Authors: Elliott Abrams
I continued to accompany Rice on all her trips to the region, now as the “White House guy” on a State Department plane rather than as her subordinate. After that trip, I reported to Hadley, now the national security advisor. There was optimism in the region, I wrote, but there is also a dilemma. Israel complains that Abbas is not confronting Hamas and
is pressing him to do more. His slow and nonconfrontational approach produces quiet, about which the Israelis then complain, but which helps Sharon in his own internal political battle. Confronting Hamas would produce more violence, which neither Abbas nor Sharon want right now.
On February 11, the president met the army officer who had been selected as security coordinator, Gen. William E. “Kip” Ward – a U.S. Army three-star general with experience mostly in Europe. In the end, Ward would serve only until December 2005 and then go on to become deputy commander of the U.S. European Command, but his work established this new and significant position. The president wanted to see him and let him know what his commander in chief thought of the situation in the Middle East before he headed there. The president harkened back to Aqaba and said Abu Mazen – he still called Abbas by his “nom de guerre” despite his elevation to president of the PA – had not acted after all the fine words he said at that summit. He could not be blamed for that because Arafat had prevented it, but the president noted that Abu Mazen had never told him to anticipate zero progress. Maybe the election changed things and he would act now. Sharon, he told Ward, was a tank driver and a gruff old general but wanted peace. The thing is, he has no confidence in the Palestinian leadership now, and he is waiting to take the measure of Abu Mazen. So am I, Bush said, and he asked Ward to give us his thoughts after a few months in the field. You tell me: Who does the PA see as the enemy? Who are its forces fighting? Before we get to a settlement, we need to see Palestinian security forces taking on Palestinian terrorists. Bush viewed Abbas as well meaning but had little confidence in his ability to force change and lead to statehood. Was he tough enough? Would he be the father of a Palestinian state? Bush's doubts had appeared early and were never satisfied. He was hopeful but never convinced.
On February 14, a massive terrorist bomb blew up the motorcade of Rafik Hariri, the former prime minister and still the most important man in Lebanon. This murder would lead to huge demonstrations on March 14 in favor of Lebanese self-rule, and the popular and international revulsion against Hariri's killing soon forced an end to 30 years of Syrian occupation of Lebanon. Free
elections were then held in May. In Washington, we were enthusiastic backers of these developments, increasing aid to Lebanon and becoming champions of its new government after elections later that spring and summer.
On February 16, the Knesset passed a compensation law, and on February 20, the Israeli cabinet again approved the withdrawal from Gaza, voting 17 to 5. (Natan Sharansky, unwilling to support the forced evacuation of Jews from their homes in Gaza, resigned at this point.) If opponents were using salami tactics, trying by one vote after another to defeat Sharon, he was still winning these votes. But around the corner was an event, the London Conference
on March 1, that was giving Sharon fits. Tony Blair organized this conference ostensibly to help move the PA forward toward reform and statehood. As I saw it, the conference would be marginally helpful to the Palestinians, at least in keeping up a sense of momentum, but was mostly helpful to Blair. He was under attack in the United Kingdom for being too close to Bush and too close to Israel and for backing Sharon's disengagement plan. This conference would showcase his pro-Palestinian side, and the Israelis, by agreement, would not even be present: It was all about the PA, not about Israeli-Palestinian relations. That focus is what annoyed Sharon and his crew. To them, Abbas was so far doing nothing and risking nothing, while Sharon was risking his party and his political career – and Europe was applauding Abbas. So was the United States because Rice would be present at the conference. And in his first trip to Europe since beginning his second term, Bush had spoken in Brussels on February 21 about the London Conference:
Next month in London, Prime Minister Blair will host a conference to help the Palestinian people build the democratic institutions of their state. President Abbas has the opportunity to put forward a strategy of reform which can and will gain support from the international community, including financial support. I hope he will seize the moment. I’ve asked Secretary Rice to attend the conference and to convey America's strong support for the Palestinian people as they build a democratic state.
For the first time since before the June 24 speech two and a half years earlier, the Israelis were in a sour mood about something we were doing. They noted carefully that Bush had spoken in Brussels the day after the Israeli cabinet had approved disengagement but had remained silent about that vote. Where were the thanks and the encouragement for them, they asked.
Still, things were moving. The PA took control of Jericho on March 16 and of Tulkarm on March 21, in accordance with an Israel-PA agreement giving it control of five West Bank towns. Of greater importance was an agreement between Fatah and Hamas, announced in Cairo. Hamas agreed to a truce – a suspension of attacks on Israel – and to participation in the forthcoming parliamentary elections in July, after boycotting elections for 10 years. A mixed electoral system was to be implemented, with half of the seats chosen by districts and half from national lists of candidates. To a degree we did not appreciate at that moment, Abbas was deciding that he wanted Hamas in, not out; that whatever his rhetoric in private with us about confronting Hamas, about having
to take them on in the end, he was avoiding any such action as well as the Roadmap requirement to “dismantle terrorist organizations.”
The announcement about the Palestinian elections spurred no real debate at that point in Washington, although there were voices – to become louder later – challenging the right of Hamas to participate. Ken Wollack, head of the National Democratic Institute (NDI) for International Affairs, the Democratic Party's democracy-promotion arm, shook his head and warned us. NDI had many programs in the Palestinian Territories, as in countries throughout the world, aimed at helping build modern democratic political parties. This would be a terrible precedent, he argued, with ramifications far beyond Palestine; people must be forced to give up their guns before they can compete in elections, not be permitted to shoot their way to political power. But the argument was theoretical at that point; it did not much engage the attention of the administration's top ranks at the time. And there were counterarguments, pragmatic if not theoretical ones. Fatah expected to win, and its victory would have the same impact as Abbas's own victory in the presidential election: As that success had legitimized his personal leadership, so would the electoral victory over Hamas legitimize Fatah's own continuing leadership after Arafat's death. To exclude Hamas, we heard over and over again from Palestinians, would mean that the election not only would not serve to legitimize the new Palestinian leadership but would also actually serve to
de
-legitimize it. Without Hamas, the election would be like those in Syria or Egypt or elsewhere in the Arab world, in which “republics” functioned without permitting opposition parties to challenge the rulers. Such an election would prove that all the fine words about democracy were phony.
I returned yet again to the region, this time with the new assistant secretary of state for the Near East, David Welch, who had just ended his tour as ambassador to Egypt; Bill Burns was off to Moscow to serve in his new position as ambassador there. David and I heard the same Israeli complaints that Abbas was not acting against terrorist groups, and now we heard – for the first time – Israeli officials complain that Hamas should not be permitted to field candidates in the July elections. Tzipi Livni, already a minister in Sharon's cabinet, was adamant then and later: How could a terrorist group be allowed to keep all its arms and affirm its commitment to the armed struggle and still be permitted to run candidates? In earlier meetings in Washington, she had told us that “she had looked at the constitutions of dozens of countries and had studied the transition to power in Northern Ireland, Afghanistan, and other hot spots. Armed militias were always required to give up their arms before they could participate in the political process.”
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Moreover, the Oslo Interim Agreement
, Weissglas said when we sat with him, prohibited the involvement of groups like Hamas: “The nomination of any candidates, parties or coalitions will be refused, and such nomination or registration once made will be canceled,
if such candidates, parties or coalitions: (1) commit or advocate racism; or (2) pursue the implementation of their aims by unlawful or non-democratic means.”
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Everyone knew this meant Hamas, the Israelis told us. Yet Weissglas told us that the Palestinian elections might be postponed anyway. He was more concerned about the forthcoming Sharon visit to Crawford. Look, he said, for leaving Gaza and those little settlements in the West Bank, we get zero from the Palestinians. The only compensation is from you, from the president, in those words he spoke on April 14 last year. Those words are our only tool to beat the opposition, he said. So any deviation from them in Crawford will be caught by the Israeli press and used against Sharon by his opponents. There must, there must, be a faithful repetition of the exact words of the April letter. I promised to relay this concern to Hadley and could already see the frowns of the speechwriters as we told them to lay off the word-smithing and just repeat the old language again.
When we met with the Palestinians, their real concern was the elections, then only four months away: There was a division in the leadership over whether they were ready for them. Abbas and Qurie said they wanted to go forward and could be ready and that Fatah could win. Dahlan disagreed, arguing that the timing is bad and they should be postponed. Welch wondered about holding elections just one month before the Israeli pullout from Gaza, with its likely
sturm und drang
. Would postponement be better? Privately, other Palestinians told us that Fatah was divided and unprepared and that postponement was essential to enable them to get their act together. My post-trip memo to Hadley said things were not as good as they looked on the surface. Abbas was certainly not confronting terrorism; there was zero preparation for the withdrawal of the Israelis from Gaza; and there was no reform in the Fatah party whatsoever, in preparation for the elections.
In fact, there was never much in the way of reform in Fatah – not then, not at any point during Bush's time in office, and not later. At one level this was understandable: When had a ruling party in any Arab country democratized itself and allowed opponents to mount a real challenge? In Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, and Syria, ruling parties ruled and fixed elections. The party was run by the president and was an arm of the government, not a democratic party as that was understood in the West, competing for power against others and alternating in power with them. The Palestinians had leapt ahead with their January 2005 presidential election, which by regional standards had been remarkably fair, and Abbas had only won 62% of the vote. But that was easy compared to parliamentary elections, which required selection of candidates and mobilization of support for them all across Gaza and the West Bank. Selection of candidates meant rejection of others and here, Fatah was hopeless; seniority, corruption, and connections won out, as they always had, and there was little understanding of what democratic, competitive politics meant.
That year we sent an experienced political hand from the administration to help out with the elections, and he came back shaking his head at the impossibility of the task. He felt they barely understood what he was talking
about. He did achieve one victory: In the hall where press conferences were held, the backdrop to the podiums was a dirty white wall with a giant photo of Arafat. Not the image they wanted to project, he suggested, so he persuaded them to move the Arafat photo higher up – out of camera range when the lens was focused on a speaker – and to put in a richly colored blue curtain behind the speakers. Year after year I would return to Ramallah and sit in that hall listening to Abbas and Rice and others address the press and think ruefully that all we had achieved by way of “Fatah reform” was that blue curtain.
Years later, I asked Jake Walles, who had been our consul general in Jerusalem throughout the Bush second term, why Fatah reform had been so difficult. “You know,” he answered, “there was a lot of resistance within Fatah to any reform.” He continued,
Clearly the old guard didn't want to give up; that was one factor.…And Abu Mazen, I think, his heart was with the young guard and the “reformers” but he also wasn't prepared to have a knock down/drag out with the old guard who were part of his generation; they shared experiences and things like that. It wasn't his personality to do it. I’m not sure he had the power to do it – just to come in and say, “That's it. You guys are done.” So that's one factor.
Second, I don't think we as outsiders ever really were in a position to do much within Fatah. I remember this very early from my time as Consul General, beginning of the second term of the Bush administration – we were trying through NDI in particular. There were programs, but I never felt the programs were very effective. Part of it was because NDI's approach was fairly technical: organizing seminars on how you market ideas, and a big project in computerizing the Fatah rolls, which [is] a mechanical thing. It doesn't change the culture of the organization.…I don't think we ever really were in a position where we could, in a practical way, affect very much of what was going on.
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