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Months of work had gone into preparation of the summit. Both parties wanted the United States to work with them on the hard decisions and believed that the high drama of the event would help them sell those decisions back home. Of course, in any summit there’s always a risk that the two sides won’t be able to reach an agreement, and that the high-profile effort will damage all involved. My national security team was worried about the possibility of failure and its consequences. Both Arafat and Netanyahu had staked out tough positions in public, and Bibi had bolstered his rhetoric by naming Ariel Sharon, the most hardline of the prominent Likud leaders, foreign minister. Sharon had referred to the 1993 peace agreement as “national suicide” for Israel. It was impossible to know whether Netanyahu had given Sharon the portfolio to have someone to blame if the summit failed or to provide himself cover on the right if it succeeded.