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brief rest in the hotel, took a seat near the front, close enough to read the facial expressions of the seven men onstage, including Peres and Rabin, Arafat and Abbas, Secretary of State Christopher and the Russian foreign minister, Andrey Kozyrev. From the raised platform, these men looked out over a mass of mostly gray heads and dark suits—and beyond, at the white obelisk of the Washington Monument towering over the National Mall.
    In the coming years, signing ceremonies and Middle East peace conferences would take place with some regularity. Eventually, they would come to serve as reminders that peace itself remained elusive. But at this first event, the sheer enormity of the moment, the unscripted interactions, the nervous asides, all generated currents of electricity. Until their encounter in the White House, the two protagonists had never met, which meant the audience, on the lawn and at home via television, was seeing in real time the body language of icy hostility slowly thawing. Even the speeches, predictably lofty and infused with biblical quotations, had a mesmerizing quality—less for the words and more for the astonishing context.
    The signing itself took place around a long wooden table dragged out from one of the White House offices—the same table Israeli and Egyptian leaders had used to seal their peace treaty in 1979. Peres sat down first, putting his name to two copies of the agreement, which included cross outs and notations in pen, changes made during the course of the morning to resolve last-minute disputes. He signed in two places on each copy of the agreement, big sloping signatures both in English and in Hebrew. Then he tucked the pen in his inside pocket. Abbas signed next and when he rose from the table, he shook hands with each of the men on stage, including Rabin and Peres. It was the first direct interaction between a Palestinian and Israelis at the ceremony and it caused people in the audience to stand and applaud.
    But the real drama occurred a few minutes later, after Christopher and Kozyrev added their names to the agreement as witnesses. Clinton, who had rehearsed for this moment, shook hands with Rabin to his right and Arafat to his left, then spread his arms wide to nudge the two men together. Arafat’s extended hand, almost mannequin-like inits pallor, hung in the air for an instant before Rabin reached out to clutch it. At the moment of contact, a collective gasp went up from the crowd, followed by loud cheering. Then Rabin turned to Peres and said quietly in Hebrew: “Your turn now.”
    Yairi, who could see the ambivalence on Rabin’s face, thought of the handshake as a reluctant groom’s I do at a wedding. Whatever misgivings existed before, the public act itself would help enforce the commitment. Nabil Shaath, one of Arafat’s advisers, also thought of nuptials as he looked on from the lawn. When Clinton came over to him later, he tiptoed to whisper into his ear: “Don’t worry, Mr. President, you haven’t lost an Israeli daughter, you gained a Palestinian son.” Barnea, who would suffer a searing personal tragedy with the unfolding of the Oslo Accord, wrote the next day: “[Rabin’s] awkwardness left a mark on the grass but it won’t go into the history pages. It will disappear and what will be left, for better or for worse, is the dramatic photo of the handshake between two enemies.”
    With the ceremony now over, Clinton took Rabin to the Oval Office to discuss the next steps. The agreement Peres and Abbas just signed contained significant gaps and flaws. It established the principle of Palestinian control over the Gaza Strip and one of seven cities in the West Bank, Jericho. But it put off negotiations on the full scope of their governing authority. It also set as a goal Palestinian autonomy in the occupied territories—without addressing the matter of Jewish settlements and how their relentless sprawl would affect the process. All the broad issues, including