When Ross accompanied Madeleine Albright to Damascus in December 1999, it was clear that something had changed. Assad put forward ideas but did not impose any conditions for resuming negotiations with Israel. This paved the way for a meeting between Barak and Farouk al-Shara at Shepherdstown, the following month. At Shepherdstown the Syrians were willing to go forward, but Barak held back. Unbeknownst to the Americans, Barak received the results of a poll that led him to believe that full Israeli withdrawal from the Golan would arouse widespread domestic opposition. He therefore decided to hold fast regardless of the Syrian moves. It was then, Ross later came to believe, that the deal was probably lost--and with it the possibility of an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon within the framework of an understanding with Syria rather than under pressure from Hezbollah.

Clinton made one more effort to broker a deal by inviting Assad to a summit meeting in Geneva on March 26, 2000. Prior to the meeting Clinton elicited from Barak his bottom lines. At the meeting, Clinton announced with great drama that Barak, based on "a commonly agreed border," was prepared to withdraw to the June 4 line as part of a peace agreement. Ross tells us that Assad was simply not interested. But his account of the summit is inaccurate and unreliable. Instead of acting as an honest broker, Ross cooperated with Barak in an attempt to trick Assad. Assad's position was consistent and unswerving: He insisted all along on full withdrawal to the June 4 line in an exchange for full peace, nothing more and nothing less. Barak, on the other hand, played games, using Clinton to intimate to Assad that the Israelis were going to offer this if he came to Geneva. But when everyone assembled at Geneva, the proposal that Barak presented still had Israeli control over the whole of the Sea of Galilee. Barak did not offer to withdraw to the June 4 line. He did offer territory elsewhere in exchange for keeping control of the shoreline, but Assad considered this unacceptable. He claimed that "the lake has always been our lake; it was never theirs.... There were no Jews to the east of the lake." He could not last in power for one day, he said, if he were to agree to what Barak was asking.

The meeting in Geneva thus ended abruptly in high-visibility failure. The most charitable explanation of this failure is that a misunderstanding had occurred: Assad expected to have his needs met as he defined them, and he simply shut down when he saw that the President had not delivered what he expected from Barak. Ross, however, suggests a different explanation. He thinks that Assad, conscious of his failing health, was preoccupied with insuring a smooth succession for his son Bashar. A deal with Israel was no longer on his agenda. This explanation, however, ignores two facts: Assad had prepared his public at home for an imminent agreement, and he brought a large team of experts to Geneva, including military officials. As they left the conference room, Assad went up to Ross and grasped him by the upper arm. Ross reciprocated this silent gesture of friendship. Though Assad did not seem weak, Ross noticed as he grasped his upper arm that there was nothing there-- no muscle, no fat, no tissue, just bone. This seemed to confirm the reports about the Syrian dictator's declining health. But whatever the cause of Assad's intransigence, the Syrian track was dead.

Having left the Palestinians to twist in the wind, Barak now had no choice but to resume negotiations with them. Once again he asked for American help, and once again he expected the Americans to do everything his way. As Yossi Beilin testifies, Barak called Clinton often to comment, criticize and complain. Like his predecessor, Barak treated the President of the United States like a clerk and got impatient when his orders were not carried out immediately. Many of the technical details with which Barak burdened the President could have been safely left to the subministerial level. Barak is a most peculiar individual, combining high intelligence with a complete absence of interpersonal skills. In the army they used to call him "little Napoleon" both because of the physical resemblance--short and stocky with a pear-shaped head--and the authoritarian personality. His style of negotiation is best described as the extension of war by other means, or peace by ultimatum.

Barak refused to fulfill Netanyahu's commitment to a third redeployment on the West Bank. This undermined Palestinian trust in him. Brushing aside their protests, Barak insisted on a summit meeting between the top leaders to conclude a final-status agreement, and Clinton obliged. Arafat felt that a summit was premature and that if it failed, it would make matters worse. He suggested lower-level talks to close the gaps and lay the groundwork for the summit. Clinton persuaded Arafat to attend the summit and promised him that if it failed, no one would be blamed: There would be no finger-pointing. The summit meeting was duly convened at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, and lasted fourteen days, from July 11 to 25, 2000. Ross provides an exceptionally detailed and gripping account of what transpired at the summit, day by day, almost blow by blow. His account demonstrates complete mastery of the issues, considerable psychological insight and a keen sense of drama.

Barak emerges from Ross's account as a man who played his cards very close to his chest, driven by conflicting impulses and utterly exhausting and exasperating to deal with. To be fair to Barak, he did bring to Camp David a set of ideas that touched on all the most sensitive issues at the core of the conflict: Palestinian statehood, borders, Jerusalem and refugees. His great fear was that Arafat would pocket whatever he offered and demand more, forcing Barak to move again beyond his red lines. He could contemplate withdrawal from 90 percent of the West Bank, but he was worried that the Palestinians would retain the animating grievances of the conflict--Jerusalem and the right of return of the 1948 refugees. In short, Barak was worried that Israel would come under pressure to give up a great deal but get nothing in return. His mood was darkly apocalyptic, seeing everything in life-and-death terms. So stressed was Barak that he choked on a peanut and required the Heimlich maneuver to resume breathing. Barak's way of dealing with these anxieties, however, was self-defeating. He would not accept anything that he did not hear directly from Arafat, yet he refused to meet Arafat. In the two weeks at Camp David the two leaders did not have one serious face-to-face discussion. This left Clinton with the unenviable task of serving as a messenger between the two taciturn and surly leaders.

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