The premise for the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue in the new peace process was the vague formula set forth in the Camp David accords, calling for “full autonomy” of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank as an intermediate stage during which a “final settlement” will be negotiated. Hie first Israeli delegation to the peace talks, headed by hard-line Likud prime minister Yitzhak Shamir, offered little concession. But the current center-left Israeli government, formed following the June 1992 elections, brought a significant change to the Israeli policy towards Palestinians and the occupied territories. Labor’s pragmatic prime minister Yitzhak Rabin moved almost immediately to freeze all settlement activity, and pushed to promote the peace process, with a special emphasis on the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

The ongoing peace talks have raised a heated debate on both sides. In Israel, while the actual hard-core settlers living deep in the West Bank and feeing daily intifada hostilities are by and large messianic-fundamentalist Jews, many others still feel that to turn the West Bank over to the Palestinians would be tantamount to guiding a knife to their own throats, exposing the narrow (9.5 miles at one point) coastal strip that contains three-fourths of Israel’s population to hostile neighbors. From the standpoint of a substantial part of the Israeli public, however, the intifada has made clear that incorporating the occupied territories into Israel proper would likely create an internal security threat far more dangerous than the external threat of an autonomous Palestinian enclave. Although many argue that Israel must hold on to specific territory for military and strategic reasons, there are also those who argue that Israel’s broader strategic situation might be improved by a territorial compromise that won real peace with Israel’s neighbors. On the Palestinian side, moderates favoring a compromise with Israel, such as negotiators Faisal al-Husseini and Hanan Ashrawi, are being challenged by the growing popularity of Islamist opposition, led by the fundamentalist group Hamas, which rejects any settlement with Israel and calls for a continued armed struggle.