that Israel should be willing to accept a small number of refugees, with priority given
to those in Lebanon (some of whom had close relatives across the border in northern
Israel). Other refugees could resettle in the new state of Palestine or be given interna-
tional aid to settle where they were or in third countries. Addressing Israeli security
concerns, Clinton suggested that Israel be permitted to keep three “early-warning sta-
tions” in the West Bank and be allowed to deploy troops to the Jordan River valley,
along the border with Jordan, under specific “emergency” circumstances. Also, the new
state of Palestine would be considered a “non-militarized state,” meaning that it would
have a security force and be able to patrol its borders, but would not have a conven-
tional standing army.
Clinton said his ideas would provide for a “fair and lasting agreement,” but also
that they will “go with me when I leave office”—in other words, the two sides needed
sign a peace agreement based on the parameters by the time Clinton’s term ended the
following January 20. Clinton said any agreement must represent a formal and final
end to the conflict between the two sides, closing out their claims against one another.
He asked the two sides to respond with a “yes” or “no” to his ideas within five days;
a “maybe,” he said, would be considered a “no.”
On December 27, the deadline Clinton had set, the Israeli cabinet accepted Clin-
ton’s proposals, but with “reservations.” Two days later, senior Palestinian diplomats
said Arafat still had questions and was under pressure to reject Clinton’s proposals.
Clinton made another personal effort, meeting with Arafat at the White House on
January 2, 2001, but got a series of reservations rather than a positive response.
At the request of Barak—who was facing an uphill battle in elections scheduled
for early February—Clinton agreed to make one final effort by meeting again with
Arafat and Barak in the Middle East. Arafat was unwilling to attend such a meeting
(saying he had another engagement), so Clinton’s peace-making came to an end.
On January 7, 2001, Clinton explained his proposals publicly for the first time
during a speech in New York to the Israel Policy Forum, a liberal group that had long
pushed for peace. The proposals, he said, would “entail real pain and sacrifices” for
both sides but ultimately would be the only way to settle a conflict on terms that met
the fundamental needs of both sides. Clinton also cautioned Israelis and Palestinians
against continuing to use violence or military force to try to impose a settlement on
the other side. “A peace viewed as imposed by one party upon the other, that puts
one side up and the other down, rather than both ahead, contains the seeds of its own
destruction,” he said.
Another set of negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian officials took place dur-
ing the last week of January 2001 at the Egyptian resort town of Taba. These talks
made more progress on key issues, according to participants, but by then time had run
out because of the impending Israeli elections and because Clinton already had left
office. In the voting in Israel, on February 6, Ariel Sharon decisively defeated Barak,
putting a final cap on the peace process Barak had embraced nearly two years earlier.
In the meantime, the intifada continued, punctuated by occasional atrocities com-
mitted by one side or the other. By the end of 2006, more than 4,000 Palestinians
and 700 Israelis had been killed in violence between the two sides, according to fig-
ures compiled by B’Tselem, an Israeli human rights organization. The economy of the
Palestinian territories, which had improved after the 1993 Oslo peace accords, went
into a tailspin, costing the vast majority of Palestinians most of the benefits of a brief
280 ISRAEL AND THE PALESTINIANS