Battle Ready (2004)

by Tom - Nf - Commanders Clancy

  The Palestinians had grown desperate. The Israelis had destroyed their headquarters in Gaza; Arafat was pinned down in Ramallah (the Israelis refused to let him go anywhere); things were coming apart; and they didn't know what the Israelis would do next. Was Sharon going to take out Arafat?

  The Israelis were also in a bind. Sharon had tried negotiating; and when that broke down, he'd tried a powerful military incursion. Now he seemed to have spent most of his options. He had to be asking himself, "What do I have to do to get this monkey off my back?" He was under a lot of political pressure, and hadn't produced anything. He was getting a lot of bad world press as a result of the heavy retaliatory attacks.

  So I think that for different reasons they were both desperate to get this thing restarted.

  The decision was made for me to return immediately after the holidays. But this time there would be a different approach: Our visit was to be short, only four days. We would convene the Trilateral Committee, and give them very specific tasks and goals to accomplish over the course of two to three weeks. During that time, Aaron would return to determine whether or not there was significant progress. If there was, I would return to move to the next phase.

  There were several reasons for this approach: First, we had to take the "theater" out of the meetings. With me out of the way, the temptation to waste time in heated rhetoric would be gone. Second, we had to force both sides to put more effort into bilateral communication and coordination, and not to rely on us to arbitrate every issue. Third, we wanted to take away our high profile, which drew press focus that was frequently disruptive. Fourth, low-key talks (unburdened of my continuous, direct involvement) might reduce the extremists' will--and opportunity--to use terrorist attacks to break up the talks.

  ROUND TWO

  Aaron and I left for Israel on January 2, 2002, and arrived on the third.

  As soon as we landed, we were briefed by the Israelis on an impending takedown operation: A ship in the Red Sea, the Karine A, had sailed from Iran with fifty tons of illegal weapons and ordnance ordered by the Palestinian Authority--a serious violation of the Oslo Agreement. Under that agreement, the Authority was permitted certain weapons and ordnance for their security. Though they actually had more weapons than the agreement permitted, the Israelis had looked the other way, as long as the excess weapons of the security forces were limited to small arms. But on the Karine A were Katyusha rockets, 120-millimeter mortars, and other high-caliber weapons systems, as well as explosives, mines, and demolitions. All this went way beyond Oslo.

  The Israelis were planning to grab the ship when it moved into international waters, which would be around noon the following day. (The operation had to take place in international waters, rather than, for example, Saudi territorial waters.)

  This news put me in a fury; it was a total surprise to me. No one had briefed us on it before we left the States, and now it threatened to derail our efforts before they even got off the ground. . . . Later, to my immense relief, both the Israelis and the Palestinians kept their cool and did not use the takedown as an excuse to back away from the Trilateral Committee meetings or our proposed plan. Still, my mission was once again off to a less-than-desirable start.

  The next morning at Prime Minister Sharon's farm in southern Israel, I received more information on the pending operation: It would occur at noon during my first scheduled meeting with Chairman Arafat in Ramallah. Before I left the farm, I asked Sharon if I could break the news of the Karine A to Arafat. I wanted to see the look on Arafat's face when I told him about it.

  "Yes," he said, "but don't do it before noon. That's when we're going to run the takedown."

  Later that morning, I met with the members of the Quad, who recommitted to working with us. Since they had significant influence on the Palestinians, they proved to be invaluable in facilitating progress on confidence-building actions during my return to the U.S.; their permanent representatives added greatly to the undertakings of our embassy and consulate.

  I FLEW to Ramallah, where I had a typically pleasant meeting with Arafat; he once again promised to take the actions necessary to implement the Tenet plan.

  Noon came and we began preparing for lunch.

  "Umm," I asked myself, "should I give him the word during lunch?" I thought on that. "No," I concluded, "I'll wait till afterward."

  About halfway through the meal, people all of a sudden started running around with panicked looks, cell phones were firing up, aides were whispering in Arafat's ear. I can understand enough Arabic to pick up on alarms and excitement. They had gotten word of the Karine A takedown.

  I watched Arafat across the table, trying to gauge his reaction. He seemed both confused and dismissive. (One of his defense mechanisms is to deny bad news and seem indifferent to it, both at the same time.)

  Finally, I asked him, "What's going on?"

  "It's nothing. Forget it."

  "Well," I said, "I know about the Karine A, I know about its cargo, and I know the Israelis were going to mount an operation to take it down. It looks like they've done that."

  "That is not true," he shot back. "This was not our ship. It's an Israeli plot. This is an Israeli setup."

  I gave him a skeptical smile and a shake of the head.

  But later, after the ship's master admitted Palestinian Authority involvement and the TV news was filled with pictures of the ship and the huge amount of weapons aboard, Arafat vowed to investigate. The investigation never happened.

  Meanwhile, I gave Arafat's top subordinates a warning. "Look," I told them, "you better think hard about how you want to respond to this thing. I'm not sure it will be a good idea to try to shift the blame . . . or claim an Israeli plot. There's evidence that leads right back to you. We and the Israelis know that Chairman Arafat made payments to the Iranians, bought the weapons, and chartered the ship; we know that the captain of the ship is a Palestinian Authority guy; and he is now spilling his guts."

  The situation was obviously looking bad for the Palestinians.

  At this point, Arafat dumped the blame on one of his own people. It was an obvious scam. The guy could never have put out that kind of money without Arafat knowing about it.

  There was no doubt that Arafat had his hand in the cookie jar big-time, and I was in fact just a little shocked that the Israelis didn't just say, "Screw the talks."

  So the Israelis really surprised me by ignoring Arafat's trickery. They just let it pass. They now had a tremendous military success, and they were proud of it--not only because it was a well-executed military operation but, more important, it put them at an advantage over him. "No, go on with the talks," they said. "We're not going to do anything." Yet every day they released more pictures of the Karine A and the weapons they found in its hold.

  For a change they had cleverly handled a potentially messy event. Usually they just went in there with brute force. This time, they put the Palestinians on the defensive in a really slick way.

  I spent the next day in Jerusalem and Jericho with Palestinian officials, urging them to take serious action against the extremists who were responsible for the violence and to make a genuine commitment in the Trilateral Committee to implementing the Tenet plan. As always, they seemed willing to move forward, but were unable to take real steps in that direction because authorization had not come from the top.

  On the sixth, at our initial Trilateral meeting of this session, I laid out our plan . . . pleasantly surprised at the absence of the usual theatrical outbursts. Everyone immediately accepted our proposals to work with each other and with our representatives on the ground to meet our timetables and goals. I began to think that our new approach to the talks might succeed. The takedown of the Karine A just may have had a sobering effect on everybody. My hopes were up.

  The next day, Aaron and I left for the States with renewed hope. I couldn't wait for the next trip.

  OVER THE next two months, my heart sank. The spiral of violence grew more horrific. The continuing violen
ce, together with Arafat's failure to do more to stop it, diminished President Bush's faith in the peace process. In his view, the Karine A affair had taken the credibility of Arafat to a new low. It was hard to see how he could rebuild it. Members of Arafat's own political movement and security forces were now taking part in the attacks against Israel.

  As a result, the plan for me to go back was put on hold.

  In February, a small measure of hope returned when Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia made a truly remarkable offer: If there was a peace agreement, the Saudis would recognize the State of Israel. Twenty-two other Arab nations supported this initiative.

  It started to get a momentum of its own; and the President decided that it represented an opening. In a Rose Garden speech on March 7, with Vice President Cheney and Secretary Powell by his side, he announced that I would return to the region for another attempt to get a cease-fire and implementation of the Tenet plan. During this time, the Vice President and Secretary Powell would also visit the region. The Vice President would travel to ten countries and link up with me at the end of his journey. This was a high-level effort to get things moving. I was scheduled to leave in mid-March.

  ROUND THREE

  We took off on March 13. As our Continental Airlines jet approached Tel Aviv, the passengers began to sing songs of peace. They knew I was on board; they were singing encouragement.

  Since our last trip, there had been an endless series of attacks and counterattacks. The Israelis had occupied most of the Palestinian territories and Arafat remained restricted to his Ramallah headquarters. The U.S. had pressed Sharon to withdraw his forces as I arrived, in order to establish a positive environment for my mission. One of my first pieces of business was to determine Sharon's reply.

  After I deplaned, I went through the now-standard briefings, then went immediately to see Prime Minister Sharon. He had positive news: He would withdraw his forces from Area A, the areas in Palestinian territory previously agreed to be under their security force control.87

  The good news meant the trip was off to a positive start, but I knew that gestures of goodwill didn't last long in this environment.

  The second day brought things back to reality as nine Palestinian kids were killed by a mine in Gaza near security positions protecting Israeli settlements. It was almost certainly planted by the Israelis to take out people trying to sneak up and fire onto these positions. What happened, I think, is the kids got in there to play, something went wrong, and the mine went off. Accusations flew: Was this a remotely detonated mine controlled by the IDF? If so, did the IDF deliberately kill the kids?

  Wherever truth lay, the incident gave the Palestinians a club to beat the Israelis with. Inevitably, the controversy made my mission harder.

  Yet in my meetings over the next few days with senior Israeli and Palestinianofficials and key members of the Trilateral Committee, I sensed a far more serious focus and readiness than ever before to make the process work. I had given all the participants homework in my absence, and they had actually done it: I had asked them to list what they could agree on and how they understood the agreement. And then I wanted them to list their disagreements, so we could focus on these.

  To my enormous surprise, they weren't that far apart. I'd expected a debate on every issue. I'd expected they'd be all over the map. But that didn't happen. They were actually pretty close. Right at the beginning, there was a lot they could work with.

  The first Trilateral Committee meetings were extremely encouraging. There were no political statements, heated accusations, or theatrics. Every member was ready to work. Each side developed a first cut at "a Tenet Work Plan," detailing their take on the measures and timelines needed for implementation.

  In subsequent meetings, we succeeded in dramatically reducing the differences. I was able to report to Washington that progress was exciting. If the attacks didn't derail us before we gained agreement, I felt we just might start the process I had been sent out to put in place.

  The third day brought the first terrorist attack. "Oh, shit," I thought. "Now the Israelis will hit back. And we can forget about progress."

  But the Israelis, surprisingly, held back. They did not retaliate. And that gave us a small opening. . . . I knew this would close if attacks continued.

  Vice President Cheney visited on the eighteenth and nineteenth of March. We had meetings with the Israeli leadership, but decided Cheney couldn't meet with Arafat until he had done more to curb terrorist attacks. I delivered the message to Arafat that Cheney was willing to meet with him in Cairo on as little as a week's notice, once we saw real progress in stopping the attacks.

  Arafat was disappointed that Cheney was avoiding him. He loves the big time. He loves the red carpet and the cameras. He loves to be out there on the world's stage meeting heads of state. And here he was, pinned down by Sharon in Ramallah for four long months. So when I offered him a chance to go to Cairo to meet Mubarak and Cheney, his face lit up. He'd be out from under this crushing restriction.

  We thought we might encourage Arafat to order real actions, such as arrests and weapons confiscation. We were wrong. In the next two days, suicide attacks killed a number of Israelis in a bus and street bombing. He had done nothing.

  In Washington, meanwhile, the President and Vice President made statements that I would be the one who determined if Arafat should get the meeting with Cheney. "Thanks a lot!" They both knew Sharon was set against the meeting; and there was a lot of pressure at home against a meeting with Arafat. So they pinned that rose on me.

  Okay, I'm a big boy. But I knew I had to be careful.

  I looked at Arafat and I told him what he had to do; and when it came down to the crunch, he didn't do it. On the twenty-second of March, I delivered the news to a sullen and disappointed Arafat that there would be no meeting.

  SOMEHOW, we managed to work through the attacks and setbacks, and the progress we were making encouraged everyone to refrain from retaliatory action. We were apparently very close to agreement.

  On the twenty-fourth, I made a decision I was later to regret. Since we were down to only a few differences, I wanted to close the deal. But it was clear time would run out on us eventually, as long as the attacks continued. So I decided to put forth my own proposals to expedite the process and resolve the remaining issues. When we started, I thought I had written in stone that there would never be "a Zinni plan." There were already enough plans out there. All the possible issues were already covered. Everyone knew what had to be done. The problem was doing it. I had always been convinced that the Israelis and Palestinians had to work that out themselves.

  Still, I couldn't resist the temptation to close the last gap.

  The plan, known as "the Zinni Bridging Proposals," was intended to do just that--bridge the remaining gaps and differences.

  I tried to make it absolutely clear that these proposals were not a make-or-break thing. "I'm putting suggestions on the table, not demands," I told everybody concerned. "You don't have to accept them. If you can't, there's no harm, no foul. This works for either side. We'll simply take them off the table, and then go back to working things out together."

  As we were initially presenting these proposals, preparations were under way for the annual Arab Summit, to be held in Beirut starting the twenty-fifth. Two big issues were then in the air. But the first--would Sharon allow Arafat to attend?--was dominating the media and political exchanges to the detriment of the second and far more important one--Crown Prince Abdullah's proposal to recognize the state of Israel. The proposal was to be formally presented at the summit; its acceptance would be a giant step.

  We were under a great deal of time pressure. If we could conclude an agreement before the summit, Arafat would be allowed to attend, make a speech, and be in his glory; and the summit's focus would be on Abdullah's historic proposal and not on the problems of Yasser Arafat.

  Meanwhile, the Israelis had a number of reservations to my bridging proposals, but promised to st
udy them and get me a quick response. After they looked at them (and it didn't take them long), they came up with thirteen objections--all of them serious. They didn't think they'd be able to accept them. "We're going to think about all this for a bit," they told me, "but it looks like we can't go for it." I waited. They thought about it; and some of Sharon's top advisers (including some hard-liners like Mofaz) went to the Prime Minister; the debate went on late into the night, but they finally came up with a position: "Even though we have serious objections, let's go with Zinni. Let's just accept his plan as is. Let's not be the ones accused of holding back peace. Let's move on this."

  On the twenty-sixth, the Israelis called to tell me they had accepted the proposal with no reservations. I was astonished. I had expected it would be really tough to get agreement from the Israelis, and they would take a hell of a long time to negotiate. But somehow they had found a way to accept the deal.

  The Palestinians had only three reservations. Two were minor administrative matters that we dealt with easily; but the third was a showstopper: We wanted to reestablish the security situation as it was prior to the beginning of the Second Intifada in September 2000; and the bridge proposal had a phased approach to this goal. The determination about whether or not to move into the subsequent phases depended upon performance measures monitored by teams we proposed, which would then be approved by the Trilateral Committee. The proposal additionally called for the establishing of a senior committee of leaders from the U.S., Israel, and the Palestinian Authority who would arbitrate any disagreements arising from this process. Finally, the two committees could agree to move ahead, even if some measures had not been achieved according to the timelines outlined, as long as good faith was shown.

  The Palestinians did not want to be held to measurable actions--such as monitored arrests and weapons confiscations--and this came through very clearly. Privately, some of them told me that Arafat would never order action against terrorist groups, regardless of what he told us. Without that order, no security force commander could take action.