Tested by Zion (37 page)

In addition, while the political negotiations among Fatah and Hamas leaders were underway, their followers were beginning to fight each other. For the first time since the elections in January, there had been a serious clash, which occurred on May 8 in southern Gaza, killing 3 and wounding 11; while the
prisoners were cooperating, those out of prison were shooting at each other. Throughout May and June, each side reacted by trying to strengthen its own forces.

On June 10 came the end of the 16-month partial truce between Hamas and Israel. An explosion on a Gaza beach on June 9 killed eight civilians and wounded dozens of others. Hamas claimed that the explosion was caused by Israeli shelling; an Israeli investigation denied responsibility, saying it might have been caused by a Palestinian land mine or the explosion of shells that had landed on the beach earlier and been covered by sand. No matter: Hamas responded by formally ending the truce and firing Qassam missiles into Israel. This would not necessarily have had a huge impact without the events of June 25. On that day, Hamas forces tunneled from Gaza into Israel, killed two soldiers, and kidnapped a third, Corporal Gilad Shalit. Between the Israeli withdrawal in the summer of 2005 and late June 2006, Hamas had fired more than 750 rockets and mortars into Israel (with the pace quickening in 2006), but Israel had responded only with artillery and from the air.
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The kidnapping of Shalit, and the killing of two other soldiers, was the last straw, and Israel responded with “Operation Summer Rains
,” its first major ground operation in Gaza since disengagement. We now faced an Israel at war with Hamas
while Hamas and Fatah negotiated over a unity government. As part of “Summer Rains,” Israeli forces seized 64 Hamas officials, including PLC members and cabinet ministers.

The recent talk of peace negotiations suddenly seemed far away. Yet what no one anticipated was another war that would largely destroy Olmert's political position – and Rice's own relationship with and faith in him and in Israel's political and military leadership. The Bush policy that had been formulated in June 2002 would become another casualty of the Second Lebanon War
of 2006.

On July 12, 2006, Hizballah attacked Israel with rockets and mortars, and Hizballah terrorists stormed across the Israel-Lebanon border, attacking a squad of Israeli soldiers. They killed eight soldiers and kidnapped two, although whether either was by then alive or how long those two stayed alive remained unclear. This action started the Lebanon War, which is worth describing briefly, because though it did not affect Israeli-Palestinian issues directly, it had an enormous impact on U.S.-Israel relations, especially on Condi Rice's view of and relations with Israeli officials and on Olmert's political fate. On July 13, Israel struck back at Hizballah, with air and artillery; Hizballah raised the ante with rocket attacks on Israeli villages and towns, including Haifa, averaging about 100 rockets a day. Israel's air strikes and artillery were soon joined by ground operations, and the targets included not only Hizballah leadership, weapons caches, and rocket launch sites but also parts of the Lebanese infrastructure that Hizballah used. Hizballah continued its rocket fire at Israeli towns, and soon hundreds of thousands of Israelis were either living in bomb shelters or had evacuated toward the south; similarly, hundreds of thousands of Lebanese fled the fighting, moving north. During the war, 157 Israelis and roughly 1,000 Lebanese were killed. The fighting lasted for a month, ending with UN Security Council Resolution 1701
, passed on August 11 and accepted by Israel on August 13. The text demanded an end to the fighting and an Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon. To prevent a recurrence, the resolution called for an enlargement of the UN's force in southern Lebanon, UNIFIL
, to 15,000 and the deployment of 15,000 Lebanese Army troops in the same area, with the goal of ending Hizballah's control there. Resolution 1701 also required that no outside power rearm Hizballah; arms could go only to the Lebanese Army. Finally, it demanded the release of the two kidnapped Israeli soldiers (whose bodies were finally exchanged with Israel in July 2008).

When the fighting began, it was crystal clear to everyone – not just in Israel and in Washington but also in Arab capitals – that Hizballah had started it. Given that Hizballah was a Shia group armed by and allied with Iran, it elicited no sympathy from the Arabs, who looked forward to seeing Israel thrash it – and told us so. Condi's clearly stated view when the war began, which was shared by Hadley and
the president, was that Hizballah had to lose.

In the early days, we assumed this outcome would happen, as it seems did everyone else: the Israelis, Europeans, and Arabs. That assessment underrated Hizballah's strength and organizational skills, but later Israeli analyses tended to the conclusion that Israel's effort had been poorly organized. The official report (from the Winograd Commission) concluded that the government did not decide between the two options: “a short, painful, strong and unexpected blow on Hezbollah, primarily through standoff fire-power” and “a large ground operation, including a temporary occupation of the South of Lebanon.” During the early weeks of the war, there was “equivocation” between these approaches, causing “a very long delay in the deployment necessary for an extensive ground offensive.” The report concluded, “As a result, Israel did not stop after its early military achievements, and was ‘dragged’ into a ground operation only after the political and diplomatic timetable prevented its effective completion.”
¹

I do not recall any analysis predicting this outcome, and we did not anticipate it. We were concerned mostly with the thousands of American citizens caught up by the war. We chartered commercial ships and used U.S. Navy vessels to help them escape from Lebanon. We also began talking early on about an international force in Lebanon that – assuming Hizballah would be weakened by this war – could step into the south and prevent Hizballah from reconquering territory near the Israeli border.

But as the weeks dragged on, we and the Europeans began to split from Israel over the desired consequences for Lebanon. We and the French, with the rest of the EU following, had built a strongly supportive relationship with Fouad Siniora, the prime minister who had assumed office after the Syrian departure and the May–June 2005 elections. While Rafik Hariri's son Saad led the Sunni community and the preeminent Future Party, it was widely agreed that an older and more experienced figure should lead the cabinet. Siniora had been a successful finance minister and was a skilled technocrat, and he had worked for Rafik Hariri in the past. In Washington, we viewed him as a talented official dedicated to Lebanese independence; only as time went by did I come to see the depths of his Arab nationalist beliefs and his deep hostility to Israel.

The difference between the United States and Israel was that we wanted to protect Siniora and his government; we did not want them, too, to be casualties of the war. Over time, the survival of Siniora and his government became the central European war aim and an increasingly important one of ours. But not
so for the Israelis. When we visited the region in mid-July, Livni said to me flatly that “[s]aving Siniora is not an Israeli goal. He is too weak. We don't care to save him.” Olmert told us that the main goals were clear: to hit Hizballah, to reduce their firepower, and to reduce the missile threat substantially. Saving Siniora was not on the list. Meanwhile, the conflict in Gaza continued: Israel was fighting on two fronts.

The Arab leaders had hoped for a quick knockout of Hizballah; now they were torn. “Lebanon is being destroyed,” one top Arab official told us glumly, but he had no advice to offer; his government did not want Hizballah to win. The president's view in late July was clear: This war was an Iranian move, using its surrogate Hizballah just as it was using surrogates in Iraq. We all agreed that a victory for Siniora and
for Lebanon was vital, and the way to get it was through victory by the IDF. In the end, we needed a more effective international force in the south of Lebanon and a more effective Lebanese Army, sharing the job of constraining Hizballah. We need shooters, not school-crossing guards, the president told visitors. A ceasefire today is a win for Hizballah, so we would oppose it. It was clear to him and to Rice that the European (and in public, at least, the Arab) demand for an immediate ceasefire was a mistake and that it would only benefit Hizballah. Give the IDF time to pound them. Then, at some point a bit down the road, organize a bridging force and then a permanent international force in south Lebanon. That would give the Israelis an excuse to stop fighting and would result in a long-term change on the ground.

On August 2, Olmert had told a reporter that “Israel will stop fighting when the international force will be present in the south of Lebanon.” He continued, “We can't stop before because if there will not be a presence of a very effective and robust military international force, Hezbollah will be there and we will have achieved nothing.”
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But securing that international force would not be easy. I recall a conversation, one of many, between Rice and
Prince Bandar, the long-time Saudi ambassador. She described our goals, and he asked why Hizballah would ever agree to them. International pressure, she answered. “Don't count on it,” Bandar replied.

A big international conference on the war in Lebanon was called for July 26 in Rome. On July 21, Rice held a press conference announcing her travel plans and said that “a ceasefire would be a false promise if it simply returns us to the status quo, allowing terrorists to launch attacks at the time and terms of their choosing and to threaten innocent people, Arab and Israeli, throughout the region. That would be a guarantee of future violence.”
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In preparation for the conference, we flew first to Beirut to see Siniora; the war was now in its third week. It was not safe to use the airport in Beirut, so Rice's plane landed in Cyprus and we jumped over to Beirut in a helicopter. The ancient military craft was deafeningly loud and leaked oil all over us, ruining suits, dresses, and hairdos as we flew the 125 miles. We rigged up plastic sheeting over Rice to protect her from the steady dripping. On the ground, Rice's motorcade rushed through the city at high and unsafe speeds, seeking to avoid possible ambushes or bombs.

At his beautiful offices in downtown Beirut, built by Rafik Hariri, Rice told Prime Minister Siniora that we opposed any return to the status quo ante and thus opposed an immediate ceasefire. No one has confidence in UNIFIL
, she added; the UN force in southern Lebanon had never actually constrained Hizballah, and a “UNIFIL Plus” would be no better – she would not support it. We need a bridging force that is serious, allowing a ceasefire to hold, and then a really capable force from NATO or the EU to put into southern Lebanon and along the Syria–Lebanon border (to block arms shipments going to Hizballah). Turkey, Jordan, and Egypt might be invited to join. If Siniora said yes, she would get a yes from Olmert at her next stop, the Rome conference could endorse the plan, and then we would go to New York to get it put into a Security Council resolution. All of that could be done in a week, Rice told him. The war would then be over. How do we start? You ask for this international force, she told Siniora.

He balked. Why do I have to ask for the force, he said; the Security Council should just impose it. Rice was startled; did he not want to take the lead in asserting Lebanese sovereignty? Siniora gulped. No force, no ceasefire? That's right, Rice replied. No one can protect South Lebanon without an international force now. The humanitarian situation will get worse. You could have a major accident by the IDF, she said. So, what you should do now is agree that the government of Lebanon is prepared to accept a robust but temporary humanitarian stabilization force of several thousand. I am going to Israel tomorrow and then to Rome. I want to be able to say some elements are agreed. The alternative is that the whole Rome conference goes nowhere. You need to do two things: Demand that Hizballah leave the border area and ask for this robust force.

It was quickly evident that Siniora would do no such thing. He was more afraid of Hizballah and of Syria than of Israel and the war. In the coming weeks, his refusal to assert Lebanon's rights as a state would make our task far harder: How could we keep insisting on conditions for the protection of Lebanese sovereignty if its own government hung back? How could we demand the stationing of European or other troops on the Lebanese borders with Syria and Israel if its prime minister was mumbling? In fact, he was mumbling about everything except Israel, which he denounced in propaganda terms that Israel's actual conduct of the war belied. The Beirut International Airport was closed, but Israel was careful not to damage it beyond making a runway temporarily unusable; it reopened within a week of the passage of Security Council Resolution 1701. Same for the port. Same for downtown Beirut. Driving near the port, we had seen a lighthouse whose beacon was shot out by an Israeli missile. But the missile had been guided to hit only the beacon, leaving the entire structure intact and obviously capable of quick restoration. Only the Dahiye neighborhood of Beirut, a southern suburb that is Hizballah's headquarters, was badly damaged.

This was not the war Siniora's speeches described – while he carefully elided any criticism of Syria or Hizballah and refused to make the demands that the world needed to hear if real sovereignty was to be gained. Siniora was an honest man and a patriot, beleaguered on all sides; in that sense, he was an attractive figure, but his tendency to shrink from making any demands of Hizballah or Syria and to mouth instead the oldest lines about Israel (“Lebanon will be the last Arab country to make peace with Israel” was an example) eventually lost him my sympathy.

He and Rice then argued about Sheba'a Farms, eight square miles close to the Syria–Lebanon–Israel tri-border area that Siniora insisted was Lebanese and had to be mentioned in any agreement. Rice resisted, replying that the UN maintains that this area is not part of Lebanon but rather of the Syrian Golan; the UN says Israel got entirely out of Lebanese territory in 2000. This is not the time to fight over that. Any progress now is likely to be credited to Hizballah and the war, not to you, she told him. Siniora was insistent and prepared to discuss the subject endlessly. It was as if this issue relieved him of the need to face the forces that were really tearing Lebanon apart; it provided a lawyerly refuge from reality. Rice's resistance was slowly eroded, partly because she was having trouble inducing Siniora to agree to anything at all. In this visit, she agreed to throw Sheba'a into the pot, and over time she became a strong advocate of pushing Israel to give the area to Lebanon – later adding another bone of contention with Olmert and
the Israelis. She summed up the situation for Siniora: If you do what I ask, you get a ceasefire, you have asserted your sovereignty, and you get some mention of Sheba'a.

We then flew to Israel, on the way working on a plan for ending the conflict. The ingredients: a prohibition on the importation of weapons by anyone but the Lebanese Army; a prohibition on militias, including Hizballah, starting near the Israeli border and over time working farther north; a new military force on the ground, with a UN mandate; a humanitarian program for Lebanon's south; and something about Sheba'a Farms. Rice was now fully on board with the inclusion of Sheba'a.

In Jerusalem, she told Olmert we did not want Lebanon to become yet another failed state. We need a big humanitarian program and an international force on the ground; it would not be a NATO force but would be really capable. The EU was not on board yet but we were working on that; Rice believed she could move the Europeans when she saw them in Rome, but this proved to be an illusion. In fact, despite efforts by Tony Blair to round up a force, EU nations were saying they would perhaps participate – but only
after
a ceasefire had been put in place. The fire brigade might arrive some day, it seemed, but not while there was an actual fire. NATO officials were saying they did not have the ability to help, and the United States would not participate in any force lest our troops become a Hizballah target, as they had been in the past. But the highest priority now is to strengthen the government of Lebanon so that it is not a failed state, Rice told the Israelis, and they need something about Sheba'a. A long argument about Sheba'a ensued, with the secretary buying and
now trying to sell in Jerusalem the Siniora line that including it was essential if we wished to weaken Hizballah. Olmert and his team bought the rest of the plan but said no on Sheba'a.