Authors: Elliott Abrams
Or, third, either Hamas or the PA/Fatah forces might simply prevail over the other. That the PA would prevail had been our goal since 2002 and was clearly stated in the Roadmap, which after all had broad international support. Terrorist organizations would be dismantled, and the PA would develop the professional security forces it would need to become a peaceful independent state. That Hamas might win this battle by taking over both Gaza and the West Bank was inconceivable while Israel was in control of both, and both we and the Israelis also believed Hamas was not strong enough to succeed when the PA
took over. As time passed, especially in 2008 and later, the Fatah gangs were increasingly turning into genuine PA government security forces – a tribute to the work of Gen. Dayton and to Salam Fayyad's leadership. But in 2007, it was still essentially Fatah versus Hamas, rival Palestinian factions, with Fatah holding the upper hand in the West Bank and with the IDF and
Shin Bet
active there to prevent any increase in Hamas strength.
In Gaza, however, the Israelis had by June 2007 been out for nearly two years. There, the third path was available for Hamas: military victory over Fatah. From the Hamas perspective, unless it believed a national unity government would truly work – which was impossible given Hamas's absolute refusal to compromise on its beliefs in terrorism and denial of Israel's right to exist – there was no reason to delay. Intra-Palestinian truces came and went but the confrontation between Fatah and Hamas was endless, and time might bring greater strength for what Hamas saw as Fatah and we saw as the legitimate PA national security forces. In that sense, it is right to argue that a violent confrontation between Fatah and Hamas was inevitable and that Israel, Egypt, the United States, and the PA/Fatah leaders themselves should have acted sooner to ensure that Hamas could not win it. There is plenty of blame to share, precisely because – it is worth repeating – the Hamas victory was
not
inevitable; more action sooner could have prevented it. Egypt could have blocked arms moving into Gaza; Israel could have permitted the training of PA forces sooner and the United States could have undertaken this work sooner and more intensively; Israel could have hit back with greater impact on Hamas whenever attacked from Gaza; and, of course, the PA leadership could have acted to organize and motivate its men under arms. All this happened later, in 2008 and 2009, but only after Hamas had acted first, in June 2007.
A final note on Sharon's Gaza disengagement strategy: Those who malign it must ask how Israel would have fared had it still been in Gaza in 2007, with all the settlers and settlements to defend and thousands of IDF troops stationed there to provide that defense. First, the considerable international support that Israel in the end received for pulling out of Gaza would never have materialized, and instead there would have been intense pressure on other fronts to make concessions to the Palestinians. The vacuum that Sharon saw and filled with disengagement would have been filled some other way. Second, the IDF would have been engaged in a deadly daily war with Hamas in Gaza throughout 2006, 2007, and after, with far more casualties among settlers and soldiers than Israel suffered from Hamas rockets after disengagement. How would Israel have dealt with the situation of its soldiers and settlers in Gaza the day after Hamas won the January 2006 elections? How would it have dealt with their safety during the Second Lebanon War in the summer of 2006 or during the war between Hamas and Fatah in 2007? Sharon made a military judgment that the cost of defending the settlements and settlers was not worth paying, and those who criticize that judgment must also realize that the cost might well have risen as Iran's support to Hamas increased. By the summer
of 2007, Israel might have had eight thousand settlers surrounded entirely by Hamas.
On June 14, the very day of the Hamas victory in Gaza, the president met with a group of Jewish leaders organized by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations
. I see no other solution for the Palestinians and Israel but a Palestinian state, he told them, for demographic reasons among others. The Gaza withdrawal was a brilliant move, a clarifying move, he said; it forced the world to see that elements of Palestinian society were rejectionists and terrorists. We will not ask Israel to deal with Hamas unless it adheres to the three Quartet Principles. As I listened, I wondered how he would break out of the box that we and the Israelis were now in: OK, the threat from Hamas was more widely understood, but how do you beat them? What now? We present a competing vision, he told the Jewish leaders: We support the development of democracy in Lebanon and Iraq; we help moderates in Egypt and Saudi Arabia build more decent societies. In the long run, he was still arguing, the moderates and democrats would beat the terrorists and radicals.
The president then let the Jewish leaders in on some of the debate continuing inside the administration. Secretary Rice had been pressing hard for the president to commemorate the fifth anniversary of his June 24, 2002, speech with a new one setting forth the next big effort – a big international conference. Condi later wrote that “the pieces were falling into place for a big push toward a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
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I was opposed to such a conference and the inevitable pressures it would place on us and on Israel, and I now had a stronger argument against it: Matters in the region were in so much flux after the Hamas takeover of
Gaza. How could the president possibly respond to that argument? How could calling a peace conference 10 days after the Hamas victory be sensible? Peace with whom? Had not Abbas and the PA just shown they were in no position to deliver peace? The timing seemed preposterous to me.
I have not decided yet on a speech, the president told the Jewish leaders, but if I do give it, I won't push Israel to deal with terrorists. Remember, Abbas does recognize Israel. The question is, can he lead? Obviously, not in Gaza. Does Olmert still believe in a Palestinian state and in withdrawals in the West Bank? Yes, but he may think now is not the time, the president said. That was a hell of an understatement, I thought: How could Olmert possibly speak about withdrawals from the West Bank just as Israelis were seeing what withdrawal from Gaza had wrought? In fact, the president did not give a speech on June 24; the “anniversary” went by in silence. I had won that round, although nine days later, Welch was showing me a speech text for something the president “might” say. Condi was not giving up.
On June 18, the day after President Abbas appointed an emergency government
by decree, the president called him to express support. Abbas's response
was to say he needed to get into negotiations
with the Israelis, to show the people he was still leading and to give them hope. The call to Abbas was in part an effort to show balance because Olmert was in Washington then for a previously planned visit. At dinner that night with Rice, Hadley, Welch, and me, Olmert interposed no objection to negotiating. On the contrary, he said, I am ready to show them a political horizon and surprise Abu Mazen at our next meeting. I am ready to discuss everything with him, Olmert added. The Winograd report was coming soon, I recalled as I listened to Olmert, and Olmert's popularity ratings were in the cellar, so I wondered about his willingness to negotiate. The weaker he became politically, the more Olmert seemed willing to risk. This was perhaps logical as a matter of individual psychology, but where would it lead Israel? How far would he go – and, more to the point, would anyone go there with him?
Rice asked if Olmert were willing to say that the time had come to prepare for final status negotiations. Yes, but look at the circumstances facing Abu Mazen, Olmert replied; he faces real limits. No, Rice answered; that is not what the president heard from him when they spoke today. On the contrary, his legitimacy comes from the link to statehood, and without that he loses his strongest card. It is time to say there will be a state and you will negotiate it with Abu Mazen, in a reasonable time – and to work toward an international meeting. I do not want a big international conference with 25 countries, Olmert replied; this had always been the Israeli position. Right, Rice agreed, we do not want another Madrid either. I just mean the Arab Quartet, Olmert said, referring to Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, a group Rice had been promoting since March as responsible states interested in stability in the region. OK, Rice, said, the Arab Quartet; maybe Morocco also. Good, said Olmert; we certainly don't need Spain and Italy. Now Rice demurred: Well, you need Portugal, which will be the rotating head of the EU starting July 1, and you need Tony Blair (who had recently resigned as prime minister and taken up a new task as the Quartet's envoy); we'll see. I knew that she did not want the Arab Quartet plus Morocco but in fact wanted a larger list – more Arab states, perhaps more Muslim states from outside the region. The goal was positive – to ensure that Abbas would have Arab and Muslim support for any compromises to which he agreed in negotiations with Israel. But she did not make that clear to Olmert, and she did not make it clear that she intended a big “conference,” not a “meeting.” The Israelis insisted on the latter term because it sounded smaller and did not arouse memories of huge conferences like Madrid. The United States agreed to call whatever happened a “meeting,” but we never kept that promise nor, I think, did we intend to.
On June 19, Olmert met the president. You said you were prepared to unilaterally create a state when we first met, the president said. I am still ready, Olmert answered; if I cannot negotiate a state, I will move forward alone. That would be a big risk, the president said, but Olmert replied that he had ideas on how to keep stability in that situation; for example, by getting Jordanian help. It is in the interest of Israel to clear out from the major part of the territories –
but not all of them, Olmert went on. I will do what I told you, he said to the president: I am going to make a genuine effort to lay the groundwork, but it will take some time to negotiate a Palestinian state.
Precisely what Olmert was saying was not clear to me. What did “lay the groundwork” mean? What did “prepare” for final status negotiations mean as well? What threshold had to be passed before you were actually
in
final status negotiations? The lack of clarity was fine from Secretary Rice's point of view but not from mine. It seemed to me that a final status negotiation between Abbas – who had just lost Gaza, who had lost an election to Hamas, whose hold on the West Bank was tenuous without the IDF and Shin Bet
being active there – and Olmert, whose own political situation was dismal, was a mistake. Olmert might make far-reaching compromises given his personal situation, but those would be illegitimate in the eyes of most Israelis; I thought that Abbas was in a position where no compromises were possible.
The discussions in the Oval Office left a very bad taste for another reason. The agreement on military aid to Israel
, negotiated in January 2001 by the Clinton administration after Camp David, soon needed to be addressed. Under that agreement, we were providing more military aid – $2.4 billion per year – and eliminating economic aid. Olmert now proposed to the president that we announce a new 10-year deal increasing military aid to $3 billion annually. There was no pressing military reason to make the announcement just then, but there were political reasons. There was grumbling about increased U.S. pressure on Israel, and this announcement would help end it; there was concern about the Hamas threat from Gaza now that it ruled there, and this would address it; and the announcement would greatly help the beleaguered Olmert. It would show that, whatever his troubles, his relations with Bush and
America remained a real asset to Israel. The president was willing. He and Olmert had been chatting alone in the Oval and called me in. Work this out, the president said to me. I spoke immediately with the budget director, OMB chief (and now Senator from Ohio) Rob Portman, who interposed no objection. This would come in the “out years,” anyway (beginning with the 2011 budget), when Bush was gone, making the commitment easier for a budget director to approve; Portman also noted that Congress would be not only agreeable but also enthusiastic. We could get this done. Hadley and chief of staff Josh Bolten were on board as well.
Unfortunately, Secretary Rice was not. The argument she proffered was budgetary: That increase of $600 million might crowd out other military assistance we needed, for example, for Pakistan. We had to think about it. We had to take more soundings on the Hill. Let's reflect some more, study it, work this through. That was not, I believed, the real problem, because Congress could be persuaded to keep the accounts whole while increasing aid to Israel. To me it seemed this objection was more visceral: She was annoyed at Olmert and
struggling with him, their chemistry was now bad and getting worse, and she did not want him to get this victory. She blocked an immediate announcement of an increase in aid, though of course the president could have brushed the
objections aside had he felt strongly enough about it. Very soon, Israel got the $3 billion; Olmert announced the aid increase in Jerusalem on July 29 and said the decision had been made when he had met with Bush on June 19.
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But Olmert got very little credit for it, especially when compared with the personal victory this would have meant for him had he been able to announce it in Washington. I was annoyed that the president had let Condi delay it and was annoyed at her for trying to do so; I could not see how this would help bilateral relations or make Olmert more likely to work more easily with Condi and David Welch.
That night Olmert dined with the vice president and repeated that he was ready for a serious effort to move forward – though without inflated expectations. Abu Mazen let us down by signing the Mecca Agreement and setting up a national unity government with Hamas, he said. Condi believes that a political horizon would add the missing ingredient, giving a big boost to Abu Mazen to do what he has never done. I am ready for risks, he continued. The political risk is, how many times can I try with nothing in return? In his heart, Abu Mazen knows he cannot make serious decisions. We will cooperate and not look for excuses, but do not create expectations now – that would be dangerous, Olmert concluded.