on July 5th, President Clinton announced that Barak and Arafat would meet at Camp David, starting on July 11, for the “make or break” summit. During July 11– 26, Barak and Arafat, with Clinton (assisted by Albright) playing a crucial mediating role, tackled the major issues dividing Israel and the Palestinians: The refugees, Jerusalem, the borders between a future Palestinian state and Israel, the Israeli settlements, and the problem of water supplies and pollution....A crucial sticking point was Jerusalem. Barak, breaking a long-held, consensual Israeli taboo, agreed to a division of Jerusalem, with the Palestinians to receive sovereignty over most of the Arab-populated neighborhoods in the eastern part of the city." None the less, "Arafat stuck firm to his demand that the Temple Mount and the whole of the Old City come under Palestinian sovereignty; he rejected President Clinton’s last-minute proposal that the Old City be divided between Israel and the Palestinians, with the Temple Mount to be governed conjointly by the Security Council, Morocco (the permanent president of the Islamic states’ “Jerusalem Committee”) and the Palestinians. Major disagreement also surfaced over the Palestinian demand for recognition and implementation of “the right of return” of the refugees (based on UN General Assembly Resolution 194, from December 1948) to their homes, villages and towns in Israel (Israel rejected this “right” and the return of millions of refugees, though it agreed to absorb “several thousand” refugees over ten years as part of a “family reunion scheme” and to participate in paying compensation for the refugees’ lost property). There was also contention over the Palestinian demand that Israel hand over all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip to Palestinian rule (Barak was willing to concede 84 –90 percent of the West Bank and almost all of the Gaza Strip). The summit collapsed, with both the Israelis and Palestinians letting fly with recriminations. In private, Barak (and, to a degree, Clinton) expressed astonishment and anger at the Palestinian rejection of the most far-reaching Israeli concessions ever offered. Arafat, for his part, lambasted the Israeli proposals as inadequate— in his view, they awarded the Palestinians the trappings rather than the reality of sovereignty and, besides, Israel would continue to rule large chunks (the Jordan Valley, the area around East Jerusalem) of the West Bank. The Americans blamed Arafat for the collapse of the talks, charging that, unlike Barak, he had failed to offer any concessions on the important issues.