The Secretary (12 page)

“You all know that this is a very difficult and complex set of issues. You also know
that I personally am very committed to this. And I know that it can be done. I believe
that with all my heart. I feel passionately about this. This is something that is
in my heart, not just in my portfolio,” said the secretary.

In 1998, as First Lady, Hillary spoke to a group of young Palestinians, Israelis,
Jordanians, Egyptians, and Americans, who were holding an unprecedented joint youth
summit in Switzerland. She spelled out exactly how she thought the outcome of peace
talks should look: the Palestinians should have their own state. She was ahead of
White House policy. No American official had mentioned a Palestinian state yet, though
some had been thinking it and the Palestinians had been calling for it. Since the
creation of Israel in 1948, Palestinians had lived either as refugees in neighboring
states or under occupation in two separate pieces of territory: the Gaza Strip, in
the Mediterranean, and inland, on the border with Jordan, the West Bank, and East
Jerusalem. The two territories had first been annexed by Egypt and Jordan in 1948
but then captured by Israel during the 1967 Six-Day War. Tens of thousands of Palestinians
also became Israeli citizens and today make up 20 percent of the country’s population.
American presidents who labored for peace between Israel and the Palestinians had
so far never spelled out in detail what the outcome should look like. But Hillary
had said it aloud; it seemed obvious to her.

The Israeli prime minister was apoplectic—the country’s leadership openly opposed
the idea of a Palestinian state and was unable yet to envisage giving the Palestinians
anything more than an amorphous nationlet made up of cantons with little or no geographical
connection between them. The White House quickly put out a disclaimer, saying Hillary’s
statement was not official U.S. policy. As a U.S. senator from New York, Hillary was
less public about her views on Palestinian hardship and more in tune with the many
Jewish voters in her constituency. Now, as a secretary of state, she told the Arab
journalists before her that Palestinian children deserved a better future and that
Palestinian parents had the right to expect such a future for their children. She
promised that the Obama administration was going to work hard for peace and for a
Palestinian state.

“You will see the amount of effort that the United States puts into this. I wish it
could happen tomorrow. I wish it could happen certainly by the end of this year. But
I will not give up. We will make progress.”

Arab journalists, most of them Egyptians, were taken aback by her show of emotion.
During the eight years of the Bush administration, there had been little or no empathy.
Emoting wasn’t Condoleezza Rice’s strong suit, and it was never part of her talking
points. Suddenly the room erupted into applause. American officials standing along
the wall listening were stunned, especially those who were steeped in Middle East
affairs and protected themselves from the vagaries of the warring parties with layers
of cynicism. Journalists never applauded at the end of a press conference, and in
the Arab world no one ever cheered for American officials. The applause wasn’t just
the result of Hillary’s ability to charm when she spoke from the heart; it was a reflection
of the deep yearning, both in the room and in the region, for renewed hope about an
intractable conflict, a reflection of the inexplicable continued desire among Arabs
to see America take their side—preferably unconditionally. Despite their wariness
about the United States, the Arabs in the region had welcomed President Obama’s election,
and so far they liked what they were hearing.

*   *   *

On his second day in office, Obama had declared that seeking a solution to the sixty-year-long
conflict between Arabs and Israelis was in America’s national security interest. From
Washington to Ramallah, ears perked up. American presidents rarely tackled Middle
East peace at the start of their administrations. Even more striking was the new language.
For the past forty years, every American president had tried to broker peace: peace
would be good for the people of the region and pulling it off would make everyone
look good. Only two presidents had succeeded in bringing Arabs and Israeli leaders
together for a handshake on the White House lawn: Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. The
others tried their best to produce the same photo opportunity. But to seek peace because
it was a matter of national security for the United States, as Obama had said, elevated
this to an essential and urgent goal.

Obama’s first phone call to a foreign leader on January 21 was to the Palestinian
president Mahmoud Abbas—an unprecedented, symbolic, and powerful gesture. Because
78 percent of American Jews had voted for Obama, he felt strong, convinced that his
persona alone could deliver a breakthrough. Looking at the region, he saw elements
he could build on.

Just before Obama’s election, the Israeli military onslaught against the Palestinian
territory of Gaza had deepened the political divide between Palestinians and further
weakened Abbas. Since 2007, Abbas had ruled over only part of the Palestinian territories,
the West Bank. Hamas, the Sunni Islamist political party and armed militant group
listed as a terror group by the United States, ruled over Gaza. Wars often create
diplomatic momentum: they focus everybody’s minds on the need to find a solution.
Obama saw an opportunity. There were also signs that an agreement could be within
reach. The Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert, from the centrist Kadima Party, had
been negotiating on and off for two years with Abbas, both with the help of the United
States and also alone. They had been making real progress on all the issues, from
the borders of a future Palestinian state to the status of Jerusalem, which both Israelis
and Palestinians claimed as their capital. Olmert claimed they were “very close”
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to a deal. But progress was stalled when the Israeli leader faced corruption charges;
he was on his way out and his foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, also from Kadima, was
running for office. She was in a dead heat race with the leader of the right-wing
Likud Party. At the State Department, many officials were secretly rooting for Kadima.
On February 10, Livni and her party won the greatest number of seats but she had such
a narrow majority, she struggled to form a coalition. The Likud party leader, the
other contender for power, was more successful in wooing small parties, and at the
end of March he became the prime minister. Benjamin Netanyahu was back, and that wasn’t
part of anyone’s plan.

Netanyahu, or Bibi, as he was known, was the Israeli prime minister who had reacted
with such fury to Hillary’s statement about a Palestinian state back in 1998. He had
also driven Bill crazy. After a lecture from Netanyahu about the Arab-Israeli conflict
during one of their first meetings in 1996, President Clinton had exploded. “Who the
fuck does he think he is? Who’s the fucking superpower here?”
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Then secretary of state Madeleine Albright had described Bibi as “pugnacious, partisan
and very smooth,” a man who could be both “disarming and somewhat disingenuous”
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and constantly played games in the negotiations. He had spent years in the United
States, had studied at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and he used his
familiarity with America both to make friends and to game the system, pitting Congress
against the president.

The contrast with his predecessor Yitzhak Rabin was stark. Rabin had been assassinated
by a right-wing Israeli in 1995 because of concessions he made for peace. President
Clinton and Rabin had been great friends. The Israeli statesman had shaken hands with
then Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn and signed a peace treaty
with Jordan. Mostly, he was a man who stuck to his words and acted on them. Bibi constantly
reneged on his promises. Rahm Emanuel, one of President Clinton’s senior advisors,
said little in public but watched with dismay as Bibi frustrated Clinton’s efforts
to reach a lasting deal. Now Rahm was back in power too, this time as Obama’s chief
of staff.

Bibi probably did not have the best of memories from the Clinton administration. When
his government coalition had collapsed at the end of 1998, early elections were called,
and in Washington top administration officials were hoping that Bibi’s opponent, Labor
leader Ehud Barak, would win. The Israeli press speculated that Clinton was actively
trying to bring about Bibi’s defeat, a narrative that was fed by the presence in Israel
of a handful of Democratic political strategists who were close to Clinton and helped
Barak on the path to victory.

Two years after Hillary’s 1998 off-script comment, Bill Clinton himself called for
a Palestinian state and the position became official U.S. policy. But the details,
Washington insisted again, would have to be decided by Israel and the Palestinians:
the borders of the state, the status of Palestinian refugees, security agreements.
But once again Bibi was dragging his feet—he could not even utter the words “Palestinian
state.” He and previous Israeli leaders had tried to alter the contours of the territory
that they occupied in Israel’s favor. They built more and more settlements for Israelis
on land that would make up the future Palestinian state and erected a barrier separating
Israel from the West Bank. Supporters of the barrier argued that it was essential
to protect Israelis from Palestinian militant attacks. But already, Palestinian territory
was not contiguous; the Gaza Strip was separated from the West Bank by Israel proper—land
that Palestinians were not allowed on without Israeli permission. Palestinians complained
they were negotiating about how to split a pizza while the Israelis were busy eating
it.

Bibi and his right-wing maximalist views threatened Obama’s hopes for Middle East
peace. Emanuel advised Obama to be tough on Netanyahu and show him, immediately, who
the superpower was. Senator George Mitchell, Obama’s new Middle East peace envoy,
had tackled this all before too. At the end of the Clinton administration, when peace
failed and violence erupted, he had been tasked with finding a way forward for the
parties. One of the items on the long list of recommendations was a settlement freeze.
Obama appointed Mitchell at the behest of Hillary, who, although she could speak with
passion about a Palestinian state, was wary of associating herself too closely too
soon with the thankless task of Mideast peace. Mitchell, a seventy-six-year-old man
with a calm demeanor, had negotiated peace in Northern Ireland and believed in details
and small steps. He brought the settlement issue to the front again. Although he was
not formally in charge of the Mideast file, Emanuel was keen to show Bibi who was
boss, and he actively pushed for the freeze to top the agenda. When Netanyahu came
for his first meeting at the White House on May 18, President Obama established his
position.

“Settlements have to be stopped in order for us to move forward,” Obama said. “That’s
a difficult issue. I recognize that. But it’s an important one, and it has to be addressed.”

In public, Bibi said he was willing to consider refraining from new construction,
but if a school needed a new playground, if a building was still under construction,
if a family needed an extension to their house—all that construction had to continue.
Daily life had to grow, he insisted, it was natural. There were more than 300,000
settlers living in the Israeli occupied territory of the West Bank in between Palestinian
towns and, even though settlements were illegal under international law, they kept
growing. Like a game of rope pulling, Palestinians and Arabs had felt America leaning
toward them. Israel was now pulling hard on the other side, and tension was settling
in.

On May 27, Clinton met with the Egyptian foreign minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit at the
State Department. She was asked what she thought of Bibi’s offer to continue building
what was already under way but not allow any new construction.

“The president was very clear when Prime Minister Netanyahu was here. He wants to
see a stop to settlements,” said Clinton. Then, with the sleeve of her electric-blue
pantsuit going back and forth for emphasis, she continued with a faint indignant smile,
detailing exactly what she believed Obama had meant.

“Not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions. We think it is
in the best interests of the effort that we are engaged in that settlement expansion
cease. That is our position.”

Standing next to her, Aboul Gheit, one hand in his pocket, smiled smugly. He knew
the Obama administration wanted to push for a stop in settlement construction, and
he didn’t necessarily agree. He thought it was a short-term tactic when what was needed
was a comprehensive long-term strategy—ideally America should put a detailed plan
on the table and get to the finish line quickly. But he liked Clinton’s firm tone
of voice. This was a strong, powerful, and very public statement, and it boded well
for tough negotiations with the Israelis.

Finally
, the Palestinians thought. Finally, the United States has seen the light and was
showing Israel who was boss. Clinton’s firmness was beyond just a general call for
a stop in settlement activity. No natural growth meant drop all your cinder blocks,
immobilize your cranes, park your trucks. The Palestinian president and his advisors
adopted it as their new mantra. They certainly couldn’t ask less than what Washington
was setting as a standard. America had spoken, it was the will of the American president,
and all they had to do now was wait for the Israelis to comply. They would get their
house in order, continue fixing up the economy, and build state institutions, and
America would make peace talks happen. The radical group Hamas was more cynical. Words,
all words, they said. Nothing will change.