Middle East - Anthony Ham [207]
Despite the Washington show, though, mutual trust between Rabin and Arafat was shaky, and there remained quite a few details to be hashed out, not least of which were the status of Jerusalem (Palestinian, Israeli or neutral?) and the future of the four million Palestinian refugees spread across the Arab world. Added to this was a fractious relationship with Syria, centred on the disputed Golan Heights, and a continued military confrontation with the terrorist Hezbollah (Party of God) organisation in southern Lebanon; Click here for more on Hezbollah.
The Second Intifada Erupts
Progress was set back once again with the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin by a disgruntled Jewish extremist on 4 November 1995. Rabin’s death marked the beginning of several years of stalled negotiations that came to an ultimate collapse when a deal for a two-state solution, brokered by Bill Clinton in 2000, was rejected by Arafat, despite support by Israel and pressure from the US government. Meanwhile, tit-for-tat violence escalated, and within months the fighting grew into a second fully fledged intifada. When Israeli voters had the opportunity, they chose the controversial, and reputedly ruthless, ex-army general Ariel Sharon to lead them through the storm.
Whilst most moderate Israelis and Palestinians continued to support the cause of peace and the creation of a Palestinian state, Sharon and Arafat soon got down to what they both seemed to do best. Blows were exchanged in the form of Palestinian suicide attacks, and Israel Defence Force (IDF) action that ranged from bulldozing Palestinian homes to full-scale aerial and ground assaults.
Israel: A Pariah State?
By late 2004 the death toll was grim, and the intifada was also taxing national morale as Sharon’s hardball tactics were threatening to make Israel a pariah state among European governments. The economy suffered too: Israel’s tourist industry collapsed and the Palestinian economy suffered US$14 billion in losses. But the war was to be Arafat’s swan song; despite a lifetime of fighting for an independent state, he never realised this achievement, dying of an unknown disease in a Paris hospital on 11 November 2004.
Arafat’s passing sparked a mood for change that fell on the shoulders of longtime PLO bureaucrat Mahmoud Abbas (aka Abu Mazen). Three months after Arafat’s death, Sharon shook hands with his new Palestinian counterpart at a summit for peace in Sharm el-Sheikh.
Encouraged by the internationally supported ‘Road Map for Peace’, the Palestinian Authority and Israeli cabinet resumed talks and took several positive steps, including the withdrawal of Jewish settlers from Gaza and four West Bank towns in August 2005, and the release of hundreds of Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.
The Rise of Hamas
Yet paths to peace always move slowly, and with Sharon’s hospitalisation in early 2006, and his subsequent slipping into a seemingly permanent coma, Israeli leadership soon fell to the less popular Ehud Olmert, whom many soon saw as ineffectual and corrupt. And while suicide attacks, by 2008, had thinned to a trickle, Israel’s controversial ‘Security Fence’, ostensibly separating Israel and the West Bank (but in actual fact veering significantly into Palestinian land) continued to cause dissent and resentment among Palestinians. In 2006, moreover, encouraged largely by Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party inefficacy at securing either peace or prosperity, the controversial Hamas party was democratically voted into power in both the West Bank and Gaza. While life in the West Bank has remained fairly calm ever since, warring Palestinian factions in Gaza (primarily Hamas versus Abbas’s Fatah group) have created a mini civil war and effectively isolated Gaza (nicknamed ‘Hamastan’) from the outside world.
Onwards & Upwards
And Israel’s troubles haven’t stopped with the missiles incessantly being lobbed across the fence from Gaza. In summer 2006, the country embarked on a month-long war with Hezbollah,