Tested by Zion (42 page)

A few days later, the president spoke at the 100
^th
anniversary dinner of the American Jewish Historical Society
, which I attended. As soon as his remarks were over, I left and was out front on the street as he got into his limo. Seeing me, he invited me in for the ride back to the White House. The president asked me how the Jewish community is feeling. Nervous, I replied. Nervous? Why? They are nervous about Condi, I said. What they hear when they meet with her now, and frankly what they must be hearing from the Israelis, unsettles them. They don't know how far it is going, where it's leading, whether we are looking for new tactics or a whole new policy. They can see that there is a
serious new tension between her and the Israelis. The president took it in and did not comment.

The president delivered his address to the UN General Assembly on September 19, and Condi lost her battle for including a major new Middle East initiative in the speech. Inside the White House there was no support for this, and instead the president covered Iran, Lebanon, Darfur, Afghanistan, Syria, and Iraq, as well as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. What she got instead of a new initiative was a personal endorsement from the president, or perhaps what in the bureaucracy is called a “tasking”:

I believe peace can be achieved, and that a democratic Palestinian state is possible. I hear from leaders in the region who want to help. I’ve directed Secretary of State Rice to lead a diplomatic effort to engage moderate leaders across the region, to help the Palestinians reform their security services, and support Israeli and Palestinian leaders in their efforts to come together to resolve their differences. Prime Minister Blair has indicated that his country will work with partners in Europe to help strengthen the governing institutions of the Palestinian administration. We welcome his initiative. Countries like Saudi Arabia and Jordan and Egypt have made clear they're willing to contribute the diplomatic and financial assistance necessary to help these efforts succeed. I’m optimistic that by supporting the forces of democracy and moderation, we can help Israelis and Palestinians build a more hopeful future and achieve the peace in a Holy Land we all want.

Rice did not win a call for a great new international conference, but behind the scenes she was getting her way on significant policy changes. What so agitated Tourgeman and
Turbowitz – whom the president and everyone else now called “T and T” – was an accurate take on these changes: The “sequence of
the Roadmap,” which had been a holy grail for Sharon, was now being given a different meaning. This sequence had been understood by all of us, Americans as well as Israelis, as meaning “beat terrorism first; no negotiations while terrorism continues.” Now we had revised that to mean “no
implementation
until terrorism is beaten, but negotiations should be underway.” As I explained it to the Israelis – indeed, as I explained it to myself – we were still absolutely opposed to moving into Phase III of the Roadmap, a Palestinian state, until we had gone through the earlier phases and terrorist organizations had been “dismantled” as the Roadmap said. But why couldn't we
talk
about Phase III? In fact, maybe talk about Phase III would provide the Palestinians with the “political horizon” they needed to act against terror.

This “political horizon” theory became a mantra, especially for Rice. I was one of those who helped formulate the new Roadmap lingo, trying to help persuade the Israelis not to get into a huge fight with Condi over it. But the “political horizon” theory left me cold; I thought it was absurd. Ariel Sharon had called for a Palestinian state at Aqaba in 2003 and had in 2005 left Gaza – and had won an election with this policy. After Sharon's stroke, Olmert had
committed himself to leaving parts of the West Bank and had won an election with that proposal. That a “political horizon” existed was obvious; it was Palestinian statehood, and the vast majority of Israelis were now in favor of it. The old dreams of a “Greater Israel” held fewer and fewer Israelis in their spell because a wide majority now wanted separation from the Palestinians. What more did Palestinians need than this, which was the clear horizon? Under this horizon, I thought, the main effort should be on the ground in the West Bank and Gaza, building the institutions of self-government from the bottom up.

Why did the president endorse this change in the U.S. approach on the Roadmap? As I interviewed top Israeli officials years later, one of them gave me his thoughtful assessment off the record:

I thought that President Bush worked within a framework that the endgame should be two states; that this and peace with security can be based only on true leadership, total renunciation of terror, proven end to terror and on the basis of two democracies living side-by-side.…[S]o the endgame is clear. At the same time, no shortcuts in the road to this endgame. And this I thought was what served him to support Israel in fighting terror, not wanting to deal with Arafat, supporting the idea that first no terror and
then
political negotiations and the like.…

What I sensed happened during 2006…was that he was convinced that we were in a deadlock, that only working bottom-up will not do the trick, and that there needs to be this horizon or this agreement on the endgame in order to gain enough momentum for the bottom-up to work. I think that he had to be satisfied for himself with the security issue and the terror issue, and this is why he bought into the notion that there is no
implementation
until there is full implementation of the Roadmap – and thus he wouldn't put Israel's security in jeopardy and thus he wouldn't betray any of his core principles. So once he was presented with the notion that the current no-movement situation…is dangerous and there is a way to go about it that would not betray the values, would not put Israel's security in danger, because there would be no implementation until such conditions are created, he bought into the notion that you can change the sequence of the Roadmap, not only implementation but on the process itself.

I felt that this was largely cultivated by Condi and I wasn't sure, let's say until the middle of ‘06, where the president stood; I wasn't sure whether Condi was reflecting Bush's views at the time. I reached a conclusion at a certain point that Bush crossed a certain line.…He basically said to us, “Tell my friend Olmert, what is your strategy? Where do you think this is going to go? Why not try this?” So Condi was not freelancing. And at that point I felt that the president after struggling with the issue got convinced that this is something he should try. I don't know what would've been his reaction had Olmert said no. Maybe it was a trial balloon, maybe he was testing the water, but it was then clear to me that either he himself or Condi had been able to construct for him a structure which would suggest starting political negotiations without making him violate his core principles with regard to democracy, terror, or the security of Israel – because the sequence of
implementation
will be guaranteed. So I felt there was a change in 2006 in terms of moving into parallel tracks which was very different from the vision of the roadmap – which basically suggested political negotiations at the later stage. And I thought that he was gradually accepting it, I thought that there was a point by which,
at least he presented to us, a position that he did accept it, challenging us, ‘What's your alternative?’ And I thought that it was constructed for him brilliantly in a way that he could lead with in terms of his own values and principles.
²⁴

This assessment seems right to me. The president believed he was both breaking through a stalemate and remaining true to his policies and his support for Israel's security. Talking about final status issues was OK so long as implementation was delayed – or anyway that was the theory. It fit with our actions in the fall of 2006, but only because Condi had not yet won her battle for a big international conference that would try to leap to a final status agreement. The notion that such an agreement could be signed but not implemented for years and years, until the PA “dismantled” all terrorist groups, always seemed ridiculous to me. Was it not obvious that once a deal had been signed, implementation would have to begin? I thought it clear that Palestinians would start pushing for implementation literally before the signatures were dry on any treaty, and in this they would have the full support of the Arab world and of the EU. Israel's objections – the Palestinians haven't done this yet or that yet; they haven't fulfilled provision A and amendment B – would fall on deaf ears. The pressure for implementation would grow inexorably and irresistibly.

None of this policy change would have happened without some support in Jerusalem. Tzipi Livni bought into this approach, more or less. On certain issues she was as tough as nails – no Hamas participation in the elections, the need to build the security fence, the absolute insistence that the number of Palestinian “refugees” who would “return” to Israel was zero. But on this matter of “the sequence of the Roadmap,” she worked closely with Rice. As to Olmert, he never said no, for his own reasons. Once he perceived that this was the Bush view, he did not want to fight with the president over it. There was also his rivalry with Livni, which made him wish to play down the Livni-Rice channel and to take up negotiations himself.

Above all, there was his own desire to achieve peace and prove that he was a consequential historical figure, not an accidental prime minister who had failed in Lebanon and was mired in corruption charges. As time went by, these latter considerations would lead Olmert to make offers to Abbas that I thought could not get through his own cabinet or the Knesset, and whose rejection by them would have harmed Israel greatly. Olmert was always torn. He understood Israel's security requirements and was getting tough-minded advice from advisors like “T and T” and from the security organizations themselves – the IDF and the Shin Bet
, Israel's internal security service. Sometimes he stood firm on this advice and he had a series of difficult meetings with Rice, from 2006 to the end of the administration. But he could not resist casting himself as a hero of peace, which was not coincidentally how he wished his own family – not one member of which was supportive of the positions he had taken throughout his career in Likud – to see him. Olmert wanted to vindicate his life and his career in politics with a peace breakthrough, and this worried not only his closest advisers but also a number of us on the American side. If he leapt
farther than Israel's politics allowed, his government would collapse and from its ruins would come not peace but a collapse of the negotiations and perhaps more violence.

But in the fall of 2006, we were far more worried about Palestinian than Israeli politics. On September 11, President Abbas announced the formation of a Fatah-Hamas national unity government
. The private message from our Palestinian interlocutors was “hold off on the criticism, see how it goes; don't denounce us.” President Chirac of France expressed EU opinion when he immediately issued a congratulatory statement. The Palestinian announcement was so vague that we could not immediately tell what had been agreed; had Hamas blinked, and said things tantamount to abandoning terror and recognizing both Israel and all previous agreements with her, thereby meeting the Quartet principles? Fatah officials were making that claim. We asked the Israelis, who told us they did not know if that were true; their immediate reaction was guarded but positive: “If that were to happen, we would have a re-energized peace process and new momentum in the Israeli-Palestinian dialogue,” their spokesman said.
²⁵
On September 13, Livni was in Washington to see Rice, and at their joint press conference Rice spoke carefully:

I think that the outcome of the process is not clear. It's an ongoing process and our purpose has been to be very clear that we do believe that the Quartet principles represent the consensus of the international community about the way forward between Israel and the Palestinians. It goes without saying that it's hard to have a partner for peace if you don't accept the right of the other partner to exist. It goes without saying that it's hard to have a process for peace if you do not renounce violence. And so we will see what the outcome is here.
²⁶

A week later on September 20, while the president was in New York for the General Assembly, he met with President Abbas and the discussion of the national unity government continued. The president reiterated his support for a Palestinian state and said it was a key objective of his administration. The question is how to get to the point where you and Olmert can negotiate and get it done and conclude a satisfactory arrangement, he said. A national unity government has to be judged from that perspective, the president told Abbas: It is a useless exercise unless it leads to a state. You cannot put the Israelis or the United States in a position where we are negotiating with people who want to destroy Israel. A unity government does not help me if it does not make it easier to negotiate a state, the president reiterated. Here again, the mythology about American policy is shown to be false because the president did not sabotage or denounce Abbas's efforts to form a unity government or demand that they cease. Instead, he explained our perspective and urged Abbas to be sure that any unity government pulled us all in the right direction and not farther away from peace negotiations.

But within two weeks, the Fatah-Hamas coalition government was blown apart by bloodshed. On October 1 and 2, nearly a dozen people were killed and about 100 wounded in fighting between Hamas and Fatah. How could
there be a unity government, we wondered – or was this the way Hamas negotiated for better terms? Throughout October, Arab leaders made mediation attempts aimed at ending the Fatah-Hamas confrontation. Egypt and Qatar sent their foreign ministers to meet with both parties. There were even mediation efforts by other, smaller Palestinian terrorist groups such as Islamic Jihad and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
. At the end of the month, Israel launched another large incursion into Gaza to stop rocket and mortar attacks still being launched from there into Israel; this was “Operation Autumn Clouds
” and lasted from November 1 to 7.