By the early 1990’s, most Israelis, on both sides of the political spectrum, had come to embrace a two-state solution to their decades-long conflict with the Palestinian Arabs, a solution based on the idea of trading “land for peace.” For these Israelis, and especially for the doves among them, the twilight hours of Ehud Barak’s short-lived government came as a terrible shock.

During a span of six months, from the Camp David summit of July 2000 to the Taba talks a few days before his crushing electoral defeat in February 2001, Barak crossed every single territorial “red line” upheld by previous Israeli governments in his frenzied quest for an agreement with the Palestinians based on the formula of land for peace. Unquestioningly accepting the Arab side’s interpretation of UN Security Council Resolution 242, passed in the aftermath of the Six-Day war of 1967, Barak’s government offered to cede virtually the entire West Bank and Gaza Strip to the nascent Palestinian state, and made breathtaking concessions over Israel’s capital city of Jerusalem. But to its amazement, rather than reciprocating this sweepingly comprehensive offer of land with a similarly generous offer of peace, the Palestinians responded with wholesale violence.