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the Palestinians after a transitional period. The part we had earmarked for
Palestinian control was now a bit over 85 percent of the West Bank, more than I’d
indicated to the President in our first meeting a year earlier. But while Abu Ala’a
had told Clinton he would ask for Arafat’s permission at least to negotiate, he
clearly hadn’t received it. He refused to talk about the map, or even respond to
Clinton’s suggestion that the Palestinians present a map of their own, until we did
two things: accept the principle of land swaps and reduce the size of the territory
we were suggesting for the settlement blocs. To Shlomo’s, and I’m sure even more
so to Abu Ala’a’s, astonishment, the President exploded. He told Abu Ala’a that to
refuse to provide any input or ideas was the very opposite of negotiation. It was an
“outrageous” approach. He stormed out.

It was late that evening when the first move toward the “make-or-break”
situation I had hoped for seemed to occur, though still with much more likelihood
of break than make. The President decided the only way to make progress was to
sequester a pair of negotiators from each side overnight. Their task would be to
search honesty for the outlines of a possible peace agreement. They were to update
Arafat and myself and then report to Clinton the next day. Then, we’d see where
we were. I agreed to send Shlomo and Gili Sher, my former “back-channel”
negotiators. I knew that whatever guidelines I gave them, they would probe beyond
them, just as they’d done in the back-channel talks. They were negotiators. They
were also smart, creative, badly wanted an agreement and, like me, believed it
ought to be possible. Though I would retain the final word to approve or reject
what they suggested, I knew that only in a legal sense could it be null and void. I
also recognized, however, that we had to be willing to push further, both to find
out for certain where the Palestinians stood and to convince the Americans we
genuinely wanted an agreement.

Shlomo and Gili left a little after midnight for Laurel Lodge. Marine guards
were posted at the doors, with orders that neither negotiating team was to leave
until morning without notifying the President’s staff. Mother Nature provided a
further incentive to stay inside, since it was again bucketing down with rain. The
negotiators talked not just through the night, but the next morning as well. It
wasn’t until early afternoon that Shlomo and Gili came to my cabin to report on
how they’d gone. As I’d anticipated, both of them had ventured beyond
concessions that I was ready to consider, at least at a time when we weren’t even
near to a final peace deal. Taking the President’s instructions to heart, they’d said

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