wasn’t enough, David Levy, my Foreign Minister, told me he would not be joining

/ BARAK / 61 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. “T 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 abstained, 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. 347 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011818