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government that the area around the temple’s surviving Western Wall, left uncared
for under the Jordanians, was cleared and a stone plaza put in place for worshipers
– at the expense of parts of the old Moroccan Quarter. It was under Labor, too, that
Israel unilaterally expanded Jerusalem’s city limits to take in more than two dozen
adjacent Arab villages on the West Bank. No Israeli government since then, Labor
or Likud, had deviated from a shared pledge that Jerusalem would remain Israel’s
undivided, sovereign capital under any eventual peace agreement.

Yet when I met Clinton the next morning in Laurel Lodge, he insisted we had to
find some room for flexibility. He said that, of course, Israel would retain
sovereignty over the Temple Mount: the site of the Western Wall and, above it, the
Al-Aqsa mosque complex. “But without damaging your sovereignty,” he argued,
“we have to find a way to draw a picture for Arafat that includes some measure of
Palestinian control in part of the city.”

“Could you agree to Arafat having an office, maybe, inside the walls of the Old
City,” he asked me. What about a form of administrative control in some of the
outlying Arab neighborhoods in East Jerusalem? I replied that I couldn’t possibly
answer any of his questions until and unless it was clear that Arafat accepted our
sovereignty over – and our national and religious connection with – the Temple
Mount. Yet I said I understood that we would have to reach some compromise
agreement on the city if we were ever going to have a chance of a peace
agreement. “But it’s an issue that is difficult for every Israeli,” I told him. Before I
could even begin to see whether there was a way forward, I would have to take it
through with my entire negotiating team. Then, we could discuss it.

It turned out to be the most open, serious, searching discussion I was a part of
during all my years in public life. It began, on the terrace of my cabin, at two in the
afternoon and went on until sundown. I introduced it by saying what each of us
already knew: Jerusalem was the most emotionally charged and politically
complex issue of all. Our maximum position coming into the summit had been that
we would again expand the municipal boundaries of the city, as we’d done after
the 1967 war, in order to accommodate two separate “city councils.” One would be
in Abu Dis, just to the southeast of the Old City, almost literally in the shadow of
the Temple Mount. The understanding was the Palestinians would be free to
rename the village, referring to it by the Arabic name for Jerusalem: Al Quds. I
said that we should use that position as a starting point, and discuss how, or
whether, we might go further. All I added was the need to be aware of what was at

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