Introduction

Abstract

As the Al-Aqsa intifada raged in late 2001, the foreign ministers of Israel and Qatar met secretly in Paris. The Qatari official wanted to help curb the violence. “I don’t understand what went wrong in Camp David,” Hamed Bin Jassim told his Israeli counterpart. Shlomo Ben Ami replied that his country was willing to make dramatic concessions to the Palestinians when it came to sovereignty over Jerusalem and the status of refugees. The Qatari was baffled. The Israeli proposals seemed fair. Why did the Palestinians reject them? “What did you want from them?” he asked Ben Ami. Before the minister could answer, and without prior coordination, all members of the Israeli delegation replied: “We wanted the end of the conflict.” In return for yielding on Jerusalem and refugees, the Israelis demanded a formal declaration that the war was over for good, that the Palestinians had no more claims. Bin Jassim finally understood: “This is something I cannot give you,” he said. “No one can.… Once we sign an agreement there will be a long period of quiet in the region and maybe in 50 years a new conflict will develop that will make everyone forget about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”¹