Saudi Arabia, and other neighboring nations. In
early 1991, Operation Desert Shield ended and was
followed by Operation Desert Storm, with the stated
mission of liberating Kuwait. Operation Desert
Storm was a dramatically swift success, with the coali-
tion forces routing the Iraqi forces in only a few
weeks.
A result of Operation Desert Storm was that Iraq
was effectively stripped of its military might. Hussein
retained his official status as the nation’s leader, but
the United States established no-fly zones in the
southern third of the country, where most of the
Shia Iraqis lived, and in the northern third of the
country, where ethnic Kurds lived. The no-fly zones
prevented Iraqi military operations in those areas
and provided much more autonomy to them than
they had enjoyed prior to 1991. Bill Clinton became
U.S. president in 1992, and under his administra-
tion the no-fly zones were maintained throughout
the 1990’s and into the first several years of the
twenty-first century.
Israel and Palestinians The state of Israel, as a sov-
ereign political entity, was established by the United
Nations in 1948 by parceling out part of the land of
Palestine. From that time up to the 1990’s, the re-
gion experienced continuing and ongoing conflict,
with Palestinians and neighboring Arab states claim-
ing that Palestinian territory had been illegally sto-
len and Israelis claiming that they were subject to
military attacks and were defending themselves.
Over the course of several decades, multiple Israeli-
Arab wars ensued, in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, and
1982.
In 1991, following the events of the Gulf War and
Operation Desert Storm, many world leaders urged
U.S. president George H. W. Bush to set a peace
agreement between Israel and its neighbors, includ-
ing Palestinians, as a top priority for U.S. foreign pol-
icy. With the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end
of the 1980’s and with many Arab leaders insisting
that Middle Eastern unrest would continue and
worsen without some resolution to the “Palestinian
problem,” the United States was seen as the only
world power that could broker a genuine and lasting
peace accord. As a result, multilateral peace talks be-
gan in Madrid, Spain, to deal with this issue. Over
the next several years, progress was slow to nonexis-
tent, in part because a new administration, under
Bill Clinton, took office in 1992, with a subsequent
refocusing of U.S. foreign and domestic priorities
and policies. In 1993, it became public that, in spite
of slow progress in Madrid, the Israeli government
and the Palestinian leadership (under the name of
the Palestine Liberation Organization, or PLO, later
to be recast as the Palestine National Assembly, or
PNA) had been holding secret meetings in Oslo,
Norway, and negotiations had been hopeful. The re-
sult was the Oslo Accords, which led to a Declaration
of Principles for Palestinian self-rule and recogni-
tion by the PNA of Israel’s sovereign status. A conse-
quence of this apparent progress was that, in 1994,
Jordan became the second Arab state (after Egypt)
to sign an official peace treaty with Israel.
Hopes for further movement toward ending the
conflicts were dashed in 1995, with the assassination
of Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin by an Israeli
Orthodox Jew, who believed that Rabin was aiding
the enemies of Israel. A result of this was the election
of Benjamin Netanyahu as Rabin’s successor and a
hardening by both Israelis and Palestinians toward
each other. In 1999, a new Israeli prime minister was
elected, Ehud Barak. In his final years in office, Pres-
ident Bill Clinton worked closely with Barak and Pal-
estinian leader Yasir Arafat to sign a final peace
agreement. These close talks and negotiations broke
down, however, over several final, important issues,
such as the status of East Jerusalem as the capital of
Palestine, questions about the final borders of Israel
and Palestine, security guarantees, and questions
concerning Palestinians returning to land now in-
side of Israel as well as Israelis living in settlements in
Palestinian territories. The 1990’s ended with no
peace agreement between the Israelis and Palestin-
ians.Events in North America Several dramatic events
connected to U.S. actions and policies related to the
Middle East took place outside the region during
the 1990’s. Within the United States, in 1993 a car
bomb was detonated beneath Tower One of the
World Trade Center in New York City. Six people
were killed and more than a thousand were injured
in the attack. It was the first such attack within the
United States that most Americans identified as an
act of terrorism connected to the Middle East. In the
subsequent trial, main perpetrator, Ramzi Yousef,
openly acknowledged this as an act of terrorism and
that it was directly related to U.S. policies and ac-
tions in the Middle East.The Nineties in America Middle East and North America 569