by John Kerry
From the first steps we took, I vowed to make sure the Arab countries were partners every step of the way. It was essential that they be free to move in two directions simultaneously—support the Palestinians and give Israel the peace with the Arab world essential to a final status deal.
During my transition to secretary, I spent a fair amount of time talking with former secretary of state Jim Baker about his efforts on the peace process, particularly his attempt at Madrid in 1991 to bring Arab nations to the table. We agreed that this ingredient of regional cooperation was riper than ever before.
Our team understood the importance of showing Israel a path to peace with its neighbors. Accordingly, one of the first things I did was to bring together the key leaders who were members of the Arab Peace Initiative Follow-up Committee at Blair House in Washington, D.C., for a meeting. I remember feeling a buzz of energy in the room. Everyone there sensed the possibilities that lay ahead. These leaders had a critical role to play and I convened them regularly to ensure they were fully briefed and to enlist their support. The Arab Peace Initiative (API) had laid out a path to Arab-Israeli peace. But there were specific elements of the plan that were problematic for Israel. One was a Palestinian state based on 1967 lines without any reference to land swaps. Swaps were critical for Israel because of the settlements in the West Bank. There were large-scale Israeli developments in three or four areas near the border that almost everyone basically agreed would have to be integrated into Israel. It was a long-accepted premise that there had to be land swaps, but the API didn’t reflect that.
It took months of painstaking diplomatic legwork with the Saudis and others, including a one-on-one conversation with the chairman of the API Follow-up Committee, Qatar’s foreign minister, to get the deal done. Arab leaders made a gesture that was significant—both substantively and symbolically—in stating publicly for the first time that the final border would include land swaps.
There was another initial significant challenge to overcome, if not just manage: Palestinian cynicism. The Palestinians expressed concern that the Israelis—and we—would cobble together a package of economic initiatives and call that peace. They were adamant that an “economic peace” could never take the place of a real final status agreement. At the same time, we thought improving the Palestinian economy could help build belief in the possibility of peace.
That’s why we focused on a major new initiative for the Palestinian economy. The idea was straightforward: a prosperous Palestine would pose less of a security threat. We commissioned McKinsey & Company to analyze the Palestinian economy. McKinsey CEO Dominic Barton agreed to donate the firm’s time, putting in eight hundred man-hours or more. The study showed that if the Palestinians were allowed to develop their own economy, the transformation in quality of life could be game changing. But the best possibilities could be fully realized only if there was peace.
The final piece of the puzzle was also the most critical. Again and again, Prime Minister Netanyahu said to me, “Security is the key. Israel must be able to defend itself by itself.” He would also remind me of Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza: “We pulled out of Gaza and look what we got—rockets and tunnels. We can’t turn the West Bank into Gaza.” I argued to Bibi that if he actually made peace and reached agreement on the future security relationship of a demilitarized Palestinian state, there was a way to make certain the West Bank would not be Gaza. Meeting Israel’s legitimate security needs was our number one priority from the very beginning. As Bibi said to me, “Take all my excuses away.” We tried to do just that even when we began to suspect that the list of excuses would never end. We had to think about security in every conceivable way.
We knew it was important to have military professionals design the plan—not politicians. To lead this unprecedented effort, we brought on General John Allen, a four-star retired marine who had commanded U.S. and coalition troops in Afghanistan. John was the perfect man for the job. He was widely respected. I knew he would fully immerse himself in this mission and he would have the respect of his peers in Israel and the Gulf. From day one, John Allen was all in.
Based on prior discussions, Israel had developed dozens of detailed security questions, and the answers would form the essential building blocks of our security initiative. That was our starting point. We coordinated with the Jordanians and Palestinians to create a layered approach that would help guarantee Israel’s security while respecting Palestinian sovereignty. King Abdullah of Jordan could not have been more helpful. He was creative. After years of effort, he knew every twist of the issue, all the sensitivities, and as a proven partner of Israel, he was in a position to weigh in with a special stake in the outcome.
We formed a separate team to assess Palestinian security needs in the context of statehood. We anticipated that the United States would continue to play a leading role in helping to build institutional Palestinian capacity, enhancing capabilities to maintain law and order, cooperate in an effective judicial system, combat terrorism and smuggling and manage border security, customs and immigration. We knew that for some period of time this effort would require continued IDF presence in the West Bank. We all recognized, Palestinians included, that there would need to be a comprehensive Israeli-Palestinian protocol for cooperation, tested over considerable time until Israel could have confidence in the commitment and performance of the Palestinian security services. How long, and under what circumstances, had to be negotiated between the parties. We also developed objective standards by which performance could be measured. We were committed not to leave things to chance. We fully allowed for the time it would take to train, build, equip and test Palestinian institutions. We were determined to ensure that the Palestinians were capable of protecting Palestinian citizens as well as preventing their territory from being used for attacks on Israel. These efforts remained a subject of focus over the next four years.
The run-up to the negotiating process started in earnest when President Obama delivered an important speech in Israel in March 2013, reaffirming the importance of a two-state solution and empowering me to try to give the peace process new life. A few days later, I met with Bibi at the King David Hotel. I will always remember what he told me. He looked me dead in the eye and said, “John, I’m willing to give this effort a try, but there are two things you should know: first, everyone in this region lies all the time and you Americans have a hard time understanding that; second, the most I can do may be less than the least Abbas could ever accept.”
That statement really stayed with me. Bibi was raising the bar, perhaps impossibly.
It was clear from the outset that the Palestinians faced a political cost simply for having negotiations with the Israelis. The Palestinians were very skeptical about whether Israel and particularly Prime Minister Netanyahu were serious about peace. His King David Hotel statement raised similar questions with us. We understood Abbas’s concern about entering into negotiations that went nowhere, leaving him looking feckless before his skeptical public. Puffing away on cigarette after cigarette, he made it clear that before he could engage in negotiations, Israel had to give him something to bolster his credibility at home and demonstrate Netanyahu’s seriousness. He was adamant that before resuming talks Israel had to either release the prisoners from before the Oslo agreement, who had iconic value to the Palestinians—even though some were guilty of heinous terrorist attacks—or agree to negotiate on the basis of the 1967 lines or implement a settlement freeze.
The Israelis refused all three concessions. So that left us with one difficult option: pulling together a package of economic incentives sufficient to permit the Palestinians to say yes to coming back to the table. I made several trips to Jerusalem and Ramallah that spring and summer to haggle over preconditions, which wasted precious time, reinforced skepticism and dissipated hopes.
I had negotiated enough in the Senate and as a prosecutor to know when I was with a party that wanted to get the job done. The Israelis’ approach to the negotiati
on was to make sure they could defend every word that was written and, I sometimes thought, make sure there were so many of them that no one could tell what the hell was going on. The Palestinians figured that if a document leaked they were screwed no matter what, so they wanted to maintain plausible deniability on everything by never writing it down in the first place.
This just reinforced the distrust. The Palestinians believed that the Israelis were building trapdoors and loopholes into every sentence so that any apparent commitment would in fact be vitiated. And Israelis saw Palestinian reluctance to commit to anything in writing as preparing their escape route—which fit the narrative that the Palestinians were always running away from agreements.
In June, after several months of work, we met with Bibi for a critical session at the David Citadel Hotel to put the finishing touches on a package of economic incentives to present to Abbas. When we wrapped up at around 4:30 a.m.—one of the things Bibi and I had in common was a willingness to work late into the night—my longtime Middle East advisor Frank Lowenstein and I took a walk around downtown Jerusalem. Frank’s father was Allard Lowenstein, who had been assassinated decades earlier. His father’s assassination had left Frank with a sense of tragedy but also with a sense of purpose. He wanted to make the world more just. He was passionate about Middle East peace and came to understand its nuances as well as anybody.
As we walked through the eerily deserted streets of this extraordinary city that was in many ways at the heart of this conflict, the challenge really hit me. I remember shaking my head and telling Frank, “This is absolutely ridiculous. If we have to fight over every word with the Israelis to get agreement on a series of economic steps that we all agree are in everyone’s best interests, think about what happens when we get to the big issues!”
By July, it was time to fish or cut bait. We had to determine what the parties’ bottom lines really were for resuming talks. This process culminated in four critical days in Amman. There was mounting criticism in the press that I was wasting time on this issue. We’d gone back and forth with both sides more times than I cared to count. I needed to bring this initial process to a close.
I knew neither side would act without a deadline, so I set one and let everyone know that if we didn’t get a deal we were done.
I couldn’t go back to Israel without raising expectations for a process that I knew might fail. We arranged for an Arab League meeting in Amman as an excuse to go there. I’d finally reached agreement with the Israelis on an economic package to present to the Palestinians. I asked President Abbas to come to U.S. ambassador Stu Jones’s residence in Amman. The proposition was straightforward: the Israelis were offering a package of what they viewed as unprecedented economic steps to get Abbas to come back to the table and negotiate final status issues. Abbas was skeptical: he had heard these economic promises in the past and they were of little substantive or political value to him. I kept pushing. He said his right-hand man, Saeb Erekat, would come back the next morning to give Abbas’s final answer to the Israeli proposal.
Saeb was one of the more interesting characters I’d come across. I’d known him for over twenty years. He knew the accomplishments and failures of the peace process inside out. He was also held accountable for failure by some, who asked derisively, “What peace has he ever delivered in all his years?”
Saeb had as good an understanding of the issues as anyone I met, but he sometimes let his frustration and accrued mistrust get in the way of compromise. On the plus side, he was steadfastly committed to nonviolence.
He spoke excellent English with endearing malapropisms like “Do I look like I have a neon on my head that says ‘stupid’?” But he could also be mercurial, emotional and unpredictable—as charming as he was maddening, with a flair for long diatribes and dramatic pronouncements. In response to my deadline, he told me that Abbas just couldn’t sell economic steps to the Palestinian people, who felt like they were half measures designed to buy them off. In their minds, the only issue that really mattered was a state on the land they’d long inhabited.
Moreover, Abbas’s main competition was Hamas. Every time he entered into a dead-end negotiation, he looked weak by comparison. Hamas had previously secured the release of hundreds of high-profile Palestinian prisoners in return for Gilad Shalit, a kidnapped IDF soldier. Abbas felt that he couldn’t accept anything less than a significant prisoner release to return to the table. He remained adamant that Israel either free the pre-Oslo prisoners or agree to the 1967 lines or implement a settlement freeze.
I called Bibi and said, “Bibi, we’re at the end of the line. I’ve done everything I can. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work. But you have to decide. The only way to get this done is to release the pre-Oslo prisoners. The skepticism just runs too deep. Something has to happen to change the dynamic. Unless you’ll agree to the 1967 lines or a settlement freeze, there’s just no other option.” I knew there was no way Bibi was about to agree to the 1967 lines or a settlement freeze. I told Bibi in no uncertain terms, “If you’re not willing to release them, I understand—but this won’t work and I’m done with it.”
Bibi had insisted all along that Israel was not willing to release any pre-Oslo prisoners. When he was confronted with this deadline, for the first time he said, “Okay, let me see what I can do.”
The press was downstairs in the lobby of the hotel in Amman, increasingly aware that we were working on a final push and skeptical that we could get there.
Frank Lowenstein asked whether he should work on a plan B with Saeb and Tzipi in case Bibi wouldn’t release the prisoners. But I was determined to keep the pressure on. I told him, “No, absolutely not—if you give either side a way out, they’ll take it. Plan B will lead to plan F: failure.”
If people claimed that I’d tried and failed, I could live with that, but I wouldn’t go through a series of half measures that just let the Israelis and the Palestinians keep dithering.
“Look, if this process isn’t serious, I’m just not going to waste any more time on it. And we’re going to find that out right now.”
The clock was ticking away. Bibi got back to me and said they were willing to do the prisoner release in four separate tranches spread out over the negotiated period. But they needed a firm commitment from President Abbas not to join any international organizations as part of an effort to legitimize the Palestinian state outside the negotiating process. Bibi said he needed settlement building to make his politics work, but the numbers he gave me were much lower than the numbers the Israelis ultimately announced—in part because of their view that no building in East Jerusalem should be considered a settlement, but also because of an arcane, opaque settlement development process that was easily manipulated to serve any argument.
Once I had Bibi’s sign-off, I went to Ramallah to see if Abbas would accept the deal. I explained to Abbas the tranches. I said that Israel would be doing some settlement announcements and that we’d try to make them as limited as possible. Abbas, who was surprised we had secured the release of pre-Oslo prisoners, accepted this formulation.
After we left Abbas’s residence, we flew to Amman, arriving about an hour and a half before the deadline for our plane to take off. I called the White House, discussed the final terms and then announced at a press conference that the parties had agreed to resume negotiations in principle, pending approval by the Israeli cabinet. Given how far we’d come, this felt like a significant accomplishment. But on the plane ride home, I felt the weight of the previous days: the mutual doubt and mistrust presented a formidable barrier.
The good news was that we had an agreement to resume peace negotiations for nine months. The question then became how to organize those talks. The well had long been poisoned. To manage the process, we needed an experienced negotiator who didn’t appear to be in anyone’s pocket. I asked Martin Indyk to assume responsibilities as the U.S. special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. It would be Martin who would lead the day-to-day negotia
tions in Israel and the West Bank, while Frank would continue as deputy envoy and my trusted aide in Washington.
They did a superb job under extremely difficult circumstances. Martin is a UK-born, Australian-raised, naturalized American citizen who has made the cause of Israeli-Palestinian peace his life’s work. From his service under President Clinton as U.S. ambassador to Israel during Bibi’s first term to his work with Secretaries of State Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright, he brought a keen understanding of diplomacy in the Middle East. In addition to his extraordinary historical perspective and long-standing relationships on both sides—or maybe because of those qualities—Martin had a sharp appreciation of the many ironies of the Middle East. It was good to have a diplomat of Martin’s skill join us. Frank and Martin had an easy rapport and shared a mischievous sense of humor.
Above all, Martin was realistic. He brought to the task a healthy skepticism about the willingness of both leaders to make peace. This came from some difficult moments in his relationship with Prime Minister Netanyahu dating back to the Clinton administration, coupled with his knowledge of the Palestinians’ ability never to miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.