Clinton Meets Again With Barak, Arafat

Displaying a renewed sense of urgency after several days of preliminary skirmishes, President Clinton, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat conferred for more than an hour early Saturday despite Jewish strictures against working on the Jewish Sabbath.

It was only the second formal meeting of all three leaders since the Camp David summit began Tuesday. But its timing, after a traditional Sabbath dinner attended by members of all three delegations, indicated that there were some issues the leaders wanted to deal with at once. But a White House official gave no hint of what was discussed.

The official said Clinton, Barak and Arafat met from 11:30 p.m. Friday until about 1 a.m. Saturday.

Barak’s participation in the session almost certainly will spark controversy in Israel, where government offices close on the Sabbath, which runs from sunset Friday to sunset Saturday, and government officials are expected to obey the prohibition against working.

Several of the Israeli and Palestinian negotiating teams assigned to wrestle with specific issues met Saturday afternoon. White House spokesman P.J. Crowley said Clinton dropped by several of those sessions.

Crowley said the president also met Saturday afternoon with Barak while Secretary of State Madeleine Albright conferred with Arafat.

The summit is scheduled to end Tuesday, allowing Clinton to leave the next day for a meeting in Japan of the Group of 8, consisting of the world’s leading industrial nations, plus Russia.

However, the president could be expected to change his travel schedule if a Middle East peace agreement was in sight.

Although the three delegations have adhered to a blackout of official news, except for cautious statements by the White House, some information about the deliberations has seeped out of the heavily guarded presidential retreat in the Maryland mountains.

Israeli officials have made no attempt to conceal Barak’s terms for a settlement, an offer that independent experts say is the most generous ever proposed by an Israeli leader to the Palestinians. Nevertheless, Palestinian sources say the offer is still heavily weighted against them. And they have complained that U.S. peace envoy Dennis B. Ross came much too close to the Israeli position when he offered a U.S.-drafted compromise last week.

One senior Israeli official, not included in the delegation at Camp David, said Barak is offering Arafat a Palestinian state covering most of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, provided Arafat agrees to some strict security guarantees. Under this plan, the Palestinian state would have no army but would be allowed to maintain a large paramilitary “police force.”

Barak intends for Israel to annex several large Jewish settlements in the West Bank close to the border as it existed before the 1967 Middle East War. That would bring most of the settlers into Israel. Settlers living in what would become the Palestine state would be given a deadline to either move to Israel or become residents of Palestine. The settlers left outside Israel would receive financial compensation.

Barak has indicated that he is prepared to swap with the Palestinians some border lands that were in Israeli hands before the 1967 war in exchange for the West Bank settlements that he plans to annex. It was not clear whether the Palestinians have accepted that proposal.

The fate of more than 3 million Palestinian refugees huddled in camps in neighboring countries is one of the most emotional issues facing the negotiators.

The refugees are mostly the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of Palestinians who fled from towns and villages that became part of Israel at the time the state was created in 1948. For generations, they have harbored dreams of returning home to places long part of the Jewish state.

Israeli officials say Barak will allow several thousand refugees with relatives already living in Israel to return.

The Palestinian Authority is ready to accept some, but not all, of the refugees. Israel suggests giving the rest of them money in exchange for dropping all claims to their former homes.

The Clinton administration acknowledges that the United States, countries in Western Europe, Asia and the Persian Gulf region will have to contribute much of the money needed to seal the deal for both Jewish settlers and Palestinian refugees.

On perhaps the most contentious issue of the dispute--the future of Jerusalem--Barak is offering substantial autonomy to predominately Arab neighborhoods of the city, but he will not consider giving the Palestinians sovereignty within the city. Palestinians have said that is not enough.

Ultimately, whether a settlement emerges from Camp David might have more to do with the personal rapport among Clinton, Barak and Arafat than the content of the proposals put on the table.

Palestinians generally applauded Barak’s election victory last year over his hard-line Likud Party predecessor, Benjamin Netanyahu. But trust between Barak and Arafat seems to have eroded during the last several months.

Middle East experts say it is now up to Clinton to try to restore that relationship, or at least to persuade Arafat to focus on what he can get from the negotiations rather than what he will not be able to obtain.