Tested by Zion (62 page)

Bush understood that his goal of “no daylight” between the United States and Israel would maximize his leverage there. He also understood the impact of any perceived gap between the United States and Israel on Israeli security. Given the amount of anti-Semitism and hostility to Israel, any suggestion that the United States is distancing itself and less inclined to defend Israel has an immediate impact: There are more expressions of anti-Jewish sentiment and of hostility to Israel. The net effect, of course, is to make Israelis feel less secure and less likely to respond to American pleas that Israel “take risks for peace.”

There is another way of stating this principle. As we saw regarding the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, the “compensation” Israel received for that move did not come from the Palestinians. Because its withdrawal was unilateral, what Sharon needed was “political” or “ideological” compensation from the United States to swing the Israeli political system toward supporting disengagement. This example is not unique. Because Israel is a strong state locked into struggle with a weak nonstate entity, many of the moves we want it to make will be unrequited or at least not evenly matched by Palestinian moves. Warm, even fulsome, American support can even the score and make such moves possible, whereas a cold or bitter relationship makes them less likely. Thus, the distancing between our two governments can hinder our ability to convince Israel to take steps we may think wise.

Neither President Bush nor President Clinton was uncritical of Israel, but both understood the need for Israeli trust in them – and used that trust to advance their policies. Because countries only have one set of leaders at a time, the corollary third lesson is to maintain the best possible personal relations with Israel
i officials. This is never easy in international politics, and President Bush had troubled relations with President Chirac of France and Chancellor Schroeder of Germany. But he tried to manage his relations with Israeli leaders so as to maximize his leverage on them, as the incident in which he called Sharon “a man of peace” revealed.

President Bush was always cognizant of the fact that foreign leaders are not primarily diplomats, even or perhaps especially when they are visiting him or meeting with him; like him, they are politicians. Most foreign ministers are elected politicians themselves (many of whom later seek the prime minister position) though our secretaries of state rarely are, so that very often discussions between American and foreign officials are between career diplomats on our side and politicians on theirs. When I listened to or participated in meetings with Middle Eastern or European leaders, I was always struck by the way President Bush wove in American politics and asked them about their own. He was seeking to explain the context in which he worked and to understand theirs better, as well as to express his understanding that they all faced constraints and could perhaps help one another deal with them. This always elicited better understanding and almost always efforts to forge better cooperation. Putting a foreign leader on the defensive, hurting him or her in domestic politics, is by contrast a sure-fire way to weaken our ability to attain American policy goals.

The fourth lesson is that it is always an error to concentrate on negotiations rather than real progress on the ground. The Bush administration had committed this error when all its influence was directed toward the “Annapolis process” rather than to helping Salam Fayyad make progress in the West Bank. As Tony Blair had told President Bush in late 2008, “Building Palestinian capabilities is key. We should push ahead and not put all our eggs into the basket of diplomacy. Look, reality on the ground will shape an agreement, not vice versa.”

In fact, the lack of real-world progress actually threatens any talks that may be underway because Palestinians will give them no credence if the context is a worsening of the conditions under which they live. Talks may then appear to be an Israeli trick, a means of prolonging the occupation. Moreover, whatever may be achieved at the negotiating table will be meaningless unless the Palestinian Authority is strong enough to enforce any agreement that is reached. One effect of a lack of American attention to real life under the PA is the PA's financial condition: The PA has repeatedly faced cash crises over the years because of the lack of Arab state financial support. One example occurred in 2010. American and EU financial support is reasonably steady and predictable; Arab support comes in fits and starts and depends to some degree on American pressure and pleading. By September 2010, Saudi contributions for the year totaled only $30.6 million, compared to $241.1 million in 2009. The United Arab Emirates, which contributed $173.9 million in 2009, paid nothing in 2010 until September, when it forwarded $42 million. It is impossible to believe this would have been the situation if the United States had been paying adequate attention and exercising adequate pressure. But it is what happens if an administration concentrates on ceremonies and not on how the PA will meet its payroll.

This is not an argument against diplomacy nor against the view that, even at their worst, Israeli-Palestinian negotiations can provide a useful cover for other activities such as the building of Palestinian institutions. The very existence of a negotiating track can allow Arab and European governments to reduce the shrillness of their attacks on Israel and to prod the Palestinian side toward moderation. But unless the negotiations are really moving toward success – and in my view, that condition never existed during the Bush years because of the PLO's unwillingness or inability after Arafat as under Arafat to sign a compromise agreement – they cannot be the main American goal. Instead, we should be trying to create the conditions that may someday make peace possible. President Bush did this when he broke with Arafat and demanded a decent, competent Palestinian government opposed to terror in all its forms. It was only when this happened that Ariel Sharon, leader of the Israeli right, committed himself to supporting Palestinian statehood. Similarly, building Palestinian institutions such as security forces and a functioning judicial system is a real step toward statehood.

The trade-offs can be very direct. As I have related, sometimes we asked the Israelis for symbolic concessions to the Palestinian Authority to make some meeting go more smoothly or at least appear to do so, instead of asking for moves that would actually provide concrete progress for Palestinian citizens. Because there is only so much traffic to be borne by any Israeli government (which will always face criticism for any concessions that are unrequited by Palestinian moves), to ask for one move is often to abandon or delay another – another that may have greater long-term impact on the ground.

As I have noted, everyone in Washington thought the state-building efforts Salam Fayyad was making were terrific, but they never became the focus of our policy. They were marginal, supplemental, and never central; in contrast,
negotiations were central, and the success being recorded in them was very often exaggerated. The “peace process” can in this sense become the enemy of progress or even of peace. I tried to eliminate the term from every White House document, though this effort met with mixed success, and I never used it myself. To me it meant the endless series of sessions that overlooked or even obscured realities on the ground: the inability of the PA to defeat terror, its financial crises, the growing popularity of Hamas, the endemic corruption of Fatah, and the party's inability to win public support. We needed a process that overcame those obstacles to statehood, and the “peace process” often led us to discuss instead where the next conference would be held.

What is the proper American part to play? The fifth lesson is to avoid an overly intrusive American role. My own experience with trilateral meetings had made it clear that no negotiating takes place in the presence of the Americans. Both sides posture, seeking our approval and support. The serious negotiations are bilateral, and indeed in the case of Oslo were purely bilateral and kept secret from the United States. During the Bush years, efforts to insert the United States actually made bilateral Israeli-Palestinian negotiations harder. It is one thing to press the Israelis and Palestinians to negotiate but quite another to think that things will go more smoothly if we are physically present.

The sixth lesson is to avoid an obsession with a settlement “freeze,” which the United States far more than the Palestinians or Arab states has made the sine qua non for progress toward peace – or even to sitting down to negotiate. A freeze had never been a Palestinian precondition for negotiations, and they had negotiated for years, under Arafat, while there was not only construction in settlements but also new settlements being built.

This is not to say that the settlement issue is an unimportant one but rather that a demand for a complete construction freeze in settlements
and
in Jerusalem (which became the U.S. position in 2009) is not realistic, nor is it a prerequisite for peace. It is unrealistic because no Israeli government will ever freeze all construction in large portions of the nation's capital or bar natural growth of populations in the settlements. In the Bush administration, we saw this and negotiated an arrangement with Israel that would allow some construction but not the expansion of Israel's footprint in the West Bank. As described in detail in Chapter 3, the agreement reached with Prime Minister Sharon was that all inducements to move to settlements (such as cheap mortgages) would end, there would be no new settlements at all, and new construction would be only in already built-up areas. That way, no additional land would be taken and Palestinian interests would not be prejudiced: Construction would only be
inside
existing settlements. This was a sensible approach to coping with the settlement issue.

The seventh lesson is that the remarkable assumption that the issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are actually pretty simple to resolve is simply a fallacy. This is the belief that one need only get the parties to the table and once there, they would make quick progress and continue the talks until a final status agreement was reached. The only question would be where to place that
table: Camp David, Taba, Annapolis, or Oslo. This was not an analysis but a nearly religious belief; it was faith-based diplomacy. The usual way this belief was put was that the parties were inches apart, all the major issues had been nearly agreed, and everyone understood what an agreement would look like, so there was not much more work to be done. This was a refrain heard often in the years after Oslo, including throughout the Bush years.

This was a remarkable and wrong-headed view. Listening to George Mitchell refer time after time after time to his experience as a negotiator on Northern Ireland, it seemed to me that he was drawing an exactly wrong analogy. In Northern Ireland, the interests of the two parties (Protestant and Catholic) had by the end become reconcilable, but the negotiators and leaders did not know each other and could not find a way to get together and hash out a deal reflecting those now mutual interests. Getting them in a room, breaking the ice, cajoling and leading, and not least providing a smoothing American presence were all important. In the Middle East, the negotiators had known each other for 20 years and got along fine; when they met, there was back-slapping and hugging, joking and storytelling. It often surprised Americans new to the region how well they all related – and how little they needed us. Getting them to the table and getting a negotiation going was, in the Clinton and Bush years, the easy part.

If indeed all the issues were so clear and all the solutions so obvious, it seemed to me that we have to learn something from the decades of failure by the parties to embrace those “obvious” solutions. Namely, we must learn that the “obvious” solution was unacceptable to both sides. That obvious solution could, of course, change over time, but Arafat's refusal at Camp David and Abbas's reaction to Olmert's offer suggested that even an offer that seemed most generous in Israeli terms might be completely insufficient for the Palestinian leadership. Similarly, could an Israeli prime minister agree to some of the “obvious” final status conditions the Palestinians wanted, such as the movement of many thousands of Palestinian “refugees” to Israel and the division of the Old City in Jerusalem?

Moreover, was it true that all the conditions of a final status agreement were so clear? I had never understood the basis for that claim. Certainly, it was not true with respect to Jerusalem. It was also not true when it came to security, so vital for Israel; it would be an endlessly complex matter to negotiate. The eight points that Defense Minister Barak had handed to President Bush and
called absolutely essential for Israel were all likely to be rejected by the Palestinians. Determining final borders, at least in the Jerusalem suburbs, would also be immensely difficult. The parties were not “an inch away,” and it was never accurate that “everyone understands what the final deal will look like.” That was not an argument against negotiations nor a counsel of doom but rather a suggestion that a final status was not around the corner – and that therefore the actual life being lived by Palestinians was not a temporary condition soon to be transformed. Now, 45 years after the 1967 War, this should hardly be a great revelation, but too often its implications are ignored. The difficulty of
negotiating a final status agreement should suggest that far more emphasis be placed instead on changing the conditions under which Palestinians live today and on building the institutions under which they are governed. That is a far surer road to reconciliation and to peace. To focus on what progress is possible today and what dangers lurk tomorrow is not an abandonment of American responsibility but an assertion of reality. And peace will be built on reality, not on hope.