The Roots of the Conflict in the Middle East

Part 6: 2000

The mythology that has been created and endlessly repeated since the collapse of the Camp David negotiations, is that Barak conceded almost everything the Palestinians wanted and Arafat threw away the opportunity for peace by rejecting Israel's offer, despite the honest and persistent mediating efforts of President Clinton and the Americans. Nothing could be further from reality. Supported by Clinton, Barak had demanded guarantees of Israel's continued strategic control over the West Bank and Gaza, including its air space and borders and insisted that Israel retain permanent sovereignty over most of East Jerusalem. This was an "offer" that no Palestinian or other Arab leader could accept.

Furthermore, in the words of an Israeli peace activist, at the same time that Barak was speaking about peace "he enlarged the settlements, cut the Palestinian territories into pieces by 'by-pass' roads, confiscated lands, demolished homes, uprooted trees [and] paralyzed the Palestinian economy".

And what about the American role as "honest peacemaker"? Since Israel's 1967 seizure of the occupied territories, there has been almost unanimous international agreement that the crisis should be resolved on the basis of international law and United Nations resolutions. The U.S. and Israel have consistently opposed this position. Instead, since 1967 the Americans have kept Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy under their control. The requirements of international law and UN resolutions have been sidelined in favour of U.S.-brokered talks between the American financed, armed and supported Israelis and the stateless Palestinians living under occupation or in exile. In Madrid, in 1991, a U.S.-Israeli Memorandum of Understanding explicitly stated that the UN would have no role in the discussions. The subsequent Oslo Process and the Camp David talks in 2000 also completely ignored the international community.

The deeply flawed Oslo Accords and failed Camp David negotiations, together with the ongoing daily humiliations and violence inflicted on the Palestinians in the occupied territories combined to ignite a second intifada in September 2000. The spark that began the uprising was a provocative visit by Likud Party leader Ariel Sharon, accompanied by close to 1,000 armed guards, to the Temple Mount in East Jerusalem - a site with religious significance for both Muslims and Jews. This provoked large Palestinian protests in Jerusalem during which Israeli soldiers killed six unarmed protesters. These killings led to widespread demonstrations and clashes throughout the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, setting in motion the current crisis.

In December 2000, to avoid a vote of no-confidence in parliament, Ehud Barak called early elections in which he was defeated by current Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Following Sharon's election, Israel's military response to the uprising escalated in intensity and scale. It has used much greater force than it did during the first intifada and has been repeatedly condemned by numerous human rights organizations and international bodies, including a recent resolution of the UN Human Rights.