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I'm a big believer
in negotiations.

Nobody outsmarts anybody.

The idea that you can
manipulate somebody

in a negotiation
is just an illusion.

And yet, at the crunch point,

it's ultimately
about a manipulation,

because you're trying
to convince the other side,

"I can do X, but I can't do Y."

The other side has to believe
that's not a manipulation.

They have to believe
that's real.

And the only way you get
to that point is by establishing

a relationship
of credibility and trust

with who it is
you're negotiating.

You can't ignore
the human factor.

Someone who has the human touch

treats someone else
with respect.

Someone who has the human touch

doesn't think
they're gonna outsmart anybody.

Someone who has the human touch
will fulfill the empathy role.

The essence of empathy
is the capacity

to put yourself
in somebody else's shoes.

And what you're trying to do
as a mediator is,

first, to get each side
to adjust to a reality,

and the reality is
they're not gonna get

what they need addressed

unless they will address
the needs of the other side.

In the Middle East,

the challenge
is building bridges

between different cultures.

And the most important tool
is language,

because diplomacy
is all about language.

It is the art
of using language.

It's the power of the word
and the notion behind the word.

For example,

when you talk about
the possibility of peace,

and you talk about the future,

actually, the word "future"
in the minds of the Arabs

is different
than the word "future"

when we talk about it.

When we talk about the future,
we mean the future.

When the Arabs
talk about the future,

they are talking about fixing
the injustice of the past.

Then you can
talk about the future.

We talk about the future,
assuming that,

okay,
let's forget about the past,

because tomorrow
should be better,

and tomorrow
is what we're talking about.

No. That's not the way it works.

I have served about
seven Secretary of States.

Maybe eight. I have to count.

And four American presidents.

The Middle East peace is always
a very attractive proposition.

It's a very sexy topic.

I cannot think
of a Secretary of State

that did not want to get
involved in the Middle East.

And by the way,
all of them think

they can reinvent the wheel,

and all of them think
that they can

sort of, like,
ignore history and start fresh.

It will never happen
in the Middle East.

The Middle East
is all about history.

That is part of the problem.
That is the curse.

It's gonna take some really
good-faith, affirmative effort

on the part
of our good friends in Israel.

Everybody over there should know

that the telephone number

is 1-202-456-1414.

When you're serious about peace,
call us.

Jim Baker was by far,
head and shoulders,

the most effective Secretary
of State with whom I worked,

because of the degree
to which he understood

how to manipulate power
and to use power.

He and President
George H.W. Bush

were long-standing friends,

so, Baker had
an incredible asset

to be able to walk into a room,

and you literally are walking in
as the United States of America.

It was the spring of 1991.

It's the end of the Cold War.

We were the only superpower
after the Gulf War.

It was difficult for anybody
to be saying no to us,

so I feel like there's
a possibility to do something

with the Arabs
and the Israelis.

It was early June of 1991

where Baker thought
after about three or four trips

that he had reached a point
where he could, uh, form

the Israeli-Arab conference.

And he sent a letter to the
Israeli Prime Minister Shamir

and to the Syrian leader,
President Assad,

asking them to say yes
to the idea

of a conference
leading to negotiations.

And they both basically said no,
they weren't gonna do it.

Yitzhak Shamir was someone

who was profoundly distrustful
of the Arabs.

He felt every step was a risk.

He saw no benefit
from his steps.

The land of Israel,
from the sea to the river,

it's my dream.

I am fighting for it.

His concern was that Israel
might have to give up something.

That's the last thing he ever
wanted to do, give up anything.

The Syrian president Assad,
from his side,

had a very traditional
Arab concern,

"Should we be making peace
with Israel at all?"

ASSAD

Baker was able
to stare down Shamir and Assad.

We called him
a consummate actor.

And what we meant by that was
that he could walk into a room,

sense what needed to be done,
and what attitude to put on,

and how to work the other side.

I remember when President Assad

was saying that
American forces can play a role

in pushing the Israeli forces
outside the Golan Heights.

Obviously, he knew
that's not gonna happen,

but he thought
he could throw it in.

We were watching
from, uh, behind the curtain,

and we could see
Baker's frustration was rising.

He got so upset,

and he said

"Yeah, Mr. President?

And if a frog could fly,

it wouldn't drag its balls
on the ground either."

"Do you want me
to interpret this?"

He said, "No,
I think they got the message."

See, in the Middle East,

all sides would love
to take America for a ride.

There is the tendency
that somehow

maybe you can
fool the Americans.

Secretary Baker was willing
to tolerate some of that,

but not all of it.

So we have gotten
Syrian acceptance

for going to a conference,

and after we get
Syrian acceptance of it,

"Assad only said yes because
he thought I would say no."

Baker says, "That's right,
so prove him wrong."

If we can create a process...

After that trip, Baker told me,
in his Texas accent,

"In my next life, I wanna be a
Middle East negotiator like you,

because I'll be guaranteed a
permanent source of employment."

Secretary Baker
is in Jerusalem today,

facing the challenge of forming
a Palestinian delegation.

Any delay will be a major
setback to Baker's plans

for an historic
Israeli-Arab peace conference.

In his final effort
to bring all parties

to the negotiating table,

Baker will meet with leaders
from the occupied territories

without the green light
of the PLO's leader in exile,

Chairman Yasser Arafat.

Arafat was
the Palestinian cause.

He was the conductor,

and he basically was
the number one, two and three

on the Palestinian side.

The United States and Israel
were the last two countries

who did not deal
over the years with Arafat,

because we saw Arafat
as a terrorist.

At the same time, the whole
world recognized Arafat,

and he was treated everywhere
as a head of state.

I said, and I say again,

that if the representatives
on the conference

will say that they speak

on behalf of the PLO,

we will not speak with them.

So Baker is dealing

with this ad hoc group,

and they were
in a very challenging position,

because they were
representing the PLO,

but they couldn't say they were
representing the PLO.

We were sitting there

in our consulate
in East Jerusalem,

and the PLO would not provide
the names of the delegation.

And Baker made it very clear

that his frustration
was rising.

"I'm gonna-- I'm gonna slam
my notebook shut,

I'm walking out of this room,

and you're gonna
orchestrate this for me."

So in the middle
of the conversation,

bam goes the notebook,
out goes Baker,

and the Palestinians
are stunned.

And I-- We said--

"Do you realize
what's happened?

The Secretary of State
of the United States

has just vacated the room,
he's gonna take a walk."

So they got on the phone,

they called Tunis,
Arafat gave the okay,

Baker came back, and like
a football coach in a huddle,

put his arms
around the Palestinians.

I'm sitting there, watching
this whole thing, just amazed

at how a guy understands
how to use his own persona,

and theater.

The bus
is not gonna come by again,

and Palestinians
have more to lose in its absence

than do anybody else.

It was history in the making.

The idea of breaking through
that taboo,

and have the Arabs and Israelis
together was just unbelievable.

For the peace team,

the conference
was actually unimportant,

because it was a show.

A Middle East
where young people

no longer have to dedicate...

What was important was,

would there be the beginning
of bilateral negotiations

the next day
after the conference?

If you would like me to,
I'll tell you a little bit...

We have to crawl
before we walk,

and we have to walk
before we run,

and today, I think
we all began to crawl.

We got on the plane,
we were exhausted,

and Baker came
to our area in the airplane,

and he said to us

that he would probably
be going back to the White House

to help the president
get reelected at some point,

which he did that summer.

But he said, "Once the president
is reelected,

I'm coming back
to the State Department,

and we'll sign peace treaties."

And then there were elections.

The good news was that, uh,

Mr. Rabin won the Israeli
election in June of '92,

and the other news was that

Mr. Bush lost the election
in November of '92,

which we didn't know
at the time,

but it was to usher in
a very different period ahead.

Dan Rather reporting.

It appears a major change

is coming
in the government of Israel

that could have
far-reaching consequences

for the Middle East
and world peace.

A big victory
for the Labor Party,

led by former prime minister
Yitzhak Rabin.

Rabin has promised
to break the logjam

in peace talks with Arabs.

Israelis decided today to take
risks and make compromises,

to perhaps change the very map
of their country

in an effort to make peace
with their neighbors.

After the election,
I was coming to Israel.

I go and I see Rabin

on a Friday afternoon.

And it's a couple hours
before Shabbat,

and I say to him,
"What are your plans?"

He says, "Look, I wanna go

for a full deal
with the Palestinians."

And so I said, "How do you
plan to go about it?"

He says, "I'm not gonna rush.

I have to lay the groundwork.

But, you know,
I'm confident I can do it

because I have all my boys
around me here in the military."

I said, "Is it that important

to have your guys
in the military around you?"

He says, "I have to have that."
I said, "Why?"

He said, "When I take the steps
that we'll have to take

to resolve this
with the Palestinians,

I'm afraid
we could have a civil war,

and I need to have my guys.

You know, they trust me,
and I trust them.

And I need them
when I face that."

Whoa!

I'll tell you,
it was a wow for me too.

You know, he used "civil war."

I said, "I don't--

I don't fully know
what that means."

But, I mean, he expects

there's gonna be
full-born battles

internally within Israel.

When Bill Clinton
was elected president,

he asked me to go in with him
to the White House

to be his Middle East adviser.

And I told him, "Everything
is coming together in a way

that you will have a chance

to achieve four peace agreements
in your first term."

And he looked at me,
and said, "I want to do that."

...in my judgment
are the precondition...

The first visit
of Rabin to the United States,

he has his meetings
with the president

and Warren Christopher,
the Secretary of State.

But he also asks for a meeting
with the peace team

without the Secretary of State,

just with us,
which was very unusual.

And what we heard
was a Rabin monologue.

He spent an inordinate amount
of time thinking out loud

of why the Palestinian
delegation to the peace talks

was not empowered
to make decisions,

and therefore
there would be no progress,

why Yasser Arafat and the PLO

had the power
to make decisions,

but he didn't trust them.

He basically said to us,

"No Palestinians can make
any decisions without the PLO."

Which meant...
We actually asked him,

"Does that mean
you'll deal with the PLO?"

He says, "No."

I remember leaving

"He's gonna deal with the PLO.
Not now, but it's coming."

The policy from
the American point of view

was Syria first,
for several reasons.

The issues
were relatively uncomplicated.

The Golan Heights
was not a simple issue,

but it was just
a territorial issue.

Palestinians, on the other hand,

had the PLO as their supposed
sole legitimate representative.

We had no ability
to deal with the PLO.

We had legislation that was
up to here on preventing

any kind of official engagement
with the PLO.

It was a terrorist organization
on our terrorist list.

And Secretary of State
Christopher believed

that there was a chance to make
an Israeli-Syrian peace deal.

Warren Christopher and I,
we were going out to Israel.

We get into a meeting,

and Rabin
wants only the two of us,

not the rest
of the American delegation.

And he says, "I want now
to go for a deal with Syria.

Let's see if Assad
is prepared to do it.

I'm prepared to put in your
pocket, not to give to him.

It has to be completely secret.

If it comes out now,
I'll deny it."

But he says
he's prepared to commit

to full withdrawal
from the Golan Heights.

So we had in our pocket

the critical ingredient
for a peace deal,

that Israel
was ready to withdraw

from the Golan Heights.

Rabin said, "It's in your
pocket. You can't take it out

until Assad
meets my requirements

for security arrangements,
normalization and real peace."

Good morning.

When we get to Damascus,

we ask Assad
to have a one-on-one meeting,

but Assad wanted to have
two on his side.

"Rabin has made it clear,

if this leaks out,
he denies it ever existed."

And Assad said,
"Anyone who would leak this

would be damaging
Syria's national interests,

and they know
what the consequences are

for damaging
Syria's national interests."

He said it just that way.
It was chilling.

I mean, it was really chilling.

Then we talk about the pocket

and it becomes clear
pretty quickly,

he's taken what's in our pocket
and he's prepared to pocket it,

and now what is important
to Rabin is negotiable.

What he got, he got.

And so he wants to know

why Rabin wants five years
for the time of withdrawal.

He doesn't like
the term "normalization."

Normal peaceful relations.

Everything is kind of grudging.

When we come back

and present to Rabin
what was the discussion,

and by definition,
we put the best face on it.

Rabin was furious at us
for mishandling the deposit.

Because Rabin gives this

extraordinary commitment
to Christopher,

does not want Christopher
to give it to Assad,

wants Christopher
to put it in his pocket,

and wants Christopher
to elicit from Assad

a parallel commitment,

which he puts
in his other pocket,

and then at some point

"Hey, folks,
we have a conceptual agreement."

And instead, Christopher gives
away the Israeli bottom line.

It's just worth noting
how skillful Rabin was

with outmaneuvering everybody.

He said to us after
we came back from Damascus

that we needed
to keep working it.

He went out
in the press conference,

and said,
"Good news from Damascus."

You have brought good news.
It's only the beginning.

I remember, when he said it,
I looked at Dennis,

said, "What is he doing?"

We didn't know
that at the same time

there was an official
negotiation going on

between Israel
and the PLO in Oslo.

So we didn't understand

that Rabin was pressuring
Arafat at that point.

It was only discovered
afterwards.

"I heard that the Oslo deal
is completed."

And we said, "Oh, yeah,
sure, of course," you know.

I've been much impressed
with the serious engagement

of all the parties
we've been meeting with...

It suited him to act

as if there was real progress
on the Syrian track,

because the more it looked like
the Syrian track was moving,

the more Arafat would feel
he better move, or Assad--

And Assad and Arafat
were sworn enemies.

Or Assad was gonna steal
a match on him.

And so we went all off
for our summer holidays,

and Dennis calls me
from San Francisco.

He says, "Pack your bags."
It was the middle of the night.

"We're gonna have a ceremony
at the White House

for an Israeli-Palestinian
agreement."

I was in shock.

I said, you know,
"You've gotta be joking."

Rabin and Peres went off,

essentially behind our backs,

did the deal
with the Palestinians.

Peres comes to see us with
the declaration of principles.

While we've been getting
the briefing,

I'm also going through it.

When I finish, Christopher says,
"What do you think?"

And I said, "I think
two very different things.

First,
this is a historic breakthrough.

These are two national movements
competing for the same space.

They haven't been prepared
to recognize each other.

And here's a document that has
them recognizing each other.

And we should embrace it."

Then I said to him,
"But it's aspirational.

Nothing is concrete here.

So the real hard work
will begin now.

But a historic threshold
is being crossed,

because you're taking
what was an existential conflict

and you're turning it

into a political conflict.
That's huge."

Christopher said,
"The president will love this."

Morning.

Ladies and gentlemen,

today marks a shining moment
of hope

for the people
of the Middle East

and indeed of the entire world.

The Israelis
and the Palestinians

have now agreed upon
a declaration of principles,

on interim self-government
that opens the door

to a comprehensive
and lasting settlement.

The signing ceremony
will take place

at the White House on Monday.

For Yasser Arafat,
the invitation to Washington

is the culmination
of years of struggle

to gain
international acceptance.

When he steps out to
the White House lawn on Monday,

he hopes to shake off
his guerrilla past

once and for all.

The president asked me
to find out

whether Rabin would agree
to shake Arafat's hand.

So I went to Eitan Haber,
Rabin's chief of staff.

And he said, "Well,
Rabin agrees to shake his hand,

but he has three conditions.

No gun,

no uniform,

and no kissing."

PLO leader Yasser Arafat

arrived here in Washington,
D.C. this afternoon.

He is scheduled to take part

in tomorrow morning's
signing ceremony

for the Middle East
peace agreement.

We'll now take a look
at his arrival.

We went to see Arafat,
tried to convince him

and persuade him that
he simply cannot carry a gun.

So he wanted to say, "Can I have
the holster without the gun?"

And we said,
"That won't work, either."

The kissing issue,

I delegated to Ed Djerejian,

who was the one
who had to go out

to Andrews Air Force Base
to greet Arafat.

And I said,
"You've got to figure out

a way to stop Arafat
from kissing you.

Because if he kisses you,
the game's up.

He'll end up kissing everybody."

So Ed figured out a way
to shake hands with Arafat

where he shook hands
with one hand

and held him at arm's length
with the other on his bicep,

and it looked like
it was a warm embrace.

The next morning,
we coached the president

on how to do this
double-handed handshake.

I have this wonderful
photograph of him practicing

with the national
security adviser, Tony Lake.

So the kissing was solved.

The question then
was the uniform.

And Arafat always wore this,
what looked like a uniform.

He never was seen
in anything else.

It was part of his
kind of image.

So I talked to Bandar,
who was the Saudi ambassador,

and Bandar went to Arafat,

"You cannot come
to the ceremony in a uniform.

And I have arranged for my
tailor to be at your hotel room.

He will make you
a beautiful suit

that you'll be able
to wear tomorrow."

So, Arafat says, "Oh, okay."

And they go to his hotel room,
and there's the tailor.

Arafat takes off his uniform
and put on this suit coat,

at which point
everybody bursts out laughing.

As soon as they laughed at him,

he realized that this was
gonna be humiliation for him.

So he said, "Forget about it."

Sent the tailor away,
sent Bandar away.

But Bandar never called me
and told me.

So the next morning,
when Arafat and Rabin

are supposed to be on their way
to the White House,

and there's a phone call
from Eitan Haber,

saying, "Rabin is watching
Arafat get into his limousine,

and he's wearing a uniform,
and Rabin is not coming."

I got the Situation Room
to track down Bandar,

who was at that moment
in the car with Arafat.

I said, "He's not wearing
a uniform, is he?"

"Uh... Uh... Uh...

Uh, it's a safari suit."

I said, "Safari suit?
Oh, okay.

Are there medals
on this safari suit?"

He says, "Uh, no, no.
No medals, no medals."

So I get Eitan
on the other line.

He said, "Wait a minute."
He goes, comes back.

He says, "All right.
Rabin is coming."

- How are you, sir?
- How are you?

Arafat is beaming.

For him, he's arrived.

He's at the White House.
The whole world is watching him.

You know, he's just beaming.
He's happy.

It's going to be
very difficult.

Look, we've just got to try...

The president,
when he's alone with him,

says, "We need a handshake."

And Rabin is like, just,
you know, his...

He can't hide
how uncomfortable he is.

This was emotionally wrenching
for Rabin,

knowing he was going
to have to shake Arafat's hand.

Ladies and gentlemen,
Mr. Arafat,

chairman
of the Executive Council

of the Palestine
Liberation Organization,

His Excellency Yitzhak Rabin,
prime minister of Israel,

the president
of the United States.

Let me say to you,
the Palestinians,

we, the soldiers
who have returned from battles,

stained with blood,

we who have come from a land

where parents
bury their children,

we say to you today

in a loud and a clear voice,

enough of blood and tears.

Enough.

I went to see Arafat in Tunis.

I go into his office.

I walk in, and the guys
around him are sitting there,

watching the TV show
The Golden Girls.

Stan and I went through
a period where we had

no marital relations at all.

I totally cut off his sex.

You mean it grows back?

The Golden Girls
is an American show.

They're effectively Jewish,
and they live in Miami.

I turn to the people with me,

"These guys are revolutionaries,

and they're watching
The Golden Girls?"

Arafat comes in.
He apologizes for being late.

And it begins
what is a tradition.

Every meeting with him
is a meal.

And the first entrée
is not only chicken,

but he insists
on cutting my chicken for me.

I said, "The last person who cut
my meals for me was my mother.

It's been a long time."

I'm watching The Golden Girls.

He's cutting my meal. There's
a Jewish mother syndrome here.

But what I see
in this first meeting

is that Arafat has
a completely different concept

of what the Oslo agreement is.

Everything that he discussed
is about independence

and the symbols of independence.

So I immediately see that
there's a huge conceptual gap

between the two sides.

For the Palestinians,

the Oslo agreement was supposed
to be an interim short period

that would lead them
to establish their own states.

And on the Israeli side, it was
a testing period, if you will.

If you do one, two, three, we
might give you four, five, six.

If you don't, then we will halt.

It was based,
like many other agreements,

on that diplomatic tool
called "constructive ambiguity."

I think it should be called
"destructive ambiguity,"

because sooner or later,

the points of differences
will come back to haunt you.

I remember at one point,

"Every line of that agreement

needs a thousand page
to explain it."

There was ambiguity

about what the endgame
was going to look like.

It didn't spell out

what the ultimate resolution
of the conflict would look like.

These two negotiating partners
were in different universes.

Arafat was never a negotiator.

And for him, the breakthrough

of getting recognition
of the PLO

meant that everything else
was unimportant.

And I think it is right
that he believed

that over time,
things would develop his way.

And as a result
of this position,

he got a very weak
Swiss cheese declaration.

So from
the Israeli perspective,

it was a significant
negotiating victory,

because Rabin and Israel
didn't have to face

any of the issues
that were hard for them.

No mention of Jerusalem.
No mention of settlements.

No mention
of territorial jurisdiction.

And no mention of a state
as an outcome.

The Oslo agreement

is not an agreement
that we would have negotiated.

It left too much
to an implementation process

in which both sides were able
to basically

not fulfill their obligations,

and that really ate away
at the core of the bargain.

A settler opened fire
with an automatic rifle

in a crowded mosque in
the West Bank town of Hebron.

At least 40 Palestinians
were killed,

scores more wounded.

The aftermath
of a house of prayer

transformed
into a slaughterhouse.

The killer, an American-born
Jew, Baruch Goldstein...

People who know him
say he was dead set

against the Israeli-PLO
peace process,

filled with hate for Arabs,
and out for revenge.

The Goldstein massacre
was the equivalent

of a heart attack
for the Oslo process.

After that, the Israelis
were constantly buffeted

by suicide bombings.

A bomb blast
in central Tel Aviv

has killed more than 20 people.

A terrorist attack would take
place while we were sleeping.

I would wake up,
drive straight into work,

get on the phone with Dennis
on the way in,

and we'd talk about
what is it now we can do

to try to get the process
back on track?

We do the first
implementing agreement

with the Palestinians
on May 4th,

the Gaza-Jericho Agreement.

It means you're gonna have
the Palestinian Authority

set up in Gaza and in Jericho.

We have a three-way meeting,

and we resolve
what is the two final issues.

One has to do with the size
of the Jericho district,

and the other has to do
with the Allenby Bridge,

whether the Palestinians
can have a policeman there.

And in each case, Rabin agrees

that he will consider
each of these issues.

He won't agree to it now, but he
agrees he'll consider them,

and that's good enough
for Arafat.

Then at 2 in the morning,
suddenly,

Arafat raises
those same two issues again,

and Amnon Shahak
starts to laugh.

And Arafat says...

"Am I a joke?

Do you think I'm a joke?"

And Rabin puts his hands up
like this,

and says, "No,
we take you very seriously."

Just like that.

And you could see
it calms Arafat down.

Israel's fragile peace process
with the PLO

suffered a major blow today,
one that even...

Dozens of Israeli soldiers
were at this bus stop

at about 9:30 a.m.

when a suicide attacker
detonated the first bomb.

Two militant Muslim groups
which oppose the peace process,

Islamic Jihad and Hamas,
claimed responsibility.

Prime Minister Rabin
visited the site

and was loudly heckled by
onlookers calling him a traitor

for pursuing peace
with the Palestinians.

One Shabbat afternoon,
I'm-I'm with him.

And there was
a demonstration outside

of his apartment,
you know, in Tel Aviv.

He was on the top floor and...

We're sitting there,
and you could hear it.

And he can tell I'm
a little bit distracted by it,

and he says,
"Dennis, don't worry.

It's not about you.
It's about me."

CROWD

Yeah, we're working hard.

We're gonna work hard.

Things looks quite tough,
Mr. Ross.

CROWD

I was increasingly worried

about the stability
of Rabin's government.

I saw what the mood
in Israel was.

I saw a mood
that was increasingly ugly.

I was worried about
what was happening with Israel.

I was worried about
the strength of the right.

CROWD

It made me think
of what Rabin had said to me,

that the potential
for a civil war was there.

ALL

There's a point at which

Arafat does
a serious set of arrests.

He doesn't arrest a lot
of people and then release them.

He does a serious set
of arrests,

and he keeps it this way
for a while.

Rabin says to me,
"Look, Arafat is doing things

that are hard for him."

He says,
"I know I have to give up

more than the other side.

I need to know they're prepared

to do things
that are hard for them."

The closer we get
to the interim agreement,

the more he begins to say to me

that Arafat
is actually taking steps,

and I can see that something
changes in the relationship.

September '95
was when Arafat, Rabin,

Mubarak
and King Hussein of Jordan

all came to Washington

for the signing ceremony
of the Oslo II agreement.

This was a moment when
the Israelis and Palestinians

put together
the Oslo II Accord,

which was immensely complicated,

because it provided
for the establishment

of the Palestinian Authority,

and giving it control,
in effect, sovereignty,

over 40 percent
of the West Bank.

The major towns
and cities of the West Bank

would come under
Arafat's control,

so it was a big deal.

It meant at the time

the core of a state in the West
Bank was now going to exist.

I also saw something change

in the relationship
between these two men.

Rabin's approach to Arafat
was totally different.

Here, he's at ease with Arafat.

In fact, there's a moment
before the deal is concluded

where the leaders are sitting
together in the Oval Office,

and I get a message from outside

that the negotiators
need to see me.

So I go outside the Oval Office.

They're saying,
"We have one last issue.

It has to do
with the location

of a whether or not
the Palestinians

will have a police station
near Hebron."

And they said,
"We can't resolve this.

Only the leaders
can resolve it."

So I go back in, and in front
of everybody,

"Look, Mr. President,
I need to borrow

the prime minister
and the chairman."

The president has,
next to the Oval Office,

a small dining room,
so we go over there.

And I explain the issue.

And before Rabin
can say anything,

"What's ever acceptable
to the prime minister."

Just like that.

And Rabin looks at me,
looks at him,

"We will have
a police station there."

And they shake hands,
and that was it.

Arafat and Rabin left the room.

Arafat put his arm
across Rabin's back.

And I thought that
really captured that moment

where they had moved
from being adversaries

to partners in peace.

I believe I can find Jericho,

but otherwise, I don't know
much about this...

That night,
there was a reception

for the Arab American
and American Jewish communities

at the Corcoran Gallery
across from the White House,

and Arafat gave
a very reasonable speech.

This was a speech
about his Jewish cousins

and how peace was necessary.

And Rabin then got up,

"You know, Mr. Chairman..."

In our tradition,
there is a saying that...

What is a Jewish sport?

Speechmaking.

I start to believe,
Chairman Arafat...

that you are close to be Jewish.

But then Rabin went on to say,

for the first time,
"The Palestinians need a state."

He had never said that.
It wasn't in the Oslo Accords.

"Need a state of their own,

so that we can separate
out of respect,

not out of hatred."

On the 4th of November,

I had taken one of my kids
to the doctor.

And I was on the way back, um...

from the doctor,
and I got paged.

And I said,
"Well, I'll-- It's...

I'm 10 minutes from home,

so I'll just call in
when I get home."

Debbie, my wife,
when I walked in the door,

said, "Rabin's been shot."

And I said, "What?"

Um...

So I, uh...

I-I called, um...

I called in immediately,

and then as soon as I called in,
I mean...

Christopher came on the phone with me.

And while we were on the phone,

they said,
"We learned that he died."

Um...

And so, you know,
here I'm on the one hand, I'm...

I'm emotionally shaken.

And at the same time,
I'm trying to think about...

What do we do?

And...

You know, it, um...

It's obviously still a moment
that I really can't talk about.

You were with your wife.

Yeah.

And, um...

And all three kids, and they'd
never seen me cry before.

So...

I'm...

She's trying to explain to them
why I'm crying.

And then I'm trying
to explain to them why I was.

You know, it was a...

In a lot of ways,
it was something...

It was something
I couldn't imagine.

My wife came in with the phone,
and it was Eitan Haber.

And he said to me,
"Rabin's been shot.

Meet me at Ichilov Hospital."

And hung up. I was stunned.

So I raced to the hospital.

Um...

And as-- As we were
going down empty streets,

the place was totally empty,
eerie.

I got there, and I was taken
down into the basement,

and Eitan was there.

But he was writing something,

and he didn't--
I said, "Eitan, hi,"

and he didn't look at me
or anything.

He just kept on writing.

And so I turned around,
and didn't know what to do,

and then Rabin's
chef de cabinet hugged me,

and he whispered in my ear,
"Rabin is dead."

And...that's how I found out.

Reported the prime minister was impacted

by those bullets fired
at short range.

CNN has confirmed that he was--
He is being treated

in the emergency ward
of Ichilov Hospital.

Truly shocking news
from the Middle East.

Israel's prime minister, Yitzhak
Rabin, has been assassinated.

The 73-year-old Rabin
was shot three times

after addressing
a huge peace rally in Tel Aviv.

He died of his wounds
a short time later.

The world has lost
one of its greatest men.

A warrior
for his nation's freedom,

and now a martyr
for his nation's peace.

Yitzhak Rabin was my partner
and my friend.

I admired him,

and I loved him very much.

Because words cannot express
my true feelings,

let me just say,
shalom, chaver.

Goodbye, friend.

Thank you.

I am very sad,

and very shocked

for this awful
and terrible crime

against one
of the brave leaders of Israel,

and the peacemakers.

I'll talk about this after
we've had chance to visit.

Then we were on the plane
very quickly

on the way to the funeral.

We're emotional
in our family.

We had the ex-presidents.

We had the leaders
of the both Senate and House.

People look to us for guidance
and leadership...

My role was to brief them
on how they should behave

and what we were going into.

"You're walking into an Israel
that is in a state of shock.

You're walking into a country

that's in a state
of depression.

What's the one pillar
they have outside of Israel?

The United States.

You need to send the message,

the U.S. is there for Israel."

Shimon Peres
became the prime minister,

and Clinton asked,
"Where's Peres right now?"

And I said, "He's shaken."

I said, "Peres has lost a guy

with whom he's been a rival
for 50 years.

You have to understand
what that means.

He's been a rival, but he's been
this steady rock for him.

You're gonna have
to be his rock right now.

He has to know
that he's got you to count on."

And when Clinton sees Peres
when we get there,

Peres walks towards him
and extends his hand,

and Clinton envelops him
in a hug,

and just holds him that way
for an extended period of time,

and it was like he was
imparting already

what the relationship
was gonna be.

The assassination
is transforming for Clinton.

March 1993, he meets Rabin.

And he tells Rabin,
"You take risks for peace,

and my responsibility
is to minimize those risks."

So when Rabin is assassinated,

the burden falls to Clinton
in his mind.

He owes this debt.

He said,
"Take risks for peace,"

and now he's dead.

People say that
Clinton just wanted a legacy.

That wasn't it.

He had a sense of mission
because of this.

Rabin made Clinton
a part of history.

The young Bill Clinton,

with almost no foreign policy
experience,

was made a part
of the historical narrative

as a consequence
of historic undertaking.

This is part of the context.

This is part
of Bill Clinton's DNA.

CROWD

Good evening, Israel has
elected its next prime minister

with a razor-thin margin
separating deeply divided sides.

President Clinton hosted

the Israeli prime minister
at the White House today.

It was the first meeting
of the two men

since Netanyahu's election
in May.

The prime minister
did not back away

from his hard-line position

on the Arab-Israeli
peace process

that the president supports.

The question was,
how could you manage a process

when you now had a leader

who clearly was cut
from a different kind of cloth?

In a sense, we had to figure
out what you could do with him.

Did you want the whole process
to fall apart?

Did you want to lose the
ability to make peace at all?

At that first meeting,

he was lecturing Clinton

"You don't understand the Arabs.
I understand the Arabs.

Here's how
we're gonna deal with the Arabs.

We know what to do, and this
is what you have to do now."

And he said,
"They have to understand.

It's a new world now.

Uh, and they'll adjust.
You'll see, they'll adjust."

And at the end of the meeting,

he walks out,

"Who does he think
the superpower is?"

We are still keeping
a close eye

on the trouble
in the Middle East.

The violence began
when the Israeli leader

decided to open a new entrance
to an ancient tunnel

near a Muslim holy site
in Jerusalem.

This is a crime, a big crime,

against our religious
and holy places.

Good evening.
The prospects of a lasting peace

in the Middle East
are fading fast tonight

as the clash between Israelis
and Palestinians over Jerusalem

now has exploded
into a mini war on two fronts.

President Clinton today

indirectly criticized
the Israelis.

This has gone on too long

and hurt too many
innocent people.

I go over to the White House,
and I say,

"Look,
the only way to stop this

is if you bring everybody here
to the White House.

This is getting out of control,

and from a distance,
we can't stop it."

We're having lunch
in the White House,

and King Hussein says to Bibi,

"You don't have
the maturity to be a leader.

You're not like Rabin.

Rabin understood that when
you have a negotiating partner,

you have to do things that give
them the ability to operate too.

You have to grow up
and become a leader,

and you're not one today."

And there was absolute silence
in the room.

And then Bibi asks if he can
go off just with Arafat and me.

He gets with Arafat,
and he says, "Look.

Let's begin a negotiation,
and we can surprise the world.

No one expects
that we can do anything."

And Arafat says, "Okay."

At that time, it became clear
that in a lot of ways,

the Clinton who was
interested in this before

is not the Clinton afterwards.

He feels he has a responsibility
to fulfill the Rabin legacy.

We took over the negotiations

with a renewed commitment
to ensure

that Rabin
wouldn't die in vain.

We had
a historic responsibility.

It was a team
that was dedicated, motivated,

mostly American Jews
at the working level,

convinced that this was
fundamentally

in the national interest
of the United States,

schooled, taught,
conditioned to the notion

that solving
the Arab-Israeli conflict

was critically important.

We were hammered
during this period

by being too accommodating
of Netanyahu,

too enabling
of settlement activity,

but without process,
there would have been nothing.

Dennis, you're Jewish.
- I am.

Beside Gamal, all the
negotiating team are Jews.

- Yes.
- How is this perceived

by the other side, as you're
supposed to be unbiased?

I think it's easy for them
to portray us as being one-sided

when they look at all
the negotiators as being Jewish.

Now, the reality is,
it was also

each of those people
who was Jewish

who carried the greatest passion

about wanting to see
this settled.

But you are biased.
You are biased.

In a way, you are.
You say yourself--

Wait, look.
But you know what? That's...

The notion that--
That, uh, mediators

have to be, quote,
"perfectly neutral,"

the only people who say that

have never done any mediation
of any hard issue.

I'm not an observant Jew.

I was raised
in a very traditional

Conservative Jewish household.

I don't think I,
or anyone, frankly,

who's ever worked
on this process

is free from the prejudgments
and prejudices and biases.

You are the sum total
of your experiences.

The downside is that you grow up
in a milieu and an environment

in which
you're much more familiar

with the needs and requirements
of one side, but not the other.

Good morning, everyone.
I'm Thalia Assuras.

President Clinton convenes

the latest Mideast
peace summit this morning.

On the table, a U.S. proposal

for further Israeli troop
withdrawals from the West Bank.

...our commitment to Israel's
security remains rock solid,

why we'll continue
to do whatever is necessary...

I had gone to Arafat,

"We need 30 percent
of the West Bank."

Bibi says,
"I can do the lowest teen."

The lowest teen is 13.

So after real hard effort,

I get Arafat to agree,
"Okay, 13 percent."

When I go back to Bibi,

I say, "Okay, look,
I got Arafat to 13 percent."

He said,
"Well, I said I agree to 11."

I said, "You said, lowest teen."
He said, "Yeah, 11."

I said,
"Does 11 sound like a teen?

Thirteen is a teen."

He said, "Well, I meant 11."

I said, "You didn't say 11."

Both Netanyahu and Arafat

are not particularly responsive
in these meetings.

Neither one was.

And at one point, Arafat
got outraged by Netanyahu.

Unbelievable.

He feels he's not showing him

sufficient respect and dignity.

This cannot be acceptable...

And Clinton blew up at Bibi

in front of Arafat
and the Palestinian team.

In a way that was...

When Clinton would get mad,
he would, like, just lose it.

Uh, and then Clinton walked out.

Bibi then was...
Initially he was stunned.

And so he says, "All right,
what do you suggest?"

So I began to make suggestions,

and he was prepared
to go along with them.

Israeli forces have to have
security control,

otherwise that place
will be taken over.

And that's my confusion...

At that point, even Netanyahu,
with all his cynicism,

also understood
certain realities.

Only the believers
could have believed

that we could create
not one but two agreements

between the PLO and this
Israeli prime minister.

Here was the first
and only Likud prime minister

in the history
of the State of Israel

not just to return
West Bank territory,

but a guy who vowed he'd never
shake hands with Yasser Arafat,

a guy who vowed
he'd never become a partner

in any negotiation with Arafat,

was willing
and able to do that.

This agreement gave Clinton
a sense of confidence

that if you put me in a room

with an Israeli
and a Palestinian

who are even remotely
interested in cutting a deal,

I could cut that deal.

New allegations
that President Clinton

The president,

seen in a video
with Monica Lewinsky...

The intern
had a sexual relationship...

Hillary Clinton
called the charges false.

The Lewinsky affair
takes place as announced

between meetings
of Netanyahu with the president

and Arafat and the president.

The allegations I have read
are not true,

and I will be vigorous
about it,

but I have to get back
to the work of the country.

I was up past midnight
with Prime Minister Netanyahu.

I've got Mr. Arafat coming in.

I have got to get back to work.

The president has to go out

to the opening
of the Gaza Airport

and to preside over
the PNC meeting.

And we're en route out there,

and suddenly he opens the door

"Where's Hillary?
I gotta see Hillary."

And I find out after that,
that the news had just broken

that there's gonna be
impeachment,

and the first person he wanted
to talk to was Hillary.

During that whole trip,
she was with him all the time.

I would come up late at night
to brief him,

and she would be there.

We were flying down to Gaza
on the helicopter,

and he said to me,
"I didn't sleep at all,"

and he was troubled by all this.

We had a three-way meeting
with Arafat and Bibi,

and I was sitting next to him.

I could see he was writing
on his notepad,

"Focus on your job.
Focus on your job.

Focus on your job."

Uh, and what's even more
stunning,

the speech he gives at the PNC,
he completely ad libs.

I was with Chairman Arafat,

and four little children
came to see me

whose fathers
are in Israeli prisons.

Last night,
I met some Israeli children

whose fathers had been killed
in conflict with Palestinians.

If I had met them
in reverse order,

I would not have known

which ones were Israeli
and which Palestinian.

A stunning speech.

He is as much preacher
as teacher in this speech.

We must acknowledge

that neither side
has a monopoly on pain

or virtue.

The end of the speech,
I was crying.

I mean, it was unbelievable.
Hillary sees me and hugs me.

He was received
as a conquering hero,

and the entire region saw it.

Here is an American president
visiting a Palestinian area.

In that itself, there was
an implicit recognition

of a future Palestinian state.

Good morning, everybody.

Voters in Israel
have given their country

a new leader
and new hope for peace.

The election
of war hero Ehud Barak

puts an end to three stormy
years under Benjamin Netanyahu.

Ehud Barak had a plan.

A plan from day one.

I think he had a plan
before day one.

He knew where he wanted to go
and where he wanted us to be

to take him there, and the
Palestinians and Syrians there.

"I have a mandate to finish
the job that Rabin started,

and I want to do it
in my first year

and your last year in office."

Clinton had only one year left
when Barak was elected.

Clinton had a meeting
with Barak in Camp David.

The two had a tête-à-tête
for hours,

and Barak had put
his whole plan on the table.

The president asked us to come,
because he was afraid

he was gonna forget
what Barak had told him,

so he has to take notes
on everything he had said.

"I'm gonna do a Syria deal.

Then I'm gonna do
the Palestinian deal.

Here's what I'll do.
Here's what you'll do."

Astronomical sums of money the
U.S. would give to the Israelis

to help them with steps
they would take,

resolution of the issues,
how it would be done.

And so I remember thinking,
"This is completely impossible.

This is an unrealistic plan."

It assumes things
about how the Palestinians

and Syrians would react
which are divorced from reality.

We can make progress.
We just do the best we can.

The president is enthusiastic
after seeing him.

He says, "He's serious.

He's prepared to make big moves.
He's prepared to go very far.

But he can do more
if he doesn't have to carry out

further withdrawal
on the West Bank,

which Netanyahu
already agreed to do."

When I see Barak, I tell him,

Arafat's gonna be
suspicious of this.

It takes two to tango.

He's going to think

you're trying to humiliate him,

that you're not showing him

sufficient respect and dignity.

But Barak was someone
who felt he knew best.

He wants to do Syria first,

so he's holding back
on the Palestinian track.

The U.S. Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright

arrived in Damascus,
where she was greeted

by the Syrian foreign minister
Farouk al-Sharaa.

Albright then went on
to meet President Hafez Assad

to discuss resuming
peace talks with Israel.

Amazingly, this time,

Assad said he was ready.
He said, "I'm ready,

and I'm ready to send my foreign
minister to meet with Barak."

The foreign minister was sitting
there, Farouk al-Sharaa,

"I've got to meet an Israeli?
You're kidding."

Assad said,
"Yeah, you're gonna go."

So there we were.

It was like a sea change
in Assad's attitude.

When we fly to see Barak,

"Wow, in all my history it says,

when you have an opening,
go for it."

Today I am pleased to announce

that Prime Minister Barak
and President Assad have agreed

that the Israel-Syrian
peace negotiations

will be resumed from the point
where they left off.

I was sitting with Arafat
in December

when they announced the Sharaa
talks at Blair House.

And he kept squeezing my hand
until it ached.

And I said, "Mr. Chairman,
what do you think about this?"

And he only said

"Barak should not take me
for granted."

We are approaching
the moment of truth,

and there is no doubt
that everyone realizes

that a peace agreement
between Syria and Israel

would indeed mean for our region
the end of a history

of wars and conflicts.

A month later, we brought them
all to Shepherdstown

to see if we can make a deal.

And I went out
to the airport to meet Barak.

And he asked me to come up
and sit with him on the plane,

which was kind of unusual.

And he said to me,

"I can't do it."

Meaning,
"I can't give the commitment

to withdraw
from the Golan Heights.

My people aren't ready."

"If you can't do that,
we're not gonna--

We're gonna be out of business

if you're not prepared
to do that."

He said, "No, I can't do it."

I remember going from there
to the Daily Grill.

Madeleine Albright was sitting
with Dennis, having dinner.

I came from the airport
and sat down.

I said to Madeleine,
"Houston, we've got a problem."

What we hear
is that Barak has gotten polls

that show this is
not such a popular thing.

And he has to show
it's harder to produce it.

But in the meantime,
we're here.

The Syrians actually move
on a number of things.

They move
on security arrangements.

They move on the border.

They're moving on everything.

And we can't get Barak
to move on anything.

Clinton took him
to the woodshed.

Clinton said to Barak, "I'm
a better politician than you.

I know
your people will support this.

You need to do this.
You need to do it now."

But all of his
persuasive powers,

which were considerable,
were not enough to move Barak.

The peace talks
between Israel and Syria

are winding down today
without a solid agreement.

That isn't good news
for President Clinton,

who wants to preside over
a peace deal

before he leaves office.

Assad says to us,
"I don't know what Barak wants.

How can we do a deal if we
don't know what Barak wants?"

Then Barak is really anxious.

He says, "Look, we're gonna
lose this possibility.

Clinton has to see him."

To produce the meeting,

Clinton has to call Assad

"I now know what Barak wants."

We go into the meeting,

"I'm gonna do something unusual.
I'm gonna read.

Barak has agreed to withdraw
to the June 4, '67 lines

and have a mutually
agreed border."

And Assad says,
"Well, then we have a problem."

And Clinton says,
"Let me explain this."

So he does the next line
that explains

that the border will be
off the water line.

"I used to go swimming
in the lake.

I used to put my feet
in the lake."

Every possible attempt
that the president tried to do,

secretary tried to do,
Dennis tried to do,

it was over by then,

because he interpreted
"mutually agreed border"

"the Israelis will have a say
in determining

where will the border be,"

and he never accepted
that notion.

At the end of the meeting,

Assad could see Clinton's face
is all red,

He doesn't want
a total blowup with us.

So he walks over to me,
and he shakes my hand,

and he puts his arm up
on my shoulder here,

and says, "We've always
had good relations."

And I put my arm up
on his shoulder right here.

What you feel
when you grab someone's arm

is you feel muscle.

I felt no muscle.
I felt only bone.

So I knew he was wasting away
and he was dying.

He thinks doing a deal
at that point

will threaten
the succession to his son.

So, what happened
essentially was,

yeah, Barak chased Syria,
and he dissed Arafat,

and then when Assad said no
in Geneva in March,

and was dead
in the first half of June,

Barak turned to Mr. Arafat,

"Okay, the price just went up."

The week after Geneva failed,

Barak says he has
to speak urgently to Clinton.

Sandy Berger, who was then
the national security adviser,

wanted to protect Clinton

because he knew
what Barak was gonna say,

"Now let's turn our
attention to the Palestinians."

"We just went through
an experience with the Syrians

that ended in failure.

We tried it your way.

It ended in failure."

At great cost obviously
to the Israelis and the Syrians,

but also at cost
to the credibility

of the United States. This one
we have to do differently.

We have to take it
more carefully.

Barak doesn't give up.
He comes to Washington.

When I see him, though, he spent
the whole night at Blair House.

He's up all night.

I can see he literally has

yellow pages spread everywhere.

I mean, he's been working
all night.

He's been working
everything through.

And he's telling me
he wants to go to a summit

with the Palestinians.

But first of all, he's going
to withdraw from Lebanon.

In the Middle East,
Israel's 15-year occupation

of a South Lebanon security
zone came to an end today,

six weeks ahead of schedule.

The last retreating soldiers
locked the door behind them

as Hezbollah guerrillas jeered
the departing Israelis.

NASRALLAH

Barak decides to withdraw
from Lebanon

not as a result of a peace deal

but of continuing firing
by Hezbollah.

So in the Palestinian psyche,
the lesson was, what pays?

Is it diplomacy,
or is it violence?

The meeting I had with Arafat

after the Israeli withdrawal
from Lebanon

was probably one of the worst
meetings I had with him.

He was in a terrible mood.

He was swearing
every other word,

which is out of character,

because he felt
he was made to look the fool.

That he is negotiating,
and what is he getting?

They don't negotiate, they do
violence, and they get it all.

Regardless of
what's happening on the ground,

Barak is insisting
to move immediately

to a summit
with the Palestinians.

He's telling me, "We need
the pressure cooker of a summit,

because no one reveals
their real positions

except if they're in
a pressure cooker

and the stakes are high."

"We can't rush to a summit not
knowing what's gonna happen."

He was Churchill,

and he told me years afterwards
that that's how he saw himself.

So he pivots.

But he pivots without thinking,

and he creates a world
unto himself.

Now Barak puts more pressure
on the president.

"I'm promising you
I'm gonna go further

than any Israeli prime minister
has dreamt of going,

but I need your help.

You have six months left
in your presidency.

I'm prepared to go extremely
far, but in order to go far,

I need the summit in which
it will be me and Arafat,

and we can present everything
he'll get if he agrees

and everything he'll lose
if he disagrees.

If you don't do that,
the result is

gonna be the collapse
of the process."

The president himself,
at the end,

had great uncertainty
about the summit.

We came to his office,
and he went around the room,

and asked people,
"Should I go? Should I go?"

Everybody more or less said

"Yes, you must go,
Mr. President."

When he came to me,
I had a decision to make.

I could have said

"Mr. President,
you will not reach an agreement.

They're not ready,
and you're not ready."

But I chose not to.

I took the weak way out.

And I regret that.

We're meeting him
in his office there,

and he's waxing
a little bit nostalgic,

because the end is coming
for him as president.

At this moment, he suddenly
is sort of hesitant.

And at that moment,
Sandy, Madeleine,

and I all make the case to go,

and not to be afraid
to take the risk.

If we don't, we'll never know
if a deal was possible.

Good morning.

After lengthy discussion
with the two leaders,

and after listening
to Secretary Albright's report,

I have concluded
that this is the best way,

it is the only way,
to move forward.

Movement now depends
on historic decisions

that only the two leaders
can make.

To delay this gathering,
to remain stalled,

is simply no longer an option.

We literally dragged Arafat
into Camp David.

He did not want to go.

I think he was convinced

that we are dragging him
to Camp David

in order to squeeze him,

and there is something going on

between the Israelis
and the Americans,

and somehow, he will be
trapped at Camp David.

I had this conversation with
Clinton before Arafat comes.

I said, "He's coming here.
He's full of suspicions.

He feels it's a gang-up.

So your whole point here
is to lift him up.

Play on who he is.
Play on his aspirations.

Play on how much
you want to be there

when the Palestinian flag
is raised above a state.

Play upon that,

and don't get into
any of the substance."

We needed to control,
in a sense,

how the summit
was going to unfold.

I wanted the president, in day
one, to meet with the two,

to outline to Barak and Arafat
what were gonna be

the parameters
of all the issues,

except Jerusalem.

But when the president meets
Barak, Barak says, no.

He doesn't wanna agree
to the parameters we lay out.

He doesn't wanna proceed
the way we proceed.

The president comes out

"Barak doesn't wanna do it."

Barak said, he felt that

this was a betrayal
of the No Surprise Rule.

We should not put something
on the table

that was not discussed
with Israelis first.

And so he told us
he thought it was

gonna destroy the trust
between our delegations.

From that point on,
anything we put on the table

was coordinated with Barak,
and seen by the Palestinians

as a fulfillment
of Arafat's worst fears,

that Barak and Clinton
were ganging up

to impose a deal on him.

We are determined
to do our best.

Look, let's be clear.

And I'll put this
right on the table.

If an honest broker means
that here are the two sides,

my left hand and my right hand,

and an honest broker
essentially means

you adopt positions
in the middle,

that's not the United States.

We have rarely played that role.

In fact, the Americans'
negotiating philosophy has been

the United States coordinates
positions with Israel,

finds out how far Israel can go,

and then tries to market that
outcome to the Palestinians.

Now, if you're a Palestinian,

you have to ask yourself,
"Why do I want

the United States
in the room?"

Since all the United States
is doing is,

in Aaron Miller's words,
"acting as Israel's lawyer."

I know a lawyer when I see one.

And too many people
in the Clinton administration,

myself included,
functioned far too frequently

as Israel's lawyer
during these negotiations.

Did we have a Palestinian
lawyer on our team?

The idea of Camp David
that Barak put to us was,

we need a leader summit.

We get to Camp David,

and Barak doesn't
wanna deal with Arafat.

President Clinton
wants to broker a meeting

between the two leaders.

Barak doesn't wanna meet.
They have dinner.

Barak spends time
not talking to Arafat.

So the whole logic,
again, became contradictory.

Why do you even need the summit
if they weren't gonna speak?

After the first days, I feel
like we're in deep trouble.

I have a sinking feeling
in my stomach

that this thing now
is entirely on the wrong track.

I would occasionally
call Debbie, my wife.

She'd say, "How's it going?"
And I'll say, "Badly."

I said, "Everything I'm trying,

doesn't matter what
I come up with, it's failing."

There are differences that
still have to be overcome.

We're still looking for ways
to try to do that.

And here we were
in an undisciplined summit,

with terrific food,

a lot of activities,

movies, golf carts,

which the Israelis
and Palestinians

love driving
at excessive speeds.

I remember one senior
American official saying to me,

Camp David was about
getting up every morning

and asking ourselves,
"What do we do today?"

"What do we do today?"

At a presidential summit?

Only the second
in the modern history

of the Arab-Israeli conflict,

where a president
gathers the leaders

to try to reach an agreement?

The first seven days,

Barak resists everything.

And it's only at the point

the president
becomes fed up with him,

where the president says,
"It's gonna break my heart.

I've drafted a speech
to say we've failed,

and I'm prepared
to go give it."

Only when Barak understands

the president
is prepared to walk away

does he finally give us
the serious set of moves

on all the issues.

The very logic.
In a sense, I said to everybody,

"Get everybody
in the pressure cooker."

And it worked.
It worked on him, not Arafat.

Now Barak finally said,

here's what he was prepared
to offer on borders,

and what he was prepared
to offer on Jerusalem, as well.

He's prepared, in Jerusalem,

for all the outer neighborhoods

to have Palestinian
sovereignty,

and he's prepared

to allow the Christian
and Muslim Quarters

of the Old City
to be Palestinian.

You have to understand
that the issue of Jerusalem

was never negotiated
before Camp David.

So when he came to Clinton
with this offer

that the Arab suburbs
of Jerusalem

would be under
Palestinian sovereignty,

this was very impressive.

And so we grabbed it,

and Clinton proposed it
to Arafat.

When Clinton finally does it,

I'm listening
through the crack in the door,

and the president
does it brilliantly.

He goes through
how hard it was to produce this.

This is what's possible.

He's gonna have a state.

He's gonna have a capital
in a part of Jerusalem.

He's gonna have sovereignty

in the Muslim
and Christian Quarters.

He goes through it all.

"In the past,

Palestinians didn't control
their own destiny.

And each time after
you weren't able to say yes,

you were worse off.

This time, if you say no,

when people look back
and they regret it,

they'll have nobody to blame.

It'll be you.
This was your chance.

Don't let the next generation
blame you

for missing the opportunity."

And Arafat says
he has to think about it.

He has questions.
He has to think about it.

He goes off.

Afterwards,
the president's feeling good.

He feels like he did it well.
He feels like--

The way he reads Arafat,
he feels like Arafat was...

You know,
he felt like he had him.

So it's like 1 in the morning.

I go to sleep,
and I fall asleep.

The next thing I know,
it's the morning.

Uh, I'm told that
they came back during the night,

and Sandy has, you know,
basically said,

"Look,
it's take it or leave it."

Uh...

And so they say no.

I felt sick.

I felt physically sick.

I felt in my stomach

that this was a high-stakes
venture that had failed,

and that I bore responsibility,

because, in the end,
I pushed for it.

You didn't push for it.

But I did in the end. But I did.

I did in the end. I knew better.

I should have known also that

this wasn't the only time
we could hold a summit.

I should have known that.

Arafat said no.
We couldn't understand it.

How could he reject
such an offer?

He could never have hoped
to get such an offer.

But we didn't understand
at the time--

It's obvious in retrospect.

But at the time,
what we didn't understand was

this was
an end-of-conflict deal.

This was it.

There was no chance
to revise it,

get a better deal later.

Barak was insisting
this was it, end of claims.

And the proposal
would have left Israel

with sovereignty
on the Temple Mount,

Haram al-Sharif,

with the Al Aqsa Mosque
in Israel's hands.

This was exactly
what Arafat needed

to be able to reject
the whole thing,

because no Arab leader,
as he told Clinton,

no Arab leader would accept

that sovereignty over the
third-holiest mosque in Islam

would be in Israel's hands.

Arafat thought
that if he would agree,

he would be killed.

And I remember

"So be it. I could be killed,
you could be killed.

Any leader who wants to change
the reality could be killed."

We were the ones who were
supposed to present Arafat

with a series of ultimata
and pressure him to accept it.

That was Barak's whole logic,
to use us,

and use the president's
credibility

to pry out of Arafat

concessions in the cauldron
and the heat of the summit.

As if Arafat, with the burden
of Jerusalem on his shoulders,

was going to cave in
and collapse

in front of this mighty effort

on the part
of President Clinton,

when you had a billion Muslims
in the world

who would have issued fatwas
for his death

had he compromised on any aspect
of the Jerusalem issue?

Barak and Clinton,
each in their own way,

wrongly believed
that the power of personality,

and the power of persuasion,
and the power of manipulation

could somehow transform
and change Arafat.

They wanted to ascend a mountain

by the very power of their
own personas, their own logic,

and what they believed to be,
wrongly again,

a moment for Clinton
and for Barak.

And that is why both of them
hold Arafat in such contempt,

fundamentally responsible
for not recognizing his moment.

It was their moment,

and yet
Arafat didn't understand

that he was part of this plan
of great leadership.

Trying and failing
is much better

than not having tried at all,

and I remember the president
saying that to us.

I was inspired by it.

But, you see, that's a slogan
for a college football team.

It's not a substitute
for a foreign policy

of the most consequential nation
on earth.

Failure costs.

I don't know. I mean,

I don't wanna be too hard
on the process.

I include myself in this.

I was as much a part of this
enterprise as anybody else,

in terms of wanting it
to succeed.

I just believe,
when I look back now,

we saw the world
the way we wanted it to be.

We did not see the world
the way it was.

BARAK

That summit,
with the best of intentions,

and the best of purposes,

laid the basis for a trauma

in the Israeli-Palestinian
relationship

from which that relationship
has not yet recovered.

It was a very hard time,

as everything we'd strived for

had just come apart, destroyed.

All of our efforts
had gone up in flames.

Instead of comprehensive peace,
we ended up with misery

on both sides,

and there was nothing
I could do about it.

Two or three days before the
end of Clinton's presidency,

Arafat calls
to say goodbye to him,

and he tells him,
"You're a great man."

And the president says,
"I'm not a great man.

I'm a failure.

And you made me a failure."

In March of '02, I was trying
to help negotiate a ceasefire

between Israelis
and Palestinians.

I went to see Arafat
at the Mukataa.

The door was barricaded.
Mukataa was dark.

We made our way up to Arafat's
second-floor conference room.

There in the conference room,
with the windows blacked out,

candles on the table,
Arafat in full battle regalia,

with his machine pistol
sitting on top of the table.

And it was then I understood

that the struggler was so much
a part of Arafat's identity

that he was, in many respects,
in his element.

The last time I saw him
was October of '04.

Arafat had so fundamentally
changed in appearance

that I didn't even realize
it was the same person.

He had on a ski hat.

He looked like a senior

in a retirement community
in Florida.

And I thought to myself

how absurd this was,
the whole enterprise.

Within two weeks, he was dead.

Bush ramped up talks

with the Israeli and
Palestinian prime ministers.

...promised high-level talks...

It has been another bloody day

for Israelis
and Palestinians...

...have gathered
in Annapolis, Maryland...

The goal, a peace agreement
by the end of next year.

...Israeli officer
just outside Jerusalem.

The attacks across the
Gaza Strip have left over...

...efforts to secure
Arab-Israeli peace...

Secretary of State John Kerry

goes to Jerusalem today
to meet with Israeli...

This morning,
Israeli police shot and killed

a Palestinian youngster after
he stabbed an Israeli officer,

just outside Jerusalem...

President Obama
tried to revive

Israeli-Palestinian
peace talks today...

It's a history
of missed opportunities.

And the missed opportunities
were not just,

as Israelis love to believe,

it was just the Arabs
or the Palestinians

that missed the opportunities.

Israel and the United States
missed the opportunities too.

And it's a tragedy.

It's a terrible tragedy

that we couldn't get
the Syrian deal

and we couldn't get
the Palestinian deal.

Looking back right now,

if I could change one thing,

I would take the word "peace,"

and I would find
another word for it.

We've never had it
between Arabs and Israelis

in the sense
that you and I would understand.

We don't have it now.

And I would essentially
not use that word,

because it creates
false expectations,

and it creates
a level of aspiration

that we can't--
We can't achieve.

For decades, we've tried
so many ways on negotiations

in so many different
iterations.

It all failed.

Even today,
there are a lot of people

who say all we need to do
is just keep the process alive,

because without a process,
just the process,

things will get worse,
things will collapse.

It's the bicycle metaphor.

The bicycle
needs to keep moving.

There's the other view,
which is,

if we simply
keep the process alive,

we are distorting
the perceptions of both sides,

we're enabling the status quo,

and, in fact, far from
pushing towards a decision,

we are facilitating
the perpetuation

of a status quo
we claim is unsustainable.

"Let's bring them together
and negotiate,"

and they don't reach a deal,

at some point,
this looks like a farce.

The United States
will encourage a peace,

and, really,
a great peace deal.

We'll be working on it
very, very diligently.

Bibi and I have known each other
a long time,

a smart man, great negotiator,

and I think
we're gonna make a deal.

Might be a bigger
and better deal

than people in this room
even understand.

That's a possibility.
So let's see what we do.

Let's try.

Doesn't sound
too optimistic, but...

Dennis, the Middle East

is in the middle
of profound transformation.

There are many in Israel
relieved you never succeeded

with the Palestinian
and the Syrian.

I know they say that.

Israel would have handed over
the Golan Heights,

leaving itself
directly exposed to attacks

from Assad's friends,
Iran and Hezbollah.

The whole Middle East might've
been different if you had peace.

You know, it's like the track,
the possibility not taken,

you don't know
all the other things

that would've taken place
at the same time.

People today say,
"Oh, how lucky we were

that the deal wasn't made."

But what they miss is that it
would have changed everything.

What do you mean?

Because I believe we would have
gotten a comprehensive peace,

with the Palestinians,
Syrians, and Lebanese.

Do you think the fate of Syria
would have been different?

If Syria--You cannot tell me--

If Syria had made
a peace deal with Israel,

circumstances would've been different.

The future of the Middle East
would have been different.

I can't tell you exactly how,

but it would be dramatically
different to the way it is now.

It's a mistake to assume all
sides are eager to have peace.

It's always easy
to have an enemy out there.

Peace is hard work,

and changing minds,
changing hearts,

accepting the other side.

You really have to look
at tomorrow

and what you're gonna do
about tomorrow.

A lot of parties
feel comfort in the past.

As a matter of fact, today,
I cannot think of a way

to really settle
the Palestinian-Israeli issue.

Is the idea of two-state
solution still possible?

I doubt it.
I really don't think it's there.

When you look at the animosity
and the hatred that exists,

the human side
is completely out.

People just love
to demonize the other side.

All their ills
is because of the other side.

All their problems,
because of the other side.

And unfortunately, today,

the leaders are basically

a reflection
of their own societies.

And unless you are planning
on accepting the other side,

there is zero hope
for a solution.