HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011819.jpg

/ BARAK / 62

I was confident of finally answering that question at the summit. Camp David
was different from Shepherdstown. No reporters would be there. Mobile phones
were banned. Each delegation had one landline. We’d also be operating under a
time constraint. President Clinton was due to leave for a G8 summit in Japan on
July 19. The gave us barely a week. I did wonder whether that would be enough,
even if both sides were committed to reaching a peace agreement. Yet I hoped it
would at least provide the possibility, as it had for Begin and Sadat twenty-two
years earlier, to reach a framework agreement that open the door to a final peace
treaty.

Not just the time, but the numbers were limited. We and the Palestinians could
have only a dozen members in our negotiating teams. Some of my choices were
automatic: Danny Yatom; Shlomo Ben-Ami, whom I’d made acting Foreign
Minister in Levy’s absence; Amnon Lipkin and Attorney-General Elyakim
Rubinstein; Gilead Sher and his chief negotiating aide, Gidi Grinstein. I also took
along a strong security team, including Shlomo Yanai, head of strategic planning
the kirya, and Israel Hason, a former deputy-head of Shin Bet. There was another
important, if less obvious, inclusion: Dan Meridor. A leading member of the Likud
before he’d formed the Center Party at the last election, Dan was not just a friend.
He was a man of rock-solid integrity, with a strong moral and ethical compass,
who put principle over party. He was also a lawyer, and had been Minister of
Justice under Bibi. Along with Attorney-General Rubinstein, I knew I’d have a
gifted legal team if we got to the point of considering the specifics of a peace
agreement. There was another consideration as well. Both Dan and Elyakim were
right-of-center politically. I felt I needed their voices as a kind of litmus for the
tough decisions, and concessions, I might have to consider if an agreement did
prove possible.

I was not nervous as we crossed the Atlantic, though even those who knew me
best assumed I would be. Nava had sent me off with a list of dietary instructions,
almost like a surgeon general’s warning that Camp David might prove hazardous
to my health. But I felt prepared. I’d gone to every source I could find about the
Begin-Sadat summit. I knew there would be periods of crisis and that at certain
points I’d have to allow leeway for my own team to explore possible compromises
beyond our set negotiating limits. Yet none of this altered my belief that holding
the summit was the right thing to do, nor my confidence in being able to play my
part. I did feel a huge responsibility. Decades after our conflict with the

348
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011819