more difficult than it already was. And I told him I was still 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 replied. “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 which we suggested would go to
355
/ BARAK / 70
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, more than I’d
indicated to the President in our first meeting a year earlier. 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 honesty 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 bucketing down with rain. The
negotiators talked not just through the night, but 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 gone. 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
356
/ BARAK / 71
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 48 hours from President Clinton’s
departure for the G-8 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
357
/ BARAK / 72
this saga.” I told the President that I still believed that we were facing 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 when, having now 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, it seemed,
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 negotiating in good faith. I hoped that, if the summit collapsed in these
circumstances, he would keep to that standard.
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
358
/ BARAK / 73
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 counter-conditions, 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 was insisting that could come only after the terms of whatever
we agreed were fully implemented.
Still, it was at least a step forward. Clinton seemed genuinely encouraged, and I
didn’t want to risk closing off this first chink of light. I suggested, for instance, 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 very soon became 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 centrepiece 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
19 years when our forces recaptured it in the Six-Day War. It was under a Labor
359
/ BARAK / 74
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 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 take it
through with my entire negotiating team. Then, we could discuss it.
It turned out to be the most open, serious, searching discussion I was a part of
during all my years in public life. It began, on the terrace of my cabin, at two in the
afternoon and went on until sundown. I introduced it 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
360
/ BARAK / 75
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 Isrsaeli sovereignty over a “united Jerusalem” with functional, day-today
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 made the decision now if we could, however difficult or
reluctant Arafat was as a negotiating partner. If we waited, we’d end up having to
deal with 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 Palestinian 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 try to get a peace agreement with the Palestinians. 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 decided 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 the 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 came 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
361
/ BARAK / 76
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 non-observant 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.” Eli Rubinstein, the attorney general, agreed.
Even though he was an observant, Orthodox Jew, and more sympathetic politically
to Likud than Labor, he concluded that we needed to include “as few Arabs as
possible” under Israeli sovereignty, and to cede 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
362
/ BARAK / 77
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 19 th . 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 am 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 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
363
/ BARAK / 78
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
and still hoped for. 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 12 years, rather than our
proposal in pre-summit talks for 30 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.”
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 one 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 13 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
364
/ BARAK / 79
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 counter-position.”
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 non-binding 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 not just huge amounts of time and brainpower,
but political capital, in the search for peace.
He phoned me at about 3:30 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
365
/ BARAK / 80
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 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 we’d be ready 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 did not 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 I couldn’t help thinking that
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 of 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 felt I couldn’t give up. Much as
I’d been resisting it, I believed I needed to give Clinton my true bottom lines, even
366
/ BARAK / 81
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 who had prevented an
agreement.
The President came to see me in Dogwood a little before 11 at night on the 18 th ,
less than 12 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 as something which he could tell Arafat he was confident of
persuading Israel to accept. It went well beyond what I’d offered before, on all the
major issues. I proposed Palestinian rule over 91 percent of the West Bank. I was
ready for a Palestinian state to have sovereignty over 85 percent of the border in
the Jordan Valley as well, and our security zone there would stay in place for “less
than 12 years.” 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 lawenforcement.
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. But given
Arafat’s behavior so far, I had my doubts.
Now, it was our turn to wait. The President invited Arafat to Aspen and, from
what we heard soon afterwards, 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 twoweek
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
367
/ BARAK / 82
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. Still, 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 “pocket”
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.
368
/ BARAK / 83
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 pm, I
phoned the President and told him that 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.
369
/ BARAK / 84
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 Albrights’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 of
the situation, and also be a direct affront to Madeleine. I liked and 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, I knew
there was no way that he was going to do so with the Secretary of State. For the
Palestinian negotiators, who were predictably in favour of her efforts, the
definition of “new ideas” was whatever further movement they might cajole out of
our negotiators. Still, 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 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 the need to decide how to deal
with the fact that Arafat, when he had engaged at all, had said “no”.
370
/ BARAK / 85
Once it was clear to the Americans there would be no talks until the President
returned, however, Madeline began urging me to go see Arafat personally. 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: making one
last push to see whether a peace deal was possible. He phoned me around midnight
on the 24 th of July, a few hours after he’d arrived. He told me he had sent an even
more far-reaching package to Arafat, expanding on my proposals. Now, 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. I didn’t object. Though it was further than I felt I could go, it was
within the spirit of my “pocket deposit”. The same ground rules still applied: these
were American proposals, which the President was telling Arafat he would try to
deliver if he accepted them as a basis for serious negotiations. But when Clinton
phoned me back, around 3:15 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 an 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 it was just words. We knew he was not willing even
to talk about the kind of 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
371
/ BARAK / 86
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. Arafat either would not or could not make peace,
at least on terms any Israel leader could accept or the people of Israel would
endorse.
There were only two potential deal-breakers on our side, as Arafat had known
from the beginning. The first involved the “right of return.” We were never going
to sign a peace agreement accepting the return of hundreds of thousands of
Palestinians within our pre-1967 borders. Demographically, that was a recipe for
the inexorable end of Israel as a majority-Jewish state. It would also imply a
rewriting of the history of how Israel was born: in a war, with an almost equal
number of refugees either fleeing or forced to leave on both sides, after the Arab
world had unanimously, and violently, rejected a UN partition that would have
created a Palestinian Arab state as well. I did accept a “right of return” to the
Palestinian state we had hoped to create, as part of a final peace deal, on the West
Bank and in Gaza. I also supported the idea of a multi-billion-dollar international
fund to compensate or resettle Palestinian refugees, and was ready to commit Israel
as a party to that effort. The other critical issue was Jerusalem. I had stretched our
negotiating position almost to breaking point. The “pocket” ideas Arafat ended up
rejecting challenged a longstanding Israeli political taboo. In practical terms, they
amounted to a breach of the assurances which I and every other Israeli Prime
Minister since 1967 had given: never to re-divide 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 I could not give up was our
sovereignty over the Temple Mount, the centerpiece of our history as a people and
Israel’s as a state. It was our connection with our past, a focus of what we had gone
through, what we had achieved, and what we had left to accomplish. It was
essential to who we were.
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 had persuaded himself there never 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 stories he liked to tell about visiting his aunt in Jerusalem as
372
/ BARAK / 87
a young boy and seeing religious Jews walking through the streets of the Old City.
I don’t know whether those 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 which I now had to confront was what to do next.
373
/ BARAK / 88
Chapter Twenty-Three
It didn’t fully hit me how draining our efforts had been until the morning that
the summit collapsed, when President Clinton called me to come talk to him in the
living room at Laurel Lodge. When I arrived, Madeleine was already there, sitting
on the edge of the sofa. She greeted me with a resigned shrug and a valiant but not
altogether successful effort at a smile.
“We tried,” Clinton said quietly as I took a seat in a wooden chair opposite his.
“We gave it everything.” The nominal reason for the meeting was to brief me on
the communiqué the Americans were going to issue: mostly boilerplate assurances
that both sides remained committed to seeking peace, but with an additional
“understanding” that neither would take unilateral actions in the meantime. But
mostly, Clinton wanted to reinforce his message of a few days earlier: don’t “lock
yourself into a losing option.” Don’t close the door. Don’t give up. “I won’t,” I told
him, an assurance I echoed in remarks to reporters a few hours later, when I said
that while the peace process had “suffered a major blow, we should not lose hope.
With goodwill on all sides, we can recuperate.”
But I told the President that we couldn’t just ignore what had happened at Camp
David. Yes, in the event Arafat suddenly had second thoughts about the potentially
historic achievement he’d passed up, he would know where to find me. But until
and unless that happened, I told Clinton that I assumed my “pocket” concessions
would now be firmly back in his pocket. And while we couldn’t erase them from
memory, I said it was important both of us make it clear that, in legal and
diplomatic terms, they were not going to provide Arafat a new starting point from
which he could make his customary demand for more.
“And I have to tell you that, given what has happened, there’s no way I can
justify handing him control of more land. I am not going to go ahead with the Wye
redeployments in these circumstances.”
“You don’t have to,” Clinton replied. “I’ll back you.”
Though I never discussed internal Israeli politics with any foreign leader, even
the closest of allies, I didn’t doubt that the President’s support was partly a
recognition of what awaited me once I got home. The compromises I’d been
willing to consider had gone further – much further, on the politically combustible
374
/ BARAK / 89
question of Jerusalem – than any Israeli leader in the search for peace. Even before
I’d left for Camp David, the defections from our coalition meant we’d been left
with only 42 seats in the Knesset, nineteen short of a majority. Amid the first,
sketchy media reports that we were even talking about sharing control of parts of
Jerusalem with the Palestinians, there was a chorus of denunciation from rightwing
politicians back home. Bibi Netanyahu had largely kept out of the public eye
since his resignation after the election. Now, he issued a statement accusing me of
having “broken all the red lines held by all Israeli governments.” During the
President’s final push to save the prospects for a summit agreement, Bibi called a
news conference. He said he was determined to prevent what he called an
impending disintegration of Israeli society. “What we hear from most of the reports
out of Camp David does not answer our hopes,” he said.
It hadn’t answered my hopes either. But I had gone into the summit with my
eyes open. Frustrated though I was by the way the summit had ended, I had no
regrets about going as far as I had in trying to reach, at the minimum, a framework
agreement. In that sense, it is true the summit had failed. But when I’d urged
President Clinton to convene it, I made the argument that if genuine peace was
ever going to be possible, we at least had to know whether Arafat was interested in,
or capable of, playing his part. That question had, for now, been answered. At least
as importantly for Israel, the President of the United States and almost the entire
international community recognized we’d done everything realistically possible to
reach an accommodation. Diplomatically, the ball was in the Palestinians’ court.
There was a final achievement as well – little noticed or remarked upon in the
days immediately after Camp David, but hugely significant. A taboo had been
broken. For the first time, all Israelis recognized what their political leaders, both
Labor and Likud, had long known: a formal, final peace with the Palestinians, if
and when it came, would require us not just to withdraw from the great majority of
the West Bank, but to find a formula for sharing power in Jerusalem. Many Israelis
still believed that was a price too high, and not just Likudniks. A couple of weeks
after the summit, Leah Rabin told an Israeli newspaper that her late husband would
be “turning in his grave” if he’d known the concessions I’d been ready to consider
on Jerusalem. I found the remarks hurtful, but I understood them. In a way, they
drove home the point I’d made to Clinton during the summit: all Israelis had a
deep, emotional attachment to our historic capital. “Yitzhak would never have
agreed to compromise on the Old City and the Temple Mount,” Leah said,
375
/ BARAK / 90
“because for him, Jerusalem was sacred from a strictly national and historic point
of view.” It was for me as well. In fact, I think its religious significance probably
resonated more strongly. Still, the major change from the summit was that even
those Israelis who found a compromise on Jerusalem unacceptable recognized that,
if they did want to negotiate a definitive end to the conflict, talking about it was
unavoidable.
At least for now, however, there wasn’t going to be a peace deal. As our El Al
707 descended over the Mediterranean for our approach back to Ben-Gurion
Airport, I faced the more immediate issue of ensuring my government survived.
This was partly in case, against all odds, Arafat showed a readiness to revive the
search for peace – but also because of the real prospect he would choose violence
instead.
* * *
Since the Knesset was about to go into recess until late October, I would have a
three-month window to reshape and stabilize my coalition – but only if we could
weather a no-confidence motion introduced by Arik Sharon after Camp David. We
did weather it, barely. Arik needed a majority of the Knesset’s 120 seats to bring
down the government. The vote ended in a 50-50 tie. The other 20 MKs abstained,
or didn’t show up. This was not because of any enthusiasm for my efforts to get an
agreement at Camp David, but because of a lack of enthusiasm for an early
election in which they feared losing seats.
Still, that did allow me to focus on the challenge of the inevitably altered
situation with Arafat after the summit’s collapse. My main concern was the
possibility of violence. Even before returning home, I’d phoned Shaul Mofaz and
Avi Dichter, the former Sayeret Matkal officer who was now head of the Shin Bet.
“Let’s hope the violence doesn’t come,” I told them. “But if it does, make sure we
are ready.” Though there was no sign of violence in the weeks immediately after
the summit, there was equally little sign of diplomatic engagement by Arafat.
Obviously relieved at the way Camp David had ended, he returned to Gaza to a
hero’s welcome, proudly proclaiming that he had refused to “give up” Jerusalem. It
was vintage Arafat: the “general” in his starched uniform and kefiyeh, fresh from
376
/ BARAK / 91
the diplomatic equivalent of the battlefield, triumphant against the odds. It was the
role he liked and played best. His next move was to take the show on the road: to
Arab, European and world capitals, pleading that he had been the “victim” of
summit chicanery in which President Clinton and I had presented him with a deal
no self-respecting Palestinian could accept. He was also campaigning for
international support for a move, in contravention of the final Camp David
communiqué, to “declare” a Palestinian state unilaterally in mid-September.
I spoke personally to Tony Blair and French President Jacques Chirac, and also
dispatched Shlomo-Ben Ami, Amnon Lipkin, Yossi Beilin and Shimon Peres, who
was Minister of Regional Cooperation in the coalition, on a series of diplomatic
visits to make sure the true story of what had happened at the summit was
understood. As a result, the globetrotting Arafat received an almost unanimous
rebuff for the idea of a unilateral declaration of stateheood. He was told that if he
really wanted a state, he should return to the negotiating table with Israel.
By the time I went to New York in early September – joining the largest
collection of world leaders ever assembled, for the UN’s Millennium Summit –
there seemed little chance of that happening. I met privately with a number of
world leaders before delivering a brief address to the more than 150 presidents and
prime ministers. I was at pains to take the high road. None of the foreign leaders I
met had expressed any doubt that we’d gone much further than they had expected
at Camp David, and that the onus for putting diplomacy back on track rested firmly
with the Palestinians. Looking straight at Arafat from the UN podium, I said: “We
are at the Rubicon, and neither of us can cross it alone.” Jerusalem, “the eternal
capital of Israel,” was calling out for a “peace of honor, of courage and of
brotherhood” – a peace recognizing that the city was also sacred to Muslims and
Christians the world over. When Arafat spoke, it was almost as if the summit had
never happened. “We remain committed to our national rights over East Jerusalem,
capital of our state and shelter of our sacred sites, as well as our rights on the
Christian and Islamic holy sites,” he declared. He didn’t mention Jews, beyond a
bizarre reference to the 2,000 th anniversary of the birth of Christ “in Bethlehem,
Palestine.” I couldn’t resist remarking to one of the American negotiators that I’d
always thought Jesus grew up as a Jewish boy, making thrice-yearly visits at
festival time to the temple in Jerusalem, at a time when there was not a church,
much less a mosque, in sight.
377
/ BARAK / 92
Still, in my meetings with Clinton, I assured him I was not giving up altogether
on the prospects for peace. Not only did I feel that would be wrong, as long as
there was a scintilla of hope. I believed that our continued diplomatic engagement
might provide a counterweight to any moves by Arafat to revert to violence. It was
also critical for Israel to retain the diplomatic, political and moral high ground we
had earned in the eyes of the international community from the concessions we had
been willing to consider. When the President suggested drafting a final American
paper, based on Camp David though presumably with an even more generous
proposal for the Palestinians, I agreed. I figured even Arafat might realize at some
point that if he did want a negotiated peace, the time for dithering was over.
Clinton would no longer be president in five months’ time. Unless I could find an
alternative way to refortify my coalition over the coming weeks, it was entirely
possible I’d have to form a “unity” coalition with Arik and the Likud. Still, I told
President Clinton I doubted the ticking clock would make a difference to the
Palestinian leader. If it didn’t, I believed at some point all our talk about an “end of
conflict” would give way to conflict. The only question was when.
Tragically, I got the answer only weeks after my return from the UN.
* * *
At the urging of the Americans, I invited Arafat and his negotiating team to a
private dinner in Kochav Yair on the 25th of September. The atmosphere was
surprisingly warm, for which a lot of the credit, as well as culinary praise, has to go
to Nava. “Very cordial, even congenial,” Nabil Shaath told reporters after the
dinner, nearly 45 minutes of which I spent talking alone with Arafat on the stone
terrace out back. Each of us spoke to Clinton for about 10 minutes near the end,
and the President was obviously pleased to hear us sounding upbeat about trying to
narrow any differences on the forthcoming American negotiating paper. On the
substance of our differences, by mutual agreement, Arafat and I didn’t say much to
each other. I did try to impress on him that time was getting short. His
monosyllabic reply – yes – was at least better than the alternative. I chose to
believe we could both now focus on trying again.
378
/ BARAK / 93
The request that had come across my desk a few days earlier need not have
changed that. Even though Arik had failed, for now, to bring down the
government, he was keen to make political capital from the collapse of Camp
David. He now declared his intention to pay a visit to the Temple Mount. The
Mount – or as it was called in Arabic, Haram al-Sharif – was part of Israel. The
unsubtle point of Arik’s visit was to dramatize his determination to keep it that
way. The target of this political theatre was not Arafat or the Palestinians. It was
the Israeli public, me, and my government. In an all-perfect world, I would have
liked to find a way to block the visit. In a democracy, it wasn’t that easy. The only
way I could do so was on the grounds it was a threat to public order or security, a
judgement in the hands of our police and security services. I duly asked for the
views of Avi Dichter of the Shin Bet, and Shlomo Ben-Ami, who in addition to
being interim Foreign Minister was Minister of Internal Security, in charge of the
police. Both came back with the same answer: though we’d all be happier if Arik
stayed down on his farm in the Negev, there was no reason to expect his visit
would pose a major public-order issue, and no basis for blocking it. When Shlomo
contacted Jibril Rajoub, Arafat’s West Bank security commander, Rajoub asked
only that two conditions be imposed, and Shlomo agreed. The first was that the
visit not occur on a Friday, when the mosques would be full of worshipers; the
second, that Sharon not set foot in either of the mosques on the Haram. Our chief
of police informed Sharon that if he didn’t accept the conditions, we’d deny him
permission to go. But he agreed. When he went, for about half an hour under
police escort on Thursday morning the 28 th , he complied.
At first, we thought it would prove a one-off media stunt. But that evening,
Danny Yatom brought me an intelligence report with evidence that Arafat’s
Palestinian Authority was planning for wide-scale violence after Friday prayers, in
protest over Sharon’s visit. Danny called Dennis Ross. Madeleine Albright called
Arafat, to urge him to ensure this didn’t happen. But as Dennis would remark later,
“Arafat didn’t lift finger to stop it.”
The trouble began the next day, shortly after Friday prayers. It was also the eve
of the Jewish New Year, and the Western Wall area was crowded. As people
poured out of the mosques, a number began hurling stones, some of them the size
of small boulders, onto the Jewish worshippers and police below. One knocked out
the highly experienced, steady-handed commander of the Jerusalem police, which
I’m sure contributed to making the confrontation that followed even worse. By the
379
/ BARAK / 94
end of the day, dozens of Israelis and Palestinians were injured. Five Palestinians
lay dead. Though the media almost instantly labelled it a new “intifada”, this one
was very different. It was not a burst of anger, however misdirected, by stonethrowing
youths convinced that a road accident in Gaza had been something more
sinister. There had been no serious unrest on the day of Arik’s visit. We would
later learn this was a deliberate campaign, waged with guns and grenades, by
Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the Fatah offshoot Tanzim, and Arafat’s own police
force.
The media had changed, too, in the 13 years since the first intifada, with the rise
of twenty-four-seven news broadcasters, including the Arabic-language Al Jazeera.
Images of pain and suffering and fear stoked anger on both sides. None, in the first
days of the violence, was more powerful, or heart-rending, than the picture of a
terrified 12-year-old Palestinian boy named Mohammed al-Durrah, sheltered by
his father as they took cover from the crossfire in Gaza. The facts of the incident,
as best we could establish immediately afterwards, were that the Palestinian
security forces had opened fire on Israeli troops near the settlement of Netzarim.
Ten Palestinians, including the little boy, lost their lives when the soldiers returned
fire. We later established with near certainty that the boy had in fact been killed by
Palestinian gunfire. But even if we’d been able to prove that at the time, I’m sure
that in the increasingly poisonous atmosphere, it would have made little difference.
Nor would it have changed the next, deeply disturbing escalation: the spread of
the violence into Israel itself, with unprecedentedly serious clashes between our
own Arab citizens and the police in the Galilee, in Wadi Ara, in the main mixed
Arab-Jewish cities, and the Negev. Beyond the political implications, the
demonstrations of solidarity with the Palestinian violence presented a security
challenge of a different order: to the ability of the Israeli police, and by extension
the government, to ensure basic law and order inside our borders. The worst of the
clashes lasted barely a week. But they left thirteen Arab Israeli protestors dead,
sparking demonstrations as far afield as Jaffa, as well as ugly incidents of mob
violence by Israeli Jews against Arabs in some areas.
President Clinton tried his best to help us halt the violence on the West Bank
and in Gaza. I doubted the Americans would succeed, but was fully ready to join in
their efforts to try. About ten days into the new intifada, I attended a crisis meeting
with Arafat, mediated by Madeleine Albright and Dennis Ross, at the US
ambassador’s residence Paris. It was nominally under the aegis of President
380
/ BARAK / 95
Chirac, but the understanding was that Madeleine would be in charge. Far from
showing any willingness to end the violence, Arafat at first simply lied. He said the
Palestinian violence was in response to an unprovoked assault by Israeli troops,
and demanded an international “protection” force. There was a particularly bizarre
moment when I read out the names of individual Tanzim leaders whom we had
intercepted organizing the attacks. Arafat pretended he’d never heard of any of
them, almost as if I was reading from a zoology textbook about species of polar
bears. This was a man who had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. What he
really deserved was an Oscar.
But people were dying. Needlessly. We ended up agreeing to a US-led factfinding
commission, as well as a number of steps to separate the Palestinian
attackers and Israeli units. I reaffirmed our policy of insisting that Israeli soldiers
use live fire only if they felt their lives were under threat. Arafat undertook to order
his security forces and Tanzim not to launch further attacks. He even phoned Gaza
with what we were given to understand were explicit orders. But it was all for
show, as we discovered when we were invited to the Elysée Palace to meet Chirac.
The French President had clearly received advance word from Arafat about his
demand for an international “protection” force, presumably with a role for the
French. To my surprise and frustration, and Secretary Albright’s as well, Chirac
insisted that no agreement was acceptable without that happening. Then, he turned
to me, demanding to know why the violence had left nearly 400 Palestinians dead,
but barely two dozen Israelis, if the Palestinians were the aggressors. “Mr
President,” I said, “just several weeks ago we were prepared to go very far in order
to put this entire conflict behind us. It is Mr Arafat who rejected the proposal, even
as a basis for negotiations. Just a basis to seek peace. He then deliberately turned to
terror. We are protecting ourselves, and our soldiers. Are you really saying that
you’ll be happy for us to sign an agreement to end it only when another 350
Israelis are killed? I’m not playing that game. Arafat started this. He has to stop it.
We know he can, and we hold him responsible if that does not happen.”
It did not happen. We tried all we could to prevent a further deterioration. I
approved moves, in co-ordination with the Palestinian police, to lower our security
profile where possible. We made sure Israeli police were not visible from the
mosques on the Haram al-Sharif. But after the next Friday prayers, a crowd made
its way to a police post at the edge of the Old City and attacked it. In Nablus, the
burial site of Joseph had long been a source of tension. Shlomo Ben-Ami reached
381
/ BARAK / 96
an agreement with the Palestinians to replace an Israeli troop cordon there with
Palestinian police. But on the morning of Saturday October 7th, hours after the
Palestinian police took over, a mob attacked, burned and ransacked the site. They
destroyed the Torah scrolls. A few hours later, our soldiers found the body of a
rabbi from a nearby settlement. He had gone to survey the damage to the
synagogue.
That evening, I delivered an ultimatum: “If we don’t see a change in the
patterns of violence in the next two days, we will regard this as a cessation by
Arafat of the peace process.” That did, briefly, have an effect. When Clinton
reinforced my message later in the day, Dennis told me that for the first time, he
sensed that Arafat realized he had to act. But again, it was not enough, nor in
anything like a sustained manner. And with an appalling act of murder three days
afterwards, it was too late. That outrage came in Ramallah. Two Israeli reservists
took a wrong turn and ended up driving into the town. They were taken to the
Palestinian police station. Hundreds of people broke in and stabbed them, gouged
their eyes out and disembowled them. In a chilling image broadcast around the
world, one of the murderers brandished the bloodstained palms of his hands in a
gesture of triumph. Since I was Defense Minister as well, I spent the hours that
followed in the kirya. We ordered attack helicopters into action for the first time,
though with advance warning to local Palestinians in the areas we targeted. We
destroyed the Ramallah police station, as well as a militia base near Arafat’s
headquarters in Gaza. But Arafat emerged to tell a cheering crowd: “Our people
don’t care. They don’t hesitate to continue their march to Jerusalem, the capital of
the Palestinian independent state.”
Israelis did care. It is hard to say which emotion was more powerful: disgust or
fury. But if the opinion polls were to be believed, a large majority wanted us to hit
back with the full force of the Israeli army. Still, my overriding aim remained to
end the violence if possible, not make it worse. When Clinton asked me to join
him, Arafat, King Abdullah of Jordan and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan for a
summit in Sharm al-Sheikh, I agreed. We worked out a series of steps to
disengage. Arafat was finally supposed to order the Palestinian Authority security
forces and Tanzim to cease fire, and establish no-go perimeters around our army
positions. We would reopen Gaza airport and, over a period of two weeks, pull
back our forces to where they had been before the violence began. But again, it
didn’t happen. The Palestinian attacks intensified and, as I’d made clear at the
382
/ BARAK / 97
summit, we responded. The only, brief, lull came when Arafat feared the
Americans would cancel his scheduled visit to Washington to see Clinton on
November 9. I was due to follow him three days later.
I met Clinton and Dennis Ross over dinner in a little kitchen area attached to the
Oval Office, and both seemed surprisingly upbeat. The President said he’d told
Arafat the broad points that would be in the new American negotiating paper. It
was Camp David-plus. Assuming all issues in a final peace were agreed, the
Palestinians would now end up, after a land swap near Gaza, with a “mid-90-
percent” share of the West Bank. On Jerusalem, the guiding principle would be
“what is Arab will be Palestinian, and what is Jewish, Israeli.” On the Temple
Mount, the Haram al-Sharif, each side would have control of its own holy sites.
Finally, though Palestinian refugees would be free to return in unlimited numbers
to a new Palestinian state, there would be no “right of return” to pre-1967 Israel.
The President told me that after he’d run all this by Arafat, he and Dennis had
asked whether “in principle” these were parameters he could accept. Arafat had
said yes.
I assume they expected me to say the same. But I told them I couldn’t give them
an answer. What concerned me now was the violence. Until it was reined in, I
would not be party to rewarding Arafat diplomatically. I urged the Americans to
make ending the violence their focus as well, because if they didn’t get tougher on
Arafat’s noncompliance with anything resembling a de-escalation, Israel would do
so.
* * *
Since the Knesset had returned before my trip to Washington, I’d needed first to
make sure my government would survive. The obvious, or at least the most
mathematically secure, choice would have been a deal with Sharon. Especially
since the lynching in Ramallah, there were calls from politicians on all sides for a
unity coalition between Labor and Likud. Arik definitely wanted in. The main
issue reamined the peace process. I didn’t find Arik’s specific objections to Camp
David hard to deal with. As I’d said from the start, the fact that we’d failed to reach
an agreement at the summit meant that any concessions I’d considered were now,
383
/ BARAK / 98
in legal and diplomatic terms, null and void. The package Arafat had ultimately
rejected had not even been presented by me. It was an American proposal. Besides,
it was obvious no serious negotiations were going to happen anyway for the
foreseeable future. Arik, however, said he wanted not just a “full divorce” from
Camp David. He insisted we formally declare an end to the entire Oslo process.
I told him that was a price I was not prepared to pay for his support. Despite the
failure of the summit, and the terrible human cost from Arafat’s choice of violence
over diplomacy, there was a wide international recognition that it was the
Palestinians, not Israel, who were responsible. For us to end the Oslo process
meant inviting accusations we’d never intended to reach a peace agreement in the
first place, and that it was Israel that was closing the door. We would also risk
forfeiting the American support we’d secured by our efforts to reach a peace deal,
an asset all Israeli governments would benefit from in other circumstances and
contexts in the future.
Fortunately, I had an alternative to a coalition with the Likud. Alarmed at the
prospect of a having Sharon in the government, the Oslo-era doves in Labor, led by
Yossi Beilin, worked out a new deal with Shas. The Sephardi Orthodox party was
still not prepared to rejoin the cabinet, but it did promise a “safety net” in the
Knesset to ensure we would not have to worry about no-confidence votes while
confronting the Palestinian violence. I knew Shas’s support would waver if there
was a resumption of serious peace negotiations. Still, as Clinton continued to insist
we make one final attempt to get a deal, I felt we had a responsibility to play our
part. I wasn’t prepared to put us in the position of appearing to stoneweall his
efforts, and encourage the false narrative that Israeli “intransigence” was somehow
frustrating Arafat’s readiness to make peace.
The Palestinian campaign of violence was getting worse. An Islamic Jihad car
bomb near Mahaneh Yehudah market in Jerusalem injured nearly a dozen people
and left two dead. Hamas blew up a school bus in one of the Gaza settlements,
killing two more people. In Hadera, halfway up the coast from Tel Aviv to Haifa, a
car bomb on a main street left two people dead and more than 60 injured.
Palestinian snipers from near Bethlehem began opening fire on Gilo, one of the
post-1967 Jewish suburbs of Jerusalem, and home to more than 30,000 people. Yet
despite all this, I authorized Shlomo Ben-Ami, Gili Sher, Amnon Lipkin and Yossi
Ginossar to continue talks with Palestinian negotiators on the terms of the
President’s last-ditch peace proposal.
384
/ BARAK / 99
By the end of November, I believed that the chances of a peace agreement with
Arafat were so microscopic as to border on non-existent, and that my own
prospects for retaining sufficient support to be an effective Prime Minister much
beyond Clinton’s departure were not much better. It was not just Arik and the
Likud, but other parties on the right that were actively attempting to bring down
the government. I was being squeezed politically: by opposition to the concessions,
especially on Jerusalem, I’d been willing to consider in pursuit of a peace
agreement, and by the ever-worsening Palestinian violence. Shlomo Ben-Ami put
it best, saying that in the view of most Israelis, “Arafat’s response to Camp David
was not peace, it was an intifada.”
By the second part of November, there were five separate motions of noconfidence
working their way through the Knesset. I could have quashed them all
at a single stroke, since Arik, both publicly and privately, was conveying to me his
continuing interest in joining a unity coalition. But I again decided against it, at
this stage not so much because I expected a peace deal, but because I believed
continued Israeli engagement in the peace process was essential to preventing
Arafat from evading his responsibility for making a deal impossible.
I could also have wrongfooted my opponents by insisting that any early election
be not just for a new Prime Minister but for a new Knesset, something very few
existing Knesset members were anxious to see happen. I did, in fact, do precisely
that at the end of November, delaying an immediate move to try to topple the
government. But I immediately regretted doing it. The game-playing side of
politics was the part I least understood, and most disliked. I recognized that to
bring down the Knesset along with me would be unfair to the country, not to
mention my own Labor Party, which still had the largest number of parliamentary
seats. In pursuing my peace efforts with Hafez al-Assad, and at Camp David, I’d
insisted I was acting on the mandate I’d received in the Prime Ministerial election.
If the peace efforts had failed, or if a significant part of the country felt I was
wrong to have tried in the way I did, surely the responsibility for that, too, should
fall on me.
I remained confident I had been right to make the efforts with Arafat, with
Assad, and, of course, to have followed through on my pledge to withdraw our
troops from Lebanon. But believing that you are right, even if later events might
bear you out, was not all that mattered in politics. You had to be able to bring the
public with you. It was clear my support was ebbing away. Looking ahead to the
385
/ BARAK / 100
challenges Israel would face during Clinton’s final period in office and afterwards,
I knew I could not go further without seeking a fresh mandate from the country,
however unlikely the prospects now seemed.
Deciding to do so was a decision that was probably easier for me than for other
politicians. Privileged though I felt as Prime Minister to be able to pursue what I
felt deeply were Israel’s national interests, the trappings of office were not that
important to me. I’d gone into politics to do things, not for the photo opportunities.
I did still believe it was important to see the final diplomatic push by Clinton
through to its end. But I knew an early election for Prime Minister wouldn’t
happen overnight. It would involve a couple of months’ preparation.
* * *
When I called a news conference on December 9, the media, and the country,
assumed that it was about the Palestinian violence and the ups and downs of the
Clinton initiative, and I did talk about both. But at the end, I said: “There are those
who doubt the mandate I received from the citizens of Israel. I have decided to
seek a new mandate – to lead the state of Israel on the road to peace, security and a
proper civic and social agenda.” I said I would go see the Israeli President the
following morning. “I will formally resign, and run for a special election, at the
head of the Labor Party, for the Prime Ministership of Israel.”
The election was set for February 2001. The last act in President Clinton’s
attempt at a breakthrough actually came after the American election, and just a
month before George W. Bush would succeed him. Since, in practical terms, any
final agreement would almost certainly come under President Bush, Clinton’s final
negotiating paper was framed as a set of paramaters which, if agreed to by both
sides, were intended to set the stage for a final deal. On December 23, Clinton
presented the draft to both sides’ representatives at the White House. I wasn’t
there. But the accounts I got from Shlomo, Gili and Dennis Ross afterwards made
me feel as if I was. The president said he would read through the document and
then leave the Israeli and Palestinian teams with Dennis to make sure they’d
recorded each detail. He said this was no longer the starting point for further
argument on the basic shape of a peace deal. This was his considered judgement of
386
/ BARAK / 101
what would constitute a fair agreement. He was presenting it on a take-it-or-leaveit
basis. If either side said no, he would withdraw it, and it would not be binding on
President Bush.
He proceeded to lay out his proposal. It now envisaged the Palestinians ending
up with between 95 and 97 percent of the West Bank. Israel’s military presence in
the Jordan Valley would be for a maximum of six years, after which our soldiers
would be replaced by an international force. On refugees, the solution Clinton
proposed would “make it clear there is no specific right of return to Israeli itself”
but recognize “the aspiration of the Palestinian people to return to the area.” He
proposed a joint endorsement by Israel and the Palestinians of the right of refugees
to return to a new Palestinian state. In Jerusalem, Arafat would have sovereignty
over the entirety of the Old City except for the Jewish Quarter and, of course, the
Western Wall and the “holy space of which it is a part.” Finally, the President said,
this would be a final peace: an end of conflict and, once implemented, an end to
any further claims. He wanted replies from Israel and the Palestinians within five
days. Dennis added that, while both sides could come back with reservations, if
any of these fell outside the substantive limits of President Clinton’s parameters,
the response would be interpreted as a “no” and our search for an agreement would
be over.
Clinton’s latest proposals went beyond even what I was willing to have him
keep in his pocket at Camp David. Opposition politicians in Israel, and even a few
of our cabinet ministers, promptly objected to the formula for Jerusalem. I told the
critics – as I knew I’d have to argue to the country in a referendum, in the
vanishingly unlikely event we actually reached an agreeement – that making peace
was not like making love. It was something you did with enemies. I, too, would
have preferred to say no to Clinton’s ideas on Jerusalem. But to reject them would
have placed Israel in the position of rejecting the entire Clinton paper, something I
was not prepared to do.
I sent word to the President that we accepted his ideas. We did raise
reservations – twenty-eight in all, about how various parts of the agreement would
work on the ground. But none fell outside his parameters for a peace agreement. At
first Arafat asked the Americans for more time. Then he went to Washington to see
Clinton. There, he presented his “reservations”. They were not just outside the
Clinton parameters. They rejected two key elements. Arafat said there could be no
387
/ BARAK / 102
Israeli sovereignty over the Western Wall of the ancient temple. Nor would he
agree to any compromise on the “right of return.”
For me, that was the final answer. As one Palestinian leader remarked to me
amid the still-escalating terror attacks a couple of years later, the Palestinians had
“needed a Ben-Gurion, but we got an Arafat.” He didn’t mean Ben-Gurion the
Zionist, but the statesman who at crucial moments like the partition vote in 1947,
could give up his maximalist hopes and dreams in order to secure a better future
for his people. Arafat felt much more comfortable, more secure, when the suicide
bombers were calling the tune. Then he could whip up the crowds with promises of
“marching on Jerusalem” or jet around the world telling everyone that Israel was
denying his right to a state.
* * *
Though I now knew an agreement was impossible, for many on the Israeli left,
my ostensible allies in the forthcoming election campaign against Arik, that was
hard to accept. Particularly for Yossi Sarid of Meretz, and to a certain extent Yossi
Beilin too, the only explanation for our failure to get a deal had to be that we
hadn’t negotiated well or creatively enough. The idea that Arafat simply didn’t
want a two-state peace was anathema to them. So was the political platform I said
that I hoped to implement if I was re-elected as Prime Minister. Maybe, at some
point in the future, a negotiated peace might be possible. We had accomplished
something of importance at Camp David. We’d made clear our red lines. We knew
where Arafat stood. But for now, I believed we had to move on, both in order to
keep the situation on the ground from getting worse and to act in Israel’s own longterm
political and security interests. I said we should unilaterally disengage from
the West Bank and Gaza.
The idea was straightforward. The Palestinians’ unwillingness to accept even
the final Clinton parameters, driven home with murderous ferocity by the
explosion of violence since Camp David, should not be allowed to paralyze Israel
politically. I proposed that we map out the area we required to retain and secure the
major settlement blocs, as well as the outer East Jerusalem suburbs; a further
security strip along the Jordan River; and several other strategically important
388
/ BARAK / 103
points. It would amount to retaining control over around 20 percent of the West
Bank, but none of the major Arab towns or cities. Though deliberately stopping
well short of share of the West Bank Arafat could have secured through a
negotiated peace, it would remove Israeli troops and settlers from most of the
territory. It would give the Palestinians ample room to set up a state if they so
chose, and conceivably to expand its area if some future leader had more of the
“Ben-Gurion” in him than Arafat. Until then, it would allow both of our peoples to
get on with their lives and focus on their own political and social and economic
challenges.
There was a second, critically important part to what I was proposing: the
construction of a physical security fence along the new “disengagement line” with
the West Bank. It was the suggestion rejected under Rabin, accepted under Peres
amid the Hamas bombings in the 1996 election campaign, but never followed
through on. Even under the new arrangement I envisaged, Israeli troops would
retain the freedom of action to respond to, or pre-empt, terror attacks with targeted
operations inside the West Bank. But the physical barrier would hugely increase
our ability to halt the attackers before they could strike.
Yet even if I’d been able to bring those on the left of Labor behind the plan, this
election campaign was going to be a lot tougher than in 1999. Since Knesset
members weren’t running for their seats, the Labor machine lacked its usual
incentive put up posters, knock on doors, or get out the vote. Arik, however,
benefited from the enthusiasm of Likudniks and other right-wing activists who saw
an opportunity to retake control of Israel’s political agenda.
Long before election day, I realized my time as Prime Minister was up. Before
the campaign began, an old friend of mine, a leading Israeli journalist, tried to talk
me into withdrawing. “You’re going to lose, Ehud,” he said. “Why, after making
all this effort for peace, after doing your best, do you want the last act to be losing
to Arik?” I’d never seen the objective as just staying in office. If that had been the
case, I wouldn’t have put the chances of a peace deal with Syria to their final test. I
wouldn’t have gone to Camp David. I also would have accepted Arik’s serial
offers to join a unity coalition. But never in my life had I walked away from a
challenge. I certainly wasn’t going to retreat in the midst of Palestinian violence,
and when Israel still faced key decisions on how to move on from Arafat’s
unreadiness to negotiate an end to our decades-old conflict.
389
/ BARAK / 104
I did regret being unable to rely on the support of two key constituencies that
had helped deliver my landslide victory barely 18 months earlier: my own Labor
Party and the Arab citizens of Israel. I had no trouble understanding the reasons
many Israeli Arabs were abandoning me. The clashes in the Galilee at the start of
the new intifada had left more than a dozen of their community dead. As an official
inquiry would later conclude, there was blame on all sides. A number of Arab
members of the Knesset had played a part in inciting the violence. Yet the police
had been unprepared, and they had used excessive force. As I said publicly before
the election, I, as Prime Minister, was ultimately responsible, and I formally
apologized for what had happened. Yet the roots went deeper, to the economic and
social disadvantages still faced by many Arab citizens, and the difficulty in
resolving those problems calmly and collectively as long as Israel remained in a
state of war with its Arab neighbors.
For Labor and the political left, it was as if, despite Arafat’s repeated rejections
of ever more forthcoming terms of peace, they still couldn’t bring themselves to
believe he really meant it. By default, they were inclined to blame me for not
delivering peace. I was accused of relying too much on a close circle of aides and
negotiators I’d known from my time in the army, of not giving a negotiating role to
Labor veterans of the Oslo negotiations like Yossi Beilin, and of being
insufficiently sensitive to Arafat’s needs in the negotiating process. Typical of the
argument was a broadside by the journalist and historian Tom Segev, in Ha’aretz,
which accused me of an “incredible arrogance” which had “led to an historic
mistake. Rather than continue on the Oslo road, Barak put it into his head that he
could reach a final settlement and try and impose it on the Palestinian Authority
President.” I did not try to “impose” anything on Arafat. I did, quite consciously,
abandon the “Oslo road” because it was inexorably leading to a situation where,
after the final Wye redeployments, Arafat would have control over the great
majority of the West Bank without having to commit to any of the assurances that
even most on the Israeli left would define as the minimum required for peace.
Now, of course, we knew that was something the Palestinian leader was not
prepared to do.
When election day came, not that many of my critics on the left actually voted
against me. Nor did the Israeli Arabs. Yet in very large numbers, they simply
didn’t vote. In percentage terms, Arik’s victory was even more decisive than mine
over Bibi. He got more than 62 percent of the vote. I received barely 37 percent.
390
/ BARAK / 105
Yet the turnout was the lowest in Israeli history. Arik received fewer votes than I
had in 1999. Around half of the 1.8 million people who had supported me stayed at
home.
I conceded defeat after the first exit polls and said I would be stepping down as
head of the Labor Party. Still, since the election had been only for Prime Minister,
Labor remained the largest party in the Knesset. Mathematically, Arik might be
able to cobble together the required 61-seat majority with an assortment of smaller
parties. But without Labor as ballast, his government would be even more
precarious than mine. When I triggered the election, he’d let it be known that if he
won, he hoped to include Labor in his government, with me as his Defense
Minister. Even though I’d announced I was stepping aside, he phoned me the
morning after the election to make that argument again. He said Israel needed a
strong government, especially to confront the escalating violence. Having a person
with my background, whom he knew well and trusted, in the defense portfolio was
important. I didn’t say yes. Unfortunately, I failed to do what I should have done: I
didn’t immediately say no.
When the public learned about Sharon’s interest in a unity government, Labor
descended into bickering. Some of my former ministers, like Yossi Beilin and
Shlomo Ben-Ami, were against the idea of joining any Likud-led government.
They were especially disgusted by the prospect of doing so under Arik, the
architect of the 1982 Lebanon War. Most of the Labor’s central committee did
seem in favor of joining. But given the scale of my election defeat, many wanted
do so without me. For a few days, Arik kept phoning me. I did feel that the
substance of the arrangement he suggested made sense. But over that first week, I
realized that, understandably, he had little interest in addressing my policy
concerns. I decided to focus instead on ensuring a properly organized transition to
a new Labor party leader, and publicly confirmed that I would indeed be resigning.
Several weeks after Arik formed his government – including Labor, with Simon
Peres as one of four deputy prime ministers – he invited me to his office. He
wanted to ask my views on a specific security question. That took barely 15
minutes. But I raised another issue that I argued would have more far-reaching
implications. It was the idea of building the security fence along the West Bank.
I’d tried to make the case for doing so during the election campaign, and I’d lost
the election. “Now I’m turning to you. When I left office, 39 Israelis had been
killed in the terror attacks. Now, there are 70. When the number reaches 700,
391
/ BARAK / 106
there’s no doubt you’ll decide to build this fence. But to your dying day, you won’t
be able to look yourself in the mirror and explain why you waited for another 630
Israelis to die first.”
He did eventually start building it, but only in the wake of an act of terrorism
which, even by the standards of this new and still-escalating intifada, was truly
obscene. In March 2002, suicide bombers murdered 30 people, mostly elderly, as
they were celebrating the annual Passover Seder in a hotel dining room in Netanya.
Arik hit back two days later with Israel’s largest military operation on the West
Bank since 1967. Israeli forces retook major Palestinian towns, placed Arafat
under de facto siege in his headquarters in Ramallah and imposed curfews and
closures. In June, the government formally approved the security fence. Still,
another year would pass before the major part of the barrier was in place, by which
time some 500 Israelis had been murdered in the terror attacks. Only then did the
number of casualties begin to fall.
I tried to steer clear of public criticism of Arik’s government. One of the lessons
I’d learned as Prime Minister was how easy it was to second-guess from the
outside. No Prime Minister can act exactly as he might plan or want to. The most
you can do is make sure you understand and analyze the issues and follow your
instincts, experience and conscience to come as near as possible to doing what you
believe is right. You will inevitably make mistakes and misjudgements. I certainly
did. At least some of the criticism I received was deserved. I was at times too
inflexible. I tended to limit my focus to a small group of trusted aides and advisors.
I was less good at schmoozing with – or, perhaps more importantly, delegating to –
others in the government or the party. I suspect it’s no coincidence that the man
who brought me into government in the first place was often criticized for the same
things. By character, instinct and experience, Rabin, too, remained less a politician
than a military man. Yet towards the end of his second period as Prime Minister,
he did get better at delegating to people around him, and creating an atmosphere
that encouraged teamwork, even when he knew he could not accept or act on
everything they might suggest. During my term as Prime Minister, I was much less
good at that.
But another thing Yitzhak and I shared was a determination to set ourselves
specific goals and do everything we could to achieve them. I promised to get the
army out of Lebanon. With the Palestinians, I arrived in office convinced that the
process begun in Oslo was both a huge opportunity and a potential dead-end. I was
392
/ BARAK / 107
determined to focus on the end goal: initially, at least, a framework agreement, and
over time a final political resolution of our conflict. Ever since the outbreak of the
Palestinians’ first intifada, I believed this was as much in Israel’s own interest as
theirs. Yet when I entered office, we had no way of knowing whether Arafat
wanted two states living side-by-side in peace. I felt it was my duty to find out,
and, if the answer was yes, to put a peace agreement in place. I felt the same about
way about Syria and Hafez al-Assad.
When I left office, I believed I had achieved the most important goals of my
premiership. We were out of Lebanon. Though we couldn’t achieve the peace
agreements I had hoped for, it was not for lack of trying. Along the way, Israel had
demonstrated to the world that it was able and willing to consider painful
compromises, and that it was the Arab leaders who, at least for now, were unequal
to the challenge of making peace. If I’d been able to retain the backing of the
voters who made me Prime Minister in 1999, we might even have moved ahead on
unilateral disengagement from the Palestinians, dramatically altering the trajectory
of our relationship. Yet even without that, Camp David did delineate the terms of
any future peace arrangement. When and if conditions allowed a resumption of
serious negotiating efforts, the shape, and indeed most of the details, of a final
peace between our peoples were now clear.
I was on holiday in the summer of 2001 when Clinton phoned me. The New
Times had run a piece on how and why the summit, and the subsequent
negotiations through the end of the year, ended in failure. When I later read the
article, by the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Deborah Sontag, I found it a
meandering mix of opinions garnered from an assortment of Americans,
Europeans, Israelis and Palestinians, including Arafat himself, with the overall
conclusion that Clinton and I had not offered as generous a deal as was assumed
and that it was somehow unfair to suggest the Palestinians deserved blame for
rejecting it. There had been several other articles in various publications along the
same lines. I didn’t see much point at this stage in setting the record straight. To
the extent the content of the Times piece bothered me, it was a simple, but
important, error of fact. Quoting Arafat himself, Sontag wrote that during the backpatio
discussion I had with him at the dinner in Kochav Yair shortly before the new
intifada, he’d “implored me to block Mr Sharon’s plans” to visit the Temple
Mount. Arafat didn’t raise the issue at all, and presumably knew that we had
consulted his West Bank security chief to ensure it happened quickly, avoided the
393
/ BARAK / 108
mosques on the Haram, and would not become a catalyst, or in this case a pretext,
for violence.
Yet the revisionist history about our peace efforts left Clinton not just
frustrated, but genuinely puzzled. What the hell were these people talking about, he
asked me. Why were they missing the forest for the trees. “The true story of Camp
David,” he said, “was that for the first time in the history of the conflict, you and I,
the Prime Minister of Israel and the President of the United States, placed on the
table a proposal, based on Resolutions 242 and 338, very close to the Palestinian
demands. And Arafat refused to accept it as a basis of negotiations, walked out of
the room, and deliberately turned to terrorism.” All the rest, President Clinton said,
was gossip.
All of it was now irrelevant, too. His parameters were off the table. Palestinian