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/ BARAK / 80 American proposal. I suggested the President could tell Arafat that he’d try to get me to agree to it, providing Arafat first showed a readiness to move. The American questions did go further than ours. They asked Arafat whether he would negotiate on the basis of getting Palestinian sovereignty over all the outer Jerusalem neighborhoods, as well as the Muslim Quarter of the Old City and a “custodial role” over the holy sites. But Arafat said no. He insisted on Palestinian sovereignty over all of East Jerusalem, including the Old City and the holy sites. For a few hours after Clinton’s fruitless meeting with Arafat, Dennis and the American team engaged in a rescue effort, adding another carrot. They included the Christian Quarter as well, meaning Palestinian sovereignty over nearly half of the Old City, including the areas where almost all Arab residents lived. Dennis gave the proposal to Shlomo and Amnon Lipkin to bring to me, and asked two of the Palestinian negotiators to take it to Arafat. Even offering sovereignty over the Muslim Quarter went beyond anything I’d proposed. So did a lot of the other American questions. Still, I said we’d be ready to consider them in discussions with the US negotiating team — with the exception of the Christian Quarter. But that, too, turned out not to matter. Arafat did not even respond. Clinton called me to say we’d reached the end of the road. There were only two options: end the summit and announce we’d tried and failed, or defer Jerusalem and try to get agreement on the rest of the issues. I asked for time to think it over, and he said he’d come see me when I was ready. I was tempted to put off Jerusalem. In the admittedly unlikely event we could get a deal on the other issues, that would undeniably be an achievement. But I couldn’t help thinking that Arafat’s lack of engagement on Jerusalem was yet another sign that he was not ready for the almost equally tough compromises required to resolve the other core issues. And there was no escaping the reality that without a deal on Jerusalem, no agreement we reached would truly represent an “end of conflict.”” Moreover, Jerusalem wasn’t just a Palestinian issue. It was of fundamental interest to the whole Muslim world. If we left it unaddressed, we would be putting future Israeli governments in the position of having to negotiate on Jerusalem after we’d given back our key negotiating assets and all our leverage. I accepted now that the search of a full peace treaty, or even a framework agreement, looked all but impossible. Even Shlomo’s and Gili’s freelancing had produced only a series of no’s from Arafat. But I felt I couldn’t give up. Much as I’d been resisting it, I believed I needed to give Clinton my true bottom lines, even 366 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_011837