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/ BARAK / 15

By November, even his Foreign Minister, David Levy, was making noises
about quitting. He said it would be a waste of time to stay in the cabinet if it was
going to bring the peace process to a halt. I warned Bibi, both in the Knesset and in
a series of speeches, about the alternative on the Palestinian side if those who
wanted a negotiated peace had nothing but stalemate to show for it. And lives, I
insisted, were at stake. Both through closed-door sessions of the Knesset’s security
and foreign affairs committee, and my own contacts in military intelligence, I was
convinced that the result would be a second, much more deadly, intifada. Not with
Molotov cocktails, but guns, and suicide bombs.

I was not out to score political points in keeping the pressure on Bibi to move
forward. In fact, I announced that if Bibi did go ahead and finalize the terms for
our Oslo redeployment, Labor would once again provide the extra Knesset votes
needed for him to get it approved.

Early in 1998, he sent word that he wanted to talk. The message came through
Yaakov Ne’eman, his Finance Minister and a prominent lawyer whom I knew and
liked. He and I held an exploratory meeting at which he proposed talks with Bibi
on the prospect of a unity government that would help move the peace process
forward. I said I’d talk, with one proviso: the discussions would be genuinely
secret, with no leaks. I was not prepared to engage in political gamesmanship. In
May, Bibi sent an assurance of confidentiality through Ne’eman. The first of about
a half-dozen meetings came a few days later at the Prime Minister’s residence in
Jerusalem. Then, we shifted venue, meeting at a Mossad-owned villa north of Tel
Aviv. I brought along Bougie Herzog, a bright young lawyer, and Labor Party
member, who was working in the same law firm and Ne’eman. It was by no means
clear we’d agree on a unity government. To my amusement, if not altogether to my
surprise, I got word that Bibi was putting out separate political feelers to Shimon
Peres. But before long, it became clear there was a specific political motivation
behind his approaching me. It was indeed the peace process. But it wasn’t the
Palestinian peace process, something Bibi still clearly wanted to avoid as much as
humanly possible. It was an attempt to engage with Syria.

He asked me about the talks under Rabin and Peres, and my views on the
possibility of a deal with President Assad. He also wanted my assessment about
whether the army could work out arrangements to safeguard the country’s security
if we handed back most, if not all, of the Golan Heights. If so, what kind of
security arrangements, with what timeline? We met through the summer, as the

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