What folly prompted Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to accept that agreement seven years ago, a treaty without guarantees, which promised no statehood, no end to Jewish settlements, no return of Palestinian refugees and -- most important of all -- no capital in Jerusalem?

The carriage may have looked good on the White House lawn in 1993, with its ``historic'' handshake between Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. But it had no wheels.

Seven years ago, it was all about trust -- technicolor trust -- the ``peace of the brave,'' the euphoria of two old enemies, the sons of Abraham making friends. But everything they should have been talking about -- Jerusalem, settlers, refugees, statehood -- was postponed for three years.

And such was the nature of this lopsided, hopelessly unfair agreement, that the deadlines slipped away and only now have the antagonists confronted reality: Oslo doesn't work.

Just look at what it originally said. The Oslo Declaration of Principles said that ``it is understood that . . . final status negotiations will lead to the implementation of Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338.''

These 1967 and 1973 resolutions called for the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Arab territories seized in the 1967 war and the security of all states in the area.

But Oslo allowed the Israelis to renegotiate Resolution 242, to decide which bits of occupied territory it would give back -- the garbage tip of Gaza, for example -- and which parts it would keep: Jerusalem and most of the settlements.

And by Tuesday Clinton was reduced to changing the very terms of Oslo, announcing only that the negotiations were ``based'' on 242 and 338.

Arafat must have realized that the end had come when U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright made her preposterous offer of ``a sense of sovereignty'' over the Muslim religious sites of Jerusalem.

So much for statehood. So much for an Israeli withdrawal from occupied East Jerusalem. So much for a halt to settlement building.

Yitzhak Rabin died for his peace treaty with the Palestinians but Arafat is not the stuff of which martyrs are made. He knows what happened to Irish revolutionary Michael Collins after a one-sided ``peace.''

Yet what can Arafat tell his people now? Seven years ago, I drove the bypass roads that Israel was building to prevent Palestinians reaching Jerusalem.

``Arafat's Road to Ruin'' was the paper's headline to my story. Israel's friends exploded in rage. What cynicism. What bias. Did we not realize that Oslo represented the best chance for peace?

Sadly, the story of that winding road was all too accurate. It ran out, Tuesday, at Camp David.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak wouldn't give up Jerusalem. He wouldn't abandon the settlements. Arafat would not make the ``concession'' -- read capitulation -- of ceding Israeli control over Jerusalem.

So the sons of Abraham acknowledged what so many Israelis and Palestinians knew all along: that Oslo didn't work.

Clinton predictably saw fit to praise the stronger of the two parties -- he spoke of Barak's ``courage, vision,'' etc. -- but merely referred to Arafat's ``commitment.''

So much for America's role as the ``honest broker'' of the Middle East peace.

Offered virtual sovereignty to secure virtual peace, the Palestinian leadership -- corrupt and effete and undemocratic -- preferred failure to humiliation.

Now they are supposed to talk it all through again by mid-September. And Clinton says they must avoid ``unilateral action''

--he meant a declaration of statehood by Arafat.

Have no doubt, it may be all Arafat has left to offer Palestinians. Virtual statehood, that is.

Robert Fisk is a correspondent for the Independent in London. He was named Amnesty International Print Journalist of the Year.

©2000 San Francisco Chronicle

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