Revelations of a Point Man

...Moreover, Middle East negotiations are sure to resume in some form at some time, and the lessons the author gleans from his years as the U.S...

...He had to be ready to fly anywhere at any time...

...Indeed, Knesset defections during the Camp David talks left him with a minority government...

...Ross notes that Arab diplomats occasionally used his Jewishness as "a ready-made handle," symbolic of alleged Jewish influences that kept the U.S...

...now the international community had to impel Israel to hand them the West Bank and Gaza for a Palestinian state...

...If Israel wanted to retain areas containing Jewish settlements, it would have to swap equivalent areas of its own land...

...Middle East envoy epitomizes his spellbinding book...

...worst of all, he had to deal on a regular basis with foreign leaders who were self-centered, manipulative and devious...

...from sympathizing with their viewpoint...

...Ross contends, justified withholding loan guarantees from Israel by the elder Bush...

...All the shortsightedness and tactical blunders evident on the Israeli side notwithstanding, Ross observes that the Jewish state's consistent aim was peace...

...That he would find himself representing Republican (George H.W...

...Not that he approves of Israel's stance, far from it...

...By 1999, Ross believes, Israel was ready for a final settlement that would have established the first Palestinian state in history...

...Under both Labor and Likud governments, he points out, Israel reached peace agreements with those Arab neighbors who were ready to recognize it, specifically Egypt and Jordan, and in the case of the former relinquished the vast expanse of the Sinai Desert to obtain Cairo's assent...

...It is day eight of the July 2000 Camp David summit, a crucial juncture in the negotiations...

...Over and over, we see Palestinian negotiators unable to move in a conciliatory direction for fear of incurring Arafat's anger...

...Having reluctantly agreed at Oslo to the legitimacy of the State of Israel, the Palestinians felt they need do no more...

...Yours is not the only blockbuster political memoir out this summer...

...President Clinton was a flawed negotiator despite his great personal charisma, Ross says, because in his eagerness to please he made premature concessions, and the one form of anger he was capable of manifesting was real—his face would turn red, his temper out of control...

...an interpreter is the only other person in the room...

...Ross cannot conceive how Arafat, had he truly wanted peace, could have passed up the rare chance for an agreement offered during the Clinton Administration...

...during sensitive mediations he got little if any sleep...

...his family rarely saw him...

...Palestinian political culture is very different from Israel's...

...The Missing Peace is a "crack in the swinging door" for the entire peace process...

...And yet, he testifies, his religion never came up as an issue with the Presidents and secretaries of state for whom he worked...

...Ross also reveals that rumors about Israel's willingness to give back the entire Golan Heights to Syria were true...

...Furthermore, the Palestinians insisted on Arab control over East Jerusalem, and at least a theoretical "right of return" for exiled Palestinians—and their descendants—to Israel proper...

...Benjamin Netanyahu, whose "hubris" led him to assume, incorrectly, that he could simultaneously mollify his Right-wing settler supporters andreachan agreement with the Palestinians...

...The Palestinian knew full well that both Clinton and Barak were leaving office, and that their successors were unlikely to give high priority to peace talks...

...point man will prove illuminating...

...So far, the only non-Arab participant in the talks to contradict Ross' indictmentof Arafat has been Rob Malley, the National Security Council Middle East expert, who has suggested that the Israelis and Americans share blame for the failure...

...He praises the current Israeli plan to withdraw from Gaza, but argues that it cannot work without Palestinian coordination...

...He was convinced a package peace arrangement would win the support of most Israelis, however painful the territorial price (especially in Jerusalem...

...He makes clear that he considers the creation of Jewish settlements on land captured in the 1967 Six-Day War a grievous mistake, though an understandable one given the Arab world's refusal to enter peace talks at that time...

...The author is not convinced Arafat actually ordered the violence that set off the second intifada, but he does indict him for deciding not to use his immense prestige among the Palestinians to stop it...

...Even though we know the disappointing end of the story—the breakdown of the talks and the onset of the second intifada after opposition Likud Party leader Ariel Sharon made his ill-advised Temple Mount walk on September 28— we keep turning the pages to see what happens next because Ross' narrative is gripping, his cast of characters fascinating, and his judgments candid and convincing...

...and Ehud Barak, a "micromanager" and "master manipulator" whose policies had an "urgent, even manic, quality...

...Arafat may not be interested in a final settlement, but Ross thinks American diplomatic engagement, even with the minimal aim of temporary or stopgap arrangements, could lower tensions and reduce the amount ofbloodshed...

...In this judgment of Arafat's culpability, Ross is supported by Clinton in his recent memoir, My Life...

...But he worried that a piecemeal leakage of specific concessions before a final agreement would erode his majority and doom the peace initiative...

...To Ross, the inescapable conclusion is that Arafat, whether out of some political calculation or psychological quirk, never had any intention of reaching a settlement...

...A re-elected George W. Bush may want to change course and send a high-level negotiator to the Middle East...

...Bush) and Democratic (Clinton) Presidents in negotiations with world leaders—and on Jewishly sensitive Middle East matters, no less—is a tribute to his ability and training, but also an indication of how completely old ethnic and religious barriers to advancement in American public life have eroded...

...Reviewed by Lawrence Grossman Associate Director of Research, American Jewish Committee MOVE OVER, Bill Clinton...

...Little do they realize that several members of the U.S...

...As Ross came to appreciate, the Palestinians could only see themselves as victims...

...This mindset encouraged the conviction that steps to undo their plight had to emanate from the Israeli victimizers...

...A vignette in Dennis Ross' account of 12 years as the chief U.S...

...It was Barak's refusal to grant Syrian President Hafez al-Assad's request for a few meters of shoreline on the eastern side of Lake Kinneret, Ross says, that prevented a peace agreement before Assad's death...

...Ross left government service when Clinton departed the White House, and now enjoys the far more serene ambiance of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, where he is a counselor and distinguished fellow...

...After the breakdown of negotiations in 2000, Dennis Ross publicly pointed the finger of blame at the Palestinian side...

...team are lurking in the pantry, "able to listen through the crack in the swinging door that opened into the living room...

...In these memoirs he builds a strong case for his conclusion...

...It was Yasir Arafat who, in the end, refused to accept a U.S.-drafted plan for a final settlement, and Arafat is, fittingly, the villain of this book...

...Ross explains some of the tricks of the trade that helped him survive...

...or, a victorious President John Kerry may revive the Clinton approach and do the same...

...Every Israeli prime minister from Rabin to Barak was prepared to leave the Golan in return for early-warning stations in the Heights...

...Aside from the obvious need for physical stamina and mental toughness, the negotiator must never reveal his ultimate, nonnegotiable positions before extracting everything possible from the other side, and the only permissible display of emotion is that which is feigned to throw one's interlocutor off guard...

...Will his blunt and perhaps too honest assessments of people, policies and events in The Missing Peace disqualify him as a diplomat...

...Barak was holding a tenuous Knesset coalition together...

...To be sure, Ross' description of the life of a negotiator makes one wonder why anyone would want the job...

...Only Yitzchak Rabin, who embraced the Oslo Accords in 1993 and began the withdrawal from Palestinian territory, emerges unscathed...

...In either case, no one is better qualified for the job than the man who held it before, Dennis Ross...

...Writing in the spring of 2004, he deplores the current Bush Administration's decision to withdraw from direct involvement in Middle East peace negotiations...

...In addition, he depicts the failings of Israel's leaders: Yitzchak Shamir, whose stonewalling on a settlement freeze...

...In The Missing Peace, Ross, for his part, has some unkind things to say about the performances of Malley and his boss, National Security Adviser Samuel "Sandy" Berger, at Camp David...

...Shimon Peres, who is enamored of "grandiose" but utterly impractical dreams of a prosperous "New Middle East...

...The former President similarly raisesthe possibility that Arafat was "confused, not wholly in command of the facts...

...President Clinton is meeting one-on-one with Yasir Arafat, hoping to use his legendary powers of persuasion to convince the Palestinian Authority Chairman to approve a deal...

...Ross recognizes that all is lost when Arafat tells him, quite matter-of-factly, that as an expert on world religions he knows the Jews never had a temple in Jerusalem...

...An identified (and somewhat observant) Jew from California, Dennis Ross began his involvement in public life with the antiwar Presidential campaigns of Robert E Kennedy and George S. McGovern...

...We shall see...