by Tom Clancy
I spent the second day with the Palestinians. Since it was the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, my meetings took place in the evening, beginning with the Iftar meal[86] with Chairman Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian leadership in the West Bank town of Ramallah, where the Palestinian Authority had one of their headquarters (called “the Muqatta’a”; their official seat of government was in Gaza).
On the way there, our consular people took me on a tour of the Israeli settlement areas in the West Bank, where, contrary to agreements, significant settlement expansion was going on. During the tour, we passed through Israeli security checkpoints and witnessed the frustrating and humiliating process Palestinians had to endure in order to travel from place to place.
In our talks the day before, the Israelis had acknowledged that these checkpoints caused problems, but they were necessary to prevent attacks (such as the Afula incident). It was obviously a difficult situation. Young soldiers who could not compromise on security subjected Palestinians to time-consuming and humiliating security procedures. I was told checkpoint stories of the birth of babies, of people dying unable to reach hospitals in time, of senior Palestinian officials held up and embarrassed, and of many other incidents that inflamed the people.
My meetings with Arafat were cordial. He has always been hospitable, and very expressive, with abundant assurances of cooperation (always echoed by the people around him).
By then, meeting with Arabs came easy to me; I was comfortable with their ways. And though I didn’t yet know these Palestinians very well, they certainly knew me. Arafat had already talked with President Mubarak, King Abdullah, and the other major Arab leaders, all of whom had advised cooperation. “They all told me that you are a guy I could trust,” Arafat explained, “who can help me do what I want to do.” He strongly stressed that, and assured me that this was marvelous. “I’m totally committed to the success of your mission,” he went on to tell me. And when I brought up the Trilateral Committee as a venue for further discussion, he went along with that as well, though he added that he wanted to open up discussions in areas other than security — a far more loaded issue than it might have seemed.
On the whole, he was always agreeable, always quick to promise cooperation, but not so quick to deliver on his promises.
It became increasingly evident to me, as Yasser Arafat and I met again and again over the next weeks and months, that this wily old revolutionary could never really bring himself to make the compromises that would lead to a lasting resolution of the conflict. He could never look at concluding a deal that risked his own place in history and his personal legacy. He saw himself as the leader who had never given an inch in compromise, and this was more important to him than concluding and implementing an agreement that caused him to make serious compromises. He’s at the point in his life where he clearly sees his own mortality, and he wants to go out as defiant. “I’m the only Arab general that’s undefeated,” he said to me at one point. “You’re not going to walk behind my funeral like with Sadat and my partner Rabin.”
I began to realize toward the end of my piece of the process that he wasn’t the guy who could bring home the bacon. He wasn’t going to take the risks for peace that Sadat, Rabin, Hussein, Begin, and Barak did. Not when his own legacy and history were at stake and he saw their fate.
Of course he knew he would have to make compromises. And Barak put on the table at Camp David a lot of compromises. The deal might not have been perfect, and he probably could have negotiated a better one; but he didn’t seem to try. He walked out.
I once asked Arafat about that. “Were you close to a deal at Camp David?”
“Oh, yes, very close.”
There are a lot of versions about what happened at Camp David or Taba. Was the deal on the table good or bad? Could it have been further negotiated? I don’t know. Still, I could never fathom why the process ended so abruptly. When you’re close or at least have a process going in the right direction, why do you cut it off?
After my talk with Arafat, I met privately with other Palestinian leaders, including Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), the then number two man and later Prime Minister; Ahmed Qurei (Abu Ala’a), the Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council and Abu Mazen’s successor as Prime Minister; and Sa’eb Erekat, the Palestinian Authority’s Chief Negotiator.
Abu Mazen had been involved in the process for a long time, did not agree with Arafat on many issues, was opposed to the Intifada, and clearly saw what had to be done on the ground pretty much the way we did. He wanted to move to negotiations. But it was clear that he didn’t have any real power; his position as number two didn’t give him much clout. He was not living as the number two guy.
The pecking order was always fuzzy after Arafat. Like every revolutionary leader, he spread out the guns and the authority; he didn’t let anybody who could challenge him have real power. Abu Mazen had stature; he openly disagreed with a lot of the steps Arafat had taken; but there was nothing behind him — no guns, no money, no popular support, no political clout. Yet he said the right things, I thought he meant them, and he had a tremendous reputation; and I thought, “Jeez, too bad this guy doesn’t have a lot more. He makes sense. He’s committed. He’s a realist.”
I had the same impression of Abu Ala’a, the Speaker of the Assembly. Abu Mazen did not last long as Prime Minister. And Abu Ala’a has not had much greater success.
Sa’eb Erekat is the mayor of Jericho — heavyset, balding, highly intelligent, easy to like. Sa’eb is constantly talking. A collector of arguments, he loves to debate (he’s on CNN all the time). He’s been in this process a long time, and by all accounts he is a very honest man. But I wonder if he hasn’t been in the process too long; maybe he’s too caught up in process. He and I got along very well, and I spent a lot of time with him and with his wonderful family at Jericho. (I enjoyed dinner at his home.)
I also got to know the security chiefs from the West Bank and Gaza, Jabril Rajoub and Mohamed Dahlan. These were practical men who could take the security steps necessary IF they were given the authority and backing from the top. Unfortunately, that would not happen.
None of these leaders had real power. Arafat called the game.
From these meetings, I gathered that the Palestinians’ priority was political issues, and their chief concern: Would the Israelis really make political concessions down the road once the security issues were resolved?
I also gathered that there wasn’t much stomach from these leaders to take on the extremists who were perpetrating the horrific suicide attacks. They wanted the Israelis to “end the occupation” and move out of their areas, and then they would deal with the extremists… but through negotiations rather than confrontation.
According to the Tenet/Mitchell plans, taking action against the extremists was the necessary condition for progress on the later steps leading to Palestinian statehood. Failure to take action would thus violate the principles of Tenet/Mitchell that Arafat claimed to have accepted.
For the Israelis, of course, this was an unacceptable risk, not only militarily but politically. No Israeli leader wants to be seen to yield on a point of security without unbreakable guarantees.
All of these roadblocks and potential roadblocks notwithstanding, by the end of the second day I was cautiously optimistic. My personal connections with both sides were good; they’d both be easy to talk to; yet I had no illusions about the probability of success. Each side viewed the problems differently. Worse, they each saw a different path to resolving them.
Bill Burns left on the third day. I was on my own.
We held our first Trilateral Committee meeting shortly after he left. To avoid press and security problems, we held back our announcement of time and place until the last minute for this and all our later meetings.
The crews from each side were the security chiefs from the various Palestinian military forces and their intelligence services and from the Israeli Defense Force and their intelligence representatives. These
old rivals were all pros, who knew each other well and seemed to share mutual respect. I didn’t realize how well they all knew each other until they all gathered at our first meeting place. It was all hugs and kisses there, cheery jokes, questions about families, good fellowship.
And then they sat down and started screaming.
At breaks, they’d return to good fellowship.
The screaming bothered me. It’s no way to conduct a negotiation. But there seemed to be a need to vent, and I let it go for the first couple of meetings; after that, I demanded serious discussion and constructive sessions.
Even after they quieted down, results from these initial sessions were mixed. Both sides were reluctant to get serious; for every small step forward we had to suffer through hours of screaming recriminations and accusations; and I left meetings exhausted and frustrated. Yet, with a few exceptions, I came to like these negotiators. They could make it happen, I realized, if they had the support and authority from their political masters. I had to get that. Meanwhile, I needed them to do the painfully difficult work of hammering out the detailed measures that had to be accomplished on the ground.
We made a little progress — at least on one side. The Israelis eased up on their insistence on seven days without attacks and one hundred percent results. They now asked for forty-eight hours of quiet and one hundred percent effort.
But the Palestinians still seemed reluctant to act against the terrorists and take real action (arrests, weapons confiscation, etc.). Despite Arafat’s promise to cooperate, no serious orders to act had been given to his security forces (they privately acknowledged this to me). This was not encouraging. Without Palestinian action against the terrorists, there would be no cease-fire. And without a cease-fire, we could not move forward.
Even more discouraging, our intelligence and Israeli actions indicated that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad were stepping up suicide bombing attacks in an effort to derail our mission.
The Israelis actually had great success blocking these attacks, but it was impossible to stop them all. For every ten attempts they foiled or countered, one got through. About every third day during this initial trip, a suicide attack would set back our progress and bring on retaliation attacks, sometimes with tragic collateral casualties, by the Israelis. It was obvious that these attacks would eventually cause the process to collapse. I felt like we were shoveling sand against the tide.
As casualties on both sides mounted, and the inevitable retaliation attacks destroyed Palestinian Authority facilities, anger grew in Israel and the streets of the Palestinian areas. I visited some of the sites of the attacks. The pointless murder of innocents sickened me.
As all this was going on, I worked on the Palestinian security forces to take action to break the cycle of violence: Arresting terrorist leaders would demonstrate their good faith and compliance with the Tenet/Mitchell plans.
They wanted that more than I did, they told me; but the Israelis were screwing them up by tossing on the table not one but many different lists of people they wanted arrested. Palestinian security claimed they were eager to pick up all the bad guys, but only if they had a single, authoritative list to act on.
“Fine,” I told them, “I’ll provide one list, compiled by our [not Israeli] intelligence, that will benchmark your effort.”
I gave them a list of thirty-three men who were on every list of bad guys; nobody had any doubt of their guilt.
Very little happened. Arrests were made; but only a few of them, at best, were real; and many of the “arrested” were actually either free or living under loose house arrest.
It was clear that the security heads would not — or could not — take any real action without a major commitment and direct order from Arafat. And Arafat was not about to give that order.
During the next three weeks, I continued my Trilateral Committee meetings, I met frequently with Sharon and Arafat and their lieutenants, but I also met with international leaders and representatives from numerous organizations and nations. All of them offered support.
The “Quad,” or “Quartet” (the U.S., the UN, the European Union, and Russia), was an especially important and helpful group. The UN, EU, and Russian representatives — Terje Larson, Miguel Moratinos, and Andrei Vdovin — became friends of mine, and provided tireless support for my mission. The EU representative Javier Solana visited several times to offer assistance and encouragement.
I also talked frequently with leaders from the region, particularly old friends from Arab nations. Both their frustration and their strong desire to see our mission work were evident.
On a more personal level, I tried to get a sense of ordinary people on both sides. I really wanted to know them and to understand their situation and views. I attended ceremonies and observances in Israel and in Palestinian areas. I ate meals with Israeli and Palestinian families. I ate dinner in both East and West Jerusalem. Everywhere, I was deeply touched by the desperate desire for peace. “Don’t give up,” everyone pleaded, with one voice. People on the street came up to me to beg me to hang in there. I visited Gaza and saw the awful conditions in the crowded refugee camps. On one occasion, I met with the kids from Seeds of Peace. “Why can’t the adults figure it out?” they asked with heartrending openness. “We have.”
For my own sanity and well-being, I worked out at the Marine House that billeted the Marine security detachment at our consulate in Jerusalem; and I sometimes dined with these hard-charging Leather-necks to keep my spirits up. Through them, I met Father Peter Vasko, an American Franciscan (the order has responsibility for the care of Christian sites in Jerusalem for the Catholic Church). Father Peter, the Marines’ unofficial chaplain, decided to look after my spiritual welfare as well. I sometimes ate with the Franciscans at their monastery, attended Sunday Mass with them, and enjoyed evenings talking to these dedicated and devout monks. Father Peter gave me a fascinating tour of the Old City.
One evening, the Custos (the Vatican custodian of the holy sites and the Franciscan superior in Jerusalem) presented me with the Papal Gold Cross for my efforts for peace in the region.
“Thank you from the bottom of my heart,” I told him when I accepted the award, “though I’m deeply distressed that we haven’t been more successful.”
“It’s important that we try,” he said in response. “That’s justification enough.”
I also met the Christian patriarchs from the sixteen other denominations who shared responsibility for the Christian sites. These holy men never failed to remind me that the Christians in the region had serious and long-standing concerns that the major combatants often ignored.
During my frequent meetings with Sharon and Arafat (never together; these two old rivals couldn’t stand each other), I tried to organize a senior-level political committee below Sharon and Arafat to oversee our efforts and provide a high-level group where we could open other areas for discussion besides security matters. I saw this committee as being made up of people at the ministerial level, like Abu Mazen and Abu Ala’a, the senior Palestinians, and Shimon Peres and Ben Eleazar, on the Israeli side, with me, perhaps, as the U.S. representative. This oversight body would oversee the security measures taken on the ground, and (I hoped) resolve differences, disagreements, or reports of violations. But on top of that, it could also open the political dialogue; and in so doing we might square the circle — satisfy the Palestinian demand for political progress without compromising the Israeli demand for security before negotiations on political issues could begin. That is, we might not make political commitments; yet a beginning of talk on these issues would give the Palestinians a sense that we were fulfilling expectations. This in turn would build confidence. In this way, we’d be opening a two-track approach: On one track, security. On the second, parallel track, political issues. I thought this parallel approach might get us around the sequentialism issue that was proving to be such a stumbling block.
Sharon was a little unsure about all this. “Why should we make poli
tical commitments up front?” he told me. “It looks like we’re caving in to terrorism and doing it under the pressure of violence.” He was leery of big political steps. Big political steps would show his hand; and he never showed his hand. Neither did Arafat. I never actually knew what either of them was really after or what they saw as a long-term solution.
Sharon would surely take security steps up front. And I’m convinced that if he had the right security cooperation from the other side, he would withdraw from certain areas, move certain checkpoints. I think he could implement the entire Tenet plan without a problem. Now when he got down the road, would he make the kind of political commitments on settlements and other more difficult issues (such as Barak offered)? That remained to be seen.
The Palestinians were very leery that he could or would do any of that. They were convinced that he’d be glad to move forward on Tenet and get the security concessions out of the way; but he would stall on political progress once the security situation leveled off.
In my mind that was always a possibility. I simply wasn’t sure. Would he move forward or not? I can’t say. He could definitely start a process. I wasn’t sure whether he could finish one.
As for the other side — I don’t think Arafat could even start it.
Sharon and Arafat eventually came around and agreed to set up the committee; but for one reason or another, we could never get it off the ground.
For three weeks we tried to get something started, to get an agreement working on the ground and to get the violence tamped down. It didn’t work.
I knew time was running out and we were close to it all falling apart.
The attacks and retaliations escalated. Targeted assassinations by the Israelis sometimes spilled over and killed nearby innocents. The Israelis had suffered a large number of casualties; innocents on buses or in cafes were brutally slaughtered by suicide bombers — young brainwashed Palestinians, agonized by the plight of their people. We were one event away from collapse.