questions about families, good fellowship.
And then they sat down and started screaming.
At breaks, they’d return to good fellowship.
The screaming bothered me. It’s no way to conduct a negotiation. But there seemed to be a need to vent, and I let it go for the first couple of meetings; after that, I demanded serious discussion and constructive sessions.
Even after they quieted down, results from these initial sessions were mixed. Both sides were reluctant to get serious; for every small step forward we had to suffer through hours of screaming recriminations and accusations; and I left meetings exhausted and frustrated. Yet, with a few exceptions, I came to like these negotiators. They could make it happen, I realized, if they had the support and authority from their political masters. I had to get that. Meanwhile, I needed them to do the painfully difficult work of hammering out the detailed measures that had to be accomplished on the ground.
We made a little progress — at least on one side. The Israelis eased up on their insistence on seven days without attacks and one hundred percent results. They now asked for forty-eight hours of quiet and one hundred percent effort.
But the Palestinians still seemed reluctant to act against the terrorists and take real action (arrests, weapons confiscation, etc.). Despite Arafat’s promise to cooperate, no serious orders to act had been given to his security forces (they privately acknowledged this to me). This was not encouraging. Without Palestinian action against the terrorists, there would be no cease-fire. And without a cease-fire, we could not move forward.
Even more discouraging, our intelligence and Israeli actions indicated that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad were stepping up suicide bombing attacks in an effort to derail our mission.
The Israelis actually had great success blocking these attacks, but it was impossible to stop them all. For every ten attempts they foiled or countered, one got through. About every third day during this initial trip, a suicide attack would set back our progress and bring on retaliation attacks, sometimes with tragic collateral casualties, by the Israelis. It was obvious that these attacks would eventually cause the process to collapse. I felt like we were shoveling sand against the tide.
As casualties on both sides mounted, and the inevitable retaliation attacks destroyed Palestinian Authority facilities, anger grew in Israel and the streets of the Palestinian areas. I visited some of the sites of the attacks. The pointless murder of innocents sickened me.
As all this was going on, I worked on the Palestinian security forces to take action to break the cycle of violence: Arresting terrorist leaders would demonstrate their good faith and compliance with the Tenet/Mitchell plans.
They wanted that more than I did, they told me; but the Israelis were screwing them up by tossing on the table not one but many different lists of people they wanted arrested. Palestinian security claimed they were eager to pick up all the bad guys, but only if they had a single, authoritative list to act on.
“Fine,” I told them, “I’ll provide one list, compiled by our [not Israeli] intelligence, that will benchmark your effort.”
I gave them a list of thirty-three men who were on every list of bad guys; nobody had any doubt of their guilt.
Very little happened. Arrests were made; but only a few of them, at best, were real; and many of the “arrested” were actually either free or living under loose house arrest.
It was clear that the security heads would not — or could not — take any real action without a major commitment and direct order from Arafat. And Arafat was not about to give that order.
During the next three weeks, I continued my Trilateral Committee meetings, I met frequently with Sharon and Arafat and their lieutenants, but I also met with international leaders and representatives from numerous organizations and nations. All of them offered support.
The “Quad,” or “Quartet” (the U.S., the UN, the European Union, and Russia), was an especially important and helpful group. The UN, EU, and Russian representatives — Terje Larson, Miguel Moratinos, and Andrei Vdovin — became friends of mine, and provided tireless support for my mission. The EU representative Javier Solana visited several times to offer assistance and encouragement.
I also talked frequently with leaders from the region, particularly old friends from Arab nations. Both their frustration and their strong desire to see our mission work were evident.
On a more personal level, I tried to get a sense of ordinary people on both sides. I really wanted to know them and to understand their situation and views. I attended ceremonies and observances in Israel and in Palestinian areas. I ate meals with Israeli and Palestinian families. I ate dinner in both East and West Jerusalem. Everywhere, I was deeply touched by the desperate desire for peace. “Don’t give up,” everyone pleaded, with one voice. People on the street came up to me to beg me to hang in there. I visited Gaza and saw the awful conditions in the crowded refugee camps. On one occasion, I met with the kids from Seeds of Peace. “Why can’t the adults figure it out?” they asked with heartrending openness. “We have.”
For my own sanity and well-being, I worked out at the Marine House that billeted the Marine security detachment at our consulate in Jerusalem; and I sometimes dined with these hard-charging Leather-necks to keep my spirits up. Through them, I met Father Peter Vasko, an American Franciscan (the order has responsibility for the care of Christian sites in Jerusalem for the Catholic Church). Father Peter, the Marines’ unofficial chaplain, decided to look after my spiritual welfare as well. I sometimes ate with the Franciscans at their monastery, attended Sunday Mass with them, and enjoyed evenings talking to these dedicated and devout monks. Father Peter gave me a fascinating tour of the Old City.
One evening, the
“Thank you from the bottom of my heart,” I told him when I accepted the award, “though I’m deeply distressed that we haven’t been more successful.”
“It’s important that we try,” he said in response. “That’s justification enough.”
I also met the Christian patriarchs from the sixteen other denominations who shared responsibility for the Christian sites. These holy men never failed to remind me that the Christians in the region had serious and long- standing concerns that the major combatants often ignored.
During my frequent meetings with Sharon and Arafat (never together; these two old rivals couldn’t stand each other), I tried to organize a senior-level political committee below Sharon and Arafat to oversee our efforts and provide a high-level group where we could open other areas for discussion besides security matters. I saw this committee as being made up of people at the ministerial level, like Abu Mazen and Abu Ala’a, the senior Palestinians, and Shimon Peres and Ben Eleazar, on the Israeli side, with me, perhaps, as the U.S. representative. This oversight body would oversee the security measures taken on the ground, and (I hoped) resolve differences, disagreements, or reports of violations. But on top of that, it could also open the political dialogue; and in so doing we might square the circle — satisfy the Palestinian demand for political progress without compromising the Israeli demand for security before negotiations on political issues could begin. That is, we might not make political commitments; yet a beginning of talk on these issues would give the Palestinians a sense that we were fulfilling expectations. This in turn would build confidence. In this way, we’d be opening a two-track approach: On one track, security. On the second, parallel track, political issues. I thought this parallel approach might get us around the sequentialism issue that was proving to be such a stumbling block.
Sharon was a little unsure about all this. “Why should we make political commitments up front?” he told me. “It looks like we’re caving in to terrorism and doing it under the pressure of violence.” He was leery of big political steps. Big political steps would show his hand; and he never showed his hand. Neither did Arafat. I never actually knew what either of them was really after or what they saw as a long-term solution.
Sharon would surely take security steps up front. And I’m convinced that if he had the right security cooperation from the other side, he would withdraw from certain areas, move certain checkpoints. I think he could implement the entire Tenet plan without a problem. Now when he got down the road, would he make the kind of
