The 2000 Camp David Summit was a summit meeting at Camp David between United States president Bill Clinton, Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat. The summit took place between 11 and 25 July 2000 and was an effort to end the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. The summit ended without an agreement, largely due to irreconcilable differences between Israelis and Palestinians on the status of Jerusalem.[1] Its failure is considered one of the main triggers of the Second Intifada.
The issues discussed included the establishment of a Palestinian state, the fate of Israeli settlements (illegal under international law), the status of Jerusalem, the question of Palestinian refugees, and potential Israeli control over the airspace and borders of a future Palestinian state. The summit ended after irreconcilable differences over who should have sovereignty over the Temple Mount (which Muslims call Haram al-Sharif or Al-Aqsa): Barak insisted on Israeli sovereignty, while Arafat insisted on Palestinian sovereignty.[2]
Reports of the outcome of the summit have been described as illustrating the Rashomon effect, in which the multiple witnesses gave contradictory and self-serving interpretations.[3][4][5][6] After the summit, the Israeli narrative was widely accepted by the American media, which sought to cast Arafat as a villain and that Palestinians did not want peace.[7] That narrative lead to the decline of the Israeli peace movement.[7]
Camp David is a bit of a Rashomon event. There is the American Camp David, there is the Palestinian Camp David, and there is the Israeli Camp David