Background Report on the Middle East

 While it may be argued that the historical origins of the Arab-Israeli conflict can be traced back to biblical times, the most significant modern roots of the conflict can be found in the development of Zionism and Arab nationalism in the 18th and 19th centuries. The ideological core of modern Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people constitute a nation, and that the only way they could be safe from anti-semitic persecution is via the establishment of a sovereign nation-state in the territory of Palestine. With the creation of the Zionist Organization and the meeting of the First Zionist Congress in 1897, Jewish immigration to Palestine was systematically encouraged, and it increased significantly. With the 1905 Russian Revolution, around 60,000 Eastern European and Russian Jews moved to Palestine and began to create the institutional forerunners of what would eventually become the Israeli state.

Modern Arab nationalism had its roots in the late 18th century, and was based on the belief that the Arab people constitute a nation, and that they should have either a single Arab state or a group of independent Arab states. While the Arab nationalist movement was divided into competing factions, the factions shared an anti-Ottoman, and anti-European colonialism political agenda. The advent of modern Zionism and the subsequent increase in Jewish immigration to Palestine gave the Arab nationalist movement an additional unifying theme of anti-Zionism. Eventually a distinct Palestinian nationalist movement emerged in response to Arab-Jewish competition over control of Palestinian territory.

During World War I the Ottoman empire (which controlled Palestine) fought on the side of the Germans. Britain fought against the Ottomans and sought to prevent them from taking control of the strategically important Suez Canal. In order to enlist the support of regional arab leaders against the Ottomans, the British promised some of these leaders that Arab territory currently being held by the Ottomans (including Palestine) would be restored to Arab control. The British would later contend that Palestine was not included in the territories to revert to Arab control.

At the same time the British sought to enlist the help of Zionists in Palestine in their local struggle against the Ottomans. They also sought the help of Zionists in Russia to help in the fight against the Germans. This effort to enlist Zionist assistance on these two fronts led to the 1917 Balfour Declaration which officially stated British support for the eventual establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine. The result of this creative wartime diplomacy on the part of the British was that both Arabs and Zionists had reason to believe that the British had promised them postwar control of Palestine. At the conclusion of World War I with the defeat of the Ottoman Empire British troops occupied Palestine and set up a provisional government in Jerusalem. In 1922 the League of Nations granted Britain a mandate over Palestine. This meant that Britain was responsible for creating political institutions for self-governance in the territory. The mandate also made the British responsible for securing Palestine as a safe Jewish homeland.

In the early 1920s, British policy in Palestine was often somewhat contradictory, alternating between support for Arab and Zionist positions. This confused policy resulted in worsening tensions between the Arabs and the Zionists. It also had the effect of leading both Arabs and Zionists to distrust the British. In the 1920s Zionists in Palestine accelerated the building of parties and other political institutions that would form the framework of an eventual Israeli state. During this same period the british encouraged Palestinian nationalists to build political institutions also, but these efforts were hampered by local factional rivalries. In the early to mid 1930s the beginnings of Nazi persecution of Jews in Germany caused a dramatic increase in Jewish immigration to Palestine which was met by intensified opposition among Arab Palestinians. In 1936 this Arab anger at Jewish immigration exploded into a the Arab Revolt, which caused turmoil in British occupied Palestine for several months. In an effort to bring an end to the Arab Revolt, the British set up the Royal Palestine Commission and charged it with coming up with a way to diffuse growing Arab-Jewish tensions. The commission report concluded that Palestine should be partitioned into Arab and Jewish homelands. Arab Palestinians opposed this proposal vehemently. In 1939 with war against the Nazis imminent, the British felt the need to establish positive relations with the Arabs, so they cut Jewish immigration quotas to Palestine significantly. This eliminated an important safe harbor for a large number of Jews attempting to escape the Holocaust.

World War II fatally weakened Britain's grip on its imperial possessions including the mandate in Palestine. British influence in the region was soon to be replaced by U.S. influence. In the U.S., lobbying by Jewish-American organizations and generalized sympathy for the plight of the Jews after the Holocaust pushed Roosevelt administration middle east policy in the direction of supporting a Jewish homeland/state in Palestine. At the same time at the war's end Zionists in Palestine were engaged in both open conflict with Arab Palestinians and a full-scale revolt against the British occupiers. The British would not be able to sustain the status quo in Palestine for very long.

In 1947 the British decided to ask the United Nations to come up with a solution to the Palestine problem. The UN created the UN Special Committee for Palestine (UNSCOP). UNSCOP sent a team into Palestine to investigate the situation there and to write a report. The UNSCOP report concluded that the only viable solution for Palestine was to separate Jews and Arabs by partitioning the territory into separate Jewish and Arab states. The plan would give the Jewish state territory along the Mediterranean coast from Haifa down to south of Jaffa, as well as the Negev desert in the south and the Jezreel and Hule valleys in the north. The Arab state was to occupy the Gaza Strip in the South, the Galilee in the north and an inland bloc of territory stretching from Beersheba in the south up to Jenin in the north. The plan called for the city of Jerusalem, which was sacred to both Jews and Arabs to be put under international control. The plan was accepted by Jewish leaders, although they did not approve of its provisions for Jerusalem. Arab leaders rejected the plan and began soliciting support from neighboring Arab states for an eventual war against the Jews. The UNSCOP partition plan was approved by the UN General Assembly on November 25th 1947 over general opposition by the Arab states. Over the next several months intense fighting broke out between Arabs and Jews, as the British prepared to withdraw their forces with the expiration of their mandate. During this time Jewish forces attacked the Arab village of Deir Yassin, Killing 250 Arabs. Arab leaders responded by putting out a radio broadcast accusing the Jewish forces of atrocities against Arab civilians. This broadcast had the effect of setting off a massive flow of some 200,000 Arab refugees from all parts of Palestine into neighboring Arab countries. By the middle of the following year the UN would estimate that as many as 900,000 Arabs had fled Palestine. The ultimate fate of these refugees would become a major issue in Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations in decades to come.

On May 14th 1948, with the expiration of the British mandate in Palestine, Jewish leaders declared the birth of the sovereign state of Israel. The neighboring Arab states of Egypt, Lebanon, Transjordan, Syria, and Iraq immediately declared war on the new Israeli state. Because the Arab states were pursuing different political and territorial aims, the Arab forces were not well integrated and they did not execute a unified battle plan. The Arab forces were also poorly trained and equipped in comparison with the Israeli forces, who also had the added incentive that comes from fighting for survival. Thus, the Israeli forces were able to hold off the Arab forces. On June 11th 1948, the UN Security Council ordered a truce. During this truce which lasted for about a month the Israeli forces were able to stock up on military supplies, and eventually were able to make significant territorial gains during subsequent fighting. By the end of the year Israel was in control of large blocs of territory that had been assigned to the Arabs in the UNSCOP partition plan. The effect of this was that Israel now possessed a contiguous territory with much more defensible borders. In the first six months of 1949, Israel concluded armistice agreements with Transjordan, Syria, Egypt, and Lebanon, but the situation was far from one of lasting peace. Over the next several years the Israelis engaged in peace negotiations with several of their Arab neighbors, but no peace agreements were reached.

The 1956 Suez War

By the early 1950s tensions between Israel and Egypt were intensifying as a result of Palestinian guerrilla raids into Israel launched from Egyptian territory which resulted in retaliatory raids by Israeli forces. These led to border clashes with Egyptian forces. By 1954 Egypt was being led by a staunch anti-Israeli Arab nationalist named Gamal Abdul Nasser. In 1955 Egypt shut down the straits of Tiran to all Israeli ship traffic. By the spring of 1956, the Israeli Ben Gurion government was collaborating with France to discuss ways of getting Egypt's Nasser out of power. The French saw Nasser as an important ally to Algerian rebels who were fighting to oust France from their colony in Algeria. The Israelis saw Nasser as a direct regional threat to them. In July of 1956 Nasser shocked the world and specifically angered France and Britain by nationalizing the Suez canal, which was a vital strategic passage for both France and Britain. While the U.S. Eisenhower administration tried to negotiate a peaceful solution to the Suez question, Britain, France and Israel plotted a strategy for launching a war against Egypt. The plan called for Israeli forces to move across the Sinai and seize the Suez canal. Britain and France would then have a justification to insert their own forces under the pretext of protecting the canal.

The plan was put into operation on 29 October 1956, with Israeli forces reaching the Suez on October 30. British and French forces bombed Egyptian military assets and sent in paratroopers in the canal zone. But Britain and France had not shared their scheme with the Eisenhower administration to agree to the plan,and the U.S. shocked its two European allies by sponsoring the Uniting for Peace resolution in the UN General Assembly which called for an immediate cease fire and eventual insertion of a UN peacekeeping force known as The United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF). The U.S. also applied Economic sanctions on Israel and threatened to sever diplomatic relations with them if they did not withdraw from the Egyptian Sinai. The Eisenhower administration had acted based on Cold War calculations that if the war were allowed to continue, it might result in Soviet intervention in the region.

The Suez war resulted in Egypt's Nasser being strengthened as the leader of the Arab bloc. Egypt also remained firmly in control of the Suez, and was now the beneficiary of a UN peacekeeping force positioned in the Sinai as protection from the Israelis.The UNEF force also benefitted Israel by assuring that the straits of Tiran would remain open to Israeli shipping, and providing protection from Palestinian Fedayeen guerilla infiltration from the Sinai.

In the aftermath of the Suez War, Palestinian Arab leaders became convinced that the surrounding Arab states were too preoccupied with their own state interests and were not sufficiently committed to the liberation of Palestine from the grip of the Israelis. In 1957, Arab Palestinian leaders created the nationalist militant resistance movement known as Fatah, led by Yasser Arafat and others. In 1964 Egypt's Nasser hosted an Arab summit in Cairo, where he took the lead in creating the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) which would serve as an umbrella institution for all Palestinian resistance groups. The Palestinian National Council (PNC) was created to coordinate the PLO, and to draft the PLO covenant in which the PLO called for an armed struggle against the Israelis toward the end of establishing a future Palestinian state.In its first years the PLO was very much under the control of Egypt and the other Arab States, but by the mid 1960s it began to become more autonomous. By the mid 1960s Palestinian Fedayeen attacks on Israel began to increase in frequency and intensity.

The 1967 Six Day War

By 1967 tensions between Israel and its Arab neighbors were at a very high level. Israeli and Syrian forces had clashed in the Galilee area in 1966. Egypt and Syria concluded a mutual defense pact in November of 1966, and hostile rhetoric escalated between the Egyptian-Syrian alliance and Israel. At the same time Israel came under intensified attacks from Fedayeen guerillas staged from Jordanian territory. In April of 1967, Syrian and Israeli fighter jets clashed resulting in significant losses for the Syrians. In May the Soviets forwarded an inaccurate intelligence report to their Egyptian allies which stated that the Israelis were mobilizing to invade Syria. Egypt's Nasser responded by moving Egyptian troops into the Sinai, demanding that UN Secretary General U Thant partially withdraw UNEF forces there, and once again closing off the Straits of Tiran to Israeli ship traffic. UN Secretary U Thant completely withdrew UNEF forces, in effect setting the stage for war. Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian forces went into complete mobilization. On June 5th 1967, Israeli defense forces launched a massive preemptive strike on all three fronts. The Israeli air force effectively destroyed the Egyptian, Syrian, and Jordanian air forces on the ground, thus achieving instant air superiority. Without effective air cover the Arab armies were greatly disadvantaged on the ground against the formidable Israeli ground forces, and Israel quickly won a stunning victory.

When the war was over after 6 days, Israel had made massive territorial gains on the ground. Israeli forces were now in control of the strategic Golan Heights which were formerly controlled by Syrian forces. They were also in control of Egypt's Sinai, Jordan's West Bank territory, and the Gaza strip which had been controlled by Arab Palestinians. Israel had tripled the size of the territory under its control.

The Six Day war served to refocus the attention of the Arab world and the international community on general on the overall Palestinian question, and on the need for a regional peace arrangement. After the war, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 242, which would serve to set the terms of peace negotiations for decades to come. UN Resolution 242 declared that the Israelis should withdraw from all territory taken during the Six Day War, and in return the surrounding Arab States should recognize Israel's territorial integrity and right to exist. In addition to this basic "Land for Peace" formula, and a comprehensive regional peace agreement, Resolution 242 also allied for a fair and just settlement of the Palestinian refugee problem. Initially Arabs and Israelis haggled over the sequence of what would come first territorial withdrawals or guarantees of Israel's right to exist. There was also disagreement over how much land Israel would have to give up. Israeli leaders argued that Israel would have to keep some of the territory taken in the Six Day War in order to have defensible borders. Arab leaders argued that Israel must return all of the territory. It would take many years but eventually Arabs and Israelis would enter into serious negotiations based on some semblance of the "Land for Peace" formula laid out in Resolution 242.

The 1973 October War

In the years following the 1967 War relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors deteriorated steadily. Israel and Egypt became embroiled in a low intensity conflict in the Sinai known as the War of Attrition. Egypt was receiving substantial military aid from the Soviets, while Israel received equally substantial military aid from the United States. The two states launched commando raids on each other's positions in the Suez canal zone, followed by reciprocating airstrikes. Palestinian Fedayeen raids on Israeli territory from Jordanian and Lebanese territory also accelerated during this period, as did Israeli retaliatory raids into Jordan and Lebanon. In 1970, Jordan, led by King Hussein launched a war against Palestinian forces and succeeded in driving them out of Jordanian territory into Lebanon. This war was actually conducted with assistance from both the U.S. and Israel, and this began a warming of relations between Jordan and Israel.Israeli-Syrian relations were also at a new low, as Syria's Haffez Al Assad continued to fume over Israel's continued occupation of the strategic Golan Heights in the border area between the two countries.

In 1970 Egypt's Nasser died and was succeeded by Anwar Sadat. In 1971 Sadat approached the Israeli leadership in search of a negotiated settlement on the Israeli occupied Sinai based on the principles of UN resolution 242. When the talks failed, Sadat decided that the only way for Egypt to gain back the Sinai was to initiate another round of war in order to get the superpowers to force a permanent settlement. He never really harbored any illusions to the effect that Egypt could actually defeat Israel in a new war.In early 1973 Sadat began making war arrangements with Hafez Al Assad of Syria, which included putting Syrian and Egyptian forces under joint command. As 1973 wore on, The Israeli leadership ignored signs that the Syrians and Egyptians were again mobilizing for war. The Israeli government led by Prime minister Golda Meir, was overconfident in Israel's military superiority and just didn't believe that the Arabs would attempt another round of war against such a superior force.

On October 6th 1973, the Israeli defense ministry informed Prime minister Meir that a two front Syrian-Egyptian offensive was imminent. Upon consultation with their American allies, the Israeli leadership was told that the United States would not be able to provide full support if the Israelis launched a preemptive strike, so they should let the Arabs attack first. The Nixon administration was concerned that a preemptive Israeli strike would force the Soviets to intervene on behalf of their Syrian and Egyptian allies. The Israeli government followed the advice of the Nixon administration and let the Arabs take the initiative. This was nearly a fatal mistake.

During the first several days of the war Israel was put on the defensive and appeared close to losing the war. The United States began a massive airlift of weapons to Israel, which eventually helped to turn the tide. At the same time, the Soviets conducted an airlift of military supplies to Syria and Egypt. After a week or so the Israeli forces had regained the upper hand, and began pushing the Arab forces back. The Israelis retook the Golan Heights, and completely encircled the Egyptian third army in the Sinai. At this point the Soviets became concerned about the loss of prestige they would suffer if their Egyptian and Syrian clients were once again routed by the American supported Israelis. The Soviets threatened to intervene, if the Israelis continued their push. The U.S. agreed to a U.S. and Soviet-sponsored UN Security Council Resolution calling for an immediate cease fire and insertion of a new UN peacekeeping force called the United Nations Emergency Force II (UNEF II).

The Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) responded to the war by cutting off oil exports to the United States and the Netherlands for their overt support of Israel. They also cut their overall production of oil by 25 percent which sent global oil prices skyrocketing, sending advanced industrial economies into recession. This helped to convince the United States leadership that more intense efforts must be made to negotiate a peace arrangement for the region. Egypt and Syria may have lost the October war militarily, but they actually benefitted from the war politically. Anwar Sadat emerged as a leader in the Arab community, and the war achieved his goal of forcing the international community and the superpowers in particular to focus on a negotiated solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.

After the war the Egyptians and Syrians announced that they were prepared to negotiate a peace deal with the Israelis based on the land for peace formula laid out in UN Resolution 242. The UN Security Council passed Resolution 338 which called for a cessation of all military activities in the area and implementation of Resolution 242. The U.S. and the Soviets sponsored a Middle East Peace conference in Geneva in December of 1973 at which very little was accomplished. In January of 1974 U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger facilitated the negotiation of the Sinai I agreement between Egypt and Israel, which provided for the withdrawal of Israeli forces to the west band of the Suez Canal. In 1975 Kissinger brokered another Israeli-Egyptian agreement known as Sinai II which brought about further withdrawal of Israeli forces across the Sinai. Negotiations between the Israelis and Syrians also went forward leading to a minor Israeli pullback that still left them in control of the Golan Heights. There was still a great deal of work to do to bring about a comprehensive peace.

In June of 1977, Menachem Begin was elected as Israeli prime minister, leading the first government led by the conservative Likud Party. Begin quickly let it be known that his first foreign policy priority was to be the negotiation of a bilateral "land for peace" treaty with Egypt.

The Camp David Treaty

The new U.S. Democratic administration of Jimmy Carter came into office trying to arrange a comprehensive multilateral peace treaty via another big conference at Geneva. Egypt's Sadat feared that the multilateral approach would give the Soviets, whom he had just rejected as an ally and arms supplier for Egypt, too much influence in the process. Sadat wanted to try to start a dialogue with the Israelis independent from any U.S. diplomatic efforts. When Israeli intelligence gave Sadat a tip about an imminent attempt on his life being planned by the Libyans, Sadat used this good deed as an excuse to make a dramatic trip to Israel to meet with Begin, to negotiate, and to thank him for the assassination tipoff. Sadat's trip was the first time an Arab leader had ever met face to face with Israeli leaders, and it received a great deal of publicity worldwide. At this point the U.S. Carter administration decided to get involved in the Egyptian-Israeli talks in the role of mediator. After separate one-on-one meetings with both Sadat and Begin, Carter convened a summit meeting at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland. Carter and his top advisors engaged in proximity talks in which they would shuttle back and forth between the Israeli and Egyptian cabins at the retreat in an attempt to narrow the gap in the negotiating positions of the two parties. The talks lasted nearly two weeks, and in the end a tentative agreement was publicly presented.

The agreement was divided into two separate parts. The first part was an Egyptian-Israeli agreement in which Israel would return all of the Egyptian Sinai, and Egypt would normalize relations with Israel and guarantee full Israeli use of the Suez Canal and the Straits of Tiran and Gulf of Aqaba. The second part of the agreement called for a comprehensive resolution of the Palestinian question, as well as of Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights, West Bank, and Gaza Strip. The plan called for a negotiating process to begin which would eventually bring about a self governing Palestinian authority in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. During a five year transition period, The Arab States and Palestinian representatives would negotiate with Israel an agreement on the final status of a new Palestinian arrangement, which would include issues such as the right of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war to return to Israel, the status of a self governing Palestinian entity/state, and the final status of Jerusalem.

Immediately after the preliminary Camp David agreement was signed. the two sides began disagreeing over what they had signed. The Israeli Begin government began backing away from the comprehensive framework agreement, because they were only really committed to the Egyptian-Israeli bilateral agreement. Egypt's Sadat worried correctly that if the comprehensive agreement fell apart he would be viewed by the other parties as having abandoned the larger Arab cause in order to sign a separate peace with Israel (Sadat would eventually be assassinated by Islamic militants who viewed his peacemaking with Israel as traitorous). The two sides also argued over continued Israeli settlement building in the territories Israel occupied as a result of the 1967 War. In the spring of 1979 Jimmy Carter pressured Sadat and Begin into locking into place the Israeli-Egyptian portion of the Accords, and the final agreement was signed in March of 1979. Unfortunately the final agreement only contained a watered down commitment on the part of both parties to pursue the comprehensive framework agreement. The other Arab-Israeli issues would have to wait until the early 1990s to be addressed. Nonetheless, the bilateral peace achieved between Israel and Egypt in the Camp David treaty was still a momentous accomplishment. Israel had now made peace with the largest of its Arab adversaries.

War in Lebanon

Throughout the 1970s Palestinian Fedayeen militants continued to launch raids and artillery attacks on northern Israel. The Palestine Liberation Organization had been evicted from Jordan into Lebanon, which by the mid 1970s was becoming embroiled in civil war between Muslims and Christians . As the Lebanese state disintegrated, Israel and Syria which both bordered Lebanon began to compete to fill the power vacuum there. In 1976 Syria's Hafez Al Asad sent Syrian troops into Lebanon to assert greater Syrian control in support of the Muslims factions. Christian factions in Lebanon appealed for and were given Israeli assistance. This support eventually evolved into the South Lebanese Army (SLA) which would continue to receive Israeli support and would eventually establish itself in the Southern region of Lebanon which borders Israel. In 1981 Palestinian forces stepped up rocket attacks into villages in Northern Israel.

The Israeli government began to plan for an invasion of Lebanon to stop such future attacks and to evict the PLO from their headquarters in Beirut. In June of 1982 the Israeli Defense forces invaded Lebanon engaging Syrian and PLO forces and began pushing towards Beirut to drive out the PLO. Eventually they achieved this goal and the PLO was forced to move its headquarters to Tunis, but in the meantime the Israeli intervention made the Lebanese civil war much worse, and actually strengthened Syria's grip on Lebanon. Israel eventually set up a permanent security zone in Southern Lebanon occupied by Israeli troops and the South Lebanese Army (SLA) in order to protect Northern Israel from further attacks.

Intifada and the Oslo Process

In 1985 the PLO and Jordan attempted to create a Jordanian-Palestinian confederation which would have included an independent Palestinian state on the West Bank. In the wake of this failed effort, Palestinian frustration with their situation began to boil over. In December of 1987, this led to a spontaneous uprising in the Israeli occupied Palestinian territories known as the Intifada. The Intifada consisted mostly of large crowds of Palestinian youths throwing stones at Israeli occupation forces as well as large demonstrations and protests. After the Intifada broke out, the leadership of the PLO tried to use it as a device to push the Israelis in the direction of negotiations over the fate of the West Bank and Gaza.

The Israelis responded to the unrest in a very heavy handed fashion. Israeli forces made extensive use of rubber bullets, tear gas, and mass arrests in an efforts to restore order. When the intifada did not subside the Israelis also began use administrative and economic sanctions in an effort to squeeze the Palestinians economically. The Intifada went on and casualties began to mount on both sides. In 1989 the PLO publicly renounced the use of terrorism, leading the U.S. to drop their longstanding refusal to hold diplomatic talks with the PLO. Militant organizations like Hamas began to emerge as political rivals of the PLO The Israelis began to realize that PLO was successfully using the ongoing Intifada to focus world's attention on the plight of the Palestinians. The Israeli government slowly came to the realization that they would eventually have to negotiate with the PLO in order to reach a lasting solution to the Palestinian problem.

In the fall of 1991 after the Gulf War, The U.S. Bush administration put together a comprehensive multilateral Middle East Peace Conference in Madrid, Spain. The parties did not achieve any significant substantive breakthroughs in Madrid, but they did manage to come up with a framework for future talks. The framework called for separate bilateral peace negotiations to be conducted between Israel and each of its Arab neighbors. It also called for comprehensive multilateral talks to engage all parties on important regional issues such as water politics, refugees, and arms control. The Madrid conference was followed by negotiations in Washington, but those talks were stymied by the refusal of the Israeli Likud government of Itzhak Shamir to negotiate with representatives of the PLO. In mid 1992 Israeli elections produced a new government led by the Labour Party's Itzhak Rabin, who was much more open to working with the PLO to achieve peace. Throughout the rest of 1992 Israeli and Palestinian negotiators worked informally and secretly in London and Oslo Norway. The Oslo talks eventually bore significant fruit in the form of the Oslo Declaration of Principles (also known as the Oslo Accords).

The Oslo Accords which were signed in an emotional ceremony at the White House in Washington contained a blueprint for a process leading to a comprehensive peace between the Israelis and Palestinians. The accords called for the establishment of an interim Palestinian self-government(in the form of an elected Palestinian council), and phased autonomy for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. The accords also called for negotiations on final status issues (i.e. the final status of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 War, the final status of Jerusalem, and the question of a future Palestinian state) to be started no later than three years after the accords were signed. A final agreement on final status issues would have to be finished no later than five years after the accords were signed.

In 1994 Israel concluded a comprehensive peace treaty with Jordan. This provided official culmination of a warming of relations between the two countires that had begun back in 1967. Jordan's King Hussein had been the first Arab leader to move convincingly in the direction of peace with Israel. With signing of the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty, Israel was now formally at peace with two of its Arab neighbors.

In May of 1994 a follow up agreement known as the Cairo Agreement was concluded. It called for partial Israeli withdrawal from parts of the West Bank and Gaza, transfer of Authority in certain areas from the Israelis to the newly created Palestinian Authority (PA) normalization of relations between Israel and the PA, and the creation of a Palestinian police force. Elections for the new Palestinian Council were held in early 1996, but the tragic assassination of Israeli Prime minister Rabin in November of 1995 created political instability in Israel. In the first half of 1996 militant Palestinian terrorist groups opposed to the peace process like Hamas carried out a series of terror attacks in Israel which drove the Israeli electorate to the right, leading to the election of the hardline Likud leader Benyamin Netanyahu as prime minister. Netanyahu was an outspoken critic of the Oslo process who argued that it was giving away too much to the Palestinians and damaging Israeli national security. Netanyahu reluctantly agreed to sign the January 1997 Hebron agreement which gave the Palestinians complete control of Hebron, established Israeli-Palestinian security and anti terrorism cooperation, and called for future further Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian territory. The Netanyahu government also engaged in an a provocative acceleration of Israeli settlement activity in Palestinian areas that would cause breakdowns in the Oslo process.

The Oslo Process has also been hampered by militants on both sides who do not want the peace process to go forward. On the Israeli side there are militant Jewish settlers who refuse to even consider leaving their homes in and around Palestinian controlled areas of the West Bank. On the Palestinian side there are militant groups such as Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which have shown a willingness to use attacks on Israeli forces and terrorist attacks in Israel to disrupt the Peace process.

Barak's Attempts to Achieve Peace

In July of 1999, Labour leader Ehud Barak was elected Israeli Prime Minister. Barak had campaigned saying that he would achieve peace with the Palestinians, Syrians, and in Lebanon. During the last half of 1999 Barak's government set out to negotiate simultaneously with the Syrians and the Palestinians. At the end of the year, talks on the Syrian track broke down over the question of how much Israel would give back of the Syrian territory Israel captured during the 1967 War. On the Palestinian track, Barak was able to make some progress. Upon entering office Barak set a November 2000 deadline for achievement of a final peace deal. In September of 1999 the Israelis agreed to implement an agreement to give the Palestinians administrative control of an additional 7 percent of the West Bank. In March of 2000, the Israelis completed a withdrawal of from another 6.1 percent of the West Bank. In May of 2000 the Barak government withdrew all Israeli Defense Forces from southern Lebanon, ending a 24 year occupation of the so called "security zone" there.

In July of 2000 Barak suffered a major political setback, losing his legislative majority as several conservative parties formally withdraw from his coalition. This occured just as Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat were leaving to go to United States for a lengthy Peace Summit mediated by President Bill Clinton at Camp David. Barak went to Camp David prepared to offer unprecedented concessions to the Palestinians in a last ditch attempt to resolve the difficult final status issues. These concessions included giving the Palestinians a degree of shared sovereignty over parts of East Jerusalem, which the Palestinians want to control as the capital of an independent Palestinian state. The parties negotiated at Camp David for two weeks, but in the end Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat ( with the backing of other Arab leaders) refused to accept anything less than full Palestinian control of East Jerusalem as the capitol of a new Palestinian state. Arafat also threatened to declare unilaterally the birth of a Palestinian state in September. On September 13th as Israeli and Palestinian negotiators continued to work on the final status issues, Arafat agreed to postpone the Declaration of a state.

On September 29, 2000 Likud Party leader Ariel Sharon made a provocative trip to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The Temple mount contains sites that are extremely sacred to both Jews and Muslims. Sharon's visit set off a wave of violence on the Temple mount that quickly spread throughout the West Bank and Gaza. This violence and turmoil has continued into early 2001. It has been referred to by some Palestinian leaders as a new intifada. Some Palestinian leaders have become convinced that this new intifada is the only way that the Palestinians can get a just peace settlement from the Israelis. This intifada differs from the first one in that it is characterized by a much higher level of violence intensity. Israeli troops have used live ammunition, tanks and helecopter gunships against groups of Palestinian rioters and snipers. In October, after a Palestinian mob killed two Israeli soldiers while they were in the custody of Palestinian security forces, the Israeli military responded with rocket attacks against parts of Palestinian authority headquarters. Palestinian militants have launched armed ambushes on Jewish settlers Israeli troops in the West Bank and Gaza.

By the end of the year the death toll from this new intifada was more than 300 and climbing. In early December of 2000, under a threat of a no-confidence vote that he couldn't win, Ehud Barak submitted his resignation and started the clock for new Israeli elections in February of 2001. In December Yassir Arafat called on the UN Security Council to deploy a peacekeeping force between the Palestinians and Israeli forces to stop the violence. The Israelis strongly opposed this idea, and the U.S. blocked it in the Security Council. In January of 2001 Barak and Arafat made last ditch efforts to achieve an agreement before U.S. president Bill Clinton left office, but to no avail.

Sources used in researching this background report include: J.B.Bell, The Long War: Israel and the Arabs Since 1946, (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1969); Thomas Draper, Israel and The Middle East, (New York: H.W. Wilson, 1983); T.G. Fraser, The Arab-Israeli Conflict, (New York: St. Martins, 1995); Kirsten Schulze, The Arab-Israeli Conflict, (New York: Addison, Wesley, Longman, 1999); Encyclopedia Britannica Online
 

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