Tried, and tried again: the attempts that paved the road

Why a page about attempts?

In this site’s view, every effort for peace is important and worthy. It is good that it was made, and it is worth making again, even if the last one stopped halfway.

In this site’s view, peace has been central to the work of Israel’s governments, and so there have been very many initiatives. Many failed or succeeded only in part, and some, we believe, are still secret. Even what we know today was once a secret: King Hussein, for example, was meeting Israeli leaders in secret from 1963.¹

All these non-successes still build a road, and we all hope it ripens into success in the end. It has happened before. For each attempt we tell who tried, how far they got, how it ended and what was left. We do not hand out blame: where each side tells its own story, the linked page sets the accounts side by side.

Egypt: the best example

1970–71: a ceasefire, and a letter

The UN envoy Gunnar Jarring and US Secretary of State William Rogers tried to turn Resolution 242 into a settlement. In August 1970 the guns fell silent along the Suez Canal. In February 1971 Sadat offered to reopen the canal in return for a partial Israeli pull-back.² That month Egypt said it was ready for a peace agreement if Israel withdrew from Sinai and Gaza. Israel replied that it would not withdraw to the pre-1967 lines. The two replies did not meet, and the contacts stalled.³ According to his memorial site, the diplomat Mordechai Gazit coordinated Israel’s preparations for the talks at Golda Meir’s request, and held the Jarring file.⁴ More on the Jarring mission and the Rogers plans.

1973: a secret channel, then war

In February 1973 Sadat’s envoy Hafiz Ismail told Henry Kissinger, in secret, that Egypt was ready for a separate peace with Israel. It did not ripen, and on 6 October Egypt and Syria attacked.² Historians still argue over whether the war could have been prevented; the Jarring page sets out their views.

1973–75: one hall, and two steps in Sinai

In December 1973 Egypt, Jordan and Israel sat in one hall at the Geneva Conference; it handed a military working group the job of pulling the armies apart.⁵ In January 1974, under Golda Meir, the forces were separated. In September 1975, in Yitzhak Rabin’s first government, the sides undertook to settle the conflict by negotiation, not force.⁶⁷⁸⁹ It was not peace yet, but both disengagement agreements were carried out.⁸

September 1977: secret talks in Morocco

On 16 September 1977 Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan met Egypt’s Deputy Prime Minister Hassan Tuhami in secret, with King Hassan II of Morocco present.¹⁰ On 9 November Sadat announced that he was willing to go to Jerusalem.¹¹

November 1977: Sadat in Jerusalem

Menachem Begin sent a formal invitation.¹² On the evening of 19 November Sadat landed in Israel,¹³ and the next day he addressed the Knesset.¹⁴ It was the visit that made what had looked impossible possible.

1978–79: Camp David and the treaty

Jimmy Carter kept Begin and Sadat at Camp David for 13 days in September 1978.¹¹ On 26 March 1979 they signed the peace treaty,¹⁵ which provided for Israel’s withdrawal from all of Sinai.¹⁶ In 2026, despite deep tensions, the two countries still coordinate on security, according to the Carnegie Endowment.¹⁷

So what ripened?

No single step did it. In this site’s view, the ceasefire, the two Sinai agreements and the secret channels each made the next step possible. That is how a road to peace gets built.

Jordan: thirty years of secret meetings

From 1963: talking quietly

King Hussein first met an Israeli envoy, Yaakov Herzog, in 1963, in a London clinic. He went on to meet Golda Meir, Abba Eban, Moshe Dayan and others in secret, and ideas such as dividing the West Bank came up; none was agreed.¹

September 1973: eleven days before the war

On 25 September 1973 Hussein met Golda Meir near Tel Aviv and told her that Syria’s army was in position for war.¹⁸ According to the memorial site of Mordechai Gazit, director-general of the Prime Minister’s Office, he took the notes. Opinion is still divided on whether this was a real warning.¹⁹ Hussein himself said in 1999 that he had not been told of the war plan and that it took him by surprise.¹

1974–76: Rabin and the King

In 1974–76 Hussein held more secret meetings with Israeli leaders, Rabin among them. The gap was not bridged, and the talks stalled.¹

1987: the London Agreement

In April 1987 Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Hussein agreed in London on an international conference leading to direct talks. Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir rejected the understanding, and it was never carried out.²⁰ Each camp in the government had its reasons, and the London Agreement page sets out both.

And then, in 1994

Rabin and Hussein met in secret again, in Aqaba in 1993 and in London in 1994.²¹ In July 1994 came the Washington Declaration, and in October the peace treaty.

Israelis and Palestinians: close, and not yet

Camp David, July 2000

Bill Clinton hosted Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat to try for a permanent agreement.²² The summit ended on 25 July without one, though the closing statement called the talks unprecedented in scope and detail.²³ Each side has its own account of why; the summit page sets them side by side.

The Clinton Parameters, December 2000

On 23 December Clinton gave both sides an outline for a permanent settlement.²⁴ Both accepted it with reservations, and no agreement was signed.²⁵ More on the Clinton Parameters.

Taba, January 2001

The delegations talked for a week at Taba, with Israel’s election set for 6 February.²⁶ In their joint statement they wrote that they had never been closer to an agreement, but the political timetable did not allow it.²⁷

The Roadmap, 2003

The Quartet (the US, the EU, Russia and the UN) published a three-stage plan towards a Palestinian state. The Palestinian Authority accepted it in principle and Israel with 14 reservations, but implementation stopped.²⁸²⁹

Annapolis, 2007–08

In November 2007 Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas pledged to seek a peace treaty by the end of 2008.³⁰ In September 2008 Olmert showed Abbas a map; no agreement was reached, and the two tell the story differently.³¹ Both accounts are on the Annapolis page.

The Kerry talks, 2013–14

John Kerry led nine months of talks: Israel undertook to release long-serving prisoners, and the Palestinians to hold back from moves at the UN. The talks were suspended in April 2014 without agreement.³² Each side blames the other; the Kerry talks page gives both accounts.

The Geneva Initiative, 2003

It is not only governments that try. Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabbo led an unofficial team that wrote a full draft of a permanent agreement, the Geneva Initiative. No government adopted it.³³

The People’s Voice

Ami Ayalon, a former head of the Shin Bet, and Sari Nusseibeh, a Palestinian academic, drafted six principles for two states for two peoples.³⁴ The two men signed it themselves, and the UN archive files it as a civil-society document.³⁵

Syria: seventeen years of rounds

The 1990s: Washington

After the Madrid Conference, Israel and Syria talked in Washington with American mediation.³⁶ On the table: withdrawal from the Golan, full peace and security arrangements.³⁷ What exactly Rabin offered, the so-called “deposit”, is disputed to this day.³⁷³⁸

1995–96: Wye Plantation

Under Shimon Peres, intensive talks opened at Wye Plantation in the United States, and according to the journalist Patrick Seale real progress was made. Peres suspended them in March 1996, after a wave of suicide bombings by the terrorist organisation Hamas.³⁸³⁹

2000: Shepherdstown and Geneva

In January 2000 Ehud Barak and Syria’s Foreign Minister Farouk al-Sharaa met at Shepherdstown, hosted by Clinton. On 10 January the talks went into a recess without agreement; they were due to resume on 19 January, but never did.⁴⁰⁴¹ In March Clinton met Hafez al-Assad in Geneva, and the gaps remained.⁴²

2008: by way of Turkey

Under Ehud Olmert, Israel and Bashar al-Assad’s Syria held indirect talks mediated by Turkey.⁴³ They broke down in December 2008.³⁷ Those who took part still disagree about why, and the Syria talks page sets out their accounts.

Lebanon: an agreement that did not hold

On 17 May 1983, a year after Israel invaded Lebanon, the two countries signed an agreement with American mediation. On paper it ended the hostilities between them.⁴⁴ Lebanon’s parliament approved it, but it never came into force, and Lebanon cancelled it on 5 March 1984.⁴⁵

According to the sources, it lacked broad consent inside Lebanon and the cooperation of Syria, whose forces were in the country.⁴⁵⁴⁴ A signature alone was not enough.

Halfway there: what succeeded in part

Camp David 1978: one framework of two

The Egyptian framework became the peace treaty.¹⁶ The framework for Palestinian self-government in the West Bank and Gaza was not carried out. According to the US Office of the Historian, Palestinian representatives refused to join the autonomy talks, and the Egyptian–Israeli gap proved unbridgeable.¹¹

Madrid 1991: no agreement, but tracks

The Madrid Conference produced no agreement, but it opened the negotiating tracks from which Oslo and the peace with Jordan grew.³⁶

Oslo: interim arrangements that stayed

The Declaration of Principles led to the Palestinian Authority being set up in Gaza and Jericho in 1994.⁴⁶ The permanent agreement due by 4 May 1999 was never reached,⁴⁷ and the interim arrangements still run. Why, on Oslo: the breakthrough, and what went wrong.

Syria 1974: a line that held

The disengagement agreement was not peace, but it set up an area of separation on the Golan where only a UN force is present.⁴⁸ On 8 December 2024 Israel declared that it had collapsed;⁴⁹ most members of the UN Security Council still call on all parties to keep to it.⁵⁰

Sudan: a signature with no follow-up

In January 2021 Sudan signed the Abraham Accords Declaration.⁵¹ No bilateral agreement was signed, and the war in Sudan has frozen the track.⁵²⁵³

What the attempts left behind

From Jarring to the treaty

The pieces of Jarring’s 1971 proposal, the international border, demilitarised zones and free passage through the Straits of Tiran, came back in the 1979 peace treaty.³

Sinai I, Sinai II, peace

The first disengagement agreement called itself a first step towards a just and durable peace;⁶ the second ruled out force;⁸ four years later the peace treaty was signed.¹⁶

From Camp David 1978 to Oslo

The idea of a five-year transition with Palestinian self-government appeared at Camp David,⁵⁴ and came back, changed, in the Declaration of Principles of 1993.⁵⁵

From London to Madrid

An international conference of the kind Peres and Hussein sketched in 1987 finally met in Madrid in 1991.²⁰

Camp David 2000, Clinton, Taba, Geneva

According to researchers at Chatham House, the talks that went on after Camp David led to the Clinton Parameters.⁵⁶ Taba tested whether an agreement could be built on them.²⁶ The Geneva Initiative, whose leaders Beilin and Abed Rabbo had both sat at Taba, draws on them too.²⁶³³

From 2008 to 2024

In 2024 Olmert, who had shown Abbas a map in 2008,³¹ signed a new two-state outline with the former Palestinian foreign minister Nasser al-Kidwa.⁵⁷

Syria: picking up where they left off

In 1999, three years after the talks had stopped, al-Sharaa spoke at the White House of resuming them from the point they had reached in 1996.⁵⁸