Tested by Zion (59 page)

Third, the Palestinians were actually being told by some Israelis not to sign. Messages were coming to Erekat from people who claimed to speak for Livni, saying they should wait for her to become prime minister and then sign with her, not Olmert. Waiting might not only improve relations with her if she became prime minister but might also result in better terms being offered – or at least in a deal that an existing Israeli government could support.

The Palestinians did not believe they were missing an irreplaceable opportunity. Although they were told they would never again see this combination of Israeli prime minister and American president so keen on a deal, they had heard that before. In 2001, the American negotiator Dennis Ross said precisely the same thing to Arafat about the Barak government and Clinton: “I cannot tell you how many times I would say to him: ‘You're never going to have a government like this. You are never going to have another American President like this. If you don't do it now, and you lose the opportunity, you've lost it.’”
⁹
Yet Arafat had let the deal pass, Abbas had watched him do so, and now Abbas took the same action: inaction.

The Palestinians did not wish to sign but also wished to escape being blamed for saying no. They therefore said neither yes nor no, despite Erekat's later accounts on al Jazeera of their bravery: Instead, they played out the clock. They asked a few questions at their last meeting with Olmert and then claimed they never heard back from him, while he claimed that Abbas never gave him an answer to his proposal. As Condi Rice accurately concluded, “In the end, the Palestinians walked away from the negotiations.”
¹⁰

I thought then and still believe Abbas will never sign any deal. Ross had explained why in his view Arafat refused to sign in 2001:

I do, personally, feel that it is too hard for him to redefine himself. It is too hard for him to give up what had been the mythologies that had guided him. It is too hard, as a revolutionary – and that is what he is – to give up struggle, to give up claims, to give up grievance, because they have been the animating factors of his life. Arafat, in my judgment, is someone who was capable of launching this process, and maybe nobody else could have from the Palestinian side, but I do not believe he is capable of concluding the process.
¹¹

President Bush had often wondered whether Abbas could conclude the process, and we learned the answer the hard way. I did not think Abbas was a self-defined revolutionary, but I thought that like Arafat, he would not be brave enough to abandon the pose of “resistance.” He knew he would be accused of treason; he knew he would face physical risks; he knew he would be sowing the whirlwind if he signed. He was a nice and mild man and not a hero, I thought, and he would not lead Palestinians to their promised land. He might be Aaron, but he was neither Moses nor Joshua.

In his memoir, President Bush discusses briefly a scenario with which I was not familiar. After Olmert had made his offer to Abbas, the president writes that “[w]e devised a process to turn the private offer into a public agreement. Olmert would travel to Washington and deposit his proposal with me. Abbas would announce that the plan was in line with Palestinian interests. I would call the leaders together to finalize the deal.” The plan failed, Bush continued, because Olmert “was forced to announce his resignation in September. Abbas didn't want to make an agreement with a prime minister on his way out of office.”
¹²

That account suggests that this process was discussed prior to Olmert's August announcement that he intended to resign. Perhaps he was to “deposit” his proposal with Bush in September around the time of the UN General Assembly. That Olmert wanted to continue trying to close a deal even after announcing his resignation, and even after resigning, is not a surprise. But Israeli officials tell me they knew of no such “deposit” plan, which was in a sense entirely superfluous: If Abbas was willing to agree to Olmert's proposals, he could simply have said “yes” without the further drama. And there was a danger here for the Israelis. Olmert's proposals were secret back then and remained secret until he revealed them months after leaving office, by which time they clearly did not bind the successor government in Israel. Had he
“deposited” them with the White House, they would have had a more official and more lasting character, despite his own status as a caretaker when they were made and despite their refusal by Abbas.

In any event, Abbas refused to go along; he never said yes to anything Olmert proposed. The Palestinian strategy may have saved Abbas from some criticism, but it was a huge strategic blunder that saved Israel from endless criticism. Had Abbas accepted the terms that Olmert proposed, Olmert would have had to present them to his cabinet and then the Knesset. Legally, it might have been ruled that he had no right to sign such an important agreement or present such terms to Abbas or to the Americans. This ruling might have made them null and void constitutionally in Israel but would itself have brought enormous criticism on Israel for saying no to peace. Worse yet from this perspective, the cabinet or Knesset might well have rejected the agreement because Olmert was extremely unpopular and the conditions themselves might not have passed muster. Livni, for example, despite messages that may have been telling the Palestinians they would get some sort of deal from her, actually opposed the return of a single refugee; on this, she had a far tougher position than Olmert. Could she have voted for the Olmert deal? And what of security? How could Israeli politicians vote for a deal that had absolutely no security content, in which they were giving up the West Bank without a single guarantee? Could the IDF itself have said it supported such a deal?

Consider the situation had Israel rejected the deal: It would have been said throughout the world that Israel rejected peace, that its own prime minister (for Olmert would be lionized far and wide across the globe as a visionary) had offered or signed an agreement only to find that Israelis preferred territory and conflict. The political and public relations disaster would have been very great, which was why I had all along feared that Olmert's efforts for a deal were increasing as his legitimacy and time left in office steadily diminished. A last-minute deal would, I thought, not bring peace closer. The proposals did not even seem to mention the word “Gaza” and proposed no way of dealing with the Hamas sheikdom there. They would be met with a few weeks of self-congratulation and then break down because they could not be implemented. And another failed agreement was the last thing we needed.

All this was on my mind and that of at least some of those near the top of the Israeli government that day in November when Olmert made his last visit to the White House. It was three days before the last Thanksgiving of the Bush administration and a year since the Annapolis Conference. This final session between Bush and Olmert ended up as the final blow-up between Rice and Olmert.

I continue to seek an agreement this year, Olmert began. I am not campaigning for anything so I am free to keep trying. The president was supportive but skeptical: I’d love to see you hit the long ball, he replied, but why would
Abbas negotiate with you? You'll be out soon, just like me. You will, Olmert responded, and the security concerns we have in any agreement are very serious. That's why I have asked Condi that you not give the new administration any document on our security that we haven't seen.

This was a clear reference to the “Jones Report
,” the document the Israelis had feared for months. They still worried that Gen. Jones would compile American assessments of Israel's security needs that would be very far from Israel's own and that these would guide the new Obama team. The president asked what document Olmert was talking about: Was this just Jones reporting to Condi about what he's done? Yes, Olmert said, it's about the recommendations Jones will make. We don't even know if he'll make any recommendations, Condi now said, and if he does, they are just for me.

I don't remember agreeing to this, the president commented, and then asked when he had. Wow, I thought; this was dangerous for Rice. Would the president really now side with Olmert and say that he wanted no such document to be created? Hadley too saw the danger and jumped in to save her, telling the president that this document was part of a long dialogue with Israelis about assurances related to the negotiating process; Hadley's language was vague and bureaucratic and meant to be reassuring. But Rice was angry and said Jones's recommendations to her need not be negotiated with the State of Israel. In principle, I will not negotiate his recommendations with you, she told Olmert, and I will or won't pass them on as I decide.

Olmert now turned from Condi to the president and said the two of them had explicitly agreed there would be no such document assessing all of Israel's security arguments. I don't remember that, the president told Olmert, but anyway what's the big deal? What's the worry? Jones does some work and makes recommendations.

Now Olmert was worked up too. What if there is no agreement with the Palestinians, he said, and what is left as the legacy of your administration on Israeli security is a document that has not even been discussed with us? Well, it has been discussed with you, Rice shot back, and in multiple sessions. Jones works for me, and he has worked with Barak. No, Olmert replied, Barak does not know Jones's views. That is simply not true, Rice answered. I thought to myself, how often has this happened in the Oval Office – a secretary of state tells a foreign leader, in his presence and that of the president, that what he is saying is simply not true? Jones has no conclusions yet, Rice continued, but in principle he cannot negotiate his conclusions with you. Look, Olmert now said, you want an agreement; the ability of the next government to get an agreement will depend on this, on whether there are disputes between you and us on the key security issues. The legacy of this administration on security issues shouldn't be a dispute between the United States and Israel. The president now closed off the argument, saying he knew nothing about this Jones document. I had no clue about this argument, he said, and I don't want him to write something I don't agree with. I have your eight points (the ones he had gotten from Barak when visiting Israel) and I have agreed to them.

This was the only time I recalled the president saying he agreed to the eight points, but in this argument, both Olmert and Rice were right. Olmert was correct in worrying about a report in the very last days of the Bush administration that might reflect Jones's views but not those of the president and might become a source of argument between the United States and Israel. Rice was correct in insisting that she would not negotiate an internal document like that, a report from a subordinate to her, with the Israelis. Where she was wrong was in letting this argument drag on and then having it out in the Oval Office. The scene was nevertheless fitting: It exposed all the tensions that had existed since the Second Lebanon War at the very last opportunity to do so. The final Oval Office meeting was perfect, I thought: Olmert and Rice snarling at each other, Hadley trying to bridge the gap, the president basically siding with the Israelis.

While the discussion on November 24 turned on what would be passed on to the next administration two months later, the ceasefire between Hamas and Israel was coming to an end in just weeks – on December 18. On December 19, Hamas declared the truce or “tahdiya” over, and rocket fire out of Gaza was intensified on December 24 – 88 rockets were fired into Israel. On Christmas Day, they fired 44 more. Beginning December 27, the Israelis struck back with “Operation Cast Lead
.”

The numbers of rockets and mortar fire from Gaza into Israel tell the tale of a provocation no Israeli government could allow: After only 2 incidents in October, Hamas and its allies fired 193 rockets and mortars in November – and then 602 in December. Nor was this increase only due to the ending of the truce: There was an intensification of rocket fire before that date. The Israelis had been warning us for a year that a war in Gaza was coming; now it was here. Perhaps Hamas calculated that the intensification of rocket fire before the end of the truce would force Israel into renewing it on better terms; perhaps they preferred fighting because they were, after all, a “resistance” organization and believed that they had little to gain from living endlessly under the Israeli- and Egyptian-imposed closed-border regime.

“Cast Lead” began with air strikes, which were followed by a ground incursion on January 3. By the middle of January, Israeli air strikes and ground operations in Gaza had killed hundreds of fighters from Hamas and other terrorist groups and caused large-scale damage to infrastructure and civilian life. Although roughly 750 rockets and mortars were fired into Israel during the war, Israeli battle casualties were light. The war lasted until January 17, when Israel declared a unilateral ceasefire; the following day, Hamas declared a one-week ceasefire, which became permanent when Israeli forces completed their withdrawal from Gaza on January 21, the day after George W. Bush left office.

The war exacerbated the tensions between Rice and
Israel. Shortly after “Cast Lead” began, the secretary began to talk with Livni about it and the tone
of the conversations was negative; the downward spiral was continuing. On the last day of the year, Rice told Livni she was working with the Arab League on a statement criticizing “illegal trade” to Gaza, which would help both Egyptian and Israeli efforts to stop arms smuggling. We are doing this for you, Rice said; you asked for this help. I did not, Livni answered. Well, Tourgeman asked for it, Rice said, which as far as I knew was simply inaccurate. Anyway, Rice had continued, you need to say something positive about the Arab League. Livni's back was now up, and she replied that she did not “need to”; she would if it was in Israel's interest and she would make that decision. Rice was now angry as well and said Livni could harm U.S.-Israel relations if there were no positive response. Livni was shocked by the threat and immediately called Olmert to report it and figure out how to protect U.S.-Israel relations during the conflict. The conversation between Rice and
Livni shows not only the unfortunate tone of the contacts by that point but also that newspaper accounts of the sweet, sisterly relationship between Rice and Livni – who were said to have “bonded” – were off the mark.