In subsequent meetings, we succeeded in dramatically reducing the differences. I was able to report to Washington that progress was exciting. If the attacks didn’t derail us before we gained agreement, I felt we just might start the process I had been sent out to put in place.
The third day brought the first terrorist attack. “Oh, shit,” I thought. “Now the Israelis will hit back. And we can forget about progress.”
But the Israelis, surprisingly, held back. They did not retaliate. And that gave us a small opening… I knew this would close if attacks continued.
Vice President Cheney visited on the eighteenth and nineteenth of March. We had meetings with the Israeli leadership, but decided Cheney couldn’t meet with Arafat until he had done more to curb terrorist attacks. I delivered the message to Arafat that Cheney was willing to meet with him in Cairo on as little as a week’s notice, once we saw real progress in stopping the attacks.
Arafat was disappointed that Cheney was avoiding him. He loves the big time. He loves the red carpet and the cameras. He loves to be out there on the world’s stage meeting heads of state. And here he was, pinned down by Sharon in Ramallah for four long months. So when I offered him a chance to go to Cairo to meet Mubarak and Cheney, his face lit up. He’d be out from under this crushing restriction.
We thought we might encourage Arafat to order real actions, such as arrests and weapons confiscation. We were wrong. In the next two days, suicide attacks killed a number of Israelis in a bus and street bombing. He had done nothing.
In Washington, meanwhile, the President and Vice President made statements that I would be the one who determined if Arafat should get the meeting with Cheney. “Thanks a lot!” They both knew Sharon was set against the meeting; and there was a lot of pressure at home against a meeting with Arafat. So they pinned that rose on me.
Okay, I’m a big boy. But I knew I had to be careful.
I looked at Arafat and I told him what he had to do; and when it came down to the crunch, he didn’t do it. On the twenty-second of March, I delivered the news to a sullen and disappointed Arafat that there would be no meeting.
Somehow, we managed to work through the attacks and setbacks, and the progress we were making encouraged everyone to refrain from retaliatory action. We were apparently very close to agreement.
On the twenty-fourth, I made a decision I was later to regret. Since we were down to only a few differences, I wanted to close the deal. But it was clear time would run out on us eventually, as long as the attacks continued. So I decided to put forth my own proposals to expedite the process and resolve the remaining issues. When we started, I thought I had written in stone that there would never be “a Zinni plan.” There were already enough plans out there. All the possible issues were already covered. Everyone knew what had to be done. The problem was doing it. I had always been convinced that the Israelis and Palestinians had to work that out themselves.
Still, I couldn’t resist the temptation to close the last gap.
The plan, known as “the Zinni Bridging Proposals,” was intended to do just that — bridge the remaining gaps and differences.
I tried to make it absolutely clear that these proposals were not a make-or-break thing. “I’m putting suggestions on the table, not demands,” I told everybody concerned. “You don’t have to accept them. If you can’t, there’s no harm, no foul. This works for either side. We’ll simply take them off the table, and then go back to working things out together.”
As we were initially presenting these proposals, preparations were under way for the annual Arab Summit, to be held in Beirut starting the twenty-fifth. Two big issues were then in the air. But the first — would Sharon allow Arafat to attend? — was dominating the media and political exchanges to the detriment of the second and far more important one — Crown Prince Abdullah’s proposal to recognize the state of Israel. The proposal was to be formally presented at the summit; its acceptance would be a giant step.
We were under a great deal of time pressure. If we could conclude an agreement before the summit, Arafat would be allowed to attend, make a speech, and be in his glory; and the summit’s focus would be on Abdullah’s historic proposal and not on the problems of Yasser Arafat.
Meanwhile, the Israelis had a number of reservations to my bridging proposals, but promised to study them and get me a quick response. After they looked at them (and it didn’t take them long), they came up with thirteen objections — all of them serious. They didn’t think they’d be able to accept them. “We’re going to think about all this for a bit,” they told me, “but it looks like we can’t go for it.” I waited. They thought about it; and some of Sharon’s top advisers (including some hard-liners like Mofaz) went to the Prime Minister; the debate went on late into the night, but they finally came up with a position: “Even though we have serious objections, let’s go with Zinni. Let’s just accept his plan as is. Let’s not be the ones accused of holding back peace. Let’s move on this.”
On the twenty-sixth, the Israelis called to tell me they had accepted the proposal with no reservations. I was astonished. I had expected it would be really tough to get agreement from the Israelis, and they would take a hell of a long time to negotiate. But somehow they had found a way to accept the deal.
The Palestinians had only three reservations. Two were minor administrative matters that we dealt with easily; but the third was a showstopper: We wanted to reestablish the security situation as it was prior to the beginning of the Second Intifada in September 2000; and the bridge proposal had a phased approach to this goal. The determination about whether or not to move into the subsequent phases depended upon performance measures monitored by teams we proposed, which would then be approved by the Trilateral Committee. The proposal additionally called for the establishing of a senior committee of leaders from the U.S., Israel, and the Palestinian Authority who would arbitrate any disagreements arising from this process. Finally, the two committees could agree to move ahead, even if some measures had not been achieved according to the timelines outlined, as long as good faith was shown.
The Palestinians did not want to be held to measurable actions — such as monitored arrests and weapons confiscations — and this came through very clearly. Privately, some of them told me that Arafat would never order action against terrorist groups, regardless of what he told us. Without that order, no security force commander could take action.
I hoped we could work through this issue; but I was beginning to sense that Arafat never intended to carry out the actions described in the Tenet plan, which he had agreed to in principle. I believe the Palestinians hoped the Israelis would be forced to accept measurable steps that they had to execute — such as withdrawals — while they could get away with just trying to talk the extremist groups into a cease-fire.
The pressure was now on the Palestinians; but I couldn’t get them to reply.
“Okay,” I told them, “then you don’t accept the proposals. That means they’re off the table. Okay, let’s go back to the committee negotiations with no hard feelings. But let’s move on.”
“No, they’re not off the table,” they countered; they didn’t want to turn them down because of the negative reaction they anticipated. “We are not opposed to them. We just need to talk further about them.”
“We’ve got to hurry!” I said. “We’ve got to hurry! I need an answer!”
Meanwhile, the other Arabs got wind of the proposals, and they were putting a lot of pressure on Arafat to accept the bridging proposals.
All the while, the Palestinians were caught up in the question of Arafat’s trip to Beirut. Since Sharon was not inclined to let him go, they were looking at alternative means, like videoconferencing, for him to address the summit. The issue occupied their attention to the exclusion of everything else. The bridging proposals got shunted to one side.
Sharon was making a hero, a martyr, and a victim out of Arafat. The American government pressed him to let Arafat go, but the gut hatred between those two is so bad he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Of course, this enhanced Arafat’s stature on the street and played into everything that he was doing. It was a mistake. The conference started as scheduled on the twenty-fifth without Arafat. Even the teleconferencing option fell through.
Time was running out.
March 27 was Passover, and I had accepted an invitation to a Seder dinner with an Israeli family. During the meal, news came of a horrific suicide bombing at a Passover celebration in a hotel restaurant, with heavy casualties. This bombing had a tremendous effect on the people of Israel. It was their 9/11.
I knew immediately we had come to the end of our road.
