The Carter years, 1977-1980

Two agreements were reached between Israel and Egypt — the second of these was a Framework for broader Peace in the Middle East which dealt with the Palestinian Territories. The agreement included a plan for Palestinian self-rule in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The latter provisions were not implemented.

The agreement was concluded without the participation of the UN and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and the UN General Assembly found that the agreement did not comply with the Palestinian right of return, of self determination, with the right to national independence and sovereignty and that it also condoned continued Israeli occupation. As a result, the Framework for Peace in the Middle East was rejected via resolution 34/65 of 12 December 1979, which ruled it invalid.

Carter had presented three main objectives for Arab-Israeli Peace: Arab recognition of Israel’s right to exist in peace — Israel’s withdrawal from occupied territories gained in the six day war through negotiating efforts with neighboring Arab nations to ensure that Israel’s security would not be threatened and securing an undivided Jerusalem.

The Reagan years. 1981-1988

Following the evacuation of the PLO from Beirut in Lebanon, Reagan outlined his own peace proposal for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and which was to use the negotiating table to reconcile Israeli’s legitimate security concerns with the legitimate rights of the Palestinians.

The Camp David agreement remained the foundation for Reagan policy as its language provided all parties with the leeway they needed for successful negotiations.

The Reagan plan for peace stated that the Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza were to have full autonomy over their own affairs. Under this plan, due consideration was to be given to the principle of self-government by the inhabitants of the territories and to the legitimate security concerns of the parties involved. A 5-year period of transition was to begin after free elections for a self-governing Palestinian authority and the aim of that period was to prove to Palestinians that they could run their own affairs and that such Palestinian autonomy posed no threat to Israel’s security. The United States did not support the use of any additional land for the purpose of settlements during the transitional period. Indeed, the immediate adoption of a settlement freeze by Israel, more than any other action, was seen as a way to create the confidence needed for wider participation in these talks. Further settlement activity was considered in no way necessary for the security of Israel and was seen to only diminish the confidence of Arabs that a final outcome might be freely and fairly negotiated.

The George H. Bush years, 1989-1992

A time of many firsts in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. US aid to Israel spiked to record levels with tens of thousands US military stationed in Israel. The Madrid Peace Conference of 1991 saw the first face-to-face diplomatic negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis in half a century of conflict.

The Intifada occurred at the beginning of the Bush Presidency. By the time it was over, negotiations were already in progress for the most comprehensive agreement brokered in the history of the conflict to that point, the Oslo Accords. It was indeed the efforts of George H.W. Bush and his diplomatic team that enabled the signing of the historic agreement at Oslo.

The Clinton years, 1993-2000

President Clinton and George W. Bush publicly supported the creation of a new Palestinian state out of most of the current Palestinian territories, based on the idea of self determination for Palestinian people. Following the Madrid Conference, secret talks between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators took place in Norway and that produced the 1993 Oslo Accords, which was a plan addressing the necessary elements and conditions for the creation of a Palestinian state. Various transfers of responsibilities took place in both the West Bank and Gaza Strip in 1994 and 1995, but Israeli maintained a wide security presence in the Palestinian territories. Small scale violence erupted in the territories. The Palestinians and the Israelis signed the Wye River Memorandum, a political agreement to implement the Oslo Accords. President Clinton was the official witness.

In the year 2000, Clinton convened a peace summit between former Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and then Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak who offered Arafat 95 per cent of the West Bank and entire Gaza Strip, if 69 Israeli colonies which comprise 85 per cent of the Israeli West Bank colonies be ceded to Israel. Occupied East Jerusalem would mostly be under Israeli sovereignty. Under intense pressure from Clinton, Arafat rejected the offer and never proposed a counter offer. The second Al Aqsa Intifada erupted and raged in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

The George W. Bush years, 2001-2008

Under the Bush Administration, in July 2002, the ‘quartet’ of the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and Russia outlined the principles of a road map for peace including an independent Palestinian state. The road map was published in April 2003 after the appointment of Mahmoud Abbas as the PNA Prime Minister, after the US administration and Israel refused to deal with Arafat any more.

The Bush administration’s greatest contribution to ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has been its adoption of the road map.

The plan called on Palestinians to undertake all necessary measures on the ground to arrest and restrain individuals and groups from conducting violent attacks against Israelis anywhere and Israel was required to freeze all colonial activities, remove its army from Palestinian cities and ease restrictions on the movement of Palestinians.

Neither side adhered to the road map’s obligations and the US administration was unwilling to coerce them into doing so.