Our Last Best Chance_ The Pursuit of Peace in a Time of Peril - King Abdullah II [98]
The violence sparked by Sharon’s visit triggered what came to be known as the Al Aqsa intifada. I condemned Sharon’s provocation and argued that the only way to stop the violence was to get back to the negotiating table and to reach an agreement that fulfilled the legitimate right of the Palestinian people to statehood on their national soil, with East Jerusalem as their capital. But Sharon had his own approach.
Some lower-level Israeli-Palestinian talks continued during the fall, but no one put much stock in them. In a final push before leaving office in December 2000, Clinton offered some proposals, which became known as the Clinton Parameters, to address the outstanding issues of settlements, Jerusalem, and refugees.
Clinton proposed an end to the conflict on the basis of a solution that would give 94 to 96 percent of the West Bank to the Palestinians, with a land swap of 1 to 3 percent. Four-fifths of Israeli settlers would be in the land kept by Israel. He also proposed that territorial arrangements such as permanent safe passage between the West Bank and Gaza be part of the deal. The parameters further stated that Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank would take place over three years, during which international forces would be gradually introduced.
Clinton proposed that the Palestinian state would be the focal point for Palestinians who chose to return to Palestine, without ruling out that Israel would accept some of those refugees. The guiding principle for solving the issue of Jerusalem would be that Arab areas are Palestinian and Jewish areas are Israeli, with Palestinians having sovereignty over Al Haram Al Sharif and Israelis over the Western Wall. An agreement along those parameters would mark the end of the conflict.
From January 21 to January 27 at Taba in Egypt, Barak and Arafat tried one last time to come to terms. But Barak was slipping daily in the polls, and after a fraught and contested election, a new president had just been inaugurated in the United States and no one knew what approach he would take. Talks soon ended and violence escalated. In Israel, commentators began to pronounce the Oslo peace process well and truly dead.
In the months that followed, controversy raged over the question of who bore responsibility for the collapse of the peace negotiations. In this debate the sticking points in the negotiations and the failure of the sides to agree were conflated with the consequences of Sharon’s provocative visit to Al Haram Al Sharif. Some blamed Yasser Arafat for the ensuing violence as well as for the negotiations’ collapse, saying that he had orchestrated the violence in order to win more Israeli concessions. Others suggested that the Americans had sided with Barak and had not pressed him for sufficient concessions. Some pointed out that not enough preparation had gone into Camp David and that what was offered to the Palestinians fell short of what they deserved or wanted. But the truth is that in the seven long years since the signing of the Oslo Accords, too many promises had been broken and trust had frayed. Palestinians knew that Ehud Barak would soon be voted out of office and doubted his ability to deliver given the weakening state of his government. It was a tragic and costly failure.
Chapter 18
Seeking Peace, Getting War
During the Clinton administration, Iraq and America exchanged many violent words and a few missiles but stopped short of outright war. But in January 2001, as the administration of George W. Bush came into office, that dynamic began to change. Neoconservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, Elliott Abrams, and Richard Perle had long harbored ambitions to take down Saddam Hussein and finish the job that Bush’s father, in their eyes, had begun. Many of these neocons began to take up strategic positions in the Pentagon, the National Security