Authors: Elliott Abrams
The U.S. focus now seemed to me doubly odd. While our energies went into the talks, we were paying too little attention not only to Fayyad's pleas for more help in building the institutions of a state in the West Bank but also to the Israeli warnings that sooner or later another Gaza war was coming. Clashes between Israel and Hamas were more frequent, and the mortars and rockets from Gaza were increasing as well: 165 in November 2007, 213 in December, 377 in January 2008 (more than 10 a day on average), and 485 in February. It was clear that the Israelis would continue to react to those numbers and sooner or later try to stop the attacks. On February 27, Hamas and other groups fired 40 Qassams into southern Israel. Israel hit back on that day and the next with missile attacks on the Interior Ministry building in Gaza and a police station in Gaza City. The IDF acknowledged killing at least 23 terrorists, though Palestinians said many civilians were also killed. On February 29, the IDF attacks increased, on the ground as well as in the air. And all these lines, military and diplomatic, did indeed intersect: Abbas accused the Israelis of “international terrorism,” and on March 2, two days after our session with Barak, Abbas said he was suspending the peace talks because of the mounting civilian deaths in Gaza. The death toll that day was 54, more than in any day since the intifada in 2000. The EU condemned Israel for the disproportionate use of force and collective punishment, terms that would circulate again when the larger Gaza conflict erupted at the end of 2008, and there were protests throughout the Arab world.
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The following day, March 3, most Israeli troops and tanks pulled out of Gaza again.
On March 4 and 5, the Rice group was back in Jerusalem. In our traveling party, optimism reigned. Welch told us Abbas would push for an agreement by May; Rice thought that was a possible achievement. The president had accepted the Israeli invitation to return to Israel to celebrate its 60th birthday in May, so perhaps he would have an agreement to celebrate. This speculation seemed to me detached from reality; the two sides were not even at the negotiating table, much less close to a breakthrough. When we met with Abbas on March 4, he explained that he had had to suspend the talks in view of the number of Palestinians being killed and was also asking for a UN Security Council resolution condemning the Israeli attacks. Rice replied that we needed to get the negotiations started again right away and to focus again on the Annapolis process. Annapolis had now morphed from a meeting, to a conference, to a process. Barak threw some cold water on the more extravagant hopes when we saw him on March 5 by telling Rice what he had told Hadley: A Gaza incursion was coming.
On March 5, Condi met with the two Palestinian negotiators, Erekat and
Abu Ala’a. She told them to resume negotiations as soon as possible and tone down
their rhetoric. Otherwise, she said, you are in effect letting Hamas determine whether and when there can be negotiations. As to the initiative to seek a UN resolution condemning Israel, she was tough: The president and I are killing ourselves for you, and now you put us in a position where we will have to veto some resolution and be attacked by the whole Arab world. I’m angry about it, she said; do not do that to us. Abu Ala'a was, as always, the master of excuses for why things could not be done. We had an executive committee meeting of the PLO this week, he replied, and everyone said stop the negotiations. So we did. Now we need a decision of the executive committee to start negotiations again. So have a meeting and decide to go back to the table, Rice demanded. When can you get that done? Hmmm, maybe in the coming days, said Abu Ala'a with something less than the precision she was seeking.
Look, said an annoyed Rice, you are getting ready to run a state. You cannot run it by the executive committee of the PLO! We are trying to give you $150 million in aid and now there is a hold on it in Congress because you won't negotiate. The story must be that negotiations are starting again, or you will lose us. When can you get back to the table? We need a week more, Abu Ala'a answered, but Condi was not satisfied and told him that was too long. Announce right now that the negotiators will resume contacts, and then hold your meeting next week. Now Abu Ala'a switched excuses and said he could not go back to the negotiating table because there was settlement construction in the West Bank. Rice again dismissed the excuse; I need a negotiating meeting next week, she said. You do not understand that support is disappearing on the Hill. Abu Ala'a shook his head and answered: I need to keep our credibility. We need to see West Bank settlement developments, he added, meaning that he wanted to see if Israel was announcing more construction. No, said Rice. You need to take risks. You need to move now.
That had been a rare difficult meeting with the Palestinians. Now we moved back to the Israelis, where our difficult meetings were frequent and predictable. Rice and
Livni argued at some length, after Rice pushed for Israel to stop acting in Gaza. As Rice explained, she was worried about leaving town and then having more Israeli attacks in Gaza, then a UN resolution we would have to veto, and then seeing more IDF action in Gaza. Everyone would say the United States was backing the Israeli actions and opening the door for more. Livni firmly rejected the pressure. What we do depends on Hamas actions, she said. Israel will defend itself, and if there are more rockets and mortars, we will again attack Hamas.
The very next day, March 6, a terrorist killed eight students at a Jerusalem seminary: A Palestinian gunman had fired hundreds of rounds from automatic weapons in the deadliest attack on Israelis in two years. The president called Olmert with condolences. You have my deepest sympathies, he told the prime minister; this is a sympathy and friendship call. There was no pressure from the top to stop acting in Gaza, and the difference between what they heard from Condi and what they heard from the president must have impressed the Israelis. The president understood that showing absolute solidarity with
Israel in security matters was the best way to get progress on the negotiating track.
Two weeks later, on March 21, he and Olmert spoke again, this time mostly about the talks. Olmert brought the president up to date and said he thought they might get a deal by August. However, they had not reached agreement on anything yet, and Olmert said that Abbas's demands – that Israel retain just 2% of the West Bank and accept 100,000 Palestinian refugees – were impossible. Why, in that case, Olmert thought an August agreement possible was beyond me.
Olmert and
the president also discussed Syria
because the Israelis knew we had decided to make much of what we knew about the reactor at al-Kibar available to the Congress and the public. Olmert was concerned that the announcements might blow up his ongoing talks with Syria. However, we knew that leaks were inevitable and were in fact coming soon, and that we would be better off giving the information before they occurred. Moreover, we did not share Olmert's enthusiasm for those talks with Syria. Olmert kept telling us this was the way to get Syria to break with Iran, but we considered this notion fanciful – and the president said so to Olmert. Olmert was planning on being in Washington in June for the annual AIPAC convention and told the president he would like to see him then and brief him fully about Syria. The president worried also that this venture with Syria meant there would be less attention and commitment to progress on the Palestinian track, but Olmert assured him it was not so – and that he would say this if and when he announced the talks with Syria publicly. The discussion of Syria brought the president to ask Olmert to consider some gesture about Sheba'a Farms
, a topic I had thought dead. Olmert pushed back pretty hard: The UN has formally recognized Sheba'a as Syrian, not Lebanese, he said. We are acting in accordance with a formal UN position. It seemed to me that the president was unlikely to have had Sheba'a Farms on his mind at breakfast that morning, so Condi must have asked him to push it with Olmert.
As the Israelis had predicted, in March and April, fierce fighting in Gaza continued. In March, 299 rockets and mortars from Gaza rained down on Israel, and 518 – the highest number yet recorded – fell in April. On April 9, four Hamas fighters infiltrated Israel and hit a fuel terminal where oil was stored before being shipped into Gaza. Two Israeli civilian workers were killed. Israel struck back, with tanks on the ground and air strikes. Eighteen Palestinians and three IDF soldiers were killed on April 16. On April 19, Hamas fighters sneaked into Israel again and hit a cargo terminal; 3 from Hamas were killed and 13 IDF soldiers were wounded in the firefight.
Hadley and I were in Israel on April 15 and 16, when this fighting was occurring. We met at length with Yuval Diskin, the head of Israel's General Security Service, the Shin Bet
. Somewhat to my surprise, Diskin focused on the political
side of things. Fatah is a big problem, he told us. You are building the security forces, but no one is building Fatah. Those police units will be trained, but they will not be backed by a political movement and will not be ideologically motivated. Hamas is defeating Fatah because it provides not just guns but an ideology too.
When we saw Olmert, he reiterated to us his desire to reach an agreement with the Palestinians in August and said he was working on maps to show Abbas. He also repeated what he had told the president on the phone: If Abbas was really insisting that Israel keep only 1.2% of the West Bank
(he had told the president 2%, so had Abbas reduced this amount?), that is impossible; it's not serious. And Abbas said we need to take 10,000 refugees a year for 10 years, Olmert told us, and that is impossible. Again I wondered why Olmert thought an agreement by August or in August was remotely likely. I was struck by Ehud Barak's comment when we met with him: After decades, he told us, I am still not clear on the true position of the Palestinian leaders. It seems that the closer we get, the more they withdraw. Are they ready for painful decisions?
In our meetings on the Palestinian side, the Fatah problem that Diskin had raised with us earlier arose again. If elections were held that day, we were told in some private sessions, Fatah would simply have nothing to run on. Only Fatah could beat Hamas, but Fatah viewed the PA as a rival and did not embrace the government – even when it did things that were popular. If Fatah continued to view the government as an enemy and continued to resist reform, how could it ever build a platform that people would support? Abu Mazen is not interested in Fatah reform, we were told; Abu Ala'a is interested all right, but he is against it. As to the negotiations, so far they had gone nowhere. A deal in 2008 or even 2009 seemed far-fetched.
Yet the negotiations continued, despite all the violence. While Israel had often said it would not negotiate under fire, the fire was of course coming from Hamas and not the PA. The Abbas-Olmert and
the Livni-Erekat-Abu Ala'a tracks were alive, if not alive and well. The atmosphere at most meetings, we were told by both sides, was good. When Abbas and
Olmert had met on April 7, they had agreed that a final status agreement in 2008 was probably unreachable, and if a document were needed, it could only be some sort of framework agreement stating general principles. Whether such a document would do any good or actually hurt both sides – arousing opposition and criticism, but little support – was much on the minds of both teams. Abbas and Olmert had met alone for 40 minutes and their own relationship remained good, but there seemed to me to be no real progress. I had the impression each man used these meetings to explain to the other his own internal political problems – useful and perhaps conducive to trust, but not bringing an agreement any closer. I continued to think these talks were not going anywhere.
Olmert and Abbas met again on April 14, just before Abbas set off on his travels that would include Washington. We were told that Abbas had said Israel could retain 2% of the West Bank at most (with one-to-one swaps) and the Israelis had said that number was a nonstarter. There was a longer discussion
of what to do about Gaza, with Abbas favoring the introduction of Arab forces as part of a deal with Hamas there. The Israelis took that on board, but in truth had no idea what to do about Gaza. It seemed they were locked in a perpetual cycle of tit-for-tat exchanges with Hamas. They could try some sort of truce directly with Hamas, but such a deal could undercut Abbas and
the PA. The Israelis told us that Egypt was trying to broker some kind of truce or ceasefire. It was a delicate dance, involving both the political status of Hamas and Fatah and the Egyptian role in stopping – or not stopping – arms smuggling into Gaza.
On April 24, the administration made public most of what we knew about the al-Kibar reactor, releasing not only statements but also photos that showed the reactor was a copy of the North Korean facility at Yongbyon.
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The Israelis maintained silence, officially. Syria denied everything: There was no reactor and never had been one. As mentioned earlier, Olmert and
his team had one concern about this release of information: They were engaging in secret negotiations with Syria via Turkey and did not want this disclosure to torpedo those talks.
That same day, President Abbas visited President Bush at the White House, five months after Annapolis and still with no real progress in the negotiations. The president was philosophical. Can we do this, he wondered? He told Abbas that his wife had asked him why he thought he could solve a hundred-year-old conflict. We are racing against the clock to solve it in 2008, Abbas replied, and we need a solution we can sell to the Palestinian people. Hamas is waiting for us to fail. I tell Olmert I am prepared to meet his needs but nothing more; I have to win a referendum on this. He then gave the president some information about Fatah reform that seemed to me made up out of whole cloth, but they soon got back to whether a deal could be done with Israel. Do it this year, the president urged. Now is the time to move; a new president won't get to this in his first year; maybe my trip to the region in May will help push things forward. I will do all I can to help, he continued, and Olmert wants to do a deal. When I was there in January, I told his cabinet to back him, the president reported to Abbas.