Interventions (36 page)

The International Court of Justice ruled in 2004 that Sharon's wall, as they called it, to the extent that it deviated from the 1967 line and went into occupied Palestinian territory, was illegal. The problem was not the barrier itself—Israel could build a wall along its border the same way the United States could build a fence along its border with Mexico. The problem was its route, inside Palestinian lands. The General Assembly asked me to set up a register to record the damage that the wall was causing for Palestinians. The barrier was built with both a security
and
a political purpose in mind. The same was true of Israel's disengagement from Gaza.

—

W
hen Sharon announced in December 2003 that he intended to leave Gaza, I admit I was surprised. Here was the father of the settlements promising to uproot settlers. He had famously proclaimed that “the fate of Netzarim [a settlement in Gaza] is the fate of Tel Aviv.” In explaining his change of heart, he said that the Palestinian population was growing rapidly “in incredibly cramped refugee camps, in poverty and squalor, in hot-beds of ever-increasing hatred, with no hope whatsoever on the horizon”—a powerful description of the impact of nearly forty years of occupation. Israelis often claim that the UN exaggerates the crisis facing the civilian population in Gaza, but perhaps Sharon's own words will convince them. I have not been back to Gaza since, but if this was how Sharon described it in 2005, it must be worse today after years of prolonged Israeli blockade and Hamas rule.

Sharon viewed the disengagement as a tool to rid Israel of a liability while consolidating its hold on key West Bank settlement blocs. He wanted to receive American backing for Israeli positions regarding settlements and refugees in any future negotiations, while further establishing that there was “no partner” for peace on the Palestinian side. He achieved all these tactical victories—but, strategically, the disengagement took both Israelis and Palestinians further away from a solution. It helped to introduce dynamics that made it harder and harder for the Palestinians to stay cohesive as a political unit, played into the hands of Hamas, and left Israelis dismayed at the security consequences of leaving occupied territory.

Whatever my considerable misgivings, I decided that I could not be opposed to an Israeli withdrawal from land that did not belong to Israel. But I was equally clear that this was the “right thing, done the wrong way.” We alerted the Security Council that Gaza was descending into lawlessness, chaos, and anarchy—fair warning of what could follow in the vacuum left by an Israeli departure. By acting unilaterally, Sharon undermined the new Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, who had been elected in January 2005 to replace Arafat after his death. Like Barak in Lebanon five years earlier, Sharon sent a worrying message that Israel was more prepared to leave territory when the price of conflict got too high—this time at the hands of Hamas militants—than it was to seek a peace accord with the Palestinian leadership. (Netanyahu did the same in 2011 by rebuffing calls by the moderate West Bank leadership for prisoner releases to the Palestinian Authority, yet releasing one thousand Palestinian prisoners to Hamas in exchange for an Israeli soldier held in Gaza.)

—

T
o mitigate these effects, and ensure that a postwithdrawal Gaza would be a viable entity, not a suffocating prison, I wanted to do everything possible to maximize Israeli-Palestinian coordination throughout the process. I also wanted to see that it led us back to the roadmap, not away from it. In the language of the day, it should be “Gaza first, not Gaza last.” This required vigorous diplomacy, including from the UN. But by the end of 2004, my envoy Terje Roed-Larsen had left Jerusalem, and in his place I appointed the veteran UN diplomat Álvaro de Soto, who arrived in May 2005. De Soto was used to delicate problems and had done impressive work in peace processes in El Salvador and Cyprus.

Unrelated to this process, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called me to propose that the retiring head of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, should be appointed as an envoy to coordinate the Gaza disengagement. I leaped at the suggestion and urged that he be an envoy not of the United States but of the Quartet as a whole. Wolfensohn was a close friend and passionate about helping the weak and poor. He had unrivaled reach into the pockets of donors and knew the Israelis and the Palestinians well.

Wolfensohn moved mountains to reach a fair and workable framework that would ensure security through the Gaza-Israel crossings, make sure that imports and exports would flow, and enable a proper Palestinian takeover of the greenhouses that Israel left behind in Gaza—even donating his own money for the purpose.

At the eleventh hour, the Americans took over the process and tilted the framework toward the Israelis. I witnessed once again the unhealthy possessiveness that Washington has over the Arab-Israeli peace process, and its reluctance to share it meaningfully with others—even those working toward the same ends. Eventually, however, a new layer of complexity would be added by the decisions of the Palestinians themselves at the ballot box.

H
AMAS AND THE
Q
UARTET

Few issues in UN Middle East diplomacy caused more controversy than my participation in 2006 in a Quartet position that effectively isolated the newly elected Hamas-led Palestinian Authority government. The Quartet had backed Hamas' participation in Palestinian elections when we met in my conference room in New York in September 2005. We agreed that a group participation in elections ought not, as a matter of principle, have a militia, but we decided to support President Abbas's strategy for addressing the problem. He wanted to end the militias, and his slogan was “One Authority, One Law, One Gun.” He told us he could not disarm Hamas forcibly; instead, he wanted to approach the matter politically, with Hamas inside the parliament, bound by the laws set by the majority, and confronted with the contradictions of its own position.

But when Hamas won the election on January 25, 2006, it became the majority—upending this strategy entirely. Hamas would now form a government and be responsible not only for public services but for the Palestinian security forces. I said publicly that we would work with a duly elected Palestinian government. However, the result was a bombshell for Washington. Rice had acknowledged in September that the Palestinians needed some room for the evolution of their political process. But with Hamas' having won the elections, she seemed determined to close off that room entirely when we met in London five days after the election.

Rice's mood was not made any better when Jimmy Carter, whose Carter Center had observed the elections, reported to the Quartet meeting that the vote had been admirably free and fair—and then criticized U.S. and Israeli policy. I thanked Carter and escorted him from the room so that the Quartet itself could continue discussions, and returned to a frosty glare from the secretary of state. After all, I was the one who had invited Carter to brief us in the first place.

Hamas stood for, and had done, many abominable things in its time. Israelis regarded Hamas as their mortal enemy, and many moderate Palestinians also worried what an unreformed Hamas could mean for their own society. Yet Hamas had now decided to participate in electoral politics and, to the surprise of many, it had been entrusted by the Palestinian people with government. I believe this reflected the failure of Fatah and the peace process rather than mass Palestinian support for Islamist-dominated politics or the destruction of Israel, a goal to which Hamas was formally committed. Some thought Hamas was sending signals that it was ready to envisage a genuine transformation; others felt the movement was pursuing tactical advantages without changing its strategic objectives.

The Americans wanted the Quartet to agree that all funding to any Hamas-led government should be withdrawn unless it committed itself to three principles: renunciation of violence, recognition of Israel, and acceptance of previous commitments and obligations. I was prepared to sign up to clear standards for Hamas, which I agreed had unacceptable positions. But I respected the vote of the Palestinian people, and I wanted to know whether the Quartet would be prepared to work with Hamas in some way if they made a move
toward
the principles, even if it did not fully
meet
them. Rice largely avoided the question. There was trouble ahead.

I was used to differences in the Quartet, but never before had the divisions been so stark. The United States and the EU were the major donors to the Palestinian Authority and viewed Hamas as a terrorist group. Russia and the UN did not have these restrictions, and the UN had an overall humanitarian responsibility for the welfare of the Palestinians. We tried to secure Quartet agreement on a “common but differentiated” approach—those without restrictions could be the agents for dealing with Hamas as necessary, while those with restrictions could apply pressure. Rice would have none of it: “The fact is we are split and we can't hide that,” she said in a Quartet phone call on March 28. When I proposed a Quartet meeting to further discuss the matter, she said: “I am always happy to see you all, but I am not sure there is anything further to discuss in the Quartet.”

My immediate concern was to ensure that the Palestinian Authority remained a viable entity. De Soto and Wolfensohn prepared studies showing that if the financial plug were pulled on the Palestinian Authority, it would lead to chaos in health and education services, as well as a large disgruntled security sector whose salaries were not paid. The work of more than a decade of building institutions, however imperfect, could be lost.

The Americans did not seem to mind. Indeed, Wolfensohn and de Soto each warned me that the United States' aim was to bring about the collapse of the Palestinian Authority and Hamas with it. The Israelis had the same view—Sharon's advisor Dov Weisglass told my envoy that it would take “just a few days” for popular protest to force Hamas to meet international demands or fall. Still, it was obvious that donors would not transfer money to the Palestinian Authority if there were no signs of serious Hamas political evolution, particularly as regards its attitude to violence and a two-state solution.

As I told Solana when we discussed this dilemma in an April phone call: “Something we will not be forgiven for is if we are accused of causing the fall of Hamas and a social and economic upheaval in the territories.” Fortunately, he and Benita Ferrero-Waldner, who had replaced Chris Patten as the EU commissioner for external relations, agreed. They set up a temporary international mechanism to channel money into key public sector services for the Palestinians, with safeguards to prevent diversion—and it took some persuading to get the Americans to go along even with this. The EU mechanism arrested but could not ultimately prevent the decline of Palestinian institutions. I hoped that a complete collapse could be avoided if the Palestinians could agree on a unity government with a sensible political program. This required Hamas to move and donors not to insist on 100 percent satisfaction.

Some of my advisors felt it was also vital that we have a political dialogue with Hamas to test its intentions, educate its leaders about the responsibilities of both government and the political process, directly convey the international community's expectations, and try to encourage its further political evolution. I had no in-principle objection to this approach, consistent with UN practice everywhere. An essential part of the secretary-general's good offices responsibilities is his prerogative to talk to all players in a given situation and to promote an inclusive approach to political dialogue.

However, my experiences in the region, including with Hizbollah, had made me less than sanguine about the UN's capacity to do this effectively with Hamas—
unless
there was a genuinely agreed international strategy in place about where we wanted to go. Clearly, there was not. I also faced a more awkward reality. A high-level political dialogue with a Hamas government at that time would have shut the UN out with many constituencies. Israel would almost certainly have refused to see my envoy, and the United States warned us in no uncertain terms of where it stood. President Abbas retained his position as head of the Palestinian Authority and the PLO, and it was important to maintain and enhance his position as the leader who stood for a nonviolent approach. I decided that we had to try to work with both parties and our international partners, and that investing our capital on bringing Hamas into the mainstream was unlikely to yield much return and could come at high cost unless there was a stronger basis of international support for it. I was also convinced that, in time, the international position would adjust.

I did not shut the door. I instructed the UN country team that they could have technical contacts as needed to fulfill their mandates. These contacts have been crucial in the years since—particularly in Gaza after the mid-2007 Hamas takeover—to enable UN agencies to deliver their programs on the ground. I also authorized political contacts as necessary. My envoy made telephone contact with the new Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, on a couple of occasions when tensions were high. One of the senior advisors at the office of the United Nations Special Coordinator (UNSCO) was authorized to make contact with the Hamas leadership, beginning a process of quiet political engagement that has matured in the years since, and been utilized by several different parties to address specific problems, ranging from de-escalating violent incidents to supporting prisoner-exchange negotiations.

L
EBANON
: H
ARIRI
'
S
A
SSASSINATION

While the Palestinian issue dominated my concerns for several years after the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon, toward the end of my tenure I would also find myself once again at the heart of dramatic events in Lebanon.