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Ha'aretz, October 23, 1998
Fun and games at Camp Gimmick
Despite nearly a week of so-called
seclusion in the Maryland
countryside, the most striking
feature of the Wye summit is the very
high level of grandstanding by those
seeking approval at home
By David Makovsky, Ha'aretz
WASHINGTON - The organizers said before it all
started that the Wye summit would not be
another Camp David and they appear to be right
- so far it seems to be more like Camp
Gimmick. While the place is ostensibly
secluded, Israeli officials behaved as if it
were a stage, with right-wing supporters in
Israel as the play's audience and President
Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore,
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, CIA
director George Tenet and the American peace
team as mere props. This focus on gimmickry is
sad from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's
perspective, since it served mostly to
distract attention from the merits of Israel's
case, rather than amplify it.
While examples of gimmickry are plentiful,
perhaps the most glaringly obvious moment came
on Wednesday night after Netanyahu's aides
declared, under instruction from above, that
Israel would leave the talks if security
issues were not resolved. This verbal threat
was not deemed sufficient, so before the
Secretary of State arrived at Netanyahu's
quarters at Wye with the U.S. bridging
proposals, members of the Israeli team dragged
luggage out onto the lawn to reinforce the
point. This fact was conveyed promptly to
reporters, as was a declaration issued just
before deadline time for the Israeli press
that Netanyahu had set a four-hour deadline
before he himself would leave. This threat was
dropped four hours later.
In the meantime, the Israeli press office,
working under the assumption that the phone
lines were bugged, notified reporters that
they should prepare to leave for Andrews Air
Force Base for a late-night press conference
and subsequent departure. But the reporters
were also advised not to check out just yet.
(Israel Television reporter Ehud Ya'ari told
Israeli officials that the treasury would have
to foot the bill if he were to order expensive
satellite time to Andrews after midnight, and
then not use it. He was told to hold off, in
that case.)
Yes, it's true that at Camp David, Egyptian
President Anwar Sadat said toward the end that
he wanted to order a helicopter to take him
away, only to withdraw the threat once the
crisis was resolved. However, Camp David
featured neither the gimmickry nor the blatant
attempt to manipulate the media that has
characterized the Wye summit.
To shake, or not to shake
It was promptly leaked that Foreign Minister
Ariel Sharon did not shake Palestinian
Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's hand when
they met Monday night. This may have played
well with Sharon's constituents back home, but
it was never mentioned that Sharon had the
courtesy to notify Arafat's adviser Mohammed
Rashid in advance that he would skip the
handshake and instead would nod a few times.
In fact, Arafat and Sharon talked about
farming over dinner.
Yet Sharon appeared a little less courteous
when he, along with Defense Minister Yitzhak
Mordechai, turned up two days late to a summit
attended by no less than President Clinton,
Secretary of State Albright, CIA director
George Tenet and the entire peace team. The
fact that the two ministers failed to arrive
on Friday meant that the early days were
wasted, since it was clear that Netanyahu
could not take tough decisions without his
full kitchen cabinet. (Trade and Industry
Minister Natan Sharansky was in attendance.)
All this rubbed U.S. officials the wrong way.
As one American source close to the upper
echelons of the Clinton administration put it,
"The president and his team came. It looks
terrible that the Israeli officials came
late."
This was compounded by an apparent insult when
Netanyahu's bureau chief Uri Elitzur indicated
he needed Jewish settlers to be admitted to
the closed area to be counted for a Shabbat
minyan. The ostensible problem was not a
dearth of Jewish men already at the summit,
but that conservative Jews, including members
of the Clinton administration, were not
admissible as part of a minyan. By way of
contrast, in the days before the Hebron
accord, Israeli and American officials
including Yitzhak Mordechai as well as senior
U.S. officials Martin Indyk and Dennis Ross,
joined together to say kaddish for the mother
of peace team member Aaron Miller.
But Netanyahu was determined to rendezvous
with the settlers. He ignored an American
request not to leave Wye (just as he ignored a
U.S. request not to bring his wife Sarah) and
met the settlers near a forest late one night
this week. The message was clear that
Netanyahu could not be separated from his
settler base, no matter what.
All part of a plan
The raft of gimmicks should be seen as more
than just playing to the Israeli right wing.
In a broader context, Israeli officials have
never denied that they consider a limited
agreement preferable to a comprehensive one,
unless this could be accomplished with the
Palestinians yielding to virtually all the
Israeli demands. A limited agreement would be
based on Israel giving up 13 percent of the
West Bank (a point already reached in August)
in return for Palestinian agreement to crack
down on Hamas. The most crucial provision
would be that implementation of the second
pullback and greater security would not occur
until all issues had been resolved. This, in
effect, would provide neither land nor
security.
To top it off, Israel publicly put forward
another demand which it knows the Palestinians
cannot accept, regarding extradition. This
issue had been resolved privately with an
understanding that there would be no
extradition, but rather that the CIA would
regularly monitor the presence of Palestinian
terrorists in PA prisons.
The very essence of a limited deal was that
tougher issues such as the scope of a third
pullback, timeout on settlement activity,
release of Palestinian prisoners and any
attempt to deal with the ticking bomb of May 4
(when Arafat plans a unilateral declaration of
Palestinian statehood) would be deferred to an
unspecified time and perhaps to a lower level
of negotiation, thereby practically
guaranteeing deadlock for the foreseeable
future.
A limited agreement would be less painful for
Netanyahu since it would allow him to avoid
some Israeli concessions while still appearing
to be a peacemaker. To this end, Netanyahu
thought he had an ally, someone else who may
have viewed Wye as an international stage,
namely President Clinton. It was axiomatic
among the Israeli delegation that Clinton
needed any sign of victory at Wye to divert
attention from the Monica Lewinsky affair and
Congressional impeachment hearings. Hence,
Israel believed that Clinton would certainly
be amenable to a limited agreement.
Arafat digs in his heels
The early signs were good for Netanyahu.
Citing State Department officials, American
reporters were predicting an early deal even
before the summit convened. (A new
Washington-based reporter from CNN was perhaps
the most vocal in predicting a deal at any
moment, every day for a week.) It was clear to
Israel that the U.S. was also willing to reach
a partial deal.
This optimism in the Israeli camp shifted in a
key two-hour meeting Monday night involving
Clinton, Netanyahu and Arafat. At the meeting,
sources say that Arafat made it clear that he
could not accept a partial agreement, and for
him, no deal was preferable to a bad deal.
There was no way to know when, or if, a
partial deal would expand into a wider
agreement, since it's not often that the
president of the United States devotes almost
60 hours in a week exclusively to the Middle
East. As one senior Palestinian official put
it this week, "No file is closed until all
files are closed."
Faced with Arafat's unswerving position, it
seemed clear that there would be no easy
victories. Rather, it would be all or nothing.
Clinton announced late that night that he was
canceling a scheduled two-day campaign trip to
the West Coast.
The following day, the U.S. distanced itself
from a partial agreement. "It is our objective
to reach an agreement that solves all the
interim issues," White House press spokesman
Joe Lockhart said the next day. Before the
Wednesday crisis, Clinton told an audience at
the White House East Room: "I have been going
over to the Wye talks. I try to say there:
'The only victories that have lasting impact
are those that are not victories over
others.'"
Yet, despite media hype early in the week that
a deal was imminent, the road proved to be
difficult, especially since the Monday night
trilateral meeting was the only one of its
kind all week. Otherwise, it seemed like an
ominous sign that through much of the week
Clinton met separately with Netanyahu and
Arafat. As incredible as it sounds, during a
week of Wye talks, there has been almost no
direct communication between Netanyahu and
Arafat. Netanyahu cannot bear all the blame,
since there are so far no visible signs that
Arafat was willing to be particularly flexible
on specific issues, except that he was willing
to stay at Wye no matter how long it took to
reach a comprehensive agreement on all interim
issues.
It seemed at week's end that Netanyahu
believed that the way to succeed at the summit
was to reestablish agreement between the U.S.
and Israel on a limited accord, or else to
realize that reaching a comprehensive deal
would be a grueling process requiring many
days at Wye, with the risk of angering some
supporters at home. It seems that a limited
agreement won't lead to an implementation of
the second pullback or to greater security
cooperation. After a few headlines, this will
become obvious as a "victory" of political
convenience. Hence, the true choice seems to
be between reaching a full agreement, or
having one side go home early and take the
blame for the summit's failure. Tough
decisions, not gimmicks, are needed from both
sides now.
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