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[pensive music playing]

[man 1] I'm a big believer in negotiations.

Nobody outsmarts anybody.

The idea that you can manipulate somebody in a negotiation is 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."

And 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'll 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.

[man 2] 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.

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.

[jazz music 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.

When you're serious about peace, call us.

[man 3] 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 and 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.

[man 1] 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 Arabs and Israelis.

[pensive music playing]

[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.

They both basically said no, they weren't gonna do it.

[indistinct chatter]

[man 1] 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?"

[in Arabic] We will keep fighting for a just peace based on the return

of all Arab lands occupied in 1967 and the return of citizenship rights

to the Palestinian people.

[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.

[man 2] I remember when President Assad

was saying that American forces can play a role

in pushing the Israeli forces, uh,

outside the Golan Heights.

He knew that wouldn't happen, but he thought he could throw it in.

[man 4] We were watching from 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.

[man 1] 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... So I hope to make new progress.

[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

'cause I'll be guaranteed a permanent source of employment."

[man 5] 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.

[speaking in Arabic]

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.

[speaking indistinctly]

[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.

[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 slam my notebook shut, I'm walking out of this room,

and you'll orchestrate this for me."

So in the middle of the conversation,

bam goes the notebook, out goes Baker

and the Palestinians are stunned.

Both Dennis and I said, "Do you realize what's just happened?

The Secretary of State of the United States of America

has just vacated the room, he's gonna take a walk."

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.

[camera shutters clicking]

The bus is not gonna come by again,

and Palestinians have more to lose in its absence

than do anybody else.

[bells tolling]

[upbeat music playing]

[Helal] It was history in the making.

The idea of breaking through that taboo

and have all the Arabs and Israelis together was unbelievable.

[Kurtzer] For the peace team, the conference was actually unimportant

because it was a show.

[Bush] 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,

which he did that summer.

But he said, "Once the president is reelected,

I'm coming back to the State Department, and we'll start signing peace treaties."

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, uh,

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.

Let's shift the confrontation to negotiation.

Let's solve it not by using stones

but around the negotiation table.

[man 6] Israelis decided today to take risks and make compromises,

to perhaps change the map of their country,

in an effort to make peace with their neighbors.

[man 1] 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 into it. 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." - [interviewer] Whoa.

I'll tell you, it was a wow for me too.

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.

[suspenseful music playing]

[man 7] 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] Security conditions that in my judgment are...

[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."

[suspenseful music playing]

[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.

But Rabin said, "It's in your pocket.

You can't take it out of your pocket until Assad meets my requirements

for security arrangements, normalization and real peace."

[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.

And normalization?

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.

[dramatic music playing]

[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] 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

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, uh,

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.

[dramatic music playing]

[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.

[woman 1] 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."

[upbeat music playing]

[man 8] 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.

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 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 take 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.

He said, "Forget about it." Sent the tailor and 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...

It's a safari suit."

I said, "Safari suit? Oh, okay.

Are there medals on this safari suit?"

He says, "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."

- [man] How are you, sir? - How are you?

[indistinct chatter]

[Ross] Arafat is beaming.

For him, he's arrived.

He's at the White House. The 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 9 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] I want to promise the Israeli people and its leadership,

I am sure that the difficult decision we reached together

was one that required great and exceptional courage.

We will need more courage and determination

to continue the course of building coexistence and peace between us.

[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]

[all cheering]

[pensive music playing]

[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.

[on TV] Stan and I went through a period where we had no marital relations.

I totally cut off his sex.

- You mean, it grows back? - [laughter on TV]

[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, 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 was thinking, 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, 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.

Uh, 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.

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.

[dramatic music playing]

[man 10] A settler opened fire with an automatic rifle

in a crowded mosque in the West Bank town of Hebron.

At least 4 0 Palestinians were killed, scores more wounded.

[man 11] The aftermath of a house of prayer

transformed into a slaughterhouse.

[man 12] 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.

[man 13] A bomb blast in central Tel Aviv has killed more than 20 people.

There'd be a terrorist attack that 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.

What it means is 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 or not 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 that 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, [as Arafat] "Am I a joke?

Do you think I'm a joke?"

[in 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.

[sirens wailing]

[man 14] Israel's fragile peace process with the PLO

suffered a major blow today, one that even...

[woman 2] Dozens of Israeli soldiers were at this bus stop

at about 9:30 a.m.

when a suicide attacker detonated the first bomb.

[man 15] Two militant Muslim groups, which oppose the peace process,

Islamic Jihad and Hamas, claimed responsibility.

[man 16] At midday, Prime Minister Rabin visited the site

and was loudly heckled by onlookers calling him a traitor

for pursuing peace with the Palestinians.

[all clamoring]

[in Hebrew] Rabin is a murderer! Rabin is a murderer!

Rabin is a murderer!

[ominous music playing]

One Shabbat afternoon, 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, you could hear it.

[in Hebrew] Traitor! Traitor! Traitor! Traitor! Traitor!

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 in Hebrew] Traitor! Traitor! Traitor! Traitor! Traitor!

Yeah, we're working hard. We're gonna continue to keep working hard.

Things looks quite tough, Mr. Ross.

[crowd in Hebrew] Rabin is a murderer! Rabin is a murderer!

Rabin is a murderer! Rabin is a murderer!

[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] Arafat's victory march into the Palestinian territories

is the height of humiliation and an absurd parade.

[crowd in Hebrew] Rabin is a traitor! Rabin is a traitor!

[Ross] It made me think of what Rabin had said to me,

that the potential for a civil war was there.

[in Hebrew] Through blood and fire, we'll get rid of Rabin!

[Ross] There's a point at which Arafat does a serious set of arrests.

He doesn't just 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, "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.

[suspenseful music playing]

[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% 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

that the core of a state in the West Bank was now going to exist.

[Rabin speaking 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.

In fact, there's a moment before the deal is concluded

where the leaders are all 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,

and 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."

[tranquil music playing]

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.

[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.

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, uh...

What is a Jewish sport?

Speechmaking.

[audience laughs]

I start to believe, Chairman Arafat,

that you are close to be Jewish.

[audience laughing]

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 ten 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...

So I, uh...

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, uh...

I'm emotionally shaken.

And at the same time, I'm trying to think about...

What do we do?

And...

You know, it, um...

It's obviously still a moment that I really can't talk about.

[solemn music playing]

[interviewer] 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.

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.

Uh...

And 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.

[on TV] Just reported that 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.

[man 17] Truly shocking news from the Middle East tonight.

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.

[camera shutters clicking]

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.

[softly] Thank you.

[solemn music playing]

I am very sad...

and very shocked...

for this awful and terrible crime...

against one of the brave leaders of Israel...

and the peacemakers.

[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.

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.

Understand what that means.

He's been a rival, but that means 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.

[solemn music playing]

The assassination is transforming for Clinton.

In 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 in Hebrew] Long live Bibi, the king of Israel!

Good evening, Israel has elected its next prime minister

with a razor-thin margin separating deeply divided sides.

[speaking in Hebrew]

[man 18] 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.

And 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?"

- [dramatic music playing] - [crowd clamoring]

[gunfire]

[man 19] 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.

[Arafat] This is a crime,

a big crime, against our religious and holy places.

[gunfire]

[man 20] 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."

[tense music playing]

[whispering indistinctly]

[Ross] 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."

[pensive music playing]

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.

[suspenseful music playing]

[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.

- [interviewer] 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, 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.

[birds chirping]

Good morning, everyone. I'm Thalia Assuras.

President Clinton convenes the latest Mid-East peace summit this morning.

On the table, a U.S. proposal

for further Israeli troop withdrawals from the West Bank.

[suspenseful music playing]

[Clinton]...why 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% 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 that he's not showing him sufficient respect and dignity.

[Arafat] This cannot be acceptable...

And Clinton blew up at Bibi in front of Arafat and the Palestinian team.

Uh, in a way that was...

When Clinton would get mad, he would, like, just lose it.

Uh, and then Clinton walked out.

Bibi then was...

Initially he was stunned. And so he says, "What do you suggest?"

So I began to make suggestions, uh, and he was prepared to go along with them.

[indistinct chatter]

[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.

[audience cheering]

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.

[woman 3] New allegations that President Clinton had an affair with a former...

[man 21] The president, seen in a video with Monica Lewinsky...

[man 22] The intern had a sexual relationship...

[woman 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 got 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.

[solemn music playing]

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.

[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.

[dramatic music playing]

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.

[all cheering]

[in Hebrew] I came here to pledge to the Israeli public

and to my friend and commander Yitzhak Rabin

that this is the new dawn of a new day.

[all cheering]

[man 23] Ehud Barak had a plan.

A plan from day one. I think he had a plan from 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.

[suspenseful music playing]

[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

that he was gonna forget what Barak had told him,

so he has to take notes on everything he had said, his plan.

"First, I'm gonna do a Syria deal. Then I'm gonna do the Palestinian deal.

Here's what I'll do with one. Here's what you'll have to do."

Astronomical sums of money that 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 on all fronts. 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 very suspicious of this.

[Arafat] 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.

[woman 5] 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.

[indistinct chatter]

[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:

"What? I've got to go and meet an Israeli? You're kidding."

Assad said, "Yeah, you're gonna go."

Uh, 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.

[upbeat music playing]

[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, uh, 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 with them.

I said to Madeleine, "Houston, we've got a problem."

[pensive music playing]

What we hear is that Barak has gotten polls

that show this is not 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.

[woman 6] The peace talks between Israel and Syria are winding down today

without a solid agreement.

[man 24] 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."

[suspenseful music playing]

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, "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, uh, 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 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.

And 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 great cost to the credibility of the United States.

This one we have to do differently. We have to take it more carefully.

[ominous music playing]

[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.

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.

[man 25] 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.

[man speaking in Arabic]

[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 ever had with him.

He was in a terrible mood.

He was swearing every other word, which is out of character for him,

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.

Now Barak puts more pressure on the president.

[Malley] He said to Clinton:

"I'm promising you that I'm gonna go further

than any Israeli prime minister has ever dreamt of going,

but I need your help.

You only 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 that 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."

[suspenseful music playing]

[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 take the risk, we'll never know if a deal was possible.

[camera shutters clicking]

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.

[pensive music playing]

[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."

[suspenseful music playing]

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 the 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 speaking indistinctly]

[Miller] 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 that are 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.

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?

[pensive music playing]

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, it's failing."

[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?"

"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]

[Ross] The first seven days,

Barak resists everything.

And it's only at the point where the president becomes fed up with him,

where the president says, "Look, it's gonna break my heart,

but 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,

Barak said, "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.

And 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 morning.

Uh, and 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.

[solemn music playing]

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.

- [interviewer] But 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 to 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.

And 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 ultimatums

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?

[indistinct chatter]

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.

[solemn music playing]

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.

- [dramatic music playing] - [crowd clamoring]

[in Hebrew] The picture that is emerging is that there is no partner for peace.

This truth is a painful one,

but that's the truth and we must face the consequences.

[sirens 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."

[dramatic music playing]

[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.

[solemn music playing]

[man 26] President Bush ramped up talks

with the Israeli and Palestinian prime ministers.

[woman 7]...promised high-level talks...

[man 27] Another bloody day for Israelis and Palestinians...

[man 28]...have gathered in Annapolis, Maryland, to talk...

[woman 8] The goal, a peace agreement by the end of next year.

[various voices speaking indistinctly]

[woman 9] ...Israeli officer just outside Jerusalem.

[woman 10] The attacks across the Gaza Strip have left over...

[woman 11] ...efforts to secure Arab-Israeli peace...

[woman 12] Secretary of State John Kerry

goes to Jerusalem today to meet with Israeli...

[man 29] This morning, Israeli police shot and killed a Palestinian youngster

after he stabbed an Israeli officer...

[man 30] President Obama tried to revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks...

[solemn music playing]

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 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 that 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 that 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 bigger and better than people in this room understand.

That's a possibility. So let's see what we do.

Let's try.

- Doesn't sound too optimistic, but... - [audience laughs]

[interviewer] Dennis, the Middle East is in the middle of profound transformation.

There are many in Israel relieved that 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.

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.

[interviewer] What do you mean?

Because I believe we would have gotten a comprehensive peace,

with the Palestinians, the Syrians and the Lebanese.

Do you think that 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.

[pensive music playing]

[Helal] It's a mistake to assume that all sides are eager to have peace.

It's always easy to have an enemy out there.

Peace is, uh, 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.

Uh, 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.

[pensive music playing]