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[OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 10/9/2014, SPi]

xxxiv The Crooked Course

two-track approach: Bilateral negotiations in Washington; and the formation of several multilateral working groups to address specific issues such as water, refugees, the economy, etc. It is worth noting that the PLO was not accepted at the negotiating table. Instead the Palestinians were represented by a joint delegation of Jordanian officials and prominent Palestinians, who allegedly were not associated with the PLO. In stark contrast to the Oslo process, the Washington talks under the Madrid formula were public and in the constant glare of the media. This resulted in the parties continuously posturing to win the favor of the complex power structures that they reported to, as well as of domestic public constituencies. However, Madrid broke the taboo of direct bilateral talks between Arabs and Israelis. Madrid failed as a process, but succeeded as a spectacular event for creating hope, and formed a springboard for the subsequent secret Oslo talks.

As noted in the comments on Part I, Oslo and all subsequent agreements were embraced by the three Israeli Prime Ministers before Ehud Barak took office in 1999. As opposed to the gradualist approach of his predecessors, Barak took the path of totalism, i.e. aiming at solving all remaining issues in one go. Pursuant to this approach, as he put it: “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”. Heroically, he wanted to resolve simultaneously all matters with Lebanon, Syria, and the Palestinians, and put a final end to all conflicts.

Shortly after his election, I was invited to meet him at his home in the outskirts of Tel Aviv. He described his new approach metaphorically: “In order to resolve a problem, you need to analyze what the problem is, and define your objective. The problem at hand is that we have an ugly dog in front of us. The objective is to beautify the dog. In order to do so, you need to analyze why it is ugly. And then you see that it is the tail that makes the dog ugly. Through this analysis, our task becomes easy: by chopping off the tail we will have a beautiful dog.” And then he added sarcastically: “But I will not chop off the tail of the dog the way you Oslo people have been doing it, painfully slice by slice like a salami. We need to chop it off all in one go.”

In this spirit, in the summer of 2000 President Clinton brought the parties to the presidential estate at Camp David for marathon talks behind closed doors. The attempt failed for many reasons. First of all, a few weeks of talks did not provide ample time to address the thorniest issues (Oslo took six months of negotiation to address the least difficult issues). Other reasons were internal Palestinian disagreements and difficult interpersonal relations, in addition to a “take-it-or-leave it” approach by Israel.

Although the leaders left Camp David without diplomatic feathers in their cap, President Clinton and his team now had a clear sense of what was needed to bridge the gap between the two parties. In late December 2000, he presented what became known as the Clinton Parameters. They were a comprehensive set of American ideas on how to end the conflict. However, time was not on the side of peace. With his second term coming to an end, Clinton was unable to persuade the parties to conclude an agreement. In addition, Likud Party leader Ariel Sharon’s visit to the Temple Mount / Haram al-Sharif in September 2000 signaled the second Palestinian uprising. This reduced the room for maneuver for the Palestinian negotiators.

Following the election of George W. Bush as President of the United States, and against the backdrop of the new Intifada, Palestinian and Israeli negotiators gathered in

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