Authors: Elliott Abrams
But the gears were grinding slowly. A month of negotiations lay before Sharon, as he tried to put together a new coalition. His Likud Party had won
38 seats in the Knesset, twice what Labor had won, but he needed 61 to govern. Not until February 24 was the bargaining concluded, and Sharon presented his new cabinet to the Knesset on the 27th – which included Benjamin Netanyahu as finance minister and Ehud Olmert as minister of trade and industry, with the added title of deputy prime minister. Meanwhile, he had sent his chief of staff, Weissglas, to Washington while the negotiations were underway, where Weissglas told Bush administration officials that the new coalition would be committed to the two-state solution. The problem on the Palestinian side, he told them, was Arafat, who was resisting the reforms called for in the Roadmap. Under immense European pressure, Arafat had finally agreed to allow the appointment of
a prime minister. Now the jockeying was over who would fill the post, and the most likely candidate was Mahmoud Abbas, known as “Abu Mazen.” Then would come the struggle over the powers of the post – which had none. Rice saw this as progress, step by step: Create the post and then get it some powers. We want to be able to move fast at the end of the Iraq war, she told the Israelis.
When Sharon and Bush spoke by telephone on February 26, Bush offered congratulations on the election victory and on forming a new coalition. Sharon was philosophical, saying, “I had 28 years in the military, and have now been in civilian life for 28 years. We've started talks with the Palestinians and we are moving forward toward peace.” Bush continued his congratulatory approach to Sharon, telling him he was a great leader, a man of peace, in the hopes of pushing and pulling him forward. But Bush also repeated that new Palestinian interlocutors were needed: Arafat was just no good. When Rice met with EU ministers the following day, she pressed the Palestinian prime minister issue, calling on the Europeans to keep pushing for the post to be created and to be given serious powers.
For Bush, Palestinian reforms were fundamental matters. He believed Israelis would back a two-state solution if Arafat were gone and a decent Palestinian political structure was emerging. He believed Sharon would lead them in this direction but was not worried about what might happen if the old warrior changed his mind; Bush believed Israeli democracy would handle that shift, as he told Arab visitors who expressed grave doubts about Sharon: If he stands in the way of a decent peace settlement, he will be voted out; democracy was the answer. And democracy was the answer on the Palestinian side as well: If Arafat were gone, Bush could embrace the new Palestinian leadership that would emerge. On February 28 he told King Abdullah of Jordan that he was aching to open the door of the Oval Office to a new Palestinian political leader, but that could not happen until Arafat was gone.
To push harder for progress on that front, formal release of the Roadmap was delayed again. The idea had been to put it out right after the Israeli elections or at least after the formation of the new Israeli government, but now it became a tool to press for appointment of a Palestinian prime minister. The EU and United States agreed the release would be delayed until Arafat made
good on his promise and a prime minister was in place. On March 10, the PLC approved Mahmoud Abbas for the post. President Bush called President Mubarak of Egypt, King Abdullah of Jordan, and Crown Prince Abdallah of Saudi Arabia on March 14 to tell them the Roadmap would finally come out when Abbas was formally appointed by Arafat, enlisting their help to make this happen. To several staff members gathered in the Oval Office for those calls, the president said he realized the Roadmap was just a tool. Peace depended on the willingness to make peace, which Arafat did not have, so we needed him out of the way. The reason I am so strongly for the Israelis, Bush said, is that they do want peace. So does Sharon, the president went on, but if I’m wrong about that, Israeli elections will take care of the problem. The task now is to push Arafat out of the way. Finally, on March 19, Arafat was forced to bow to pressure; he agreed to appoint Abbas as prime minister of the Palestinian Authority.
It was one day before the invasion of Iraq. A week earlier, Weissglas had visited Washington again, this time for sensitive discussions of the forthcoming war. He was told nothing about its timing; the subject was specifically how Israel would react if Saddam attacked Israel in response to the American assault. During the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam had shot SCUD missiles
at Israel. What kind of Iraqi provocations would produce what kind of Israeli responses this time? Clearly, the United States wanted Israel to stay out of the conflict, but Bush also realized that significant Israeli casualties might make that impossible for Sharon. The meetings were conducted by Rice, not Powell or Rumsfeld or their staffs; the key relationships with Israel were now in the White House. And the tone of the meetings – quiet confidence, good humor, shared approaches – was increasingly the tone of the U.S.-Israel relationship at every level, including at the top.
On April 2, as the Iraq War continued, Bush met with Israel's new foreign minister, Silvan Shalom, who was never to be a powerful member of the government because Sharon kept control of foreign relations in the Prime Minister's Office. The conversation reflected Bush's focus on the prospects for progress if Arafat were truly starting to be pushed aside. No peace is possible with Arafat, Bush said, but Abu Mazen looks like progress; let's bet on him and help him. We want him to succeed. I need to talk to Sharon about him, the president said, and at some point I need to meet him. The foreign minister demurred: Abu Mazen has to act against terror, and we still do not know what authority he will have. Sure, Bush answered, but we have to help him; don't set conditions that almost guarantee his failure. You can make him succeed or destroy his chances.
At this point, Bush was thinking through his options, not jumping forward: He was anxious to move, but understood that an embrace of Abbas could hurt the new prime minister, especially with the Iraq War raging. He would continually
remind the Israelis that Abbas was their best hope for progress but realized that progress would only occur if Abbas asserted himself against Arafat.
My first meetings with the president in 2001 had shown, first of all, that he was completely in charge of his administration. Early on the press had offered the “Cheney as prime minister” line, suggesting that he was the power behind the throne. Yet it took me just a few minutes in the Oval Office in the summer of 2001, watching the president interrupt cabinet officers to pepper them with questions and tell them what he wanted, for me to see who was in charge. It was also obvious that the caricature of him as lacking in intelligence was itself a joke; like Condi and others he chose to surround himself with, he was razor sharp in seeing and evaluating both political and policy developments. I saw quickly, as well, that his view of international politics centered largely on leadership – his own and that of other heads of government, with whom he tried to build relationships that could later be used to American advantage. His tone was a patented combination of formality and informality: One could never appear in the Oval Office without a suit and tie out of respect for the office of president and the White House itself, but the banter was relaxed, the jokes frequent, the Texas references constant.
And the president was a constant: rarely moody, almost always fun to joke or chat with, always probing for more information and opinions, and amazingly well informed. To the formal briefings from CIA and others, he added his own network of contacts around the world, so that an update based on official reporting would often be met with a response based on a factoid he had picked up from some American businessman, author, or retired ambassador he knew. He read constantly, and several times I had the experience of reading some new history work (for example, on Air Force One in 2008 it was
Power, Faith, and Fantasy
, Michael Oren's history of the American role in the Middle East) only to have the president, walking by, tell me he had just finished it and wanted to know what I thought of it.
He was a constant in another way too: He spoke the same way to everyone who came through the Oval. I had a tendency to slow down and limit my vocabulary a bit when speaking with foreign officials to be sure they caught what I was saying. It was not condescension but an effort to communicate more effectively. In contrast, the president had one vocabulary, heavily salted with colloquialisms, and our interpreters were familiar with them and knew how to translate them. Foreign leaders who spoke some English, even good English, often wondered what was being said when the leader of the Free World asked if they were “ready to saddle up,” or told them about someone who was “lying in the weeds,” or commented that a certain other leader had “more hat than cattle.” Their facial expressions of confusion were priceless, and if the president saw them he would laugh and translate his own remarks from Texan to English. If he did not see them, God only knows what these foreigners thought they were being asked or told.
Now the president wanted to be ready for action right after the conclusion of the Iraq War. Rice led planning meetings on April 9 and April 11. She
was looking for something big when the war ended; we've broken the Middle East with this war, she would say, and now we need to show we know how to put it together again. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is at the center of this effort, she said. She wanted a major push: Perhaps a big speech by the President? A regional economic initiative? A nonproliferation piece? Something bold – a significant democracy initiative, and of course something about terrorism. Perhaps, on the institutional side, a new organization modeled on the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
, which had both security and political dimensions. Rice was reaching for a positive and comprehensive agenda for the entire region after the Iraq War – encompassing human rights and democracy, fighting poverty, counterterrorism, security, and, of course, addressing the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. We need a bold agenda that displays American power as well as American values, she told the staff. It was Rice who formulated the idea of a grand meeting, one that would showcase both the new Palestinian leadership – because Arafat would not be invited – and Sharon's willingness to move on peace, and would be a demonstration of American leadership. She began a round of consultations with Arab leaders, by phone and in person, to see what the traffic would bear. Would the key leaders come to a meeting? Would they come if Sharon were there? And if Arafat were not? What would they say? What would Sharon and
Abbas say? Rice and her staff spent scores of hours in April and May turning these ideas into a program for a summit meeting – or two summits, as it turned out. The timing was linked to the coming G-8 meeting in Evian, France, for that meant the president would be overseas in early June and already halfway to the Middle East.
But American power was proving more useful against Saddam than against Arafat. The post of prime minister had been created and Abbas had been selected, but Arafat was blocking his ability to choose a cabinet. If Abbas lacked all power, he could not be the interlocutor the president sought – for himself and for the Israelis. On April 14, Bush again called Mubarak and
Crown Prince Abdallah, seeking their help to pressure Arafat to give in. As to sustained Palestinian action against terror – a Roadmap requirement and the key to progress – there was none. Arafat was fighting Abbas, not the suicide bombers. And he was far tougher and more resourceful than Abbas, his underling for decades. Arafat was battling over every inch of territory. Finally, the EU and Arab pressure again forced a concession; on April 29, Arafat swore in Abbas and
his new cabinet. The PA had a prime minister. And according to plan, the text of the Roadmap was formally released on April 30.
Bush then sent Steve Hadley and
me to Israel to see Sharon and confirm that he would move forward. Sharon would not be coming to the United States for a while, so it would be useful to sound him out. Hadley had a plan that reflected his own character and his insight into Sharon: Instead of the usual 45- to 60-minute meetings in his office, let's really listen to him. Let's go to his
residence for some sessions that can last for hours and hours. Let him talk, let him explain himself. This is a man who has been a war hero and a pariah. This guy is one of the last of his generation of leaders. Let's hear him out, Hadley decided.
Hadley's plan worked; added to Bush's appreciation of Sharon, and Rice's and my own growing relationship with Weissglas, the sessions helped persuade Sharon that Bush and his people were different, that they really wanted to understand Israel and his view of its situation. Sharon liked being liked; under the gruff exterior was a man who cared what people thought, who could be wounded, who responded to respect and affection. Hadley gave Sharon a letter from Bush that thanked him for being willing to take risks for peace. After reading the letter, Sharon gave a long monologue that included stories of his parents and his own youth on an Israeli kibbutz and his views on Israel, its situation, and the demands being made of it.
I took risks personally, he said, but never took any risks with the security of the State of Israel. I appreciate Arab promises but will take seriously only tangible performance. For tangible performance I will take tangible steps. Israel is a tiny small country. From the Jordan River to Jerusalem is only 17.5 miles. Before 1967, the Knesset was in range of machine guns south of Jerusalem. From the Green Line to Tel Aviv is 11 miles. From the sea at Netanya to Tulkarm is 9 miles. Two-thirds of the Jewish population live in a narrow strip on the coastal plain. Between Haifa and Ashdod, which is 80 miles, are two-thirds of the Jewish population, our only international airport, and most of our infrastructure. The hills of Judea and Samaria overlook all of that area.