Palestinians and the Peace Process ••• 415Barak's offers to Arafat at Camp David seemed generous to Israel's back¬
ers, but in fact they were not, even as modified in later meetings at Taba
and Sharm al-Shaykh. Israel would have given the Palestinians a truncated
state that could not control its own borders, water supply, air space, or im¬
migration processes. Palestinians would not have been allowed arms to de¬
fend themselves against a neighbor that had often attacked them. Had such
an offer been made to the Israelis, they would never have accepted it.
Meanwhile, though, Jewish settlers continued to build new settlements and
increase the size of older ones on the West Bank (at the end of 2000 the
Jewish settler population in the West Bank and Gaza exceeded 200,000).
They seized water resources and sometimes land belonging to the Palestini¬
ans and crisscrossed the area with new highways.
The Second Intifada
On 28 September 2000 General Ariel Sharon made a highly public visit to
the Muslim shrines atop the Temple Mount, or al-Haram al-Sharif, ac¬
companied by more than a thousand soldiers and police. Partly because
Sharon is viewed by most Arabs as a murderer, his act enraged the Pales¬
tinians, who began attacking Jewish settlements with rocks and sometimes
firearms. The IDF struck back with massive retaliation raids, killing hun¬
dreds and maiming thousands of Palestinians, many of whom were inno¬
cent bystanders or even young children caught in the line of fire. Under
the Oslo Accords Israel and the Palestinian Authority could have carried
out a joint police action. Instead, what took place was an Israeli military
operation that included blowing up houses, uprooting olive and orange
trees, shooting demonstrators with live ammunition, and blanketing
whole villages with tear gas. The Israelis were distressed when fighting
broke out between Jewish soldiers and Israeli Arab civilians in Nazareth,
because they had assumed that Israeli Arabs would never rise up against
them. The Palestinians suffered not only deaths and injuries but also the
loss of their livelihood, as Israel closed border crossings to Palestinians
who had been workers in Israel.
This Palestinian uprising was soon dubbed the Intifada of al-Aqsa (re¬
ferring to the large mosque on the Temple Mount). It won the support of
nearly all Arabs, who called on their governments to cut diplomatic and
commercial ties with Israel. Only Egypt and Jordan (whose King Husayn
had died of cancer and was replaced by his son, Abdallah II) maintained
formal relations with Israel. The Israelis claimed that their security was at
risk, and angry debates took place in the Knesset because of what many