Sharon, the leader of Likud, did just that when, in September 2000, he announced his plans to visit Al Haram Al Sharif. Jews call this area the Temple Mount. They believe that the First and Second Temples were built on that site, and some hold that the Temple Mount will be the site of the Third Temple, whose construction will herald the coming of the Messiah. But some Israeli zealots do not want to wait any longer for the coming of the Messiah. A radical group that calls itself the Temple Mount Faithful, led by an Israeli officer, Gershon Salomon, has called for the demolition of the Al Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock and their removal to Mecca, so that the Third Temple can be erected in their place.
Many Muslims saw Sharon’s planned visit as evidence that the ideas of the Temple Mount Faithful had entered mainstream Israeli politics. Arafat argued that he should not be allowed to enter the holy complex. Sharon ignored the protests, and on September 28, 2000, he entered Al Haram Al Sharif compound with a group of Likud members. Protected by around one thousand Israeli riot police and in disregard of the sensitivities of Muslims worldwide, he walked across the site as an angry group of Palestinians protested this incursion into one of Islam’s holiest sites.
The next day the Palestinians’ reaction to Sharon’s provocation escalated. In violent clashes at least four Palestinians were killed and over two hundred wounded by the Israeli forces. After that, the situation quickly spiraled out of control. The violent demonstrations spread from East Jerusalem across the West Bank and Gaza. On September 30, at the Netzarim Junction in Gaza, an incident occurred that horrified the world. A carpenter, Jamal Dura, and his twelve-year-old son Mohammed were caught up in a violent clash between Palestinian demonstrators and the Israeli army. Trying in vain to take shelter behind a wall, they were showered with bullets. This gruesome scene was filmed and millions watched in shock as Jamal vainly tried to protect his son, who was killed in his arms. Across the Muslim world this image came to symbolize the brutality of the Israeli occupation of Palestine. In five further days of violence, around fifty Palestinians were killed and hundreds more wounded. Three Israelis died in the clashes.
The violence sparked by Sharon’s visit triggered what came to be known as the Al Aqsa intifada. I condemned Sharon’s provocation and argued that the only way to stop the violence was to get back to the negotiating table and to reach an agreement that fulfilled the legitimate right of the Palestinian people to statehood on their national soil, with East Jerusalem as their capital. But Sharon had his own approach.
Some lower-level Israeli-Palestinian talks continued during the fall, but no one put much stock in them. In a final push before leaving office in December 2000, Clinton offered some proposals, which became known as the Clinton Parameters, to address the outstanding issues of settlements, Jerusalem, and refugees.
Clinton proposed an end to the conflict on the basis of a solution that would give 94 to 96 percent of the West Bank to the Palestinians, with a land swap of 1 to 3 percent. Four-fifths of Israeli settlers would be in the land kept by Israel. He also proposed that territorial arrangements such as permanent safe passage between the West Bank and Gaza be part of the deal. The parameters further stated that Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank would take place over three years, during which international forces would be gradually introduced.
Clinton proposed that the Palestinian state would be the focal point for Palestinians who chose to return to Palestine, without ruling out that Israel would accept some of those refugees. The guiding principle for solving the issue of Jerusalem would be that Arab areas are Palestinian and Jewish areas are Israeli, with Palestinians having sovereignty over Al Haram Al Sharif and Israelis over the Western Wall. An agreement along those parameters would mark the end of the conflict.
From January 21 to January 27 at Taba in Egypt, Barak and Arafat tried one last time to come to terms. But Barak was slipping daily in the polls, and after a fraught and contested election, a new president had just been inaugurated in the United States and no one knew what approach he would take. Talks soon ended and violence escalated. In Israel, commentators began to pronounce the Oslo peace process well and truly dead.
In the months that followed, controversy raged over the question of who bore responsibility for the collapse of the peace negotiations. In this debate the sticking points in the negotiations and the failure of the sides to agree were conflated with the consequences of Sharon’s provocative visit to Al Haram Al Sharif. Some blamed Yasser Arafat for the ensuing violence as well as for the negotiations’ collapse, saying that he had orchestrated the violence in order to win more Israeli concessions. Others suggested that the Americans had sided with Barak and had not pressed him for sufficient concessions. Some pointed out that not enough preparation had gone into Camp David and that what was offered to the Palestinians fell short of what they deserved or wanted. But the truth is that in the seven long years since the signing of the Oslo Accords, too many promises had been broken and trust had frayed. Palestinians knew that Ehud Barak would soon be voted out of office and doubted his ability to deliver given the weakening state of his government. It was a tragic and costly failure.
Chapter 18
Seeking Peace, Getting War
D
uring the Clinton administration, Iraq and America exchanged many violent words and a few missiles but stopped short of outright war. But in January 2001, as the administration of George W. Bush came into office, that dynamic began to change. Neoconservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz, Doug Feith, Elliott Abrams, and Richard Perle had long harbored ambitions to take down Saddam Hussein and finish the job that Bush’s father, in their eyes, had begun. Many of these neocons began to take up strategic positions in the Pentagon, the National Security Council, and the State Department. They had the access; now all they lacked was the opportunity. All too soon, one would present itself.
The Bush administration showed little or no interest in building on the work of the Clinton administration. The day after Bush came into office, on January 21, 2001, the Israelis and Palestinians met at Taba in Egypt to try to follow on from the previous year’s negotiation at Camp David and, with the assistance of Clinton’s last-minute proposals (the Clinton Parameters), to bridge their final differences. But the talks soon broke down. After Taba, the revolving door in Israel began to spin again.
Ehud Barak was defeated in March by the Likud Party, led by Ariel Sharon. By electing Sharon, the Israeli public was sending a clear message. As his actions would soon demonstrate, Sharon had little interest in peace.
As dusk fell on the evening of May 18, 2001, Israeli F-16 fighters took off from their bases, heading for the West Bank and Gaza. Some of their bombs struck at the Palestinian security headquarters in Nablus, flattening the complex and killing eight people. Others hit targets in Ramallah and the Gaza Strip, killing eleven people and wounding many more. It was the first time since the 1967 war that Israel had attacked the Palestinians with fighter jets, and the strikes brought international condemnation. An unrepentant Ariel Sharon said in an interview with an Israeli newspaper, “We will do everything necessary and use everything we have to protect Israeli citizens.”
The Israeli attack was the culmination of a week of escalating violence. On May 14, five Palestinian police officers were killed by Israeli soldiers. Four days later, on the morning of May 18, Hamas sent a suicide bomber to attack a shopping mall in the coastal resort town of Netanya, killing five shoppers and wounding around a hundred more. Later that evening the Israelis deployed their warplanes and bombs. Each side seemed to be trying to outdo the other in atrocities. Every human life is sacred, and I believe it is simply wrong to target innocent civilians, whether using suicide bombers or F-16 jets.
U.S. vice president Dick Cheney appealed for calm in a television interview a few days later, saying, “I think they should stop, both sides should stop and think about where they are headed here, and recognize that down this road lies disaster.” But neither side was listening.
Later that year, on September 8, 2001, I sent a letter to President Bush urging him to speak out on the Palestinian problem, and I was quickly invited to travel to the United States and discuss my plan with him. On September 11, 2001, I was flying across the Atlantic on a private plane, on my way to the Baker Institute in Texas to give a speech before going on to meet President Bush in Washington. I had taken a sleeping pill, so I was knocked out when my brother Ali came and shook me awake, saying, “We have a major problem. Something has happened in the States.” We had received reports from the BBC that an airplane had crashed into the twin towers in New York, but as we had no access to television, we could not fully comprehend the horror and destruction of the attack.
Back in Jordan, Rania was glued to CNN, watching the devastating events unfold minute by minute. She managed to get a call through to the onboard telephone and urged me to turn the plane around and go back to Britain. But I had been raised to support close allies in times of crisis and told her I would stick to my plan. “We’re going to continue to the United States,” I said. “I want to show solidarity with my friends.”
“Abdullah, you don’t understand what’s happened,” she said. “They’re not going to be interested in looking after you.”
While we were talking, the pilot had contacted U.S. air traffic control and obtained clearance for our plane to land in America. But as we approached Labrador, Canada, I made the decision to turn back. In the cockpit we managed to catch a BBC broadcast that was reporting on the attack and I started to realize the magnitude of what had happened. Several hours later we landed back in the UK, at Brize Norton Air Base in Oxfordshire, about sixty-five miles west of London. While the crew was refueling, I walked across the tarmac in the dark and headed for the passenger lounge. As I went through the main doors, I saw the awful images of the two airplanes crashing into the twin towers. I was shocked by such naked aggression against civilians. Then I thought, “Oh my God. All hell will break loose if this has been done by an Islamist group.”
My next thought was, “How can Jordan help?” I found a secure telephone and began to place calls to the United States. President Bush was very busy at that point, but I managed to get through to George Tenet, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. “George,” I said, “whatever we can do, Jordan is behind the United States.” He confirmed my fear that Al Qaeda was behind the attack and mentioned that there might be forthcoming operations in Afghanistan.
Then I called General Tommy Franks, who was commander of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) and would be in charge of any military operations covering the Middle East. Tommy was someone I had known for many years, going back to my Special Operations days. I said, “We’re committed to helping you.”
When I got back to Jordan, I gathered my senior military officers and told them that I was determined to help in the fight against these madmen. My officers were ready for Jordan to join in the fight; they had been battling militant extremists in Jordan for years, so they well knew the harm they could do.
When the United States and its allies went to war in Afghanistan in October 2001, we sent a field hospital and Special Forces detachment to Mazar-e-Sharif in the north. After 9/11, the first priority of the United States was to go after its enemies.
From that point on, the Israelis would do their best to link their fight against Arafat and the Palestinians to what the Americans were now calling the “global war on terror.” I noticed this disturbing development early on and feared what might happen if they succeeded.
Early in the morning of January 3, 2002, a battered blue ship moved through the calm waters of the Red Sea, rounded the Horn of Africa, and headed north along the coast of Saudi Arabia. The 4,000-ton freighter
Karine A
had stopped in Dubai to pick up a cargo of mattresses, sunglasses, and sandals. The captain of the ship, a former senior officer in the Palestinian naval police, had made an earlier stop at an island off the Iranian coast. At dawn, the quiet of the ocean was broken by the sound of Israeli army helicopters heading toward the ship, accompanied by Israeli naval vessels. Israeli commandos seized control of the vessel, subdued her crew, and diverted the
Karine A
to the southern Israeli port of Eilat. Beneath the flip-flops and bedding, the Israelis found boxes of Kalashnikov rifles, Katyusha rockets, and plastic explosives.
The seizure of the
Karine A
further damaged the already reeling peace process. Yasser Arafat had been under siege at his Ramallah headquarters for nearly a month, his authority severely undermined by Israel’s high-handed actions. Sharon’s government had ordered the killing of several leaders of Hamas in targeted assassinations and the intifada was growing more violent daily as Palestinians began to despair. Eight years after the signing of the Oslo agreement, little had changed for the Palestinians, as subsequent Israeli prime ministers had reneged on its promises and prescriptions. Sharon periodically closed off access to Israel and sealed off Gaza and parts of the West Bank, making it impossible for Palestinians with jobs in Israel to go to work.
On January 7, Sharon held a press conference in Eilat next to the captured ship. He displayed the seized weapons and called Arafat a “bitter enemy,” claiming that he had bought deadly weapons from Iran with the intention of smuggling them into the West Bank and Gaza Strip and launching further attacks against Israel. President Bush could have used his influence to calm the situation, but his attention was focused elsewhere, and he seemed to have no desire to rein in Sharon. His administration appeared to have decided to stand aside and watch as the peace process sputtered and died.