How nine days of shouting, laughter and forgiving put Israel and the Palestinians back to peace

WEDNESDAY 2:15 A.M. THE PHONE RANG. Outside, in the quiet Maryland fall night, the Wye River whispered. Benjamin Netanyahu had finally made it back to his bedroom after negotiating for a full day, the last three hours with President Bill Clinton, who had just helicoptered back to the White House. The night had been a long give-and-take over security issues. "Hello?" Netanyahu said. "Happy Birthday." It was Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, calling to congratulate the Prime Minister on his 49th. "Is that really all you called for?" said Netanyahu. A few hours later, he had another surprise: flowers from Yasser Arafat. Forty-eight hours later, after almost no sleep and two near walkouts, "Bibi" Netanyahu stood in the East Room of the White House, where he called Arafat his "partner" and signed a new pledge to work for peace.

It was, in many respects, a quiet gift: the present called the Wye River Memorandum. Its terms are modest. It provides for the return of a parcel of sparsely inhabited land in the West Bank. It firms up the details of the implementation of accords the p.l.o. and Israel had reached in 1993. Far tougher disputes remain, including the future of Jerusalem and the return of Palestinian refugees. According to the original timetable, all these must be settled by next May--when Arafat has threatened to declare a Palestinian state. But last week's accord, fought for and won over nine tumultuous days, created new momentum toward a permanent peace, the first such movement in 19 months.

Act I: Getting To Know You

After a White House send-off on Thursday, Oct. 15, Netanyahu and Arafat settled in at Wye. The two men actually didn't know each other well. Nor had Arafat ever met Ariel Sharon, the hard-liner Netanyahu recently named Foreign Minister. The hulking former general showed up two days late, sweeping into dinner, right past Arafat's gesture of welcome, refusing to shake hands or even look at the man he calls a terrorist and murderer. Instead Sharon focused on some Arafat aides with whom he has held talks this year. While he never did shake Arafat's hand, an official says they "talked a lot."

Act II: The Detour

The news Monday morning was horrific--and unhelpful. Two grenades had been tossed into an Israeli bus station at rush hour, wounding 64 people. A Hamas activist was caught at the scene. Arafat condemned the terror, but the Americans feared that if Netanyahu wanted a pretext to leave, he had found it. Instead Bibi declared a suspension of the talks (soon quietly relaxed) except on security matters, and proposed a detour--a quickie deal on troops and security, to be followed by new talks in two to four weeks.

U.S. officials thought the mini-deal wouldn't have enough meat, and they weren't surprised when Arafat balked. The Americans felt they had heard enough--in fact, more than enough--to craft a full package. It was time to force Netanyahu to focus on the security problems, the President decided. Over dinner, he pushed Netanyahu to boil his security demands down to five elements.

The next day, Tuesday, Clinton got off his helicopter with a pad that had a column for each side's needs, bunched in three categories of difficulty. Clinton got Arafat to accept Netanyahu's five security demands, but that afternoon Bibi put forward a kitchen-sink collection of complaints. Once the core security problems were solved, it was clear to Clinton that two emotional issues were blocking progress. For the Palestinians, it was the release of prisoners held in Israeli jails. For the Israelis, it was revising the p.l.o. charter's call for Israel's destruction. That night, by a fireplace, Clinton sat down with Arafat, Netanyahu and aides and told them, "I want to clearly understand where you stand on each issue." For four hours, patiently, deliberately, he urged them to explain their position. At the end, Clinton suggested they defer everything except security for now.

Act III: The Push

At 9:30 Thursday morning, Clinton climbed from his helicopter and told aides, "It's now or never." With agreement on the land-for-security swap in hand, the emotional issues of returning Palestinian prisoners and revising the p.l.o. charter calling for Israel's destruction became the focus. At the end of lunch, Arafat and Netanyahu sat down without Clinton and slogged through details for two hours. When they got testy, Clinton stepped back in.

Frustrated with their intransigence, Clinton
finally pulled out a trump card: a badly weakened King Hussein of Jordan, in the U.S. for treatment of non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Gaunt and hairless, the King lectured the leaders and their aides. "You can't afford for this to fail," he said. "You owe this to your people, to your children, to future generations." For an hour afterward, his eloquence lifted the mood. When it waned, Clinton tried his own stagecraft. Patient and receptive so far, the President stormed out of the room just after midnight, looking at no one. "That was a powerful moment," says one of his aides. "It pushed all the leaders back on their heels."

And they got back to work. No one slept. The Israelis agreed to a phased release of some Palestinian prisoners. The Palestinians agreed to rethink the language of their charter but couldn't see a way to amend it. Once before, Arafat had summoned the Palestine National Council, many of whose members loathe the peace process, to change the charter. Reconvening them would be an embarrassment--and a danger. Clinton suggested a way out: he would fly to Gaza to speak to the council when it met. At dawn Friday, Arafat, Netanyahu and Clinton shook on a deal.

As tough as Wye was, a much worse ordeal awaits: final-status talks, where the issues are harder and the parties infinitely further apart. Wye offered no proof the talks would succeed, but there were surprising hints of new life in the peace process. Netanyahu's right-wing coalition partners are outraged at the deal but have nowhere else to go. And at the White House ceremony, the p.l.o. leader offered a new empathy for Israelis: "We are fully committed to whatever is required from us to achieve real security and constant peace for every Israeli person and for the Israeli people...I will do everything I can so that no Israeli mother will be worried if her son or daughter is late coming home."

Questions

1. What are the terms of the Wye agreement?

2. What roles did Jordan's King Hussein and President Clinton play in the peace negotiations?

Answers

Next Article >