Bill Clinton: 'I had a deal the Palestinians turned down'
Top 3 Signs Bill Clinton didn’t kill himself
to “give” the Palestinians a State
By Juan Cole | May. 15, 2016

Memo To: President Bill Clinton
From: Jude Wanniski, 12-11-2004

Dear Mr. President: I know it still grates on you that despite your best efforts you could not bring off a conclusive peace agreement between the Israelis and the Arabs, but I do regret you using the occasion of Yasir Arafat's death to blame him for the failure.
In the last three years, since he has been virtually imprisoned in his West Bank compound by Ariel Sharon, he has scarcely been able to keep up with knowledge of the venomous attacks on him in New York and Washington by those who bear the real responsibility for the breakdown of the peace process.
Now that he is dead, it is even easier for people to forget the courageous efforts he made in his lifetime in bringing the Palestinian nation to accept the idea of a permanent state of Israel existing on 78% of the land Palestinians once claimed as their own.
It is shameful now, given what is on the record, that supposedly serious people are saying at his passing that he never really wished for peace with Israel, when it is the Likud Party that is officially on record opposed to the very idea of a Palestinian state.
I particularly regret your insistence that Arafat walked away from the Camp David offers that were made by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in 2000 when in fact the talks continued at Taba, Egypt until the end of January 2001, a week after you left office, with his team and Prime Minister Barak's diplomats coming very close to a conclusive agreement.
Of course, in order for there to be a conclusive agreement, Barak would have had to defeat Sharon in the elections that followed a month later, complete the negotiations, and get the agreement through the Knesset. But Barak lost and Sharon flushed down the toilet all that work that you helped initiate in 1993 with the Oslo Accord.
It is amazing to me, Mr. President, that you know this is exactly what happened, and yet you blame Arafat for the loss while he is being buried. (Wanniski Website 12-11-2004)

Yasser Arafat & Sharon's visit to the Haram al-Sharif

- Q: Many Israelis, if not the majority, are certain that you did not really mean to reach a peace agreement, and that you had planned the intifada in advance, and exploited Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount.
- Arafat: "I went myself with Abu Ala, Abu Mazen and Dr. Saeb Erekat to the house of Barak (in Kochav Yair). Amnon Shahak was there, Shlomo Ben-Ami was there, Yossi Ginosar, Gilad Sher, Danny Yatom and Danny Avraham. I begged him `Please remember what had been declared on Har Habayit by your hero Moshe Dayan, that which had been declared [regarding the ban on Jewish prayers on the Temple Mount]' ...
Why [Sharon] didn't make this visit when he was the second man after Netanyahu? Why he didn't make the visit during Begin? Why now?
Please. I begged him [Barak] in front of all the others. Please not to do it." ( By Akiva Eldar, Ha'aretz 20-6-2002)

The Mitchell rapport:

In late September 2000, Israeli, Palestinian, and other officials received reports that Member of the Knesset (now Prime Minister) Ariel Sharon was planning a visit to the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount in Jerusalem. Palestinian and U.S. officials urged then Prime Minister Ehud Barak to prohibit the visit. Mr. Barak told us that he believed the visit was intended to be an internal political act directed against him by a political opponent, and he declined to prohibit it.
Mr. Sharon made the visit on September 28 accompanied by over 1,000 Israeli police officers. Although Israelis viewed the visit in an internal political context, Palestinians saw it as highly provocative to them.... Thus began what has become known as the “Al-Aqsa Intifada”...