The Middle East Peace Summit at Camp David, Maryland was held on July 11, 2000.
US President Clinton send invitations to Israeli Prime Minister
Ehud Barak and leader of the Palestinian Authority
Yasser Arafat. As previously agreed in the Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum (1999) these final status negotiations were to be completed by September 13, 2000 and final
settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict would be based on the
Oslo accords.
The negotiations ended in failure with a release of the
Trilateral Statement defining the agreed principles to guide future negotiations. Both sides could not agree about the issue of
Jerusalem. The Palestinians demanded sovereignty over all of East Jerusalem including the Haram-Ash-Sharif (Temple Mount).
The negotiators could not come to an agreement about the issue of the Palestinian
refugees either. Palestinians were demanding full implementation of the right of return of the refugees, under
UN Resolution 194.
Israel offered proposals regarding the settlement that were modified in subsequent negotiations. These were modified in various ways by US bridging proposals. The details of the proposals are still unknown. Israel claims that they were far reaching and generous. The Palestinians have been claiming that the proposals would have perpetuated the situation of the interim agreements, in which the West Bank is divided into numerous small areas of Palestinian sovereignty interspersed with a much larger area of Israeli sovereignty.
Barak went to the negotiations as the leader of a collapsed coalition and resigned on December 10, 2000. Elections were held in 2001, bringing a right-wing government to power. Arafat was widely blamed for the failure of the Camp David talks and the subsequent outbreak of violence in September 2000, despite Palestinian willingness to continue negotiations.