BY MICHAEL KRANISH | WASHINGTON A Secret Service agent raced into the White House’s Palm Room just before yesterday’s signing of the Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. “Make a little hole!” the agent shouted as he parted the crowd in the room. “It’s the president!”
Suddenly, a tanned, smiling George Bush raced by on his way to meet with President Clinton. “Ex!” Bush corrected the agent. “Ex! Ex!”
Nearby, on the North Portico of the White House, Yasser Arafat was arriving. Until four days ago, US officials weren’t allowed to talk to the chairman of the Palestine Liberation Organization, much less receive him as an honored guest.
Now, they merely noted that he wasn’t wearing his trademark pistol and welcomed him to the White House, where the former guerrilla leader signed the guest book.
It was that kind of extraordinary day in Washington yesterday, a day when former campaign foes could meet and praise each other, when ancient enemies could shake hands and make peace with each other. It was a day when it really seemed, in this era of antipolitics, that politicians could make a difference after all.
When Clinton walked onto the South Lawn side-by-side with Arafat and Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin of Israel, many in the crowd of 3,000 politicians, diplomats, and Middle East activists gasped. For many minutes, the crowd noticed that Arafat and Rabin were not looking at each other and had not shaken hands. The tension mounted: Would they shake hands?
When Clinton finally appeared to nudge Rabin to shake Arafat’s outstretched hand, the crowd spontaneously said, “Ooohh!” when Arafat and Rabin clasped hands, many in the crowd stood and applauded. Some appeared to be crying.
Leonard Zakim, the Boston director of the New England Anti-Defamation League, watched trancelike as the scene unfolded, not quite believing it was happening after all these years. It was, Zakim said, a day of “somber exuberance,” a celebration of the moment and a cause for concern about what lay ahead.
“This is really an earthquake in the region,” he said. “The aftershocks, like the murder of Israelis in Gaza yesterday, are going to be serious.”
The ceremony was also one hot ticket.
“It was like getting a ticket to Bruce Springsteen,” Zakim said, clearly thrilled to be there.
The politicians who signed the peace accord on this sun-scorched day were the stars of the show. They stood behind an ornate desk that had been used in the signing of the 1978 Camp David accord, the old enemies Arafat and Rabin promising peace even as extremists on both sides vowed to undo the agreement. Arafat, wearing thick glasses, a traditional keffiyeh headdress and olive military suit, waved and smiled exuberantly wherever he went. On Sunday night, Bush—who in 1990 broke off a dialogue with the PLO over a terrorist attack—flew in from his summer home in Kennebunkport and met privately with the PLO chairman for an hour.
Yesterday morning, Arafat met with Bush’s secretary of state, James A. Baker 3d. Arafat also met privately with former President Jimmy Carter, who also attended yesterday’s ceremony.
Bush and Carter planned to attend a dinner with Clinton last night and then stay overnight in their old home, the White House, so that they could be present today at a ceremony kicking off a campaign to sell the North American Free Trade Agreement to Congress.
At the end of a day of ceremonies that were witnessed by millions on television around the world, Arafat planned to appear on the Larry King show, eating into the long-scheduled air time of the US Gulf War commander, Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf.
It was Arafat’s decision to side with Iraq that led the Persian Gulf states to cut off financial aid to the PLO, and that helped spur Arafat’s decision to sign the agreement with Israel yesterday.
While the Clinton administration had little to do with the secret Norway negotiations that led to the accord, the president was eager to make the most of the movement. Clinton gave what many believed was his best speech since he took office, tapping his campaign theme of hop without sounding corny and trumpeting what he called “one of history’s defining dramas.”
Overseeing it all was a man known in the White House as the Rabbi.
Steve Rabinowitz, who got the nickname during the campaign, remembers hearing about the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and Camp David peace agreement when he was going to Hebrew school and attending his bar mitzvah. Now, as the White House director of production, Rabinowitz had set up everything from the placement of Arafat and Rabin on stage to the numbers of seats on the lawn. He gave instructions in Hebrew and English, attending to every detail like a doting parent.
“I have always looked forward to the time when something like this could happen,” Rabinowitz said. “It is an extraordinary thing, and to be a part of it is pretty unbelievable.”
Perhaps the most eloquent statement came from a group of Israeli and Palestinian children that Clinton had invited. The children had just finished attending a “Seeds of Peace” camp in Otisfield, Maine.
“Before I came to camp, I thought they were very bad,” a 15-year-old Palestinian named Fadi said of the Israelis. “Now I feel happy that I have friendships with them. And today I shook hands with Clinton, Arafat, Bush. It is good.”
But things are not yet good enough. Even after the signing of yesterday’s agreement, for which he had a choice seat, Fadi did not want his last name used. He was still unsure whether the killing would really stop now in the Holy Land, and he feared retaliation back home for having spent a peaceful summer in Maine with Jewish children.