This rigorous and nailbiting documentary examines the US president’s failure to facilitate an agreement between
Palestinians and Israelis in the 1990s
In the last days of his presidency
Bill Clinton took a call from the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. “You are a great man,” Arafat told him. Clinton replied angrily: “I’m not a great man. I’m a failure. And you made me a failure.” Dror Moreh’s gripping, intellectually vigorous documentary is the story of that failure: the collapse of the peace deal brokered by the US between the Palestinians and Israelis. It’s a blow-by-blow account in measured – but nailbiting – detail, told by the
American diplomats in charge of the high-stakes negotiations. You could imagine John le Carré basing a character on one of these polite, ferociously bright people.
When Clinton took office in January 1993, the
Middle East was not high on his agenda, but since secret talks were already under way he hopped aboard; in September that year the Oslo peace accords were signed at the
White House. Negotiators ruefully remember wrangling with Yitzhak Rabin, the
Israeli PM, to persuade him to shake hands with Arafat, his sworn enemy. Rabin insisted that Arafat not have his gun; Arafat asked if he could wear a holster without the gun.