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/ BARAK / 57 A few days later, the “pre-endgame” around the summit began. Not in Washington or Jerusalem or Ramallah or Gaza, but in Kochav Yair. Nava and I still spent almost all our weekends there. We valued the quiet, or at least the slightly quieter, time away from Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. Some of my oldest army friends lived there as well: Danny Yatom, as well as Shaul Mofaz and Uzi Dayan, who was now deputy chief of staff. Newer colleagues, too, like Yossi Ginossar, a Shin Bet veteran who spoke fluent Arabic and, after working in the West Bank and Gaza in the late 1960s became one of the first Israelis to hold secret talks with Arafat, building up a personal relationship with him. Under both Rabin and Peres, he had been a valuable liaison with the Palestinian leader. Nowm under my Premiership as well. The summit seemed to me more important than ever, but I knew that only President Clinton could make it happen. Short of giving the Palestinians the whole list of short-term rewards they wanted, including the three villages, I knew Arafat was never going to be enthusiastic. But if Clinton was persuaded that a peace agreement was within reach, I had confidence he would make the effort. I had allowed Gili Sher and Shlomo Ben-Ami to go to Washington the week before for exploratory talks with Dennis Ross. Shlomo, as I knew he’d done in the back- channel talks with the Palestinians, had gone beyond anything that I would or could say at this stage in order to probe the edges of where an eventual compromise might be possible. Now Clinton had sent Dennis to Israel, with Madeleine Albright to follow at the end of the month, and I had to assume that their impressions would be critical to his decision on whether to bring me and Arafat to Camp David. We agreed to meet Dennis and his team at Danny’s house in Kochav Yair. By the time I’d made the pleasant Shabbat-afternoon stroll from our house, a few streets away, they were in the back garden sipping lemonade and munching on popcorn. I'd met often with Dennis during my year as Prime Minister, and I liked him. He was smart, knowledgeable and experienced. He’d worked under three US Presidents: Carter, Bush Senior and now Clinton. No American diplomat had been more indefatigably involved in the search for Middle East peace. And whatever his occasional frustrations, he also recognized I was ready to go further than any 343 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_028191