HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011771.jpg

/ BARAK / 14

five-year interim period had yet to begin. In one respect, I had some sympathy for Bibi’s predicament. The reason I’d tried to get Yitzhak to alter the terms of Oslo II was that it required us to hand back control before we knew what a “permanent-status” peace deal would look like. But where my sympathy ended was in how Bibi handled the situation. Despite my concerns about the way the Oslo process had been designed, I never doubted that killing it off would be by far a worse alternative. Bibi had been elected to lead Israel. Instead, he acted as if he was playing some sort of pinball match, flipping the ball first one way, then the other, with no obvious aim beyond keeping it in play – and, where Oslo was concerned, simply stalling for time. Rather than setting out any vision of where he hoped to move the negotiating process, he seemed more concerned with keeping the right-wing of Likud and the smaller, even more extreme parties from turning against him.

In late September 1996, Bibi and the Likud mayor of Jerusalem, Ehud Olmert, decided to go ahead with the festive opening of an archeological tunnel that provided access to a larger portion of the Western Wall of the ancient Jewish temple. It was a decision that, under both Rabin and Peres, we’d delayed out of concern about inflaming tensions with the Palestinians. As Shimon rightly said publicly after the three days of violence that followed, we understood that, at a minimum, it would need to be coordinated beforehand with Arafat. As the unrest spread into the West Bank and Gaza, there were media warnings of a “new intifada,” the difference this time being that the Palestinians newly established police had entered the fray. By the time urgent US diplomacy, our efforts and Arafat’s, brought it to a close, 25 Israeli soldiers and nearly 100 Palestinians had been killed. He did not slam the brakes altogether on the American-led efforts to move ahead with the Oslo. In early 1997, in fact, he and Arafat reached a separate agreement on the critically important question, and potential flashpoint, of Hebron. It stipulated that about 80 percent of the area would be under Palestinian authority, with Israel retaining control and responsibility for nearby settlements and key security points. Despite right-wing and settler opposition, it was approved by a wide margin in the Knesset, with Labor’s backing. But a few months later, in the spring of 1997, Hamas launched a new campaign of suicide bombings in shopping areas of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, leaving 24 people dead. While not suggesting that Bibi took the human cost of terror lightly, he did use the attacks to drag out further US-mediated talks on the details of implementing the Oslo II redeployments.

300
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011771