The Secretary (18 page)

“Bibi thinks he can just stick to his position and outlast us, but we’re here for
four years,” one smiling official had told me that spring, soon after Bibi came to
power. The official had also served in the Clinton administration. “And then we’ll
likely be here for another four years.”

All the United States needed to do was coax him a bit further down the road he had
already traveled to keep things moving forward. As it was so often with American officials,
the strategy was hope and the timetable was hope. The Palestinians were hearing the
same from Israeli politicians in the center and on the left: “Bibi will be gone soon.
We’ll give you a better deal. Stick it out.”

But the Democrats who were now back in power and thought they could handle Bibi like
they had in the 1990s had misread the extent to which Israel itself had changed. The
world might have celebrated Obama’s election, but in Israel there was little fondness
for him. He had traveled to Cairo but had not visited Jerusalem, and Israelis felt
slighted. Obama had been elected with 78 percent of the Jewish vote in America, but
Israel had been slowly veering to the right and it brought to power people like Avigdor
Lieberman, Israel’s ultraconservative, Russian-born foreign minister.

Clinton was meeting with Lieberman as well as with Barak. Lieberman lived in a settlement
himself, though no one brought it up. The atmosphere was already stiflingly tense
when he started complaining about Turkey, where a moderate Islamist party was in power.
Hillary was developing a strong working relationship with her Turkish counterpart,
Ahmet Davuto
ğ
lu. But Lieberman warned that the Turks were Muslim extremists. Clinton reminded him
that Israel’s own actions inflamed sentiments in the region.

*   *   *

While Clinton was sitting in a basement with the Israeli ministers, the traveling
press were making their way, one by one, into the stone building housing the prime
minister’s offices, through the metal detector. Apart from Pakistan and Afghanistan,
there was no other country where the delegation of the American secretary of state
had to go through such thorough screening. The United States may have been Israel’s
top ally and biggest donor, but there was no preferential treatment here, even for
senior and midlevel American officials on state business.

The wailing sirens signaled the arrival of Clinton’s motorcade sometime after ten
o’clock. The press conference would take place before the talks so the Israeli media
could put something on air that evening. Netanyahu walked onto the slightly elevated
stage, followed by Clinton. With two microphone stands and no lectern, it was an odd
setting. Bibi stood so close to the edge of the stage that he loomed over the row
of chairs where the journalists were waiting to ask their questions. The blue of his
tie matched the blue of the Israeli flag behind him.

“We think we should sit around that negotiating table right away,” Bibi said. “What
we should do on the path to peace is to get on it and get with it.” Standing along
one wall to the side, American officials cringed. They knew he didn’t mean it. It
was a statement that cost him nothing and made him look like a noble, genuine peacemaker.
He knew full well the Palestinians were not in a position to come straightaway to
the table. He would look good, and the Palestinians would look like obstructionist
fools. American officials described it as a well-honed Israeli trick. The settlement
freeze before negotiations was a new demand by the Palestinians, Bibi added, and in
the past they had always negotiated without it. It was true, but Abbas was politically
weak, and he was clinging to the new American gospel about the settlement freeze.

Clinton kept a straight face, nodding mechanically, as she often did. As a politician,
she understood the context that Bibi himself was operating in. She had just met his
foreign minister, and understood that Bibi’s right-wing coalition kept him boxed in.
If she gave him some credit in public for his concessions, no matter how small they
were, perhaps she could coax him a bit further out. After all, he had uttered the
magic words “Palestinian state” for the first time in his life merely a few months
ago. Crucially, there was no American plan B if Bibi remained obstinate in his refusal
to give more on settlements. So in front of the world media, Clinton tried to lock
him into the promise he had made in private.

“What the prime minister has offered in specifics of a restraint on the policy of
settlements, which he has just described—no new starts, for example—is unprecedented
in the context of the prior two negotiations,” she said.

It was factually correct, but making peace in the Middle East often boils down to
moving a comma here or a semicolon there. If you praise the Israelis for restraint
on settlement construction, you have to add, “but they should do more and the U.S.
position remains that continued settlement building is illegitimate”; otherwise, the
Palestinians will sulk. If you talk about the suffering of the Palestinians under
Israeli occupation, you have to say, “and the Israelis too suffer under Palestinian
rocket attacks,” or else the Israelis will go bonkers. But if you praise the Israelis
for offering to refrain from any new construction while building continues in projects
already under way, then you’ve just backed down from your own demand to stop all settlement
activity.

It was past 11:00 p.m. in Jerusalem, and 2:00 a.m. in Pakistan, where we’d been just
the day before. Somewhere it was breakfast time; we had been on the move for twelve
hours. Clinton knew Netanyahu would talk forever, and the meeting would be intense.
She wanted to get on with it. She omitted the “but.”

“I know you’re someone who is indefatigable,” Clinton said smiling broadly, “so even
though we’re starting our meeting so late, I have no doubt that it will be intense
and cover a lot of ground. And I’m very much eager to begin those discussions.”

The press conference ended, and Netanyahu and Clinton went into their meeting. In
the cramped room, journalists debated furiously what had just happened. What did this
mean? Had the United States given in? Had Bibi won? Was this significant? The newswire
agencies started sending urgent one-line stories called snaps.

“Clinton calls Netanyahu restraint unprecedented.”

The statement had taken Hillary’s own team by surprise. Praising Bibi’s restraint
hadn’t exactly been part of the script. In fact, there wasn’t a written script. Clinton
was answering a question, and she had no notes in front of her. She often spoke from
her gut, but the Middle East was not willing to let go of the accepted script, just
like Asia hadn’t on her maiden trip. The tiniest deviation provoked panic, anger,
fear, depression, and feelings of betrayal. Mitchell, the peace envoy, and Jeff, the
Building’s Middle East man, knew immediately that there would be some damage control
needed to calm the Arab world. But sitting inside the meeting, they were not aware
of the extent of the fury that was unfurling across the region. They were too busy,
with Clinton, holding their ground in front of Netanyahu.

Sitting on either side of a rectangular table laid with finger food, the Israelis
and the Americans talked and talked and talked. Bibi didn’t move much. Neither did
Hillary.

“We need something to hold Abbas’s hand and bring him to the table,” Clinton told
Netanyahu. He didn’t budge.

“The risk of not doing anything is greater than the risk involved in compromising,”
she went on. He didn’t budge.

*   *   *

Sitting in the press conference room, the traveling reporters wrote their stories
until it was time to go. Everyone climbed into the black vans parked outside and waited
some more in the parking lot. The vans started to drive but stopped just outside the
gates. More waiting. Just after midnight, an e-mail arrived from Philippe:

Senator Mitchell and his party aren’t travelling on with us, so when we leave the
PM’s office shortly we’re going to head back to the David Citadel hotel so the Secretary
can huddle with him for a bit to discuss tonight’s series of meetings.

Clearly, this was a crisis. It was starting to dawn on everyone that the delegation
might be sleeping in Jerusalem. Maybe even in these vans, because no one had booked
any hotel rooms. Lew was still at the airport in Tel Aviv with the delegation’s passports
and luggage. On quick stops like this, he stayed with SAM, awaiting our return and
catching up on e-mails from Washington where he still had to run a whole a department
of 100 people that looked after 750 top officials in the Building.

Twenty-two minutes after midnight, another e-mail from Philippe.

We’re going to fly to Marrakesh, arriving 6am. On the upside, we’ll have 1AM pancakes
and hot chocolate on the plane.

On the tarmac in Tel Aviv, the air force flight attendants were digging deep into
their pantry.

The black vans headed to the David Citadel Hotel. Reporters and staffers settled in
the lobby and begged for some food. The restaurant was closed, but the hotel managed
to put out three salads for twenty people and some rolls of bread. Everyone spread
out in the deserted mezzanine café area while Clinton and Mitchell huddled.

By two in the morning, the haggard travelers were all slouched on our chairs half
asleep, still hungry, some browsing the Internet to find a restaurant for dinner in
Marrakesh the following day. Suddenly, a booming perky voice echoed through the marble
lobby.

“Hi, guys!” Hillary was walking up the stairs to the mezzanine where everyone had
been waiting. “What have you been up to? Are you ready for Morocco?” She had just
spent almost five hours in back-to-back meetings with hardheaded politicians on one
of the thorniest issues on the agenda of a U.S. administration, but she seemed alive
with the adrenaline that kicks in during crisis mode.

*   *   *

We arrived in Marrakesh at six in the morning on Sunday and went straight to breakfast
by the pool of our hotel—the Palmeraie Golf Palace hotel. We felt like we had been
propelled from a nightmare into a mirage. Clinton was here for a Forum for the Future
conference. Traveling with the secretary of state sometimes meant an incongruous combination
of deprivation, luxury resort accommodations, and explosive conflicts. (Once, in Thailand
for an Asian regional meeting, we’d had to traipse across a sandy beach in our heels
and suits, carrying laptop bags, to reach our rooms in ninety-degree heat and 80 percent
humidity.)

The morning headlines in the region’s newspapers revealed not only the damage done
by Clinton’s words but also the extent of the divide between Israelis and Palestinians.
The Israeli press was jubilant. The Obama administration had finally seen the light.
Haaretz
wrote that Clinton had “demanded” that Abbas return to talks “immediately,” and it
was clear that the United States had accepted Israel’s position about restarting peace
negotiations. A “deal” had also been struck to allow Israel to continue building its
three thousand units. Israel had won the rope-pulling contest.

The Arab press was despondent. Why did Clinton think the restraint was a concession
worthy of praise? They accused her of trying to bully Abbas into entering peace talks.
They saw her statement as the result of a clear decision made in Washington to drop
the demand of a settlement freeze. Obama had made the decision and sent Clinton to
deliver a message. It was part of the plan, they concluded. There was no room in anyone’s
reading of Hillary’s comment for a politician’s gut and an American administration
feeling its way on the path to peace.

Later that afternoon, puffing on a cigar in the hotel’s café, the secretary-general
of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, lamented the dismal state of affairs. He said he hoped
Obama would not accept this “slap in the face” by Israel. “I’m really afraid that
we’re about to see a failure,” Moussa said, in English, holding up his cigar for dramatic
effect. “Failure is in the atmosphere all over.”

He ended the conversation by saying he still had a “reservoir of hope.” Despite the
outrage, Arabs didn’t want to alienate an American president who seemed to be on their
side and who spoke with empathy about their suffering. Keeping the Arabs on board
was key to any progress, and Clinton wanted to make sure they wouldn’t stab Abbas
in the back again.

On Monday, Philippe had news for the traveling press.

This is for Your Planning Purposes ONLY—NOT for Reporting

Want you all to know that we are considering stopping in Egypt after we leave Marrakesh
tomorrow. This is by no means certain, the planning is fluid because we are trying
to see if President Mubarak’s schedule allows for a visit (he’s currently not in Cairo,
he’s in Sharm El Sheikh). To reiterate, this is for your planning purposes ONLY, and
NOT reportable.

Mubarak, Egypt’s modern-day pharaoh, had been in power since 1981. He was Washington’s
reliable ally and often hosted peace summits; his backing would be crucial. Never
mind that he was a dictator; this was just how things were done in the region.

With the secretary, Jake and Jeff labored for hours over a statement that would reassure
the Arabs that the United States wasn’t giving up on them. That Sunday, sitting next
to the Moroccan foreign minister, Clinton read carefully from a piece of paper. Every
comma, every “but,” every caveat was scripted. The American position had not changed,
she insisted. The United States did not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement
construction.

“I will offer positive reinforcement to the parties when I believe they are taking
steps that support the objective of reaching a two-state solution. I will also push
them as I have in public and private to do even more.”

*   *   *

Meanwhile, Lew was dealing with his own crisis, organizing another last-minute stop
in yet another country—hotel rooms and motorcades could be arranged, but he couldn’t
do much about lunch on the plane; it would be a meager affair.