Strategic Assessment

The Wye River Memorandum, signed by Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization on 23 October 1998, is riddled with so many ambiguities that some of its critics have compared it to Swiss cheese. The most prominent of these concern the issues that gave urgency to the negotiations at Wye Plantation — the size of the third redeployment stipulated in the original 1993 Declaration of Principles, and the question of whether or not the Palestinians will make a unilateral declaration of statehood and attempt to exercise sovereignty in May of 1999, when the interim period specified in the DOP expires. These ambiguities are likely to provide grist for controversy and confrontation in the spring of 1999.