ABSTRACT
The Israeli soldiers were killing real people with real bullets on the West Bank, and Palestinians were fighting what seemed to be the first real war between the two peoples since 1967. For the first time, Israeli Arabs entered the fight, and a horrified Israeli peace camp saw neighbors they thought they knew attacking their Jewish fellow citizens. It has been seven years since the Madrid Conference, when the two sides met for the first time in Spain and began the process that led to the Oslo Accords, and thus to Palestinian control over 40 percent of the West Bank and Gaza. Institutional progress has been made, but the average Palestinian feels that he has gained little from it. The good intentions of Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s government are real and greatly to be admired. Barak himself, a man of integrity and a lifelong soldier, didn’t seem to be able to seize that historic moment.
