Decision Points

by George W. Bush

  I understood the risks, but I was convinced that a democratic Palestinian state and a new Palestinian leadership were the only way to forge a lasting peace. “My vision is two states, living side by side in peace and security,” I said in the Rose Garden on June 24, 2002. “There is simply no way to achieve that peace until all parties fight terror. I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror. I call upon them to build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty. If the Palestinian people actively pursue these goals, America and the world will actively support their efforts.”

  My support for a Palestinian state was overwhelmed by my call for new leadership. “Bush Demands Arafat’s Ouster,” one headline read. Shortly after the speech, Mother called. “How’s the first Jewish president doing?” she asked. I had a funny feeling she disagreed with my policy. That meant Dad probably did as well. I wasn’t surprised. While I considered Arafat a failed leader, many in the foreign policy world accepted the view that Arafat represented the best hope for peace. I laughed off Mother’s wisecrack, but I took her message to heart: I was in for some serious opposition.

  The day after the speech, I flew to Kananaskis, Canada, for the annual G-8 meeting. The summit was supposed to focus on foreign aid, but my speech on the Middle East was on everyone’s mind. I ran into Tony Blair in the gym the morning before the first meeting. “You’ve really kicked up quite a storm, George,” he said with a smile.

  Others were less accepting. Jacques Chirac, European Commission President Romano Prodi, and Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien clearly disapproved. By rejecting Arafat, the heralded Nobel Peace Prize winner, I had upended their worldview. I told them I was convinced Arafat would never prove a reliable partner for peace.

  Colin took the lead in hammering out a detailed plan to move from my speech to a Palestinian state. Called the Roadmap, it included three phases: First, Palestinians would stop terrorist attacks, fight corruption, reform their political system, and hold democratic elections. In return, Israel would withdraw from unauthorized settlements. In the second phase, the two sides would begin direct negotiations, leading to the creation of a provisional Palestinian state. In the third phase, the Palestinians and Israelis would resolve the most complicated issues, including the status of Jerusalem, the rights of Palestinian refugees, and permanent borders. Arab nations would support the negotiations and establish normal relations with Israel.

  With Tony Blair’s encouragement, I decided to announce the Roadmap in the spring of 2003, shortly after we removed Saddam Hussein from Iraq. Both the Israelis and Palestinians supported the plan. In early June, I met with Arab leaders in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, to stress my commitment to peace and urge them to stay engaged in the process. Then I traveled to Aqaba, Jordan, for a session with Palestinian and Israeli representatives.

  Given all the recent bloodshed, I expected a tense session. To my surprise, the mood was friendly and relaxed. It was clear many leaders knew one another from previous peace efforts. But I knew there was a lot of history to overcome. Mohammad Dahlan, the Palestinian security chief, liked to remind people where he had learned to speak fluent Hebrew: in the Israeli jails.

  The Palestinians had taken an important step by naming a prime minister to represent them at the summit, Mahmoud Abbas. Abbas was a friendly man who seemed to genuinely want peace. He was a little unsure of himself, partly because he hadn’t been elected and partly because he was trying to emerge from Arafat’s shadow. He said he was willing to confront the terrorists. But before he could turn his words into action, he needed money and reliable security forces.

  After the formal meetings, I invited Sharon and Abbas to take a walk on the lawn. Under the palm trees, I told them we had a historic opportunity for peace. Ariel Sharon made clear—at Aqaba and later in his landmark Herzliya speech—that he had abandoned the Greater Israel policy, an enormous breakthrough. “It is in Israel’s interest not to govern the Palestinians, but for the Palestinians to govern themselves in their own state,” he said at Aqaba. Abbas declared, “The armed intifada must end and we must use and resort to peaceful means in our quest to end the occupation and the suffering of Palestinians and Israelis.” We had a long way to go, but it was a hopeful moment in the Middle East.

  With Ariel Sharon (left) and Mahmoud Abbas in Aqaba, Jordan. White House/Eric Draper

  In April 2004, Ariel Sharon came to Washington to brief me on a historic decision: He planned to withdraw from Israel’s settlements in Gaza and parts of the northern West Bank. As a father of the settlement movement, it would be agonizing for him to tell Israeli families they had to leave their homes. But his bold move achieved two important goals: It extricated Israel from the costly occupation of Gaza. And by returning territory to Palestinian control, it served as a down payment on a future state.

  I was hopeful that Abbas would match Sharon’s tough decision with a positive step. But in September 2003, Prime Minister Abbas resigned after Arafat undermined him at every turn. Just over a year later, Arafat died. In January 2005, Palestinian voters went to the polls for the first time in a decade. Abbas campaigned on a platform to halt violence and resume progress toward a Palestinian state. He was elected in a landslide. He set to work developing the institutions of a democratic state and called for legislative elections.

  Abbas’s party, Fatah, was still tainted with the corruption of the Arafat era. The main alternative was Hamas, a terrorist organization that also had a well-organized political apparatus. The prospect of a Hamas victory understandably unnerved the Israelis.

  I supported the elections. America could not be in the position of endorsing elections only when we liked the projected outcome. I knew the election would be just one step on the journey to democracy. Whoever won would inherit the responsibilities of governing—building roads and schools, enforcing the rule of law, and developing the institutions of a civil society. If they performed well, they would be reelected. If not, the people would have a chance to change their minds. Whatever the outcome, free and fair elections reveal the truth.

  On January 25, 2006, the truth was that Palestinians were tired of Fatah’s corruption. Hamas won 74 of 132 seats. Some interpreted the results as a setback for peace. I wasn’t so sure. Hamas had run on a platform of clean government and efficient public services, not war with Israel.

  Hamas also benefited from Fatah’s poorly run campaign. Fatah often ran multiple candidates for the same seat, which split the party vote. The election made clear that Fatah had to modernize its party. It also forced a decision within Hamas: Would it fulfill its promise to govern as a legitimate party, or would it revert to violence?

  In March 2006, voters went to the polls for another election. This one was in Israel. Two months earlier, Ariel Sharon had suffered a debilitating stroke. I’ve always wondered what might have been possible if Ariel had continued to serve. He had established his credibility on security, he had the trust of the Israeli people, and I believe he could have been part of a historic peace.

  The vote for a new prime minister would be a test of Israeli commitment to the two-state solution. Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert campaigned hard in support of it. I had met Ehud on my 1998 trip to Israel, when he was mayor of Jerusalem. He was easygoing and confident, with a gregarious manner and a ready laugh. “The only solution now is two states—one Jewish, one Palestinian,” he said during the campaign. At one point, he suggested he would create a Palestinian state unilaterally if necessary. Israeli voters rewarded him at the polls.

  Olmert and Abbas, who retained the presidency despite Hamas’s victory in the legislative elections, quickly developed a working relationship. They found agreement on issues such as security checkpoints and the release of some prisoners. Then, in June 2007, the militant wing of Hamas intervened. In a familiar pattern in the ideological struggle, the extremists responded to the advance of freedom with violence. Hamas terrorists backed by Iran and Syria mounted a coup and seized control of Gaz
a. Fighters in black masks ransacked Fatah headquarters, threw party leaders off rooftops, and targeted moderate members of Hamas’s political wing.

  President Abbas responded by expelling Hamas from his cabinet and consolidating his authority on the West Bank. “It’s basically a coup d’etat against democracy itself,” Abbas told me on the phone. “Syria and Iran are trying to set the Middle East ablaze.” We redirected our economic and security assistance to Abbas’s government in the West Bank and supported an Israeli naval blockade of Gaza. While we sent humanitarian aid to prevent starvation, the people of Gaza would see a vivid contrast between their living conditions under Hamas and those under the democratic leader, Abbas. Over time, I was confident they would demand change.

  Condi and I talked about a way to restart momentum for a democratic Palestinian state. She suggested an international conference to lay the groundwork for negotiations between Abbas’s government and the Israelis. At first I was skeptical. The aftermath of a terrorist coup didn’t seem the most opportune time for a peace summit. But I came to like the idea. If wavering Palestinians could see that a state was a realistic possibility, they would have an incentive to reject violence and support reform.

  We scheduled the conference for November 2007 at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Condi and I persuaded fifteen Arab nations to send delegations, including Saudi Arabia. Investing Arab partners in the process early would boost Palestinians’ confidence and make it harder for them to later reject a peace deal, as Arafat had at Camp David.

  The key test of the conference was whether Abbas and Olmert could agree on a joint statement pledging to open negotiations. When we boarded the helicopter for the flight to Annapolis, I asked Condi for the statement. She said they had made a lot of progress but hadn’t finished. “You’re going to have to deliver this one yourself,” she said.

  I pulled Abbas and Olmert aside individually. I told them the summit would be viewed as a failure and embolden the extremists if we couldn’t agree on a statement. They instructed their negotiators to work with Condi. A few minutes before we were due in front of the cameras, she brought me the document. There was no time to enlarge the font, so I pulled out my reading glasses and read from the page: “We agree to immediately launch good-faith bilateral negotiations in order to conclude a peace treaty … and shall make every effort to conclude an agreement before the end of 2008.”

  With Ehud Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas. White House/Eric Draper

  The room broke into applause. Abbas and Olmert delivered speeches of their own. “Freedom is the single word that stands for the future of the Palestinians,” President Abbas said. “I believe that there is no path other than peace. … I believe it is time. We are ready,” Prime Minister Olmert said.

  It was a historic moment to see the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia listen respectfully to the prime minister of Israel and applaud his words. The Annapolis conference was hailed as a surprise success. “The cynicism about the Annapolis talks shouldn’t overshadow the hope that came out of the effort,” the Los Angeles Times wrote.

  Shortly after Annapolis, the two sides opened negotiations on a peace agreement, with Ahmed Qurei representing the Palestinians and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni representing the Israelis. Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, an economist with a Ph.D. from the University of Texas, began carrying out long-needed reforms in the Palestinian economy and security forces. We sent financial assistance and deployed a high-ranking general to help train the Palestinian security forces. The day he left Downing Street, Tony Blair accepted a post as special envoy to help the Palestinians build the institutions of a democratic state. It wasn’t glamorous work, but it was necessary. “If I win the Nobel Peace Prize,” Tony joked, “you will know I have failed.”

  The negotiations resolved some important issues, but it was clear that striking an agreement would require more involvement from the leaders. With my approval, Condi quietly oversaw a separate channel of talks directly between Abbas and Olmert. The dialogue culminated in a secret proposal from Olmert to Abbas. His offer would have returned the vast majority of the territory in the West Bank and Gaza to the Palestinians, accepted the construction of a tunnel connecting the two Palestinian territories, allowed a limited number of Palestinian refugees to return to Israel, established Jerusalem as a joint capital of both Israel and Palestine, and entrusted control of the holy sites to a panel of nonpolitical elders.

  We 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 development represented a realistic hope for peace. But once again, an outside event intervened. Olmert had been under investigation for his financial dealings when he was mayor of Jerusalem. By late summer, his political opponents had enough ammunition to bring him down. He 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. The talks broke off in the final weeks of my administration, after Israeli forces launched an offensive in Gaza in response to Hamas rocket attacks.

  While I was disappointed that the Israelis and Palestinians could not finalize an agreement, I was pleased with the progress we had made. Eight years earlier, I had taken office during a raging intifada, with Yasser Arafat running the Palestinian Authority, Israeli leaders committed to a Greater Israel policy, and Arab nations complaining from the sidelines. By the time I left, the Palestinians had a president and prime minister who rejected terrorism. The Israelis had withdrawn from some settlements and supported a two-state solution. And Arab nations were playing an active role in the peace process.

  The struggle in the Holy Land is no longer Palestinian versus Israeli, or Muslim versus Jew. It is between those who seek peace and extremists who promote terror. And there is consensus that democracy is the foundation on which to build a just and lasting peace. Realizing that vision will require courageous leadership from both sides and from the United States.

  Jacques Chirac and I didn’t agree on much. The French president opposed removing Saddam Hussein. He called Yasser Arafat a “man of courage.” At one meeting, he told me, “Ukraine is part of Russia.”

  So it came as quite a surprise when Jacques and I found an area of agreement at our meeting in Paris in early June 2004. Chirac brought up democracy in the Middle East, and I braced myself for another lecture. But he continued: “In this region, there are just two democracies. One is strong, Israel. The other is fragile, Lebanon.” I didn’t mention that he’d left out a new democracy, Iraq.

  He described Lebanon’s suffering under the occupation of Syria, which had tens of thousands of troops in the country, siphoned money from the economy, and strangled attempts to expand democracy. He suggested that we work together to stop Syria from dominating Lebanon. I immediately agreed. We decided to look for an opportunity to introduce a UN resolution.

  In August 2004, Lebanese President Emile Lahoud, a Syrian puppet, gave us our opening. He announced he would extend his term in office, a violation of the Lebanese constitution. Chirac and I cosponsored UN Resolution 1559, which protested Lahoud’s decision and demanded that Syria withdraw its forces. It passed on September 2, 2004.

  For six months, Syria responded with defiance. Then, on February 14, 2005, a huge car bomb in Beirut destroyed the motorcade of Rafiq Hariri, Lebanon’s pro-independence former prime minister. All the evidence pointed to a Syrian plot. We recalled our ambassador from Damascus and supported a UN investigation.

  A week after Hariri’s murder, Chirac and I had dinner in Brussels. We issued a joint statement calling the car bombing a “terrorist act” and reiterated our support for a “sovereign, independent, and democratic Lebanon.” Chirac and I rallied Arab nations to pressure Syrian President Basher Assad to comply with the UN resolution. On the one-month anniversary of
Hariri’s murder, nearly a million Lebanese people—a quarter of the nation’s population—turned out at Martyrs’ Square in Beirut to protest Syria’s occupation. People began to speak of a Cedar Revolution, named for the tree in the middle of Lebanon’s flag.

  The Syrians got the message. Under the combined pressure of the international community and the Lebanese people, Syrian occupation troops began to withdraw in late March. By the end of April, they were gone. “People used to be afraid to say anything here,” one Lebanese citizen told a reporter. “People seemed to be opening up more today, and feeling more comfortable to speak their mind.”

  That spring, the anti-Syrian March 14 Movement won a majority of seats in the parliament. Fouad Siniora, a close adviser to the slain Hariri, was named prime minister.

  The Cedar Revolution marked one of the most important successes of the freedom agenda. It took place in a multi-religious country with a Muslim majority. It happened with strong diplomatic pressure from the free world and with no American military involvement. The people of Lebanon achieved their independence for the simplest of reasons: They wanted to be free.

  The triumph of democracy in Lebanon came two months after the free elections in Iraq and the election of President Abbas in the Palestinian Territories. Never before had three Arab societies made so much progress toward democracy. Lebanon, Iraq, and Palestine had the potential to serve as the foundation of a free and peaceful region.

  “It’s strange for me to say it, but this process of change has started because of the American invasion of Iraq,” Lebanese political leader Walid Jumblatt said. “I was cynical about Iraq. But when I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, eight million of them, it was the start of a new Arab world. The Syrian people, the Egyptian people, all say that something is changing. The Berlin Wall has fallen. We can see it.”