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/ BARAK / 74 government that the area around the temple’s surviving Western Wall, left uncared for under the Jordanians, was cleared and a stone plaza put in place for worshipers —at the expense of parts of the old Moroccan Quarter. It was under Labor, too, that Israel unilaterally expanded Jerusalem’s city limits to take in more than two dozen adjacent Arab villages on the West Bank. No Israeli government since then, Labor or Likud, had deviated from a shared pledge that Jerusalem would remain Israel’s undivided, sovereign capital under any eventual peace agreement. Yet when I met Clinton the next morning in Laurel Lodge, he insisted we had to find some room for flexibility. He said that, of course, Israel would retain sovereignty over the Temple Mount: the site of the Western Wall and, above it, the Al-Aqsa mosque complex. “But without damaging your sovereignty,” he argued, “we have to find a way to draw a picture for Arafat that includes some measure of Palestinian control in part of the city.” “Could you agree to Arafat having an office, maybe, inside the walls of the Old City,” he asked me. What about a form of administrative control in some of the outlying Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem? I replied that I couldn’t possibly answer any of his questions until and unless it was clear that Arafat accepted our sovereignty over — and our national and religious connection with — the Temple Mount. Yet I said I understood that we would have to reach some compromise agreement on the city if we were ever going to have a chance of a peace agreement. “But it’s an issue that is difficult for every Israeli,” I told him. Before I could even begin to see whether there was a way forward, I would have to take it through with my entire negotiating team. Then, we could discuss it. It turned out to be the most open, serious, searching discussion I was a part of during all my years in public life. It began, on the terrace of my cabin, at two in the afternoon and went on until sundown. I introduced it by saying what each of us already knew: Jerusalem was the most emotionally charged and politically complex issue of all. Our maximum position coming into the summit had been that we would again expand the municipal boundaries of the city, as we’d done after the 1967 war, in order to accommodate two separate “city councils.” One would be in Abu Dis, just to the southeast of the Old City, almost literally in the shadow of the Temple Mount. The understanding was the Palestinians would be free to rename the village, referring to it by the Arabic name for Jerusalem: Al Quds. I said that we should use that position as a starting point, and discuss how, or whether, we might go further. All I added was the need to be aware of what was at 360 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011831