Saddam Hussein meanwhile remained in power
in Baghdad, surviving an international economic
blockade and the humiliations inflicted by the
UN. Perhaps these were even proving counter-
productive as Iraqis rallied to their leader who
was presented as standing up to overwhelming
Western hostility. Saddam played a cat-and-mouse
game frustrating the fulfillment of UN demands
that he throw open his nuclear facilities for inspec-
tion and destroy his missiles as long as he dared. It
remained in the interests of the nations in the
region and of the West to maintain Iraq as a uni-
tary state and that helped Saddam to survive for so
long after defeat. What appeared to be morally
right did not necessarily correspond to what were
regarded as the wider interests of peace in the
Middle East and the priorities of the world’s most
powerful nations. Bush’s decision to stop at Iraq’s
frontier was in part based on a miscalculation, that
Saddam could not survive such a defeat but that
his successor should be enabled to hold the coun-
try together as a counterweight to Iran.
General peace in the volatile Middle East re-
mained a distant prospect. But on 13 September
1993 there was one totally unexpected and dra-
matic turn for the better. On that day on the
White House lawn the Israeli prime minister,
Rabin, shook the hand of PLO chairman Arafat.
Their agreement had been secretly brokered by
the Norwegian foreign minister and became
known as the ‘Oslo Agreement’. Arafat signed a
letter recognising that Israel must exist in peace
and security and Rabin accepted the PLO as the
‘representative of the Palestinian people’. Gaza
and Jericho were to be handed over to Palestinian
self-rule when all the details had been worked out.
There was an outcry from opponents – from
Hamas and from among the fearful Jewish settlers
in 144 settlements on the West Bank and Gaza,
who constitute some 4 per cent of Israel’s popula-
tion. The detailed negotiations dragged on, and
the December date for the handover passed.
Three months later a fanatical Israeli settler
sprayed a mosque in Hebron, the Patriarchs’
Tomb, with bullets from the automatic weapon
many settlers carry, killing thirty Palestinians;
Hamas retaliated in kind. The Israeli army was
seen to maintain order one-sidedly – ready to
shoot at Palestinians, but not at Jews. It was a set-
back, but there was no alternative but to try to
implement what had already been agreed in prin-
ciple in Washington. Meanwhile a resistant Hafez
Assad was cajoled by the Americans without suc-
cess to normalise relations with Israel. His prior
demand was that he recover the Golan Heights. In
Egypt, Mubarak came under increasing pressure
from groups of Muslim fundamentalist terrorists.
The fires of conflict thus continued to smoulder
under the surface.
Hopes of peace turned to ashes. Hamas and
Islamic Jihad, based in the West Bank and Gaza,
continued to launch suicide bombing attacks on
Israel and the peace accord reached between the
PLO leader Yasser Arafat and Israel’s prime min-
ister Yitzhak Rabin in 1993 was in tatters. Rabin
was attacked by the Likud opposition and its
leader Binyamin Netanyahu for ‘betraying’ Israel,
and was assassinated not by an Arab terrorist but
by a Jewish fanatic at a peace rally in Tel Aviv in
November 1995. Shimon Peres, who succeeded
him as prime minister, attempted to build on the
trust Rabin had established with Arafat. But elec-
tions in May 1996 were preceded by bombs and
deaths in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv which created
divisions between those Israelis who supported
the peace process and those who thought it
would undermine security. Netanyahu won by
the narrowest of margins. His approach was far
more hard line. By the end of 1997 Gaza and
only a small part of the West Bank had come
totally under Palestinian control. By constructing
a new settlement on the southern edge of East
Jerusalem, Netanyahu brought negotiations with
the Palestinians to a halt. But his refusal to abide
by the Oslo timetable to leave the West Bank was
overshadowed by the behaviour of Arafat, who
failed to distance himself from Hamas and the
continuing suicide bombings. Islamic Jihad and
Hamas set off bombs in buses, busy markets and
shopping streets. The Clinton administration
managed to keep the peace process alive until
the election in May 1999 of Ehud Barak, who
replaced Netanyahu. Peace hopes revived.
The biggest obstacle to overcome is a legacy of
hatred and mistrust increased by the violence on916 GLOBAL CHANGE: FROM THE 20th TO THE 21st CENTURY