Camp David Summit Ii

The Summit for Peace in the Middle East at Camp David (sometimes called Camp David II) was held in July 2000 in the home of Camp David in the presence of Bill Clinton , President of the United States , to Ehud Barak , Prime Minister State of Israel and Yasser Arafat , President of the Palestinian Authority. This was one of diplomatic attempts to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict , the key issue broader Arab-Israeli conflict.

For a chronological reading of the peace process, read the general article Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

Diplomatic Background

On 5 July 2000 , Bill Clinton invited the two leaders to continue peace talks on the location of the previous negotiations at Camp David agreements of 1978 , which had established peace between Israel and Egypt. The summit was held from 11 to 25 July but did not allow both parties to find compromises.

Principles adopted

However, the final report of the tripartite talks outlines the principles agreed to conduct future negotiations:

• seeking a just and lasting solution to decades of conflict on the basis of resolutions 242 (1967) and 338 (1973) the Security Council of the UN.
• commitment to resolve all existing problems as quickly as possible and to create an environment conducive to negotiations without pressure or intimidation, or threat of violence.
• understanding that both parties should refrain from taking unilateral actions that predispose terms of future agreements.
• perception of the United States as a key partner in driving the peace process , embodied in the person of then President Bill Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.

The impasse

The three main obstacles to an agreement were:

1. disagreement over the territorial concessions from Israel. Despite the questionable terms of resolution 242 (1967) on the extent of withdrawal after the Six Day War , Palestinian negotiators had agreed to the Green Line as the boundary of the West Bank during the Oslo Accords of 1993. However, Barak and Clinton offered Israel annex 9 to 10% of the West Bank in exchange for the same area in the Negev of Israel and maintains a temporary staging area controlled by the IDF and a strip of 15% of the length of the river of Jordan. The West Bank would have been a territorial continuity between existing roads but some blocks of Palestinians have been stalled because of the proposed annexations. Arafat rejected without making this proposal-cons. .
2. the final status of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount / Temple Mount. He was offered the Palestinians sovereignty over Arab neighborhoods of East Jerusalem outside neighborhoods that are not part of the municipality of Jerusalem before 1967 and sovereignty over the Christian and Muslim quarters of the old city. By cons, Israel offered only autonomy on neighborhoods inside the city while retaining sovereignty over Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem. On the Temple Mount / Temple Mount, Clinton proposed several formulas that would guard mosques in Palestinian sovereignty over the area Israel retaining sovereignty in the basement. The Palestinians refused categorically any sharing of sovereignty over the holy site. The Israelis accept full sovereignty would mean for Jews lost access to the Temple Mount and Western Wall ( Wailing Wall ) which is attached. According to accounts of ambassadors of the U.S. delegation Dennis Ross and Robert Malley, Yasser Arafat claimed during this discussion that the Temple of Solomon was never in Jerusalem but in Nablus in the West Bank.
3. the problem of refugees and their right to return. The Palestinians put forward the fact that no solution was proposed for this problem essential to achieving lasting peace. They prcisrent that Israelis had been partly responsible for this problem. Israeli negotiators replied that a similar number of Jewish refugees had been forced to flee Arab countries since 1948 without being compensated. They excluded the possibility of a "right of return" for Palestinian refugees whose demographics would threaten the Jewish character of the State of Israel. Israel agreed, however, a return of 10 000 to 30 000 Palestinian refugees to Israel ten years for humanitarian reasons . Palestinians camping on the idea of the theoretical recognition of the right to return.

Responsibility for the failure of talks

Following the summit, each of the two sides blamed the failure of the talks. The Palestinians considrrent that Israel they had not offered enough, while the Israelis claimed that they could not reasonably offer more. The United States as in Israel , the defeat was largely attributed to Yasser Arafat who, to them, had left the negotiating table without making cons proposal. Bill Clinton later spoke of his "regret that Yasser Arafat has missed the opportunity to be his nation." Nabil Amr , a former Minister of the Palestinian Authority also accused Arafat of being responsible for the failure of discussions . According to his former bodyguard, Mouhmad El-Daya, Arafat refused any negotiation on the issue of Jerusalem for fear of being killed . For cons, the Europe and Arab countries considrrent that wrongs were mixed.

In a gallery of the New York Times dated July 2001 , Robert Malley, former adviser to Bill Clinton for Arab-Israeli affairs said that Yasser Arafat was not solely responsible for the failure of negotiations. Present at Camp David, he asserted that the proposal to Ehud Barak to Yasser Arafat , described the allegedly generous as the Israeli and American opinion was in fact a myth.

Negotiations continued, however, in January 2001, at the Taba summit.

For a chronological reading of the peace process, read the general article Israeli-Palestinian Conflict.

References

• Portal on the Arab-Israeli conflict

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