ement threatened by a last-minute dispute with Mr. Netanyahu over the fate of the spy Jonathan J. Pollard, presided over the signing ceremony in the White House. He was joined as host by a visibly ailing King Hussein of Jordan, who had been called in to push the talks toward a conclusion and spoke movingly of a search for peace that has consumed much of his life.
The agreement in part serves to commit the two sides once again to actions they had already promised in 1993 and 1995 in agreements reached in Oslo, setting a detailed timetable for the Israelis to withdraw from 13 percent more of the West Bank in three phases over 12 weeks starting as soon as the agreement is ratified. That would bring to 40 percent the total territory that the Palestinians control fully or partly ("Wake" 49). In return the accord provides for specific steps by the Palestinians to fight terrorism and formally amend its charter to expunge clauses calling for Israel's destruction.
The Israelis won the formal, public change in the Palestinian charter that Mr. Netanyahu and his influential Industry Minister, Natan Sharansky, have insisted upon: to remove the 26 clauses calling for Israel's destruction. While Mr. Arafat says the clauses are long gone, the Israelis demanded a formal vote by the large Palestine National Council, which contains expatriates and terrorists living abroad. While there is some fudging over how the Palestine National Council will be defined in the accord -- it will be subsumed in a larger gathering of other Palestinian organizations more easily controlled by Arafat, the gathering that Mr. Clinton has agreed to attend -- Israel will get the public "turning of the page" that Mr. Sharansky wanted.
The Israelis have also won a Palestinian pledge to jail 30 of the 31 Palestinians wanted in Israel for killing Israelis, while the C.I.A. will monitor their imprisonment and their cases. Israel did not get Mr. Arafat to agree to jail the c...