Current History, January 2001

When the Camp David negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians ended without an agreement last July, the general verdict was that the summit had failed.

A dejected and exhausted President Bill Clinton went in front of the cameras to lay the foundation for two conflicting goals: bolstering a weak Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak at home by beginning to blame Palestinian Authority President Yasir Arafat for the failure; and persuading the Palestinians to move closer to Barak's position on Jerusalem in the hope of reaching an agreement by the fall.

Soon after the summit, in an appearance on Israeli television intended to help Barak at home, Clinton was even more explicit about blaming the Palestinians and threatening to move the United States embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem if an agreement was not concluded before he left office in January. Mutual confidence between the United States and the Palestinians quickly deteriorated, with the Palestinians accusing the United States, and Clinton personally, of taking Israel's side. What went wrong?

It had been a remarkable journey for Clinton's relationship with the Palestinians. When he was elected president in 1992, Clinton was immediately seen by most Arabs, especially Palestinians, as Israel's biggest supporter because of his campaign pronouncements and the overwhelming support he had received from Jewish voters. When the Palestinians pursued the Norwegian-mediated secret negotiations with the Israelis that led to the Oslo accords in the following months, it was in part because of their conclusion that they were not likely to get any negotiating help from the Clinton administration. But Clinton's relations with the Palestinians began to improve following the Oslo agreements, reaching a high point in the last days of the administration of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 1999.

Although the Palestinians have never stopped accusing the United States of bias, they acquired respect and affection for Bill Clinton personally. Certainly, no American president had displayed more private and public empathy for the Palestinians than Clinton, and no one had brought more acceptance of their plight in Washington. Yet the increased acceptance of the Palestinians never came at the expense of Clinton's support for Israel, where he was arguably the most admired American president since Harry S. Truman.

Clinton's message was clear: in an era of negotiations and agreements between Israel and the Palestinians, the interests of both sides were no longer zero-sum. The Clinton administration portrayed the conflict as not between Palestinians and Israelis, but between moderates and extremists on both sides.

Following Barak's election as prime minister in 1999, both Palestinians and Israelis were pleased to see an increase in Clinton's personal involvement in the negotiations. Barak in particular asked Clinton to elevate the level of United States mediation in the hope that a deal could be struck before Clinton's term expired. In his electoral campaign, the Israeli prime minister had promised his public a quick deal and began his tenure actively pursuing agreements with Syria and the Palestinians.

For a while it seemed as if an agreement with the Syrians could come before a deal with the Palestinians, thus undermining Arafat's hand. Added to the Palestinians' difficulties was the great relief in Washington that Barak had replaced the disliked Netanyahu, with the White House quickly making Barak a favorite ally. But the failure to conclude an agreement with Syria by the spring of 2000, rein-forced by the sudden death of Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, revived the urgency of a Palestinian-Israeli deal. Adding pressure was the Palestinian threat to declare a state unilaterally if an agreement was not reached quickly.

These circumstances set the stage for the Camp David summit. Barak persuaded the United States that the time was ripe for such a summit, even though the Palestinians felt that not enough preparation was made to assure its success. The Israeli prime minister also believed that a summit could succeed only if it led to a comprehensive agreement that settled all the major issues between the parties and finally ended the 52-year-old conflict. The entire negotiating strategy was based on this all-or-nothing formula.

Indeed, the Camp David summit narrowed the gap between the two sides more than all the negotiations in the seven years that followed the 1993 Oslo accords. In the end, however, Jerusalem was the deal killer. The question is, why?

One can certainly point to the emotional, religious, cultural, and political importance of Jerusalem to both sides, and to the geographic and demographic complexity of the issue. But these are matters that should have not come as a surprise. The answer is to be found in the perplexing assumptions that led to the Camp David negotiations.

First, why was President Clinton so frustrated with Yasir Arafat? Objectively, both Arafat and Barak made remarkable concessions at Camp David. Barak moved beyond any previous Israeli prime minister in agreeing to eventually withdraw from 90 percent of the West Bank and in offering Palestinians control of some East Jerusalem neighborhoods.

For his part, Arafat offered remarkable concessions. He agreed that most Jewish settlers on the West Bank could remain in settlement blocks in portions of the West Bank that would come under Israeli sovereignty- as long as the Palestinians were compensated with new territories, probably near Gaza. He also agreed to separate the issue of the "right" of the Palestinian refugees to return to their homes from the actual settlement of claims to that right.

On Jerusalem, the Palestinians agreed that the Jewish Quarter and the Western Wall, which were under Arab control until the 1967 war, would fall under Israeli sovereignty. For both sides, these were significant concessions over which they stood to face a fight at home.

Yet the public discourse in the United States following Camp David placed the blame for failure solely on Yasir Arafat, with whom the president was frustrated to a degree he could not hide. At center stage was one issue: the political fate of the Harem al-Sharif/Temple Mount area of Jerusalem, which is holy both to Muslims and Jews.

Clinton conveyed to Arafat an Israeli proposal: the Palestinian leader would be called "custodian" of Haram al-Sharif and would be able to fly his own flag on the mosques- but they would remain under Israeli sovereignty. From Clinton's point of view, this was a reasonable proposal that may not have represented Barak's last word on the subject. For years he had heard from his own aides and from his own Congress how the issue of Jerusalem is sacred in Israel, and that no Israeli government could compromise on Jerusalem remaining the united capital of Israel. He was fully aware of Israel's domestic politics, knowledgeable about every conceivable coalition and almost every member of the Knelt. He was mindful of the difficulty in winning democratic elections and certainly wanted Barak to be able to sell an agreement to his public. And he was stunned by Craft's total rejection of the offer.

This empathy for Barak's difficulties and the recognition of the courage Barak displayed in moving beyond any other Israeli leader on critical issues also meant that the United States was effectively accepting a frame of reference that was different from that of the Palestinians. For the Palestinians, the frame of reference was to Israel's borders before the June 1967 war, with modifications to accommodate each other's needs, especially on security and settlement.

For the Israelis, the frame of reference was how much more to concede beyond the status quo. In the Palestinian mindset, what Israel keeps out of the West Bank is what the Palestinians "give" to Israel and which must be justified. For the Israeli government, what the Palestinians get beyond what they now control they are "given" by Israel. On Jerusalem, the United States in effect accepted Israel's frame of reference. This had the consequence of framing expectations that under-estimated possible Israeli concessions and overestimated possible Palestinian concessions.

From Arafat's point of view, he offered much on Jerusalem: the Jewish Quarter, the Western Wall, and Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem. Haram al-Sharif was used almost entirely by Muslims and was under the control of the Islamic Waqf (Islamic Trust). Arafat did not seem to understand the importance of the Temple Mount to Jews, beyond the Western Wall. Ultimately, however, Israel's own opening arguments on Jerusalem, which called for separating political from religious aspects, reinforced Arafat's position.

The Palestinians, whose frame of reference began with the assumption that East Jerusalem belongs entirely to them, were able to turn this around: if religion is removed from the political equation, what are the legal claims for Israeli sovereignty over Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount? Arafat thus saw no room for compromise on this issue and did not present a counteroffer, to the dismay of President Clinton. And when the American president at the last minute suggested possible postponement of the issue of Jerusalem sovereignty, Arafat saw it as a trick to preserve Israeli control. The talks collapsed.

How did the United States so misjudge the Palestinian position on Jerusalem? The focus on Yasir Arafat was especially telling. American negotiators leaked that many of Arafat's younger advisers were more willing to compromise at Camp David and that he alone stood in the way. The assumption was clear: Arafat could deliver whatever agreement he signed, even on Jerusalem.

The trick was to give him enough incentives to accept Israeli sovereignty on the Old City of Jerusalem, including Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount. Barak provided him with significant incentives but he still rejected the deal; therefore either he did not want an agreement or he was just using Camp David to extract more concessions from Barak down the road. The possibility that Palestinian, Arab, and Islamic public opinion provided serious redlines for Arafat was not taken seriously.

The events following the collapse of Camp David and the subsequent violence that came after Ariel Sharon, the Israeli opposition leader, visited Haram al Sharif/Temple Mount in September, were an indication of just how passionate the Palestinian public is about Jerusalem. For years Palestinian public opinion polls had shown that, given a choice between an agreement that gave the Palestinians a state without East Jerusalem and no agreement at all, the vast majority of Palestinians would choose the latter. The intensity of the sudden violence that erupted in September was one indication of the depth of feelings. Debate will continue about the role that the Palestinian Authority (PA) played in instigating the "al-Aqsa intifada" and the extent to which the Palestinian leadership was willing to contain it, but Palestinian public passion, and the heavy price in human lives that Palestinians were willing to accept, could not be merely due to the urging of the unpopular PA.

Similarly, consider the consequences of the Palestinian eruption in the Arab world: hundreds of thousands of people took to the street, even in Arab countries friendly to the United States, such as Morocco, Egypt, and Jordan. Arab governments felt compelled to reduce the few relations they maintained with Israel and to respond to public opinion by holding the most complete summit since the Iraq- Kuwait crisis in 1990. The anti-Israeli and anti- United States sentiments reached their highest levels in over a decade. The United States found itself on the defensive: increased threats to the United States military presence (the American fleet was unable to use the Suez Canal to reach the Persian Gulf because of fear of attacks) and to American diplomatic missions.

From the United States point of view, this should be puzzling. The United States has invested heavily in the Middle East in the past decade. Militarily, it has succeeded in establishing an unprecedented presence in the gulf that has dominated the military scene in that region. Diplomatically, the United States has spent more time and energy in the Middle East than on any other foreign policy issue. Economically, the United States has provided more aid to the region (mainly to Egypt and Israel) than to any other in the world. Politically, the United States has added to its strong relations with Israel the highest level of cooperation with a historically large number of Arab governments. The political order in the region was generally shaped to America's liking. All this power has been accumulated so as to employ it at a moment of crisis. Yet, as the crisis between Israel and the Palestinians emerged, these significant American assets could not be used effectively to help American policy. The explanation for this predicament lay in the same broad American assumptions about politics in the region over the past decade: the Arab world is made up of autocratic governments that are less sensitive to their public opinion than democracies, and have more control over shaping public opinion. While the United States must pay some attention to Arab public sentiments, its policy must be based on employing American power to get governments to cooperate with United States policy, and on assuming that they will in turn get their publics to follow. In the same way that the point of departure for the strategy in dealing with the Palestinians focused on Arafat personally, so did policy toward much of the Arab world focus primarily on Arab rulers. Bolstering this approach in the past decade was the retreat of those Middle East experts who warned in 1990 and 1991 that the "Arab street" would erupt if the United States- led coalition acted to dislodge Iraq from Kuwait. When the coalition succeeded, and friendly Arab governments muted dissent, the Arab public opinion thesis faltered. In fact, Arab governments have responded favorably to the United States on most occasions in the 1990s despite public dissent. Subsequently, American officials have grown comfortable with the assumption that Arab public opinion only minimally affects policy.

As recent events show, however, this has been a mistake. First, even if governments can mute public dissent, they do so only by raising the price of muting dissent the next time; the effectiveness of this approach comes at a price. Second, part of the success of Arab governments in control-ling public opinion was their ability to dominate the media in the past, thus providing their own spin of events. During the gulf war, for example, coalition members executed a highly coordinated effort to provide a uniform picture that was favorable to them.

In the past decade, however, an information revolution has occurred in the region, especially in local satellite television stations that are more independent and more diverse. Governments can no longer prevent news from reaching their publics.

The most dramatic and apparently spontaneous public demonstrations in Arab world occurred not when Sharon visited Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount, but when the regional media aired the heart-wrenching television footage of a Palestinian boy, Muhammad Durra, as he was shot in the arms of his father. (In the same way that Israeli public opinion turned dramatically against the Palestinians when film was aired of two Israeli soldiers being lynched by angry Palestinians.)

The United States and Israel, however, have continued to presuppose that Arab public opinion is largely a function of leadership behavior. The assumption about Yasir Arafat at Camp David was no exception: if he could be persuaded through incentives and threats, a deal could be struck. But the Israelis and the Americans were surprisingly unable to sense the degree to which the issue of Jerusalem, especially Haram al-Sharif, was so passionately important, not only to Palestinians, but also to Muslims and Arabs worldwide.

In important ways, Jerusalem is bigger than Palestine for many Arabs and Muslims, and had Arafat been perceived to have given away Jerusalem, he would not have been able to sell the deal- or contain the opposition. Instead of leading to a comprehensive deal, the focus on Jerusalem, and the framing of the issue in religious terms at Camp David and since, may have ignited a serious threat to Palestinian-Israeli peace that goes beyond the violence: the possible transformation of the conflict from a nationalist conflict that can be resolved to a religious-ethnic dispute that cannot.

One success of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations in the past decade has been the framing of the conflict in nationalist terms. The most important accomplishment of the Oslo accords was the mutual recognition expressed in letters exchanged by Prime Minister Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization chairman Yasir Arafat. The idea that the dispute is between a Jewish state accepted by the Palestinians and a Palestinian national movement seeking a state of its own opened the door for territorial compromise. All negotiations have since been premised on this understanding.

The nationalist framing of the conflict meant that, through territorial compromise, an outcome could be envisioned that would result in a Palestinian state manifesting Palestinian nationalism, next to Israel as a Jewish state with a Jewish majority. Certainly this was the basis for optimism at the outset of the Camp David II negotiations. But Jerusalem had the power of transforming the conflict, not so much because of its religious importance, but because the terms of reference were defined in religious language and because it was a perfect weapon in the hands of religious opposition groups. As in the Palestinian areas, most militant opposition groups in the Arab world are Islamist, and the dispute over Haram al-Sharif was a convenient instrument of political mobilization. Unlike the Palestinian intifada that began in 1987, the uprising of 2000 was termed the al-Aqsa intifada after the third-holiest mosque in Islam. The discourse about the conflict since has increasingly acquired religious terms in ways that have not been witnessed before.

The beginning of this transformation can be seen in the increased tension between Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs. Like other Palestinians and Arabs, Arab citizens of Israel revolted violently against the bloodshed that followed Sharon's visit. Thirteen Arab citizens were killed by Israeli police. While this was not the first time that Arabs in Israel had engaged in protests, it was the first time since 1948 that religious-ethnic overtones dominated. In the past, most Arab protests were organized by secular groups, sometimes Arab nationalists, and mostly over civil rights issues or protestations of foreign policy. They had often mobilized Jewish partners in their protests. This time it was different.

Two related reasons explain the Israeli Arabs' behavior. First was the framing of the dispute with the Palestinians over Jerusalem sovereignty. The Israeli government's argument for sovereignty over Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount was not based on Israeli security needs, legality, international legitimacy, or even use of property- but simply that it is important religiously to Jews. For Muslim Israelis, the argument placed them on the other side. The second reason is related to the rise of Islamic religious groups. In the past decade, many of Israel's Islamic religious groups have participated in Israeli politics. Since Israel's founding in 1948, some Arabs, especially religious Muslims, initially opposed participation in Israeli politics, since they viewed the state as illegitimate- although the vast majority of Arabs actively participated. But after the 1993 Oslo accords, Islamic religious groups fielded their own political candidates for the Knesset and encouraged their public to vote.

Their strategy became a traditional democratic politics game: how to win the greatest number of Arab votes in the elections. Religion was employed to obtain support, since most Israeli Arabs are Muslim. The irony: as Israel's Arabs became more Israeli- increasingly accepting and participating in state institutions- their activism, which has generated electoral support in Israel's democratic system, has also focused attention on their core issues of Arab and Palestinian identity as tools of political mobilization. And Jerusalem is the perfect tool.

But the issues politicians exploit obviously resonate with the Arab public in Israel, although most are not militant. And when confrontations with police result in many civilian deaths and injuries, the issue becomes very personal- nearly everyone in the small Arab community is related to one of the victims. The police, and the state, quickly become the "bad guys," accentuating prevalent feelings that the state still does not accept Arabs as full citizens. This is a prescription for protracted civil conflict. The framing of issues between Israel and the Palestinians in religious terms, fueled by the question of Jerusalem, has led to the beginning of a transformation that has begun to mobilize Arabs within Israel, and Arabs and Muslims worldwide.

The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, and the violence that has led to the death of hundreds and the wounding of thousands- mostly Palestinians- since September, are not religious. Nor is religion the primary reason for the fury of Palestinians, most of whom have been born under occupation and have never had full freedom and independence. For Israelis, despite the obvious asymmetry of power favoring them, and despite the fact that the casualties in the conflict are overwhelmingly Palestinian, the sense of insecurity remains real. Neither side will ultimately reach a stable settlement through force, and both are destined to be neighbors.

For American diplomacy, the priority must be preserving the nationalist framing of the conflict and separating the religious status from the issue of political sovereignty. This framing of the conflict must be maintained, and must be the basis for proposals on core issues such as Jerusalem and the Palestinian refugees, even if an agreement on these issues may not be achievable in the short term.

More broadly, a comprehensive American review of policy toward the Middle East is warranted, given the changes that have occurred within the region in the past decade, and given the rising public pressure on governments whose stability has been the cornerstone of American Middle East policy. In particular, the paradigm that separated the actions of Arab governments from the sentiments of their public must now be reexamined.

In the end, no third party can impose a lasting settlement on Israel and the Palestinians; both sides will have to find their own formula for compromise. But the history of Arab-Israeli negotiations shows that the help of third parties has been indispensable. Despite its reduced clout, the United States remains in the best position to help. The new American president will not be able to avoid an active American diplomatic role: the events since September have made the Palestinian-Israel conflict more consequential for vital American interests than at any point since the Arab oil embargo in 1974.