1. Gates, From the Shadows, pp. 454–455.

2. Michael Duffy and Dan Goodgame, Marching in Place: The Status Quo Presidency of George Bush (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992), excerpted in Time, 24 August 1992, 32, 38.

3. Quandt, Peace Process, p. 383.

4. Bush referred to himself in interviews as "cautious," "prudent," and "diplomatic." Baker was dubbed by former Reagan aide Michael Deaver "the most cautious human being I've ever met." John Newhouse, "The Tactician," New Yorker, 7 May 1990, 52.

5. Christopher Ogden, "Vision Problems at State," Time, 25 September 1989, 22, and Maureen Dowd and Thomas L. Friedman, "The Fabulous Bush and Baker Boys," New York Times Magazine, 6 May 1990, 36.

6. On Baker's political skill, see Dowd and Friedman, "The Fabulous Bush and Baker Boys," pp. 34ff., and Newhouse, "The Tactician," pp. 50–82. For the judgment of another administration official on his political abilities, see Gates,

7. Quandt, Peace Process, p. 404, and New York Times, 8 November 1992.

8. James A. Baker, III, with Thomas M. De Frank, The Politics of Diplomacy: Revolution, War and Peace, 1989–1992 (New York: Putnam, 1995), p. xiii.

9. Ibid., pp. 115–117.

10. Dowd and Friedman, "The Fabulous Bush and Baker Boys," p. 67.

11. In one rare example, Baker, touring Kurdish refugee camps in the aftermath of the Gulf war in 1991, was so deeply affected that he organized a relief effort for purely humanitarian reasons. It is an indication of how unusual his reactions to this disaster were that the press wrote about it at the time and that he devoted several pages to it in his memoirs, writing with an unusual degree of feeling. Washington Post, 29 April 1991, and Baker, The Politics of Diplo macy, pp. 430–435.

12. Washington Institute's Presidential Study Group, Building for Peace: An American Strategy for the Middle East (Washington, D.C.: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1988).

13. Indyk did not become a U.S. citizen until he was appointed to the Clinton administration National Security Council staff in early 1993.

14. "The Next Step in the Peace Process: A Roundtable Discussion of Building for Peace," a symposium with Martin Indyk, Samuel Lewis, William Quandt, and Dennis Ross, November 30, 1988, in Proceedings of the Washing ton Institute Policy Forum, 1988 (Washington, D.C.: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1988), pp. 31–44.

15. Downplaying the significance of these PLO concessions, Indyk chastised the PLO for having addressed them to the United States and not solely to Israel, despite the fact that the focus of U.S. demands on the PLO had for years been precisely those concessions that would lead to a U.S.-PLO dialogue. Ibid., p. 40.

16. Benvenisti, Intimate Enemies, pp. 86–87.

17. Deeming the Middle East a pitfall to be avoided, Baker said in his memoirs, "From day one, the last thing I wanted to do was touch the Middle East peace process." Baker, The Politics of Diplomacy, p. 115.

18. In a paper published in 1985, Ross criticized those in the bureaucracy who he claimed "feel guilty about our relationship with Israel and our reluctance to force Israeli concessions." Dennis Ross, Acting with Caution: Middle East Policy Planning for the Second Reagan Administration, Policy Paper 1 (Washington, D.C.: Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1985), p. 32.

19. A brief profile of the two men appears in Jonathan Broder, "The Bush League," Jerusalem Report, 22 October 1992, 16–18.

20. The description of these men's Labor Party approach is from ibid. The reference to "impeccable pro-Israeli credentials" and the designation "Israelists" are from Leon Hadar, "High Noon in Washington: The Shootout over the Loan Guarantees," Journal of Palestine Studies 82 (winter 1992): 77.

21. Hanan Ashrawi, This Side of Peace: A Personal Account (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), p. 230

22. Ross, Acting with Caution, pp. iv, 2–5.

23. Broder, "The Bush League," and Laura Blumenfeld, "Three Peace Suits," Washington Post, 24 February 1997.

24. Aaron David Miller's book on the Palestinians, The PLO and the Politics of Survival (New York: Praeger, 1983), is a balanced and nonpolemical exposition of Palestinian and PLO positions; it describes the rise of Palestinian nationalism and the outlook for the Palestinians in the wake of the PLO's dispersal after Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon. His second book, The Arab States and the Palestine Question: Between Ideology and Self-Interest (New York: Praeger, 1986), is also an unbiased description of the Arab states' relation to and interests in the Palestinian issue. In 1987, Miller wrote an article examining the Arab-Israeli conflict twenty years after the 1967 war; the article viewed the conflict from a middle-of-the-road perspective and showed a realism shared by few in the Reagan administration of the time and by few others on Baker's team two years later; "The Arab-Israeli Conflict, 1967–1987: A Retrospective," Middle East Journal, summer 1987, 349–360.

25. Daniel Charles Kurtzer, "Palestine Guerrilla and Israeli Counter insurgency Warfare: The Radicalization of the Palestine Arab Community to Violence, 1949–1970" (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1976). Kurtzer recognized that the Arab-Jewish conflict in Palestine involved two "national liberation movements" struggling for "political sovereignty."

26. Teicher and Teicher, Twin Pillars, p. 146.

27. Richard N. Haass, "Paying Less Attention to the Middle East," Commentary, August 1986, 22–26. Richard N. Haass, Conflicts Unending: The United States and Regional Disputes (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990).

28. Haass, Conflicts Unending, p. 51.

29. Ross, Acting with Caution, pp. 25, 40.

30. Dennis Ross, "The Peace Process—a Status Report" (a presentation at the Aspen Institute of the Wye Plantation Fourth Annual Policy Conference, "U.S. Policy and the Middle East Peace Process," Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1989), pp. 11–12.

31. Quandt, Peace Process, p. 388.

32. Broder, "The Bush League," p. 18, and Blumenfeld, "Three Peace Suits."

33. Christison, "Splitting the Difference," pp. 42 and 50, note 19.

34. Thomas L. Friedman, "A Window on Deep Israel-U.S. Tensions," New York Times, 19 September 1991.

35. Wolf Blitzer, "How American Pressure Shifted from Israel to the Palestinians," Jerusalem Post International Edition, 29 April 1989; David Makovsky, "Shamir's Defiance Aimed at Setting Limits for U.S.," Jerusalem Post Interna tional Edition, 3 November 1990; and Thomas L. Friedman, "Special Relationship Reaches Its Limits," New York Times, 21 October 1990.

36. Rabie, U.S.-P.L.O Dialogue, pp. 99–107, describes the dialogue on the

37. Some Palestinians, in fact, believe that the official Tunis channel was undermined by Arafat's acquiescence in the U.S. desire to communicate indirectly and unofficially via the Egyptians. Rabie, U.S.-P.L.O Dialogue, pp. 107–156.

38. Quandt, Peace Process, p. 389.

39. Ross, Acting with Caution, p. 43.

40. Interview with a former government official who asked to remain anonymous.

41. Rabie, U.S.-P.L.O Dialogue, p. 145.

42. Baker credits New York Times correspondent Thomas Friedman with the idea of threatening to withdraw from the peace process. Noting that he occasionally asked Friedman "to share his thoughts with me on an off-the-record basis," Baker said in his memoirs that Friedman had offered the view that it made no sense to continue with the peace process if the parties were not genuinely interested and that, to get their attention, the United States should let them know it would not be there to help unless they called. Baker himself was the one who decided to doth is publicly. Baker, The Politicsof Diplomacy, p. 131.

43. Abba Eban, "Vision and Hard Facts," Jerusalem Post International Edition, 13 January 1990, 8.

44. Hadar, "Reforming Israel," pp. 124–126.

45. Frank Collins, "Borrowing Money for Israel: Annual Interest Alone Exceeds $3 Billion," Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 1991/January 1992, 33.

46. Tessler, A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, p. 745. A combination of relaxed restrictions on emigration from the Soviet Union, leading to a more than twelve-fold increase in the number of Soviet Jewish emigrants by late 1989, and changes in U.S. immigration laws that increased limits on the entry of those claiming refugee status, together resulted in a huge increase in the numbers of Soviet Jews moving to Israel. In early 1990 the Israeli government was predicting that as many as five hundred thousand Soviet Jews would move to Israel in that year alone. Geoffrey Aronson, "Soviet Jewish Emigration, the United States, and the Occupied Territories," Journal of Palestine Studies 76 (summer 1990): 30–45.

47. Dowd and Friedman, "The Fabulous Bush and Baker Boys," p. 67.

48. Ibid., and Glenn Frankel, "The Widening Gulf of Distrust between the U.S. and Israel," Washington Post National Weekly Edition, 7–13 May 1990, 17.

49. Baker, The Politics of Diplomacy, pp. 127–128. Baker says that White

50. Tessler, A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, p. 736.

51. Aronson, "Soviet Jewish Emigration," pp. 30, 37. Immigrants to Israel from all countries for the first ten months of 1990 totaled 122, 592; approximately 90 percent were from the Soviet Union. New York Times, 2 November 1990.

52. Tessler, A History of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, p. 745; Geoffrey Aronson, "Settlement Report" (November 1994), reprinted in Journal of Pal estine Studies 94 (winter 1995): 99; and Rachelle Marshall, "End of the Beginning or Beginning of the End?" Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, March 1995, 7.

53. The Security Council initially met outside New York to avoid the issue of whether the United States would again deny Arafat a visa to address the session, as had occurred in 1988, when Secretary of State Shultz refused to allow Arafat to enter the United States for a General Assembly session.

54. Jules Kagian, "Another American Veto," and Daoud Kuttab, "Hunger Strike Gains," Middle East International, 8 June 1990, 8–10.

55. Salah Khalaf expressed his concern to Quandt in June 1990. He thought Saddam was planning something big and wanted the PLO in his corner. Khalaf was concerned that this development boded ill for the Palestinians, andhehoped to avoid a break with the United States, but he had been unable to get Arafat to listen to any proposals for a compromise on the Abu al-Abbas issue that would satisfy the United States. Quandt, Peace Process, pp. 393–394, and interview with William Quandt, 12 May 1991. (Khalaf was assassinated, most likely by a renegade Palestinian group under orders from Saddam, in January 1991.) Even Baker attributes the Palestinian tilt toward Iraq to the breakdown of the peace process. In his memoirs, Baker observes that "perhaps" because Israel had repudiated its own peace plan, public opinion in the Arab world suddenly began to shift "away from conciliation in the direction of Saddam's truculence," and the Egyptians began to lose influence with the PLO. Baker, The Politics of Dip lomacy, p. 129.

56. William B. Quandt, "The Middle East in 1990," Foreign Affairs 70, no. 1 (1991): 56.

57. Quandt, Peace Process, pp. 398–399.

58. Friedman, "Special Relationship Reaches Its Limits," and Michael Kramer, "The Political Interest: Baker's Real Agenda: 1992," Time, 27 May 1991, 35.

59. Bush diary entry, early 1991, cited in Herbert S. Parmet, George Bush: The Life of a Lone Star Yankee (New York: Scribner, 1997), p. 500.

60. See NBC/ Wall Street Journal poll, September 25, 1991, reprinted in the Journal of Palestine Studies 82 (winter 1992): 163; Gallup poll, December 1992, executive summary reprinted in the Journal of Palestine Studies 86 (winter 1993): 167–168; and Fouad Moughrabi, "Polls Show Dramatic Shifts in US

61. A political cartoon by Oliphant, for instance, depicted Shamir slapping Baker in the face and then extending his hand; it was labeled "Donations accepted." Reprinted in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October 1991, 9.

62. Baker believes that AIPAC's failure to block the request for delay was "a powerful psychological weapon" on the administration's side and meant that AIPAC was no longer perceived in Congress as politically invincible. Baker, The Politics of Diplomacy, pp. 549, 555.

63. Quoted in Melman and Raviv, Friends in Deed, p. 456.

64. Ashrawi, This Side of Peace, pp. 59, 93–94.

65. Baker, The Politics of Diplomacy, pp. 414–415, 423.

66. Thomas L. Friedman, "Amid Histrionics, Arabs and Israelis Team Up to Lose an Opportunity," New York Times, 3 November 1991.

67. Ashrawi, This Side of Peace, p. 93. Ashrawi paints a picture of Baker's team, particularly Ross and Kurtzer, as imperious and patronizing toward the Palestinians, excessively vigilant about preventing any hint of PLO involvement, and extremely careful to accommodate Israel's sensibilities. She alleges that Ross frequently failed to pass on to Baker Palestinian proposals and information on Israeli occupation practices. See, for example, ibid., pp. 99, 108–117, 160, 199–200.

68. Ibid., pp. 83–84, 87, 128, and Baker, The Politics of Diplomacy, pp. 466, 493. Baker used the "dead cat" admonition with the Israelis also, urging them to go far enough so that "we can leave this dead cat on the Arab doorstep." Baker, The Politics of Diplomacy, p. 450.

69. Baker, The Politics of Diplomacy, p. 446.

70. Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July 1991, 15.

71. Richard H. Curtiss, "It's Lift-Off or Abort as Bush-Baker Initiative Nears Point of No Return," Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, July 1991, 8.

72. George J. Church, "Finally Face to Face," Time, 11 November 1991, 55.

73. CNN broadcast, 5 November 1991.

74. One theme was the "moral-equivalency" argument—the notion that there could be no moral equivalency between Israel and the Arabs and that an evenhanded approach to the peace process was thus unfair to Israel because Israel was the victim of Arab aggression. This theme was enunciated in a fullpage ad in the New York Times on 26 February 1992 by the Committee on U.S. Interests in the Middle East. Signers included, from the Johnson administration, Eugene Rostow; from the Nixon administration, Leonard Garment; from the Carter administration, Stuart Eizenstat; and from the Reagan administration, Elliot Abrams, William Bennett, Stephen Bryen, Linda Chavez, Alan Keyes, John Lehman, and Richard Perle.

75. David R. Bowen, "Analysis of Loan Guarantee Terms," CNI Newsletter,

76. "Settlement Population Growth under Labor," in "Settlement Report," ed. Geoffrey Aronson, reprinted in Journal of Palestine Studies 101 (autumn 1996): 130.

77. Quoted in Ashrawi, This Side of Peace, p. 90.

78. Anton Shammas, "A Lost Voice," New York Times Magazine, 28 April 1991, 48.

79. Ibid.