The Clinton Parameters

The Clinton Parameters (Hebrew: מתווה קלינטון‎‎, Mitveh Clinton) were guidelines for a permanent status agreement to resolve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. They were proposed by then U.S. president Bill Clinton, following stagnating negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians from 19 to 23 December 2000. The Parameters were the compromises that Clinton believed to be the best possible within the margins of the positions of the two parties. The Clinton Parameters were meant to be the basis for further negotiations.

The proposal was presented on 23 December. On 28 December, the Israeli Government formally accepted the plan with reservations. In a meeting in the White House, on 2 January 2001, Yasser Arafat also officially accepted the parameters with reservations. The White House confirmed this the following day in a statement which said that "both sides have now accepted the president's ideas with some reservations." In 2005, Clinton wrote that he considered the Israeli reservations within the Parameters and the Palestinians' outside them. Others argue that Clinton's parameters denied Palestinians what they were legally entitled to under international law, specifically, sovereignty over the entirety of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Palestinian refugees' right of return to Israeli territory they inhabited before 1948 and dismemberment of Israeli settlements on Palestinian West Bank territory.

The background for the Clinton's Parameters was the failure of the 2000 Camp David Summit, the following outbreak of the Second Intifada (al-Aqsa Intifada), the upcoming Israeli elections, which polls indicated a possible defeat for then Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and the end of the Clinton presidency, in which Bill Clinton desired to end the eight years of peace efforts and Middle East arena in a successful note.

The negotiations, which were suspended on 25 July 2000, were resumed on 19 December at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington. On 21 December, President Clinton presented a plan for a final-status agreement on the basis of former talks. As the parties failed to reach an agreement, Clinton offered bridging proposals, later dubbed "the Clinton Parameters".

...
Wikipedia