In November I spent eight hours with Netanyahu at the Regency Hotel in New York City. It was my longest single bilateral meeting as Secretary. We talked everything over, again and again, including the old ideas for restarting a settlement moratorium in exchange for military hardware and other security assistance. Eventually he agreed on a proposal to bring to his Cabinet that would halt construction in the West Bank (but not East Jerusalem) for ninety days. In exchange, we pledged a $3 billion security package and promised to veto any resolutions at the UN that would undercut direct negotiations between the parties.
When news of the deal became public, it caused consternation on all sides. Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition partners were irate, and to placate them, he emphasized that construction would continue in East Jerusalem. This, in turn, set off the Palestinians. Some in the United States also raised fair questions about whether it was wise to buy a ninety-day freeze for negotiations that might well lead nowhere. I wasn’t happy either—I confided to Tony Blair that I found it to be “a nasty business”—but it felt like a sacrifice worth making.
Under all this pressure, however, the deal started to unravel almost immediately, and by the end of November it was effectively dead. In December 2010, I spoke at the Saban Forum, a conference that brings together leaders and experts from across the Middle East and the United States. I pledged that America would stay engaged and keep pressing both sides to grapple with the core issues, even if it was through a return to “proximity talks.” We would push both the Israelis and the Palestinians to lay out their positions on the toughest questions with real specificity, and then we would work to narrow the gaps, including by offering our own ideas and bridging proposals when appropriate. Since my husband put forward the “Clinton Parameters” a decade before, the United States had been reluctant to push any specific plans or even a substantive framework. “Peace cannot be imposed from outside,” was a frequent saying, and true. But now we would be more aggressive in setting the terms of the debate.
President Obama followed through on this commitment in the spring of 2011 by declaring in a speech at the State Department, “We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps, so that secure and recognized borders are established for both states.”
Netanyahu unhelpfully chose to focus on the reference to “1967 lines” and ignore the “agreed swaps,” and another highly personal standoff between the two heads of state resulted. The Palestinians, meanwhile, escalated their plan to petition the United Nations for statehood. George Mitchell stepped down that summer, and I spent much of the rest of 2011 trying to keep the situation from deteriorating from deadlock into disaster.
It wasn’t easy. By then Hosni Mubarak, the most prominent champion for peace among the Arab states, had fallen from power in Egypt. Unrest was spreading across the region. Israelis faced a new and unpredictable strategic landscape. Some Palestinians wondered if they should be protesting in the streets like the Tunisians, Egyptians, and Libyans. The prospects for a return to serious negotiations seemed further away than ever. A window of opportunity that had opened with the inauguration of President Obama in early 2009 seemed to be closing.
Throughout those difficult days I often thought back to our long discussions in Washington, Sharm el-Sheikh, and Jerusalem. I hoped that one day the constituencies for peace among both peoples would grow so strong and loud that their leaders would be forced to compromise. In my head I heard the deep and steady voice of my slain friend Yitzhak Rabin: “The coldest peace is better than the warmest war.”
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The Arab Spring: Revolution
They’re sitting on a powder keg and if they don’t change, it’s going to explode.” I was exasperated. It was the first week of January 2011, and we were planning another trip to the Middle East. This time I wanted to go beyond the usual agenda of official meetings and private cajoling about needed political and economic reforms in the Arab world. Jeff Feltman, Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs, my top advisor on the region, agreed. Trying to drive change in the Middle East could feel like banging your head against a brick wall, and Jeff had been doing it for years, under several administrations. Among other roles, he had served as Ambassador to Lebanon during some of its most tumultuous recent history, including the assassination of Prime Minister Rafic Hariri in 2005 that triggered the Cedar Revolution and the withdrawal of Syrian troops, as well as the war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006. These experiences would serve Jeff well in the weeks to come as we tried to stay one step ahead of a wave of upheaval that would sweep the region. The period ahead would be fluid and confusing even for experienced diplomats.
I turned to two of my speechwriters, Megan Rooney and Dan Schwerin. “I’m tired of repeating the same old things every time I go there,” I told them. “I want to say something that really breaks through this time.” The upcoming annual Forum for the Future conference in Doha, the capital of energy-rich Qatar, would provide an opportunity for me to deliver a message to many of the Middle East’s most influential royals, political leaders, business tycoons, academics, and civil society activists. Many of them would be gathered in the same room at the same time. If I wanted to make the case that the region’s status quo was unsustainable, this was the place to do it. I told Megan and Dan to get to work.
Of course, I was not the first American official to push for reform. In 2005, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice went to Egypt and made a remarkable admission: for more than half a century, the United States had chosen to pursue “stability at the expense of democracy” and “achieved neither.” That would be true no longer, she promised. Four years later in President Obama’s major speech in Cairo, he too called for democratic reforms.
Yet for all the words delivered in public and even more pointed words in private, and despite the persistent efforts of people from all walks of life to make their countries more prosperous and free, by early 2011, much of the Middle East and North Africa remained locked in political and economic stagnation. Many countries had been ruled for decades under martial law. Across the region corruption at every level, especially at the top, was rampant. Political parties and civil society groups were nonexistent or tightly restricted; judicial systems were far from free or independent; and elections, when they were held, were often rigged. This sorry state of affairs was dramatized anew in November 2010, when Egypt held flawed Parliamentary elections that nearly eliminated the token political opposition.
A landmark study published in 2002 by leading Middle Eastern scholars and the United Nations Development Program was as troubling as it was revealing. The Arab Human Development Report painted a devastating portrait of a region in decline. Despite the Middle East’s oil wealth and strategic trading location, unemployment was more than double the global average, and even higher for women and young people. A growing number of Arabs lived in poverty, crowded into slums without sanitation, safe water, or reliable electricity, while a small elite gained increasing control over land and resources. It was also not surprising that Arab women’s political and economic participation was the lowest in the world.
Despite its problems, most of the region’s leaders and power brokers seemed largely content to carry on as they always had. And despite the best intentions of successive American administrations, the day-to-day reality of U.S. foreign policy prioritized urgent strategic and security imperatives such as counterterrorism, support for Israel, and blocking Iran’s nuclear ambitions over the long-term goal of encouraging internal reforms in our Arab partners. To be sure, we did press leaders to reform, because we believed that would eventually provide greater long-term stability and inclusive prosperity. But we also worked with them on a wide range of security concerns and never seriously considered cutting off our military relationships with them.
This was a dilemma that had confronted generations of American policymakers. It’s easy to give speeches and write b
ooks about standing up for democratic values, even when it may conflict with our security interests, but when confronted with the actual, real-world trade-offs, choices get a lot harder. Inevitably, making policy is a balancing act. Hopefully we get it more right than wrong. But there are always choices we regret, consequences we do not foresee, and alternate paths we wish we had taken.
I talked with enough Arab leaders over the years to know that for many of them, it wasn’t a simple matter of being content with how things were; they accepted that change would come but only slowly. I looked for ways to build personal relationships and trust with them, to better grasp the cultural and social views that influenced their actions, and, when possible, push for more rapid change.
All of this was on my mind as 2011 dawned and I prepared once again to visit the Middle East. I had spent much of 2009 and 2010 working with President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah II of Jordan to bring the Israeli and Palestinian leaders together for direct peace talks, only to see them fall apart after three rounds of substantive negotiations. Time and again I had told both sides that the status quo was unsustainable and that they needed to make the necessary choices that would lead to peace and progress. Now I was thinking the same thing about the entire region. If Arab leaders, many of whom were America’s partners, failed to embrace the need for change, they risked losing control of their increasingly young and alienated populations and opening the door to unrest, conflict, and terrorists. That’s the argument I wanted to make, without too many of the usual diplomatic niceties diluting the message.
As we planned a trip around the theme of economic, political, and environmental sustainability, events unfolded on the ground that raised the stakes even higher.
The pro-Western government in Lebanon was teetering on the verge of collapse under intense pressure from Hezbollah, a heavily armed Shiite militia with significant influence in Lebanese politics. On January 7, I flew to New York to discuss the crisis with Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri, the son of the assassinated former leader, Rafic Hariri; and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, both of whom were visiting the United States.
At the same time, reports were coming in of street protests in Tunisia, a former French colony on the Mediterranean coast of North Africa between Libya and Algeria that had been ruled for decades by the dictator Zine el Abidine Ben Ali. For the many European tourists who flocked to its beaches and cosmopolitan hotels, it was easy to ignore the dark side of Ben Ali’s Tunisia. Women enjoyed more rights there than in many other Middle Eastern nations, the economy was more diversified, and extremists were not welcome. But the regime was ruthless, repressive, and corrupt, and beyond the glitzy tourist destinations, many people lived in poverty and despair.
The unrest had begun with a single heartbreaking incident on December 17, 2010. A twenty-six-year-old Tunisian man named Mohamed Bouazizi was selling fruit from a small cart in Sidi Bouzid, a poor provincial city south of the capital, Tunis. Like so many others in Tunisia, he was part of the underground economy and struggled to make enough money to provide for his family. Bouazizi did not have an official permit to sell his produce, and on that day he had an altercation with a female police officer that left him humiliated and desperate. Later that day he set himself on fire in front of the local government offices. That act galvanized protests across Tunisia. People took to the streets, protesting corruption, indignity, and lack of opportunity. On social media they passed around lurid tales of Ben Ali’s corruption, some derived from reports by U.S. diplomats about the regime’s excesses over the years, which had been released by WikiLeaks not long before the protests began.
The regime responded to the protests with excessive force, which only fueled public outrage. Ben Ali himself visited Bouazizi in the hospital, but the gesture did little to quell the growing unrest, and the young man died a few days later.
On January 9, as I flew from Washington to Abu Dhabi for the start of my trip, which would take me from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to Yemen, Oman, and Qatar, security forces in Tunisia intensified their crackdown on protesters. Several people were killed. Most observers saw it as yet another example of a familiar cycle of repression in a region that had become numb to such convulsions.
The UAE is a tiny but influential Persian Gulf nation that has grown exceedingly wealthy because of its extensive oil and natural gas reserves. The government, under the leadership of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, was investing in solar power as a way of diversifying its economy and hedging against future volatility in the global oil market, a rare instance of foresight and smart planning in a petrostate. At the high-tech Masdar Institute in the desert about twenty miles outside of Abu Dhabi, I spoke to a group of graduate students about the region’s shrinking oil supplies and declining water tables. “The old strategies for growth and prosperity will no longer work,” I said. “For too many people in too many places, the status quo today is unsustainable.”
No place in the region seemed to represent my warnings better than Yemen, at the foot of the Arabian Peninsula. The contrast between its dusty and medieval capital, Sanaa, and the sleek and modern UAE cities of Abu Dhabi and Dubai could not have been starker. Yemen, a tribal society that had been ruled since 1990 by a strongman named Ali Abdullah Saleh, was plagued by violent separatist insurgencies, an influx of al Qaeda–linked terrorists, widespread unemployment, dwindling water supplies, dreadful child survival statistics, and, counterintuitively, a surging population that was expected to double in the next twenty years. Yemen’s population is one of the most heavily armed and least literate on earth.
America’s relationship with President Saleh was emblematic of the dilemma at the heart of our Middle East policy. He was corrupt and autocratic, but he was also committed to fighting al Qaeda and keeping his fractious country together. The Obama Administration decided to hold our noses, increase our military and development aid to Yemen, and expand our counterterrorism cooperation. Over a long lunch at his palace, I talked with Saleh about how we could work more closely together on security. I also pressed him on human rights and economic reforms. He was not so much interested in hearing that as he was in showing me the antique rifle that had been a gift from General Norman Schwarzkopf. He was also adamant that I see the Old City of Sanaa before leaving and insisted that I take a tour.
The Old City is right out of the Arabian Nights, a jumble of mud-brick buildings whose façades are covered with decorative alabaster work, almost like gingerbread houses. Crowds of curious onlookers watched from spice shops and cafés as we passed. Most of the women wore veils, either headscarves called hijab or the more extensive face coverings called niqab. The men wore large curved daggers at their belts, and quite a few carried Kalashnikov rifles. Many of the men were chewing khat leaves, the Yemeni narcotic of choice. I was in a wide armored SUV that could barely fit through the narrow streets. The car came so close to some of the walls of the shops and houses that if the windows had been open, I could have reached inside.
My destination was the Mövenpick Hotel, which sits on a rise overlooking the city, where I met with a large group of activists and students, part of Yemen’s vibrant civil society. I opened our meeting with a message intended not just for Yemenis but for people across the Middle East. “The next generation of Yemenis will be hungry for jobs, health care, literacy, education and training that connect them to the global economy, and they will be seeking responsive democratic governance that reaches and serves their communities.” The entire region had to figure out how to offer young people a vision for a future of opportunity resting on a foundation of stability and security. My remarks set off an energetic exchange of ideas and venting by the crowd. Students who had studied abroad spoke passionately about why they had returned home to help build their country. Despite their frustration over repression and corruption, they were still hopeful that progress was possible.
One young woman in the crowd was named Nujood Ali, who successfully fought for a divorce at age ten. She h
ad been forced to marry a man three times her age who had made her drop out of school. This wasn’t uncommon in Yemen, but to Nujood, it felt like a prison sentence. Desperate to escape what quickly became an abusive marriage and to reclaim her dream of an education and an independent life, she boarded a bus and made it to the local courthouse. Everyone towered above her and paid no attention until a judge asked the young girl why she was there. Nujood said she wanted a divorce. A lawyer named Shada Nasser came to her rescue. Together they shocked Yemen and the world by fighting in court—and winning. I suggested that Nujood’s story should inspire Yemen to end child marriage once and for all.
The next day provided more contrasts when I went on to Oman, whose ruler, Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said, had made wiser choices over the years that helped his country build a modern society while remaining true to its culture and traditions. “Let there be learning, even under the shade of trees,” he had proclaimed. In the 1970s the entire country had three primary schools, which educated fewer than a thousand boys and no girls. In 2014, Oman has universal primary education, and more women than men graduate from the country’s universities. Oman is a monarchy, not a democracy, but it has shown what is possible when a leader focuses on education, empowers women and girls, and puts people at the center of its development strategy. In 2010, the UN Development Programme ranked Oman as the world’s most improved country in human development since 1970.
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