Authors: Elliott Abrams
At that time, we did not contemplate a more radical approach: turning against Fatah. Why, one might ask, was it good policy to “save Fatah?” The president himself had doubts that Abbas was a strong enough leader to take the Palestinians to the promised land of statehood. The rest of Fatah was worse: It remained the party Arafat had built. It was already becoming clear to us that the kind of modern, reformist leadership we wanted was not to be found within that party, and at least in theory we could have turned to other figures a generation younger than the Abus who had been Arafat's cronies – Fayyad, who was effective as finance minister, and Mustafa Barghouti, who had gotten 20% of the vote running against Abbas for president, are two examples – and supported an effort to create a new party. But that was easier said than done, considering personal rivalries and the lack of resources (while we gave aid to the PA, we gave none to Fatah as a party and to its campaign coffers, nor could we have given any to competing parties). The struggle for power seemed to be between Fatah, now led by “moderates” like Abbas, and Hamas plus the other terrorist and Islamist organizations. What is more, despite the very high literacy rate among Palestinians, their political culture glorified violence.
A new generation of technocrats was unlikely to compete successfully against men who had spent years in Israeli jails for their actions in the “resistance.” It was an irony that always made me smile ruefully that the older generation (of both professionals and of Fatah leaders) spoke English well, while that younger generation of Fatah fighters often spoke excellent Hebrew, learned during years in Israeli jails. Moreover, the younger generation of competent technocrats and professionals was far better represented among PA leaders than in the Fatah party ranks.
This situation left us in 2005, and leaves the United States still, confronting the bizarre division of power and responsibility among the Palestinians. Negotiations with Israel are conducted by the PLO, which Israel and the United States recognized after the Madrid Conference in 1991 as the party with whom Israel would negotiate peace – and which had been designated in 1974 by the Arab League as the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.” The West Bank (and, until the Hamas coup in 2007, Gaza) is governed by the Palestinian Authority, formed under the Oslo Accords
in 1994. The Fatah Party was formed, by Arafat among others, in 1954 and by the late 1960s was the most powerful faction in the PLO. Arafat headed all three – PA, PLO, and Fatah – but after his death, the differences among the three organizations became consequential. The United States was giving aid to the PA but none to Fatah as a party. Israel was negotiating with the PLO, not with Fatah or the PA. While under Fayyad, first as finance minister and later as prime minister, PA official structures were beginning real reforms, Fatah remained a 1950s Arab political movement struggling in the face of competitive elections. We often wondered why Fatah did not capitalize on Fayyad's successes and claim them as its own – good government, less corruption, economic progress: Was this not the best platform? Yet that was a very Western viewpoint, we soon saw, for the Fatah pols hated Fayyad; he stood for everything they viewed as a threat, not least this business about fighting corruption. And what did good government mean, except that they and their relatives and their cronies could no longer get well-paid government jobs in the PA ranks?
We understood all of this better as the months and years went by, but in the spring of 2005, just months after Arafat's death and Abbas's election, we did not understand it. We were able to work with the PA, and over time its finances, its ministries, and even its security forces showed real change, but Fatah was immune to U.S. efforts. We did not then foresee what that resistance to change would mean when parliamentary elections were finally held.
In April, Ariel Sharon visited the president's ranch. The ranch was not so easy to get to if you were not president of the United States, and especially if you set out from Israel. Sharon's plane had had to stop for refueling, and it then landed in Waco on April 10, where Hadley, Rice, and I joined Sharon for dinner to prepare for the next day's meeting with the president. Sharon had had a rotten
flight and had a bad cold. He should probably have gone right to bed; after all, he was 77 years old. He was irritable, he felt we did not appreciate the depth of the divisions inside Likud over disengagement
, and some comments by Rice about settlement expansion set him off. Usually very gracious and even courtly with Rice, this time he literally pounded the flimsy hotel dining table as he lectured her:
People in Israel don't understand, for example, why we can't build in Gush Etzion, an old community where everyone was killed in the 1948 War.
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NEVER will this area be handed to the Palestinians. NEVER. I am not going to negotiate this area. As to negotiations under the roadmap: something must come before. Israel will never agree to withdraw pursued by terrorists. Economic and social and humanitarian steps for the Palestinians should be taken, but they want negotiations under the roadmap. I am not going to do it. We are not in the roadmap, but the pre-roadmap. The roadmap will not start as long as there is terror. I am not going to withdraw pursued by terror. The basic problem is that the Arabs have not recognized the basic right of the Jewish people to a homeland. The peace agreement with Egypt is with the leaders, not the people; many organized groups boycott us. Jordan, we are under boycott there too. How do we solve this? Only by education. But what they are teaching children about us? For real peace, you need education. Their maps still show no Israel. But on the major blocs, the Palestinians will NEVER be able to come there – NEVER; they already destroyed it one time, and murdered hundreds.
Once Sharon had gotten all this off his chest and gotten a night's sleep, the meeting with the president the next day went smoothly. Bush, forewarned, began by congratulating Sharon for the political courage and leadership he was showing. He acknowledged that since Aqaba he had not seen the commitment and leadership he expected from Abbas, but told Sharon we must all help him: If he fails we all fail, and if he succeeds we all do. Sharon answered that he remained committed to peace, and then to retirement back at his farm. He noted that since the two men had met a year before, Bush had been reelected and Arafat had died. Recalling how many times he had told Sharon not to harm Arafat, Bush thanked him for not being the reason why he's gone. Sharon quickly replied, “Sometimes God helps!” And he spoke with hope. Bush had eliminated Saddam Hussein and changed Iraq. Lebanon was changing. People were starting to speak about democracy. I am optimistic, said Sharon. Turning to disengagement, he reiterated his commitment to see it through and detailed the many complications – political and practical – of moving thousands of people out of their homes.
Conversations with the President were never stilted and formalistic, even with leaders who tried to stick to a script. So Bush reacted to Sharon's comments by asking the question he had posed back in April at the White House: How did Sharon come to his decision to leave Gaza? I support it, the president said; it's a good decision, but what was the logic behind it?
We had no negotiating partner in Arafat, Sharon replied, but it was dangerous not to try to move forward, and I saw that Gaza disengagement could pave the way to the Roadmap. Some people advised me to “destroy the PA.” Some
said “do nothing.” Some said, “You have a solid majority, wait until after new elections.” I didn't want to wait, and I didn't want other people, even you with all the problems you have, to press me. It was better to take steps ourselves; it was not right to sit and do nothing. I rose through the ranks from private in the IDF, and saw my best friends killed in wars; I fought in all our wars, was badly injured twice, and saw the horrors of war. The only condition for peace is quiet. I am ready for painful compromises but not without security. I greatly appreciate that you always understood that there can be no compromises with terror. Maybe my generation, that saw the great victories and defeats, could take these responsibilities on our shoulders. And I had no partner when Arafat was alive, but I saw we had to make an effort, unilaterally, to relocate – maybe to help move forward.
If this was just a line it was a good one, but the president did not think it was just a line and I fully agreed with him. When he had so controversially said Sharon is a man of peace, he had been right; he had seen through to the Sharon that lay under the years of abuse and vilification as some kind of warmonger. He had seen the Sharon whom Hadley and I had seen when we sat with him for hours in his living room in Jerusalem: one of the last leaders from the founding generation, who had spent his life at war and wanted peace. And he believed that his generation, and he personally, had a responsibility to try to get peace.
Sharon and
the president talked about Gaza for some time. Bush clearly saw Gaza as a start, a precedent for disengagement
in the West Bank and further moves toward a peace settlement. But he told Sharon he saw the other side of that coin too. If this experiment failed, if the Palestinians could not rule Gaza, Sharon would have proved to the world that moving forward in the West Bank was not possible. And it would have proved that to us as well: The United States was not interested in moving toward any final status agreement if there is no progress in Gaza, Bush told Sharon. Later, in 2007 and 2008, that position would change: Despite disaster in Gaza, a complete PA failure, and a Hamas takeover, the Bush administration did indeed push hard for final status talks. But by then Sharon was gone from power and could not have recalled the comment made in April 2005 at the ranch.
After the visit to Crawford, Sharon came to Washington, where he told Vice President Cheney that the Palestinian elections were on his mind. He was strongly opposed to allowing Hamas (and others, like Palestinian Islamic Jihad [PIJ]) to participate. If they win something, how can we then go forward?, he asked. He suggested postponing the PLC elections because they could very well weaken Abbas and
“already he is not Samson.” Fatah is not yet strong enough to take on Hamas in elections, Weissglas added.
On April 19, Welch and I returned to Jerusalem and Ramallah, and Abbas told us he had made no final decision about the elections. One issue was the date; another, arising again, was whether to have people run in constituencies, as in the United States, or to have a national poll and proportional representation of the winning percentages. Perhaps he would go for a mix of the two, he said. As to Gaza, we asked how coordination between Israel and the PA was
going; the Israeli withdrawal was only four months away. There was not much coordination, we were told, but things were quiet. That's because we're not attacking Hamas, the Palestinians explained, and Hamas too wants the quiet; if we listened to the Israelis and their demand for “action against terror,” that would be the end of the quiet.
When I saw Sharon on April 20 in his office in Jerusalem, he was in an unhappy mood, in part because of American statements criticizing new construction in settlements. Whenever there was an announcement of new construction from Jerusalem, it was followed by one in Washington, repeating that the Roadmap required a freeze on construction and that new construction was not helpful, not constructive, troubling (a favorite State Department term), or words to that effect. For Sharon, the problem was that he had described the Bush letter of April 14, 2004, as giving Israel the major settlement blocks. That was the compensation, the only compensation, for wrenching nearly eight thousand Israelis from their homes in Gaza and moving out of the four settlements in the West Bank. So how was it that the Americans – in Washington and in Israel, where he especially disliked U.S. Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer, and (rightly) saw him as a political enemy – were criticizing every time a wheelbarrow moved in one of the major blocks that Israel would clearly keep?
You are causing me more and more problems daily, Sharon told me, and if elections were held now, I would lose. I ask that you not make daily announcements. Do you understand the situation here? Now only 50% believe what the president said about the major blocks. If this criticism continues, I won't be able to do Gaza disengagement. I want you to understand: If there were elections now, primaries in Likud, I would lose. Maybe the U.S. criticism is said to please the Arabs but it endangers Gaza disengagement. Leave me alone for several months now. I understand your position; do you understand mine? Leave it quietly now. I am on the edge of my ability to implement. If there is a vote of no confidence I have to have an election, and I am not going to win. Let me finish this burden. If I don't do it, it will not be implemented. Sharon spoke in exasperation, not anger, and he viewed me as an ally against enemies he and the president shared. My trip report to Hadley said Sharon was beleaguered and wondered if we understood how close to failing he was.
President Abbas came to visit Washington the following month, on May 26, and the schedule of these visits is a reminder of President Bush's continuing involvement and interest. That this was not the only issue on his plate would be a laughable understatement even considering only Iraq and Afghanistan, but it was never off his plate. Sharon and
Abbas visited repeatedly, as did other Arab, Muslim, and European leaders with all of whom he discussed Israeli-Palestinian affairs at length. On top of that were frequent telephone calls to leaders like President Mubarak, the kings of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and European heads of government. I was in the Oval Office for very many of those calls to the
Europeans – to Merkel and Blair and even Putin – even though my portfolio was the “Near East and North Africa,” because so often the Middle East was on the agenda. It is fair to say that hardly a day went by when Israeli and Palestinian issues were not discussed with the president.