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they were willing to consider full Palestinian sovereignty over two Arab
neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, and even some form of Palestinian authority and
control in the Christian and Muslim quarters inside the walls of the Old City. They
had dropped our insistence on Israeli control over the Jordan Valley, suggesting
that we hold on to only a small segment of the border with Jordan. They had gone
beyond the share of the West Bank allocated to a Palestinian state on the map that
Abu Ala’a wouldn’t even look at. Now, they suggested around 90 percent. But
when I asked what the Palestinian negotiators, Saeb Erekat and Mohammed
Dahlan, had proposed in return, the answer was almost nothing. They had taken
notes. They had asked questions. The one Palestinian proposal, from Saeb Erekat,
was on Jerusalem: Palestinian sovereignty over all the city’s predominantly Arab
areas, and Israeli sovereignty over Jewish neighborhoods. In other words, a
division of the city.

Even though I was concerned that Gili and Shlomo had gone so far, especially
on Jerusalem, I’d reached the point where I doubted that even that would matter.
We were now in day-six of the summit, barely 48 hours from President Clinton’s
departure for the G-8 summit, and we were negotiating only with ourselves.
Knowing that the President planned to go see Arafat, I sat down and wrote him a
note – emotional not just because I did it quickly, but because of how deeply let
down I felt by the Palestinians’ deliberate avoidance of a peace deal which, with
genuine reciprocity, should have been within reach. “I took the report of Shlomo
Ben-Ami and Gilead Sher of last night’s discussion very badly...” it began. “This is
not a negotiation. This is a manipulative attempt to pull us to a position we will
never be able to accept, without the Palestinians moving one inch.” I reminded
President Clinton that just as he was taking political risks, I was too. “Even the
positions presented by our people last night, though they are not my positions,
represent an additional risk,” I said.

I said I doubted there would be another Israeli leader willing to engage in
serious efforts for a final peace agreement with the Palestinians after what had
happened here. Unless things changed dramatically, I was not prepared for us to
throw out further suggestions, or consider painful concessions. “I do not intend to
allow the Israeli state to fall apart, physically or morally. The State of Israel is the
implementation of the dream of the Jewish people, for generation upon generation.
We achieved it after enormous effort, and at the expenditure of a great deal of
blood and sweat. There is no way I will preside at Camp David over the closing of

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