The Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, wanted it, almost desperately. Mr. Clinton, who was watching time run out on his presidency, wanted it, too. Some advisers argued, as they do even today, that if they waited for Mr. Arafat they might just wait indefinitely. So the administration decided to plunge ahead.
While much progress was made at that July summit meeting at Camp David, it ended after 15 days in deadlock over the issue of Jerusalem, the very site where the worst violence in four years between the Palestinians and Israelis erupted in the gravest assault on the peace effort since Mr. Clinton came to office.
Now as the Clinton administration scrambles to bring the parties together for another Middle East summit meeting - this one in Egypt on Monday - the goal has been vastly scaled back, from a grand peace accord to a simple truce, and experts on the region and even some administration officials have begun to wonder aloud whether the Camp David summit may have been rushed.
Administration officials, who have watched seven years of intensive peacemaking efforts die along with more than 90 people during the last 15 days, have already begun assessing where since Camp David the opportunities for peace may have been grasped, and where they may have been lost.
Even they now acknowledge that the likelihood of picking up the pieces of Camp David during the remainder of Mr. Clinton's presidency are remote, the New York Times reports.
A senior administration official who is usually known for his optimism told reporters at the White House on Thursday: "What makes it particularly frustrating is that 12 days ago we had the negotiators here, and while we had three tough, difficult, exhausting days of negotiations, there's no question but at the end of those negotiations, all of us felt that the possibility of reaching agreement was quite real."
He added: "Now everyone's focus is not on that; it's on trying to stop the violence." At the time of the Camp David meeting, Mr. Barak, a former army chief of staff, said he believed that a permanent peace settlement was needed to preserve Israel's security.
And Mr. Clinton, who had devoted more time to Middle East peacemaking than any other American president, saw little risk and possibly big gains, his aides said. If he failed, he would be given points for trying; if he succeeded, his legacy as the Middle East peacemaker would be unchallenged.
Now, with three months' hindsight and having witnessed the startling speed with which an elaborately woven peace effort can unravel, officials and diplomats are considering whether those risks were greater than the Clinton administration had anticipated.
Diplomats from moderate Arab nations have said that they were startled by the alacrity with which the summit meeting was called, and they said afterward that the White House had neglected to prepare the ground with them, something that proved crucial particularly as proposals were put forth over the fate of Jerusalem, which is a priority not just for Mr. Arafat and the Palestinians but for the entire Muslim world.
If the Americans had consulted them fully beforehand on the scope of their ambition, those diplomats said, they might have been able to give greater support to Mr. Arafat during and immediately after the meeting.
At Camp David, Mr. Barak offered what he and the Israeli public considered a large concession: control over the Christian and Muslim quarters of the Old City of Jerusalem, control over certain neighbourhoods around the Old City and an opening of the door to sharing of control over the Temple Mount, which is the most holy of Jewish holy sites, and known to Palestinians as Haram al Sharif, or the Noble Sanctuary.
But for Mr. Arafat, who insisted that those problems belonged to all Muslims, the offer was not enough. He felt that the proposals still left Israel with sovereignty over East Jerusalem, which he wants someday to be the capital of an independent Palestinian state.
Immediately after the summit meeting, Mr. Clinton praised Mr. Barak as a pioneer for peace while in contrast he made clear his disappointment in Mr. Arafat, whom American officials later blamed for blocking a deal. Undaunted, Mr. Arafat went off on a world tour from Russia to Indonesia, trying to find solace and support where he could.
After an August hiatus, the American mediators once again began exploring ideas with Israeli and Palestinian negotiators on how sovereignty over Jerusalem's holy sites might be shared.
As the United Nations "millennium summit" approached in early September in New York City, there was some optimism among the moderate Arabs that a formula might be found for the holy sites in the Old City that was acceptable to Mr. Arafat.
Mr. Clinton and Dr. Albright met with both the Israeli and Palestinian leaders at the United Nations gathering, but little progress was made.
By that time, the Israelis were toying with an idea that was almost revolutionary for them. The United Nations Security Council, in league with several Islamic nations, would be given custody of the Temple Mount. That approach and others to the core issues were being refined by the administration - in concert with Israeli and Palestinian negotiators - when the violence began more than two weeks ago.
As fighting intensified after the visit by the Israeli rightist opposition leader Ariel Sharon to the plaza outside two Muslim holy sites atop the Old City, Mr. Arafat sought succor in the court of international public opinion and succeeded in ways he had not after Camp David.
Administration officials now acknowledge that they hesitated in the first few days of the rioting, not wanting to intervene too early in case they could not stem the violence, but not wanting to wait so long that it would spin out of control.
And as the drama unfolded in Israel, the United States lacked a strong team on the ground. The ambassador to Israel, Martin S. Indyk, was not allowed to work because his security clearance had been suspended due to allegations that he had mishandled classified documents. (The clearance was restored this week).
As the violence continued, the Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak, offered to hold a meeting in Cairo that would include Dr. Albright, Mr. Barak and Mr. Arafat, in an effort to restore calm. But the administration chose Paris as the venue, believing, officials said, that the American point of view would prevail there.
Instead, Dr. Albright was one of three mediators - the French President, Jacques Chirac, and the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, were also present - and the Paris conference turned into farce and tragedy at the same time.
Mr. Arafat stormed out of a session at the American ambassador's residence, leaving Dr. Albright to chase after him, yelling at guards to shut the gates and pleading with Mr. Arafat not to leave. Mr. Chirac, according the Israeli and American officials, then persuaded Mr. Arafat not to sign an agreement that was intended to include a truce and an agreement for an inquiry into the origins of the violence.
Some security measures were agreed to verbally, but Mr. Barak, piqued at the lack of progress, refused to attend a meeting called by Mr. Mubarak in Egypt with Mr. Arafat the next day and, officials say, the Israeli and Palestinian leaders have not spoken to each other since.
Much of the pessimism about the future is based on the fact that the violence of the last two weeks has ruptured some of the basic themes sketched out at Camp David.
Mr. Sharon's provocative visit to Muslim holy sites atop Jerusalem's Old City, the destruction of the Jewish shrine known as Joseph's Tomb in Nablus by Palestinian demonstrators last week and the burning of an ancient synagogue in Jericho on Thursday night have challenged the very notion of respect for and sovereignty over religious sites.
The idea of some Palestinian refugees being allowed to return to Israel after a final peace settlement was an area of compromise discussed at Camp David. Now with fighting in Israel between Jews and Arab Israelis, the possibility of Palestinian refugees returning to Israel appears out of the question, the officials said.
But most fundamental, a senior official said, the administration had failed in the last several years to grasp the depth of resentment among the Palestinian population.
The peace efforts during Mr. Clinton's tenure forged an understanding among Israeli and Palestinian elites but not among the people, one official said with rare candour.
In hours of relaxation at the Camp David summit meeting, for instance, Israeli and Palestinian politicians, veterans of peace negotiations together, ate meals together, swapped stories and at one moment - when the meeting appeared near collapse - embraced one another in sadness.
This sharing of interests and understanding among the negotiators was a far cry from the suspicion and hostility shared between ordinary Israelis and Palestinians.
In addition, the administration had also been lulled into believing that the Palestinians authorities could, and would, control violence if it erupted, that official said.
This confidence was based on the reasonable relations the Central Intelligence Agency had developed in the last two years with Mr. Arafat's senior security officers in Gaza, Jabril Rajoub in Ramallah and Mohammed Dahlan, with whom the C.I.A. had worked to coordinate security with their Israeli counterparts. But in the middle of the roiling violence last week, Mr. Dahlan told an Arab newspaper that cooperation with Israelis was inconceivable.
The chance for a "grand deal" has probably passed, said David Makovsky, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and author of the book "Making Peace With the PLO." He added:
"Camp David was a rare moment in time, and the violence has thrown into question the very premises that undergirded the progress on a variety of issues at the summit."
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