the Oslo accords and vowed to “freeze” Israel’s compliance with them, including fur-
ther withdrawals from West Bank territory. Netanyahu also said the Palestinians had
not kept some of their promises, notably to halt violence against Israelis. Yet another
blow to the peace process came on September 24, 1996, when Israeli authorities
opened an exit from a tunnel running under much of the Western, or Wailing, Wall
at the base of the hill in Jerusalem that Israelis call the Temple Mount and Muslims
call the Haram al-Sharif. The government said the opening would improve tourists’
access to Jewish holy sites, but Muslim authorities charged the Israelis with deliber-
ately undermining the two mosques—the al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the
Rock—on the plateau. Palestinians protested the excavations in demonstrations that
turned violent. Israel suppressed the disturbances after three days, but about seventy
Palestinians and fifteen Israeli soldiers died in the violence. Hoping to calm the situ-
ation, in early October, U.S. president Bill Clinton summoned Netanyahu and Pales-
tinian leader Yasir Arafat to a meeting in Washington, where the two, though angry,
agreed to revive talks on the long-stalled Israeli withdrawal from Hebron.
From October through early January 1997, U.S. Middle East envoy Dennis Ross
worked to bridge differences between the Israelis and the Palestinians on the Hebron
withdrawal, which by that time had become the biggest stumbling block to the con-
tinuation of the Oslo peace process. As with every other step in the process, the nego-
tiations became bogged down in minutiae; after nearly four years of direct negotiations,
the Israelis and Palestinians still did not trust one another and wanted every aspect of
any agreement nailed down Also on the negotiating table at this point was the date in
1998 on which Israel would complete its withdrawal from smaller towns and villages
in the West Bank, with the Palestinians wanting it early in the year and the Israelis
wanting it toward year’s end. The negotiations concluded with an agreement on Janu-
ary 14, 1997, after Ross threatened to leave the region unless the two sides reached a
deal and after Jordan’s King Hussein flew to Gaza to intervene directly with Arafat.
The Israeli Knesset approved the agreement, the Protocol Concerning the Rede-
ployment in Hebron, on January 16 with only a slim majority of Netanyahu’s Likud
voting in favor. Arafat easily won approval in his cabinet, though hard-line factions in
the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) along with Hamas and Islamic Jihad
opposed it. Saeb Erekat, the chief negotiator for the PLO, and Daniel Shomron, who
headed the Israeli negotiating delegation, signed the protocol on January 17.
The Israeli army immediately withdrew from the sections of Hebron designated for
Palestinian control. The withdrawal was the first pullback by a Likud-led government
from any part of the so-called Land of Israel—the historic Palestine that Jews claimed
had been given to them by God. Following another series of Palestinian suicide bomb-
ings in summer 1997, however, Netanyahu refused—even after direct pleas from Sec-
retary of State Madeleine Albright and President Clinton—to carry out additional West
Bank withdrawals that had been agreed to for 1997 and 1998. It would take another
major diplomatic effort by the United States, during meetings in October 1998 at the
Wye River Plantation in Maryland, before Netanyahu would agree grudgingly to fol-
low through on his earlier commitments (Wye River Memorandum, p. 267).
Following is the text of the Protocol Concerning the Redeployment in Hebron, signed
on January 17, 1997, by Daniel Shomron, representing Israel, and Saeb Erekat,
representing the Palestine Liberation Organization.260 ISRAEL AND THE PALESTINIANS