In 2000, United States President, Bill Clinton organized a peace conference between the Israeli’s and Palestinians. This conference took place at Camp David in Maryland on 11th of July, 2000 and was fraught with insurmountable disagreements that ended in its overall failure. The largest among these irreconcilable differences were the inability of both sides to agree on what the borders of a Palestinian state should be. Historical religious disputes between the Muslim Palestinians and the Jewish Israeli’s exasperated things as control of The Temple Mount, which was a holy site for sides became an undebatable issue as religious issues often are. Another point of great contention was the resettlement of Palestinian refugees that had been displaced during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Israel refused the notion of accepting millions of refugees over security and demographic concerns. We will explore the reasons for the inevitable failure of the 2000 peace talks and why progress is not likely to come anytime soon.
President Bill Clinton, in his final year in office as President of the United States, decided to tackle the issue of Israeli-Palestinian strife. The year was 2000 and it seemed strange to many in the U.S. that such a daunting task would begin in the eighth and final year of a Presidents second term. It may be that Clinton was trying to bolster his historical legacy in part, however, the effort was genuine in practice. He said he “had hoped that it would resolve the deepest matters dividing the Israelis and Palestinians, questions of beliefs, political identity, a collective fate that raise dark fears and emotions” (Perlez). Clinton invited both sides to Camp David to see if a peace agreement could be brokered. The meeting began 11th of July 2000 and ran until the 25th of July of the same year and was dubbed the “2000 Camp David Summit”. Representing Israel was Israeli President, Ehud Barack and the Palestinians were represented by the Chairman of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat.
President Bill Clinton, as mediator and organizer of this conference, had hoped to replicate the success of the 1978 Camp David Accords which successfully brokered peace between Egypt and Israel. The scheduled peace talks were to begin as a continuation of the 1993 Oslo agreement. The Oslo agreement, signed by then Israeli Prime Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat, created the Palestinian Nationality Authority, an organization which granted Palestinians some autonomy but was not granted the status of a sovereign entity (Hedges). This quasi-sovereignty granted the Palestinian Authority the ability to negotiate economic and cultural agreements with other nations, and allowed the Palestinian Authority some control over their internal affairs, but prohibited the Palestinian Authority from opening embassies in other nations. The Agreement also mandated the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip and the Jericho area of the West Bank (Hedges).
It is hard to gather exactly who said what at the summit or even the structure, as according to former President Clinton, there was a confidentiality agreement between the leaders and representatives of the two nations and territory (Mintier). What we can deduce is based on anecdotal evidence and the results of the summit and what the parties were saying to their people and the press afterward when they returned home.
One of the most contentious issue in all of the negotiations was The Temple Mount. It is an elevated plaza above the Western Wall. It is the site of ancient Jerusalem’s ancient Jewish temples. It is also, according to Islamic tradition, the third holiest site, after Mecca and Medina. For the Jewish people, this is said to be the place where Abraham took his son Isaac to sacrifice to prove his obedience to God. It is also said to be the site of Solomon’s Temple. To the Muslims, Temple Mount is the place where Muhammed ascended into heaven in the seventh century. The Temple Mount is under Israeli sovereignty, but it is administered by a Muslim Waqf (a charitable religious trust). Overall security of the site rests with the Israeli government, essentially putting ultimate control of the Temple Mount into the hands of the Israelis.
On 7th of June 1967, during the Six-Day War between Israel and Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Iraq, East Jerusalem which contains the Temple Mount was seized by Israeli forces, from the Jordanians, and they still maintain sovereignty over it to this day. The West Bank was also seized from Jordan, along with the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, and the Golan Heights from Syria. Negotiations over control over Eastern Jerusalem and specifically the Temple Mount have been bloody and contentious. A lasting deal has never been able to be forged as the site is holy to peoples of both faiths. Arafat instructed his negotiators to "not budge on this one thing: The Haram (the Temple Mount) is more precious to me than everything else” (Hassner 137). Any attempts at negotiations have been thwarted by violence. Israeli attitudes were similar, although they, at least in words offered what appeared to be some sort of faint compromise or even a status quo arrangement (Hassner 80).
The Temple Mount had been occupied by Canaanites as early as the 2nd Millennium BCE. The biblical figure, King David ordered the construction of an altar which later became known as the Temple Mount. From then on, this area was occupied by Persians, Hasmoneans, Romans, Byzantines, Sassanids, Muslims, briefly Christian crusaders, Mamluks, Ottomans, British, Jordanian, and eventually Israel post-Six-Day War. Who the rightful sovereign of this land is a historical dispute going back thousands of years. The Israelis say that it was promised to them by God through Moses. The Muslims believe that since they inhabited it pre-World War Two, that it was theirs. The Temple Mount being the third holiest Islamic site exacerbates this. The history is so long and the religious convictions so deep that it is no surprise that this issue could not be resolved during the 2000 Camp David Summit.