Understanding Contemporary Arab-Israel Politics:
Lebanon, Syria, and the Palestinian track (1982-today)
Teaching Guide
This workshop should take approximately 70 minutes to teach. Plan for breaks as
appropriate.
Objectives:
Students will learn about:
 Israeli diplomacy on the Palestinian and Syrian tracks
 The Second Intifada and Israel’s response
 Israeli and Palestinian politics today
 Israel’s war with Hezbollah and its implications
Questions this workshop addresses:
(Part І: 1982-2000)
1. Why did Israel invade Lebanon in 1982? Why did Israel withdraw from Lebanon in
2000?
2. What were some of the obstacles in the way of an Israeli-Syrian peace?
3. What are the Oslo Accords?
4. What was the Camp David ІІ Summit? Why was it significant?
5. What were the “Clinton Ideas”?
6. What was resolved at the end of the Taba Summit?
7. What was the Second Intifada? How did it start?
Teaching Guide
Motivation and Introduction
This workshop is intended to teach students not only about Israel’s present geopolitical
standing, but also about how Israel arrived at its present standing—that is, its recent
history, especially its conflict with neighboring states and the Palestinians.
Within a short time of their occurrence, events in the Middle East often become
skewed in the public eye, particularly in the media. It is therefore important for students
to learn definitively what has happened historically. Having a clear understanding of
relations between Israel and its neighbors will arm students with the knowledge to
become strong, confident advocates for Israel. Simply put, this is the motivation for
IKAR, and this unit in particular.
This workshop is divided into three parts: The first two sections provide an
overview of approximately the last 25 years of Israel’s history, with particular attention
devoted to the diplomacy of the late 90s and the early part of this decade; the third
section discusses in detail Israel’s war with Hezbollah in 2006 and some possible farreaching implications of that conflict. In the PowerPoint presentation, the three sections
are distinguished by three different color patterns.
IKAR: ISRAEL KNOWLEDGE, ADVOCACY AND RESPONSIBILITY
© 2007 The American Jewish Committee (www.ajc.org)
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(The teacher now turns to the accompanying PowerPoint presentation. There are a
number of slide viewing options for the PowerPoint presentation. They can be copied so
that each student has his/her own set; they can be copied onto transparencies and used
with an overhead projector so that all students are looking at the same enlarged visuals;
or they can be downloaded from www.ajc.org onto a computer and then projected onto
a screen or wall.)
Part I: Understanding Contemporary Arab-Israel
Politics (1982-2000)
Show Slide 3 and 4: Measuring Israel
Israel is a small country, slightly bigger than the size of New Jersey, measuring only
10,840 square miles. Since the state’s establishment in 1948, Israel has faced attacks
from neighboring countries (Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and Jordan), as well as from terrorists
operating from within Lebanon, Jordan, and the Palestinian territories. The recent
outbreak of violence between Hezbollah and Israel was only the latest example of this
constant conflict. Nevertheless, Israel has consistently sought peace with its neighbors
and signed peace treaties with Egypt in 1978 and Jordan in 1994. Before we talk about
the present, however, we need first to understand the not-so-distant past and how it
relates to the situation today. Reviewing Israel’s most significant territorial change,
before and after the Six Day War in 1967, is an essential step towards this end. Now,
let’s move to one of Israel’s neighbors to the north, Lebanon.
Show Slide 5: Lebanon, Round I (1978, 1982-2000)
1. Why did Israel invade Lebanon in 1982? Why did Israel withdraw from Lebanon in
2000?
In the decades following the 1948 war, Israel’s border with Lebanon was relatively quiet
compared to its borders with other neighbors. However, after King Hussein of Jordan
expelled the Palestine Liberation Organization from Jordan in 1970, PLO leader Yasir
Arafat moved his forces into southern Lebanon; subsequently, hostilities on Israel’s
border with Lebanon intensified.
In March 1978, after the Coastal Road massacre, in which PLO terrorists
highjacked an Israeli bus, killing 37 and wounding 76, Israel launched Operation Litani,
taking control of southern Lebanon in an effort to push Palestinian groups north of the
Litani River and curb incessant cross-border attacks. Israel withdrew its forces from
southern Lebanon later that year, turning over its positions to its ally, the South Lebanese
Army. UN Security Council Resolution 425 of March 1978 called for the formation of
IKAR: ISRAEL KNOWLEDGE, ADVOCACY AND RESPONSIBILITY
© 2007 The American Jewish Committee (www.ajc.org)
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UNIFIL, the UN Interim Force in Lebanon, which was responsible for ensuring a ceasefire.
In June 1982, after the continued shelling of northern Israel by PLO forces based
in Lebanon, Israel launched a full-scale invasion of Lebanon, eventually driving the PLO
out of the country to Tunisia. Israeli troops completed a phased withdrawal from
Lebanon in June 1985 and created a nine-mile-wide security zone in southern Lebanon,
controlled by Israel and the SLA. Meanwhile, Lebanon was embroiled in a brutal civil
war during the latter part of the 1970s and nearly the entire 1980s. Christian, Muslim,
and Druze factions formed militias, which perpetrated most of the violence, killing
thousands of combatants and civilians alike.
Show Slide 6: Israel’s Withdrawal from Lebanon (May 2000)
After an Israeli grassroots campaign calling for the IDF to pull out of its security belt in
southern Lebanon in the latter part of the 1990s, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak
withdrew Israeli troops from Lebanon in May 2000. On May 24, 2000, Israel completed
the pull-back of its forces from southern Lebanon in accordance with UN Security
Council Resolution 425, which in 1978 had called for Israel’s immediate withdrawal
from southern Lebanon. In June 2000, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan reported to the
Security Council that Israel had officially completed its withdrawal from Lebanon, to
behind the so-called Blue Line.
Israel retained a presence in the Shebaa Farms area, which it considers to be part
of the Golan Heights, captured from Syria in the Six-Day War, and an important strategic
defense position, overlooking southern Lebanon and Syria.
Show Slide 7: Shebaa Farms
Lebanon now lays claim to the Shebaa Farms, a ten-square-mile, largely uninhabited
patch of farmland on the western slopes of Mount Hermon. Israel captured it from Syria,
not Lebanon, in 1967. The Shebaa Farms are a point of contention for Hezbollah, which
uses Israel’s control of the territory as continued justification for its terrorist activity
against Israel. In January 2005, the UN Security Council adopted a resolution
condemning violence along the Israel-Lebanon border and asserted that the Lebanese
claim to the Shebaa Farms area is “not compatible with Security Council resolutions.”
Show Slide 8: The Israeli-Syrian Track
2. What were some of the obstacles in the way of an Israeli-Syrian peace?
Indirect and sometimes direct negotiations between Israel and Syria grew out of the
Madrid Peace Conference of 1991 and continued intermittently for the next fifteen years.
IKAR: ISRAEL KNOWLEDGE, ADVOCACY AND RESPONSIBILITY
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Whereas the Israeli-Palestinian track would involve supposedly difficult compromises
from the parties on contentious issues such as Jerusalem and refugees, the Israeli-Syrian
track essentially boiled down to an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights in
exchange for peace and full normalization of relations with Syria. That baseline was
established in August 1992, when Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin conveyed a
message to Syria through American mediators that he would be willing to withdraw from
the Golan for such a guarantee. A peace agreement with Syria was particularly important
to Israel, because it presumably meant that Syria would reign in Hezbollah, its guerrilla
proxy in southern Lebanon. Over the following years, Israeli and Syrian negotiators,
aided by the U.S., also broached other issues, particularly security arrangements on both
sides of the border. The Golan, however, remained the main sticking point.
When Ehud Barak came into office in 1999, he indicated willingness to pursue a
peace deal with Syria. For Barak, withdrawing from the Golan meant an adaptation of
the 1923 international border between Palestine and Syria, which included Israeli access
to the Sea of Galilee, and kept the Jordan River under Israeli sovereignty. Israel was
greatly concerned about retaining a plentiful source of water for the country, thus making
the Sea of Galilee, and its main feeder, the Jordan, essential commodities. The Syrian
position was that withdrawal must be conducted pursuant to the status of the parties on
June 4, 1967, the day before the Six-Day War commenced. That border, according to
Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad, would have granted the Syrians access to the
northeastern corner of the Sea of Galilee, and left the Jordan River under Syrian
sovereignty. It should be noted that the June 4, 1967 border was not an internationally
recognized border, but simply an armistice line pursuant to the status of the parties after
the 1948 War of Independence.
In December 1999 and January 2000, the U.S. brought the parties together for two
rounds of peace talks at the diplomatic level. At the time, the Syrians seemed eager to
negotiate on substance, but Barak, sensing that he could not pull off the deal politically,
pulled back. In March 2000, the reverse occurred; Barak was eager for a deal, but Syrian
President Assad backed away. Negotiations have stalled since that time, and the new
Syrian leader, Bashar Al-Assad, has continued to support Hezbollah.
Show Slide 9: The Oslo Accords (1993)
During the 1990s, with relative calm on Israel’s northern border, the country’s political
establishment turned its attention to a festering issue—the restive Palestinian populations
in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Since 1967, when Israel had acquired Gaza and the
West Bank from Egypt and Jordan in a defensive war, a few million Palestinians had
lived under Israeli military occupation. (Currently, there are approximately 3.8 million
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.) In December 1987, Palestinians throughout
Gaza and the West Bank began rioting against the Israeli military presence in these areas,
attacking Israeli forces on a regular basis until 1990. This period became known as the
First Intifada. It marked a significant turning point in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
because segments of the Israeli population and influential policymakers in the
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government saw the need to engage the Palestinian side in dialogue; the notion of
remaining in the territories indefinitely no longer seemed feasible in the long term. The
Madrid Peace Conference of 1991 led for the first time to a process of bilateral
negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian exile organization, the Palestine
Liberation Organization (PLO), culminating in the Oslo Accords in 1993.
3. What are the Oslo Accords?
On September 13, 1993, following secret negotiations in Oslo, Norway between Israeli
and Palestinian negotiators, Israeli Prime Minister Rabin and PLO Chairman Arafat
signed a Declaration of Principles. The Oslo Accords, as they came to be known, called
for an interim stage in which Israel would cede civil control from parts of the West Bank
and Gaza and recognize the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian
people; the PLO was required to recognize Israel’s right to exist, and renounce both
terrorism and its desire for the destruction of Israel. The Oslo Accords also called for
eventual “permanent status” negotiations that would seek to terminate the conflict’s
outstanding issues.
For the better part of the decade, Israel and the newly formed Palestinian
Authority continued to negotiate aspects of the Oslo Accords, making some headway on
issues such as Palestinian self-rule in the so-called Oslo II agreement of 1995.
Rabin was assassinated in November 1995 by an Israeli extremist who opposed
the peace process; the Oslo process’s continuation, however, was a testament to its
strength.
While there were relative periods of calm under the Oslo process, there were also
periods of violence, such as a wave of Palestinian suicide bombings in 1996. In 1998,
Israel and the PA signed the Wye River Memorandum, which formalized implementation
of Oslo II on bilateral security, political, and economic issues agreed upon.
The peace process also made it possible for an important leap ahead in Israel’s
regional cooperation: In 1994, Israel and Jordan normalized relations through bilateral
negotiations.
Show Slide 10: Camp David Summit (July 2000)
4. What was the Camp David ІІ Summit? Why was it significant?
On the heels of Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, United States President Bill Clinton,
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasir Arafat
gathered with their negotiators at Camp David in July 2000 to try to negotiate a solution
to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Some say that the failed negotiations, as well as
subsequent rounds of bilateral talks, still serve as a blueprint of what a settlement could
IKAR: ISRAEL KNOWLEDGE, ADVOCACY AND RESPONSIBILITY
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ultimately look like. During the two weeks of talks, Barak made more concessions to the
Palestinians than any Israeli prime minister before him.
Although many Israelis were eager to end the occupation, doing so would, in the
process, demand of Israel difficult concessions such as ceding enormous swaths of
territory acquired in the 1967 defensive war; a 3,000-year-old claim on Jerusalem’s
holiest site, the Temple Mount; and the status of the city as the eternal, undivided capital
of the Jewish State.
Show Slides 11-12: Maps about Camp David Proposals
The Israeli positions at Camp David have been subject to debate and various
interpretations, but it is believed that Barak offered the following:
 A Palestinian state on 91 percent of the West Bank and 100 percent of the Gaza
Strip.
 Slices of Israeli land to be ceded to the Palestinian state to compensate for the
percentage of the West Bank to remain under Israeli sovereignty.
 Palestinian control over the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif and Arab East
Jerusalem.
Israel would have retained a military presence in the Jordan Valley and control over three
settlement blocs, as well as some type of general sovereignty over the Temple Mount.
Arafat rejected the offer.
The first map shows the Israeli proposal at Camp David. Israel would have
retained three settlement blocs, but these would not have carved the West Bank into three
“cantons,” as depicted by Palestinian officials in the second map. The inaccurate
Palestinian claim is important, because a key Palestinian demand at Camp David and
subsequently has been the need for territorial contiguity on the West Bank.
Show Slide 13: The “Clinton Ideas”
6. What were the “Clinton Ideas”?
In the aftermath of Camp David, the parties, prodded by the U.S., continued to negotiate,
even as the violence of the Second Intifada raged. With less than a month remaining in
his presidency, Clinton presented the two sides with the so-called “Clinton Ideas,”
essentially an informal proposal for a final settlement that bridged the negotiating gap left
unresolved at Camp David. If the sides accepted the parameters of the ideas, negotiations
could resume. If not, the proposal would be withdrawn and would not be binding once
Clinton left office. The basic outline of the ideas was as follows:
 A Palestinian state on 94 to 96 percent of the West Bank, with Israel annexing 4
percent to 6 percent for the settlement blocs; Israel would also swap 1 to 3
percent of Israel proper to compensate for the settlement annexation.
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


An IDF presence in the Jordan Valley, to be withdrawn after six years and
replaced by an international security force, but only by mutual consent.
A limited “right of return” for Palestinian refugees. Under this proviso,
Palestinian refugees would resettle in three possible locations: Palestine, Israel
(a limited number for “family reunification” purposes), or host third countries.
Israeli sovereignty over the Western Wall and Palestinian sovereignty over the
Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif.
The Israeli cabinet met and approved the ideas, although with some reservations.
Arafat rejected core principles of the agreement. U.S. Middle East envoy Dennis Ross
offers some insightful comments into Arafat’s intransigence:
How many times did Arafat have to tell us “no” before we heard “no”? How
many times could excuses be made for him? Those who argue that we just ran
out of time ignore the many opportunities Arafat had refused. They ignore that
with the Clinton ideas practically on the table at the end of September [2000],
Arafat either let the Intifada begin or, as some argue, actually gave orders for it.
They ignore his rejection of the specifics of the Clinton ideas….Yasir Arafat had
definitively demonstrated that he could not end the conflict. We had made every
conceivable effort to do what we now had to accept was impossible with Yasir
Arafat.
Clinton left office shortly thereafter, and the negotiators went to Taba, Egypt, not to reach
an agreement, according to Ross, but to ensure that the “Clinton Ideas” remained in effect
for the Bush Administration.
Show Slide 14: Israeli-Palestinian Joint Statement after the Taba Summit
7. What was resolved at the end of the Taba Summit?
The Taba Summit, also known as the permanent status talks at Taba between Israel and
the Palestinian Authority, was held from January 21 to January 27, 2001, at Taba, Egypt,
in the Sinai Peninsula. At that point, Barak was almost certain to lose the upcoming
elections to right-leaning Likud leader Ariel Sharon, making the Taba talks his last
chance to reach an agreement to end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The summit came
closer to reaching a final settlement than any previous or subsequent peace talks, yet the
political climate was no longer conducive to implementation.
After the Taba Summit failed to produce an agreement, the negotiators released a
statement explaining that the urgency of the “political timetable” prevented them from
doing so. That timetable was a reference to Clinton having left office and Barak facing
early elections against Likud leader Ariel Sharon. Deemed to have made tremendous
concessions without a reciprocal gesture in return, Barak was severely compromised
politically by Arafat’s rejection of the Israeli offer at Camp David. With the subsequent
upsurge in Palestinian violence, Barak did not have the political clout to pursue
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negotiations to an agreement. Still, both sides said that, given the seriousness of the Taba
talks, they were “convinced that in a short period of time and given an intensive effort
and the acknowledgment of the essential and urgent nature of reaching an agreement, it
will be possible to bridge the differences remaining and attain a permanent settlement of
peace between them.”
Show Slide 15: Second Intifada (2000)
As noted, Barak was severely weakened by Arafat’s rejection of his generous Camp
David ІІ offer. Yet he continued to negotiate with the Palestinians during this time, even
as an outbreak of Palestinian violence grew in intensity.
8. What was the Second Intifada? How did it start?
The Second Intifada, also known as the Al-Aqsa Intifada, was the wave of violence that
began in September 2000 between Palestinians and Israelis. Encouraged by Arafat, who
hoped to gain more concessions than he had gotten at Camp David through the
introduction of violence, fighting broke out following Likud Party leader Sharon’s visit to
the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
“Intifada” is an Arabic word for “uprising.” Many Palestinians consider the Second
Intifada to be a war of national liberation against foreign occupation; many Israelis, who
note that substantive negotiations for a Palestinian state were under way before the
Intifada broke out and have been halted since, consider it to be a terrorist campaign. To
be sure, the Intifada has claimed many lives on both sides. Over 1,000 Israelis have been
killed and 7,000 wounded in terrorist attacks during this time; through 2006, nearly 4,000
Palestinian combatants and civilians have been killed, and perhaps as many as 30,000
wounded in the course of Israeli security operations against terrorists. Palestinian
terrorists live among the civilian population; despite Israel’s best efforts to spare
innocents, arrest raids and assassinations sometimes claim noncombatants.
Aside from the loss of life, the Second Intifada has had several consequences,
including:
 The emergence of suicide attacks as a central tactic of terrorist organizations.
 Israel’s construction of a security barrier—“the fence” or “wall”—to prevent such
attacks.
The most lasting impact, however, has been the so-called “death of Oslo.” Large
numbers of Israelis came to see Israeli magnanimity at the negotiating table as foolhardy
in the face of Arafat’s orchestrated violence. Palestinians, too, saw Israel’s deadly
response to the violence as indicative of the scuttling of their prospects for a state.
IKAR: ISRAEL KNOWLEDGE, ADVOCACY AND RESPONSIBILITY
© 2007 The American Jewish Committee (www.ajc.org)
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