The Israeli army surrounded the PLO in Beirut and began shelling the city at an enormous civilian cost, resulting in worldwide disapproval. When Lebanese Christian Phalangists began to massa- cre civilians at refugee camps within Israeli-controlled territory, the Israeli gov- ernment's position eroded even further. Under an agreement negotiated by the United States, most fighting ended in 1983. Worried about the Syrian presence and active Shi'a militia in Lebanon, Israel withdrew in 1985, but maintained a strip of southern Lebanese territory as a security zone, until its recent with- drawal in May 2000. THE INTIFADA On December 8,1987, an Israeli armored transport and several Arab cars collided in Gaza; four Palestinians were killed and several injured in the crash. The Pales- tinians' despair after 20 years of Israeli military occupation turned demonstrations at the victims' funerals into an upheaval that spread to the West Bank. The Pales- tinian intifada , was a tremendous shock to everyone, the PLO included. At first, Israeli authorities viewed the intifada as a short-lived affair that would dissolve as earlier agitations had. But after Palestinians in the territories began establishing networks to coordi- nate their hitherto sporadic civil disobedience, the intifada came alive, gaining its own leadership. In the midst of all the turmoil, the world began to reconsider Israel's Palestinian policies. In the summer of 1988, King Hussein suddenly dropped his claims to the West Bank and ceased assisting in the administration of the territories, which Jordan had been doing since 1967. Arafat seized the opportunity to secure a PLO role in negotiations by renouncing terrorism and recognizing Israel's right to exist. Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir presented his own proposal promising elections in the territories but insisted that neither the PLO nor PLO-sponsored candidates take part. When the United States and Egypt began to draw up a list of acceptable candidates, Shamir qualified his proposal by insisting that Arab residents of East Jerusalem, which had been formally annexed by Israel, be barred from participation. The PLO, local Palestinians, and Egypt could not tol- erate the Israeli claim that Jerusalem, whole and undivided, was Israel's eternal capital, nor that Palestinian refugees outside the occupied territories should not be allowed to return. Many Palestinians became convinced, by late 1989, that Arafat had weakened the position the Palestinians had gained as a result of the intifada. They were also worried by the growing number of Israeli settlements in the West Bank. The United States and the PLO terminated their discussions that summer. THE GULF WAR The Gulf Crisis began when Iraqi troops marched into Kuwait on August 2, 1990. Early on, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had slyly suggested he would withdraw from Kuwait when Israel withdrew from the West Bank, Gaza, and Golan, and when Syria withdrew from Lebanon.