Clinton and the Arab-Israeli Conflict: The Limits of Incrementalism

This summary of President Bill Clinton's second term, by the former assistant National Security Council adviser for the Middle East during the Carter administration and a participant in the first Camp David negotiations, provides an insider's assessment of Clinton's legacy. It ends with an analysis of four reasons why Clinton did not achieve more than he did with regard to Middle East peace.

William B. Quandt, currently professor of government and foreign affairs at the University of Virginia, was a member of the National Security Council staff during the Nixon and Carter administrations. This article is extracted from a long chapter in the revised edition of Peace Process: American Diplomacy and the Arab-Israeli Conflict since 1967, to be published in Spring 2001 by the Brookings Institution Press and the University of California Press.