Tenet’s aim was to bring the security situation on the ground back to where it was in September 2000, at the beginning of the Second Intifada. The Israelis would pull out of the areas they had occupied since then, they would move checkpoints, and the Palestinian workers would come back into Israel. For their part, the Palestinians would crack down on extremists, make arrests, and confiscate weapons.
Once everything had been restored to the September 2000 position, the two parties could then move forward on Mitchell’s more political plan, which was designed to build confidence and move forward on political issues such as freezing the settlements the Israelis had been building on the West Bank and in Gaza. Eventually, they’d return to final status issues, like the status of Jerusalem, the right of return, the final status of the settlements… all of the issues on which President Clinton, Barak, and Arafat had locked horns at Camp David.
Both Israelis and Palestinians had “agreed” to these proposals “in principle,” but implementing them had gone nowhere. As I was to learn, you could paper the walls with agreements. Getting them implemented on the ground was another matter; both sides disregarded them.
This time the approach was going to be softer and less visible. There would be no special envoy. Ambassador Burns was going to quietly run the mediation mission out of his own shop. Since he had to run the whole region, not just this one process, he was looking for someone he knew and trusted, with knowledge, experience, stature, and solid personal relationships in the region, who would become his semiofficial assistant, working closely with him and filling in when he had to turn his attention elsewhere. This person would become a part-time right hand, who could take over and oversee the process when he was away.
The goal, Burns went on to explain, was to reengage without making a big deal of it. Everyone knew what needed to be done and where we needed to go; and the Mitchell and Tenet plans already went a long way toward spelling all this out (as did the various agreements, near agreements, and accords already reached in Madrid, Oslo, and elsewhere). There was no need to create another big plan or to launch another big effort. What needed to be done was already out there. It had to be won or lost on the ground.
Burns and Powell wanted a few people to go over there and work out with the two parties how to actually structure the existing agreements, and to find the best way to set these up and implement them. These people would start up the process, feel it out, and then oversee it.
What I think Burns had in mind for me was to start the initial movement; and then, as the process moved along, if a bigger player was needed in there to close deals or whatever, he would come and take the lead. When he was not able to be present, but they still needed somebody with clout who could ride herd on this thing, then I would fill in for him.
“Are you willing to take this on?” he asked.
How could I not be excited? This was a job worth doing. Even if nothing lasting came of it — which was all too likely.
“Great!” I told him. “I’m not real familiar with all the issues or many of the people involved in this thing; but I’d really love to get involved in it.”
“I’d love to see you involved,” he said. “Let’s see what we can do to make it happen.”
And he continued: “What I’m talking about is a kind of unusual setup here at State. We’ll have to figure out how we structure our arrangement.”
“Well, look,” I said, “I have some thoughts on that. First of all, I don’t want to be paid for this thing. That way I can keep some measure of independence. I want to be able to do what I have to do, say what I have to say, and not feel that somebody’s going to accuse me of doing this for gain.
“Second, I don’t want a title. I don’t want to be called envoy or anything else.
“Third, we ought to keep this low-key. There shouldn’t be a lot of publicity about me doing this. I’m just a part-time special assistant who happens to be there with you.
“Let’s absolutely do this thing. But let’s do it with no pay, no title, no press, no media attention, and no making a big deal of it.”
He agreed that was the best arrangement. “I’ll take these ideas to Secretary Powell and see what he says.”
“Great,” I said.
Days passed. I waited restlessly for Bill Burns’s call, which would take us to the next step. I was very eager to find out my actual function and the nature of my mission — all still unclear.
As I waited, I did my usual thing when I took on something new; I read everything about the Israeli- Palestinian problem that I could get my hands on.
During the same period, I worked with Bill Burns’s people to structure my official relationship with the State Department. The lawyers drew up a contract. It turned out that even a no-pay employee is still bound by conflict- of-interest and ethics rules, which rightfully limited other things I might have done.
I have to confess that my refusal to take pay did not totally spring from altruistic motives, such as my wish for independence, or from my hope to be a wonderful servant of the nation (though these motives were important). This job was going to be part-time; and I was involved in other work that brought in paychecks. If I accepted pay from State, I’d have to give up these other positions. The ethics and conflict-of-interest rules still prevented me from taking on certain jobs; and everything I did had to be vetted and cleared by the government and the State Department. Was it worth it? Absolutely.
Two weeks after my initial meeting with Bill Burns, on September 11, 2001, the world changed drastically.
In the aftermath of the terrorist attacks, the Bush administration looked anew at reengagement in the peace process. Their approach changed, and expanded. According to Ambassador Burns, the rate of these changes was accelerating. He couldn’t be specific, but the nature of the peace initiative was no longer what we had discussed. I sensed that my own part in all this was also changing.
On the twenty-third of October, I attended a series of briefs at the State Department on the background of the peace process and an update on the current situation; and I was instructed to stay ready to travel quickly after the design of my mission was firmed up. How exactly it was going to be firmed up was still not clear to me.
On November 10, 2001, President Bush delivered a historic speech before the UN General Assembly in which he committed to the establishment of a Palestinian state — the first time a President of the United States had done that. The objective of the peace process, he told the delegates, is two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side. This was a very controversial and bold statement.
I was very impressed. The reengagement effort we were about to start promised to be more momentous than I had first thought.
The President’s speech was to be followed by a major speech from Secretary Powell on the nineteenth at the University of Louisville that would add specifics to the President’s general principles.
Shortly before the Louisville event, Ambassador Burns called to tell me that Powell’s remarks would trigger our departure for Israel, though he couldn’t actually tell me what this meant for me and what we were going to do… He was not keeping this from me; he truly didn’t know the answer. All he — or anybody — did know was that Powell’s speech would be the defining moment; yet right up to the eleventh hour, nobody was sure what the moment would define.
The day before the speech, Burns faxed me a rough copy of the speech, but with a caveat attached: These pages are not yet final — but they are close.
I read the pages, and, bang! I got knocked off my feet.
“Holy cow,” I said to myself. “There’s a big piece in this thing about me: I’ve got a big new title now! I’m the Special Advisor to the Secretary of State for the Middle East! So much for all our hopes about not making a big deal of my mission. There goes our no-title and no-publicity agreement.” (They kept my no-pay arrangement.)
Suddenly, for all practical purposes I’d become another special envoy. Powell had inflated my position into something I didn’t want it to be — not because I am all that modest, but because I wasn’t convinced it would work (an opinion later justified by events). On the other hand, I was excited to learn that the administration’s level of commitment and involvement had moved way up. I really liked it that Secretary Powell had showed what was called the path: We’d try to put the Tenet and Mitchell plans in play on the ground, and this, we hoped, would lead to the final status agreement, and then finally to the Palestinian state. We now had a horizon. The peace process was beginning to look promising.
