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Palestinian architect of Oslo, was with him, along with a more junior aide who served the tea and sweets. At least this time, Arafat didn’t take notes as we spoke. The mood was friendly. We talked about a whole range of issues. With ony one exception: what was really happening, or what should happen, in the summit talks. I found the exercise disappointing as a result. But Yossi Ginossar assured me it would help the atmosphere, and would eventually translate into negotiating progress. “I hope so,” I said.

It wasn’t until day-four that real talks began. The Americans arranged for negotiating teams from both sides on borders, the refugee issue, and Jerusalem to meet with President Clinton. The Palestinians participated, but showed no sign at all of a readiness to compromise. Borders should have been the most straightforward. Assuming we wanted a deal, it was about sitting down with a map and working out how to address both sides’ arguments. But Arafat’s representative in the meeting – the Oslo negotiator Abu Ala’a – said he wouldn’t even discuss borders without a prior agreement to land swaps ensuring Palestinian control over an area equivalent to 100 percent of the West Bank. Shlomo Ben-Ami did try to find a way around this. He suggested the Palestinians assume that to be the case for the purposes of the meeting, so that at least there could be meaningful discussion of the border, including the provisions Israel wanted in order to retain the major settlement blocks. President Clinton agreed that made sense. He said that without talking about the substance of such issues, there wasn’t going to be a deal. Even Abu Ala’a seemed receptive, according to Shlomo. But he insisted that he would have to ask Arafat first whether it was okay.

On refugees, pretty much the same thing happened. The Americans, and I assumed at that point even the Palestinians, knew that a peace deal would be impossible if we agreed to hundreds of thousands of refugees entering Israel – in effect leaving the state created in 1948 with a Jewish minority. But when President Clinton began trying to narrow down details of a compromise resettlement package – how many refugees would return, where they would go, and how to arrange international financial support for them – Abu Mazen insisted that nothing could be discussed until without a prior Israeli acceptance of the “principle of the right of return.” On Jerusalem, according to Gilead Sher, the President didn’t even try to find common ground on the core issue: sovereignty. Instead he used the formula Shlomo Ben-Ami had suggested, telling each side to proceed on the assumption sovereignty was decided in its favour, and to concentrate instead on how everyday

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