“It’s the opposite in this case,” I replied. “In a battle, the enemy is doing everything it can to stop you. When you break through, it’s against their resistance. Here, the other side will choose to make it easiest for us in the place it prefers. If Arafat thinks he’Il get more from the Bear and the Mouse than from the other talks, it’s hardly a surprise we’re finding that only Oslo seems to offer a way forward.” Rabin did make one more move, not so much 1n a bid to end the talks in Oslo as to slow them down and create a context more favorable for the kind of agreement he wanted. He shifted his attention to his original peacemaking priority: the Syrians. In an effort to remove a roadblock to even beginning serious talks, he offered the Americans what they would later call his “pocket deposit.” He authorized Secretary of State Warren Christopher to tell Assad that Washington’s understanding of our position was that, assuming all our own negotiating concerns were addressed, we accepted that peace with Syria would include withdrawing from the Golan. The formula was agreed in a meeting in Israel between Rabin and the Clinton Administration’s Middle East negotiator, Dennis Ross. Rabin didn’t tell Peres or other ministers about it, though Itamar Rabinovich did know. I did as well. Since acceptance of the need for a withdrawal had security implications, Rabin and I talked about it in detail before Ross’s visit. We formulated the “deposit” together. We used an English acronym: IAMNAM, “if all my needs are met.” The point was to convey to the Syrian president that if he addressed our requirements for a demilitarized zone and early warning facilities; non-interference with our critically important water sources; as well as a full peace including embassies, open borders and joint economic projects, we knew the trade-off would be to return the Golan. It was by diplomatic accident that the Syrian overture went nowhere. The reason even the Americans had called our proposal a “