Tested by Zion (15 page)

What does a settlement freeze “including natural growth” mean? Should we decree that settlers cannot have children? That pregnant women must have abortions? They live there, they serve in army elite units, they marry. Now what? They contribute to the society, and serve, and now tell them no more children – or move?

I am a Jew above all, he continued, and feel the responsibility to the future of the Jewish people on my shoulders. After what happened in the past, I will not let the future of the Jewish people depend on anyone, even our closest friends. Especially when you saw the crowds cheering Saddam, who killed even members of his own family and government. With the deepest friendship and appreciation, we do not choose to be the lamb, but not the lion either. I will not sacrifice the nation. I come from a farm family who settled here but I deal with these problems with a cold mind. I met with the Pope, Sharon concluded, who said this is Terra Sancta to all, but Terra Promisa for the Jews only.

The discussion of the route of the security fence Sharon was building was typical of these sessions. The United States had not been supportive of the move initially, but repeated suicide bombings had chipped away at American resistance – and over time the success of the barrier in stopping such attacks became an unanswerable argument. This day Sharon explained the proposed route at length and with maps. Having commanded troops in every part of
Israel, he knew the terrain almost by the square meter; he could explain why the route in one place or another could not be changed because “here there is a hill and you have to go around it; here there is a spring.” Hadley told him of the widespread criticism that the fence and its route were an effort to create facts on the ground and prejudice final status negotiations. This is not a border, Sharon answered; it is just another means to control terror. You want us to withdraw from the West Bank towns; this allows us to do so without allowing more terror. And as to the critics who say this is just an Israeli land grab, Sharon replied that we don't want land; we want to protect people. Look, he said, you can't defend a nation based on what the
New York Times
will write.

By the end of this visit in early May, the American victory in Iraq was being celebrated; President Bush's “Mission Accomplished” landing on an aircraft carrier came on May 2. After the talks with Sharon, I thought I understood his intentions very well. Our discussion of settlements had revealed that he did not plan any new settlements, nor did he envision the physical expansion of the settlements that existed. There would be no need to include more land within settlement borders. Moreover, financial enticements to Israelis to move to the settlements were also on their way out, for budgetary reasons if for nothing else. We were stuck with the phrase “settlement freeze,” which had appeared in the Mitchell Report
in 2001 and in the Roadmap and
been repeated endlessly by Powell and
other State Department officials as well as by the president. After the conversations with Sharon, I told Rice and
Hadley we could say we had an acceptable “settlement freeze” if Sharon did the following: announced a commitment to a viable Palestinian state, agreed that the security fence was for security only and was not meant to be a border, ended all subsidies to Israelis to move across the Green Line into settlements in the West Bank or Gaza, and said that said there would be no new settlements or taking of land for new settlements or physical expansion of existing ones, and that new construction in settlements would reflect only natural growth and be only in built-up areas. The last condition was simple: It did not prejudice Palestinians or block final status talks if Israelis built new houses or apartments
inside
existing settlements, using no additional land. Ma'ale Adumim had (at that time) perhaps 35,000 people, so adding another couple of thousand inside the settlement borders was not a major event. Building on new territory or at the edge of settlements, which would require security roads and perimeters to use additional land, was different – and to be avoided.

This was a formula that could work and represented a decent compromise between the United States and Israel without prejudicing Palestinian interests. Of course, the PA demanded an absolute halt to construction of any kind in the settlements and
in Jerusalem, but no Israeli government would ever agree
to that and the Palestinians knew it. The discussions we were holding with Israeli officials were moving toward a sensible compromise on the settlement issue.

Sharon's goals appeared to me to be to build the fence, stop the terrorism, and get to Phase II of the Roadmap. That would mean negotiations over the existence of a Palestinian state and of its provisional borders, and significant withdrawals in the West Bank and Gaza, but it would not mean dealing with all the most sensitive final status issues (including Jerusalem) or a full withdrawal to whatever the final borders would be. The borders of the Palestinian state would be provisional, but I thought Sharon envisioned this temporary situation as lasting for many years, perhaps decades – until the terrorist groups had truly been disbanded and a working Palestinian state structure was in place. Peace, quiet, and separation from the Palestinians were his goals, I thought, not a final status agreement. He seemed to me to be looking at the issues like an old general, not an ideologue; he wanted practical solutions and above all security.

On the Palestinian side, we still did not know whom we were dealing with – Arafat or Abbas. How successful the efforts to move power away from Arafat and
his “security” gangs would be was still entirely uncertain. I did not think Abbas wanted a final status agreement any more than Sharon because then he would have to face extremely difficult compromises that he lacked the legitimacy to impose. Arafat, a charismatic leader with many means of persuasion at his disposal (including guns and cash), had backed away from such an agreement with Israel under Clinton. So perhaps the Palestinians too could find their way to an interim agreement that established a state with provisional borders and left the toughest issues for a later day. After all, that was the content of the Roadmap, to which all parties were now more or less pledged.

In fact, the Israelis had announced 14 objections to the Roadmap after its “official” publication. They insisted that it be clear Arafat was gone, not simply ruling from behind the scenes; they wanted clear action on terrorism, including arrests, arms seizures, and dismantling terrorist organizations; and they focused on an end to “incitement,” which meant eliminating a broad category of Palestinian broadcasts, textbooks, and publications that demonized Israel and taught each new generation that war and “resistance” were the proper attitude, not peace and coexistence with the Jewish state. Most of all, they insisted on the sequencing: There must be full completion of one stage before the next is opened. All of their objections were based on reasonable points, but it was too late to reopen the text of the Roadmap in the spring of 2003. The Israelis (and Palestinians) had been promised all along that the Roadmap text they were seeing was a draft that was open to amendment, but the text as drafted in the early fall of 2002 was final. The Israelis had a right to feel misled; the best we could do in response was the statement I negotiated with Weissglas that promised all of Israel's objections would be “addressed fully and seriously.” This left many Israelis, I was soon told, reaching for dictionaries;
why would we “address” their objections? Why did they need an address, and who would be mailing responses to whom?

By early May, Rice's plans for the post–Iraq War meeting had gelled. Right after the G-8 summit in France, Bush would continue on to Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt. There he would meet with key Arab leaders – Mubarak, Crown Prince Abdallah, King Abdullah of Jordan – and the new face in town: Prime Minister Abbas. The following day he would proceed to Aqaba, Jordan, where he would meet separately with King Abdullah, Sharon, and Abbas and
then preside over a meeting with Sharon and Abbas together. It was critical that all of the parties say the right things about peace, so Rice engaged in a whirlwind of diplomacy. She browbeat the Saudi ambassador, Prince Bandar, into assuring that his head of government, the Crown Prince, would show up. She telephoned King Abdullah of Jordan on May 19 to get him to come to Sharm on June 3 and then hurry home to host his visitors the following day. She had the staff draft “parallel unilateral statements,” statements that Abbas and Sharon would utter at Aqaba and that would reflect views compatible with the American approach. My computer contained dozens of drafts of these statements, and if the parties were amazed at the American chutzpah in proposing to put our words in their mouths, they did not say so. Perhaps it was Rice's warm but extremely firm approach; perhaps it was what appeared to be the smashing American victory in Iraq. But our parallel unilateral statements were never rejected; they were the basis for negotiations, word by word, line by line, because we wanted to be sure that Abbas made firm commitments against terror and Sharon equally firm ones about peace and Palestinian statehood. In these preparations, Rice entirely sidelined Colin Powell. As she notes in her memoir, “I took direct responsibility for overseeing U.S. efforts.”
¹⁶
Powell at
tended the Sharm and Aqaba summits but was a marginal figure. The calls and the meetings, the cajoling and pressuring, and the planning of what the president would say, to whom, and when were all White House activities. At best, State was informed and asked to perform various helpful supportive roles. Increasingly, Rice rather than Powell was acting for the president and was in charge of Middle East policy. Assistant Secretary Bill Burns was involved in the practical arrangements for what were now being called the “Red Sea Summits,” but neither he nor his boss was making policy; Burns was simply helping make sure the details were ironed out.

The president knew what he wanted: Terrorism must stop, which was not negotiable, and Abbas must say so in Aqaba. He could not stop 100% of the attacks, the president said, but the key is for Abu Mazen (the president never referred to him as Abbas) to show the world he is giving every ounce of effort to fighting terror. This was not an abstract argument: As we were planning for the Sharm and Aqaba meetings, Palestinian terror continued. On
May 18, 7 people were killed and 20 wounded in another suicide bombing of a public bus, this time near French Hill in Jerusalem. The following day, a suicide bomber attacked in a shopping mall in northern Israel, killing 3 and injuring 70 more. These followed six smaller attacks in April and three earlier in May. Nor did Prime Minister Abbas believe he could stop them: When Sharon (in a May 17 meeting between the two men) offered him a redeployment of IDF troops so that Palestinian forces could take greater responsibility for security, he demurred. Instead, Abbas spoke of how weak his own position was; Sharon's notes of the meeting say, “They are not yet ready to take responsibility.”
¹⁷

On May 20, the president called the newly installed Palestinian prime minister, noting that it was his first call to a Palestinian leader in two years. Bush was warm and encouraging but clear about terror: Denounce terror and you have a friend in me, he said. If you want peace we can work together, and this is just the first of our calls and meetings. Bush told Abbas that Israel would never compromise its security and he would never ask them to do so, but the killers were the enemies of the Palestinians as well as Israelis. Abbas had the right responses: He was committed to peace and against terrorism, and he understood that without Israeli security there would be no peace. It was a good start.

Bush also called Sharon that day. A planned Sharon visit to Washington had been put off due to the terrorist attacks. Bush offered condolences for the deaths and injuries and said he understood why Sharon was staying home. He told Sharon he had spoken to Abu Mazen and thought the new prime minister wanted to move forward to peace. The United States would never jeopardize Israeli security, but we should help Abu Mazen; there is a chance for progress. Not if the terror continues, Sharon replied, and Abu Mazen, whatever his intentions, was doing nothing to stop it. Well, he just got there, Bush said; he means well and we should help him succeed. Back and forth they went, Bush noting the possibilities and the need to help Abu Mazen succeed, and each time Sharon replying that he could not move during a wave of terror and while Abu Mazen did nothing to end it. It was a conversation they would have over and over during the next two years. Sharon said he would not compromise on security; Bush agreed, but said we had a chance to marginalize Arafat now if we could empower Abu Mazen. You can be a man of security
and
a man of peace, he urged Sharon.

At its regular Sunday cabinet meeting on May 25, Israel's cabinet approved the Roadmap – but not unanimously. The vote was 12 to 7, with 4 abstentions, once again suggesting that Sharon's coalition was fractious indeed. A day later, Sharon shocked allies and opponents alike by using the word “occupation” for the first time to describe Israel's presence in the Palestinian Territories. Speaking to a Likud audience in Haifa, he said Israel should seek a political arrangement with the Palestinians and added, “The idea that it is possible to continue keeping 3.5 million Palestinians under occupation – yes, it is occupation, you might not like the word, but what is happening is occupation – is bad for Israel and bad
for the Palestinians, and bad for the Israeli economy. Controlling 3.5 million Palestinians cannot go on forever.”
¹⁸
Here was more evidence that Sharon was intent on a serious negotiation with Abbas and that he would say so at Aqaba.

As June began, Bush headed off in Air Force One for Evian, where the G-8 leaders pressed him for more action on the “peace process.” He had a ready answer: The Red Sea Summits were the next step. They were Bush's first venture into Clinton-style diplomacy on this issue. The meeting in Sharm el-Sheik was an effort to showcase Arab support for the president's efforts, and it was noteworthy more because it happened than for anything said there. In fact, the meeting almost broke down before it began. The heads of state were to meet at a round table in the Movenpick resort, favored by President Mubarak for such sessions. They would discuss the issues privately before moving outside for the reading of a public statement by Mubarak, their host. When Mubarak, Bush, King Abdullah of Jordan, and Abbas (and the other invitee, King Hamad of Bahrain) arrived at the resort, they found that Crown Prince Abdallah of Saudi Arabia had not yet arrived. The minutes ticked by, but still no prince. More and more pressing inquiries were addressed to sweating Saudi diplomats, and finally the explanation was whispered: Abdallah had decided or been told that Sharon would be present – and the prince refused to meet with him.