A Bridge To Peace

He has three weeks left in his presidency. He had to scratch a trip to North Korea that might have cemented his foreign policy legacy; missile talks with Pyongyang weren't yet ripe. So Bill Clinton is making one last Hail Mary shot at a Middle East peace deal.

Two Saturdays ago, he summoned Israeli and Palestinian negotiators to a long table in the Cabinet Room of the White House to receive a carefully calculated ultimatum. The two teams had been sequestered at nearby Bolling Air Force Base the previous week, making some progress in restarting peace talks ruptured by three months of Palestinian rioting that had left nearly 350 dead. But they "would still be flapping around" at Bolling if Clinton hadn't decided "to force the beginning of an end game," says an aide--eager to give credit to the President.

When the Palestinian and Israeli diplomats were seated, a door to the Cabinet Room opened. Clinton walked in, pulled his chair up to the table and unfolded his notes. "I want to be as precise as I can, so I'll read this slowly," he said. As the envoys scribbled on pads, Clinton, sounding like a settlement attorney, calmly laid out American "ideas" for finally closing a peace deal. Arafat would get a Palestinian state, with Israel ceding all of the Gaza Strip and 95% of the West Bank (in exchange for the 5% of the West Bank Israel keeps for its settlements there, the Palestinians would get an extra slice of territory in Israel's Negev). Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat would have to give up his demand that millions of Palestinian exiles have the "right" to return to homes in Israel lost during Mideast wars. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak would have to make concessions as well: Palestine would gain sovereignty over East Jerusalem neighborhoods and the top of Temple Mount, a holy site sacred to Jews and Arabs, who call it Haram al-Sharif, or the Noble Sanctuary. Clinton folded his notes and looked up. "If you want to reach an agreement, I think that the only way to get it done is to accept this," he said.

Barak and Arafat had until midweek to let Clinton know if they were ready to negotiate based on the U.S. outline. Barak said he was willing to accept the plan "as a basis for discussion" if Arafat was. Arafat's response would have made a Palm Beach County lawyer proud: a long letter delivered to the White House on Wednesday with 26 questions, clarifications and objections he wanted answered first. It was a stall, and an irritated Clinton had no intention of answering. "There's no point in our talking further unless both sides agree to accept the parameters that I've laid out," he said icily. "Both sides know exactly what I mean, and they know exactly what they still have to do."