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ceived billions of dollars in aid from the international community, thousands of weapons, and
international legitimacy. Its commitment, in return, was to stop terrorism and incitement to
anti-Israel violence while preparing for peace and an end to the confl ict.
Would the offer of concessions, including the return of almost all the captured territories
and Palestinian statehood, produce peace, or did the roots of the Arab-Israeli confl ict lie in the
refusal of Palestinian, Syrian, and other Arab leaders to accept Israel's existence?
With Israel engaged in this seven-year-long experiment between 1993 and 2000, the terms
of the internal debate shifted. Those Israelis whose views ranged from the center to the left
argued that PLO, PA, and Fatah leader Yasir Arafat if offered an independent Palestinian
state comprising the West Bank and the Gaza Strip would negotiate a peace agreement and
keep it. At stake was not only an end to war and a securing of the blessings of peace but noth-
ing less than what the veteran Labor leader Shimon Peres called a “new Middle East” in which
everyone would prosper.
The general view from the center to the right was that making concessions to achieve a
peace agreement would not work and was likely to raise the level of violence and strengthen
the hostile forces. It was believed that when fi nal negotiations took place, the two sides would
fail to agree, and the peace process would collapse, with Israel in a far worse security situation
than before. And if the two sides did reach an agreement, a Palestinian state would be used as
a base for a second round of confl ict aimed at wiping Israel off the map.
During the 1990s, passions ran high in this new debate, sharpened by the assassination
of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in November 1995. The PA at times —but not always —
stopped terrorist attacks, but it also continued to incite anti-Israel attitudes and actions, failed
to prepare its people for real peace, and persisted in claiming all the territory of Israel. Still,
everyone urged patience: the fi nal round of negotiations would prove the case one way or
another.
In 2000, four events occurred. The United States hosted the Camp David summit at which
Arafat rejected a framework for future talks, and the Palestinians decided to resume full-scale
violence. Next, the PA rejected President Bill Clinton's peace plan, and Syria's government
turned down a deal to regain the captured Golan Heights in exchange for full peace.
Despite being offered an independent Palestinian state with its capital in east Jerusalem,
almost all the pre-1967 territory, and more than $20 billion in compensation (all dollars here
are U.S. dollars), the Palestinian leadership turned down these proposals even as the basis for
further negotiations. Similarly, Syria, which had been offered the return of the Golan Heights
up to the internationally accepted border of 1923, had insisted on also receiving the territory
that it had illegally occupied after 1948. The latter gave Syria access to the Sea of Galilee (called
Kinneret in Hebrew) and other strategic territory whose only value to Syria would be to in-
terfere with Israel's water supply or to launch offensive attacks. Israel refused to hand back the
additional territory.
By 2001, all of these events had convinced the majority of Israelis that peace was not at hand
and could not be won by any conceivable concessions on their part. The problem was Israel's
existence, not the details of a peace agreement. Subsequent electoral results, notably in 2001
and 2003, showed how Israeli hopes (or illusions, as many now saw them) had evaporated.
 
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