8: From the First Intifada to the Camp David Summit

The eighth of ten programmes exploring the origins and tracing the history of the Middle East conflict begins five years after Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, with the outbreak in 1987 of a Palestinian uprising or intifada, in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Presenter Jonny Dymond, the BBC’s International Editor Jeremy Bowen, and Mark Tessler, Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan, USA, discuss what caused it – and the consequences for Israel and the Palestinians.

They then trace the beginnings of a peace process that led eventually to the Oslo Accords of 1993 and the establishment of a Palestinian Authority in the occupied territories. Why did the “Oslo process” gradually unravel?

Jonny and his guests look at the pressures on the agreement, and examine the assassination in 1995 of one of its architects, Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. The Camp David summit of 2000 was a final attempt to get the Oslo accords back on track. Why did it fail? And how did that failure contribute to the outbreak of a second intifada in 2000?

'How Did We Get Here? Israel and the Palestinians' is a BBC News Long Form Audio production.
The presenter is Jonny Dymond and the editor is Penny Murphy.
The Radio 4 commissioners are Hugh Levinson and Dan Clarke.
The studio engineers are Neil Churchill, James Beard, Rod Farquhar, Mike Regaard and David Crackles.