
Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs
The last serious attempt to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians unravels across three episodes, each built around the leader who tried and failed to close the deal. The first covers Bill Clinton's push at Camp David in 1999 and 2000, where Ehud Barak and Yasser Arafat come close enough to a final settlement that the collapse afterward feels like the real story. The second follows Arafat through 2001 and 2002 as the second intifada turns negotiation into open confrontation and Washington's patience runs out. The third tracks Ariel Sharon from 2003 to 2005, when unilateral disengagement replaces talks as the working strategy. Built from archival footage and interviews with the officials and negotiators who were in the room, the series stays close to the diplomatic record rather than either side's public messaging, tracing exactly where each round of talks broke down and why the next leader inherited a harder problem than the last one left behind.