414 • 20 THE GULF WAR AND THE PEACE PROCESSAccords. Netanyahu even agreed to withdraw Israeli troops from most of
Hebron in January 1997. But Israel put off giving back the other West Bank
areas because of new anti-Israel bombings that Netanyahu blamed on
Arafat. Despite the opposition of many members of Netanyahu's cabinet,
Clinton and his new secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, tried time and
again to get him to give up occupied lands and Arafat to stop acts of terror¬
ism. Arafat could not do this after Israel had attacked the PLO security in¬
frastructure in the occupied territories, making it harder to curb Hamas, a
point not understood by Washington. The Palestinians grew ever more
frustrated at a peace process that gave them no hope for freedom or even
employment. They also resented Israel's policy of creating new Jewish set¬
tlements, symbolized by its building houses in Har Homa ( Jabal Abu Ghu-
naym), a part of Jerusalem that Israel had annexed in 1967.
Under the 1993 Declaration of Principles, a five-year transition period
was to lead to final status talks, which were to occur in 1998, about such
contentious issues as ( 1 ) the future of Jerusalem (which the Palestinians,
like the Israelis, claim as their capital), (2) the right of dispersed Palestinians
to return to their homes or to receive compensation from Israel, (3) the fu¬
ture of Jewish settlements in territories conceded to the Palestinians, (4) the
configuration of final borders between Israel and the projected Palestinian
state, and (5) the status of the Palestinian Authority. Israeli bullying and
Palestinian terrorism combined to derail the final status talks.
Israel held general elections in May 1999. Labor made gains at the
Likud's expense and managed to form a coalition cabinet that included
several splinter parties and enjoyed the tacit support of Israeli Arabs. In
the first separate election ever held for the position of prime minister,
Ehud Barak handily defeated Netanyahu. Clinton hoped that Barak could
make peace with both the Palestinian Authority and with Syria. Neither
peace was concluded. Syria's Hafiz al-Asad (who died in 2000 and was re¬
placed by his son, Bashar) would not parley with Israel without its prior
commitment to return all the occupied Golan Heights to his country.
Palestinian and Israeli representatives met at the Erez Crossing between
Gaza and Israel, in Shepardstown (West Virginia), in an estate on the Wye
River (Maryland), and finally with Bill Clinton in a three-way summit at
Camp David. But there were no breakthroughs to peace. Israel would not
allow the Palestinians to regain the entire West Bank and East Jerusalem,
nor would it agree to readmit the Palestinian refugees (and their descen¬
dants) from the 1948 war. Palestinians promised to curb terrorism, but in
practice they went on attacking Israelis, and the Israeli army continued to
punish them in return.