A decade after a historic handshake, peace process in shambles
By Wolf Blitzer
CNN
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Rabin, left, Clinton and Arafat on September 13, 1993.
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ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- It looked spontaneous, but it was anything but. President Clinton's aides later disclosed he had actually rehearsed how he would try to bring Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat together for that powerfully symbolic handshake.
September 13, 1993, was a high moment in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
I was on the South Lawn of the White House that day -- reporting on what many of us had thought would quickly result in real peace after so many decades of war.
For a time, it did look good. The next year, Clinton went to Aqaba to officiate at the signing of the Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty, bringing Prime Minister Rabin and King Hussein together for yet another upbeat moment. Jordan became the second Arab state after Egypt to enter into a formal peace accord with Israel.
Those were high points. There was a moment near the end of the Clinton administration in 2000 when the Israelis and the Palestinians seemed close to a deal. Clinton had brought Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak together at Camp David. But in the end, the negotiations collapsed.
And in the three years since, the situation has gone from hopeful to horrifying.
When I interviewed him last year at his besieged Ramallah compound, Yasser Arafat defiantly rejected Israeli accusations that he was engaged in terrorism.
I thought it couldn't get much worse, but it has. And now, with more terror and the threat of exile, it's becoming apparent that the cycle of terrorism and retaliation could easily deteriorate into all-out war.
