Tested by Zion (60 page)

The central issue between Rice and the Israelis was the possible role of the United Nations in bringing the Gaza war to an end. Rice favored its involvement; Olmert resisted. On January 1, Tourgeman called me to say that Olmert remained firm; the Security Council
was not an acceptable forum. The Israelis had heard from Rice that time was running out and they had only a few days, at most a week, more before the Security Council would demand a halt to fighting in Gaza. Olmert bristled: Lebanon was at least a country! Now the UN will tell us not to fight a terrorist group! There was a 50-minute call between Rice and Olmert at 3:00 am Israeli time, in which Olmert told her he would not accept a resolution demanding a halt to Israeli action in Gaza. Well, it's going to happen, Rice replied. So veto it, Olmert told her. We can't, Rice answered; we are fighting terror in the whole region, and we have the Iraqi elections coming. The latter was a particularly weak argument because those elections were scheduled for October, 10 months away. Olmert suggested the war on terror worked the other way: A defeat for Hamas strengthens moderates and weakens radicals in the whole region. No, Rice said; one mistake like Qana and the whole region will be turned upside down. Qana again, I thought as Tourgeman recounted the conversation; Rice had been as deeply burned by that day as I thought.

The following day, January 2, Tourgeman and
Hadley spoke, and Olmert picked up an extension and joined the call. Israel will not accept a Security Council resolution that puts Israel and a terrorist organization on the same level, he told Hadley. You are at the end of the administration; this is the last Security Council resolution of your eight years, and it should not rescue Hamas. We are fighting terror and I can't comprehend that the United States, through the secretary of state, would stop me. Hadley responded that this entire conversation was strange to him. I am surprised, he told Olmert; I thought we
all agreed to stay out of the UN. Unless something has changed, we are trying to keep this
out
of the Security Council. The president has clear views.

This was a reasonably shocking conversation for me because it seemed the president had expressed those “clear views” to Hadley, but the secretary was pursuing a different policy. Hanging up the phone, Hadley told me the president does not want a deal at the United Nations. The president is comfortable with a veto, he said, though he added that Condi was not. Condi then called in, to affirm that she did
not
want to be forced into a veto. I’m not anxious to go to the Security Council at all, she said, but we are going to be dragged there. I need to manage the Security Council, she continued, and the United States can't stand between the Israelis and the Council. Hadley told her the president is comfortable vetoing if necessary. But that will weaken our Arab allies, Rice replied; I will explain it to him.

This was a classic conversation in several ways. It showed first that Hadley and
I had been kept out of the loop as to what Rice and
State were doing in the UN; our information came from the Israelis, not from our own diplomats. Hadley had thought we were all opposed to action at the UN and had candidly told the Israelis that. Second was Rice's matter-of-fact statement that we could not stand between the Security Council and
the Israelis. We certainly could – and we did, every time we vetoed a resolution. It was a matter of will, and although Bush had not lost his, Condi's was weakening. Put another way, Bush was perfectly happy to leave office vetoing a resolution against Israel, while Rice was not and sought an agreement with the Europeans and Arab states. Finally, Rice's statement that a veto would “weaken the moderate Arabs” was a rote repetition of the line NEA had been peddling for years. Why would an Israeli defeat of Hamas weaken moderate Arabs, after all, when Hamas was their enemy?

The next few days brought an intricate series of negotiations among us, the French, the Israelis, and the Egyptians. Our discussions centered on actions that Egypt might take to prevent smuggling of weapons into Gaza. If Egypt would establish a credible mechanism to stop the arms smuggling, Israel would have a basis to stop the war. French President Sarkozy inserted himself into the negotiations by visiting Egypt and
Israel, and he then told us he thought he could get a deal between Egypt and Israel. Even if a deal were not yet done, if there was a serious negotiation, Sarkozy would act to prevent the Security Council from meeting. The presidency of the Security Council rotates, and France held it in January 2009.

Exactly what Sarkozy was doing was never clear to us because the French gave different versions to everyone with whom they spoke. Bush's own views were clear: On January 6, he spoke again to Chancellor Merkel and
repeated the argument Olmert had used with Hadley. Israel has a right to defend herself, he told her, and the entire war on terror would be harmed if the UN were to
adopt a resolution that expressed moral equivalency between a member state and a terrorist group. But, he told her, Israel could stop fighting if we could get a good agreement on smuggling, and that's what we are trying to do with the Egyptians. Condi is going up to New York, he concluded. In fact, not only Condi but also the French and British foreign ministers, Bernard Kouchner and David Miliband, headed for New York. The three began to meet at the UN, for hours each day, disconnected it seemed from their own capitals. Within hours of the Bush-Merkel conversation, we learned from the Israelis that Rice had just called Olmert and asked him to declare an immediate ceasefire. That was not at all what the president was saying. At one point, Hadley instructed me to call the Israelis and make clear what the president's views were, in effect telling me to contradict the secretary of state. I did so, shaking my head at where we had ended up in this last month in office.

Sarkozy and
his national security advisor, Jean-David Levitte, were telling us they were now inches from a deal. On January 5, Sarkozy had visited Egypt and then Israel, and then returned to Egypt once again. Here was the plan, Levitte informed us: On January 6, Sarkozy and President Mubarak would hold a news conference at which Mubarak would deliver some carefully negotiated language about stopping arms smuggling. We knew Levitte well because he had been the French ambassador to the United Nations in 2001 and 2002, and then France's ambassador in Washington until 2007, and we trusted him. The idea was simple: A mechanism would be established on the Egyptian side of the border to stop the smuggling; European help and even forces on the ground would be available to make it work. The Netherlands and Denmark actually did offer to provide troops for such a border force. Once the mechanism was agreed, Israel would declare a ceasefire.
¹³

The press conference did indeed take place, but Mubarak did not say what was expected; instead, he called only for an immediate ceasefire. The fine words about stopping smuggling were spoken – but only by Sarkozy. Instead of establishing a mechanism first, the ceasefire – and opening of the border crossings – would come first. This was not at all what Sarkozy had discussed when in Israel, nor was it what Levitte had discussed with me. It was perhaps the reaction to carnage that day when Israeli shells had killed dozens of Palestinians near a UN school.

But negotiations were continuing and Olmert spoke to Sarkozy again on Wednesday, January 7. Sarkozy again promised to block any action in the UN Security Council. Olmert dispatched a senior military figure, Gen. Amos Gilad, to Egypt to try to elicit a serious commitment against smuggling on which Israel could rely – and then it could declare a halt to the war. Hadley told me he had spoken to Condi, who would stay up in New York. Olmert needs to just declare victory, Hadley said, and call the president and say he's stopping – right now. I knew that was Rice's position, and it seemed Hadley was now adopting it rather than trying to force Rice back into line with the president's views. Condi says the situation will come unstuck, Hadley told me, at Friday prayers when so many crowds will gather all across the Middle East. Of course,
Friday prayers in the Middle East occurred before the business day began in New York, and that meant the ceasefire would have to come not on Friday but on Thursday – the following day, Thursday, January 8. I thought this was another classic NEA line now being swallowed whole; I had heard the “Friday prayers” threat so many times I could not count them.

On Thursday, Condi told us she wanted a Security Council
resolution, so her position had officially changed from trying to resist one to trying to pass one. But the Israelis were still resisting and told us the French were too. According to the Israelis, Paris was saying a resolution could be resisted if only the United States would join them and remain firm. France and the United States were now in the same boat in at least one sense: There appeared to be one policy in their capitals, coming from their presidents, and another coming from their foreign ministers camped at the UN in New York. Rice and
Olmert spoke that day, and the Israelis described the conversation as stormy. Tourgeman told us the French cannot understand why United States is pushing for a resolution; why isn't the United States supporting a delay? Rice called Olmert a second time and once again asked for a halt to all military action. She told Olmert there was no draft resolution circulating, which was inaccurate – the staff of our mission to the UN had just given one to the staff of the Israeli mission. Now the Israelis felt they were being deliberately misled. What was in the draft? Did it meet the president's requirement that it not suggest a moral equivalency between Israel and Hamas? I did not know because I hadn't seen it yet; we in the NSC had not been given a draft. Hadley told me he had spoken with Condi and she said the draft language was fine but, all things considered, that was not very reassuring.

It was important, Hadley and
I agreed, that we make sure we know exactly what the French are doing, so we called Levitte. We needed to get the French view from the French, not via Israel. We put together a conference call with both Levitte and Tourgeman. Hadley told them we all agreed on delay in New York – but we all knew that at that moment Condi was not backing delay. She was pressing for a resolution to be adopted fast, as was Kouchner. There is a revolt of the foreign ministers, Levitte joked – but it was a perfectly accurate description. Hadley had told Rice of the call and halfway through she joined it. There is an agreed text now, she said, and we can't delay any more. An agreed text? Agreed by whom? Hadley asked. Have the Israelis seen it? No, Condi admitted. My own sources at the UN had told me the Arab states had gotten the text and indeed had made some edits in it, but like the Israelis, we in the White House had not seen it yet.

What was going on in New York? Eliot Cohen, counselor to the State Department, described the scene this way: “We were all exhausted. We had not planned on being there for several days. Those things count. We kept on staying.…The Arabs were putting a lot of pressure on us. In retrospect it might have made more sense to back off and let our UN mission handle it.”
¹⁴

Meanwhile, Kouchner and Miliband put on additional pressure, and at least in the case of Kouchner he did so without coordinating his actions with his own capital. Tourgeman now called back to say Olmert had just spoken with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and had called the text shameful, insulting, and a victory for terrorism. Why? It did not call for the release of Gilad Shalit or for an end to terrorism against Israel and Israelis. It did not even mention Hamas, much less condemn it, condemn its weapons smuggling, or condemn the thousands of rockets and mortars fired into Israel. It called Gaza occupied territory and made no reference to the Israeli pullout of all bases and settlements in 2005. It called for opening all the passages into Gaza, a key Hamas goal. Finally, by encouraging “intra-Palestinian reconciliation,” it called for reconciliation between the PA and a terrorist group, Hamas.

Here is the text of Resolution 1860
, as adopted on January 8, 2009:

1. Stresses
   the urgency of and
   calls for
   an immediate, durable and fully respected ceasefire, leading to the full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza;
   
2. Calls for
   the unimpeded provision and distribution throughout Gaza of humanitarian assistance, including of food, fuel and medical treatment;
   
3. Welcomes
   the initiatives aimed at creating and opening humanitarian corridors and other mechanisms for the sustained delivery of humanitarian aid;
   
4. Calls on
   Member States to support international efforts to alleviate the humanitarian and economic situation in Gaza, including through urgently needed additional contributions to UNRWA and through the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee;
   
5. Condemns
   all violence and hostilities directed against civilians and all acts of terrorism;
   
6. Calls upon
   Member States to intensify efforts to provide arrangements and guarantees in Gaza in order to sustain a durable ceasefire and calm, including to prevent illicit trafficking in arms and ammunition and to ensure the sustained reopening of the crossing points on the basis of the 2005 Agreement on Movement and Access between the Palestinian Authority and Israel; and in this regard,
   welcomes
   the Egyptian initiative, and other regional and international efforts that are under way;
   
7. Encourages
   tangible steps towards intra-Palestinian reconciliation including in support of mediation efforts of Egypt and the League of Arab States as expressed in the 26 November 2008 resolution, and consistent with Security Council resolution 1850 (2008) and other relevant resolutions;
   
8. Calls for
   renewed and urgent efforts by the parties and the international community to achieve a comprehensive peace based on the vision of a region where two democratic States, Israel and Palestine, live side by side in peace with secure and recognized borders, as envisaged in Security Council resolution 1850 (2008), and recalls also the importance of the Arab Peace Initiative;
   
9. Welcomes
   the Quartet's consideration, in consultation with the parties, of an international meeting in Moscow in 2009;
   
10. Decides
    to remain seized of the matter.