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points. It would amount to retaining control over around 20 percent of the West Bank, but none of the major Arab towns or cities. Though deliberately stopping well short of share of the West Bank Arafat could have secured through a negotiated peace, it would remove Israeli troops and settlers from most of the territory. It would give the Palestinians ample room to set up a state if they so chose, and conceivably to expand its area if some future leader had more of the “Ben-Gurion” in him than Arafat. Until then, it would allow both of our peoples to get on with their lives and focus on their own political and social and economic challenges.

There was a second, critically important part to what I was proposing: the construction of a physical security fence along the new “disengagement line” with the West Bank. It was the suggestion rejected under Rabin, accepted under Peres amid the Hamas bombings in the 1996 election campaign, but never followed through on. Even under the new arrangement I envisaged, Israeli troops would retain the freedom of action to respond to, or pre-empt, terror attacks with targeted operations inside the West Bank. But the physical barrier would hugely increase our ability to halt the attackers before they could strike.

Yet even if I’d been able to bring those on the left of Labor behind the plan, this election campaign was going to be a lot tougher than in 1999. Since Knesset members weren’t running for their seats, the Labor machine lacked its usual incentive put up posters, knock on doors, or get out the vote. Arik, however, benefited from the enthusiasm of Likudniks and other right-wing activists who saw an opportunity to retake control of Israel’s political agenda.

Long before election day, I realized my time as Prime Minister was up. Before the campaign began, an old friend of mine, a leading Israeli journalist, tried to talk me into withdrawing. “You’re going to lose, Ehud,” he said. “Why, after making all this effort for peace, after doing your best, do you want the last act to be losing to Arik?” I’d never seen the objective as just staying in office. If that had been the case, I wouldn’t have put the chances of a peace deal with Syria to their final test. I wouldn’t have gone to Camp David. I also would have accepted Arik’s serial offers to join a unity coalition. But never in my life had I walked away from a challenge. I certainly wasn’t going to retreat in the midst of Palestinian violence, and when Israel still faced key decisions on how to move on from Arafat’s unreadiness to negotiate an end to our decades-old conflict.

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