Rain Played a Role in Summit Extension

THURMONT, Md. —  The marathon Camp David summit probably would have ended in complete failure early Thursday if it hadn’t been for an act of nature--a driving summer rain that raked Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains.

President Clinton had already concluded that it was pointless for Israelis and Palestinians to continue haggling over issues such as Jewish settlements, Palestinian refugees and Jerusalem, the city that both sides covet as their capital. Nine days of negotiations had done little to resolve the emotion-laden disputes of a generations-long conflict.

But instead of boarding his Marine One helicopter for the short flight back to the White House, Clinton decided to go by road because the rain made flying hazardous. During the extra time required to set up the presidential motorcade, Israeli and Palestinian negotiators decided to stay at Camp David and try once more to reach agreement.

It was just about the only unequivocal agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians during the summit. According to one Clinton administration official, both sides have always agreed that they want to settle the conflict--they just have diametrically opposed plans for doing it.

The impetus for continuing the summit came not from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat, but from lower-level negotiators. The Israeli and Palestinian staff experts agreed that it was not in their interests to go home empty-handed. They decided to try to keep the summit afloat--and sold the idea to their bosses, who, in turn, informed Clinton.

So on Thursday, the Israeli and Palestinian delegations were back in the now-familiar rustic cabins of Camp David, continuing to talk. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright headed the U.S. contingent.

“The effort has certainly not slackened in any way,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher told reporters in this tiny village near the presidential retreat. “And I think the parties wouldn’t be here, [and] we wouldn’t be here, if we didn’t think there was some potential.”

But if the effort wasn’t diminished, the work schedule Thursday seemed to be. Boucher announced only a handful of mostly informal meetings as the delegations tried to recover from three days of nearly round-the-clock bargaining that left most of the negotiators haggard and deprived of sleep.

When the summit began, Clinton said he could stay at the table only through Tuesday because he planned to leave the next day for Japan and the summit of the Group of 8, the world’s seven leading industrialized nations plus Russia. He said the allotted eight days for the Israeli-Palestinian summit were plenty of time to resolve the disputes because the issues were well known to both sides.

When the original deadline passed, Clinton decided to postpone his departure for one day. But just before midnight Wednesday, he decided to call off the whole Camp David summit. White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart issued a terse statement of failure, and the president was ready to leave for Japan.

“All the cars were lined up, the bags were packed, people were ready to go,” Boucher said. “At any moment, we could have gotten in the motorcade and departed. This was real.”

Another administration official, who requested anonymity, elaborated: “Even though the president had told the leaders that he was going, the Israeli and Palestinian negotiators remained together. They decided that it was better to stay than to go. How that filtered up to the leaders I don’t know. But what seems clear is that, at some point, the negotiators said, ‘We can’t let this happen,’ and the leaders agreed.”

Although U.S. officials insisted that the crisis was genuine, it also mirrored a negotiating ploy that has been used so often in Middle East talks that it has become somewhat of a cliche. At the Israeli-Egyptian summit at Camp David in 1978, the Egyptian delegates packed their bags but didn’t leave. During the Israeli-Palestinian talks at Wye Plantation in 1998, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stacked his luggage in front of his cabin, where the American and Palestinian sides could easily see it, but he didn’t walk out either. And on Wednesday, both the Israelis and the Americans played the pack-the-bags game; Arafat had threatened to walk out earlier in the summit.

But there can be no doubt that the Israeli delegation was preparing for failure, hoping to make sure that the blame would be placed on Arafat. Several of Barak’s Cabinet colleagues who are not members of the Camp David delegation spent much of Wednesday telling American Jewish groups and other segments of public opinion that agreement at the summit was unlikely. Barak sent a letter to Clinton accusing Arafat of bargaining in bad faith.

“It was very serious,” an Israeli source said Thursday. “It was touch and go. Everyone was prepared for a bad outcome.”

He said Barak had planned to give his version of why the summit failed at a news conference that was to be held in a Maryland hotel. Twenty television cameras were already in place when the summit was extended, and the news conference was canceled.

Although failure was averted this time, eventual success was far from assured.

“I don’t know if the negotiations will really continue until Clinton returns,” said Uzi Baram, an Israeli parliament member from Barak’s Labor Party whom the prime minister summoned to Washington this week. “The truth is that a breakthrough will be very hard.”

Palestinians agreed. “Arafat, very simply, cannot give in on the subject of Jerusalem,” said Ziad abu Ziad, a member of Arafat’s Cabinet. Abu Ziad also ruled out a partial deal: “The problems with partial agreements from our past experience, and what the Israeli side proves, is that the Israeli side does not implement partial agreements.”

Barak telephoned five current and former members of his Cabinet to brief them on the status of the negotiations. One of them, Eli Yishai, said he remains skeptical about any success at the summit. Yishai, a member of the ultra-Orthodox Shas Party, quoted Barak as saying that his reason for threatening to walk out--the intransigence of Arafat--remained valid.

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Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson in Jerusalem contributed to this report.