The Peace Breakdown

The 15 days at Camp David took on an odd life of their own. Dozens of golf carts zipped from cabin to cabin at the northern Maryland presidential retreat, with Israeli and Palestinian officials scrunched in them haggling with one another and dodging chipmunks darting across their paths. There were negotiations across tables, but just as much work got done over pinball machines at Hickory Lodge. With talks held practically round the clock, diplomats began to mark time by hours instead of days. And with clouds dumping rain almost every day, the Middle East guests--accustomed to dryer climates--complained that they were stuck in an expensive but soggy refugee camp.

Even the summit's death seemed odd. It came at 2:30 a.m. on Tuesday. Saeb Erakat, a top aide to Yasser Arafat, walked into the living room of Aspen Lodge, where Bill Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and National Security Adviser Sandy Berger sat, and read them a letter from the Palestinian leader. Arafat saw no use continuing talks on an agreement to end 52 years of conflict with Israel. Sovereignty over Jerusalem and its holy sites was the stumbling block. "The problem is they both want the same thing," Albright said later in an interview with TIME: control of the city's eastern half.

Erakat folded the letter and looked up dejectedly: "I'm very unhappy that we did not reach an agreement." Clinton stared at him vacantly. "I don't like to fail, particularly at this," he said softly. But he and the others were too spent to even feel sad. Clinton had been up almost 48 hours in a final diplomatic surge; Albright and Berger had had so many emotional highs and lows in the previous two weeks that they were numb. In nearby Laurel Lodge, where meals were served, Palestinian and Israeli diplomats had already begun hugging one another and apologizing. Relations between Arafat and Barak remained frosty, but their negotiators have grown close over the years. Which wasn't unusual, considering that back home their people had learned to live close to one another. They just hadn't learned how to live in peace.

Would they ever? Arafat returned to a hero's welcome in the Gaza Strip, where thousands cheered him for not giving up Jerusalem. Barak stepped off his plane at Tel Aviv with what he admitted was a "sour heart" and with the worry of a crumbling government coalition.

Evaporated as well perhaps were Clinton's dreams: a final foreign policy triumph, the chance, maybe, to preside over a showy ceremony establishing a Palestinian state, maybe even breaking ground for a U.S. embassy in West Jerusalem, a prospect Clinton raised again at week's end in an effort to boost Barak's support at home. But this time, "they couldn't get there," Clinton acknowledged after the talks. He placed most of the blame on Arafat. A more flexible Barak had come to the summit showing "courage, vision and an understanding of the historical importance of this moment," the President said. Arafat arrived cemented in old demands.