several steps toward ending hostilities advanced U.S.
objectives by conveying that the United States was in-
dispensable if regional problems were to be effec-
tively addressed.
Extremists Derail Progress Hard-line nationalists
in each community, however, failed to embrace the
peace initiatives and undertook to undermine the
fragile steps toward peace. On the Jewish holiday of
Purim in February, 1994, an American-born Israeli,
Baruch Goldstein, massacred twenty-nine Arab Mus-
lims praying at a disputed holy site in Hebron, the
Tomb of the Patriarchs, which is known to Muslims
as the Ibrahimi Mosque. Extremist Palestinians,
chiefly of the Islamist organization Hamas, also ac-
celerated their attacks on Israelis after the signing of
the 1993 peace accords: Four suicide bombings in
1994 killed thirty-nine Israelis. The next year, the
leading Israeli peacemaker, Prime Minister Yitzhak
Rabin, was assassinated by a fellow Israeli on Novem-
ber 4, 1995. After the 1995 interim accord was
signed, Hamas bombers killed nearly sixty Israelis in
four 1996 attacks.
Repeated sessions led by U.S. negotiator Dennis
Ross and vigorous U.S. efforts at mediation could
not overcome Israeli suspicions that the PNA was not
living up to its obligations to rein in Palestinian ter-
rorists, as it had agreed to do under the peace agree-
ments. Palestinian attitudes also hardened when a
new Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu,
approved expansion of Israeli housing units in dis-
puted suburban areas adjacent to Jerusalem in 1998.
The United States expressed its displeasure with Is-
rael’s settlement activities in the occupied territo-
ries by reducing somewhat its generous loan guar-
antees to the Jewish state, but these guarantees still
amounted to $10 billion (1993-1997). This was in ad-
dition to the annual $3 billion in U.S. military and
economic aid to Israel given each year in the 1990’s.
President Clinton poured much personal energy
into trying to stop the unraveling of the Israeli-Pales-
tinian peace agreements in his final years in office.
At Wye River, Maryland, in 1998, and at Camp David,
Maryland, in 2000, Clinton hosted Palestinian chair-
man Yasir Arafat and Israeli Prime Ministers Netan-
yahu (1998) and Ehud Barak (2000). Significant Is-
raeli territorial concessions were offered at the Wye
River talks, granting Arafat’s Palestinian National
Authority practical control over 98 percent of the
Palestinian population on the West Bank. At Wye
River, Netanyahu also strained Israeli relations with
Clinton and with U.S. intelligence agencies by at-
tempting to win release of Jonathan Pollard, a U.S.
citizen convicted in 1985 of spying for Israel. Clinton
refused this request after Director of Central Intelli-
gence George Tenet threatened to resign. Negotia-
tions on implementing the peace agreements con-
tinued under U.S. auspices through the end of the
decade, but broad differences remained between
the parties over the final status of Jerusalem, exact
borders, and the Palestinians’ insistence on their
“right of return” to homes abandoned in 1948-1949
inside Israel.Impact Though strained at times, U.S. ties to Israel
deepened overall in the 1990’s. However, the failure
of U.S. mediation efforts regarding the Palestinian
element in the Arab-Israeli conflict reinforced skep-
tical attitudes toward the United States across the
Muslim world.Subsequent Events At Camp David in December,
2000, Clinton persuaded Israel to propose further
concessions beyond those offered at Wye River,
amounting to 91 percent of the lands in the West
Bank and 100 percent of Gaza to be composed as a
Palestinian state. Chief U.S. negotiator Ross later
blamed Arafat for rejecting what Barak, Clinton, and
Ross believed to be generous terms for a final settle-
ment. The lingering pace of U.S.-led peace negotia-
tions in the 1990’s had frustrated hopes among
many Palestinians, and this reinforced a preference
for armed struggle among other Palestinians, chiefly
militant Islamists. Widespread civil unrest and vio-
lence erupted: The Palestinian second intifada be-
gan in September, 2000. The perception that the
Palestinian leaders endorsed this renewal of vio-
lence undermined Israelis’ support for Barak and
for his initiatives to offer further territorial conces-
sions. With forward movement toward peace stalled,
a new U.S. administration in 2001 substantially dis-
engaged from further attempts at peacemaking,
especially after Muslim extremists launched devas-
tating suicide attacks on the United States on Sep-
tember 11, 2001.Further Reading
Bentsur, Eytan.Making Peace: A First-Hand Account of
the Arab-Israeli Peace Process.New York: Praeger,- Useful companion when read with Ross and
Qurie. Israeli participant finds Madrid Confer-
464 Israel and the United States The Nineties in America