Jerusalem (which was our official point of contact with the Palestinians).
In the past, friction had developed between these two posts. Embassies tend to get “clientitis,” which meant that their staffs, if they’re not careful, begin to take the side of locals they see and live with day to day.
Fortunately, when I came to Israel we were blessed with two of our best diplomats — Dan Kurtzer and Ron Schlicher — running the embassy and the Jerusalem consulate. Kurtzer, our ambassador to Israel, is absolutely one of the finest diplomats we have ever created in the United States. He had been ambassador to Egypt when I was at CENTCOM, so I knew him well. In Jerusalem, we had Ron Schlicher, a career diplomat with extensive experience in the Middle East and in the Arab world, whom I had not met, but his reputation was splendid.
These two brilliant professionals made it work and made their people cooperate. Although they both had strong personal feelings on the issues, they made it absolutely clear that their job was to promote the interests of the United States of America, and they made it equally clear that their first and foremost priority at that moment was to cooperate and find a peaceful resolution to the calamitous conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. These attitudes took hold of everybody in the embassy and the consulate. And it was the force of their leadership that made it work.
The initial briefs (and press reports) painted a bleak picture. No surprises here. The level of violence had steadily increased since the Second Intifada had begun in September 2000. All trust and confidence between the parties had evaporated, and peace talks were almost nonexistent. For the Israelis, the first priority was security, and in particular stopping the suicide attacks from extremist groups. Once that goal was achieved, they might begin negotiations and consider making concessions. For the Palestinians, the first priority was political commitment by the Israelis to Palestinian statehood, and removal of all Israeli troops from their territories. The gap between these views was huge.
The only ongoing talks were in the Trilateral Committee meetings. This committee — consisting of security experts from Israel, Palestine, and the U.S. — was set up by George Tenet to deal with security coordination and de-confliction issues (that is, where forces rubbed up against one another). Since it was then the only point of engagement between the two parties, it seemed to be the best venue for any attempt to get the Tenet plan into effect on the ground and a cease-fire in place.
At the end of the day, I retired to the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, where we set up our headquarters and living spaces. Because 9/11 and the Intifada had dried up tourism, there was very little occupancy. We set up in one wing of the hotel. My suite, which I used as office and living quarters, was at a corner that overlooked the Old City. It was a beautiful setting, a couple of floors up.
As I hit the sack after a long and exhausting first day of travel and briefs, dark thoughts swirled through my mind.
The task ahead was daunting. I knew I had a lot to learn about the situation, the personalities, the issues, but I couldn’t afford to take a lot of time to get up to speed, while at the same time getting the negotiations started and a process moving. I had to hit the ground running. Aaron Miller, Bill Burns, and the others on the team were certainly available with their considerable experience, but much of the responsibility still weighed on me. Expectations were already raised, people had begun to hope again; I didn’t want to see the momentum or the hope fade. Progress had to be evident right off the bat.
I had an additional gut feeling that we were going to get heavy pressure from the terrorists and extremists, like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. According to our own and Israeli intelligence, the pattern with these groups was to pick up the level of violence whenever negotiations looked like they were making progress. Inevitably, the violence would box in the mediation effort. The Israelis would retaliate against the perpetrators of the violence. The Palestinians would hit back. And everybody would break off from the negotiations — always the goal of the extremist groups. So I expected that they would come at this one with a vengeance and would hit with a lot of violent events. If I was right, it meant we would have a very limited time frame in which to make progress. How much time depended on our ability to operate through the violence… or, better, to prevent violent events, catch a break, and get something done before the violence overshadowed our efforts. Unless I was very off the mark, we were going to be taking a roller-coaster ride… whipping from crisis to hope over and over again.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t have been more right. When the violence came, it was horrific. It eventually brought an end to the negotiations.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad are committed to the destruction of the State of Israel. Since neither of them, in my view, seriously buys the two-state solution, it’s hopeless to think they will compromise. With them, it’s all or nothing. That means they will simply continue to generate destructive violence to punish the Israelis and block any kind of peaceful resolution and compromise.
Their history is interesting: When Hamas was initially organized, it was encouraged by the Israelis as a counter to the PLO. It later took a more radical turn and now gets support from Iran, Syria, and elsewhere (Iraq, for example, before the fall of Saddam Hussein). When Islamic Jihad emerged, it was even more religiously fanatic, but just as skilled in the evil arts. It has never quite had the same clout as Hamas, however. Hamas is the big player. It is much better organized, has strong tentacles in the Palestinian population (cleverly put in play by charitable organizations), and has a powerful political wing. Hamas has much better reconnaissance than Islamic Jihad’s; and their attacks are far more sophisticated and achieve much greater effect, with far greater casualties. (They were responsible for the Passover bombing and all the major bus bombings — blowing up busloads of school kids, for example.) Their attacks strike right at the heart and soul of the Israelis. They really know how to jam the blade home.
Other Palestinian extremists can probably be handled. But Hamas is another thing. It would almost certainly take a civil war in Palestine to break their back — assuming they didn’t win the war.
In talks with mediators, the Palestinians will always press for a cease-fire and a compromise with Hamas. I don’t see it. It would be great if Hamas actually agreed to all that, and meant it; but it’s hard to see how they’d square their objectives with a compromise.
Even if they bought into a cease-fire, I’d be suspicious that it was just an attempt to regroup and rearm. And of course, as they went about doing that, the Israelis (whose intelligence is excellent) would find out about it and strike. The case would then be made that the Israelis had struck for no reason… and so on. The spiral of violence would start again.
The first full day was scheduled for meetings with the Israelis. To begin the day, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had laid on a helicopter tour, highlighted by his personal perspective on the geography and situation on the ground. This was to be followed by a series of briefs that would last well into the evening.
Some of my State Department advisers had reservations about this, on the grounds that the Palestinians might accuse us of letting Sharon co-opt the agenda; but I told them I could handle any attempt to manage my views. And if the Palestinians wanted to take me on a similar tour, they were welcome to invite me. I thought it was better to be open and transparent with both sides… and not tight-assed and overcautious.
Sharon’s tour gave me a strong sense of the land of Israel. We saw all the major sites — Bethlehem, Nazareth, the Jordan River, the Dead Sea, the Sea of Galilee. We flew down to look at Sharon’s farm in the south. We flew up to the Golan Heights, stopped at a military position, and talked with their people.
What was most interesting that day was Sharon’s own take on all this. He was a battle-tested soldier (1967, 1973), a farmer deeply attached to his land, and an Israeli convinced of his birthright, as well as a wily politician. His running dialogue during the trip came from all of those perspectives. He stressed security issues in relation to the terrain, the way any soldier would to another soldier. But there was open joy and pride in his voice as he dwelled lovingly on the agricultural aspects of the panorama that unfolded below us. And there was a similar joy and pride as he pointed out sites of historical significance to Israelis — ruins from Roman times and earlier.
“Look at those terraces up there in the rocks,” he’d exclaim with a simple passion that was very touching. “My ancestors built those thousands of years ago!” Or: “Look at this piece of terrain. You’re a military man. If we don’t control that, we’re vulnerable.” Or: “Look at this land. It was desert. Look what Israel has done here. We have greened it. Look at the orchards. Look at the fruit we produce. Look at those beautiful cattle down there.”
These three elements — soldier, farmer, Jewish roots — really sum up the man. Everything he is flows from these. His commitment to them is passionate and total. The man is committed with his entire soul to the land he’d grown up in: “We have returned from the Diaspora. This is our land, this is our birthright, this is our history.”
