5. Be realistic: Israeli and Palestinian negotiators were not "this close" -- thumb and forefinger an eighth of an inch apart -- at the July 2000 Camp David Summit. On none of the core issues -- territory, refugees, Jerusalem, even security -- were the gaps fundamentally narrowed.
It is true that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak put positions on the table that went farther than any premier had ever gone. But the fairy tale that we were "this close" to a deal emerged largely to justify Israeli concessions and hammer the Palestinians. Yasir Arafat's transgression was that he didn't empower his negotiators -- several of whom were more flexible than him -- not that he refused to sign on to an agreement made in heaven for Palestinians.
What the American side (myself included) refused to accept -- or didn't understand in the first place -- was that Oslo was the last concession Arafat was prepared to make. When it came to territory, Palestinians -- like the Egyptians and Syrians before them -- needed something that added up to 100 percent. Sadat got 100 percent of Sinai and Syrian President Hafez al-Assad wanted 100 percent of the Golan Heights plus access to the Sea of Galilee, after all. While Palestinians are prepared to allow the Israelis to retain a tiny part of the West Bank, they will need to be compensated with territorial swaps of equal size and perhaps value.
Lesson: The parties have enough self-created mythologies and illusions. The United States doesn't need to create new ones.
6. Fighting with the Israelis (and the Arabs too) is part of the job description: Pressuring both sides is an unavoidable part of serious and successful diplomacy. The question is whether the fights are productive or gratuitous.
A fight that produces an actual agreement that benefits all parties is good. With President Gerald Ford's blessing, Kissinger threatened a reassessment of U.S.-Israeli relations if Rabin didn't become more flexible on the second Sinai disengagement agreement. And more than once, Baker told Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir that if he didn't bend a little, Baker would get on a plane back to Washington. In both of those cases, U.S. diplomats used pressure to get the job done.
A fight that leads to nothing but mistrust, however, is bad: Obama's tough calls for an Israeli settlement freeze that no prime minister could accept first alienated Netanyahu, and then it alienated the Palestinians when Obama backed down. But the truth remains: Getting deals done requires not only ample amounts of honey, but vinegar too.
Lesson: If you aren't prepared to be both tough and reassuring, find another conflict to mediate.
7. Don't drag a president to a summit on a wing and a prayer: American presidents have convened only two leader-level summits with the Arabs and Israelis to try to reach peace agreements -- the successful 1978 Egyptian-Israeli summit and the unsuccessful 2000 Israeli-Palestinian summit at Camp David. Both were risky ventures. But the Carter summit had a much better chance to succeed for three reasons -- all mirrored in the failure of the second Camp David.
First, Begin and Sadat were strong leaders who came prepared to make decisions. Second, they knew what they were prepared to accept, and the issues on the table were ones that could be mutually agreed upon in a way that would satisfy those needs. And third, the U.S. mediators were well prepared and took charge of the summit to drive the parties toward a successful conclusion.
Committed leaders whose desire for an agreement outweighs the tangible risks of failure, a doable deal, urgency, and a competent American broker: That's the recipe for any future success.
Lesson: "Trying and failing is better than not trying at all" is an appropriate slogan for a high school football team, but it's no substitute for the foreign policy of the world's greatest power. Failure has consequences.
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