If I believed in omens, I might have turned back as soon as we got to the summit. It was pouring down rain when we reached Camp David a little before ten at night on July 10, after helicoptering from Andrews Air Force Base near Washington. The cabin assignments also came as a surprise. I was given the one that Anwar Sadat had at the first Camp David summit in 1978. Arafat got Menachem Begin’s. Still, the cabins themselves, each named for a tree, were large and pleasant. Mine, Dogwood, had a bedroom, two large sitting rooms, and a terrace. I took it as a good sign that it was the same one where Nava and I had stayed during our visit with President Clinton and Hillary right after I’d become prime minister.
With just eight days to address the core issues of decades of conflict, we got down to work the next morning. Clinton began by meeting Arafat, as I went through the Americans’ overall strategy for the negotiations with Madeleine Albright, Dennis Ross, and Martin Indyk. I then met the president in his cabin, which was called Aspen. He told me that while Arafat still thought I was trying to “trick him” into an agreement, and didn’t think we’d necessarily get a deal, the Palestinian leader did now accept that I was serious about trying. My fear remained that Arafat was not serious. Yet my hope was that the isolated environment of Camp David, and the wide public expectation that we would accomplish what Sadat and Begin had done there before, would help us deliver the breakthrough that I believed ought to be possible. For that to happen, I told the president it was essential that Arafat truly understood the importance of what was at stake. Not just the cost of failure, but what was potentially on offer: the creation of the Palestinian state he sought, with the full acceptance of Israel and the support of the world.
I wish I could say I was optimistic when Clinton led the two of us into Laurel Lodge, the larger cabin a few hundred yards downhill from Aspen, for the summit’s opening session. The scene at the front door—with me bustling Arafat ahead, with the intention of allowing him to enter before me—yielded the best-known image from the summit. Captured by the television crews allowed into the compound for the ceremonial opening, it spawned a cottage industry of political speculation and armchair psychoanalysis purporting to decipher what it meant. Some said it was an encouraging sign of “chemistry” between me and Arafat, a not unreasonable guess, since both of us were grinning. Others concluded that because each of us was trying to nudge the other to go in first, it was a sign of underlying conflict: neither of us wanted to allow the other the privilege of appearing to be polite. Still others saw it as an ornate Middle Eastern power play, intended to demonstrate that I was ultimately in control of proceedings. In fact, it would turn out to be a singularly apt image of what happened in the days that followed: a reluctant Arafat, an engaged and expectant prime minister of Israel, a smiling and hopeful Clinton.
We actually began on a note of optimism. In my opening statement, I said, “Now is the time for us to make a peace of the brave, to find a way to live together side by side with mutual respect, and to create a better future for our children.” Arafat said he hoped that the peace Begin and Sadat had made at Camp David would prove an auspicious example. “With the help of President Clinton, we could reach a deal that is good for both sides.”
But it was going to take more than noble words. The details of a peace treaty, or even a framework agreement, would require negotiation. Both Arafat and I arrived fully aware of the shape of the “hard decisions” I’d referred to months earlier when we met in Oslo. On his side, it would come down to whether he was prepared for a comprehensive, final peace. A true “end of conflict,” with no get-out clauses, no strings left untied, no further claims on either side. In concrete terms, this would mean abandoning his claim for potentially hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees to resettle inside the pre-1967 borders of the State of Israel. And what were Israel’s difficult decisions? In return for the end of conflict, I would have to deal away the maximum possible part of the West Bank, certainly well above the 80 percent I’d intimated in my first meeting with President Clinton as prime minister. I would have to accept the idea of land swaps, if necessary, in order to bring the overall percentage as near as possible to the equivalent of the whole of the West Bank. I would have to be flexible on the arrangements to ensure Israeli security oversight over the Jordan Valley. And if a true peace was really on the table, both Arafat and I would have to consider some form of compromise on the most emotionally and symbolically difficult issue of all: the future governance of Jerusalem.
On the first evening, we met as an Israeli delegation to discuss our position for the days ahead. Gili Sher and Danny Yatom helped me keep a clear overall picture of proceedings throughout the summit. Our secure landline was operated by a Shin Bet technician. I assumed the Americans could still listen in, but was fairly confident we were at least beyond the electronic earshot of the Palestinians. I kept myself fully informed of, but at a distance from, the specific work of the five negotiating teams we’d set up to deal with each of the major issues we’d have to resolve if we were going to get an agreement. It would have been impractical for me to have remained fully involved with all of them. Yet I also believed the looser arrangement would allow our negotiators to explore any realistic opportunity for a breakthrough and any sign of flexibility on Arafat’s side—without committing me to a formal position until there was such flexibility.
For the first couple of days of the summit, there was not only no sign of flexibility, there was little meaningful engagement. Dennis Ross and his team drew up a paper setting out the main issues. For those on which we differed, the Israeli and Palestinian positions were marked with “I” and “P.” It wasn’t until around midnight on day two that we got a first look at the American draft. The main, unhappy, surprise was Jerusalem. This crucial issue was not marked with “I” or “P.” It said outright that there could be two capitals, one Israeli and one Palestinian, within the city of Jerusalem. I was not opposed to the Palestinians calling Jerusalem the capital of their state. But even in follow-up talks after Oslo, when Yossi Beilin and Abu Mazen had explored avenues toward a possible resolution of the Jerusalem question, the maximum understanding was that Israel might expand the existing city limits to accommodate the “two capital” solution. The Palestinian capital would be in Abu Dis, one of the villages Arafat had asked me to hand back in May. The way the American document was worded suggested dividing Jerusalem as it now was: something ruled out repeatedly by all Israeli politicians, of all parties, ever since 1967.
When I phoned President Clinton, he asked me to come talk. We sat on the back terrace of his cabin, looking out incongruously on a beautifully tended golf hole installed by Dwight Eisenhower. I told the president that after all the hours we had spent together, I’d felt blindsided by the inclusion of a proposal on Jerusalem that went beyond anything we’d talked about. “It was my mistake,” he replied, obviously already aware through his negotiators of the error. He said that he’d put pressure on them to get the draft finished, and that Dennis hadn’t had time to read it through. But it was already being fixed: the word “expanded” would be added to the Jerusalem section. I was grateful for that, but I told Clinton I was concerned that even this “I and P” paper might have the unintended effect of delaying any real progress. Since it was an American document, with the implication that it would be the president’s responsibility to frame and forge an eventual agreement, it gave the Palestinians no incentive to engage directly in looking for common ground. I suggested it might be best simply to withdraw the paper. Clinton’s answer surprised and encouraged me. “We agree,” he said. “The paper no longer exists.” It soon turned out the Palestinians were unhappy with it too, but for another reason. On the lookout for validation of Arafat’s insistence that Camp David was an Israeli “trap,” they were convinced that the paper had Israel’s fingerprints all over it. That wasn’t true. The one change we’d insisted on was because it misrepresented our position on Jerusalem. Still, since Dennis had added the word “expanded” to the Jerusalem section in longhand, the Palestinians were convinced of Israel’s coauthorship.
In fact, three days into the summit, the mood among the Palestinians seemed increasingly aggrieved. As a result, the Americans and even some members of my own team were urging me to show more “personal warmth” toward Arafat. I always exchanged greetings and pleasantries with him at mealtimes in Laurel Lodge, but even there, I admit that I didn’t exactly show enthusiasm, much less ebullience. After one dinner, when I’d been placed next to the Palestinian leader, the president’s national security adviser, Sandy Berger, asked me why, rather than talking to Arafat, I’d spent almost the entire time chatting with Chelsea Clinton. My response was only half-joking: “Given the choice, who wouldn’t?”
It wasn’t only that I believed a charm initiative would come over as contrived. I didn’t want to risk misleading Arafat, the other Palestinians, and possibly the Americans as well by giving them the impression I was satisfied with the progress of the summit, or felt that we were heading toward any serious engagement and compromise on the core issues. I had met Arafat many times before Camp David. I had made it clear in all of those meetings that I was ready to consider the tough decisions necessary to make peace possible. At Camp David, I was not against meeting Arafat as a matter of principle. I simply felt the time for such a meeting, if it came, would be at the moment that we saw at least some signal of a readiness on his part to negotiate seriously.
Still, given the strength of feeling among some of my own negotiators, I felt a responsibility to give it a try. I told Yossi Ginossar, the former Shin Bet officer who was closest to the Palestinian leader among the Israelis, to set up an informal meeting. To Yossi’s obvious satisfaction and surprise, I added that I’d be willing to have the meeting in Arafat’s cabin if that’s what he preferred. The next afternoon, I went there for tea and baklava. Abu Mazen, his top political adviser and the main Palestinian architect of Oslo, was with him, along with a more junior aide who served the tea and sweets. At least this time, Arafat didn’t take notes as we spoke. The mood was friendly. We talked in general terms about the importance of peace. But he showed no sign of willingness to engage on the specific question of what was happening, or should happen, in the summit talks. I found the exercise disappointing as a result. But Yossi assured me it would help the atmosphere and would eventually translate into negotiating progress. “I hope so,” I said.
It wasn’t until day four that real talks began, but still without any indication Yossi’s optimism would be borne out. The Americans arranged for negotiating teams from both sides on borders, the refugee issue, and Jerusalem to meet with President Clinton. The Palestinians participated but showed no sign at all of a readiness to compromise. Borders should have been the most straightforward. Assuming we wanted a deal, it was about sitting down with a map and working out how to address both sides’ arguments. But Arafat’s representative in the meeting—the original Oslo negotiator, Abu Ala’a—said he wouldn’t even discuss borders without a prior agreement to land swaps ensuring Palestinian control over an area equivalent to 100 percent of the West Bank. Shlomo Ben-Ami tried to find a way around this. He suggested the Palestinians assume that to be the case for the purposes of the meeting, so that at least there could be meaningful discussion of the border, including the provisions Israel wanted in order to retain the major settlement blocs. President Clinton agreed that made sense. He said that without talking about the substance of such issues, there wasn’t going to be a deal. Even Abu Ala’a seemed receptive, according to Shlomo. But he insisted that he would have to ask Arafat first whether it was OK.
On refugees, pretty much the same thing happened. The Americans—and, we assumed at that point, even the Palestinians—knew that a peace deal would be impossible if we agreed to hundreds of thousands of refugees entering Israel, threatening to leave the state we’d created in 1948 with a Jewish minority. But when President Clinton began trying to narrow down details of a compromise resettlement package—how many refugees would return, where they would go, and how to arrange international financial support for them—Abu Mazen insisted that nothing could be discussed without a prior Israeli acceptance of the “principle of the right of return.” On Jerusalem, according to Gili Sher, the president didn’t even try to find common ground on the core issue of sovereignty. Instead he used the formula Shlomo Ben-Ami had suggested for borders, telling each side to proceed on the assumption sovereignty was decided in its favor, and to concentrate instead on how everyday municipal functions and daily life would be divided between Israel and the Palestinians under a peace agreement.
When I convened our negotiators in my cabin to take stock of the logjam, I was getting more and more skeptical. I told our team that until there was at least some movement from Arafat, I didn’t want them suggesting any Israeli concessions. We’d obviously get nothing in return. The summit would fail. And despite my repeated insistence both to the Americans and Palestinians that without an agreement any Israeli suggestions would be null and void, that didn’t mean they would simply be forgotten. The result is we’d actually be in a worse situation than before Camp David. Politically, I’d find myself in much the same position as President Assad after the leak of the American draft from Shepherdstown: apparently ready to consider giving Arafat the great majority of the West Bank, without the slightest sign he was ready for a full and final peace. In addition, anything that we put on the table here would handcuff future Israeli governments if and when an “end of conflict” agreement became possible.
Still, when Dennis Ross learned from my negotiators what I’d decided, he was frustrated and upset. He came to see me on Saturday morning—day five of what was looking increasingly like a stillborn summit. “This summit was your idea,” he said, reminding me that the president had agreed to it over the reservations of many of his own aides. He told me that at a minimum, I had to give it a chance by giving him my true negotiating “red lines.” Either that, or give my negotiators more leeway to explore compromises. I did not want to make Dennis’s job any more difficult than it already was. I assured him I remained ready to engage fully if we ever got to the real substance of a possible deal. “But I can’t do what you’ve asked me,” I said. “Not when Arafat is simply holding firm and not showing a willingness even to look for compromises.”
Fortunately for my relationship with the president—though not for the prospects of an agreement—Clinton had considerably more sympathy with my position after his next meeting with both sets of negotiators that afternoon. It was a return encounter with Abu Ala’a on territory and borders. Shlomo Ben-Ami now produced a map of the West Bank with our proposed breakdown into the areas that would be controlled by a Palestinian state, the part Israel would retain to accommodate the major settlements, and territory that we suggested would go to the Palestinians after a transitional period. The part we had earmarked for Palestinian control was now a bit over 85 percent of the West Bank. But while Abu Ala’a had told Clinton he would ask for Arafat’s permission at least to negotiate, he clearly hadn’t received it. He refused to talk about the map, or even respond to Clinton’s suggestion that the Palestinians present a map of their own, until we did two things: accept the principle of land swaps and reduce the size of the territory we were suggesting for the settlement blocs. To Shlomo’s, and I’m sure even more so to Abu Ala’a’s, astonishment, the president exploded. He told Abu Ala’a that to refuse to provide any input or ideas was the very opposite of negotiation. It was an “outrageous” approach. He stormed out.
It was late that evening when the first move toward the “make-or-break” situation I had hoped for seemed to occur, though still with much more likelihood of break than make. The president decided the only way to make progress was to sequester a pair of negotiators from each side overnight. Their task would be to search in good faith for the outlines of a possible peace agreement. They were to update Arafat and myself and then report to Clinton the next day. Then, we’d see where we were. I agreed to send Shlomo and Gili Sher, my former back-channel negotiators. I knew that whatever guidelines I gave them, they would probe beyond them, just as they’d done in the back-channel talks. They were negotiators. They were also smart, creative, badly wanted an agreement, and like me believed it ought to be possible. Though I would retain the final word to approve or reject what they suggested, I knew that only in a legal sense could it be null and void. I also recognized, however, that we had to be willing to push further, both to find out for certain where the Palestinians stood and to convince the Americans we genuinely wanted an agreement.
Shlomo and Gili left a little after midnight for Laurel Lodge. Marine guards were posted at the doors, with orders that neither negotiating team was to leave until morning without notifying the president’s staff. Mother Nature provided a further incentive to stay inside, since it was again raining buckets. The negotiators talked through the night and the next morning as well. It wasn’t until early afternoon that Shlomo and Gili came to my cabin to report on how they’d done. As I’d anticipated, both of them had ventured beyond concessions that I was ready to consider, at least at a time when we weren’t even near to a final peace deal. Taking the president’s instructions to heart, they’d said they were willing to consider full Palestinian sovereignty over two Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, and even some form of Palestinian authority and control in the Christian and Muslim quarters inside the walls of the Old City. They had dropped our insistence on Israeli control over the Jordan Valley, suggesting that we hold on to only a small segment of the border with Jordan. They had gone beyond the share of the West Bank allocated to a Palestinian state on the map that Abu Ala’a wouldn’t even look at. Now, they suggested around 90 percent. But when I asked what the Palestinian negotiators, Saeb Erekat and Mohammed Dahlan, had proposed in return, the answer was almost nothing. They had taken notes. They had asked questions. The one Palestinian proposal, from Saeb Erekat, was on Jerusalem: Palestinian sovereignty over all the city’s predominantly Arab areas, and Israeli sovereignty over Jewish neighborhoods. In other words, a division of the city.
Even though I was concerned that Gili and Shlomo had gone so far, especially on Jerusalem, I’d reached the point where I doubted that even that would matter. We were now in day six of the summit, barely forty-eight hours from President Clinton’s departure for the G8 summit, and we were negotiating only with ourselves. Knowing that the president planned to go see Arafat, I sat down and wrote him a note—emotional not just because I did it quickly, but because of how deeply let down I felt by the Palestinians’ deliberate avoidance of a peace deal, which, with genuine reciprocity, should have been within reach. “I took the report of Shlomo Ben-Ami and Gilead Sher of last night’s discussion very badly,” it began. “This is not a negotiation. This is a manipulative attempt to pull us to a position we will never be able to accept, without the Palestinians moving one inch.” I reminded President Clinton that just as he was taking political risks, I was too. “Even the positions presented by our people last night, though they are not my positions, represent an additional risk,” I said.
I said I doubted there would be another Israeli leader willing to engage in serious efforts for a final peace agreement with the Palestinians after what had happened here. Unless things changed dramatically, I was not prepared for us to throw out further suggestions, or consider painful concessions. “I do not intend to allow the Israeli state to fall apart, physically or morally. The State of Israel is the implementation of the dream of the Jewish people, for generation upon generation. We achieved it after enormous effort, and at the expenditure of a great deal of blood and sweat. There is no way I will preside at Camp David over the closing of this saga.” I told the president that I still believed that we faced a “moment of truth.” But only if he could “shake” Arafat, and get him to sense the enormity of the stakes—an independent Palestinian state, versus more, and undoubtedly deadlier, violence.
And if it did come to armed conflict? “When the people of Israel will understand how far we were ready to go, we will have the power to stand together, unified, in such a struggle, however tough it will become, even if we will be forced to confront the entire world. There is no power in the world that can force on us collective national suicide. Peace will be achieved only if there is a willingness to negotiate on both sides. I am sure the people of Israel, and the American people, will understand it when the details will be revealed.”
Clinton had already left for Arafat’s cabin by the time Danny Yatom went to deliver the letter. But the president, too, was in a more sober and downbeat mood by the time that meeting was over. Late that night, having read my note, he joined me on the balcony of Dogwood. He looked exhausted. “It was the toughest meeting I’ve ever had with Arafat,” he said. Clinton said he had told the Palestinian leader that only one side, the Israelis, had so far been negotiating in good faith. If Arafat was not prepared to make a genuine effort to reach an agreement, then there was no choice but for all of us to go home. Now, both the president and I were left to wait and see what, if anything, Arafat came up with in reply.
“I’ve been through battles, and danger, in my life,” I said. “But in terms of my responsibility, today, for me as well, was probably the toughest. Shlomo and Gili went beyond what I could live with. If this offer can’t move him, then I believe we are left to prepare for war.” I told the president he didn’t even need to phone me after hearing from Arafat if all he offered was some clever half-reply. Only if it was serious and substantive. I also reminded him that while he’d promised Arafat that he would not “blame” the Palestinians if the summit failed, that had been on the basis of both sides negotiating in good faith. That wasn’t happening.
Finally, I touched on an immediate concern if the summit broke up. For months, the Palestinians had been talking about simply “declaring” a Palestinian state. The Americans had insisted neither side should resort to unilateral action in a conflict whose resolution depended on mutual agreement. The Europeans had been less explicit. I told President Clinton I could speak only for how I would respond if a state was indeed declared without a peace deal. “We will extend Israeli sovereignty over the major settlement blocs. We will establish a security zone in the Jordan Valley, and let them know that there will be a heavy price should they attack any of the outlying settlements.” In other words, Palestinian unilateral action would prompt unilateral Israeli action. “And the confrontation will begin.”
* * *
Clinton seemed, if not completely revived, considerably more upbeat when he came back to see me an hour later. He told me that he had received the Palestinians’ answer. The way he described it to me, Arafat had agreed to leave President Clinton to decide the amount of West Bank land that would go to a Palestinian state, a figure he now told me that he was assuming would end up at around 90 to 92 percent. The trade-off, he said, would be a limited, “symbolic” land swap. Arafat also wanted control of the Jordan Valley, but had agreed to begin negotiating on Israeli security needs there as soon as possible. Then came Arafat’s counterconditions, which appeared to bother the president much less than they did me. Everything would be contingent on an unspecified “acceptable outcome on Jerusalem.” And despite Clinton’s emphasis that any meaningful agreement had to include a formal declaration that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was “over,” Arafat insisted that could come only after the terms of whatever we agreed were fully implemented. I remained skeptical, but Clinton seemed genuinely encouraged, and I didn’t want to risk closing off this first hint of progress. I suggested that we could address Arafat’s reluctance about an “end of conflict” statement by providing an American guarantee that the terms of the deal would be implemented.
Still, it was clear that any hope of real progress rested on by far the most difficult issue: Jerusalem. Across party boundaries, even across divisions between religious and secular, nearly all Israelis viewed the city as not just our capital, but the centerpiece of the state. It had been divided after 1948. The Old City and the site of the ancient Jewish temple had been under Jordanian rule for nineteen years when our forces recaptured it in the Six-Day War. It was under a Labor government that the area around the temple’s surviving Western Wall, left uncared for under the Jordanians, was cleared and a stone plaza put in place for worshipers—at the expense of parts of the old Moroccan Quarter. It was under Labor, too, that Israel unilaterally expanded Jerusalem’s city limits to take in more than two-dozen adjacent Arab towns and villages on the West Bank. No Israeli government since then, Labor or Likud, had deviated from a shared pledge that Jerusalem would remain Israel’s undivided, sovereign capital under any eventual peace agreement.
Yet when I met Clinton the next morning in Laurel Lodge, he insisted we had to find some room for flexibility. He said that, of course, Israel would retain sovereignty over the Temple Mount: the site of the Western Wall and, above it, the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex. “But without damaging your sovereignty,” he argued, “we have to find a way to draw a picture for Arafat that includes some measure of Palestinian control in part of the city.”
“Could you agree to Arafat having an office, maybe, inside the walls of the Old City?” he asked me. What about a form of administrative control in some of the outlying Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem? I replied that I couldn’t possibly answer any of his questions until and unless it was clear that Arafat accepted our sovereignty over—and our national and religious connection with—the Temple Mount. Yet I said I understood that we would have to reach some compromise agreement on the city if we were ever going to have a chance of a peace agreement. “But it’s an issue that is difficult for every Israeli,” I told him. Before I could even begin to see whether there was a way forward, I would have to talk it through with my entire negotiating team. Then, we could discuss it.
For the next five or six hours, we had the most open, serious, searching discussion I’ve experienced in my public life. It began on the terrace of my cabin at two in the afternoon and went on until well after sundown. I opened by saying what each of us already knew: Jerusalem was the most emotionally charged and politically complex issue of all. Our maximum position coming into the summit had been that we would again expand the municipal boundaries of the city, as we’d done after the 1967 war, in order to accommodate two separate “city councils.” One would be in Abu Dis, just to the southeast of the Old City, almost literally in the shadow of the Temple Mount. The understanding was the Palestinians would be free to rename the village, referring to it by the Arabic name for Jerusalem: Al Quds. I said that we should use that position as a starting point and discuss how, or whether, we might go further. All I added was the need to be aware of what was at stake. I didn’t know whether peace was within reach. I was still deeply skeptical. But if it was, we had to accept that Jerusalem would be key. And if the summit failed, for whatever reason, what inevitably awaited us was confrontation.
Israel Hasson, the Shin Bet veteran, spoke first. He saw two choices. Either we could retain Israeli sovereignty over a “united Jerusalem” with functional, day-to-day autonomy for the Palestinians in their neighborhoods, or we could in effect divide the city: “divide sovereignty.” He didn’t say which he favored, only that it was essential that we make the decision now if we could, however difficult or reluctant Arafat was as a negotiating partner. Otherwise, we’d never be able to say with certainty whether he was truly equal to the challenge of peacemaking. And if we didn’t achieve an agreement with him, the reality was that we’d end up at some stage having to deal instead with the Islamists: Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Oded Eran, the career diplomat whom I’d put in charge of frustrating, formal talks with the Palestinians in the months preceding the summit, said he was convinced that we should give the Palestinians full sovereignty over at least the “outer” Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, which had become part of the city only when we’d expanded the city boundaries after 1967. He said that was in Israel’s own interest. We had no historic connection to these Arab villages, and something like 130,000 Palestinians lived there. “Why should we want to annex them?” he asked. It would be like accepting the “right of return” through the back door.
Dan Meridor’s voice, for me, was especially important. I knew he was as determined as I was to achieve a negotiating breakthrough. But he was also a former Likudnik and a native Jerusalemite. “I’m against any concessions when it comes to Israeli sovereignty,” he said. “Any attempt to divide Jerusalem would be a serious blow, and not just for Jews in Israel.” For centuries, Jewish communities all over the world had looked to Jerusalem, prayed for Jerusalem. The yearly Seder meal, on Passover, ends with the Hebrew phrase Shanah haba b’Yerushalaim. Next year, in Jerusalem. “What we decide here in Camp David,” Dan said, “also affects Jews in New York. In Moscow. In Johannesburg.” He urged us to focus instead on offering Arafat as attractive as possible a package of concessions on all the other issues. “Then let him decide. But even if sovereignty over Jerusalem means that the deal collapses, I’m not willing to pay that price.”
No voices were raised. It was the rarest of political discussions. People offered their views, and listened to others’. Amnon Lipkin pointed out that a large area of what was now inside the boundaries of Jerusalem was not part of the city he’d known before 1967. Echoing Oded Eran, he said, “It’s in our interest for as many as possible of the Arab inhabitants to come under the authority of the Palestinians, and as few as possible under our rule.” Amnon’s bottom line was that we could not give up Israeli sovereignty over the Temple Mount, which, although he was a nonobservant Jew, he called “the cradle of Jewish history.” But equally, we couldn’t and shouldn’t “run the Al-Aqsa Mosque.” He was also in favor of agreeing to what Clinton had asked of me: giving Arafat a base in the Muslim Quarter of the Old City. His one caveat was that we should not do any of this unless it was part of a genuine, final peace agreement with the Palestinians.
Danny Yatom urged us to move beyond our emotions and look for a practical solution. “We all know how the boundaries of Jerusalem were drawn,” he said, referring to the post-1967 expansion of the city. “They’re not holy. It is important to get down to our real red lines.” Elyakim Rubinstein, the attorney general, was an observant, Orthodox Jew, and more sympathetic politically to Likud than Labor. Israel, in his view, had to retain our hold over the Old City. But in practical terms, he too believed we needed to include “as few Arabs as possible” under Israeli sovereignty. As a result, he was in favor of ceding the outer villages to the Palestinians, adding, “This is a moment of truth.”
It was nearly five hours before I brought the discussion to a close. “This is as grave a decision as when Ben-Gurion accepted the partition plan in 1947; the declaration of the state; or the most tense moments of the Yom Kippur War,” I said. “Or the decisions which Begin took in this same place.” Of course, Begin hadn’t even been willing to enter into discussion on Jerusalem. But we were in a different situation. If we were going to get a true end to our conflict, the question of Jerusalem had to be addressed. “We can’t delay the decision. We can’t avoid it. We will have to decide.” My own red line was the same as Amnon Lipkin’s: sovereignty over the site of our First and Second Temples. Even shared sovereignty elsewhere within the Old City seemed to me a step too far at this stage, but I didn’t rule it out as part of a full peace. “Without disengagement from the Palestinians, without an end of conflict,” I reminded our negotiating team, “we’re heading toward further tragedy. We can’t pretend we don’t see the iceberg.”
I asked several members of the team, under Shlomo Ben-Ami, to draft a paper based on our discussion. Since I knew that Clinton, and Arafat too, could do nothing of substance until I’d resolved how far to go on Jerusalem, I went to see the president. I told him about our session. I said that we were now crystallizing what had been said into a formal position, and I hoped to be able to return in a few hours with “the furthest point we can go.” Clinton said that would be a critical moment in the summit. If we could find common ground, he said, Israel would have achieved what had eluded it under Rabin, and even Ben-Gurion: “end of conflict, and Jerusalem recognized internationally as your capital.” I told him that the discussion with my negotiators had been moving and illuminating. “I could see how much it weighed on everyone.” But I added that I still did not feel anything of a similar nature, or remotely as serious, was happening on the Palestinian side. I also said that in deciding how to proceed, I couldn’t ignore political realities back home. I would have to get any major change in our position concerning Jerusalem through the Knesset, even before putting a peace agreement to a referendum.
“When will you get back to me with your paper?” he asked. I said I’d try by midnight. I also asked him whether he could delay going to the G8 summit in Japan, for which he was due to leave Camp David on the morning of the nineteenth. That meant we had just one full day left. I said even if the plan was to resume our talks afterward, I couldn’t move on Jerusalem right before we recessed. It would mean “putting my last and best offer on the table” and running the risk of leaks in Israel while Clinton was gone. He said that he had to go to the G8, but would try to put off leaving for a further day. Then, he asked me to draw up a list of questions for him to present to Arafat so that we could solidify our understanding of how far he was ready to go for peace.
I had Shlomo get busy on the list of questions, but it took time. We reconvened around eleven at night to discuss both the questions and the Jerusalem package. Though it retained Israeli sovereignty over the entirety of the Old City, it did give the Palestinians a greater measure of control over other areas of East Jerusalem than any Israeli government had been willing to consider in the past. Still, almost everyone in the negotiating team could live with it, assuming it became the critical element in a final peace. Dan Meridor alone remained firmly opposed, though Elyakim Rubinstein also had some reservations. Even Dan said he understood the importance of getting a peace agreement, if indeed it was possible, and our readiness to discuss new proposals on Jerusalem.
When I left for Clinton’s cabin at about 1:00 a.m. on Wednesday, I had no idea I was about to enter the most difficult meeting—and the only real fight—I had with him during our long effort to achieve a Middle East peace. I brought Shlomo and Danny with me, which meant that Madeleine Albright, Dennis Ross, and Sandy Berger stayed as well. I sensed tension in all of them, in large part, I soon discovered, because they took exception to the more than twelve hours we had spent discussing and refining our position on Jerusalem. I think Clinton expected a formal offer from us. Since I’d been guided by his request for a list of questions for Arafat, however, that is what we came to him with. As we’d discussed, I wanted finally to elicit some sign of whether Arafat, too, was ready to make difficult decisions.
The questions were specific. “Will you accept an agreement that stipulates the following,” it began, and proceeded to outline the kind of peace we could accept. The points included not just Jerusalem, but areas I knew would also be sensitive for Arafat, such as the right of return and formal agreement to an end of conflict. We went further than before in some areas. One of the outer East Jerusalem neighborhoods would be under Palestinian sovereignty. The rest of the city would remain under Israeli sovereignty, but most of the other Arab villages would be subject to a system of Palestinian administration. The Haram al-Sharif, the mosque complex above the wall of the Jewish temple, would be under Palestinian “administrative and religious management.” We also suggested “special arrangements” implying a Palestinian presence in the Old City, but again under Israeli sovereignty. The questions envisaged eventual Palestinian control in the Jordan Valley, with an Israeli security zone for twelve years, rather than our proposal in pre-summit talks for thirty years. Then, explicitly, we proposed a question to Arafat to confirm my understanding with Clinton that the “right of return” would apply not to Israel proper, but to a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza. Finally, the document said, “I understand that such an agreement constitutes an end of conflict, and a finality of all mutual claims.”
After he read it, the president blew up. Far from the “bottom lines” he’d apparently hoped for, but which I’d never thought were expected at this stage, I seemed to be retreating from ideas Shlomo and Gili had presented in their all-night session with the Palestinians. Given the ground rules of that exercise, they’d felt able to go beyond anything we’d actually agreed, and in some areas beyond what they knew I could support. As a result, the list of questions assumed Israel would keep a little more than 11 percent of the West Bank, nearly 1 percent more than Shlomo had mentioned. Shlomo and Gili had also raised the possibility of up to three of the outer Jerusalem villages coming under full Palestinian sovereignty. “You keep us, and Arafat, waiting for thirteen hours,” Clinton fumed, his face nearly scarlet. “And you want me to present something less than you’ve already offered.” He said he wouldn’t do it. “This is not real. It’s not serious.” He said that he’d gone to Shepherdstown in search of what was supposed to be an endgame with the Syrians. Then to Geneva to see Assad, “where I felt like a wooden Indian, doing your bidding. I will not let it happen here. I will simply not do it.”
I tried to keep my voice steady when I replied. I explained that the issues we were addressing went to the heart of Israel’s interests, its future security, its identity and definition as a nation. I had a responsibility to tread carefully. Then, my voice rising too, I came back to what I felt was the real problem. Arafat and his negotiators had been sitting and waiting for me and my team, and probably Clinton as well, to deliver more and more concessions with no sign that they were willing to move on anything. “I find that outrageous,” I said. I did not expect Arafat to respond with equal concessions. After all, Israel had most of the tangible assets. “But I did expect him at least to take a small step once we had taken ten. We have not seen even this. This is the kind of behavior parents would not tolerate in their own children! We don’t expect Arafat to accept this, but I do expect him to present a counterposition.”
Clinton remained adamant he couldn’t go to Arafat with a retreat from our earlier ideas. “My negotiating team moved beyond my red lines,” I told him. The overnight talks were supposed to be nonbinding and assumed that both sides would make a genuine attempt to get an agreement. “I can’t see any change in Arafat’s pattern. We take all the risks.” I said I doubted that Arafat expected to hear that we had decided to “give him Jerusalem.” In any case, the Israeli public hadn’t given me a mandate to do that. But I would still move in Arafat’s direction, if and when I got any sign he was willing to do the same.
The president’s anger eased. He suggested he caucus with his negotiators and figure out what to do next. I felt bad about what had happened: not about the list of questions, or my insistence that we could not offer major concessions with no sign of reciprocity. But I did regret that it had left the Americans so frustrated, and Clinton so angry. He had invested huge amounts of time and brainpower, and political capital, in the search for peace.
He phoned me at about three thirty in the morning and asked me to come back. This time, I went alone. We sat on the terrace of Aspen. He said again he couldn’t go to Arafat with the list we’d drawn up. But having met with his negotiators, he suggested they draft a more forthcoming list of their own—consistent with what Shlomo and Gili had proposed. I agreed, as long as they kept in mind that it had to be something I could ultimately live with, and that it be presented to Arafat as an American proposal. I suggested the president could tell Arafat that he’d try to get me to agree to it, providing Arafat first showed a readiness to move.
The American questions did go further than ours. They asked Arafat whether he would negotiate on the basis of getting Palestinian sovereignty over all the outer Jerusalem neighborhoods, as well as the Muslim Quarter of the Old City and a “custodial role” over the holy sites. But Arafat still said no. He insisted on Palestinian sovereignty over all of East Jerusalem, including the Old City and the holy sites. For a few hours after Clinton’s fruitless meeting with Arafat, Dennis and the American team engaged in a rescue effort, adding another carrot. They included the Christian Quarter as well, meaning Palestinian sovereignty over nearly half of the Old City, including the areas where almost all Arab residents lived. Dennis gave the proposal to Shlomo and Amnon Lipkin to bring to me, and asked two of the Palestinian negotiators to take it to Arafat. Even offering sovereignty over the Muslim Quarter went beyond anything I’d proposed. So did a lot of the other American questions. Still, I said that if Arafat ever showed a readiness to move, we’d be willing to consider them in discussions with the US negotiating team—with the exception of the Christian Quarter. But that, too, turned out not to matter. Arafat didn’t even respond.
Clinton called me to say we’d reached the end of the road. There were only two options: end the summit and announce we’d tried and failed, or defer Jerusalem and try to get agreement on the rest of the issues. I asked for time to think it over, and he said he’d come see me when I was ready. I was tempted to put off Jerusalem. In the admittedly unlikely event we could get a deal on the other issues, that would undeniably be an achievement. But Arafat’s lack of engagement on Jerusalem was yet another sign that he was not ready for the almost equally tough compromises required to resolve the other core issues. And there was no escaping the reality that without a deal on Jerusalem, no agreement we reached would truly represent an end of conflict. Moreover, Jerusalem wasn’t just a Palestinian issue. It was of fundamental interest to the whole Muslim world. If we left it unaddressed, we would be putting future Israeli governments in the position of having to negotiate on Jerusalem after we’d given back our key negotiating assets and all our leverage.
I accepted now that the search for a full peace treaty, or even a framework agreement, looked all but impossible. Even Shlomo’s and Gili’s freelancing had produced only a series of no’s from Arafat. But I couldn’t give up. Much as I’d been resisting it, I needed to give Clinton my true bottom lines, even with Arafat still mute and unresponsive. That was the only way we could know with certainty whether peace was possible. If it wasn’t, it would also demonstrate powerfully to the Americans that we were not the party that had prevented an agreement.
The president came to see me in Dogwood a little before eleven at night on the eighteenth, less than twelve hours before he was due to take his delayed flight to the G8. I told him I’d decided to do what Rabin had done with Syria. I was going to give him a “deposit” to keep in his pocket, which he would be free to use as the basis for a further, American proposal to Arafat, assuming it was part of an agreement with a “satisfactory resolution” of the refugee issue and an explicit end of conflict. He could present it to Arafat as something he was confident of persuading Israel to accept. It went well beyond what I’d offered before, on all the major issues. Under the terms of our “deposit,” I was ready to consider Palestinian rule over 91 percent of the West Bank. Our security zone in the Jordan Valley would remain in place for “less than twelve years.” And if all went well there, I was prepared for a Palestinian state to have sovereignty over 85 percent of the border area. Seven out of the nine outer Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem would come under Palestinian sovereignty. The inner neighborhoods would be under Palestinian civil authority, including planning and zoning, and law enforcement. For the mosques on the Temple Mount, I proposed a shared custodianship to include the new state of Palestine, Morocco, and the chair of the Higher Islamic Commission in Jerusalem. I also agreed to consider Palestinian sovereignty over both the Muslim and Christian quarters of the Old City.
Clinton, arching his eyebrows and smiling, said what I’d offered was a package of genuine concessions. It was more than he had expected and, he assumed, more than the Palestinians could have hoped for. It had the makings of a potential breakthrough toward a fair and final peace. I told him I hoped so.
Now, it was our turn to wait. The president invited Arafat to Aspen and, from what we heard soon afterward, got no hint of any readiness to reciprocate. He agreed only to talk to his negotiators and get back with an answer. Overnight, the Palestinians sent messages to the Americans asking questions on each of the concessions, though still with no indication from Arafat of a response. Finally, he sent a suggestion that since Clinton was about to fly off to the G8, we take a two-week break to allow Arafat to consult with Arab leaders. To his credit, Clinton knew an escape act when he saw it. He recognized that only by confronting the issues raised by our proposals and showing a willingness to find common ground would we have any hope of success. No recess, Clinton said. He needed a straight answer. Again, not full acceptance necessarily, but agreement to treat the proposals as a basis for negotiating an Israeli-Palestinian peace. Arafat’s answer came shortly before dawn. It was “no.”
Clinton couldn’t quite believe it. He went back to see Arafat, telling him he was making an error on the scale of 1948, when the Palestinians had rejected the partition of Palestine and the creation of an Arab state; or in 1978, when by negotiating on the basis of Sadat’s Palestinian-rights framework, they would have ended up with a mere 5,000 Israeli settlers on the West Bank instead of nearly 200,000. What most astonished Clinton was that Arafat was saying no even to using the package as a basis for negotiations. Arafat would not budge.
As Palestinian negotiators tried to salvage things by suggesting another trip by Madeleine and Dennis to the Middle East, it was clear that even the Americans were fed up. They knew that one side, at least, had been trying to get an agreement. They couldn’t understand why Arafat was unwilling even to accept the proposals as a basis for further talks. When Yossi Ginossar, our most reliable conduit, went to see Arafat, he found him sitting alone and, in Yossi’s description, “paralyzed.” Clinton finally decided to have one last go. When he did, Arafat not only remained unwilling: to the president’s astonishment, he insisted that the ancient Jewish temple hadn’t been in Jerusalem at all, but in the West Bank city of Nablus.
I was getting a bite to eat in the dining room in Laurel Lodge when Madeleine showed up. She didn’t bother defending Arafat. She was as frustrated as I was. Her message was that after the summit, it was important not to make things worse. A negotiating process had to be kept alive. Then, Clinton sat down with me. He delivered a similar message, but with even greater feeling. “You’re smarter than I am,” he joked. “You’re certainly experienced in war, and I’m not. But I’m more experienced in politics, and there are a few things I’ve learned along the way. The most important is not to corner your adversaries, and not to corner yourself. Always leave yourself a way out. Don’t lock yourself into a losing option.” I could see that he was right. I also believed, as strongly now as before the summit, that Israel’s own interests and its security were not served by an unresolved conflict with the Palestinians. The problem was that, in the absence of an equal commitment on Arafat’s side, any continued negotiating process seemed futile.
I packed my bags. I told Danny Yatom to inform the Americans we were leaving and to get our plane ready to take us back to Israel. I let the others in our team know that we were going. A number of them, and several of the Americans as well, urged me to reconsider. But I said I saw no point in staying. What I didn’t know, however, was that one of the Palestinians’ original Oslo negotiators, Hassan Asfour, had approached Dennis Ross with a new proposal: that we ask Arafat to accept everything except the proposal on the holy sites as a basis for negotiation. Sovereignty over the Temple Mount would be addressed in later, international negotiations. When Dennis brought this to me, my instinct was to say no. Like so much else at the summit, it was an inherently skewed formula: it would involve major Israeli concessions on all the other main issues, without securing our absolute minimum need in Jerusalem: sovereignty over the Temple Mount. I didn’t say yes. Still, with Clinton’s words of advice still on my mind, I said that I’d think it over.
When I met the rest of the Israeli team, almost all of them felt we should stay. The consensus was that especially if violence broke out after the summit’s collapse, we didn’t want to feel we’d left any stone unturned. At about 11:00 p.m., I phoned the president and told him we would stay until he returned from Okinawa. He was clearly pleased, and asked us to keep working in his absence. When I resisted that, saying that any substantive talks needed his involvement, we finally agreed that talks could continue in search of a formula for the holy sites. On all the other issues, only informal discussions would be held until and unless a way ahead on the Temple Mount was found. If that happened, and if Arafat finally accepted the pocket proposals as an agreed starting point, formal negotiations could resume. Clinton accepted this formula. He went to see Arafat and secured—or thought he had secured—his agreement as well.
One of the president’s great strengths was his genius for blurring the edges of potential differences in search of common ground. But when edges had to be sharpened, this could lead to confusion. Before leaving for the G8, the president neglected to mention to Arafat our explicit understanding that, with the exception of the talks on the holy sites, nothing would happen until he accepted the concessions that President Clinton and I had delivered as at least a basis for further negotiations. As a result, Arafat’s team now set about happily asking questions and probing my negotiators—pushing us to go further—but with no more inclination than before to produce any concessions of their own.
When I learned what was happening, I told my negotiators they were not to hold any further formal meetings during the four days Clinton would be away. Dennis’s initial response was frustration. Madeleine Albright’s was fury. They both made no secret of their view that I was needlessly stonewalling. It wasn’t until a few hours later that Madeleine apparently saw the stenographer’s record of my conversation with the president before he’d left, confirming the condition that Arafat accept the pocket at least as a basis on which to proceed. That evening, she apologized to me for the misunderstanding, and explained the mix-up to the full Palestinian and Israeli negotiating teams.
I spent most of the remaining three days in my cabin or, when the rain relented, walking through the woods. The Americans appeared to think I was sulking. I wasn’t. I was trying to find the least diplomatically damaging way to navigate the period until the president’s return. I couldn’t see showing up at Laurel at every mealtime, mingling and joking with the Americans and Palestinians, but refusing to enter into any form of negotiations. That would compound the awkwardness, and also be a direct affront to Madeleine. I highly respected her. But I could not in good conscience help her out in her efforts to find at least some, informal, way of moving the summit along in Clinton’s absence. If Arafat had failed to show even a scintilla of movement with the president in the room, there was no way he was going to do so with the secretary of state. For the Palestinian negotiators, who were predictably in favor of her efforts, the definition of “new ideas” was whatever further movement they might cajole out of our negotiators. On day three of Clinton’s absence, I got a note saying that Secretary Albright was on her way to my cabin. I didn’t want the needless diplomatic difficulty involved in again telling her I could not sanction freewheeling, and decidedly one-sided, negotiations while Arafat hadn’t moved a single inch. So I made myself scarce. Fortunately, I was wearing sneakers. I told Danny to inform the Americans I was out jogging around the perimeter of the large Camp David estate, and went off to do just that.
I told my own delegation I was taking time out to assess where we stood. I did continue meeting with Gili Sher and Danny Yatom. Yet for much of the time, I read. I also did a lot of thinking. I considered the pocket concessions I’d agreed to, the uncertainties and risks I’d been prepared to run, and how to deal with the fact that Arafat, when he had engaged at all, had said no.
Once it was clear to the Americans there would be no talks until the president returned, however, Madeline urged me to go see Arafat, again seemingly of the view that a dash of “personal chemistry” between us might somehow unblock things. The two members of our team who were the least pessimistic about Camp David’s outcome, Shlomo Ben-Ami and Yossi Ginossar, also said they thought it was a good idea. It was they who’d pressed me to go see Arafat for tea and sweets earlier in the summit. But that meeting had produced not even a glimmer of negotiating flexibility from the Palestinian leader. Yossi had said at the time that it would help the atmosphere, and pay dividends later on. But that hadn’t happened either. “Madam Secretary,” I told Madeleine, “eating more baklava with Arafat isn’t going to help. The situation is simple: he needs to answer whether he views the president’s proposal as a basis for going forward.”
When Clinton returned, he promptly got back down to business, attempting one last push to see whether a deal was possible. He phoned me around midnight on July 24, a few hours after he’d arrived. He told me that he had sent an even more far-reaching package to Arafat. Now, he was proposing that all of the outer Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem would come under Palestinian sovereignty, in addition to the Muslim and Christian quarters in the Old City. And Arafat would be given “custodial sovereignty” over the Muslim holy sites on the Temple Mount. Though he knew this was further than I could go, it was still broadly within the spirit of the “deposit” ideas I’d agreed he could present. So I didn’t object to his offering it under the same ground rules: as American proposals, which the president was telling Arafat he would try to deliver if he accepted them as a basis for serious negotiations. Yet when Clinton phoned me back, around three fifteen in the morning, it was to tell me that Arafat had again said no.
The curtain had finally come down. What remained now was to clear up the set. I did meet Arafat once more, in a joint session with President Clinton, but only for closing statements. The president and I spoke as much in sorrow and frustration as anger. Both of us said we thought a historic agreement had been within our grasp, and that far-reaching proposals had been tabled to make it possible. Arafat responded with words both of us had heard before: effusive toward Clinton, rhapsodic about his “old partner” Rabin, and fulsome in his ostensible commitment to keep trying for peace. But in reality, he’d proved unwilling even to talk about the compromises a real, final peace would require.
The president’s remarks to the media were, by the standards of post-summit diplomacy, unmistakably clear in making that point. He praised me and the Israeli negotiating team for courage and vision. Essentially, he thanked Arafat for showing up. That was some consolation. But it didn’t alter the weight of the message we were carrying home.
There were only two potential deal-breakers on our side, as Arafat had known from the start. The first involved a Palestinian “right of return” to within Israel’s pre-1967 borders. This was not just a recipe for the end of Israel as a majority-Jewish state. It would imply a rewriting of the history of how Israel was born: in a war, with an almost equal number of refugees fleeing or forced to leave on both sides, after the Arab world took up arms against a UN partition plan that would have created a Palestinian Arab state as well. The second critical issue was Jerusalem. There, I’d stretched our negotiating position almost to breaking point. The “pocket deposit” ideas Arafat ended up rejecting amounted to a breach of an assurance that I and every other Israeli prime minister since 1967 had given: never to redivide Israel’s capital. Had we actually got an end-of-conflict deal, I would have had to justify it to Israelis in a referendum. I think I could have done so. But one thing no Israeli leader could give up was sovereignty over the Temple Mount, the centerpiece of our history as a people and Israel’s as a state.
Arafat never even engaged in a discussion on the right of return. On the Temple Mount, however, he was explicit. Any peace, any basis for negotiation toward peace, had to begin by confirming Palestinian sovereignty. Besides, as he’d told the president of the United States, he’d persuaded himself there never even was a Jewish temple in Jerusalem. When I heard about that remark, I was less shocked than Clinton. It struck me as just another way Arafat had of conveying his bottom lines. It was a bit like the stories he liked to tell about visiting his aunt in Jerusalem as a young boy and seeing religious Jews praying at the Western Wall. I don’t know whether the stories were true. But the point was that while he had no problem with Jews in their long coats and black hats praying in the holy city, Jews exercising authority or sovereignty, or a Jewish state, was something else entirely. Camp David had made it clear it was something he was not prepared to accept.
The question I now had to confront was what to do next.