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MICHAEL OREN:
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The Camp David War
 Though Arabs and Israelis disagree not only on the names of their wars but also on their numbering, both sides recognize the last two years of bloodshed as a war in every respect, distinct from the previous intifada of the late 1980s.
There can also be a neutral name for the struggle: the Camp David War. The Palestinians initiated the fighting after the Camp David summit meeting, during which they demanded the return of all refugees to Israel and Israel refused to commit demographic suicide.
Rather, convinced that they had offered more-than-adequate concessions at the summit, the Israelis rallied together and successfully resisted Arafat's attempt to wage diplomacy by other means.
Camp David also symbolized the climax of the Oslo process. Nine years of negotiations failed to produce peace and, after Camp David, devolved into a war in which both sides, Israeli and Palestinian, have suffered greatly.
Michael Oren is a senior fellow at the Shalem Center
in Jerusalem and author of "Six Days of War: June 1967
and the Making of the Modern Middle East."
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