In April 2004, I was again scheduled to meet with President Bush at the White House. I planned to push to restart the peace process and hoped that the president would take a broader view of the challenges facing our region. Before my arrival, Bush welcomed another visitor, Prime Minister Sharon. During that visit, on April 14, an exchange of letters between Bush and Sharon was made public. In the days leading up to the visit, Sharon had pressed the president to reveal America’s positions on several issues and to support his unilateral disengagement in Gaza. Bush’s secret assurances amounted to a major shift in American policy. In his formal letter to Sharon, Bush promised U.S. support for Israel’s retention of some West Bank settlements and ruled out the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their former homes, saying that they should settle in a future Palestinian state. The U.S. administration was prejudging one of the most controversial topics in the whole peace process. Bush said:
The United States is strongly committed to Israel’s security and well-being as a Jewish state. It seems clear that an agreed, just, fair and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.
The whole Arab world exploded in anger. It was clear to me that the Bush administration intended to back Israel right or wrong, so I told the White House that I was canceling my meeting. They were stunned. Few people ever turn down a meeting with the American president, and fewer still cancel meetings that have already been scheduled. But I had to make my point. I could not condone the shift in U.S. policy implied by Bush’s letter. The peace process was frozen, and despite the best efforts of the Arab states to make a new push for peace, all we were getting were one-sided pronouncements and more violence.
One month later I went to Washington to try to reverse the change in American policy and was partially successful. In our joint press conference, which reiterated the substance of letters we had exchanged before my visit, Bush reaffirmed that he would not prejudge the final status talks. I restated Jordan’s position that any Israeli withdrawal should follow the parameters of the road map and lead to the creation of a Palestinian state on the basis of the 1967 borders.
In October, Yasser Arafat was flown to Paris for medical treatment after his health speedily deteriorated. He slipped into a coma and died the following month. His body was flown to Cairo, where he was given a military funeral. An Egyptian plane then took his body to the Sinai, and Jordanian military helicopters carried it from there to Ramallah for burial. The helicopter landed as a distraught crowd of mourners surged forward, desperately trying to get one last glimpse of their beloved leader. Whatever the world may have thought of Arafat, he was a hero to the Palestinian people and his passing marked the end of an era.
Mahmoud Abbas (known as Abu Mazen) was elected president of the Palestinian National Authority the following January. For decades, Israel had claimed that Arafat was a barrier to peace. Now, with his passing, they would have one less excuse for failing to deliver on their promises. Abbas assumed the leadership of the PNA at one of the lowest points in the peace process. The challenges before him were enormous. He had to fill the vacuum left by Arafat and rebuild Palestinian institutions that had been systematically destroyed by Israel in the past few years. The new Palestinian leader also had to work to put the peace process back on track. From the day he assumed office, Abbas sought a political settlement with the Israelis on the basis of the two-state solution. But he would be sorely disappointed.
In August 2005, the Israelis unilaterally withdrew from Gaza three days earlier than announced—without adequate coordination with the Egyptians, who share a long border with Gaza, or with the Palestinian Authority. The Israeli cabinet had voted overwhelmingly in support of this move the previous February. Sharon, the former champion of the settlers, had given the order to bulldoze their buildings and remove the occupants, by force if necessary. Although the withdrawal was welcome, the manner in which it was conducted was not.
By blockading all of the Gaza Strip’s entry and exit points, the Israelis had turned Gaza into a virtual prison. And when they withdrew in an uncoordinated manner, they created a security vacuum. This vacuum was soon filled by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. It was a desolate scene, with heavily armed men moving through a landscape of barbed wire and ruined buildings. There was no management of the transition and no handing over of security and other responsibilities in a coordinated manner to Palestinian institutions.
A few months later, in November, Sharon split from the Likud Party and founded a new party, which he called Kadima. His decision followed months of political infighting with members of Likud over what was known as the “disengagement plan,” which involved the withdrawal from Gaza and the dismantlement of four settlements in the northern West Bank. Sharon was joined by key Likud members, including Tzipi Livni, who would later become foreign minister, and Ehud Olmert, the former mayor of Jerusalem, who was his deputy.
In early January 2006, Sharon suffered a stroke and fell into a coma. His duties were assumed by Olmert. It soon became clear that the old warrior would not recover, and Olmert officially became prime minister of Israel in April.
New leaders were taking over on both sides, and many in the region hoped this would lead to a fresh approach to an old conflict. Nowhere was that hope stronger than among those gearing up for the first Palestinian legislative election in a decade, which was slated for January 25, 2006. One of the parties on the ballot was Hamas, which had chosen not to take part in the 1996 legislative elections. Because of Hamas’s participation, the Israeli government considered not allowing Palestinians living in East Jerusalem to vote in the election (it considers East Jerusalem to be part of Israel). But in the end, they were allowed to vote.
Many Palestinians and others in the region argued that the conditions were not right for holding elections and urged that they be delayed. But the Bush administration disagreed with this suggestion. In a question-and-answer session with the State Department Correspondents Association on January 5, Condoleezza Rice said:
I don’t really believe that we can favor postponing the elections because we fear an outcome.... [O]ur position on Hamas has not changed. It’s listed as a terrorist organization. We recognize that there’s a transition here going on in Palestinian politics. And so this is an internal matter for the Palestinians. We do believe that there should be the ability of everyone to participate—the Palestinian people to participate in the elections.
But what would the Bush administration do if Hamas won?
Many hoped and expected that Yasser Arafat’s Fatah Party would win the elections. Fatah had promised the Palestinian people statehood and freedom through the Oslo process, but the long-agopromised state was still a distant mirage and charges of corruption against Palestinian National Authority officials were rampant. Many felt that Fatah had not delivered on its promises. So when the day came for Palestinians to go to the polls, they gave Hamas a decisive win. Hamas’s victory created a major problem. The U.S. government considered Hamas a terrorist organization and would have nothing to do with it. Many European countries followed suit. This in turn allowed the Israelis to freeze tax payments to the Palestinian Authority and to claim that they did not have a “partner for peace.”
Americans rightly extol the benefits of democracy, but democracy manifests itself in different forms in different cultures. If conditions are not right, it can cement divisions and fuel hatred. Part of the problem with the Bush administration was its cookie-cutter approach toward the concept of exporting democracy, which basically came down to holding elections. To my mind, developing an effective democracy is a journey. Voting in the absence of a widespread acceptance of democratic values and the existence of an independent judiciary can be a disaster. Democratic institutions are strengthened by the presence of a strong, effective middle class and reputable governing bodies. It is certainly a process that is more difficult to develop under an occupation that could, and would, destroy these institutions at will.
I do not think the Bush administration fully understood conditions in the region and thus it pushed blindly for early elections wherever it could. It sometimes seemed as if the administration was just seeking a quick win to feed the never-ending twenty-four-hour news cycle. But the problems in the West Bank and Gaza were not going to be resolved through the ballot box before the end of the Israeli occupation. If the foundations for a stable society are not in place, extremist groups will capitalize on popular frustrations to seize power. And once the radicals take control, they do not easily relinquish it.
After winning a majority of seats in the parliamentary elections, Hamas took over the government, while Fatah still retained control of the presidency and the PLO. The new Hamas government was sworn in in March 2006. The United States and EU countries refused to recognize the government and suspended aid to it. The situation deteriorated quickly after that, especially after militants close to Hamas killed two Israeli soldiers and captured another, Gilad Shalit, during a raid into Israel from Gaza. Israel reacted by invading Gaza in June.
Almost three weeks before the invasion of Gaza, I expressed alarm at the deteriorating situation in the West Bank, Gaza, and Iraq, as well as the growing dispute between Iran and the United States. The likelihood of a new conflict appeared high to me. In a graduation speech at Mu’ta University on June 7, I warned of the risk posed by both state actors and nonstate groups seeking to ignite conflict and spoke about the devastating consequences of Iranian expansionist policies in our region. I normally address domestic issues in such speeches, but the enormity of the looming threats prompted me to emphasize these concerns instead.
On July 12, 2006, Hezbollah fighters crossed into Israel, killing eight Israeli soldiers and capturing two others. In response, Israel launched an all-out invasion of Lebanon and Hezbollah fired rockets at Israeli border towns. I watched on television as the Israeli army attacked cities and villages in South Lebanon and bombed power stations across the country as well as Beirut’s airport, closing that city’s lifeline to the outside world. Hezbollah fighters were in the south. They were not going to escape via the airport, nor were they going to fly in more men and military supplies. Closing the airport hurt the civilian population.
I condemned the war. I had seen enough suffering in our region to know that war brings nothing but destruction. Israel’s security will be guaranteed only by coming to terms with its neighbors, not by more wars and military action.
The Israeli planes targeted not only power plants but also waterworks, roads, bridges, and other civilian infrastructure. Over the last few years Lebanese expatriates of all backgrounds had come back to the country and the economy was booming. And now the Israelis were systematically destroying Lebanon’s economy and infrastructure. This was a terrible act of collective punishment, inflicting pain on the entire country in retaliation for the actions of one group.
Although throughout history there have been examples of states targeting civilians to break the will of the enemy, that is not a decision to be proud of. It is dangerously easy in wartime to demonize the enemy, which can lead to the killing of civilians, women, and children in large numbers. But any leader, whether a platoon commander, a general, or a head of state, has a moral obligation to distinguish between civilians and combatants. And Olmert chose not to do this.
Satellite stations across the Arab world filled their screens with pictures of civilian suffering in Beirut. Public opinion in Arab countries was strongly against the Israeli attack, and many in Jordan and across the region urged that something be done to help the hundreds of thousands of innocent Lebanese caught in the crossfire.
Our peace treaty with Israel allowed us to fly in humanitarian aid to Lebanon. A Jordanian C-130 transport plane was the first to land at Beirut-Rafic Hariri International Airport after Israel severely damaged its tarmac. Our military engineers helped to reopen the airport to supply planes. We then continued to send planes carrying relief supplies into Beirut airport, evacuating some Lebanese and third-country nationals stranded there.
An emergency Arab League meeting convened in Cairo on July 17 and unanimously condemned the Israeli military offensive in Lebanon. Several Arab states, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, also criticized Hezbollah for “unexpected, inappropriate, and irresponsible acts.” Saudi foreign minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal said, “These acts will pull the whole region back to years ago and we simply cannot accept them.” Since we suspected that Hezbollah was acting as an Iranian proxy, we believed that its rocket attacks were a direct intervention by Iran into Arab politics. We knew that no good would come out of this increased Iranian assertiveness, but we were widely criticized in the Arab world for our stance.
The war lasted for thirty-four days. More than 1,100 Lebanese and 160 Israelis were killed, and much of Lebanon was destroyed before the fighting stopped on August 14, two days after the Security Council adopted Resolution 1701 calling for the end of hostilities. Hezbollah, which put up a strong fight against the Israeli army and was able to fire rockets deep into Israel till the last minute of the war, declared victory. The majority of public opinion in the Arab world celebrated Hezbollah and took pride in its ability to stand up to the Israeli army. For a brief period, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah became the hero of the Middle East. The celebration of Hezbollah’s survival in the war against Israel as a victory was indicative of a major shift in the Arab and Muslim world. Victory now means survival, rather than defeating the Israeli army. The implications of this new dynamic are dangerous in the sense that, if the conflict persists, people are willing to support armed confrontations no matter what the cost is as long as they can survive and inflict damage on Israel. This new reality gives more credence to the belief that only peace, and not the military superiority of Israel, will ensure the safety of Israelis and all other peoples of the region.