Operating as an independent body, Hamas instigated strikes, punished Palestinians who did not comply with its policies and created a network to help those in need. In August 1988 Hamas published its covenant, which rejected the legitimacy of the PLO as the sole representative of the Palestinian people. In addition, it rejected any compromise with the State of Israel. All of Palestine, it stated, belonged to Muslims, and Hamas proclaimed a holy war against Israel as well as corrupt elements within Palestinian society. Another group, Islamic Jihad, from the Egyptian-based Muslim Brotherhood in the Gaza Strip, similarly supported military action against the Jewish state. In Jordan, the Sudan and southern Lebanon other splinter groups supported the Palestinian cause.
In the election that took place on 1 November 1988, Likud retained the largest number of seats, with Labour second. However, in order to form a government, it was necessary to form a coalition. In an attempt to integrate the various factions within society, Likud formed a National Unity government. On 22 December 1988 Yitzhak Shamir became Prime Minister, Shimon Peres was appointed Minister of Finance and Yitzhak Rabin became Defence Minister. The leader of the ultra-Orthodox Shas party, Arye Deri, was appointed Minister of the Interior. The political leader of Shas, Rabbi Yitzhak Peretz, became Minister of Immigrant Absorption. The leader of the National Religious Party, Zvulun Hammer, became Minister of Religious Affairs. Excluded from government, the left-wing parties combined into one party, Meretz.
Within Israel there was increasing sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians in the occupied territories. In 1988 a human rights organization, Betselem, was created which criticized breaches of human rights by the Israeli forces. Another human rights organization, Hotline: Centre for the Defence of the Individual, was established to aid Palestinians who had been denied the right to leave the country. In April 1989 the Israeli police reported that they had uncovered a network of illegal classes held by two West Bank universities at private schools in East Jerusalem, all schools in the University and the West Bank and the Gaza Strip having been closed by military order as a collective punishment because of resistance to the occupation. These meetings were closed down. In protest an expert on criminology, Professor Stanley Cohen of the Hebrew University, declared that such an action was an infringement of Jordanian law and a violation of the Geneva Convention and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.1
During this period the emigration of Soviet Jews had dramatically receded because of instability within Israel; many Soviet Jews chose instead to live in the United States. On 1 October 1989 the United States adopted a new policy insisting that any Soviet Jew who sought to settle in the United States would no longer be able to use an Israel exit visa; instead, the person would be compelled to apply to the United States Embassy. As a consequence, the Israeli government drafted plans to integrate hundreds of thousands of new settlers. Another, smaller immigration took place in the 1990s, the arrival of 4137 Ethiopian Jews.
As the Intifada intensified, Yitzhak Rabin recommended that elections should take place in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. On 14 May 1989 this scheme was presented by the National Unity government as one of several proposals: to strengthen peace between Egypt and Israel, to seek peace agreements with other Arab states, and to attempt to resolve the problem of Arab refugees in camps outside Israel. This peace initiative, however, was dependent on several conditions: Israel would negotiate only with Palestinians not connected with the PLO who resided in the occupied territories; there would be no change in the status of the occupied territories; Israel would not agree to an additional Palestinian state in the Gaza district and in the area between Israel and Jordan.
Such conditions were not acceptable to the PLO, and as a consequence the Intifada continued. On 20 May the leadership distributed a leaflet calling on Palestinians to kill a soldier or settler for every Palestinian killed in a conflict with Israeli troops. In addition, this document criticized the United States for supporting Israel’s election proposal. The leaflet also encouraged attacks on Palestinian collaborators who were perceived as enemies of the Palestinian people.2
During the year thirty-five Palestinians were killed, and one Israeli soldier. To stem such hostility, the Israeli government attempted to quell Israeli actions in the occupied territories. In May a group of Israeli soldiers were criticized for desecrating the Qur’an; orders were also given to prevent Jewish settlers from damaging Arab property. Nonetheless, in July students at a yeshiva near Nablus attacked local Arabs, killing a thirteen-year-old Palestinian girl.
In the following months Palestinian schools were closed, since they were perceived as focal points of insurrection, leading to conflict between Palestinian youth and Israeli troops. In the wake of such violence a number of Palestinian moderates were murdered. Anxious about such increasing violence, a number of Israelis and Palestinians established the Israeli–Palestine Centre for Research and Information in an attempt to discover a way forward. On 6 December the United States Secretary of State, James Baker, acted as a facilitator in this crisis, issuing a five-point statement which proposed that Israel engage in talks with acceptable Palestinians.
As the Intifada continued, Jews were reluctant to walk in the Old City, particularly after Professor Menachem Stern was stabbed to death in West Jerusalem. At the beginning of July an Arab passenger on the 405 bus service outside Jerusalem forced the bus off the road, killing 16 people. During the next three days, 24 Jews were arrested by Jerusalem police for hurling stones at Arab cars and trying to attack Arabs in the streets. In response Arabs threw petrol bombs at Jewish buses. On 28 July an Israeli unit crossed into southern Lebanon and abducted an important Hizbullah cleric, Sheikh Abd al-Karim Obeid.
In the view of Yitzhak Rabin, the Intifada represented the will of small groups who sought to discover their national identity and insist on its recognition. Such an acknowledgement was officially given by the American Secretary of State at the beginning of March 1990. Seeking to find a solution to the Palestinian problem, he asked the government of Israel if they were ready to engage in negotiations with Palestinian representatives about the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. The Israeli Foreign Minister, Moshe Arens, was anxious for such discussion to take place, but Prime Minister Shamir objected. Angered by such intransigence, the Labour Party withdrew its support from the National Unity government.
Shamir’s government was then defeated on a vote of no confidence; the President then called on Peres to form a government. During this period Arafat called on the Palestinians to renew violence against Jewish immigrants. Despite this, Peres sought to form a new coalition with the Sephardi religious party, Shas. When this attempt failed, he turned to other religious groups but in the end Likud was able to form a government with Shamir as Prime Minister.
Such internal turmoil was interrupted by international events that directly affected Israel. On 2 August 1990 the Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein decided to invade Kuwait. Joining with the United States, Israel demanded Iraq’s withdrawal from Kuwait. In response, Saddam agreed to an Iraqi withdrawal as long as Israel and Syria withdrew from southern Lebanon and Israel also departed from the occupied territories. At a summit in Helsinki on 8 September, President George Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev discussed this proposal; although Gorbachev wished to accept it, the Americans disagreed. Several weeks later Iraq threatened to deploy missiles against Israel; in response, the Israeli government distributed gas masks to the entire country, although they were not handed out to Palestinians living in the West Bank.
On 17 January 1991 a coalition of Allied forces attacked the Iraqi army in Kuwait. Israel was encouraged not to participate in this conflict. Although there was resistance among leading figures in the government, Israel complied despite Iraq’s use of Scud missiles against the country. When Saddam was defeated, the population of Israel was greatly relieved. Nonetheless, the Intifada continued throughout the year. Throughout 1991 attacks on Jews and Palestinian collaborators intensified. By September 1225 Arabs had died, of whom 697 had been killed by Israeli forces; the others were killed by fellow Arabs. In addition, thirteen Israeli soldiers had been killed by Arabs.3
Israel was determined not to recognize the PLO. Hence, when Ezer Weizman met with Arafat in Vienna, he was sacked by Shamir. Yet, through James Baker’s intervention, it was agreed that the Palestinians would be represented by persons from the occupied territories who would form a joint Jordanian–Palestinian delegation. On 18 October 1991 invitations were sent for a conference which was to be held in Spain. At the end of the month the Madrid Conference was opened with President Bush and President Gorbachev as the main speakers. At the conference Israel was represented by Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, and the Arab states were represented by their foreign ministers.
In December 1991 another conference took place in Washington dealing with the procedures for future talks. Israel insisted it was not willing to discuss territorial concessions; rather it desired to focus on Palestinian autonomy. The Palestinians, however, were not content with such a limitation. After these talks, Jews and Arabs met in a number of cities to explore various practical issues. The first of these talks took place in Moscow and focused on water sharing and economic co-operation. In Ottawa the refugee problem was of central importance, whereas in Vienna water sharing was of critical importance. In Brussels the main topic was economic co-operation.
Such collaborative ventures were interrupted by the Israeli election, in which Labour became the largest party, forming an alliance with the left-wing party Meretz and the Arab Democratic Party. Shas, too, joined the coalition. As Prime Minister, Yitzhak Rabin was committed to continuing the peace process as well as the absorption of Russian immigrants into the country. In his opening speech as Prime Minister, Rabin emphasized that the peace process would be reactivated and that Palestinians would be partners with Israelis in this quest.4
Seeking to extend the agenda beyond the subjects discussed at Madrid and Washington, Rabin stated that the Israeli government would propose a continuation of the talks based on the framework of the Madrid Conference. Aware of Palestinian suffering in previous decades, Rabin proposed a form of Palestinian self-government in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Anxious to win Palestinian support for this proposal, he refused to grant permission for the army to enter the Palestinian university campus at Nablus to search for six armed Palestinians who were allegedly attempting to influence student elections. In addition, he ordered a freeze on all new building of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
On 19 July, James Baker arrived in the Middle East to seek a solution to the conflict between Israel and its neighbours. Two days later Rabin went to Cairo in order to renew negotiations for a peace settlement. The next month he travelled to the United States to meet President Bush. On 24 August, Israel cancelled deportation orders for eleven Palestinians; the same day, talks between Israel and the Palestinians were resumed in Washington. Several days later Israel released eight hundred Palestinians who had been kept in detention. Simultaneously, Peres, acting as Foreign Minister, engaged in renewed negotiation. In September he met Prime Minister John Major in London, who agreed to end the arms embargo as well as the ban on British companies selling North Sea oil to Israel. In addition, Major agreed to intercede to end the boycott on British and European companies doing business with Israel.
Despite these steps, tension mounted in the West Bank and Jerusalem during November and December. These efforts to renew the peace process inflamed members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad who were bitterly opposed to compromise. With the encouragement of Iran, Hamas condemned the Israeli occupation while improving its educational, welfare and health care of the Palestinian population. During this period Israeli soldiers were occasionally trapped by gangs of Palestinian youths and fired on them with live ammunition. At the beginning of November in Khan Yunis, Israeli soldiers killed three Palestinians during a demonstration. Several days later in Beit Omar, Israeli troops killed a Palestinian youth who threw stones at the military. Two days later in Hebron another youth was shot dead. On 23 November in A-Ram a young Palestinian boy was killed during an attack. At the beginning of December in the Balata refugee camp, another youth was killed when a bomb he was handling exploded.
On 7 December 1992 three Israeli soldiers were killed in Gaza City; several days later Hamas kidnapped and killed an Israeli sergeant. Determined to suppress such violence, the government took action against Hamas and Islamic Jihad. On 17 December 415 of their leaders who had been detained in prison or were at home were deported to Lebanon. When the Lebanese government refused to allow them to enter the country, these leaders created a tented encampment on the Lebanese side of the border. Eventually the United Nations Security Council demanded they be returned to Israel.
On 18 December, Israeli troops shot a Palestinian youth in the Askar refugee camp and another youth in the El-Arroub refugee camp near Hebron. The next day Israeli troops killed six Palestinians in Khan Yunis. Three days later another young boy was shot and killed. On 30 December, Israel admitted that some of the Hamas deportees should not have been expelled from the country. Acts of violence continued. On 15 January 1993 a Palestinian stabbed to death four people at the Tel Aviv Central Bus Station and at a café.
Despite such acts of violence, talks between Israel and the PLO began on 20 January. At a villa outside Oslo, representatives met for three days. At the meeting several of the PLO submitted proposals involving the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, a mini Marshall Plan for the West Bank and Gaza, and economic co-operation between Israel and the Palestinian authorities. In Israel seventeen deportees were allowed to return home; however, an Israeli offer to take back 101 deportees was rejected. As the Intifada resumed, Israeli troops killed an armed Palestinian in Gaza City. On 5 February, Israeli troops killed a youth in the Nusseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. In addition, three other Palestinians in the Bureij refugee camp were shot. On 6 February Israeli troops killed another youth when confronted by an Arab mob.
Such killings provoked debate within the country. According to the army, two-thirds of the deaths of Palestinians took place between August 1992 and January 1993 when the lives of Israeli soldiers were threatened. Because army regulations did not permit lethal shooting in such contexts, the troops were not complying with the regulations designed to regulate their conduct. Amidst such controversy, Peres and Rabin continued to engage in negotiations with the Palestinians. On 9 February the Oslo talks reached a new stage. Meeting with Rabin, Peres argued that Israel should seek to induce Arafat to leave Tunis and return to the West Bank and Gaza. He then set out the advantages of the proposals that had been presented by the Arab delegates.
On 11 February the Oslo talks continued, and a draft declaration of principles was drawn up as well as a paper establishing guidelines for a regional Marshall Plan. Nonetheless, on 1 March two young civilians were stabbed to death in Tel Aviv. On the next day Yehoshua Weissbroad was stoned and then shot in his car in the Gaza Strip. On 8 March a gardener was stabbed. On 12 March a young immigrant from Canada was shot. The next day a woman driver who took Palestinians from the Gaza Strip to their jobs was killed. Several days later two Israeli soldiers were shot dead.
Between 20 and 22 March secret meetings took place in Oslo in which it seemed that an accord between Israel and the PLO might emerge. This was followed by another meeting on 14 June in Oslo; two months later the Oslo Accords were approved by both the Israelis and the Palestinians. After the PLO had been required to renounce terrorism, a ceremony took place in Washington on 13 September 1993 with Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat as the main representatives. After the signing Rabin reluctantly shook hands with Yasser Arafat. In the following months Israel and the PLO engaged in active negotiations for an Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.
Despite these steps towards peace, Hamas and Islamic Jihad pressed for a more radical solution to the Middle East problem. In an attempt to stem further violence, Rabin felt that an approach should be made to Syria for an agreement concerning the Golan Heights. Peres, however, believed that Jordan should be consulted first about its desire that all the land should be returned, that Israel should cease taking water from the River Jordan, and that Palestinian refugees should be allowed to return to their former homes.
The Oslo Accords served as the framework for the peace process and a basis for Israeli–Arab co-operation. The form of self-government authorized at Oslo and the withdrawal plans provided a basis for eventual Palestinian statehood. In Arafat’s view, such self-governing institutions were vital to the future of Palestine as a nation state. However, just as in 1947, the Palestinian Arabs were being encouraged by more radical groups to oppose a two-state solution. Israeli extremists were also set to sabotage the Oslo Accords. In January 1994 Yehoshafat Harkabi, former head of the Israeli military intelligence, told researchers from Ben-Gurion University that the internal debate about Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank could have serious consequences. Even though he was a supporter of the peace process, he feared that extremists would resort to violence.5 On 25 February an Israeli gunman, Baruch Goldstein, opened fire on Palestinian Arabs inside the main mosque in Hebron, killing twenty-five people.
In response to the massacre at Hebron, Arafat broke off negotiations with Israel, yet after several weeks of pressure the talks were resumed. Discontented Palestinians, however, actively sought to undermine the peace process. On 6 April a member of Hamas blew himself up with a bomb in Afula, killing eight Israelis. According to Hamas, this was to be the first in a series of terrorist attacks in retaliation for the murders at Hebron. A week later another member of Hamas detonated a bomb, killing himself and six other people in a bus in Hadera.
Determined to continue with negotiations, Rabin warned that such acts of terrorism would not deter the Israeli government from seeking an agreement with the PLO. On 3 May, Rabin and Arafat met in Cairo to finalize a peace agreement. Just after midnight Arafat added a number of territorial alterations to the maps that had previously been agreed upon. Once Rabin had agreed to these changes, a signing ceremony took place on 4 May. Under the Cairo agreement, a Palestinian authority headed by Arafat was given legislative, executive and judicial powers as well as responsibility for security, education, health and welfare. Israel would retain control of foreign affairs and defence.
Several days later Arafat flew to Johannesburg, where he declared that the Palestinians would not give up their jihad until Jerusalem was liberated. Jihad, he explained, did not mean holy war, but rather a sacred campaign. On 13 May, Israeli troops as well as administrators left Jericho; four days later they withdrew from the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian flag was raised over Jericho and Gaza City. During this period, a United Nations force took up positions between the Jewish and Arab sections of Hebron. Once Gaza and Jericho were transferred to the Palestinian Authority, Rabin and Peres engaged in discussion with Jordan; on 24 July, Rabin and King Hussein signed a peace declaration in Washington.
Despite these advances, four Hamas kidnappers seized an Israeli soldier in October, determined to murder him unless two hundred Hamas prisoners were released including Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. Determined not to negotiate with Hamas, Rabin refused to comply and suspended the Egyptian–Israeli negotiations. As Israeli commando units tried to rescue the soldier, he was killed along with one of the commandos. In consequence, discussions concerning Palestinian autonomy were suspended, but negotiations with Jordan continued. On 16 October, Rabin visited Jordan, where he and Hussein discussed border modifications that were to be part of the peace agreement. On 19 October another suicide bomber detonated a bomb on a bus in Ramat Gan, killing twenty-two people. Angered by this event, the leader of the opposition, Benjamin Netanyahu, condemned the peace process.
Following the incident at Ramat Gan, public support for the government’s efforts began to decline. To deter further acts of violence, Rabin sealed off Gaza and the West Bank from Israel. Inside the Palestinian territories, Arafat arrested Hamas extremists. At the end of the month, President Clinton travelled to Cairo, where he held discussions with President Mubarak and Yasser Arafat. He then flew to Wadi Araba for the signing of the Israeli–Jordan Treaty of Peace, and then on to Amman and Damascus. Finally he flew to Israel, where he addressed the Knesset.
Several days after the signing of the Israel–Jordan treaty, a meeting of 2500 Israeli, Arab, American and European politicians and business people met in Casablanca for an economic summit which was addressed by Peres and Rabin.6 These efforts to secure peace, however, were marred by further attacks. On 22 January 1995 twenty-nine Israeli soldiers and a civilian were killed at Beit Lid by a suicide bomber. Both Rabin and Arafat resolved that further efforts should be made to curtail such violence. Throughout Gaza a number of Islamic fundamentalist leaders were arrested.
Despite such setbacks Rabin pressed on with the peace process. Peres was to engage in negotiations with the Palestinians, and Rabin would focus on terrorism. On 29 March 1995 John Major arrived in Israel for a meeting with Rabin. Among the Palestinians, there was bitter conflict between those who supported efforts to achieve autonomy and those who rejected any form of negotiation with Israel. On 2 April two members of Hamas accidentally blew themselves up while preparing for an attack, killing six Palestinians. In response to these deaths, the chief of Gaza’s civil police appealed to Hamas to desist from further acts of terror. Seven days later six Israelis were killed in suicide bombings in Kfar Daron.
Determined to continue the peace process, Peres went to Gaza on 4 July for a meeting with Arafat to finalize Oslo II, the extension of Palestinian rule to the West Bank accompanied by the withdrawal of Israeli troops. Under this scheme the West Bank would eventually be ruled by Palestinian authorities. Several weeks later six Israelis were killed in Tel Aviv. This act of terrorism, however, was not allowed to interrupt the peace process. Negotiations continued, and Israeli–Palestinian committees discussed the withdrawal of Israeli troops, Palestinian rule, the release of Palestinian prisoners, and the territory to be handed over to the Palestinian Authority.
Throughout the year the Israeli government had transferred a number of areas of government to the Palestinians in both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip: education, health, taxation, tourism and welfare. On 20 August 1995 several more spheres of responsibility were transferred: commerce, industry, agriculture, government, fuel, postal services, labour, insurance and statistics. Subsequently, with the help of an American negotiator, further aspects of Palestinian life were discussed. In Israel, however, there was growing alarm about these developments. According to Likud, Rabin had no authority to make such decisions, since his majority depended on Arab support within the country.
On 22 September Peres and Arafat went to an Egyptian resort and discussed the final aspects of Palestinian rule in the West Bank. The next week Rabin flew to Washington, where he signed the Oslo II agreement. The opposition parties denounced Rabin, calling him a traitor to his country. At the beginning of October the Knesset debated the Oslo treaty; at a rally in Jerusalem right-wing demonstrators protested against the government. In their view, Oslo II was a betrayal of the biblical Land of Israel. The leader of Likud, Netanyahu, attacked Rabin for reaching this accord with the support of Arab Knesset members. Despite such disturbances, Oslo II was narrowly passed in the Knesset.
Nonetheless, criticism of Oslo II continued. The President of Israel maintained that the treaty had been accepted too quickly. Undeterred, Rabin pressed on with plans for Palestinian autonomy. At the end of October he flew to Amman for the Amman Economic Conference; in his speech to the delegates, he supported economic co-operation between Israel and its Arab neighbours. In Israel, opposition mounted. At a rally in Jerusalem on 28 October, Rabin was denounced as a traitor to the Jewish state. The next week, Rabin and Peres appeared at a rally in Tel Aviv in support of the peace process. At the end of the rally Rabin left the platform and was shot dead by a religious Jew, Yigal Amir, a student at Bar-Ilan University.
The same evening at a meeting of the Israeli Cabinet, Peres was elected Prime Minister. Rabin’s body had been placed in the Knesset forecourt; nearly a million people passed by his coffin during the afternoon and evening of 4 November and the early hours of the next day. Rabin’s funeral was attended by a wide variety of representatives, including King Hussein, President Mubarak, the Prime Minister of Morocco, Prince Charles and representatives of over eighty countries. Although Arafat had wanted to attend, it was felt that his presence might cause difficulty at the ceremony. Throughout the Jewish world, memorial ceremonies were held to commemorate the Israeli leader. Eight days after Rabin’s assassination a memorial meeting was held in Tel Aviv.
Despite such mourning, the peace process was disrupted when a West Bank university graduate student was killed in Gaza City on 5 January 1996. The next month a suicide bomber killed twenty-five people on a bus in Jerusalem. Later in the day another suicide bomber killed himself at a bus stop, killing one Israeli. Arafat’s adviser, Ahmed Tibi, condemned these murders, insisting that the cycle of terrorism must come to an end. Despite his plea, thirteen Israelis were killed on 13 March by a suicide bomber in Jerusalem. The next day another suicide bomber attacked a crowd in Tel Aviv, killing eighteen people.
After the 13 March bus bomb, Peres told Arafat that the future of the peace process was at risk unless the Palestinian Authority was prepared to act against Hamas. Anxious to enlist international support against terrorism as well as to stop the funding of terrorist groups by Iran and Libya, Israel and Egypt held an international conference at Sharm el-Sheikh. Subsequently President Clinton flew to Israel to express sympathy for families that had lost relatives in the bombings.
In the face of renewed attacks on Israel, the Oslo agreement came under increasing pressure. Although both Rabin and Peres were adamant that terrorism would not be allowed to undermine the peace process, the opposition parties unleashed a frenzied campaign against the Oslo Accords. In the midst of such uncertainty about government policy, Peres called an election, thereby inviting the Israel public to express its views about peace. On the night before the election Peres launched Operation Grapes of Wrath against Israel’s enemies. For over two weeks Israeli forces bombed fundamentalist positions north of the security zone, killing twenty Lebanese civilians. Subsequently a civilian shelter was hit and 105 Lebanese died. Faced with international condemnation, Israel halted this attack.
In the election campaign, yeshiva students and young members of Likud roamed the streets denouncing Peres. Within the Labour opposition, however, Meretz evoked considerable anxiety by stressing its secular character. Among the religious parties Likud’s nationalism exerted a strong attraction for the right. In the campaign the leader of Likud, Benjamin Netanyahu, declared that he would ensure that the Oslo Accords were upheld, even though he was intent on slowing down the process. On 29 May 1996, elections were held.
Labour had the largest number of seats in the Knesset, totalling 34 seats. However, in the vote for Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu narrowly won the election. Together with parties opposed to the Oslo peace process, as well as the religious bloc, a new Russian immigrant party and the centrist Third Way Party, Netanyahu was able to form a coalition government. Following the election, further conflict took place between Israel and the Palestinians as well as within Israel. Despite his defeat, Peres pressed forward with his peace plans. However, Netanyahu delayed completing the arrangements for Israel’s withdrawal from the occupied territories.
Unable to achieve the type of co-operation attained by Rabin and Peres with Palestinian authorities, Netanyahu further exacerbated relations with the Palestinians by opening the exit of an ancient tunnel that ran under the Old City next to the Temple Mount – before Labour’s defeat, Peres had been negotiating with Muslim authorities to transform an area of the Mount into another mosque in return for the opening of the tunnel. In response, Palestinians engaged in acts of violence that resulted in the death of fifteen Israeli soldiers and around eighty Palestinians. To salvage the situation, President Clinton invited Netanyahu, Arafat and King Hussein to Washington. On 7 October, in a speech to the Knesset, Peres warned of the dangers of allowing the peace process to collapse. Eventually an agreement was reached on 17 January that eighty per cent of the city of Hebron should come under the Palestinian Authority. As part of this agreement, it was accepted that Israel would withdraw more troops from the West Bank.
During this period there was considerable discussion about Israel’s presence in southern Lebanon. On 4 February 1997 two helicopters crashed in northern Israel on their way to southern Lebanon – an event that caused further anguish about troops stationed there. On 13 March seven girls were shot by a Jordanian soldier. On the day after this attack, the Cabinet agreed to initiate a building project on West Bank land that had been annexed to Jerusalem. This decision provoked both Palestinian and Jewish left-wing protests as well as the condemnation of the United Nations.
On 21 March a West Bank Arab killed three people in Tel Aviv. At the beginning of May the Palestinian Authority issued an order imposing the death penalty on any Arab who sold land to a Jew. Two months later Israel observed Memorial Day. To the dismay of the population, the ultra-Orthodox refused to stand in silence to pay respects to those who had died for the Jewish state. In June a group of Jews praying at the Wailing Wall were attacked by ultra-Orthodox Jews. A week later members of the ultra-Orthodox attacked a Jewish pub in Jerusalem.
Despite the agitation of various peace groups, there was no change in governmental policy regarding Lebanon. In the summer of 1997 liberal Israelis protested against efforts to reduce the Palestinian population in Jerusalem: in their view the Israeli quest to claim all of Jerusalem had taken on an anti-democratic and anti-humanistic character. During this period further Jewish settlement took place in the West Bank. In the same month the government dramatically altered the maps from the Oslo Accords under which the vast majority of the West Bank would be transferred to the Palestinians. Instead the government based its view on the map previously introduced by Clinton Bailey which envisaged three self-governing Palestinian enclaves, with an Israeli corridor in Samaria. According to Netanyahu, Israel would annex a large part of the territory captured from Jordan in 1967. The Palestinian area would lack statehood and possess no common borders with Jordan. Rather it would be between territories annexed by Israel and intersected by a series of highways controlled by the army.
In accord with the Oslo agreement, Israel had vacated six Palestinian cities as well as Hebron. Most of the West Bank continued to remain under Israeli control. The transfer of further territory was halted. Friction between Israel and the Palestinians was further exacerbated by a suicide bombing on 30 July in Jerusalem, which killed sixteen victims. Reacting to such terrorism, the government stopped the movement of Palestinian workers into Israeli territory and suspended all financial transfers to the Palestinian Authority. In September a bombing in Jerusalem killed five people; the next day twelve Israeli naval commandos were killed during an attack in Lebanon. During the same month Israel asked the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, to discuss with President Yeltsin the sale of weapons technology from the former Soviet arsenal to Iran. Simultaneously Israel agitated for the Americans to end aid to Russia while the sale of missile technology from Russia to Iran was continuing.
Despite such a shift in foreign policy, a number of Israelis still agitated for the continuation of the peace process, and during the autumn Peres founded the Peres Centre for Peace. Such agitation ran counter to the government’s determination to create Jewish homes on land purchased in 1990 near the Dome of the Rock. When three Jewish families moved into these dwellings, the American Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, pressed for them to be moved. Agreeing to this demand, the Netanyahu government insisted that religious students should be allowed to use these houses for prayer. This was followed by an expansion of the Etzon bloc settlements despite criticism from the American government. At the end of September a Jordanian terrorist wounded two Israeli embassy guards in Amman during an assassination attempt against a Hamas political representative. In response to this failed action, Israel agreed to release the spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, from prison.
In October 1998 Prime Minister Netanyahu and Yasser Arafat met in Washington to discuss the peace process. After prolonged argument, Israel and the Palestinians agreed to embark on a new stage of co-operation. According to the Wye agreement, Israel would effect a further West Bank redeployment, involving 27.2 per cent of the occupied territory. Thirteen per cent of this area would pass from Israeli occupation to Palestinian civil control. The remaining 14.2 per cent, which was previously under joint Israel–Palestinian Authority control, would come under Palestinian rule. In addition, the Israelis and Palestinians would together establish a committee to consider the third-phase redeployment that was mandated by the 1995 interim agreement.
Arafat agreed that the Palestinian authorities would take all measures necessary to prevent acts of terrorism, crime and hostilities. This would include a Palestinian security plan, shared with the United States, to ensure systematic and effective combat of terrorist organizations and infrastructure. To ensure peace in the region, bilateral Israeli–Palestinian security coordination would be restored, and a US–Palestinian committee would be created to monitor militant groups. The Palestinians further agreed to apprehend, investigate and prosecute specific individuals suspected of violence. It was accepted that they would collect all illegally held weapons in areas they controlled, and issue a decree barring any form of incitement to violence or terror. To ensure the implementation of this policy, a US–Palestinian–Israeli committee would monitor any cases of incitement.
Conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbours has thus not been overcome through the settlement initiated by Rabin and Peres, and the peace process has been undermined by intransigent attitudes on both sides, despite the steps taken by the new Prime Minister of Israel, Ehud Barak, elected in the summer of 1999. The events that took place in September and October 2000 have undermined attempts to create peace in the Middle East. On 28 September Israel’s hardline leader Ariel Sharon angered Palestinians by visiting a Jerusalem shrine sacred to Jews and Muslims. Dozens of police and several Palestinians were injured in the riots that followed. The following day six Palestinians were killed and close to two hundred were wounded in clashes at the shrine, known as the Temple Mount to Jews and the Noble Sanctuary to Muslims.
Subsequently, clashes erupted in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. On 30 September fourteen Palestinians were killed by Israeli firing, including twelve-year-old Mohammed al-Durrah, whose death was captured by a television cameraman and broadcast throughout the world. On 2 October nineteen people were killed in a day of heavy fighting. Israeli Arabs protested in solidarity with Palestinians, and Israelis were barred from travelling in the Palestinian territories. On 4 October Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat flew to France to meet the US secretary of state Madeleine Albright and French President Jacques Chirac. Despite this political activity, fighting between the two sides continued. On 6 October, Israel sealed the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and the next day demonstrators stormed Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus. Fighting in Jerusalem, Nazareth and Hebron continued through the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur on 9 October, and in the following weeks the violence continued amid a flurry of diplomatic activity. As hostility between Israelis and Palestinians intensified, Barak called for an election to take place later in the year resulting in the election of Ariel Sharon as Prime Minister. These terrible events have made it increasingly difficult to see how Jews and Palestinians can ever reach any accommodation of their conflicting claims to the Holy Land.