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REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK: Reflections on WyeBy DANNA HARMAN(October 25) WASHINGTON - Finally, close to midnight on Friday, several of the Israeli negotiators sat down informally with all those members of the press they had been chatting with throughout the week over mobile phones and passed out the Wye Memorandum.
The efforts of some 19 months and nine intensive days of talks will have to be judged by time. But, clearly, just the fact that the document has been agreed upon is significant. The Wye summit almost ended in failure twice. On Wednesday night, the Israelis packed their bags, protesting that they had yet to see any text outlining the Palestinian commitments. And then, at the very last minute on Friday, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu threatened to stop the whole process after US President Bill Clinton, according to the Israeli rendition, reneged on his promise to release convicted spy Jonathan Pollard. With everybody nervously counting the passing hours, TV stations ran and reran archive photos of Pollard, and Clinton insisted no such promise, written, oral or otherwise, had been made. Meanwhile, the helicopters on the Wye Plantation pad stopped their engines, the White House band took a snack break, and the Israeli delegation convened at Wye to discuss its next move. Sources present at that meeting said the final decision to go forward with the signing ceremony had nothing to do with Pollard. "Yes, we felt Clinton was not straight with us, and this is very disconcerting," a senior Israeli official said, "but the real question was, is this a good deal or not? It was our last chance to rethink." Clinton, reportedly, was angry with the delay. His spokesman said he was "disappointed" and "surprised" by it; close observers said he was "seething." But, by late afternoon on Friday, as observant Jews looked worriedly at their watches, Clinton finally was where he had wanted to be all along: Seated beside the two leaders, under the gilded chandeliers and in front of the cameras in the White House's East Room. The upshot of the Pollard crisis was not immediately clear, although the friendly body language apparent between the American and Israeli leaders signaled that perhaps an acceptable compromise had been reached. At times, the White House ceremony had the air of a presidential pep rally, with Arafat, Netanyahu, Jordan's King Hussein, US Vice President Al Gore and US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright serving as the main cheerleading squad. Gore started it with his introduction: "In Bosnia, in Northern Ireland, and now again in the Middle East," Gore cried, sounding as if he were about to present a rock group, "President Bill Clinton has demonstrated his uncompromising personal commitment to bringing peace to some of the world's most troubled regions." King Hussein said Clinton had the "patience of Job" and expressed his wish that the president would "be with us as we see greater successes." Arafat promised that the president would "stay in the heart of every Palestinian person" and Netanyahu called Clinton a "warrior of peace." Mostly, however, the simple ceremony was quite moving. Hard work had been done and hard choices had been made. With all the talk of how impossible it would have been to leave without a White House affair, the specter of Netanyahu signing away land and Arafat promising to enter into battle with Hamas and both promising to work together as partners and move forward toward a more comprehensive peace was nothing to downplay. The ailing King Hussein, whose presence and words left practically all gathered teary eyed, put it well: "There has really been enough destruction, enough death, enough waste, and it is time that together we occupy a place beyond ourselves ... a place that is worthy of our people."
Headlines
The Document
Speeches
Analysis
The Pollard Issue
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Munching on chocolate chip cookies and intermittently nodding off to sleep, the exhausted negotiators stressed that this was, "the absolute best deal we could have gotten." And then, out of a large brown manila envelope labeled "For [cabinet Secretary] Dan Naveh's eyes only!!!!," came the sort of specifics the public had only been able to speculate about for months.