1993 - Oslo
Until 1993, Israel did not acknowledge Palestinian national rights or recognize the Palestinians as an independent party to the conflict. Israel refused to negotiate with the PLO, arguing that it was nothing but a terrorist organization, and insisting on dealing only with Jordan or other Arab states. It rejected the establishment of a Palestinian state, insisting that Palestinians should be incorporated into the existing Arab states. This intransigence ended when Israeli representatives entered into secret negotiations with the PLO, which led to the Oslo Declaration of Principles.
In 1993, the Oslo Accord called for limited Palestinian self-rule. Israel and the PLO exchanged letters of mutual recognition on September 10, and signed the Declaration of Principles on September 13, 1993. President Clinton announced on September 10 that the United States and the PLO would reestablish their dialogue. On October 26, 1994, President Clinton witnessed the Jordan-Israel peace treaty signing, and President Clinton, Egyptian President Mubarak, and King Husayn of Jordan witnessed the White House signing of the September 28, 1995 Interim Agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.
President Clinton attended the funeral of assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhaq Rabin in Jerusalem on November 6, 1995. Following a March 14, 1996 visit to Israel, President Clinton offered $100 million in aid for Israel's anti-terror activities, another $200 million for the Arrow anti-missile deployment, and about $50 million for an anti-missile laser weapon. President Clinton disagreed with Prime Minister Netanyahu's policy of expanding Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, and it was reported that the President believed that the Prime Minister delayed the peace process.
Between March 1997 and October 1998, U.S. Middle East envoy Dennis Ross shuttled to the region at least seven times. The U.S. secretary of state visited Israel and the PA three times and met with senior Israeli and PA advisors elsewhere at least six times. President Clinton held two summits with Netanyahu and an equal number with Arafat.
President Clinton hosted negotiations at the Wye River Conference Center in Maryland, ending with the signing of an agreement on October 23, 1998. Israel suspended implementation of the Wye agreement in early December 1998, because Prime Minister Netanyahu said the Palestinians violated the Wye Agreement by threatening to declare a state (Palestinian statehood was not mentioned in Wye). In January 1999, the Wye Agreement was delayed until the Israeli elections in May. Ehud Barak was elected Prime Minister on May 17, 1999, and won a vote of confidence for his government on July 6, 1999. President Clinton and Prime Minister Barak appeared to establish close personal relations during four days of meetings between July 15 and 20 in what many observers believed was a clear reversal of the less than friendly relations between Clinton and Netanyahu.
President Clinton mediated meetings between Prime Minister Barak and Chairman Arafat at the White House, Oslo, Shepherdstown, Camp David, and Sharm al-Shaykh in the search for peace. Until the Camp David meetings of July 2000, Israel did not consider Jerusalem to be occupied territory. At the July 2000 Camp David meetings, Israel offered the Palestinians control over the Muslim and Christian holy sites, but the Palestinians sought full sovereignty over the Arab Muslim/Christian areas of the old city. The Palestinian leadership (now the Palestinian Authority, PA) turned down offers of a state.
On September 28, 2000 Instead, Arafat launched the al-Aqsa intifada, an armed terrorist assault on Israel, that went on for five years until the Palestinians were defeated. On 23 December 2000 President Clinton gathered the Israeli and Palestinian negotiators at the White House and presented his proposals for a final-status settlement. These ideas on Israeli-Palestinian Peace are known as the Clinton Parameters. In a January 11, 2001 interview, the President implied that his attempts to arrange a peace had failed and that the task would carry over to the new Bush Administration.
The Bush administration had chosen to distance itself from direct involvement in political negotiations with the Palestinians and Israelis and has called upon the Palestinians to change their ways. President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Sharon established good relations in their March and June 2001 meetings. On October 4, 2001, Sharon accused the Bush Administration of appeasing the Palestinians at Israel's expense in a bid for Arab support for the U.S. anti-terror campaign. The White House said the remark was unacceptable. In the Winter of 2002 Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia began promoting a Arab Peace Plan that became known as the Arab Peace Initiative. It was formally issued on 28 March 2002 as the Arab League Beirut Declaration, and later accepted by the 56-member Organization of the Islamic Conference at its 2005 Mecca summit. It offered a comprehensive Arab peace with Israel if Israel were to withdraw fully from the territories it occupied in 1967, agree to the establishment of a Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem, and provide for the "[a]chievement of a just solution to the Palestinian Refugee problem in accordance with UN General Assembly Resolution 194."
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