HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011798.jpg

/ BARAK / 41 control of something like 40 percent of the West Bank. That meant — at least in theory — that Israel could limit phase-three to a mere token pullout, leaving the Palestinians with less than half of the territory. “T don’t know what percentage, exactly,” I replied. “But one of my cabinet ministers thinks that a formula of 70-10-20 would work, meaning 70 percent for the Palestinians, ten percent to allow us to retain and secure the largest of the settlement blocs, and the rest to be worked out in further talks.”” When he nodded, I added: “Peres thinks it could end up at 80-20, and says he thinks Arafat would find it hard to walk away from getting control of four-fifths of the West Bank. But it’s not about the number. It’s about the area needed for the major settlements, and whatever else is required to safeguard our security. Beyond that, we don’t need a single inch of the West Bank, and we won’t ask for a single inch.” I replied in much the same vein when President Clinton urged me to help kick- start new talks with Assad by formally reaffirming Yitzhak’s “pocket deposit” on the Golan Heights. As with the Palestinians, I was not going to cede a major negotiating card — our only real negotiating card — before we had any indication Assad was serious about making peace. But I did feel it was necessary to reassure Clinton that J was serious. I told him that, if and when the Syrians showed real signs of readiness to address our needs in a peace agreement, I would reaffirm the “pocket deposit.” I’d come to Washington hoping that President Clinton would be with me on the main issues of substance. But what I needed most at this point was his support on the procedural decisions I’d made in order to get to real peace negotiations: engaging with Syria first, and shifting the emphasis on the Palestinian track away from the redeployments toward the core permanent-status issues we’d have to resolve in order to get a peace agreement. What emerged from my first meetings with President Clinton was essentially a trade-off. He knew I would be ready to make concessions in pursuit of genuine peace. I was confident that on the route that I was proposing to take, he would have my back. But what I couldn’t be sure of was whether my own government would have my back. On paper, we had a comfortable Knesset majority: 75 out of the 120 seats. But I knew it was inherently vulnerable, both to friction between the Orthodox parties and assertively secular MKs from Meretz and inside Labor, and to possible defections over the concessions we might have to consider in peace 327 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011798