Assessing one of the most serious issues of our day, this volume employs rigorous research to analyse all sides of official negotiations over Israeli-Palestinian territorial disputes. It focuses especially on the Camp David talks of 2000 and the Taba talks of 2001 and on discussions of the future of Jerusalem, offering a balance sheet of what went wrong, and what remains of the failed peace process. Menachem Klein, an adviser to the Israeli team during the Camp David talks and a member of several Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy groups, argues that the negotiations themselves created a negative dynamic and that the violent outcome was neither inevitable not entirely determined by the personalities of their participants. He maintains that the Israeli and Palestinian negotiators and leaders interacted destructively and that the American interaction with each side was detrimental; the prevailing strategy was one that set out lines that could not be crossed, instituting a style of bargaining that stymied negotiations. While all three parties shattered long-held preconceptions about how issues should be resolved, the talks ended in bloodshed.
Moreover, neither side has ever drafted a definitive document delineating what was understood and said at Camp David. Beginning with the opening of the official permanent status talks, which sparked strong initial hopes, Klein tracks diplomacy on all sides from 1994 onward. He synthesizes a profusion of unresolved issues, including Palestinian state borders, Israeli settlements, and the future of the Palestinian war refugees of 1948, and he disproves a number of claims made by the Israeli and Palestinian actors involved in the process. He also illuminates such questions as whether the talks commenced too early for one or both sides, whether the push for a final settlement was the caprice of three or four senior decision-makers disconnected from their constituencies, and whether the cycle of violence has turned back the clock.

Translated by: Haim Watzman