Tested by Zion (7 page)

Sharon told IDF troops on March 10,

I have been demanding seven days of quiet as a precondition for entering into negotiations for a ceasefire. I know that I am now criticized for changing my mind. Due to the level of violence and the intensity of barbaric terrorist attacks inflicted on us – and the brave [counterterrorist] war being conducted by commanders and soldiers, there is no possibility at this stage of achieving a few days of quiet. I decided that since I had always attached great importance to the matter of achieving a ceasefire, I was also willing to change my position.

The policy shift by Sharon had no effect. A bus bombing in Jerusalem injured 25 people on March 17, and on March 20 an attack on a bus traveling from Jerusalem to Nazareth killed 7 and injured 30. On March 27, Palestinian terrorists exploded a bomb during a Passover seder at the Park Hotel in Netanya, killing 27 Israelis and injuring 140. Two were killed and more than 20 wounded by a bomb attack at a Jerusalem supermarket on March 29. On March 30, 1 was killed and 30 injured by a café bombing in downtown Tel Aviv. On the last day of the month, 14 people were killed and more than 40 injured by a suicide bomb in a Haifa restaurant.

In response, Sharon said the country “is at war” and Israel moved back into the West Bank in force – attacking terrorists and their workshops and PA buildings, declaring Ramallah a closed military zone, and surrounding Arafat in the Muqata – where electricity and water were cut off. IDF troops were but a few yards from Arafat's offices. All this activity turned out to be a public relations disaster because Arafat appeared on television throughout the world as the victim, not the terrorist. Lit by candlelight, he appealed for international pressure to stop Israel's attacks. The United States voted along with every other member of the Security Council (except Syria, which abstained) for a resolution calling for “immediate cessation of all acts of violence, including all acts of terror” and urging “the parties to halt the violence.”
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This was the kind of moral equivalence between terrorists and their Israeli victims that the United States would later come to reject. Yet in a news conference held the day after the UN vote, President Bush said, “I understand someone trying to defend themselves and to fight terror, but the recent [Israeli] actions aren't helpful.”
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In the midst of this paroxysm of violence in early 2002 came a peace proposal from an unlikely source: Crown Prince Abdallah of Saudi Arabia. Abdallah discussed his thoughts with Thomas Friedman of the
New York Times
, who
wrote about them in a column on February 17. Abdallah's idea was “full withdrawal from all the occupied territories, in accord with U.N. resolutions, including in Jerusalem, for full normalization of relations.” He told Friedman,

I have drafted a speech along those lines. My thinking was to deliver it before the Arab summit and try to mobilize the entire Arab world behind it. The speech is written, and it is in my desk.…I wanted to find a way to make clear to the Israeli people that the Arabs don't reject or despise them. But the Arab people do reject what their leadership is now doing to the Palestinians, which is inhumane and oppressive. And I thought of this as a possible signal to the Israeli people.

The Arab League summit on March 27 adopted a version of Abdallah's plan, which became “the Arab Plan.” Ever since, Saudis and other Arabs have criticized both Israel and the United States for ignoring it and have argued that it would have provided a solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – if only we had implemented it.

Having the Saudi head of government speak of normalization with Israel – under any circumstances whatsoever – was a significant step forward, but the Saudi claims that their ruler had provided a magic solution for the region were disingenuous. For one thing, this was no offer to negotiate with Israel: It was a “take it or leave it” statement. For another, its demand was clearly unacceptable: a complete return to the 1967 borders, which Israelis (and American officials) had long ago concluded were indefensible. Returning to the “1967 borders” also meant abandoning the Old City of Jerusalem, including the Western Wall of the ancient Temple, and every single settlement. The issue of Palestinian refugees, not mentioned by Abdallah, was added to the brew at the Arab summit in Beirut, making it even less potable for Israel: To accept millions of Palestinians into Israel would destroy the Jewish character of the society (which was presumably the goal of Syria and Sudan, who threw in this provision). Finally, although Abdallah had spoken only of Israeli-Palestinian peace, the “Arab Plan” adopted in Beirut required Israeli withdrawal not only from the Golan Heights but also from “the remaining occupied Lebanese territories in the south of Lebanon.” This was a reference to the Sheba'a Farms area, which the United Nations itself had found to be Syrian, not Lebanese, territory, so adding a reference to it was yet another complication designed to be a killer amendment.

Then there was the issue of form. Given the American relationship with Israel, if Abdallah's proposal was meant to commence negotiations or a new peace effort, it is reasonable to think he might have given Washington a head's up or asked the administration to convey the proposal to the Israelis. He did not, laying out the plan in a column – not even a news story – in the
New York Times
. That was an odd way to put something on the table if he truly sought American backing.

Sharon's reaction, privately, was “[i]f it is a serious plan by the Saudis, let the Saudis talk to me about it.” As Shalom Tourgeman put it, “What is the beginning of the Arab initiative? It is the Saudi plan that was launched. By
Tom Friedman writing about it, in the middle of a wave of terror. Now, how on the most critical and important issue to the future of our country, can one expect that we should rely on an editorial or an article written by a journalist from America? It wasn't serious.”
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Remembering the way Anwar Sadat's visit to Jerusalem had changed Israeli-Egyptian relations, perhaps a dramatic presentation of the plan in Jerusalem by a group of Arab leaders might have created a new dynamic. Yet no such visit came; instead, the original (and vague) terms suggested by Abdallah via Friedman were stiffened at the summit meeting on March 27 – and later that very same day came the “Park Hotel Massacre,”
the bloody and vicious bombing of a Passover seder in the coastal town of Netanya.

With Palestinian terrorism mounting and the list of victims growing, American diplomacy limped along almost aimlessly. Calls for Arafat to clamp down on the violence were endlessly repeated, as if it were not clear that he was in fact behind the violence. When Vice President Cheney visited several capitals in the Middle East in March, the schedule did not include a meeting with Arafat. Such a meeting had not been discussed in Washington. But once Air Force Two lifted off, Powell's man on the trip, Assistant Secretary Bill Burns, told Cheney he simply had to see the Palestinian leader – and facilitate his attendance at the Arab summit that was to be held March 27 in Beirut. As Eric Edelman, then Cheney's top foreign policy advisor, explained, “The idea was you'd get Sharon to agree that Arafat could go and come back, and then you'd get Arafat to agree that he would take some serious steps to deal with terror, and then the vice president would meet with him and he would go off to the Arab Summit.” The VP's view was that most likely “Arafat wouldn't deliver, but there was a chance he might; but in the meantime you'd be able to tell Abdallah that we had done what we could for his peace plan.”
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Libby and
Hannah on Cheney's staff argued against any meeting with Arafat: Especially after the
Karine A
incident, such a meeting meant business as usual with a terrorist and would undercut the entire war on terror.

The party reached a compromise: General Zinni was accompanying the VP in Israel, and if Arafat made certain firm antiterror commitments to Zinni, Cheney would see him later in the trip. As Cheney puts it in his memoir, “Would it be helpful, I asked, to set up a meeting with me as an inducement for Arafat's cooperation? Zinni said that it would, and so I offered to meet with Arafat provided he agreed to the conditions Zinni had set forth. Zinni was confident.”
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Zinni believed that Arafat had already made these commitments orally, and he needed only to get the PLO chief to sign a piece of paper setting forth the agreed terms. Simple: Arafat signs and gets a visit from the VP in Ramallah. But when Zinni contacted him, Arafat would not sign. Zinni wanted more time. It was then agreed that if Arafat could be persuaded to sign, Cheney would see him at the very end of the trip, in Cairo. Still, and to Zinni's amazement, Arafat would not sign, so no meeting was held with the vice president. Shortly thereafter came the Park Hotel bombing of a Passover seder, and the Zinni
mission was all but dead as well. In Zinni's words, “I knew immediately we had come to the end of the road.”
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On March 29, Israel commenced what it called “Operation Defensive Shield
,” the largest military operation in the West Bank since the 1967 war. The goal: to stop terrorist attacks by hitting Palestinian targets, capturing terrorists, and making it nearly impossible for terrorists to plan and implement attacks. Arafat was put under siege at his headquarters in the Muqata in Ramallah. The IDF made incursions in all the major West Bank cities and into several refugee camps.

Immediately there were Palestinian claims of mass casualties, centering on the “Jenin Massacre” at the refugee camp there – where according to PLO officials, up to 500 people had been killed. It later emerged that, in fact, 52 Palestinians (mostly gunmen) and 23 IDF soldiers had died, but the Palestinian claims were picked up in the world media and by Arab governments. The latter began pressing Washington to stop the IDF and, according to Rice, “threatening all manner of retaliation if the Israelis didn't stop.”
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The Arab governments were also demanding that the United States protect Arafat, whom they believed (or in any event claimed) would be assassinated by the Israelis. President Bush did call Sharon to demand that the attacks on Arafat's Muqata stop and made the demand publicly as well. Ayalon recalled, “During
Defensive Shield
there were a few phone calls between Sharon and Bush that were not pleasant. When Bush said ‘When I say now, I mean now,’ it was after a phone call he made with Sharon. But Sharon didn't get the message and it wasn't a very good phone call.”

Ayalon was referring to what were probably the roughest moments in U.S.-Israel relations in all eight Bush years; Rice called it “a deepening split with Israel.”
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On April 4, Bush said in a speech that “Israel is facing a terrible and serious challenge. For seven days, it has acted to root out terrorist nests. America recognizes Israel's right to defend itself from terror. Yet, to lay the foundations of future peace, I ask Israel to halt incursions into Palestinian-controlled areas and begin the withdrawal from those cities it has recently occupied.…Storms of violence cannot go on. Enough is enough.” When Israel did not pull back, he repeated the message in tougher language on April 8: “I meant what I said to the Prime Minister of Israel. I expect there to be withdrawal without delay.…I repeat, I meant what I said about withdrawal without delay.” Bush denounced terrorism with clarity and called on not only Palestinians but also the Arab states to act against it, but the confrontation with Sharon was clear. In Sharon's view, Israel and Israelis were under attack, and he would fight and win this war. For the Bush administration, concerned both about pressure from Arab allies and about picking up the pieces after the violence had diminished, an absolute demolition of the Palestinian political structure was unwise.

We were now seven months after 9/11, but in April 2002, U.S. policy in the Middle East remained a mish-mash, even though it had a new and concrete goal: Palestinian statehood. On March 12, the United States had supported a UN Security Council resolution (Resolution 1397) that for the first time explicitly called for two states, Israel and Palestine, living “side by side.” Yet how that goal could be reached when the Palestinian leader was understood to be a terrorist himself was entirely unclear. Judging by the continuing trips to the region and the visits with Arafat, policy still seemed to revolve around re-creating conditions for a new peace negotiation between the PLO leader and the Israelis. On April 1, Rice called a small meeting to think through options. We have a policy that is “visibly different” from the past, she said; our goal is a Palestinian state, so a political solution exists in theory. Yet the creation of that state cannot appear to be the result of terror and violence, and it cannot be a terrorist state. She was grasping for a new approach.

In his April 4 remarks, the president announced that he was sending Secretary Powell on another visit to the region. This decision was less a reflection of policy than a substitute for one. At a meeting the following day to prepare for the trip, Rice warned Powell against falling back into the old “peace process” because the president was sympathetic with Israel's struggle against terrorism and nowhere called for new negotiations with Arafat. Yet it was clearer what Powell should
not
do than what he should: It seemed he was being sent only because the United States had to appear to be doing something to end the violence. As a biographer of Rice put it, “Bush had decided.…that there was little the United States could do to nudge the parties toward peace or even a suppression of hostilities. But he could also not be seen as indifferent to the downward spiral of events. By April 1, he concluded that he would have to send Powell to the Middle East. The Secretary of State did not want to go, and both he and the president knew that the trip would be futile.”
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