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municipal functions and daily life would be divided between Israel and the
Palestinians under a peace agreement.

When I convened our negotiators in my cabin to take stock of the logjam, I was
getting more and more skeptical of finding a way to get to actual negotiation on the
“hard decisions” I assumed both sides knew we’d have to make. I told our team we
could not play that game. Until there was at least some movement from Arafat, I
didn’t want them suggesting any Israeli concessions. We’d obviously get nothing
in return. The summit would fail. Despite my repeated insistence both to the
Americans and Palestinians that, without an agreement, any Israeli suggestions
would be null and void, that didn’t mean they would simply be forgotten. The
result is that we’d actually be in a worse situation than before Camp David.
Politically, I’d find myself in much the same position as President Assad, after the
leak of the American draft from Shepherdstown: apparently ready to consider
giving Arafat the great majority of the West Bank, without the slightest sign Arafat
was ready for a full and final peace. But that wasn’t my main concern. It was that
anything that we put on the table here would handcuff future Israeli governments if
and when an “end of conflict” agreement became possible.

Still, when Dennis Ross learned from my negotiators what I’d decided, he was
frustrated and upset. He came to see me on Saturday morning – day-five of what
was looking increasingly like a stillborn summit. “This summit was your idea,” he
said, reminding me that the President had agreed to it over the reservations of a lot
his own aides. He told me that at a minimum, I had to help give it a chance: by
giving him my true negotiating “red lines.” Either that, or give my negotiators
more leeway to explore compromises. I did not want to make Dennis’s job any
more difficult than it already was. 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

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