History in a Handshake

A jubilant but strange pledge of peace. No large armies lying smashed and smoking in the far deserts. No victors, no vanquished. This was a search for peace in quieted minds and hearts, though no less perilous for that. Yet it was a profound statement of hope, this singular coming together of Yitzhak Rabin and Yasser Arafat on the broad green South Lawn of the White House, with chrysanthemums in bloom and robins calling.

History was sealed less with paper and pens than with a brief handshake that was caught in the click of hundreds of cameras, a scene beamed to millions of people in a world nurtured for 45 years on a diet of hate and death in the arid lands of Israelis and Arabs. This, more than the Declaration of Principles, was the affirmation of a new era that watchers could believe. The parchment signed out on the lawn was a framework for interim Palestinian self- government, and it was for the archives, a document meant to bind Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization to further constructive deliberation. It was the handshake between the Israeli Prime Minister and the chairman of the P.L.O. that mattered. Men, not papers, make peace.

Bill Clinton felt the weight of the moment. He went to bed at 10 the night before, but woke at 3 a.m. to roam the White House corridors as so many of his predecessors had done -- Johnson, Nixon, Bush. They had paced away the dark hours contemplating war, the enduring curse of Middle East policymaking. Clinton read the Book of Joshua, hearing in his mind the trumpet blasts that rent the walls of Jericho, wanting to be sure to make the point in the ceremony that this time the trumpets "herald not the destruction of that city but its new beginning." He wandered into the kitchen "to see the morning light," and was worried it might rain. At 6:30 someone made him fresh coffee. "I just couldn't sleep," recalled Clinton. "My mind was so full of the day."

Nobody was sure the touch of hands would happen. No formal request had been sent through diplomatic channels. Arafat wanted desperately to come; Rabin didn't. Arafat wanted to show up on the lawn with his holster holding his faithful Smith & Wesson and, with a great flourish, to unstrap the gun and hand it to Clinton. That was vetoed: too much theater even on that day. One hour before the ceremony, the Israelis and the Palestinians both threatened to boycott over trifles: then Rabin swallowed his objections to Arafat's uniform and agreed the P.L.O. could be named in the accord. Arafat and Rabin avoided each other at the reception before the ceremony, but Clinton recalled that as the three of them left the Blue Room, "they looked at each other, really clearly in the eye, for the first time, and the Prime Minister said, 'You know we are going to have to work very hard to make this work.' And Arafat said, 'I know, and I am prepared to do my part.' "

From the moment he appeared silhouetted against the White House, in sharp- pressed khakis and trademark kaffiyeh, Arafat couldn't stop smiling. This was the arrival on the world stage he had always dreamed of. Rabin was plainly of a different mind, uncomfortable and stiff. His body language throughout the ceremony -- the tics, the cocking of his head, the eyes cast toward the sky, the ground, anywhere but Arafat -- gave away just how uneasy he was.