FINAL WARNING: The Shining Star
department and their foreign minister, said in a speech: “There is a
state which was established through historical force and it must be
destroyed. This is the Palestinian way.” Arafat later told Rabin, the
Israeli Prime Minister, that his comment did not reflect the view of the
PLO.On November 4, 1995, Rabin, like Sadat before him, paid for peace with
his life.An October, 1998 summit at Wye Mills, MD, became the first serious
peace negotiations in two years, as Israel Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu and Arafat met to settle various important issues that had
been negotiated during the 1993 Oslo Accords. It ended with Israel
surrendering 13% of their land to the Palestinians as part of a land for
peace agreement brokered by the U.S.Pope John Paul II met with Yasser Arafat at the Vatican on February
15, 2000, where they agreed that Jerusalem must be made into an
international city. The agreement they signed was in the form of a
covenant. The Pope called for an end to the violence and said that the
Palestinian State should be created out of the land of Israel. The
Vatican said that Israel’s annexation of east Jerusalem was illegal, and
they didn’t recognize Israeli sovereignty there.In March of the same year, the Pope traveled to the Middle East where
he visited Jordan, Israel, and the Palestine territories. Time magazine
(4/30/00 pg. 36) quoted Yasser Arafat’s wife Suha, who had been a
devout Catholic before her marriage, as saying that the Holy Father’s
very presence there was “a clear message for an independent
Palestinian state.”Billed as Camp David II, in July, 2000, hoping for a final settlement
before he left office, President Bill Clinton hosted a meeting between
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Arafat. For the first time, Israel
offered part of East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital, and most of
the West Bank. The talks failed because of Arafat’s demand for the
‘right of return’ for Palestinian refugees living abroad.On August 2, 2001, Arafat and Pope John Paul met for a private
meeting at the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, where the