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wasn’t enough, David Levy, my Foreign Minister, told me he would not be joining
me at Camp David. He wasn’t resigning, at least not yet. But he knew that the final
decisions at the summit would be mine, he feared it would fail, and didn’t want to
share in the consequences.

None of this meant I wasn’t going. Even if the no-confidence vote succeeded,
the new Israeli electoral system, with its separate vote for Prime Minister, meant I
would remain in office, at least until the summit was over. In a nationally televised
message, I reminded the country that I’d been elected with nearly two million
votes. I felt I had a responsibility, and a mandate, that went beyond party politics.
“I must rise above the political arguments, and seek out all possibilities on the way
to a peace agreement that will end the conflict, and the blood, between us and our
neighbors.” I made the same points before the Knesset. I did, of course, want
parliamentary support. But I was acting on a mandate from the people of Israel. It
was they, in a referendum, who would ultimately decide on anything we might
agree. When the Knesset votes were counted, thanks to the fact two dozen MKs
stained, both sides lost. Arik fell seven votes short of a majority. So the
government survived. But those opposed to the summit got more votes than we
did: 54 to 52.

There were several consolations as I prepared to fly out from Ben-Gurion
airport. Shas leader Eli Yishai passed me an envelope on the tarmac. Inside was a
note from Rabbi Ovadia Yossef, the Shas spiritual leader whom I’d met with
privately after the election and a number of times since. He wanted to wish me
good luck. Nearly 30 reserve generals also issued a public message of support.
Perhaps most encouragingly, a newspaper poll found a majority of Israelis – 55
percent to 45 – believed I was right to go to Camp David and that I had a mandate
to make concessions in return for peace.

David Levy came over to talk before I boarded. “I doubt we’ll get an
agreement,” he said. I told him what I was telling other ministers, what I’d told
reporters and, in fact what I had told Nava. “The odds are fifty-fifty.” The reporters
took this as coy, or deliberately deceptive. So I added that it was not because I
knew something they didn’t. “It’s because there are two possible outcomes, and I
don’t know which one will happen.” The gaps of substance were bridgeable. The
question was whether both sides wanted peace, and whether each had made a
serious, strategic decision to go for it. I’d made that choice. But I had no way of
knowing whether Yasir Arafat had.

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