In Jerusalem I had the pleasure of seeing my old friend President Shimon Peres, a lion of the Israeli left who had helped build the new state’s defense, negotiated Oslo, and carried forward the cause of peace after Rabin’s assassination. As President, Peres had a largely ceremonial role, but he served as the moral conscience of the Israeli people. He still believed passionately in the need for a two-state solution, but he recognized how hard it would be to achieve. “We don’t take it lightly, the burden that is now lying on your shoulders,” he told me. “But I think they are strong, and you will find in us a real and sincere partner in the double purpose to prevent and stop terror and achieve peace for all of the people in the Middle East.”
I also consulted with Olmert and his smart, tough Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni, a former Mossad agent, on defusing tensions in Gaza and strengthening the cease-fire. With sporadic rocket and mortar attacks continuing, it seemed that full-fledged conflict could flare up again at any time. I also wanted to reassure Israel that the Obama Administration was fully committed to Israel’s security and its future as a Jewish state. “No nation should be expected to sit idly by and allow rockets to assault its people and its territories,” I said. For years, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, the United States had been committed to helping Israel maintain a “qualitative military edge” over every competitor in the region. President Obama and I wanted to take it to the next level. Right away, we got to work expanding security cooperation and investing in key joint defense projects, including Iron Dome, a short-range missile defense system to help protect Israeli cities and homes from rockets.
Olmert and Livni were determined to move toward a comprehensive peace in the region and a two-state solution to the conflict with the Palestinians, despite the many disappointments over decades of halting negotiations. But they were soon on their way out of power. Olmert had announced his resignation under a cloud of corruption charges, mostly stemming from his earlier service as Mayor of Jerusalem. Livni assumed the leadership of their Kadima Party and ran in new elections against Netanyahu and Likud. Kadima actually won one more seat in the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, than Likud (twenty-eight seats for Kadima, compared to twenty-seven for Likud), but Livni couldn’t put together a viable majority coalition among the fractious smaller parties that held the balance of power. So Netanyahu was given a chance to form a government.
I talked to Livni about the idea of a unity government between Kadima and Likud that might be more open to pursuing peace with the Palestinians. But she was dead set against it. “No, I’m not going into his government,” she told me. So Netanyahu put together a majority coalition of smaller parties and, at the end of March 2009, returned to the Prime Minister’s office he had occupied from 1996 to 1999.
I had known Netanyahu for years. He is a complicated figure. He spent his formative years living in the United States, studied at both Harvard and MIT, and even worked briefly at the Boston Consulting Group with Mitt Romney in 1976. Netanyahu has been deeply skeptical of the Oslo framework of trading land for peace and a two-state solution that would give the Palestinians a country of their own in territory occupied by Israel since 1967. He is also understandably fixated on the threat to Israel from Iran, especially the possibility of Tehran acquiring nuclear weapons. Netanyahu’s hawkish views were shaped by his own experience in the Israel Defense Forces, especially during the Yom Kippur War of 1973; the memory of his brother Yonatan, a highly respected commando killed leading the Entebbe raid of 1976; and the influence of his father, Benzion, an ultranationalist historian who had favored a Jewish state encompassing all of the West Bank and Gaza since before the birth of the State of Israel. The elder Netanyahu held fast to that position until he died in 2012 at age 102.
In August 2008, after the end of my Presidential campaign, Netanyahu came to see me in my Senate office on Third Avenue in New York. After a decade in the political wilderness following his defeat in the 1999 elections, Bibi had climbed his way back up to the top of Likud and was now poised to retake the Prime Minister’s office. Sitting in my conference room above Midtown Manhattan, he was philosophical about his twists of fortune. He told me that after being voted out, he received some advice from Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady herself: “Always expect the unexpected.” Now he was giving me the same advice. A few months later, when President-elect Obama first said the words “Secretary of State” to me, I thought back to what Bibi had predicted.
Later we would both look back on that conversation as a new beginning in our relationship. Despite our policy differences, Netanyahu and I worked together as partners and friends. We argued frequently, often during phone calls that would go on for over an hour, sometimes two. But even when we disagreed, we maintained an unshakeable commitment to the alliance between our countries. I learned that Bibi would fight if he felt he was being cornered, but if you connected with him as a friend, there was a chance you could get something done together.
With the region still reeling from the Gaza conflict, and a skeptic back at the helm in Israel, the prospects for reaching a comprehensive peace agreement seemed daunting, to say the least.
There had been nearly a decade of terror, arising from the second intifada, which started in September 2000. About a thousand Israelis were killed and eight thousand wounded in terrorist attacks from September 2000 to February 2005. Three times as many Palestinians were killed and thousands more were injured in the same period. Israel began constructing a long security fence to physically separate Israel from the West Bank. As a result of these protective measures, the Israeli government reported a sharp decline in suicide attacks, from more than fifty in 2002 to none in 2009. That was, of course, a great source of relief for Israelis. But it also lessened the pressure on them to seek even greater security through a comprehensive peace agreement.
On top of that, the number of Israeli settlers in the West Bank continued to grow, and most of them were adamantly opposed to giving up any land or closing any settlements in what they called “Judea and Samaria,” the biblical name for the land on the West Bank of the Jordan River. Some settlers who moved to these outposts across the 1967 “Green Line” were simply trying to avoid a housing crunch in expensive Israeli cities, but others were motivated by religious zeal and a belief that the West Bank had been promised to Jews by God. Settlers were the political base of Netanyahu’s main coalition partner, the Yisrael Beiteinu Party, led by Avigdor Lieberman, a Russian émigré who became Foreign Minister in the new government. Lieberman viewed negotiating concessions as a sign of weakness and had a long history of opposition to the Oslo peace process. Bibi and Lieberman also believed that Iran’s nuclear program was a bigger and more urgent threat to Israel’s long-term security than the Palestinian conflict. All of this contributed to a reluctance among Israel’s leaders to make the hard choices necessary to achieve a lasting peace.
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After visiting with both the outgoing and the incoming Israeli leadership in Jerusalem in early March 2009, I crossed into the West Bank and headed to Ramallah, the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Under previous agreements, the PA administered parts of the Palestinian territories and maintained its own security forces. I visited a classroom where Palestinian students were learning English through a U.S.-sponsored program. They happened to be studying Women’s History Month and learning about Sally Ride, America’s first woman astronaut. The students, especially the girls, were captivated by her story. When I asked for a single word to describe Sally and her accomplishments, one student responded, “Hopeful.” It was encouraging to find such a positive attitude among young people growing up under such difficult circumstances. I doubted one would hear the same sentiment in Gaza. For me, that summed up the divergence of fortunes between the two Palestinian territories.
For nearly twenty years two factions, Fatah and Hamas, have vied for influence among the Palestinian people. When Arafat was alive, his Fatah part
y was ascendant and his personal stature was enough to largely keep the peace between the two. But after he died in 2004, the schism burst into open conflict. To those disillusioned by a peace process that had failed to deliver much concrete progress, Hamas peddled the false hope that a Palestinian state could somehow be achieved through violence and uncompromising resistance. By contrast, Arafat’s successor as head of Fatah and the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Mahmoud Abbas (also known as Abu Mazen), maintained a platform of nonviolence and urged his people to keep pushing for a negotiated political solution to the conflict, while building up the economy and institutions of a future Palestinian state.
In early 2006, Hamas won legislative elections in the Palestinian territories that had been pushed by the Bush Administration over objections by some members of Fatah and the Israelis. The upset victory led to a new crisis with Israel and a violent power struggle with Fatah.
After the election results came in, I released a statement from my Senate office condemning Hamas and stressing, “Until and unless Hamas renounces violence and terror, and abandons its position calling for the destruction of Israel, I don’t believe the United States should recognize Hamas, nor should any nation in the world.” The outcome was a reminder that genuine democracy is about more than winning an election, and that if the United States pushes for elections, we have a responsibility to help educate people, and parties, about the process. Fatah had lost several seats because it ran two candidates in districts when Hamas fielded only one. It was a costly mistake. The next year Hamas led a coup in Gaza against the authority of Abbas, who continued to serve as President despite his party’s losses in the legislative elections. With Fatah still in control in the West Bank, the Palestinian people were split between two competing power centers and two very different visions for the future.
This division made the prospects of resuming peace talks more remote and increased Israeli reluctance. However, as a result of this unusual arrangement, both sides were able to test their approach to governing. The results could be seen every day in Palestinian streets and neighborhoods. In Gaza, Hamas presided over a crumbling enclave of terror and despair. It stockpiled rockets while people fell deeper into poverty. Unemployment ran to nearly 40 percent, and was even higher among young people. Hamas impeded international assistance and the work of humanitarian NGOs and did little to promote sustainable economic growth. Instead Hamas sought to distract Palestinians from its failure to govern effectively by stoking new tensions with Israel and inciting popular anger.
Meanwhile, in the West Bank, Abbas and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, an able technocrat, produced very different results in a relatively short period of time. They got to work addressing a history of corruption and building transparent and accountable institutions. The United States and other international partners, especially Jordan, helped improve the effectiveness and reliability of PA security forces, which was a key priority for Israel. Reforms began to increase public confidence in the courts, and in 2009 they handled 67 percent more cases than in 2008. Tax revenues were finally being collected. The PA began building schools and hospitals and training teachers and medical staffs. It even started work on a national health insurance program. More responsible fiscal policies, support from the international community—including hundreds of millions of dollars each year from the United States, the PA’s largest bilateral donor—and improving security and the rule of law led to significant economic growth. Despite ongoing economic challenges, more Palestinians in the West Bank were finding jobs, starting businesses, and reversing the economic stagnation that followed the outbreak of the second intifada in 2000. The number of new business licenses issued in the West Bank in the fourth quarter of 2009 was 50 percent higher than in the same period in 2008, as Palestinians opened everything from venture capital funds to hardware stores and luxury hotels. Unemployment in the West Bank fell to less than half the rate in Gaza.
Even with this progress, there was much more work to do. Too many people remained frustrated and out of work. Anti-Israeli incitement and violence were still problems, and we hoped to see greater reforms to crack down on corruption, instill a culture of peace and tolerance among Palestinians, and reduce dependence on foreign assistance. But it was becoming easier to envision an independent Palestine able to govern itself, uphold its responsibilities, and ensure security for its citizens and its neighbors. The World Bank reported in September 2010 that if the Palestinian Authority maintained its momentum in building institutions and delivering public services, it would be “well-positioned for the establishment of a state at any point in the near future.”
I saw the progress firsthand on visits to the West Bank in 2009 and 2010. Well-equipped Palestinian security officers, many of them trained with U.S. and Jordanian assistance, lined the road. Driving into Ramallah, I could see new apartment buildings and office towers rising from the hills. But as I looked at the faces of the men and women who came out of their shops and homes, it was impossible to forget the painful history of a people who have never had a state of their own. Economic and institutional progress is important, indeed necessary, but it is not sufficient. The legitimate aspirations of the Palestinian people will never be satisfied until there is a two-state solution that ensures dignity, justice, and security for all Palestinians and Israelis.
I will always believe that in late 2000 and early 2001, Arafat made a terrible mistake in refusing to join Prime Minister Barak in accepting the “Clinton Parameters,” which would have given the Palestinians a state in the West Bank and Gaza, with a capital in East Jerusalem. Now we were trying again with President Abbas. He had worked long and hard to realize the dreams of his people. He understood those dreams could be achieved only through nonviolence and negotiation. And he believed an independent Palestine living side by side with Israel in peace and security was both possible and necessary. I sometimes thought that while Arafat had the circumstances required to make peace but not the will, Abbas may have had the will but not the circumstances, though at some of our more frustrating moments, I wondered about his will, too.
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Coaxing the Israelis and the Palestinians back to the negotiating table was not going to be easy. There was no great mystery about what a final peace deal might look like and the compromises that would have to be struck; the challenge was mobilizing the political will on both sides to make the choices and sacrifices necessary to accept those compromises and make peace. Our diplomatic efforts had to focus on building trust and confidence on both sides, helping the leaders carve out political space to negotiate with each other, and making a persuasive case that the status quo was unsustainable for everyone.
I was convinced that was true. For the Palestinians, decades of resistance, terrorism, and uprisings had not produced an independent state, and more of the same was not going to do anything to advance their legitimate aspirations. Negotiations offered the only credible path to that goal, and waiting just meant prolonging the occupation and suffering on both sides.
For the Israelis, the case was harder because the status quo was less obviously and immediately problematic. The economy was booming, improved security measures had dramatically reduced the threat of terrorism, and many Israelis felt that their country had tried to make peace and received nothing in return but heartbreak and violence. In their eyes, Israel had offered generous deals to Arafat and Abbas, and the Palestinians had walked away. Under Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Israel had unilaterally withdrawn from Gaza (without a negotiated peace agreement), which had turned into a terrorist enclave that lobbed rockets into southern Israel. When Israel pulled back from southern Lebanon, Hezbollah and other militant groups, with Iranian and Syrian support, used the territory as a base for attacking northern Israel. What reason did Israelis have to think that giving up more land would lead to actual peace?
I was sympathetic to those fears and to the threats and frustrations behind them. But as someone who cares deeply about Israel’
s security and future, I thought there were compelling demographic, technological, and ideological trends that argued for making another serious attempt at a negotiated peace.
Because of higher birth rates among Palestinians and lower birth rates among Israelis, we were approaching the day when Palestinians would make up a majority of the combined population of Israel and the Palestinian territories, and most of those Palestinians would be relegated to second-class citizenship and unable to vote. As long as Israel insisted on holding on to the territories, it would become increasingly difficult and eventually impossible to maintain its status as both a democracy and a Jewish state. Sooner or later, Israelis would have to choose one or the other or let the Palestinians have a state of their own.
At the same time, the rockets flowing into the hands of Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon were increasingly sophisticated and capable of reaching Israeli communities far from the borders. In April 2010, there were reports that Syria was transferring long-range Scud missiles to Hezbollah in Lebanon, which could reach all of Israel’s major cities. In the spring of 2014, Israel intercepted a ship carrying Syrian-made M-302 surface-to-surface rockets bound for Palestinian militants in Gaza that could reach all of Israel. We would continue building up Israel’s air defenses, but the best missile defense system of all would be a just and lasting peace. And the longer the conflict dragged on, the more it would strengthen the hand of extremists and weaken moderates across the Middle East.
For all these reasons, I believed it was necessary for Israel’s long-term security to give diplomacy another chance. I had no illusions that it would be any easier to reach an agreement than it had been for previous administrations, but President Obama was ready to invest his own personal political capital, and that counted for a lot. Netanyahu, precisely because of his well-known hawkishness, had the credibility with the Israeli public to cut a deal, like Nixon’s going to China, if he were convinced it was in Israel’s security interests. Abbas was aging and there was no telling how long he could hold on to power; we couldn’t take for granted that his successor, whomever it would be, would be as committed to peace. With all his political baggage and personal limitations, Abbas might well be the last, best hope for a Palestinian partner committed to finding a diplomatic solution and determined enough to sell one to his people. Yes, there was always a danger in diving back into the quagmire of Middle East peace negotiations. Trying and failing could well discredit moderates, embolden extremists, and leave the parties more distrustful and estranged than before. But success was impossible if we didn’t try, and I was determined to do so.
Hard Choices Page 39