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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 reigned 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,

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