The Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum, formally titled the “Memorandum on Implementation Timeline of Outstanding Commitments of Agreements Signed and the Resumption of Permanent Status Negotiations,” was signed on September 4, 1999 at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. The signatories were Prime Minister Ehud Barak for Israel and Chairman Yasser Arafat for the PLO, with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, King Abdullah II of Jordan, and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright as witnesses. It was the first major agreement signed by the newly elected Barak government, and it was explicitly designed to reset the Oslo process after the final breakdown of the Netanyahu-era implementation and to clear the path toward permanent status negotiations.
What the memorandum renewed
Sharm consolidated and rescheduled the outstanding Israeli commitments from the Wye River Memorandum and from earlier Oslo-track agreements. Israel committed to complete the further redeployment of an additional 11 percent of the West Bank (covering the Wye commitments that had not been executed) in three phases: 7 percent on September 5, 1999; 2 percent on November 15, 1999; and 1 percent plus the transfer of 6.1 percent from Area B to Area A on January 20, 2000. The Palestinian Authority committed to collecting illegal weapons, providing lists of Palestinian police personnel to Israel for verification, and coordinating on anti-terror measures.
Safe passage and the seaport
Two specific operational commitments were set. Article 7 committed Israel to open a southern safe passage route between the West Bank and Gaza by October 1, 1999, and to negotiate a northern route by October 5, 1999. The southern route did open on October 25, 1999, allowing limited Palestinian transit. Article 9 addressed the Gaza seaport, committing the parties to begin construction with a target completion in October 2001. Construction began but was halted after the outbreak of the Second Intifada, and the seaport was never completed.
Restarting permanent status talks
The decisive element of Sharm was Article 1, which committed the parties to resume permanent status negotiations “in an accelerated manner” with the goal of reaching a Framework Agreement on Permanent Status (FAPS) within five months (by February 2000) and a Comprehensive Agreement on Permanent Status (CAPS) by September 13, 2000, the seventh anniversary of the Oslo I Declaration of Principles. These deadlines proved unrealistic. The State Department Office of the Historian records that the February 2000 framework deadline slipped, and the July 2000 Camp David summit, convened by Clinton in an attempt to force a final agreement, ended without an accord.
Why Sharm matters in the land-for-peace record
Sharm is important because it disproves any narrative that Israeli territorial compromise occurred only in the first flush of the Rabin era and then stopped. A new Israeli prime minister, heading a new coalition, signed an agreement in 1999 committing to further, specific, phased Israeli redeployments. Israel did execute the first-phase redeployment of 7 percent of the West Bank in September 1999 on schedule. The Oslo framework was still producing real territorial transfers six years after the original Declaration of Principles.
Why the process collapsed anyway
The permanent status negotiations never produced an agreement. At Camp David in July 2000, Arafat rejected Barak’s offer, which included roughly 91 percent of the West Bank, Gaza, and significant Jerusalem arrangements. The subsequent Taba talks of January 2001 narrowed some gaps but did not close them. In late September 2000, the Second Intifada erupted, and the negotiating track gave way to sustained violence that would last more than four years. The Sharm implementation schedule was not completed; the later redeployments were overtaken by events. Sharm therefore fits OZJF’s “territorial compromise without lasting peace” category precisely. It is documentary evidence of persistence and good faith on the Israeli negotiating side, and it is also evidence that persistence and good faith were not sufficient to produce a durable outcome.