Authors: Elliott Abrams
There had been. A day or two after Welch and I were in London, Hadley met with the Egyptian foreign minister and confirmed to him that Condi would push for final status negotiations as soon as she felt them to be possible. On February 7, I wrote a memo to Hadley saying that although the president had said he wanted no daylight between us and the Israelis, there was more every day. Moreover, I told him, there was a growing gap between us and
the Palestinians. We seemed to want negotiations leading to a final status agreement, whereupon Abbas would hold an election and beat Hamas, but he seemed to want a national unity government with Hamas. It was clear to me that we were not listening carefully any more to what the Israelis and Palestinians were saying, nor were we noting what was really on the mind of Abbas and
his advisors – their internal struggles. As recently as February 2, 20 people had been killed in factional fighting in Gaza, and more people died on February 3 and 4. This bloodshed was all over the Arab TV networks, and this war was far more significant to the Palestinians than our diplomatic moves.
The TV coverage turned out to be of great significance because one of the Arab television viewers was the king of Saudi Arabia. I had been to several of his palaces and had seen the banks of TV screens that surrounded him almost everywhere. At his favorite retreat, his horse farm, the set-up in the giant dining room (at most dinners I could count about 100 people) placed a huge screen, probably six feet square and tuned to Saudi-backed Al-Arabiya, right in front of the king. Much affected (it was explained to us later) by the intra-Palestinian violence, he acted. He summoned both parties to Mecca, Islam's holiest city, to arrange a truce. Neither could refuse the summons even if they had wished to, given the prestige of the king and the wide support for this effort to stop the bloodshed (and on the PA side, the fact that the Saudis were a key source of financial backing). We in Washington made our views crystal clear to the Saudis: The three Quartet Principles remained our guide. Anything they did beyond a truce had to meet that standard. Any kind of coalition government that did not require Hamas to renounce terrorism, recognize Israel's right to exist, and accept past Israeli-Palestinian agreements would be a tremendous setback. In fact, the Saudi meetings were in themselves a huge setback because the Saudi government was treating Hamas and the PA as equals. The Israelis could not be expected to negotiate with a government half made up of people who wanted to destroy their state and who engaged in terror against it, and we would not ask them to do so. Therefore, as we urged the Saudis, stopping the violence – sure; national unity government – disaster.
But it was a national unity government for which they pressed, for reasons never explained to us. They simply ignored our advice. Perhaps they thought we were too pro-Israel; perhaps Saudi officials were following an order from the king that permitted no consideration of American doubts; perhaps their confidence in us was a casualty of Iraq, where we seemed to them to be fighting hard to establish a Shia-led government that per se they viewed as a disaster. Whatever the reason, they forged ahead and the Palestinians went along.
The Mecca Agreement
was announced on February 8. It was very short, declaring four principles. “First: to ban the shedding of the Palestinian blood…and to stress the importance of national unity.…Second: Final agreement to form
a Palestinian national unity government
.…Third: to move ahead in measures to activate and reform the Palestine Liberation Organization.…Fourth: to stress on the principle of political partnership [and] political pluralism.”
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The “reform the PLO” language was a huge victory for Hamas: It meant letting Hamas into the PLO, which we believed it had a long-term plan to penetrate and take over. Formally, it was the PLO that negotiated with Israel, not the PA, and it was the PLO that sat as an observer in the United Nations. Now the Mecca Agreement was advancing Hamas's goals in the PLO as well. More important, it threw the Quartet Principles out the window. Olmert may have been ready to negotiate with Abbas and the PA, but after Mecca it was hard to see how such negotiations could take place: by signing the Mecca Agreement, Abbas was deliberately fudging the distinctions between Hamas and the PA. Even more, he had specifically told both American and Israeli officials that the national unity government idea was dead and that he opposed it. So much for his credibility.
On February 15, Abbas dissolved the PA government and authorized Haniyeh to organize a new one. After several weeks of negotiations, a new government was agreed on March 15. On March 17, the PLC approved it, with Haniyeh remaining prime minister. The new national unity government met none of the Quartet conditions. When asked how he could possibly have agreed to it, Abbas would smile nervously and say he really had no choice once the king had asked him to do it.
Reactions to Mecca revealed the stresses within the Quartet, for while we viewed it negatively, others were delighted. We saw to it that the initial Quartet statement in response was cautious and reaffirmed the three principles, but separately the EU expressed support for the Mecca deal. Worse, the EU language now suggested that the new unity government could “reflect” rather than adhere to the Quartet Principles, vague terminology that could mean almost anything. The Europeans were all over the lot and viewed the American approach as too rigid. Russia actually called for a lifting of international sanctions; Norway was bubbling with enthusiasm for Mecca and the new unity government.
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We pulled our punches a bit, trying not to say anything that would kill Secretary Rice's next trip to the region and waiting to see if the unity government actually came into being.
The impact of the Mecca Agreement was considerable, as summed up years later by Condi Rice:
I thought there was some chance that you might be able to negotiate. Now, of course what killed that – any hope of that – was Mecca and then we spent a year trying to recover from Mecca. And really Annapolis was a way to get things back on track that Mecca knocked off balance.…I was supposed to meet with Abbas and Olmert in February and I was scheduled to go to the Middle East to meet with them; it was going to be a trilateral. Mecca happens [February 8, 2007]…and there is a question of whether or not I even ought to go because it's not clear they'll talk to each other at that point.…Olmert is ready to go, we set up for me to…go and kick off negotiations between the two of them, and then Mecca happens.
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Rice had been pressing for an international conference as early as the summer of 2006, after the Second Lebanon War, so it was certainly not Mecca that gave birth to that idea. It may, however, have persuaded Rice that an international conference was inevitable. After the Second Lebanon War, she had nearly managed to bring the parties back to the negotiating track over a period of six months, but now Abbas, or perhaps more fairly one should say the king of Saudi Arabia, had acted to blow up that possibility. In Rice's view, something dramatic was once again needed.
At the White House, the president read news bulletins about the announcement of the Mecca Agreement
and asked Hadley and me if it met the Quartet Principles. We told him it clearly did not and that Haniyeh, from Hamas, remained as prime minister. Let it play out then, the president said. We need to insist on the Quartet Principles. Let's see what the new government says and does. The Israelis took a dimmer view, saying that Mecca had wrecked any chance of negotiations and that we should all now shun the PA. Our core assumptions about the PA have been challenged, Sallai Meridor told Hadley; we thought Abbas and the PA were confronting Hamas, not making deals with them. The administration told the Israelis we were equally upset but would have a different contact policy: We would stay in touch with Abbas and Fayyad.
The president spoke with Olmert on February 16, and their differences were evident. An angry Olmert said Abbas had betrayed all of us by agreeing to a unity government with Hamas. A far more relaxed Bush said our best bet was to let it play out; he did not think this unity government could last. It will change or it will collapse, so let it run, he advised Olmert. But there was a second subject of this call: Condi. We were to travel again very soon, and Condi was pushing Olmert for a trilateral meeting: She wanted to get Olmert and Abbas together. He was resisting, still angry over Mecca, and his tone made his concern evident. It sounds to me like you're a little nervous about Condi, the president told Olmert. I feel how important this meeting is to her, Olmert said; she does not want me to spoil the party.
This brief exchange was the first, but far from the last time, in which Olmert attempted to place himself between Condi and the president. With the exception of the administration's final UN Security Council vote in January 2009, for which Olmert (and others) did persuade the president to move from Condi's desired “yes” to an abstention, these efforts by Olmert had one principal effect: They angered Rice. They did not succeed in changing U.S. policy directly, though they may have slowed Rice down from time to time; certainly, she knew that the president liked Olmert. It remains unclear how much the president or Hadley told Rice privately about such statements by Olmert, although it was not long before the president referred to them directly in larger meetings where both were present.
The secretary's party then traveled again to the Middle East. The main subject raised with Abbas was the national unity government
, which he now defended as the only alternative to a combination of violence and new elections. However, when we told him we could not recognize or deal with the new government and would take a “wait and see” attitude, he actually appeared relieved. The meeting with him was fine: relaxed, without tension, friendly. We were now in the pattern that had begun after the Second Lebanon War and would prevail to the end of the administration: There was never a bad meeting with the Palestinians and never a good one with the Israelis. Perhaps it was just personal chemistry, but it seemed to me there was more: a combination of Rice's drive for negotiations and her assumption that very little could actually be expected from Abbas (so concessions would have to come from the Israelis). The phrase that rung in my head was Bush's: “the soft bigotry of low expectations.”
When we met with Olmert, sparks flew – despite the fact that Olmert, moved by our pressure, had decided he would continue to meet with Abbas. I told the president that the Palestinians betrayed us and deceived us, Olmert said to Rice. Abu Mazen said he needed weapons and money to fight Hamas, and now he is in a national unity government with them. I will not close the door to him, but let me tell you – now I know better who he is. Then he told her he had spoken with the president and that the president thinks the national unity government will not work – we should not do anything abrupt; we should wait. OK, but we must be more careful and more realistic, Olmert concluded. This reference to the president set Rice off: I know exactly what the president thinks, she responded. He thinks it is important to keep open a path for the Palestinians. Now Olmert shot back: I don't remember this phrasing. I can show you the transcript of the call, Rice replied. This was not an auspicious way for the post-Mecca cooperation to begin.
Tourgeman and
others soon explained to me just why Olmert was pugnacious: He thought Rice was building a relationship with Foreign Minister Livni that went beyond their diplomatic business and looked more like Rice trying to pick his successor. Olmert continued to be battered by the corruption charges and had never recovered from Lebanon (his popularity level was in single digits in all the polls), and he resented the news stories about how close Rice and
Livni were becoming. Olmert also wondered just where Rice was heading; he did not understand where she thought the trilaterals would take him and Israel, and the Egyptians and Jordanians were telling the Israelis about excellent conversations they were having with Rice covering final status talks. All this made him nervous and out of sorts and, in addition, he was about to do something he did not want to do: join Rice and Abbas in the trilateral. In the end, he decided not to say “no” to Rice.
The trilateral meeting took place on February 19. Olmert used it to complain face to face to Abbas: You promised there would be no national unity government; you especially promised there would be no new government formed without the release of Corporal Gilad Shalit in Gaza; now you are kissing
Khaled Meshal. Abbas was not apologetic. The reality is, he replied, that the United States forced us to hold an election and Hamas won, and they now have four years to govern. So what do we do? Do we leave them to govern alone? We just went close to having a civil war in Gaza, and we need more time to build our strength.
Rice told them both that a “political horizon” was needed. Rice's thinking at that point was that there would have to be an election and that for Abbas and Fatah to win it, we would all have to outline that “political horizon” more clearly. That was the only product Abbas could sell. There was some truth to this view – the only thing he could sell was the prospect of peace and an avoidance of endless confrontations with Israel – but negotiations also posed an obvious danger for Abbas. The more details were spelled out, the easier it would be for Hamas to accuse Abbas and Fatah of selling out. Statehood, independence, an end to Israeli occupation, an end to violence – those were all fine. But as soon as Abbas gave the slightest detail about the compromises he was planning to make, Hamas would brand him as a traitor: giving up pieces of holy Jerusalem, abandoning the refugees, and so on. Rice's pressure to outline a “political horizon” was, then, a formula for endless arguments with the Israelis, who said we were pushing them to final status negotiations despite the unity government with Hamas; it was also a risk for Abbas the moment the “horizon” gained any definite content.