Israel-Palestine peace process

Ongoing talks between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). The process can be said to have begun in January 1993 when an Israeli ban on contact with the PLO was formally lifted, and in September of that year Israel officially recognized the PLO's right to participate in the peace process, and agreed an initial peace accord. The process continued throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, though experiencing many setbacks. Although Israel agreed to hand over control of parts of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank to the Palestine National Authority (PNA), the final status of these areas remained unresolved against the background of a renewed Palestinian uprising (Intifada) which began in September 2000. There were, however, signs of political progress following the death of Palestinian leader Yassir Arafat in November 2004, with fresh discussions between his successor Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon.

Summary In the Six-Day War of 1967, the Third Arab-Israeli War, Israel took control of the West Bank from Jordan and the Gaza Strip from Egypt. In 1987, Palestinians in these ‘occupied territories’ began a violent uprising against Israeli rule. In September 1993, a first peace accord was signed by Israel and the PLO, providing for a phased withdrawal of Israeli troops from the occupied territories, which were to be granted limited autonomy. In May 1994, Israeli troops were withdrawn from the West Bank town of Jericho and about 60% of the Gaza Strip. In September 1995, agreement was reached on further withdrawals, and elections to a Palestine National Council (PNC) were held in January 1996. The peace process then began to stall. Further negotiations and accords unravelled and Palestinian unrest increased, culminating in the violent reaction to the visit by right-wing Israeli politician Ariel Sharon to the Muslim holy site of Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount) in Jerusalem in September 2000, which sparked a second Palestinian Intifada. Over the next four years ongoing violence and mistrust overshadowed political and diplomatic initiatives, and Palestinian president Yassir Arafat and Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon maintained an implacable hostility to one another. In November 2004 Arafat died, opening the way for the election in January 2005 of Palestinian moderate Mahmoud Abbas, who promptly signalled his willingness to reach an accommodation with the Israelis and end the Intifada.

1993-96: Israeli-PLO peace accord (Oslo accord) After several months of secret negotiations mediated by Norway, a peace agreement was reached in September 1993 between Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yassir Arafat in Washington, DC. However, talks on the implementation of the accord stalled after outbreaks of extremist violence in the occupied territories, which began with the massacre in Hebron of 39 Palestinian worshippers by an Israeli settler in February 1994. The talks resumed after the United Nations (UN) condemned the massacre, and in May 1994 the first phase of the accord (the Gaza-Jericho agreement) was finalized and signed in Cairo, Egypt. By the end of the month Israeli troops had been withdrawn (although many were relocated around Jewish settlements) and a Palestinian police force had been drafted in to replace them. The areas were transferred to Palestinian control, although Israel remained responsible for foreign policy and defence. The Cairo agreement also set out a five-year plan for negotiations on Jerusalem, Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, Palestinian refugees, and the issue of autonomy. In July 1994, Yassir Arafat returned from exile to head an interim body, the Palestine National Authority (PNA), appointed to govern the newly liberated territories until the holding of free elections. In October 1994, Rabin, Arafat, and foreign minister Shimon Peres were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace.

Extremist attacks, principally the work of the militant Islamic groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, continued, and in November 1994, Israel closed its borders with the Gaza Strip, increasing pressure on the PNA, who were facing a strong, and potentially hostile, fundamentalist presence in Gaza.

The peace process stalled over the issues of Palestinian militant violence and continued Israeli settlement of the West Bank. Talks later resumed, and in September 1995, agreement was finally reached on the second phase of the 1993 peace accord - the expansion of Palestinian autonomy in parts of the occupied territories and the holding of elections to a Palestine National Council (PNC) that would hold power for three years. Arafat took the unprecedented step in October 1995 of inviting Hamas to talks on Palestinian self-rule.

Six weeks later, in November, Rabin was assassinated by a young Jewish extremist. Shimon Peres replaced him as prime minister. The first free elections to the PNC, held in January 1996, were won by the PLO, and Arafat was elected PNC president. It was a condition of further Israeli withdrawal that the PLO remove from its charter clauses calling for armed struggle to replace Israel with a Palestinian state, and this was done in April 1996.

1996: violence and elections Within nine days of the PNC elections, Israel suffered the first of four suicide bombings - two in Jerusalem, the other two in Ashkelon and Tel Aviv-Yafo - in which 56 people were killed. Hamas claimed responsibility. This threw the peace process into crisis, and lessened the chances of a Labour Party victory in Israel's May general elections. The elections were won by conservative parties, who formed a coalition under the directly elected prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu of the right-wing Likud party. Netanyahu had campaigned against the peace process.

In September 1996, the worst violence in the occupied territories since 1967 erupted, triggered by Israel's opening of an ancient tunnel running alongside the Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount), the site of the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem's Old City, and one of the most sensitive and disputed holy places in the region. The Palestinians had consistently opposed excavations of the tunnel, and Arafat called for strikes and demonstrations throughout the Palestinian territories in protest. A series of decisions to expand Israeli settlements and the lack of progress regarding Hebron's status had already inflamed the mood in the West Bank, and the tunnel was the catalyst for unleashing Palestinian frustration and anger.

Fighting broke out in Ramallah, Nablus, Gaza, and Jerusalem, and Israel enforced an ‘internal closure’ on the West Bank and Gaza, closing off 2 million Palestinians within their autonomous areas.

Two months later, in accordance with the agreement of September 1995, the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Hebron began. Despite futher violence, Israel had withdrawn from 80% of Hebron by January 1997. The remaining 20%, where several hundred Jewish settlers lived, remained under Israeli control.

1997-98: peace process stalls Israel continued to develop settlements in the West Bank, despite Palestinian objections and international criticism. Peace talks between Israel and the PLO resumed in July 1997, but were suspended two days later in the wake of Hamas suicide bomb attacks in Jerusalem. Israel retaliated by declaring economic war on Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. Armed troops barred tens of thousands of day labourers from crossing the border to jobs in Israel. Further bombings by Hamas followed in Jerusalem in September. In December, Netanyahu announced a limited and partial withdrawal from the West Bank.

In March 1998, following the killing of three Palestinians by Israeli police, there were outbreaks of violence in the West Bank. It was also announced that Israel had new settlements planned in the occupied territories despite international disapproval. In April, Netanyahu rejected a US-sponsored peace plan. The following month, the 50th anniversary of the establishment of the state of Israel led to further violence in Gaza and around Hebron, Ramallah, and Bethlehem in the West Bank.

1998-99: the Wye accord Talks resumed in July 1998. In October a three-way conference of Netanyahu, Arafat, and US president Bill Clinton, held at Wye Plantation in Maryland, produced a new deal which involved Israel's withdrawal from a further 13% of the West Bank and the release of a number of Palestinian prisoners in return for greater protection from Palestinian terrorism. In May 1999 Arafat announced he would not declare an independent Palestine state, as previously threatened. But following the murder of two Israeli soldiers in Lebanon in November, Netanyahu later won cabinet agreement for the suspension of peace moves with the Palestinians. However, in accordance with the Wye peace deal, Israel did release a number of mainly non-political prisoners in mid-December. Soon after, Clinton visited Israel and Palestine in an effort to rejuvenate the peace process in the face of Israeli intransigence, but in January 1999 Israel suspended the timetable for handing over West Bank land outlined in the Wye accord. In May, Arafat said that an independent Palestine state would be declared by the end of the year, although that declaration was repeatedly delayed.

In Israeli parliamentary elections held in May 1999, Ehud Barak, the leader of the Labour Party, defeated Netanyahu to become prime minister. However, Barak was forced to form a coalition government that included three ultra-Orthodox parties, though he excluded Likud. Barak's election promises were strongly in favour of continuing the peace process with Palestine, Syria, and Lebanon, and he quickly began meetings with Arafat and other Arab leaders.

Barak pledged to stop the seizure of hilltops on the West Bank by Jewish settlers. However, as he struggled to form his new coalition government, in June the country's outgoing defence minister approved plans for a huge enlargement of Ma'aleh Adumim, a big Jewish settlement outside Jerusalem. This sparked violent confrontation, particularly in Hebron and at Rachel's Tomb, near Bethlehem.

Discussions in August 1999 started badly, with Arafat walking out in protest at Israeli attempts to delay the implementation of the Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank as agreed in the Wye accord. Arafat then proceeded to hold talks with a more radical faction of the PLO, in which they agreed to two major principles: the establishment of an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, and the right of Palestinian refugees to have their land returned to them. In September a revised version of the Wye accord was agreed upon. Israel began to cede more of the occupied territories to Palestine, and Arafat pledged to combat terrorism against Israel. In October 1999, an agreement to establish a safe passage between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip was signed, enabling Palestinians to cross Israel from one territory to the other. Barak also agreed that 10 of 42 illegal Israeli ‘outpost’ settlements that had been created in the previous year would be dismantled. Israel's new interior minister, Natan Sharansky, put an end to a policy that stripped Palestinians of their right to live in Jerusalem if they had left the city for seven years. Over 2,000 people had lost residency in this way under the previous government.

1999-2000: final status talks In November 1999, talks concerning a long-term peace settlement and the permanent status of the occupied territories began at Ramallah. However, in the following month new Israeli settlements on land earmarked for a Palestinian state proved divisive. Barak agreed to postpone the plans for 1,800 Jewish homes in order to facilitate the ongoing peace plan. But in January 2000, in response to Palestinian demands to have villages on the outskirts of Jerusalem returned to Arab Palestine, Barak postponed the next West Bank withdrawal. Peace talks broke down in February. The same month, Israel's Supreme Court ruled that the government could not re-allocate state-owned land on the basis of ethnicity or religion. The decision challenged discriminatory Israeli policies and the historic assumption that the state of Israel was being developed for Jews alone. In practice this meant that land would not be allowed to be given exclusively to Jews as opposed to Arab Israelis.

In March 2000, Israel handed over further West Bank territory to Palestinian control, and talks resumed soon after. However, Palestinian protests at an Israeli plan to build more homes in a West Bank Jewish settlement continued, and the talks failed to reach agreement. Israel proposed that Palestine would at first get 66% of the West Bank, with a possible further 24% after a trial period, but there would remain an Israeli annex of the last 20%, which contained the bulk of the 144 Jewish settlements in the territory. Frustration at the failing talks, together with a Palestinian demand for the release of 1,650 prisoners from Israeli jails, sparked riots in the Palestinian territories.

In July 2000, Arafat announced that he would declare Palestine an independent state on 13 September 2000, with or without Israel's agreement. Talks at a three-way summit with US president Clinton at Camp David, Maryland, ended in a deadlock over the future of Jerusalem. On their return home, Arafat was praised for refusing to abandon his demand for sovereignty over east Jerusalem, while Barak was criticized for offering concessions to the Palestinians. He narrowly survived two parliamentary votes of no confidence in as many months. On 10 September, the PNC bowed to US and Israeli pressure and put back the 13 September deadline for declaring an independent Palestinian state until at least 15 November. In the event, the declaration was postponed indefinitely.

2000: the start of the second Intifada On 28 September 2000, the Likud leader Ariel Sharon visited Haram al-Sharif (Temple Mount) in Jerusalem. This sparked violent clashes between Palestinians, led by members of al-Fatah (the main component of the PLO), and Israeli security forces. The violence quickly spread to other disputed areas in the Palestinian territories. Both Barak and Arafat called for peace and Israeli tanks were rolled back from positions in the West Bank on 5 October. However, it proved impossible to control the violence, in which Palestinians suffered high death tolls and Israeli forces were criticized for excessive use of force. On 12 October, two Israeli soldiers were murdered by a Palestinian mob, and Israel retaliated by firing rockets at targets in Ramallah. Barak formed a national emergency government, including the Likud party, while Arafat appealed for UN peacekeepers to be deployed in the occupied territories. A summit held on 17 October at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, reduced the violence, but did not stop it.

The conflict intensified in late November. Israel placed several Palestinian cities under blockade, while al-Fatah called upon Palestinians to liberate the occupied territories. An Israeli school bus was attacked in Gaza on 20 November. In retaliation, Israel shelled Palestinian areas in Gaza, and attacked the main al-Fatah headquarters in Gaza City. By December, over 300 people had died in the violence. Barak offered to recognize a Palestinian state and withdraw from more of the West Bank, but violence continued.

2001: political and security developments On 9 December 2000, Barak announced his resignation and called for a prime-ministerial election in February 2001. The elections were won by Ariel Sharon. The result was denounced by the Palestinians, and violence continued in Jerusalem and the West Bank. Several West Bank towns were sealed off by the Israeli army in mid-March. Both the UN and the European Union (EU) warned that the PNA was close to financial collapse as a result of the violence and Israel's economic blockades. In late March, Israeli helicopters attacked the headquarters of the Palestinian security forces in Gaza and Ramallah, following the death of two Israeli teenagers from a Palestinian bomb. Israeli tanks shelled Bethlehem, and the following week the Israeli military invaded Palestinian areas of Gaza, bulldozing the homes of at least 200 Palestinians, from where they claimed shots had been fired. In mid-April Sharon repudiated all concessions to the Palestinians that his predecessor Ehud Barak had considered, such as evacuating Jewish settlements in Palestinian territories or sharing sovereignty in Jerusalem. Violence continued to escalate, and in May 2001 Israel used planes for the first time since the 1967 war to bomb a Palestinian security site, killing 11 Palestinian policemen. Also in May it approved plans for 700 new settlement homes in the occupied West Bank, provoking Palestinian anger.

A Palestinian suicide bomb attack on 1 June 2001, which killed 20 Israelis at a discotheque in Tel-Aviv-Yafo, threatened to lead to massive Israeli retaliation, but Sharon and Arafat accepted a ceasefire on 13 June, brokered by the USA. Although the first day of the ceasefire was marked by sporadic violence in the Gaza Strip, Israeli tanks did start pulling back, and restrictions were eased on the flow of Palestinian traffic and workers in jointly-operated industrial zones. The patchy truce continued into late June, although both sides accused each other of not sticking to the terms of the agreement. On 28 June, the US secretary of state Colin Powell proposed that outside observers should monitor the ceasefire in the Middle East - an apparent change in US policy, and a proposal that angered Israel as it had long been one of the Palestinian demands. However, greater US involvement did not deter Prime Minister Sharon's Cabinet from declaring on 3 July that it would stick to its controversial policy of tracking down and killing suspected Palestinian militants.

In July 2001, the USA joined the EU in condemning Israel for demolishing Palestinian homes in Rafah refugee camp in the Gaza Strip and in Jerusalem, which left scores of people homeless. The Israeli Cabinet also controversially approved a plan to build five communities on a desert site, near the Gaza Strip, that had originally been offered to the Palestinians as part of a land-swap.

Also in July, international leaders at the G8 summit in Genoa, Italy, called for third-party monitoring of the ceasefire, and Israel suggested that it might be prepared to accept US monitors.

In the same month, however, Israel launched a rocket attack on the West Bank headquarters of Hamas, in Nablus, killing eight Palestinians, including two senior Hamas leaders. The US State Department condemned the assassinations as excessive and provocative, and Prime Minister Sharon's office acknowledged responsibility for the attack.

A series of Palestinian suicide bombings in July and August provoked further Israeli reprisals and incursions into occupied territories. On 9 August, 15 Israelis were killed and nearly 90 injured in the worst bomb attack in Jerusalem since 1997. The militant group Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility. In a symbolic retaliation, Israeli forces captured Orient House, the PLO headquarters in east Jerusalem, and raised the Israeli flag.

In September, the Israeli army moved into the city of Jericho in an unexpected raid on one of the quieter towns in the ongoing Intifada. Ariel Sharon called off planned talks with the Palestinians on 14 September, in a further move to isolate and pressure Yassir Arafat in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks on the USA on 11 September. In October, US president George W Bush, anxious to draw Arab public opinion into his anti-terrorism coalition, spoke in favour of an eventual Palestinian state.

Israel's far-right minister of tourism, Rechavam Zeevi, was assassinated by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) on 17 October 2001 in revenge for the killing by Israeli forces in August of the PFLP leader Abu Ali Mustafa. Sharon said that he held Yassir Arafat responsible, though the Palestinian Authority was quick to condemn the killing and arrested several PFLP men. Israel froze all contacts with the Palestinian Authority and declared an all-out war against terrorism, specifically referring to Palestinian guerrilla groups.

In November 2001, US secretary of state Colin Powell announced a fresh effort to end Israeli-Palestinian violence. Anthony Zinni, a former commander of US forces in the Middle East, was instructed to help negotiate a ceasefire, and to remain in the region until his mission was accomplished. However, after three Hamas suicide bomb attacks killed 26 people in Jerusalem and Haifa in early December, the Israeli government accused the PNA of actively supporting terrorism. The Israeli army then launched a wave of attacks against PNA installations. Unusually, the USA did not call for Israeli restraint and instead froze the assets of three groups thought to be financing Hamas. Israel severed all ties with Yassir Arafat on 12 December, and struck at Palestinian police stations and other targets after ten Israelis had been killed near a Jewish settlement in the West Bank. A week later, the PNA arrested 15 of its own security force members on suspicion of participating in attacks on Israelis, the first time since the Intifada began that Palestinian policemen had been taken into custody.

2002: continuing cycle of violence On 4 January 2002, Israel seized a Palestinian-owned ship with a 50-tonne cargo of arms allegedly destined for the PNA. Such shipments were banned under the 1993 Oslo peace accords, and, as a result of the ship's capture, Ariel Sharon said he would plan a strategic review of Israel's relationship with the PNA. Violence escalated steeply in Israel and the Palestinian territories during the second half of January. For the first time in the nine-year history of Palestinian suicide attacks, a female suicide bomber carried out an attack, killing an Israeli and injuring 140 people in Jerusalem on 27 January.

A Middle East peace proposal floated by Saudi Arabian crown prince Abdullah gathered momentum in late February 2002 after it was approved by the US government. The proposal involved the Arab League offering full diplomatic relations and trade and security guarantees to Israel in return for its total withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967 and the establishment of a Palestinian state. However, Israel's subsequent use of tanks to search Palestinian refugee camps and the bombing of Yassir Arafat's Gaza headquarters in early March was a further setback.

Violence between Israel and the Palestinians escalated further in late March 2002. Palestinian suicide bombers launched several attacks in Israeli cities, including one at the beginning of the Pesach (Passover) holiday that killed 26 people. In response, Israeli tanks invaded eight Palestinian towns. Tanks surrounded Yassir Arafat's headquarters in Ramallah on 29 March, putting him under siege. Two more Palestinian suicide bombings took place on 30 March, and the Israeli army responded by pushing deeper into the West Bank. In assaults on Nablus and Jenin at least 200 Palestinians were killed. Both sides faced international criticism from UN secretary general Kofi Annan, US president Bush, and the European Union. Israel also faced demands from international aid and human-rights organizations to stop the military offensive, amid warnings that a humanitarian crisis was in the making. The UN was repeatedly barred from entering occupied towns, despite growing reports of a massacre of Palestinians in Jenin. US secretary of state Colin Powell began a Middle East peace mission on 8 April, but failed to get Sharon to commit to either a withdrawal or a timetable for withdrawal. Instead, Israel pressed on into two more Palestinian villages near Bethlehem, and succeeded in capturing Marwan Barghouti, a close aide of Arafat and one of Israel's most wanted men.

In May, a US-brokered deal ended Arafat's five-month confinement in his Ramallah compound. A stand-off between Israeli forces and Palestinian gunmen in Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity was also resolved when Israel agreed to their deportation to European destinations. However, continuing Palestinian suicide attacks led to further retaliatory measures by the Israeli military. Suicide bombings of Israeli targets in June killed 17 people in Megiddo and 25 in two incidents in Jerusalem. Israeli forces reoccupied many towns in the West Bank in reprisal. Despite the announcement of political and financial reform of the PNA, the US government called for the removal of the Palestinian leadership as a condition for future negotiation of Palestinian statehood. However, European and Arab governments disagreed with the US stance.

Major security incidents in July included an ambush by Palestinian assailants on a bus near an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, leaving eight dead, and a subsequent Israeli air attack on Gaza city which killed Salah Shehada, the military leader of the militant Hamas organization, and 14 others. In retaliation, a Palestinian bomb killed seven people at a Jerusalem university cá. A Palestinian bus bombing in northern Israel in August left nine people dead. Arafat's Palestinian cabinet resigned in September to avoid a parliamentary vote of no confidence, while his al-Fatah movement issued a declaration calling on Palestinian organizations to stop attacking Israeli civilians. Nevertheless, further suicide bombings resulted in a siege by the Israeli army of Arafat's Ramallah headquarters for 11 days before a withdrawal under US and UN pressure. Violence continued to inflict losses on both sides up to the end of 2002. In October the Palestinian parliament approved the appointment of a new cabinet under Arafat, and Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon's national unity government collapsed as the Labour Party left the 20-month-old administration. In November an Israeli general election was called for January 2003.

2003: political changes and diplomatic moves In January, Palestinian suicide bombers killed 22 people and injured more than 100 in an attack in Tel Aviv-Yafo, prompting the Israeli government to bar Palestinian delegates from attending a diplomatic conference in London organized by UK prime minister Tony Blair. The Israeli army subsequently mounted its deepest punitive incursion into Gaza City since 1994. The Israeli elections on 28 January returned Prime Minister Sharon's Likud party to power, doubling its seats in the 120-member Knesset (parliament) from 19 to 37. Other right-wing and religious parties mustered another 30 seats, while the opposition Labour Party retained only 19. A new hard-line coalition government including the Likud party, the secular Shinui party, and the National Religious Party took office in February, making the prospects for a peaceful settlement with the Palestinians seem ever more remote.

In March, Arafat relinquished some of his executive powers to a new prime minister of the Palestinian National Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, and his new government was sworn in the following month. Also in April, an international blueprint - the so-called ‘road map’, designed by the USA, EU, UN, and Russia - for a phased settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict by 2005-06, was released. A Palestinian suicide bombing, killing at least 16 people in Jerusalem, and Israeli military reprisals in Gaza threatened to derail this initiative before Palestinian radicals announced a ceasefire at the end of June and Israeli forces started pulling out of occupied Palestinian territory. This led to a sharp fall in violent incidents during July. However, Palestinians accused Ariel Sharon of failing to honour commitments under the road map peace process, as Israel continued to confiscate Palestinian land in the West Bank in its building of a controversial security wall, and refused to free many of the 5,000 Palestinians in detention. Rifts within the Palestinian leadership become increasingly evident as Prime Minister Abbas threatened to resign.

The ceasefire collapsed and the road map process was seriously undermined in August as a Palestinian suicide bomber blew up a bus in Jerusalem killing 20 Israelis. Israel consequently suspended its withdrawal from Palestinian territory and targeted attacks on Hamas leaders. In September, Ahmed Qureia took over as prime minister of the PNA as Mahmoud Abbas resigned in a power struggle with President Arafat. A Palestinian suicide bombing in October killed 20 Israelis and Arabs in a restaurant in Haifa; Israeli retaliation included the first direct air attack on Syrian territory since 1973 and heavy assaults on Palestinian targets in Gaza. The following month the Palestinian parliament approved a new government headed by Prime Minister Qureia, comprising mainly senior members of al-Fatah.

2004: ongoing violence, Israeli disengagement plans, and Arafat's death As the Intifada dragged on, much of 2004 witnessed the familiar cycle of Palestinian suicide bombings and Israeli military reprisals in the West Bank and Gaza. In March the Israelis assassinated Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the spiritual leader of Hamas, provoking Palestinian pledges of vengeance and international condemnation, as did the assassination of his successor, Abdel Aziz Rantissi, the following month. Prime Minister Sharon announced in February that he would remove all Jewish settlements in Gaza as part of a plan to disengage unilaterally from territories occupied since 1967, leaving a rump self-governing Palestinian state behind Israel's controversial security wall, which was under construction. In April, in a major shift of US policy towards the Middle East, President Bush announced his endorsement of Sharon's plan while holding on to larger settlement blocs in the occupied West Bank, and accepted that Israel would not make a full and complete return to its pre-1967 borders. Nevertheless, Sharon faced dissension over the plan from within his government and his own Likud Party which rejected it in a referendum in May. In June, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that parts of Israel's security wall, planned to run through Palestinian land in the West Bank, must be rerouted. A ruling by the International Court of Justice that the wall was illegal was rejected by Israel the following month. Meanwhile, internal Palestinian violence erupted in the Gaza Strip in protest against President Arafat's leadership and corruption within the PNA. Arafat conceded some security powers to Prime Minister Qureia in July after the latter threatened to resign.

Israel announced an expansion of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank in August. At the end of September a Hamas rocket attack on the Israeli town of Sderot prompted an Israeli military assault on northern Gaza, and some 100 Palestinians were killed before the Israeli withdrawal in mid-October. Also in October, despite dissension in Likud, Prime Minister Sharon got approval from the Israeli parliament for his Gaza disengagement plan, and President Arafat was allowed to leave his Ramallah compound in the West Bank for urgent medical treatment in France.

From 11 November, politics in the Middle East entered a new phase, when Arafat, the leader of the Palestinians since 1969, died in hospital. The speaker of the Palestinian parliament assumed the interim presidency of the PNA pending an election for Arafat's successor to be held in January 2005. Former prime minister Mahmoud Abbas became the new chairman of the PLO. In December, Sharon persuaded Likud to sanction his formation of a new Israeli coalition government including the opposition Labour Party, giving him solid parliamentary backing for disengagement from Gaza.

2005: fresh developments Elections on 9 January for the Palestinian presidency resulted in a victory for moderate candidate and former prime minister Mahmoud Abbas with 62% of the vote, although fewer than half the estimated number of eligible voters took part. On the following day the Israeli parliament approved a new coalition government comprising Likud, the Labour Party, and the orthodox United Torah Judaism party. On 8 February there was a summit meeting in Egypt between between Sharon and Abbas, at which the two leaders declared an end to Palestinian-Israeli violence. Although the commitment of militant Palestinian groups to this agreement remained uncertain, the deal offered new hope for the revival of political negotiations and an end to the Intifada, which, over four years, had claimed 3,500 Palestinian and 1,500 Israeli lives.