Report on Israeli Settlement in the Occupied Territories

Despite an extraordinary effort, a departing President Bill Clinton failed in his effort to formally establish agreed-upon parameters for the future conduct of final status negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Nevertheless, the events of the last seven months have moved the relationship between Israel and the Palestinians irrevocably beyond the diplomatic and territorial constraints established in the Oslo accords.

On January 7, 2001, President Bill Clinton offered an outline of U.S. policy concerning an "end to the conflict" between Israel and the Palestinians. The following are excerpts from his remarks.

One critical difference distinguishing Israeli-Palestinian discussions during the Oslo interim period from those that commenced in May 2000 is the central importance of maps outlining proposed territorial divisions of the West Bank. (Gaza continues to be excluded from this process.)

On December 30, 2000, the Palestinian Authority distributed its response to the U.S. proposal presented orally by President Bill Clinton during the Washington talks a few days earlier. Below are excerpts from the document.

Elad Hershenson, 19, committed suicide after his good friend David Biri was killed during military service at Netzarim. Elad's older brother, Amir, was killed in a Hamas attack at Beit Lid in January 1995. After the suicide, Yitzhak Frankenthal, whose own son was kidnapped and killed by Hamas, wrote an open letter to the residents of Netzarim that appeared in Yediot Aharanot on October 24, 2000.

For years Israelis have been drawn to live in settlements by the promise of seamless travel between their prospective homes and Israel. Advertisements sing the praises of communities only "five minutes from Kfar Saba," and "five minutes from Jerusalem," but as Ha'aretz correspondent Danny Rubinstein has pointed out, since the outbreak of the intifada "those five minutes have become five minutes of gunfire, five minutes of fear. The bypasses leading to and from these suburbs have outlasted their usefulness."