Where Clinton appears
346 total
ortant, if less obvious, inclusion: Dan Meridor. A leading member of the Likud before he’d formed the Center Party at the last election, Dan was not just a friend. He was a man of rock-solid integrity, with a strong moral and ethical compas...
…ones were banned. Each delegation had one landline. We’d also be operating under a time constraint. President Clinton was due to leave for a G8 summit in Japan on July 19. The gave us barely a week. I did wonder whether that would be enough...
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 politi...
not just peace, and international recognition and endorsement for it. But normalcy: the central aim of Zionism. Jews living in a state like any other. Ever since 1967, we had been in control of the daily lives of hundreds of thousands of Pa...
ernment, Labor or Likud, 345 / BARAK / 60 would agree to make them part of a Palestinian state. The second principle was that “Jerusalem will remain united.” It would not be cut into Jewish and Arab halves as had happened between 1948 and 1...
…ld consider limited, symbolic moves on both land swaps and Palestinian sovereignty in part of East Jerusalem. Clinton replied: the summit was on. It would begin at Camp David in one week’s time, on July 11. * * * Two days before leaving for...
…id. “We’ll raise new ideas, which the Palestinians will reject, and ask for more.” I don’t know what she told Clinton, or Arafat. But Dennis called me the following day. He said that Arafat had agreed to attend a summit, and would leave the...
o recognized I was ready to go further than any 343 / BARAK / 58 previous Israeli leader in trying to get that peace. I knew that he would press me to tell him how far that actually was. He didn’t ask directly. But each of his ostensibly th...
…nder my Premiership as well. The summit seemed to me more important than ever, but I knew that only President Clinton could make it happen. Short of giving the Palestinians the whole list of short-term rewards they wanted, including the thr...
…nder my Premiership as well. The summit seemed to me more important than ever, but I knew that only President Clinton could make it happen. Short of giving the Palestinians the whole list of
on said he was certain Arafat would refuse to attend a summit. And even if he said yes, 341 / BARAK / 56 Clinton felt we would need a draft document with broad areas of agreement before a diplomatic “endgame” could begin. I disagreed on tha...
…to find that out, I said. We had to establish whether we were all firefighters, and could put out the flames. Clinton and I had got to know each other well. In one-on-one conversations like this, we called each other by our first names, tho...
…stimated, the reaction in Israel to the summit and what came after it. Yet as I tried to impress on President Clinton, there were risks in not holding a summit as well, along with the obvious reward of a full and final peace if it succeeded...
… on a “permanent status” agreement, and only six months from an American election that would choose President Clinton’s successor. We could, of course, pursue the Oslo process along its current, meandering path. But even though Bibi had slo...
…w had full authority to return the three villages. Fuming over what had happened, however, I called President Clinton and told him I was going to delay the handover. I was not about to return the villages under gunfire, or reward Arafat for...
er than any previous Israeli leader to get peace with Syria, and with Arafat too. I might fail, but it would not be for lack of trying. I believed that even a “failure” would tell us something: whether the other side was truly ready for pea...
etails turned out not to matter. President Clinton agreed to present the map to Assad in what we both hoped would be a step to reopening the path for peace. The two of them met in Geneva in late March. Though the President also came with fu...
…ly narrowed the scope for the flexibility needed by both sides to negotiate. I can’t say I was surprised when Clinton phoned me when we got back to Israel to say that Assad had refused to send Al-Sharaa back, as planned, for a further round...
… negotiations. There was obviously not going to be a deal at this round of talks, but I agreed with President Clinton that when they ended, he could phone Assad and tell him that I had confirmed Rabin’s “pocket deposit.” Yet by the time we...
…ion even to talk about these other issues. So on the second afternoon we were there, I suggested to President Clinton the Americans try to break the logjam by drafting a paper of their own. It would detail all the issues in an eventual agre...
