51. For the number killed during the Coastal Road massacre, see Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “32nd Anniversary of the Coastal Massacre,” March 11, 2010, accessed September 29, 2016, http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/ForeignPolicy/Terrorism/Palestinian/Pages/32nd_anniversary_coastal_massacre_11-Mar-2010.aspx. Other sources state that thirty-five or thirty-seven Israelis were killed. For the latter, see Ian Black and Benny Morris, Israel’s Secret Wars: A History of Israel’s Intelligence Services (New York: Grove Press, 1991), pp. 361–62. They write that, in addition, nine of the eleven perpetrators were killed. Other sources state that the number of perpetrators was twelve. For the Carter quotes, see Carter, White House Diary, p. 179.
52. For the 1982 invasion and sense of quagmire, see Shlaim, The Iron Wall, pp. 430, 433, 437–40. For the recommendation of unilateral withdrawal, see Shlaim, The Iron Wall, pp. 430, 433; Shapira, Israel, p. 383. For Begin’s torment and the Begin quotes (“war of choice” and “I cannot go on”), see Shlaim, The Iron Wall, pp. 431–32; Shapira, Israel, p. 380. For the commission of inquiry, see Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Events at the Refugee Camps in Beirut—8 February 1983,” accessed September 29, 2016, http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/foreignpolicy/mfadocuments/yearbook6/pages/104%20report%20of%20the%20commission%20of%20inquiry%20into%20the%20e.aspx. For estimates of the number killed at Sabra and Shatila, see Ze’ev Schiff and Ehud Ya’ari, Israel’s Lebanon War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), p. 282. For the stages of Israel’s pullout from Lebanon, see Shlaim, The Iron Wall, pp. 430, 433–36, 437–42.
53. For Operation Grapes of Wrath and civilian deaths in Qana, see Shlaim, The Iron Wall, pp. 580–84. (Sources vary on how many civilians were killed, with most citing one of two numbers: 102 or 106. The figure of 102 comes from Amnesty International, “Unlawful Killings During Operation ‘Grapes of Wrath,’” July 23, 1996.) For Netanyahu’s departure from the previous Israeli insistence on a peace treaty for any withdrawal from Lebanon, see Shlaim, The Iron Wall, pp. 616–17, 619. (When Netanyahu’s “Lebanon first” proposal—for withdrawal in return for the dismantlement of Hezbollah—was not accepted, he made several others: a multinational force to replace Israeli troops after they withdrew or a guarantee by the Lebanese government that it would take over the evacuated buffer zone and prevent attacks against Israel.) For the Israeli names for Lebanon (which also included “that cursed place,” “the Valley of Death,” and that “Moloch”), see Shlaim, The Iron Wall, p. 617. For the group of bereaved mothers, see “Israeli Mothers Who Called for Lebanon Pullout Say Work Is Done,” Associated Press, June 6, 2000; Shlaim, The Iron Wall, p. 617. For Hezbollah’s growing strength, the weakening of the South Lebanon Army, and the greater burden placed on Israel, see Shlaim, The Iron Wall, pp. 616–19, 670–73. For Barak’s campaign promise, see Shlaim, The Iron Wall, p. 643. For the objections of the IDF chief of staff, see Shlaim, The Iron Wall, pp. 670–73.
54. For the doubling and tripling of IDF deployments in the West Bank and Gaza, see remarks by IDF Chief of Staff Dan Shomron in “Israel Prepares for Violence on Anniversary of Al Fatah,” Associated Press, December 29, 1987; see also Hillel Frisch, “The West Bank and the Gaza Strip: The Intifada,” in Middle East Contemporary Survey, vol. 12: 1988, Ami Ayalon and Haim Shaked, eds. (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990), p. 292; Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State, p. 619. For King Hussein’s quotes, see Shlaim, The Iron Wall, p. 473. Members of the Israeli right and a few Jordanian figures have continued to discuss the possibility of Jordanian rule in the West Bank, but Jordan and the PLO are both opposed to the idea. See Hassan A. Barari, “Four Decades After Black September: A Jordanian Perspective,” Civil Wars 10, no. 3 (2008): 231–43.
55. On the same day, in another UN resolution, 138 member states welcomed the PLO’s declaration, called for its participation at an international peace conference, and affirmed that among the principles necessary for peace were “the withdrawal of Israel from the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, and from the other occupied Arab territories”; “dismantling the Israeli settlements”; and “resolving the problem of the Palestine refugees in conformity with General Assembly Resolution 194 (III) of 11 December 1948, and subsequent relevant resolutions.” Israel and the United States were the only countries to vote against the two resolutions (43/176 and 43/177).
56. For the understanding of Israeli leaders that military means were insufficient, see comments by IDF Chief of Staff Dan Shomron (“there is no such thing as eradicating the intifada because in its essence it expresses the struggle of nationalism”) in Glenn Frankel, Beyond the Promised Land: Jews and Arabs on the Hard Road to a New Israel (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 88. For comments by the IDF chief of staff, the head of central command, and the head of the analysis branch of military intelligence, all of whom said that military measures were insufficient to stop the violence, see Beilin, The Path to Geneva, p. 290; Aluf Benn, “The Army Is Dictating Policy,” Haaretz, August 8, 2002; Tamir Libel and Shlomo Shpiro, “Israeli Intelligence Threat Perceptions of Palestinian Terrorist Organizations, 1948–2008,” in The Image of the Enemy: Intelligence Analysis of Adversaries Since 1945, Paul Maddrell, ed. (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2015), p. 201. For the US push for Israel to accept or produce a new peace plan, see Dan Fisher, “Shamir Shuns U.S. Deadline on Peace Plan: Won’t Bring Initiative to Cabinet Vote Before His Washington Visit,” The Los Angeles Times, March 7, 1988; Shlaim, The Iron Wall pp. 470–72, 483. For Rabin’s 1989 proposal, see Shlaim, The Iron Wall, p. 483. For Shamir’s plan, see Shlaim, The Iron Wall, pp. 483–86.
57. For Rabin’s election and the increasing strength of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, see Shlaim, The Iron Wall, p. 533. For the growing violence of the intifada (Hamas and Islamic Jihad killed six IDF soldiers in seven days, resulting in the deportation of 415 of their members to Lebanon), see Graham Usher, Dispatches from Palestine: The Rise and Fall of the Oslo Peace Process (London: Pluto Press, 1999), p. 18; Shlaim, The Iron Wall, p. 527; Michael Parks, “Palestinians Return from Lebanon Exile,” The Los Angeles Times, December 16, 1993. For the violence in March, the sealing of the Occupied Territories “until further notice,” and the near hysteria of the Israeli press at this time, see Usher, Dispatches from Palestine, pp. 12–13, 15. For Israelis stressing the urgency of a political solution and asking Palestinians in Oslo to stop the intifada, see Shlaim, The Iron Wall, p. 533; Mahmoud Abbas, Through Secret Channels: The Road to Oslo, Senior PLO Leader Abu Mazen’s Revealing Story of the Negotiations with Israel (London: Garnet Publishing, 1995), pp. 179–80. For the debate over withdrawal from Gaza and the summer 1993 poll, see Shlaim, The Iron Wall, pp. 531–32; Abbas, Through Secret Channels, p. 199. For Rabin’s quotes (“take Gaza out of Tel Aviv” and “swarming around here”), see Usher, Dispatches from Palestine, p. 13. For reports to Rabin on Oslo, see Shlaim, The Iron Wall, pp. 530–41; Hilde Henriksen Waage, “Norway’s Role in the Middle East Peace Talks: Between a Strong State and a Weak Belligerent,” Journal of Palestine Studies 34, no. 4 (2004–2005): 6–24.
58. For the text of Oslo, see Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements September 13, 1993,” accessed September 29, 2016. For attacks on Oslo by the Israeli right (Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu promised to cancel Oslo, called the agreement appeasement, and said to Peres, “You are even worse than Chamberlain. He imperiled the safety of another people, but you are doing it to your own people”), see Shlaim, The Iron Wall, p. 539. On Rabin’s insistence that the Camp David framework agreement serve as the basis of the Oslo negotiations, see Ross, Doomed to Succeed, p. 168; see also Beilin, The Path to Geneva, pp. 47–48. For Rabin’s quote (“less than a state”), see Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Address to the Knesset by Prime Minister Rabin on the Israel-Palestinian Interim Agreement,” October 5, 1995, accessed October 1, 2016, http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/foreignpolicy/mfadocuments/yearbook10/pages/address%20to%20the%20knesset%20by%20prime%20minister%20rabin%20on.aspx. A Palestinian negotiator during the early Oslo period told me that he and others hoped Rabin’s statement to the Knesset represented a harder line than his private views and that, whatever Rabin’s true beliefs regarding Palestinian statehood, it seemed to the Palestinian team that several of the Israeli negotiators had come around to the idea. Phone interview by the author with Palestinian negotiator, August 18, 2016. In his memoir, former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami wrote that Rabin—his colleague in the Labor Party—did not support Palestinian statehood: “As a matter of fact, neither Rabin nor, especially, Peres wanted autonomy to usher in a Palestinian state. As late as 1997—that is, four years into the Oslo process when, as the chairman of the Labour Party’s Foreign Affairs Committee I proposed for the first time that the party endorse the idea of a Palestinian state—it was Shimon Peres who most vehemently opposed the idea.” Shlomo Ben-Ami, Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 220.
59. For the sharp rise in violence after the Oslo signing, see Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Terrorism Deaths in Israel-1920–1999,” January 1, 2000, accessed October 1, 2016, http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/MFA-Archive/2000/Pages/Terrorism deaths in Israel-1920–1999.aspx; Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Fatal Terrorist Attacks in Israel (Sept 1993–1999),” September 24, 2000, accessed October 1, 2016, http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/ForeignPolicy/Terrorism/Palestinian/Pages/Fatal%20Terrorist%20Attacks%20in%20Israel%20Since%20the%20DOP%20-S.aspx. For the “first—and last” quip, for which Shlaim gives original credit to Mahmoud Darwish and for which others have credited Shafiq al-Hout, see Shlaim, The Iron Wall, p. 540; Barry M. Rubin, Revolution Until Victory?: The Politics and History of the PLO (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), p. 203.
60. On Oslo allowing Israel to repackage rather than end its control and making resistance easier to contain, see Shlaim, The Iron Wall, p. 542. For the Rabin quote (“do what they will do”), see Usher, Dispatches from Palestine, p. 74. Rabin’s mention of the Association for Civil Rights in Israel was not accidental. During the First Intifada, when he was defense minister, the organization had brought a case to the Supreme Court that had cast Rabin in a terrible light. In the village of Hawara, south of Nablus, IDF soldiers took twelve young men, handcuffed them, shackled their legs, placed them facedown on the ground, and beat them with clubs, breaking their arms and legs. Court testimony from the local officers later revealed that before the incident Rabin had traveled to Nablus and given the following orders: ‘You must catch them and break their arms and legs.… Go in and break their bones.’” Frankel, Beyond the Promised Land, pp. 75–82.
61. Counting each calendar year from the beginning of 1975 to the end of 1993. According to the Israeli government, the last year prior to 1994 in which as many died from Palestinian attacks was 1974, when 67 were killed. Of the 64 killed by suicide bombing from July 1994 to September 1995, 61 were Israeli, two were American, and one was Dutch; the number does not include perpetrators killed in the attacks. Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Terrorism Deaths in Israel-1920–1999,” January 1, 2000, accessed October 1, 2016; Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Fatal Terrorist Attacks in Israel (Sept 1993–1999),” September 24, 2000, accessed October 1, 2016; “Yasser Arafat Ends 27-Year Exile,” BBC, July 1, 1994.
62. The Temple Mount is considered by many Jews to be the holiest site of their faith, although a majority of Israelis (69 percent) say they believe the holiest site in Judaism is the Western Wall. See Kobi Nachshoni, “Poll: Israel’s Jews Abandoning Temple,” Ynet, July 16, 2013. The Noble Sanctuary refers to an elevated plaza housing two main structures, the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. In Islam, the entire Noble Sanctuary, not just its two main structures, has the sanctity of a mosque, and it is common for Muslims to refer to the Noble Sanctuary as al-Aqsa Mosque. See International Crisis Group, “The Status of the Status Quo at Jerusalem’s Holy Esplanade,” Middle East Report, no. 159, June 30 2015, p. 1. For the Netanyahu quote (“expresses our sovereignty”), see Anthony Lewis, “Which Israel?,” The New York Times, September 30, 1996. For two common estimates of the number of Palestinians killed in the tunnel riots (Shlaim: 80 Palestinians; Herzog: 84 Palestinians), see Shlaim, The Iron Wall, p. 598; Chaim Herzog (updated by Shlomo Gazit), The Arab-Israeli Wars: War and Peace in the Middle East (New York: Vintage, 2005), p. 422. For the worst violence since the height of the intifada, see Shlaim, The Iron Wall, pp. 598–99; Usher, Dispatches from Palestine, p. 117. Names used by Palestinians for the tunnel riots include “the tunnel upheaval” (habba al-nafaq) and, more commonly, “the tunnel uprising” (intifada al-nafaq).
63. For the Security Council resolution, see “S/RES/1073 (1996),” United Nations Security Council, September 28, 1996. For the summit and Netanyahu’s promise, see Ross, The Missing Peace: The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004), pp. 266–68. For details of the Hebron Protocol and the attached “Note for the Record” (the latter called on Israel to release prisoners and set a March 1997 deadline for Israel’s redeployment), see “Note for the Record, January 15, 1997,” United States Institute of Peace, Peace Agreements Digital Collection, accessed October 1, 2016, http://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/file/resources/collections/peace_agreements/note_for_record.pdf; Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Protocol Concerning the Redeployment in Hebron, 17 January 1997,” accessed October 1, 2016, http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/foreignpolicy/peace/guide/pages/protocol%20concerning%20the%20redeployment%20in%20hebron.aspx; Shlaim, The Iron Wall, pp. 601–603; Ross, The Missing Peace, pp. 302–24. For the release of 31 prisoners (Ross writes that he was negotiating the release of 29 female prisoners), see “Question of the Violation of Human Rights in the Occupied Arab Territories, Including Palestine,” United Nations, Commission on Human Rights, 53rd Session, February 19, 1997, https://unispal.un.org/DPA/DPR/unispal.nsf/0/B4BF26CDEC8333A8802564530035E48D. For the Wye Memorandum and the failure to implement much of it, see Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “The Wye River Memorandum, 23 October 1998,” accessed October 1, 2016, http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/foreignpolicy/peace/guide/pages/the%20wye%20river%20memorandum.aspx; Shlaim, The Iron Wall, pp. 633–39.
64. For Sharon as “the bulldozer,” see Shlaim, The Iron Wall, p. 712. For Sharon’s demand that an IDF general be fired, see Kobi Finkler, “Friends Tell of Dan Shomron,” Arutz Sheva [Hebrew], November 16, 2014; Mazal Mualem, “Right Wing Declares Open Season on IDF Chief of Staff,” Al-Monitor, February 22, 2015. For the quote (“Sharon offered a freeze”) by Indyk, who accompanied Sharon on his first visit to President George W. Bush in March 2001, see Martin Indyk, Innocent Abroad: An Intimate Account of American Peace Diplomacy in the Middle East (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), pp. 377, 380.
65. For the refusal to visit by the Saudi Crown Prince (who also canceled a high-level defense meeting with the United States), as well as the quotes (“how can you possibly tolerate,” “put U.S.-Saudi relations in the balance,” and “responding to Saudi pressure”), see Elliott Abrams, Tested by Zion: The Bush Administration and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 14–15. For more details on the Saudi threats and the US endorsement of Palestinian statehood that resulted, see Robert G. Kaiser and David B. Ottaway, “Saudi Leader’s Anger Revealed Shaky Ties,” The Washington Post, February 10, 2002. According to a senior Saudi official quoted in the above article, in late August 2001 Crown Prince Abdullah instructed his ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, to deliver the following message to national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and secretary of state Colin Powell: “‘Starting from today, you’re from Uruguay, as they say. You [Americans] go your way, I [Saudi Arabia] go my way. From now on, we will protect our national interests, regardless of where America’s interests lie in the region.’” Bandar, the article states, “was instructed to cut off further discussion between the two countries.… over the next two days, the United States went to extraordinary lengths to try to repair the relationship, its closest with any Arab country, finally satisfying the Saudis with a personal letter to Abdullah from the president himself.… Bush’s letter, according to Saudi officials, endorsed the idea of a viable Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.” Abrams writes (pp. 36–37) that Crown Prince Abdullah made a similar threat to relations with the United States several months later, in April 2002, demanding that the United States end Israel’s siege of Arafat at his headquarters in Ramallah. Bush wrote of that moment in his memoir: “America’s pivotal relationship with Saudi Arabia was about to be seriously ruptured.” For the change in policy reflected in the US endorsement of Palestinian statehood (which was first made privately, in the August 2001 letter to Crown Prince Abdullah, then publicly in an October 2001 statement to the press and a November 2001 speech to the UN), see Ross, The Missing Peace, p. 786, p. 848; Abrams, pp. 15, 22. Ross writes that it was Bush who had “establish[ed] for the first time that U.S. policy henceforth would be to support a two-state solution.… While the Clinton parameters presented to the two sides in December 2000 would have provided for an independent Palestinian state, the parameters represented ideas to resolve the differences between the two sides, were never stated as formal policy, and were withdrawn at the end of the administration.” For Bush’s first public support of Palestinian statehood and the administration’s leaked plans for creating a Palestinian state in fall 2001, see James Bennet, “Sharon Apologizes over Dispute With U.S.,” The New York Times, October 7, 2001; Abrams, pp. 21–24; “Bush ‘Endorses’ Palestinian State,” BBC, October 2, 2001, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/1575090.stm.
66. For the Security Council resolution on Palestinian statehood, see “S/RES/1397 (2002),” United Nations Security Council, March 12, 2002. The formal endorsement by Sharon’s government was made in 2003, but Sharon himself had stated that he accepted a demilitarized Palestinian state in October 2001. See “World-Wide,” The Wall Street Journal, October 17, 2001, p. A1; Jonathan Karp, “Radical Palestinian Group Assassinates Israeli Minister, Hurting Peace Process,” The Wall Street Journal, October 18, 2001. Sharon’s fall 2001 statement, the first of its kind that he had made as prime minister, did not put an unrealistic limit on the size of the Palestinian state, unlike his claim during his 2001 election campaign that he would offer the PLO something it would never accept: a demilitarized state in no more than 42 percent of the West Bank. See Anthony H. Cordesman (with the assistance of Jennifer Moravitz), The Israeli-Palestinian War: Escalating to Nowhere (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2005), p. 52. In November 2001, Sharon’s chief foreign policy adviser, Zalman Shoval, described a new Israeli peace plan that included Palestinian statehood. See Sam Kiley, “Sharon Backs a Palestinian State,” Evening Standard, November 8, 2001; Simon Jeffrey, “Sharon Endorses Palestinian State,” The Guardian, June 4, 2003. (Sharon issued another statement of support for Palestinian statehood in 2002. “Sharon Tentatively Backs Plan for Palestinian State,” The New York Times, December 5, 2002.) For Sharon leading the first Israeli government to endorse Palestinian statehood, see James Bennet, “The Mideast Turmoil: Jerusalem; Israel Approves Bush’s Road Map to New Palestine,” The New York Times, May 26, 2003.
67. For Clinton’s proposal, see Ross, The Missing Peace, pp. 809–13. Clinton’s plan also called for a Palestinian state in Gaza and 95 to 99 percent of the West Bank; withdrawal of nearly all Israeli forces within three years (and the remainder—in the Jordan Valley—within another three); recognition of the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland or to historic Palestine, subject to Israel’s sovereign discretion; and the release of Palestinian prisoners. For details of the 2002 polls, see Ben-Dror Yemini, “Palestinians Are Not Exempt from Blame over Failure of Peace Talks,” Yediot Aharonot, July 26, 2015; Raviv Drucker, “History Will Fault Netanyahu, but Not for Iran Deal,” Haaretz, July 20, 2015. Similarly, in annual polls from 1987 to 2005, support for the establishment of a Palestinian state reached an all-time high (59 percent) in 2003. Yehuda Ben Meir and Olena Bagno-Moldavsky, “The Voice of the People: Israeli Public Opinion on National Security 2012,” The Institute for National Security Studies, April 2013, p. 78. For the Abrams quote (“the bloodshed was so great”), see Abrams, Tested by Zion, pp. 27–28. For the open letters to Sharon, see David Landau, Arik: The Life of Ariel Sharon (New York: Knopf, 2014), pp. 456–57; Amos Harel, “13 Elite Reservists Refuse to Serve in Territories,” Haaretz, December 22, 2003. For the interview with four former chiefs of the Shin Bet, see Landau, Arik, pp. 457–58.