(Photo by AgadaUrbanit via Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)
Note: This article is the second part of a three-part article series analyzing the history and deception of Israel’s occupation of Palestine on the domestic and international stage.
On February 28th, 2026, Israel and the United States started a brutal aerial bombardment campaign against Iran, in the middle of Iranian-American negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. Israel struck the day after the Omani Foreign Minister, who mediated the negotiations, stated, “a peace deal is within our reach.” This is the second time in eight months that Israel instigated an attack during Iranian-American mediation talks.
These strikes display Israel’s clear intent to sabotage any peace agreement that could potentially limit Israeli regional power and strategic aims, such as a greater Israel, the idea of a “biblical Israel” that stretches from the Euphrates in Iraq to the Nile in Egypt.
In 2015, Israel attempted to wreck what became Barack Obama’s successful nuclear deal in 2015, at least until Donald Trump came into office and abolished the deal in 2018. Israel’s recent subversion of negotiations between the U.S. and Iran follows a similar pattern where Israel purposefully derails negotiations, while accusing the opposing party of doing the same.
Israel accused Iran of building a nuclear arsenal when it was not. Israel most emphatically applies this strategy towards negotiations on Palestinian sovereignty and statehood. The calculated failure of the Camp David Accords is most emblematic of this strategy.
Bad Faith Negotiations
After the perceived success of the 1993 Oslo Accords, international pressure ramped up on Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) to further negotiate a peaceful settlement. These negotiations, dubbed Oslo II, initially started in Taba, Egypt, where both parties reiterated their commitment to further negotiations and to PA sovereignty over the West Bank and Gaza in phased withdrawals from the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF).
Shockingly, two months after both parties signed Oslo II, Yigal Amir, a radical right-wing Israeli, assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. The killing derailed negotiations, as the Shimon Peres led Labour Party lost to Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud Party in May of 1996. Netanyahu ran on an explicitly anti-negotiation stance.
Despite this, Netanyahu continued negotiations, but in bad faith. In 1997, Netanyahu and Yasser Arafat, the head of the PA, signed the Protocol Concerning the Redeployment in Hebron. This began further IDF withdrawals from sections of Hebron and other parts of the West Bank.
Netanyahu later boasted that the Hebron Protocol undermined Oslo by insisting that Israel maintain an armed presence in “specified military locations,” and that Israel would unilaterally define military locations. Essentially, Israel could declare anything a military location and refuse to withdraw, cementing their grip on the occupied territories.
Camp David
Two years after the Hebron Protocol, the new leader of the Labour Party, Ehud Barak, defeated Netanyahu on the platform of striking a deal with both Syria and the PA in 12 to 15 months and withdrawing IDF troops from southern Lebanon. In September 1999, four months after his May 1999 election, Barak signed the Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum with Arafat, which called for both parties to reach a permanent agreement on final status by September 2000.
10 months later, in July 2000, President Bill Clinton invited Israel and the PA to Camp David, located in Maryland, 60 miles northwest of Washington D.C., for final status negotiations on a Palestinian state. Bill Clinton promised that “there would be no finger-pointing” if the summit ended without a deal.
(Photo by the Clinton Administration via Wikimedia Commons/Public Domain)
After two weeks of intense negotiations, the summit ended without a deal, and Clinton immediately pointed the finger at Arafat. In the aftermath of the summit’s failure, the media, with intense Israeli backing, blamed the Palestinians, stating they had rejected a “generous offer.” In reality, it was the Palestinians who provided a generous offer.
Unreasonable Demands
In secret negotiations before the summit, Palestinian negotiators offered large concessions where they would accept annexation of large parts of the West Bank in exchange for Arab-populated land of equal value and size in Israel. Israel countered with an oral – not written – proposal that offered annexation of even larger parts of the West Bank, leaving the PA controlling only 78% of the land. In exchange for that takeover, the PA would get some desert land outside the Gaza Strip. Still, Israel also gave itself the right to invade at any point in cases of “emergency.”
Israel would have permanent control of Palestinian airspace, three permanent military installations in the West Bank, Israeli presence at Palestinian border crossings, and special “security arrangements” along the borders with Jordan, effectively stealing additional land.
This Israeli proposal would not have created a sovereign Palestinian state, but rather a Palestinian state completely subordinate to Israeli control. If Arafat had signed onto that deal, he would have signed Palestine’s final and complete capitulation to Israel. Arafat correctly rejected the deal, knowing it was unacceptable and that accepting it would have put him in grave danger.
Even the main Israeli negotiator and Foreign Affairs Minister at the time, Shlomo Ben Ami, admitted, “Camp David was not the missed opportunity for the Palestinians, and if I were a Palestinian, I would have rejected Camp David, as well.” Equally evident of Israel’s deceit was that during Barak’s premiership West Bank settlements increased rapidly, despite Barak positioning himself as the Prime Minister who would finally end the conflict.
Ultimately, Israel’s calculated failure at Camp David would be partly responsible for one of the most violent episodes of Israel’s occupation of Palestine, the Second Intifada.
Israeli Infighting
Israel’s tactic of using negotiations as a delaying mechanism was working because, according to the Oslo Accords that both parties signed, Palestine should have been a state by May 4th, 1999. Israel had unilaterally postponed Palestinian statehood, while doubling the number of Settlers in Palestinian lands. Yet to maintain the façade of the peace process, Israel had to continue negotiating. Or at least appear to be.
A month after Israel crippled the peace process at Camp David, Clinton reinitiated talks, not to bring about a Palestinian state, but to cement his legacy. These negotiations took place in New York, Tel Aviv, and Jerusalem. As negotiations were slowly progressing, Barak was convinced that an old and weakened Arafat would cede to certain Israeli maximalist demands.
Ariel Sharon, Likud’s new leader and the butcher of Sabra and Shatila, could not let the Labour Party triumph in negotiations and finally resolve the “Palestinian question” for two reasons. Firstly, it was a simple political calculation that he could not allow the rival party to score political points and position itself favourably for the eventual elections.
Secondly, as a staunch conservative, he was opposed to Palestinian statehood and making any concessions to the Palestinians. Sensing Barak could strike a deal, he decided to march on the Al-Aqsa compound as an Israeli show of force and sovereignty.
Barak, fearful of his right-wing opposition, allowed Sharon’s visit to proceed despite several warnings. Arafat warned him that Sharon’s visit would inflame tensions and lead to violence. A U.S. envoy stated, “I can think of a lot of bad ideas, but I can’t think of a worse one.”
The Second Intifada
On September 28th, 2000, Sharon smugly marched onto the Al-Aqsa compound flanked by 2,000 soldiers, special forces, and police officers. As he advanced, the security forces clashed with congregants, and the Second Intifada started.
The next day, hundreds of young Palestinians protested in Jerusalem. The IDF responded by killing 7 of them. The IDF’s immediate turn to violence in the face of protest marked a clear shift from breaking protestors’ bones to murdering them.
Despite the media’s claim that Palestinian militants made the Second Intifada exponentially more violent than the first, it was not only Israel that started it this time, but they also created the first casualties and fired the first shots.
As Israel instigated the violence, Palestinian protests and resistance spread. Palestinian citizens of Israel also started protesting in favour of a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders. Israeli police responded to their protests by slaying a dozen of them.
(Photo by UNRWA photographer Adnan Abu Hasna via Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO DEED)
Four months into the Intifada, on February 6th, 2001, Israelis resoundingly elected Ariel Sharon Prime Minister, rewarding him for his display of colonial hubris the previous September. Sharon’s premiership further inflamed tensions and made the Second Intifada grow even stronger and more violent.
Immediately after his ascent to power, Sharon severed contact with the PLO, killing the peace process, despite Arafat begging him not to. Sharon effectively split the PA in two. Mahmoud Abbas’ faction favoured continuing negotiations despite all the evidence that Israel was using them as a smokescreen for further annexation. And Marwan Barghouti’s faction that favoured the Intifada and armed resistance because negotiations had only increased Israeli power.
Violence Begets Violence
Israel responded by jailing Barghouti and elevating Abbas, another clear signal that Israel was never intent on a true sovereign Palestinian state. Ironically, the Second Intifada also elevated Hamas, a Palestinian Islamist militant organization. Hamas carried out scores of suicide bombings in Israel, killing hundreds of Israelis.
In response to Palestinian resistance fighters mirroring Israeli mass killings, the IDF got even more violent than before. In March 2002, after a brutal suicide bombing that killed 30 people, the IDF launched Operation Defensive Shield to reoccupy the totality of the West Bank and Gaza.
The operation was extremely violent. The IDF imposed a 24-hour curfew, cut electricity, water, and phone lines, occupied all high ground, conducted brutal house raids, and arrested PA leaders. The IDF also looted PA offices, destroying valuable files and hard drives.
Hardening Occupation
As the IDF ransacked the PA, they also mounted a siege on Arafat’s compound, hoping to oust him from the West Bank and transfer him either to Gaza or a third country. The rationale was that Arafat was harbouring people responsible for the assassination of Rehavam Zeevi, the far-right minister of tourism, who advocated for the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians. Israel eventually lifted the siege after intense American pressure.
During all this madness, Israel also started building what it called “the separation wall.” The wall’s stated goals were to shield Israel from Palestinian attacks from the West Bank. The wall’s real objective was to cement Israeli Apartheid and land theft. Israel also erected scores of checkpoints around the wall, making Palestinian daily life nearly impossible.
(Photo by Justin McIntosh via Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 2.0 DEED)
In response, Palestinian militants ramped up their attacks, especially suicide bombings. Eventually, the fighting coalesced in Gaza. Palestinians were surrounding settlements and destroying advanced Israeli military equipment, such as tanks and armoured personnel carriers.
The insurgency’s success, paired with the fact that there were only 8,000 settlers, amidst 1.4 million Palestinians, forced Sharon’s hand, and he decided to unilaterally withdraw from the territory. By early 2005, at the end of the Second Intifada, Israel had killed nearly 5,000 Palestinians, 25% of them children.
Actions Speak Louder Than Words
From Camp David to Obama’s Iran Nuclear Deal, Israeli leaders have continuously and purposefully sabotaged peace negotiations, despite framing themselves as partners for peace. Israeli leaders have used the cover of negotiations to massacre and dispossess more Palestinians. Israel uses peace talks to pacify the international community, all while it continues to steal more land, kill more people, and assert its regional power.
Israel’s violent assault against Iran as it was reaching an agreement with the U.S. is a continuation of Israeli tactics – destroying a peace agreement before it can get off the ground. The international community must urgently band together for peace. It is the only way to ensure justice, peace and Palestinian sovereignty.
Edited by Gabrielle Andrychuk
