Clinton Administration Back‑Channel Negotiations on West Bank Land Swaps

/ BARAK / 70 the Palestinians after a transitional period. The part we had earmarked for Palestinian control was now a bit over 85 percent of the West Bank, more than I’d indicated to the President in our first meeting a year earlier. But while Abu Ala’a had told Clinton he would ask for Arafat’s permission at least to negotiate, he clearly hadn’t received it. He refused to talk about the map, or even respond to Clinton’s suggestion that the Palestinians present a map of their own, until we did two things: accept the principle of land swaps and reduce the size of the territory we were suggesting for the settlement blocs. To Shlomo’s, and I’m sure even more so to Abu Ala’a’s, astonishment, the President exploded. He told Abu Ala’a that to refuse to provide any input or ideas was the very opposite of negotiation. It was an “outrageous” approach. He stormed out. It was late that evening when the first move toward the “make-or-break” situation I had hoped for seemed to occur, though still with much more likelihood of break than make. The President decided the only way to make progress was to sequester a pair of negotiators from each side overnight. Their task would be to search honesty for the outlines of a possible peace agreement. They were to update Arafat and myself and then report to Clinton the next day. Then, we’d see where we were. I agreed to send Shlomo and Gili Sher, my former “back-channel” negotiators. I knew that whatever guidelines I gave them, they would probe beyond them, just as they’d done in the back-channel talks. They were negotiators. They were also smart, creative, badly wanted an agreement and, like me, believed it ought to be possible. Though I would retain the final word to approve or reject what they suggested, I knew that only in a legal sense could it be null and void. I also recognized, however, that we had to be willing to push further, both to find out for certain where the Palestinians stood and to convince the Americans we genuinely wanted an agreement. Shlomo and Gili left a little after midnight for Laurel Lodge. Marine guards were posted at the doors, with orders that neither negotiating team was to leave until morning without notifying the President’s staff. Mother Nature provided a further incentive to stay inside, since it was again bucketing down with rain. The negotiators talked not just through the night, but the next morning as well. It wasn’t until early afternoon that Shlomo and Gili came to my cabin to report on how they’d gone. As I'd anticipated, both of them had ventured beyond concessions that I was ready to consider, at least at a ttme when we weren’t even near to a final peace deal. Taking the President’s instructions to heart, they’d said 356 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011827