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[♪]
ROSS: 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.
[VOICES SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY]
HELAL: 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.
[♪]
[TOMMY DORSEY'S "OPUS ONE" PLAYING]
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.[PEOPLE LAUGHING]
When you're serious about peace, call us.
KURTZER: 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.
["OPUS ONE" CONTINUES PLAYING]
ROSS: 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.
[♪]
KURTZER: 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.
[PEOPLE CHATTERING INDISTINCTLY]
ROSS: 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.
SHAMIR: 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, and that was:
"Should we be making peace with Israel at all?"
ASSAD [IN ARABIC]:
KURTZER: 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.
HELAL: 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.
MILLER: We were watching from, uh, behind the curtain,
and we could see Baker's frustration was rising.
He got so upset,
and he said the following to Assad:
"Yeah, Mr. President?
And if a frog could fly,
it wouldn't drag its balls on the ground either."
HELAL: I looked at him and said:
"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.
[PEOPLE CHATTERING INDISTINCTLY]
ROSS: So we have gotten Syrian acceptance
for going to a conference,
and after we get Syrian acceptance of it,
then Shamir says to Baker:
"Assad only said yes because he thought I would say no."
Baker says, "That's right, so prove him wrong."
BAKER: If we can create a process...
[BAKER CONTINUES INDISTINCTLY]
[CAMERA SHUTTERS CLICKING]
MILLER: 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."
NEWS ANCHOR: 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.
HELAL: 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.
KURTZER: 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.
MILLER: 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.
He pulled us aside and he said:
"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-- Both Dennis and I 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.
[CHURCH BELL RINGING]
[♪]
[CAMERA BEEPS AND SHUTTERS CLICKING]
HELAL: It was history in the making.
The idea of breaking through that taboo,
and have the Arabs and Israelis together was just unbelievable.
KURTZER: For the peace team,
the conference was actually unimportant,
because it was a show.
MAN: A Middle East where young people
no longer have to dedicate...
KURTZER: What was important was,
would there be the beginning of bilateral negotiations
the next day after the conference?
BAKER: 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.
KURTZER: 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."
[FOOTSTEPS]
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.
[IN ENGLISH]
NEWS ANCHOR: 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.
ROSS: 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."
- MOREH: - 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.
[♪]
INDYK: 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."
CLINTON: ...in my judgment are the precondition...
KURTZER: 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 that breakfast saying:
"He's gonna deal with the PLO. Not now, but it's coming."
[♪]
INDYK: 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.
ROSS: 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.
INDYK: 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.
ROSS: When we get to Damascus,
we ask Assad to have a one-on-one meeting,
but Assad wanted to have two on his side.
And I remember saying to Assad:
"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.
KURTZER: 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 takes the two out and says:
"Hey, folks, we have a conceptual agreement."
And instead, Christopher gives away the Israeli bottom line.
[♪]
INDYK: 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.
INDYK: 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.
Dan Kurtzer said to us:
"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...
INDYK: 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.
[♪]
ROSS: 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.
REPORTER: 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."
[♪]
REPORTER: 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."
INDYK: 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.
[PEOPLE CHATTERING, LAUGHING]
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, and said:
"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?"
And Bandar says:
"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?
[PEOPLE CHATTERING INDISTINCTLY]
ROSS: 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.
RABIN: It's going to be very difficult.
CLINTON: Look, we've just got to try...
ROSS: 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.
MAN [OVER PA]: 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.
[CROWD APPLAUDING]
[IN ARABIC]
[CROWD APPLAUDING]
RABIN: 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.
[CROWD APPLAUDING]
[CROWD CHEERING]
[♪]
ROSS: 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.
DOROTHY: 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?
ROSS: The Golden Girls is an American show.
They're effectively Jewish, and they live in Miami.
I turn to the people with me, I go:
"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.
[♪]
HELAL: 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, President Assad of Syria said:
"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.
INDYK: 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.
[♪]
[GUNFIRE]
REPORTER 1: 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.
REPORTER 2: The aftermath of a house of prayer
transformed into a slaughterhouse.
REPORTER 3: 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.
REPORTER: 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?
[♪]
ROSS: 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...
[IMITATING ARAFAT] "Am I a joke?
Do you think I'm a joke?"
[NORMAL VOICE] 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.
[HELICOPTER WHIRRING]
[SIRENS WAILING]
REPORTER 1: Israel's fragile peace process with the PLO
suffered a major blow today, one that even...
REPORTER 2: Dozens of Israeli soldiers were at this bus stop
at about 9:30 a.m.
when a suicide attacker detonated the first bomb.
REPORTER 3: Two militant Muslim groups which oppose the peace process,
Islamic Jihad and Hamas, claimed responsibility.
[PEOPLE SHOUTING INDISTINCTLY]
REPORTER 4: Prime Minister Rabin visited the site
and was loudly heckled by onlookers calling him a traitor
for pursuing peace with the Palestinians.
[CHANTING IN HEBREW]
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.
[CHANTING IN HEBREW]
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 [CHANTING IN HEBREW]:
Yeah, we're working hard.
We're gonna work hard.
Things looks quite tough, Mr. Ross.
CROWD [CHANTING IN HEBREW]:
[♪]
[SIRENS WAILING]
ROSS: 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.
[IN HEBREW]
CROWD [CHANTING IN HEBREW]:
ROSS: It made me think of what Rabin had said to me,
that the potential for a civil war was there.
ALL [CHANTING IN HEBREW]:
[♪]
ROSS: 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.
[♪]
INDYK: 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.
ROSS: It meant at the time
the core of a state in the West Bank was now going to exist.
[PEOPLE CHATTERING INDISTINCTLY]
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.
[MEN CHUCKLING]
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, I say:
"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, Arafat says:
"What's ever acceptable to the prime minister."
Just like that.
And Rabin looks at me, looks at him, and he says:
"We will have a police station there."
And they shake hands, and that was it.
[FOOTSTEPS] [CAMERA SHUTTER CLICKS]
INDYK: 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.
CLINTON: I believe I can find Jericho,
but otherwise, I don't know much about this...
INDYK: 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, and he said:
"You know, Mr. Chairman..."
In our tradition, there is a saying that...
What is a Jewish sport?
Speechmaking.
[AUDIENCE LAUGHS]
I start to believe, Chairman Arafat...
that you are close to be Jewish.
[CROWD LAUGHING]
[CROWD APPLAUDS]
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...
[SIGHS]
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...
[VOICE BREAKS] It's obviously still a moment that I really can't talk about.
[♪]
MOREH: 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.
[SNIFFLES] You know, it was a...
[CLEARS THROAT]
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.
KESSEL: 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.
SCHIEFFER: 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.
[BREATHLESSLY] 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.
CLINTON: I'll talk about this after we've had chance to visit.
ROSS: Then we were on the plane very quickly
on the way to the funeral.
BUSH: We're emotional in our family.
ROSS: We had the ex-presidents.
We had the leaders of the both Senate and House.
CLINTON: People look to us for guidance and leadership...
ROSS: My role was to brief them on how they should behave
and what we were going into.
And so I told them:
"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.
[♪]
MILLER: 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 [CHANTING IN HEBREW]:
Good evening, Israel has elected its next prime minister
with a razor-thin margin separating deeply divided sides.
[SPEAKING IN HEBREW]
NEWS ANCHOR: 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.
ROSS: 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 and telling him:
"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, and Clinton says to me:
"Who does he think the superpower is?"
[GUNFIRE, PEOPLE CLAMORING]
REPORTER: 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.
[GUNFIRE]
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.
CLINTON: This has gone on too long
and hurt too many innocent people.
ROSS: 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."
[♪]
[SPEAKING INDISTINCTLY]
ROSS: 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.
MILLER: 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.
- MOREH: 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.
[♪]
CLINTON: ...our commitment to Israel's security remains rock solid,
why we'll continue to do whatever is necessary...
ROSS: I had gone to Arafat, Arafat said:
"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.
ARAFAT: Unbelievable.
ROSS: He feels he's not showing him
sufficient respect and dignity.
ARAFAT: This cannot be acceptable...
ROSS: 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.
[CHUCKLES]
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.
NETANYAHU: Israeli forces have to have security control,
otherwise that place will be taken over.
And that's my confusion...
[NETANYAHU CONTINUES INDISTINCTLY]
MILLER: 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.
[CROWD APPLAUDING]
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.
REPORTER 1: New allegations that President Clinton
had an affair with a former... REPORTER 2: The president,
seen in a video with Monica Lewinsky...
REPORTER 3: The intern had a sexual relationship...
REPORTER 4: Hillary Clinton called the charges false.
ROSS: The Lewinsky affair takes place as announced
between meetings of Netanyahu with the president
and Arafat and the president.
CLINTON: 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.
[♪]
ROSS: 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 and asks:
"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.
[CROWD APPLAUDING]
HELAL: 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.
[CROWD CHEERING]
[IN HEBREW]
[ALL CHEERING]
MALLEY: 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.
[♪]
INDYK: Barak tells Clinton:
"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.
MALLEY: 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.
CLINTON: 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.
BARAK: It takes two to tango.
ROSS: 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.
REPORTER: 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.
[INAUDIBLE DIALOGUE]
INDYK: 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.
[♪]
ROSS: When we fly to see Barak, he says:
"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.
MILLER: 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 one thing to me:
"Barak should not take me for granted."
AL-SHARAA: 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.
[♪]
INDYK: 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."
I was like:
"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.
REPORTER 1: The peace talks between Israel and Syria
are winding down today without a solid agreement.
REPORTER 2: That isn't good news for President Clinton,
who wants to preside over a peace deal
before he leaves office.
ROSS: 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 and say:
"I now know what Barak wants."
[♪]
We go into the meeting, and Clinton starts by saying:
"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.
And this is where Assad says:
"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" as:
"the Israelis will have a say in determining
where will the border be,"
and he never accepted that notion.
ROSS: 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, and Arafat said:
"Okay, the price just went up."
MALLEY: 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,
which is: "Now let's turn our attention to the Palestinians."
And Sandy said:
"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.
[♪]
ROSS: 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.
RATHER: 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 [IN ARABIC]:
[CROWD CHEERING]
MALLEY: 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?
ROSS: 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."
And I'm telling him:
"We can't rush to a summit not knowing what's gonna happen."
MILLER: 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.
MALLEY: Now Barak puts more pressure on the president.
He said to Clinton:
"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."
[♪]
MILLER: 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 the same thing:
"Yes, you must go, Mr. President."
When he came to me, I had a decision to make.
I could have said what I should 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.
ROSS: 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.
[♪]
HELAL: 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.
ROSS: 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 and says:
"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.
INDYK: 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.
CLINTON: We are determined to do our best.
MILLER: 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.
[♪]
KURTZER: 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?
[CRICKETS CHIRPING]
[PEOPLE CHATTERING INDISTINCTLY]
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?
ROSS: 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."
ROSS: There are differences that still have to be overcome.
We're still looking for ways to try to do that.
MILLER: 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?"
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?
[THUNDER RUMBLING]
[RAIN PATTERING]
ROSS: 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.
INDYK: 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.
ROSS: 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.
He says to him:
"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.
MOREH: 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.
INDYK: 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 Barak saying that:
"So be it. I could be killed, you could be killed.
Any leader who wants to change the reality could be killed."
MILLER: 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?
[PEOPLE CHATTERING INDISTINCTLY]
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.
[CAMERA SHUTTERS CLICKING]
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.
[PEOPLE CLAMORING]
[♪]
[SIREN WAILING]
BARAK [IN HEBREW]:
[SIREN WAILING]
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.
ROSS: 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."
[♪]
[GUNFIRE]
MILLER: 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.
[♪]
[INAUDIBLE DIALOGUE]
REPORTER 1: Bush ramped up talks
with the Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers.
REPORTER 2: ...promised high-level talks...
REPORTER 3: It has been another bloody day
for Israelis and Palestinians...
REPORTER 4: ...have gathered in Annapolis, Maryland...
REPORTER 5: The goal, a peace agreement by the end of next year.
[REPORTERS CONTINUE INDISTINCTLY]
[WOMAN SOBS]
[EXPLOSION]
REPORTER 6: ...Israeli officer just outside Jerusalem.
REPORTER 7: The attacks across the Gaza Strip have left over...
REPORTER 8: ...efforts to secure Arab-Israeli peace...
REPORTER 9: Secretary of State John Kerry
goes to Jerusalem today to meet with Israeli...
REPORTER 10: This morning, Israeli police shot and killed
a Palestinian youngster after he stabbed an Israeli officer,
just outside Jerusalem...
REPORTER 11: 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.
MILLER: 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.
MALLEY: 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.
Because if we keep saying:
"Let's bring them together and negotiate,"
and they don't reach a deal,
at some point, this looks like a farce.
[CAMERA SHUTTERS CLICKING]
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...
[CROWD LAUGHS]
MOREH: 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.
MOREH: 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.
[♪]
HELAL: 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.
[♪]