ABSTRACT
"Everyone went home smiling" from the July 5 meeting, Hirschfeld later recalled, "and then the brinkmanship began." When talks resumed on July 10 at the Halvorsbole hotel outside of Oslo, the Palestinians sought no less than twenty-six revisions of the Gressheim declaration of principles (DOP), apparently withdrawing concessions made at the end of June and early July. Although Israeli negotiators saw this as an indication that, for the first time, Arafat was concentrating on all the details of the accord, they feared that the Palestinians were returning to their opening positions and complained that the changes would effectively vitiate the DOP. Savir threw the latest Palestinian version of the DOP back at Abu Alaa, telling him it was simply unacceptable. Everything that had been said about the Palestinians was true, he said; they never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
