The Second Intifada, 2000 to 2005

What happened

In July 2000, President Bill Clinton brought Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat to Camp David for two weeks of final-status talks, from July 11 to July 25. ¹ By the Anti-Defamation League's account, Barak proposed withdrawing from roughly 95% of the West Bank and all of Gaza, dismantling isolated settlements, giving Palestinians control over parts of Jerusalem, and offering what was described as religious sovereignty over the Temple Mount, in exchange for an end-of-conflict clause that would close every outstanding claim. ¹ The summit ended with nothing signed. Clinton said afterward that Barak had shown "particular courage and vision and an understanding of the historical importance of the moment," and Barak said he had found no "partner prepared to make decisions on all issues." ¹

The two sides have never agreed on why it failed. Each argument deserves to be stated the way its own side states it. The ADL's version is that Arafat refused the offer and held to maximalist positions on Jerusalem and refugees while presenting no counter-proposal of his own. ¹ Palestinian negotiators argued afterward that the Americans had prepared the summit badly, that personal tensions poisoned the room, and that Barak's negotiating method was the problem. ¹ Follow-up talks in October and December 2000 produced no agreement either. ¹

Violence broke out on Sept. 28, 2000, the day Ariel Sharon, then leader of the opposition, visited the Temple Mount. ³ The Sharm el-Sheikh Fact-Finding Committee, chaired by former U.S. Senator George Mitchell, reported on April 30, 2001 that "The Sharon visit did not cause the 'Al-Aqsa Intifada,'" while adding that the visit was "poorly timed" and that its "provocative effect should have been foreseen." ² The same report declined to endorse the mirror-image Israeli claim, stating that the committee was "provided with no persuasive evidence that the Sharon visit was anything other than an internal political act; neither were we provided with persuasive evidence that the PA planned the uprising." ² Mitchell's recommendations went to both governments. The Palestinian Authority "should make a 100 percent effort to prevent terrorist operations and to punish perpetrators," and Israel "should freeze all settlement activity, including the 'natural growth' of existing settlements." ² Neither side did what was asked.

What followed was a bombing campaign against Israeli civilians in cafés, on buses, in shopping malls, and at family celebrations. ⁵ Israeli fatality counts from terrorism, drawn from Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, run 43 in 2000, 207 in 2001, 457 in 2002, 213 in 2003, 124 in 2004, and 53 in 2005. ⁵ More than 1,000 Israelis were killed in the five years from September 2000. ⁵ The worst single attack came on March 27, 2002, when a Hamas bomber walked into a Passover seder at the Park Hotel in Netanya killing 22 instantly and eight more who died of their wounds in the following days, and wounding 150. ⁴

Israel's answer was Operation Defensive Shield, which ran from March 29 to April 21, 2002. ⁴ The IDF entered Ramallah, Bethlehem, Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarm, and Qalqilya, conducting house-to-house searches for fighters and weapons. ⁴ Thirty Israeli soldiers were killed and 127 wounded; Palestinian deaths are estimated between roughly 240 and 497, with 1,447 wounded and 4,258 detained. ⁴ The hardest fighting was in the Jenin refugee camp, where more than 1,000 soldiers entered on April 2 against roughly 200 armed men in a heavily booby-trapped area. ⁴ Thirteen soldiers were killed in a single ambush on April 9. ⁴ International allegations that Israel had committed a massacre in Jenin were investigated and disproven; the Palestinian death toll there was roughly 52 to 56, about half of them combatants. ⁴

In June 2002 the Israeli government decided to build a physical barrier between Israel and the West Bank. ⁶ The planned route ran about 740 kilometers, later trimmed to roughly 708, and less than 3% of it is the concrete wall that appears in most photographs; the rest is chain-link fence with sensors, trenches, and patrol roads. ⁶ As of November 2022 only about 62% had been built. ⁶

The uprising wound down rather than ended. On Feb. 8, 2005, Ariel Sharon and Mahmoud Abbas met at Sharm el-Sheikh with Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and Jordan's King Abdullah II to declare the Second Intifada over and to restart negotiations under the Road Map, with Israel committing to release several hundred Palestinian prisoners. ⁷ The total toll over the five years was about 1,000 dead on the Israeli side and between 3,000 and 5,000 on the Palestinian side. ³

Why it still matters

The Israeli left has not recovered. Meretz, the flagship party of the peace camp, held 12 Knesset seats in 1992 and 10 in 1999. In 2003, after Camp David and three years of bombings, it held 6, a collapse the Israel Democracy Institute attributes directly to the failed summit and the outbreak of the intifada. ⁸ The Israelis who lost faith in Oslo were the ones who had voted for it, and who then watched the process they backed run into the bombing campaign that followed.

That skepticism outlived the decade. In a poll fielded by the Israel Democracy Institute on Sept. 18 to 21, 2023, thirty years after the handshake, more Israelis called entering the Oslo process a mistake than called it correct, 39% to 36%, with 25% unsure. ⁹ Among Jewish respondents, the gap was wider, 42% saying it was a mistake against 35.5% saying it was right. ⁹

The security barrier is the other durable inheritance, and it is genuinely contested. Israeli figures count more than 3,000 attacks originating in the West Bank between September 2000 and the end of 2006, killing 1,622 people inside Israel, against 141 attacks killing 100 people from 2007 to mid-2022. ⁶ Israelis read that as proof the barrier worked. Critics point out that the route cuts through the West Bank rather than following the Green Line, which is precisely why Mitchell had asked Israel to freeze settlement growth four years before construction began. ²

The phrase that came out of this period and never left is "no partner." Barak said a version of it at Camp David in 2000, and it became the organizing assumption of Israeli politics for the two decades that followed. ¹

The words you'll hear

Al-Aqsa Intifada. The other name for the Second Intifada, taken from the mosque on the Temple Mount, where the violence began on Sept. 28, 2000. ³ The Mitchell Report used the term while explicitly rejecting the claim that Sharon's visit to the site caused it. ²

Camp David 2000. The July 11-25, 2000 summit at which Clinton, Barak, and Arafat failed to reach a final-status agreement, and after which Barak said Israel had no partner able to decide. ¹

The Mitchell Report. The April 30, 2001 findings of the Sharm el-Sheikh Fact-Finding Committee, which asked the Palestinian Authority for a "100 percent effort" against terrorism and asked Israel to "freeze all settlement activity." ²

Operation Defensive Shield. The IDF's March-April 2002 reentry into West Bank cities after the Park Hotel bombing, the largest Israeli military operation in the West Bank since 1967. ⁴

The security fence, or the separation wall. The barrier Israel decided to build in June 2002, roughly 708 kilometers as planned, under 3% of it concrete wall. ⁶ The name a person uses for it usually tells you their politics.

Sharm el-Sheikh, 2005. The Feb. 8, 2005 meeting of Sharon, Abbas, Mubarak, and King Abdullah II that declared the intifada over and committed Israel to release several hundred prisoners. ⁷