Wye River Memorandum was a Middle East peace agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians that was negotiated at the Wye Plantation in Wye, Maryland. It was signed in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 23, 1998. However, most of the provisions of the memorandum were never carried out.
The terms of the Wye agreement included a provision that called for Israel to withdraw its troops from 13 percent of the West Bank. Palestinians, an Arab people, make up the vast majority of the population of the West Bank, but the territory had been occupied by Israel since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Under the Wye accord, the Palestinians agreed to crack down on Islamic terrorists and to remove provisions in the charter of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) that called for Israel’s destruction. The pact also provided for the opening of an international airport in the Gaza Strip, a territory administered by the Palestinians but occupied by the Israelis from 1967 to 1994.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu signed the Wye agreement for the Israelis, and Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat signed for the Palestinians. Netanyahu, leader of the conservative Likud party, had opposed earlier Arab-Israeli peace deals (see Netanyahu, Benjamin ). Since 1997, peace talks had stalled, partly because Netanyahu had refused to carry out further troop withdrawals from the West Bank unless the Palestinians did more to stop terrorism. Many conservatives in the Israeli parliament and in Netanyahu’s Cabinet opposed the Wye accord. In December 1998, Netanyahu accused the Palestinians of failing to keep the security commitments called for in the Wye accord, and he suspended troop withdrawals from the West Bank. That same month, the Israeli parliament voted to dissolve itself and scheduled new elections.
In May 1999, Ehud Barak, leader of the Labor Party, was elected prime minister of Israel. Barak favored renewing the peace process with the Palestinians (see Barak, Ehud ). On September 4, Barak and Arafat signed a new agreement in Sharm el-Sheikh (also spelled Sharm ash Shaykh), Egypt. This agreement, officially known as the Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum, is often referred to as Wye Two. The accord revived and expanded on the previous Wye River Memorandum. For example, it called for three Israeli withdrawals from the West Bank by late January 2000. It also gave Israel and the PLO a year to negotiate a final peace settlement. Israel resumed its troop withdrawals from the West Bank shortly after the agreement was signed.
Peace talks between Israeli and Palestinian leaders continued in 2000. However, the two sides were unable to agree on certain key issues, especially those involving the final status of Jerusalem. In September 2000, Palestinians began riots and demonstrations against Israeli security forces. Numerous attacks by Palestinian militias and suicide bombers took place throughout Israel, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. Israeli forces repeatedly bombed and invaded the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In 2001, Israel closed the Gaza Strip airport that had opened under the terms of the Wye River Memorandum. In 2002, Israel reoccupied most West Bank cities.
