xxxiv The Crooked Course two-track approach: bilateral negotiations in Washington; and the formation of several multilateral working groups to address specific issues such as water, refugees, the economy, etc. It is worth noting that the PLO was not accepted at the negotiating table. Instead the Palestinians were represented by a joint delegation of Jordanian officials and prominent Palestinians, who allegedly were not associated with the PLO. In stark contrast to the Oslo process, the Washington talks under the Madrid formula were public and in the constant glare of the media. This resulted in the parties continuously posturing to win the favor of the complex power structures that they reported to, as well as of domestic public constituencies. However, Madrid broke the taboo of direct bilateral talks between Arabs and Israelis. Madrid failed as a process, but succeeded as a spectacular event for creating hope, and formed a springboard for the subsequent secret Oslo talks. As noted in the comments on Part I, Oslo and all subsequent agreements were embraced by the three Israeli Prime Ministers before Ehud Barak took office in 1999. As opposed to the gradualist approach of his predecessors, Barak took the path of totalism, i.e. aiming at solving all remaining issues in one go. Pursuant to this approach, as he put it: “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”. Heroically, he wanted to resolve simultaneously all matters with Lebanon, Syria, and the Palestinians, and put a final end to all conflicts. Shortly after his election, I was invited to meet him at his home in the outskirts of Tel Aviv. He described his new approach metaphorically: “In order to resolve a problem, you need to analyze what the problem is, and define your objective. The problem at hand is that we have an ugly dog in front of us. The objective is to beautify the dog. In order to do so, you need to analyze why it is ugly. And then you see that it is the tail that makes the dog ugly. Through th