What Participants and Observers Said About the Wye Document Signed at the White House Oct. 23, 1998

Compiled by Richard H. Curtiss

“It is true that whatever we achieved is only temporary and that it has been late, but our agreement underscores that the peace process is going ahead.”—U.S. President Bill Clinton, Oct. 23, 1998.

“We are just at the beginning, or maybe in the middle, of the road to a permanent peace...I am today brimming with some confidence, and not overconfidence, simply because we have overcome tremendous challenges and achieved success for both sides...And that fills me with the confidence that we are able to tackle the larger challenges that still await us, and that still await our two peoples.”—Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Oct. 23, 1998.

“We will never leave the peace process, and we will never go back to violence and confrontation.”—Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, Oct. 23, 1998.

“There has been enough destruction, enough death, enough waste. And it’s time that together we occupy a place beyond ourselves, our peoples, that is worthy of them and of their sons, the descendants of the children of Abraham.”—King Hussein of Jordan, Oct. 23, 1998.

“As far as he [Netanyahu] is concerned, the main thing is remaining in office, which comes even before the interests of the state of Israel.”—Former Likud prime minister of Israel Yitzhak Shamir, Oct. 23, 1998.

One thing Netanyahu has done there is he’s risked his life.”—Jerusalem Report columnist Ze’ev Chafets, Oct. 23, 1998.

“It delivers the fabric of a Palestinian state to Arafat’s hands. It’s a lot more than just a 13 percent [troop withdrawal], it’s the entire direction...It’s like a house of cards. [Netanyahu] collapsed totally.”—Yehudit Tayar, spokesperson for the extreme right-wing Israeli Settler’s Council.

“The main reason Netanyahu went along with the agreement was because his constituency supports it. He’s catering to the center.”—Israeli professor Avishai Margalit, Oct. 23, 1998.

“There is no confidence in the Israeli government or the follow-up steps. I have very serious doubts about Israeli implementation because we have learned from experience that this Israeli government is certainly not interested in bridging the gap between signing of an agreement and honoring the commitment.”—Former Palestinian minister Hanan Ashrawi, Oct. 23, 1998.

“The text of yesterday’s accord, which closely followed an American proposal that the parties were briefed orally on last January, included few new obligations on either side, but is more specific than previous agreements on vital details. By design, it lays out a sequence of reciprocal moves because strong mutual distrust has halted performance of most obligations by either side since Israel broke ground on Har Homa, a new Jewish neighborhood in East Jerusalem, in March 1997.”—Staff writer Barton Gellman, Washington Post , Oct. 24, 1998.

“The agreement in part serves to commit the two sides once again to actions they had already promised in 1993 and 1995 in agreements reached in Oslo...However modest the specifics of this deal, an inability to reach agreement here would have had serious consequences for the Middle East and American stature in the region, especially among Washington’s moderate Arab allies.”—Staff writer Steven Erlanger, The New York Times , Oct. 24, 1998.

“The fact is that this summit was convened more for the benefit of Mr. Clinton than for Mr. Netanyahu or Mr. Arafat...This, however, is typical of Mr. Clinton’s foreign policy mode: long periods of neglect interrupted by frantic and often futile moments of activity. Yes, Mr. Clinton got himself a deal—one we will likely live to regret.”—Washington Times editorial, Oct. 24, 1998.

“Whatever its shortcomings...the accord has set in motion potentially far-reaching changes among Israelis and Palestinians that could set the stage for a final, peaceful resolution of their 50-year-old conflict. It is possible, in fact, that the events at Wye could trigger a decisive shakeup in Israeli politics—forming a new centrist alliance for a peace accord even as it forces the Palestinian Authority to root out once and for all the violent extremists who are bent on preventing one...The remaining obstacles to peace are formidable. There is deep skepticism Netanyahu will implement all the concessions he made in Maryland under intense U.S. pressure. If his conservative coalition survives, it could regard any Palestinian transgression as cause to freeze further withdrawals from the West Bank.” —Staff writer Lee Hockstader, Washington Post, Oct. 24, 1998.

“The agreement puts the long-delayed peace process back on track and sets the stage for ‘final status’ talks to be completed by May 4. Those negotiations, set to begin Nov. 2, promise to be even more thorny, because they involve the status of Jerusalem, the drawing of borders and the destiny of the Palestinian self-rule area.”—Staff writer Bill Sammon, Washington Times, Oct. 24, 1998.

“The Wye agreement is no lasting peace treaty but a brief interim deal to revive the deadlocked Oslo peace process. But whether it succeeds or fails, it will cost the U.S. taxpayer billions in arms to Israel and aid to the Palestinians...Mr. Netanyahu brought with him to Wye a shopping list for increased military aid that U.S. insiders described as ‘enormous’...The United States has followed for more than 20 years a policy of persuading Israel to make controversial territorial withdrawals or other concessions by providing increased supplies of state-of-the-art weapons as a carrot for yielding to Washington’s pressure...When asked if the cost of backing the Wye agreement would be similar to the $5 billion a year the United States has given to Egypt and Israel since the 1978 Camp David agreement, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright yesterday said the cost had not yet been calculated...Both diplomats and intelligence officials said [convicted spy Jonathan] Pollard’s pardon and release now appear to be a done deal, and in a matter of weeks at the very most...Mr. Netanyahu wanted Pollard’s release to defuse the explosion of criticism he knew he would face from his nationalist critics for agreeing to any deal at all with Mr. Arafat. Mr. Clinton, however, was determined not to face the accusation before the congressional elections that he had freed a convicted traitor just to look good as an international statesman.”—Staff writer Martin Sieff, Washington Times, Oct. 24, 1998.

“Clinton, after a lifetime of getting himself out of jams with last-minute heroics, is chronically disorganized and crisis-prone, say the critics. But the Wye River summit, with its all-night sessions and constant brushes with disaster, was a setting in which Clinton’s penchant for keeping all the balls in the air at once seemed to thrive...Wye River also displayed one more time Clinton’s talent for survival, an ability to transform his political circumstances precisely at those moments when things look most dire.”—Staff Writer John F. Harris, Washington Post, Oct. 25, 1998.

“The interim agreement which was known as Oslo II is now going to be completed...It’s very clear that we have had to play an instrumental role in terms of being not just a facilitator but a mediator...We have said all along our objective is a comprehensive peace settlement, not only an agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians...There is no question that if you can solve the Israeli/Palestinian part of this equation, that you are going to have a dramatic impact in terms of changing the whole area of the Middle East. But if you are not going to settle also the Syrian-Israeli conflict, then you are still going to have a burning conflict out there...What the president has done now is make a commitment to get together with leaders at least twice between now and May.”—U.S. Middle East peace coordinator Dennis Ross, “Fox News Sunday,” Oct. 25, 1998.

“To Palestinians, from the elite strata of the intellectual class to the angry ranks of the refugee camps, the ‘if’ is a big one, and implementation is the key. The agreement signed at the White House on Friday is mostly a reiteration of actions already promised in accords signed in Oslo in 1993 and 1995, and never undertaken. This agreement sets a precise timetable for Israeli troop withdrawal in exchange for specific Palestinian steps to eradicate terrorism. And, unlike the Oslo agreements, it is a trilateral one, with the Americans playing guarantor, policeman and financier, using promises of financial aid to both sides.”—Staff writer Deborah Sontag, New York Times, Oct. 25, 1998.

“At 4 a.m. the Americans distributed the draft of a document that summarized the ideas exchanged on Tuesday...That was when the first crisis struck. Evidently sensing that the document was a form of American ultimatum, and convinced that it was devoid of the concrete security measures he required, Netanyahu ordered his delegation to pack its bags and demanded that the Americans provide vans and helicopters for Israel’s withdrawal...At 10 p.m. Netanyahu issued a statement declaring that he had received assurances that enabled him to stay... What participants at the Wye River Middle East conference call the Long Night—the all-night stand from Thursday to Friday during which an agreement was finally clinched, or almost clinched—opened with the second crisis. That was when President Clinton became so angry with the way Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of Israel was treating Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader, that the president slammed down his papers and angrily walked off, exclaiming, ‘This is despicable!’...The third and final crisis broke out Friday morning, at the end of the Long Night, when everything seemed sealed and ready for signing, when Mr. Netanyahu suddenly told Mr. Clinton that he could not go home without Jonathan Jay Pollard, an American convicted of spying for Israel. Mr. Clinton said ‘no.’ Mr. Netanyahu said ‘no deal,’ tempers flared, Mr. Netanyahu went off for a nap. Mr. Clinton paced, and several hours of acute suspense ensued before the exhausted negotiators emerged under the sparkling chandeliers of the East Room at the White House to sign on the dotted line, only minutes before sundown ushered in the Jewish Sabbath...In the end, Mr. Clinton won plaudits from all sides, his own included, for the extraordinary time he invested in Wye, his evenhandedness, and the attention to detail that he demonstrated. Mr. Arafat was lauded for his patience. And despite all the crises that Mr. Netanyahu created, participants declared that he had made wrenching concessions, and that if he was the most demanding, it was because he had the most to lose.”—Staff writers Serge Schmemann and Steven Erlanger, New York Times, Oct. 25, 1998.

“Clinton, who has relied throughout his political career on the American Jewish community for votes and campaign contributions, has been reluctant to engage in controversy with Israel. Yet the president and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu clearly confronted each other at times...Both sides were angered by incidents during the Wye summit. When Netanyahu threatened to walk out of the talks Wednesday, U.S. officials accused him of cheap theatrics. And Netanyahu and his aides accused Clinton of double-crossing them by first agreeing to free Jonathan Jay Pollard, convicted of spying for Israel, and then snatching the agreement off the table. U.S. officials denied this, and Israeli officials later conceded that indeed there never was a firm deal. No one knows yet whether the summit friction will make it easier or more difficult for Clinton to adopt the sort of even-handed approach that ultimately will be necessary if the United States is to fulfill its new responsibilities under the pact.”—Staff writer Norman Kempster, Los Angeles Times, Oct. 25, 1998.

“If the Palestinian state’s contours were still indistinct before the intensive negotiations in Maryland, they are now coming into focus. Until this accord, the Palestinians had complete civil and internal security control over just 3 percent of the territory of the West Bank—essentially, the cities. Now, assuming the pact is fully implemented as signed, Israeli troop withdrawals will extend exclusive internal Palestinian control to 17 percent of the Delaware-sized territory...But among ordinary Palestinians, there is no rejoicing, not yet at least. Few of them believe Israel will comply with its end of the bargain, and fewer still trust Netanyahu.”—Staff writer Lee Hockstader, Washington Post, Oct. 25, 1998.

“If Netanyahu had to be dragged unwillingly through months of negotiations, culminating in a nine-day summit and 85 hours of wrangling with the U.S. president himself to do only that, Arabs doubt his intention to negotiate in good faith for the Palestinians’ chief demand of a Palestinian state encompassing most of the West Bank and Gaza with Jerusalem as its capital.”—Staff writer John Daniszewski, Los Angeles Times, Oct. 25, 1998.

“For this deal to work, Bibi has to treat the Palestinians as a real partner (and they him) and freeze settlements and rein in Jewish extremists, every bit as much as Arafat has to rein in Hamas.”—Columnist Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, Oct. 25, 1998.

“Bibi has now taken ownership of the pragmatic side of the Oslo peace process and made it better and more popular. But now Bibi has got to begin to build a constituency among the Jews of Israel for peace as something more than a defeat of the Palestinians or the result of coercion from Washington.”—Stephen Cohen, Center for Middle East Peace, Oct. 25, 1998.

“Even if the end of this process includes something that bears the name “State of Palestine,” as the Palestinians so fervently hope and the majority of Israelis now accept, many doubt it will end the century-old Jewish-Arab conflict.”—Writer Ethan Bronner, New York Times, Oct. 25, 1998.

“This deal does not change the basic rules of the game. Let’s say the Palestinians get even 50 percent of the West Bank. Think about water resources, land development, sewage. Israelis use five times the water of Palestinians. What happens when the Palestinians want more? Where will it come from?..So what the Palestinians will get is exactly what the Israelis can live with, peace without any real price. That’s why they don’t care if there is a Palestinian state. That’s why even Sharon and Netanyahu can accept a state, because of the way they will define it.”—Former deputy mayor of Jerusalem Meron Benvenisti, Oct. 25, 1998.

“I think that for Netanyahu this week’s deal is the end of the track altogether. He won’t give up much more land. And what kind of state will we get? There will be cantons with no direct links. It is a gloomy prospect for us.”—Palestinian political scientist Ali Jarbawi of Birzeit University, Oct. 25, 1998.

“There is huge writing on the wall. It shows us that without a comprehensive agreement with our neighbors we are doomed ultimately to war. I think the politicians can see it. But they don’t have the courage to act on it.”—Gen. Shlomo Gazit, former director of Israeli military intelligence, Oct. 25, 1998.

“I can assure you that Mr. Netanyahu knows very clearly that if he wants to achieve peace with the Palestinians, if he wants to achieve peace in the Middle East, a Palestinian state is inevitable.”—Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat in CNN interview, Oct. 25, 1998.

“Saturday morning, barely 12 hours after Arafat signed an agreement that promises the Palestinians what amounts to 40 percent of the West Bank, there were no parties here [in Ramallah], no outbursts of pride, no euphoria...Few wanted to admit what many said they did feel—a leap in the heart, a flash of faith—because they did not want to end up dupes of a peace effort they no longer trust.”—Staff writer Deborah Sontag, New York Times, Oct. 25, 1998.

“It may be purely pragmatic, it may be temporary; what is clear is that Netanyahu has been forced to move toward a political center from where he is pledging to carry out a land-for-peace plan that he once campaigned against...Still, many in the Middle East, especially among Palestinians, do not trust Netanyahu and doubt that he will fulfill the promises he made at the Wye Plantation.”—Staff writer Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times, Oct. 25, 1998.

“Just as he’s [Netanyahu] implementing the new agreement, he may have to get into a countdown for new elections. That certainly will affect the way the agreement is carried out by Israel.” —Israeli security specialist Joseph Alpher, Oct. 25, 1998.

“Netanyahu has never behaved as if it were in his political interest to make a just peace with the Palestinians. The prime minister can only have been forced into his awkward position at Wye by the coercive power of the U.S. government and U.S. dollars, and by Arafat’s masterful threats to make a unilateral declaration of a Palestinian state if he did not get an agreement and get it soon.”—Writer Amy Wilentz, Los Angeles Times, Oct. 25, 1998.

“The Wye Mills accord could drive the Palestinian people away from Arafat and straight into the arms of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and his Hamas movement.” —Gulf Times, Doha, Qatar, Oct. 25, 1998.

“People and officials cannot help being cautious. There is a long history and heritage of Israeli manipulation and non-implementation of any of the previous agreements.”—Senior researcher Mohammed al-Sayed Said, Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, Cairo, Oct. 26, 1998.

“The road is still long for a comprehensive peace. This necessarily requires an Israeli withdrawal from the Syrian Golan Heights and from southern Lebanon as well as declaring a Palestinian state and achieving security for all parties.”—Egyptian Foreign Minister Amr Moussa, Oct. 26, 1998.

“Let us wait and see. There have been so many agreements that were never enforced.”—Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Oct. 26, 1998.

“If this president releases Jonathan Pollard, his legacy will be it’s okay to lie and it’s okay to spy...It will be one of the most disgraceful acts by an American president in the history of this country.”—Former federal prosecutor Joseph DiGenova on ABC’s “This Week,” Oct. 25, 1998.

“The Oslo peace process is supposed to end next May. Wye is a significant beginning on the much larger tasks ahead.”—Editorial, Christian Science Monitor , Oct. 26, 1998.

“Virtually everything on the Wye agenda had already been agreed in principle, in the past, especially in the January 1997 Hebron Accord, the last agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. However...the Israeli territorial concession at Wye is the final nail in the coffin to a claim by any major Israeli political party to ‘all the land of Israel’...Effectively, this is the tacit Likud acceptance of some form of independent Palestinian entity—state?—as the eventual outcome of the peace process. The only remaining questions are how large and how sovereign that entity will be.”—Executive director Robert Satloff of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, founded by members of AIPAC’s board of directors, Wall Street Journal, Oct. 26, 1998.

“Even after the new pullback, Israel will still have total control of East Jerusalem and 60 percent of the rest of the West Bank, and ‘security control’ of a further 21.8 percent. Israeli-controlled roads, many of them newly built or under construction, will continue to crisscross the area, fencing off the scores of tiny Palestinian ‘leopard spots’ into easily-contained cantonments.”— Writer Helena Cobban, Christian Science Monitor, Oct. 26, 1998.

“We’re trying to be hopeful, but so far we feel pretty cynical about the implementation of this agreement. We’re still not sure if they found a formula for it to work, or if it is a way to dismiss the Palestinians into their Bantustans.”—Palestinian political analyst Albert Aghazarian, Birzeit University, Oct. 26, 1998.

“Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu wants $1 billion in new aid to pay for the withdrawal of Israeli troops on the West Bank and such security measures as a third battery of the Arrow anti-missile system. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat badly needs economic assistance.”—Staff writer Stephen J. Glain, Wall Street Journal, Oct. 26, 1998.

“Uzi Benziman, a columnist for the liberal daily Ha’aretz, wasn’t alone in voicing the suspicion that Netanyahu’s maneuvering as prime minister has been ‘nothing but a tactical means of ridding himself of the burden of the Oslo process’ without getting blamed for it...For Israel to demand that terrorism be totally ended is to hand terrorists a veto over the peace process...The harder you look at the Wye agreement, the more Netanyahu’s critics seem to have a point. Twice at the Wye talks he pulled childish stunts that might have been intended to derail the talks but that did him no good.”—Author Geoffrey Wheatcroft, New York Times, Oct. 26, 1998.

“The Likud has given up the idea of the greater land of Israel, and adopted the positions of the Labor Party....The state is mired in mud. It’s time to act toward early elections and establish a government that will start pulling us out.”—Israeli Labor party leader Ehud Barak, Oct. 26, 1998.

“Mr. Netanyahu must try to survive a likely upheaval in his coalition as right-wingers who oppose compromise on even one more acre threaten to bolt his government and offer a more hawkish candidate in his place. Mr. Arafat must try to get members of the Palestine National Council, spread all over the globe, to gather and amend their founding charter calling for the destruction of Israel...Reaching almost any of these accomplishments requires the completion of some act of compliance by the other side.”—Staff writer Ilene R. Prusher, Christian Science Monitor, Oct. 26, 1998.

“Handing over even one centimeter or one grain of the soil of the Land of Israel to the Palestinian Authority is difficult and agonizing. We fought with all our might. We fought like lions, to reduce as much as possible, within the framework of Israel’s commitments, the land that was handed over.”—Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in speech carried on Israeli television, Oct. 25, 1998.

“‘I loved it. Even the meanest, toughest moment,’ Clinton said Saturday night. He said that before sleeping Friday night he had been awake for 39 straight hours in marathon negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders.”—Staff writer Sharon Waxman, Washington Post, Oct. 26, 1998.

Richard H. Curtiss is the executive editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.