Battle Ready

  The speech generated a lot of media excitement; my phone rang off the hook; and there was nothing I could tell anybody. I just didn’t know any answers. What was my job?

  ON NOVEMBER 21, I visited the State Department for further briefings and administrative processing in preparation for my initial trip, scheduled for the twenty-fifth; but my most important business at Foggy Bottom that day was the marching orders I got from Secretary Powell and Deputy Secretary Armitage. They gave me tremendous latitude:

  My mission was to achieve an immediate cease-fire in place, to be followed by implementation of the Tenet and Mitchell plans. They wanted these to be accepted on the ground rather than just in principle. How I did it was up to me. I was expected to use my head, and my own initiative.

  “We don’t like to lose,” Secretary Powell told me. “We like to win. You get out there and make it happen, use your judgment. You’ve got a lot of latitude, a lot of freedom in action. But don’t hesitate to pick up that phone and call me directly if you need something.”

  It was gratifying to hear the Secretary express such personal confidence in me. Yet taking on that kind of responsibility always makes you a little tense. I knew what kind of burden had fallen on me.

  Ambassador Burns would travel out with me on the first part of the trip; and Aaron Miller would be assigned to assist me—a great choice.

  Miller was the State Department specialist on the Middle East peace process. Years before, he had joined the Department as a historian, but somehow the peace process itself had captured him. It became his life. His total personal commitment was to bring peace to the region. In time, as the specialist, he’d worked for all the secretaries of state and presidents, becoming over the years the government’s corporate memory on that subject. 84 He knows everybody, and he’s known by everybody. He knows every issue, every event, and every betrayal. Nothing in that part of the world stays hidden from Aaron Miller.

  In Israel, he was involved in everything I did, and was totally there for me—without in any way trying to impose his thinking or his way of doing things. He provided background, recommendations, support, ideas; and then encouraged me to add my own thinking. “We need fresh thinking,” he explained. “A lot of people in this business think they know how to do it, and they’ll never skip an opportunity to pass on their wisdom. But the truth is, no ideas have worked so far. So fire at will, and find something new.”

  He and I became very close; it was just a wonderful fit of two different personalities. He was intense and full of nervous energy. While I’m not exactly easygoing, I try to be more relaxed and good-humored at work. He had started out as a liberal academic, and had never experienced a military guy before we met. I was a complete alien to his country. Yet he found that fascinating, and I found him fascinating; and so we somehow complemented one another. When he was down, I could pick him up; when I was down, he’d pick me up. And in the end, our friendship really helped the team.

  EARLY ON the twenty-first, Secretary Powell, Bill Burns, and I traveled to the White House to brief President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and National Security Advisor Rice.

  When the president asked me about my mission—essentially to see how I understood what I was supposed to do—I let him know that I wanted to get the Tenet and Mitchell plans into play. This seemed to satisfy him. He wished me luck and told me he appreciated my doing this for the country. My sense was that he was giving this thing his blessing, but from a distance; this was Colin Powell’s baby. Still, we were good to go, and that was enough for me.

  AS I prepared to leave for Israel, I tried to keep a low profile and avoid distractions—such as encounters with the press. Better to leave the press interaction to the State Department. This caused resentment in the media and resulted in minor disruptions when some of the media retaliated; but I knew public diplomacy on my part would be counterproductive.

  After the struggle to make the U.S. Constitution had been won, James Madison remarked that the twenty representatives who’d put it together had made an agreement to hold the process in confidence and not talk to the press. If that had not been done, he went on to say, if the fathers had failed to keep the process private and it had become naked to the media and the scrutiny of the public, we would never have had a Constitution.

  If every step of the way, every consideration, every possibility, every proposal, every tentative glimmer of an idea, every thought put on the table suddenly got into the open where it could be endlessly analyzed or attacked or mauled by the press (and it didn’t matter which press—Al Jazeera, the New York Times, the Jerusalem Post, the Guardian, the Wall Street Journal), we’d never have moved anywhere. You can’t go forward in an emotional, involved, complex process like the Middle East peace process if the spotlight is on you.

  Public diplomacy and transparency are a good thing. But these don’t work well in some places, under some circumstances, and with some issues. Often a process hits critical moments when private negotiations are necessary to work through sensitive issues or proposals. If these are made public every inch of the way, they can make it impossible for the parties to explore and develop possibilities. This was clearly one of those places.

  AS I prepared to take on the peace mission, I sounded out friends who were familiar with the Israeli-Palestinian nightmare, looking for advice and insights. Their predictions were gloomy: “You know, you ought to really think about this before you sign on to it. The chances of this thing going south are right up there with night following day. And when that happens, you’re going to be saddled with the failure.” Even the people from the State Department who solicited me for the job kept asking me: “Are you out of your mind? Do you really want to be actually stuck with this?” . . . Thoughts that were jokingly echoed by Rich Armitage: “Are you crazy?” he asked. I knew, though, that he appreciated my willingness to do this. One reason I was excited about this mission was the chance to work for Rich and Secretary Powell once again. These two great men have always been inspirations for me.

  How could I not look hard at the slim chances of success? Yet I also had to face myself and my own conscience. “It’s not this or that failure that matters,” I told myself. “You know, if you save one life, you have to do it. But more important, if there’s even a point one percent chance of success, you’ve got to try. You can’t give up trying in these situations.”

  The number of times you’re successful in these mediations is low. It’s like baseball. You get a hit every third time up, you’re in the Hall of Fame. You have to answer your country’s call to service regardless of personal interests or the likelihood of success.

  I had one other strong motivation—Colin Powell’s personal commitment. If he was ready to put his ass on the line for this, then I was glad to be part of it.

  I have a tremendous respect for Secretary Powell. I don’t know many people with greater honor, integrity, and ethics. The distinction between right and wrong is not a trivial thing with him. I have personally seen Colin Powell take actions that in no way benefit him, actions where the personal and political risks are high, actions that calculating people or those looking at their own personal benefit would avoid. He does them anyway, without calling attention to himself, because they’re the right things to do.

  Powell was not standing back and letting the peace process take its course. He was pushing it. It wasn’t popular. It wasn’t politically expedient. Within the administration, he had enemies. I learned that the Defense Department opposed my selection for this mission. While I was at CENTCOM, I had disagreed with positions taken by many policymakers there; and now I had few friends at the Pentagon. Powell knew this, yet pushed on with what he felt was right.

  ON NOVEMBER 25, 2001, Bill, Aaron, and I departed for Israel.

  ROUND ONE

  Our plane touched down at Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv on the evening of November 26.

  I spent the first night getting briefings from the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv and the U.S. Consulate in Jer
usalem (which was our official point of contact with the Palestinians).

  In the past, friction had developed between these two posts. Embassies tend to get “clientitis,” which meant that their staffs, if they’re not careful, begin to take the side of locals they see and live with day to day.

  Fortunately, when I came to Israel we were blessed with two of our best diplomats—Dan Kurtzer and Ron Schlicher—running the embassy and the Jerusalem consulate. Kurtzer, our ambassador to Israel, is absolutely one of the finest diplomats we have ever created in the United States. He had been ambassador to Egypt when I was at CENTCOM, so I knew him well. In Jerusalem, we had Ron Schlicher, a career diplomat with extensive experience in the Middle East and in the Arab world, whom I had not met, but his reputation was splendid.

  These two brilliant professionals made it work and made their people cooperate. Although they both had strong personal feelings on the issues, they made it absolutely clear that their job was to promote the interests of the United States of America, and they made it equally clear that their first and foremost priority at that moment was to cooperate and find a peaceful resolution to the calamitous conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians. These attitudes took hold of everybody in the embassy and the consulate. And it was the force of their leadership that made it work.

  THE INITIAL BRIEFS (and press reports) painted a bleak picture. No surprises here. The level of violence had steadily increased since the Second Intifada had begun in September 2000. All trust and confidence between the parties had evaporated, and peace talks were almost nonexistent. For the Israelis, the first priority was security, and in particular stopping the suicide attacks from extremist groups. Once that goal was achieved, they might begin negotiations and consider making concessions. For the Palestinians, the first priority was political commitment by the Israelis to Palestinian statehood, and removal of all Israeli troops from their territories. The gap between these views was huge.

  The only ongoing talks were in the Trilateral Committee meetings. This committee—consisting of security experts from Israel, Palestine, and the U.S.—was set up by George Tenet to deal with security coordination and de-confliction issues (that is, where forces rubbed up against one another). Since it was then the only point of engagement between the two parties, it seemed to be the best venue for any attempt to get the Tenet plan into effect on the ground and a cease-fire in place.

  AT THE END of the day, I retired to the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, where we set up our headquarters and living spaces. Because 9/11 and the Intifada had dried up tourism, there was very little occupancy. We set up in one wing of the hotel. My suite, which I used as office and living quarters, was at a corner that overlooked the Old City. It was a beautiful setting, a couple of floors up.

  As I hit the sack after a long and exhausting first day of travel and briefs, dark thoughts swirled through my mind.

  The task ahead was daunting. I knew I had a lot to learn about the situation, the personalities, the issues, but I couldn’t afford to take a lot of time to get up to speed, while at the same time getting the negotiations started and a process moving. I had to hit the ground running. Aaron Miller, Bill Burns, and the others on the team were certainly available with their considerable experience, but much of the responsibility still weighed on me. Expectations were already raised, people had begun to hope again; I didn’t want to see the momentum or the hope fade. Progress had to be evident right off the bat.

  I had an additional gut feeling that we were going to get heavy pressure from the terrorists and extremists, like Hamas and Islamic Jihad. According to our own and Israeli intelligence, the pattern with these groups was to pick up the level of violence whenever negotiations looked like they were making progress. Inevitably, the violence would box in the mediation effort. The Israelis would retaliate against the perpetrators of the violence. The Palestinians would hit back. And everybody would break off from the negotiations—always the goal of the extremist groups. So I expected that they would come at this one with a vengeance and would hit with a lot of violent events. If I was right, it meant we would have a very limited time frame in which to make progress. How much time depended on our ability to operate through the violence . . . or, better, to prevent violent events, catch a break, and get something done before the violence overshadowed our efforts. Unless I was very off the mark, we were going to be taking a roller-coaster ride . . . whipping from crisis to hope over and over again.

  Unfortunately, I couldn’t have been more right. When the violence came, it was horrific. It eventually brought an end to the negotiations.

  Hamas and Islamic Jihad are committed to the destruction of the State of Israel. Since neither of them, in my view, seriously buys the two-state solution, it’s hopeless to think they will compromise. With them, it’s all or nothing. That means they will simply continue to generate destructive violence to punish the Israelis and block any kind of peaceful resolution and compromise.

  Their history is interesting: When Hamas was initially organized, it was encouraged by the Israelis as a counter to the PLO. It later took a more radical turn and now gets support from Iran, Syria, and elsewhere (Iraq, for example, before the fall of Saddam Hussein). When Islamic Jihad emerged, it was even more religiously fanatic, but just as skilled in the evil arts. It has never quite had the same clout as Hamas, however. Hamas is the big player. It is much better organized, has strong tentacles in the Palestinian population (cleverly put in play by charitable organizations), and has a powerful political wing. Hamas has much better reconnaissance than Islamic Jihad’s; and their attacks are far more sophisticated and achieve much greater effect, with far greater casualties. (They were responsible for the Passover bombing and all the major bus bombings—blowing up busloads of school kids, for example.) Their attacks strike right at the heart and soul of the Israelis. They really know how to jam the blade home.

  Other Palestinian extremists can probably be handled. But Hamas is another thing. It would almost certainly take a civil war in Palestine to break their back—assuming they didn’t win the war.

  In talks with mediators, the Palestinians will always press for a cease-fire and a compromise with Hamas. I don’t see it. It would be great if Hamas actually agreed to all that, and meant it; but it’s hard to see how they’d square their objectives with a compromise.

  Even if they bought into a cease-fire, I’d be suspicious that it was just an attempt to regroup and rearm. And of course, as they went about doing that, the Israelis (whose intelligence is excellent) would find out about it and strike. The case would then be made that the Israelis had struck for no reason . . . and so on. The spiral of violence would start again.

  THE FIRST full day was scheduled for meetings with the Israelis. To begin the day, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had laid on a helicopter tour, highlighted by his personal perspective on the geography and situation on the ground. This was to be followed by a series of briefs that would last well into the evening.

  Some of my State Department advisers had reservations about this, on the grounds that the Palestinians might accuse us of letting Sharon co-opt the agenda; but I told them I could handle any attempt to manage my views. And if the Palestinians wanted to take me on a similar tour, they were welcome to invite me. I thought it was better to be open and transparent with both sides . . . and not tight-assed and overcautious.

  Sharon’s tour gave me a strong sense of the land of Israel. We saw all the major sites—Bethlehem, Nazareth, the Jordan River, the Dead Sea, the Sea of Galilee. We flew down to look at Sharon’s farm in the south. We flew up to the Golan Heights, stopped at a military position, and talked with their people.

  What was most interesting that day was Sharon’s own take on all this. He was a battle-tested soldier (1967, 1973), a farmer deeply attached to his land, and an Israeli convinced of his birthright, as well as a wily politician. His running dialogue during the trip came from all of those perspectives. He stressed security issues in relation to
the terrain, the way any soldier would to another soldier. But there was open joy and pride in his voice as he dwelled lovingly on the agricultural aspects of the panorama that unfolded below us. And there was a similar joy and pride as he pointed out sites of historical significance to Israelis—ruins from Roman times and earlier.

  “Look at those terraces up there in the rocks,” he’d exclaim with a simple passion that was very touching. “My ancestors built those thousands of years ago!” Or: “Look at this piece of terrain. You’re a military man. If we don’t control that, we’re vulnerable.” Or: “Look at this land. It was desert. Look what Israel has done here. We have greened it. Look at the orchards. Look at the fruit we produce. Look at those beautiful cattle down there.”

  These three elements—soldier, farmer, Jewish roots—really sum up the man. Everything he is flows from these. His commitment to them is passionate and total. The man is committed with his entire soul to the land he’d grown up in: “We have returned from the Diaspora. This is our land, this is our birthright, this is our history.”

  Before I met him, I was led to expect that I was going to run into some kind of big bully soldier. That characterization does not exactly fit. He is certainly a hard guy, who grew up in a tough environment—direct, frank, blunt, tells you right out what he wants to say to you, doesn’t try to twist words (he’s no slick politician)—but he never tried to bully me. What you see is what you get, that’s the way he is. If he couldn’t do something—make some concession he didn’t want to make—he wouldn’t weasel around the issue. He’d just say no. Unfortunately, I had the feeling that when we got down the road, when the tough concessions would be necessary, I couldn’t see him making the kind of concessions some of his predecessors had offered.