On November 5, 2008, when Barack Obama won the U.S. presidency by a big margin, many throughout Jordan and the Middle East breathed a sigh of relief. People hoped his administration would bring a new approach to the region and that he would rise to the historic challenge of the peace process-as mediator, middleman, and honest broker. Although it may seem that the complex negotiations should be solely between Israel and the Palestinians, America plays a crucial role. The United States has in the past too often appeared as an uncritical supporter of Israel, but everyone in the region knows that America is the only country Israel will listen to-even if Israel sometimes chooses to disregard what it is told.
In July 2008, Senator Obama paused from campaigning to make an overseas tour around Europe and the Middle East. Accompanied by Senators Jack Reed and Chuck Hagel, he arrived in Jordan on July 22, 2008, after visiting Iraq and Afghanistan. Amman, our capital, was originally built at the intersection of seven hills, and Obama chose the Citadel, a historic site atop one of these hills, to hold a press conference. One of the oldest cities in the world, Amman has been conquered by various empires, including the Greeks, the Romans, and the Umayyads, each of whom left their mark. Standing near the ruins of a Greek temple, a Byzantine church, and an Umayyad palace, Obama spoke about his recent visits to Afghanistan and Iraq and took questions from the press. He stressed the importance of the peace process, saying, "My goal is to make sure that we work, starting from the minute I"m sworn into office, to try to find some breakthroughs."
Following the press conference, I met with Obama at Beit Al Urdun, my residence in the suburbs of Amman. I stressed the importance of a just and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians, not just for the sake of peace alone, but because it would bring stability to the region and mitigate dangers from other regional hot spots. From my perspective, I told him, it was extremely important to have a coordinated U.S. foreign policy. During the Clinton administration, a series of envoys would show up in the region, from Dennis Ross to Martin Indyk to Madeleine Albright, each carrying a different message. I described how the same problem carried over into the Bush administration, when the president told me, "My man is Colin Powell. He"s the only one who"s going to talk foreign policy, and he is directly empowered by me." But Powell was contradicted by others in the administration who carried very different messages.
I advised Obama to select his lead person on the Middle East peace process and stick with that person. He outlined some of his thoughts on how to move forward. It was clear that he understood the issues, and I was left with the strong impression that this was a man who spoke the language of peace. We concluded our discussion and joined the other senators and their aides for a private dinner.
After dinner, I offered to drive Obama, whose next stop was Israel, to the airport. Driving senior guests around is something I do all the time-but his security detail was somewhat nonplussed. Being king, however, has its advantages. To Obama"s surprise, I jumped behind the wheel of a gray Mercedes sedan and invited him to take the pa.s.senger seat. We drove to the airport, followed by a convoy of other vehicles. In the half-hour drive to the airport we talked about our families and more personal topics, and got to know each other better.
One week after the U.S. election, I traveled to New York for a meeting of the United Nations General a.s.sembly on interfaith dialogue, sponsored by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. While I was there, I met with former president Bill Clinton, who urged me not to waste the next two and a half months before the inauguration and to begin to engage with the transition team immediately. This was long before Clinton"s wife, Hillary, had been identified as the next secretary of state. "You have to start moving," he told me. Clinton, who came closer than any other American president to getting the two sides to hammer out a deal, is a man whose advice I take seriously, and I began to reach out informally to members of the incoming Obama administration.
On November 12, while I was in the United States, I spoke by phone with Obama. I congratulated him on his recent victory and said I was looking forward to working with him on Middle Eastern issues. I said that while I understood he had a plethora of problems facing him as he launched a new administration-ranging from the global economic crisis to America"s budgetary woes and the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan-I hoped he would make time to quickly push forward negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians.
Our conversation left me extremely hopeful. I felt that we would have an American president who really understood that the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians was the root cause of instability in the region, and that achieving a just, comprehensive, and lasting peace would be in America"s national interest. It was a stark contrast to the previous eight years, when America"s policy had all too often seemed to be to support Israel, right or wrong. But before Obama would come to office, in January 2009, the situation would deteriorate radically.
The Egyptian-brokered cease-fire between Hamas and Israel expired in December 2008 and the two sides again exchanged blows. The cease-fire had been in jeopardy since November, when Israel killed six Hamas activists and Hamas fired rockets into Israel. Gaza had been blockaded economically by Israel since 2007-even medical supplies were severely limited-and was a ticking time bomb, waiting to explode.
Taking advantage of the political transition period in America and the Christmas and New Year holidays, when most heads of state are vacationing, Israel"s prime minister, Ehud Olmert, decided to launch an all-out attack on Gaza on December 27. A weeklong aerial bombardment was followed in early January by a full-scale invasion of Gaza by the Israeli army. A UN fact-finding commission, set up in April 2009 and headed by the eminent South African justice Richard Goldstone, reported that in three weeks of fierce fighting some fourteen hundred Palestinians were killed, including nine hundred to one thousand civilians, over six hundred of whom were women and children. The Israeli army lost ten soldiers, four to friendly fire, and Hamas rockets killed three Israeli civilians. In addition, Israeli fighters bombed the main prison and the Palestinian Legislative Council building as well as a United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) school in Gaza City, an action that was judged by the UN investigation to be illegal and in breach of the Geneva Conventions. The Goldstone Report, published in September 2009, concluded that the Israeli armed forces breached internationally recognized codes of military conduct by attacking a hospital in Gaza City with white phosphorus sh.e.l.ls and carrying out deliberate attacks against civilians in Gaza, including firing a missile at a mosque during evening prayers, killing fifteen people.
Satellite news networks broadcast images of civilian suffering in Gaza, sparking furious outrage. Across the Arab world people united in demanding a stern response to the Israeli actions. For the first time, a group of Arab countries mounted a concerted attempt to revoke the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, setting themselves against the moderates and pushing for a rejection of peace with Israel. The moderate Arab countries, including Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, among others, wondered whether Israel had managed to destroy the peace process for good.
Qatar called for an emergency summit of the Arab League, to be held in Doha on January 16. Fearing a hidden political agenda, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and other like-minded countries stayed away. Only thirteen Arab countries agreed to attend the summit. That was two countries short of the quorum required to make the meeting an official Arab League summit. In the end Qatar widened the guest list to include Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, who traveled to Doha from his base in Damascus.
Some Arab leaders declared the Arab Peace Initiative "already dead," and called for severing all links with Israel, including the closure of Arab emba.s.sies (Egyptian and Jordanian) in Israel. But as this was not an official summit, the Arab Peace Initiative could not be formally rejected. If we thought that severing ties with Israel would help bring justice to the Palestinians or peace to the region, we would not hesitate to do so. But the opposite is true. Our treaty with Israel has meant that on many occasions the Palestinians have relied on us to represent their viewpoint and pa.s.s on messages. Now, when Gazans were in desperate need of support, the fact that Jordan had diplomatic relations with Israel allowed us to help them.
We opposed the war on Gaza but could do nothing to stop it. We demanded that Israel halt all military operations against Gaza and strongly protested to the Israelis that they should not target civilians. We also provided a channel for relief that was used to deliver most of the Arab, European, and international relief supplies. Hundreds of tons of humanitarian and medical supplies from Jordan and the rest of the world entered Gaza by way of Jordan. We also dispatched a military field hospital-still operating in Gaza-that treated over a thousand patients a day immediately after opening. As of October 2010, 340,000 Gazans have received medical care at the hospital.
On January 19, 2009, Arab heads of state gathered in Kuwait for what was intended to be an economic summit that would devise a response to the global financial crisis. But we could not ignore the continuing crisis in Gaza. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia voiced the concerns of many when he said, "The Arab Initiative will not remain on the table indefinitely."
The emir of Kuwait, Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah, resisted the pressure from countries calling for the Arab Peace Initiative to be sc.r.a.pped, and the final communique confined itself to calling for a cease-fire in Gaza, immediate Israeli withdrawal, and an investigation into possible war crimes committed by the Israeli army.
The next day, as Israeli troops at last withdrew from Gaza, around a million people gathered in Washington to watch Barack Obama being sworn in as the forty-fourth president of the United States. President Obama honored his campaign promise, and his first calls the following morning were to the leaders of Jordan, Egypt, Israel, and the Palestinian Authority.
Typically, recent U.S. presidents have waited until the middle of their second term to take on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with one eye on the present and the other on their historical legacy. But by engaging forcefully from day one, Obama seemed to be presenting the region with a rare opportunity to make progress on this most difficult and intractable of problems. We all had to wonder: Would leaders in the region be able to seize this chance?
Developments in Israeli politics were not encouraging. The optimistic spirit of Annapolis was long gone. The negotiations that had been launched at Annapolis in late 2007 ended in July 2008, when Olmert, following allegations of corruption, announced that he would not seek reelection as Kadima leader and that he would resign as prime minister after the party elected a successor. In September, his foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, won the leadership of the Kadima Party. But Livni was unable to form a coalition. Olmert stayed on as prime minister in accordance with the law, which mandates that the inc.u.mbent remain in office until a new prime minister is sworn in. On February 10, 2009, Israelis went to the polls. Although Kadima won the most seats in the Knesset, Livni was again unable to form a coalition. So Israeli president Shimon Peres asked the Likud leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, to attempt to form a coalition government.
On March 16, Netanyahu signed a coalition agreement with Israel"s third largest party, Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel is Our Home), a far-right nationalist party led by Avigdor Lieberman, who was offered the position of foreign minister. In a sign of the changing sentiments of the Israeli public, the historic Labor Party, home of my father"s old peace partner Yitzhak Rabin and of Ehud Barak, which had been the dominant political party from 1948 until the late 1970s, was now only the fourth largest, behind Kadima, Likud, and Yisrael Beiteinu. The return after a decade of a hard-liner who had done so much to undermine Oslo, and the inclusion of right-wing Israeli nationalists in his coalition government, did not bode well for the peace process.
While Netanyahu was finalizing his coalition, the twenty-two members of the Arab League prepared to meet for their annual summit in Doha. Mindful of the previous attempts of some Arab countries to withdraw the Arab Peace Initiative, I knew the peaceseeking members would have to act aggressively if there were to be any chance of keeping the process alive.
A few days before every Arab League summit, the foreign ministers come together to prepare for the full meeting of the heads of state. I instructed my foreign minister, Na.s.ser Judeh, to ensure that everybody at the foreign ministers" meeting understood that the new president of the United States had to be supported in his early engagement in the peace process. We should not allow ourselves to be overcome by emotion, horrendous though Israel"s war on Gaza was. n.o.body would benefit from continued occupation and misery. You have to make sure, I told him, that the Arab summit comes up with a pragmatic statement that pushes for a collective effort at reviving the peace talks.
In Doha, the mood was very negative. Some Arab foreign ministers argued that there was no point in pursuing peace in view of the Israeli government"s intransigence and its continuing refusal to abide by international law. Some argued that the Arab Peace Initiative should be pulled off the table. Netanyahu had just been elected, they said, and that meant Israel would soon be even more right-wing and intransigent. Forget trying to make peace with such a government. Our foreign minister and a few others argued that even though the general mood was pessimistic, we should still try to use any window of opportunity.
At the summit my objective was to convince my fellow Arab leaders to think strategically and maintain a unified stance, to show the world once and for all who was the roadblock to peace. We all blasted Israel for its war on Gaza, but I urged my fellow heads of state to look for a ray of hope amid the general darkness. We must give Obama a chance, I argued. He had been in office for just six weeks and was already doing some good things. He had appointed George Mitch.e.l.l, a former senator with a track record of success in Northern Ireland and deep familiarity with the Middle East, as his special envoy on the peace process and had deployed him to the region immediately. He was saying that Israeli settlements were illegal and should stop. His secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, knew the region and the issues extremely well from her time as a senator and as first lady. Everyone remembered how close President Clinton had come; we should not do what many expected from the Arabs, reject new initiatives out of hand. "Let"s show some prudence and restraint, reaffirm our commitment to the Arab Peace Initiative, and see where this current initiative is going," I said.
In the end, this argument carried the day, and our commitment to the Arab Peace Initiative was reaffirmed. But the strong emotional reaction across the region to Israel"s conduct in the Gaza war suggested that the initiative would not survive another major a.s.sault.
I told my fellow heads of state that President Obama had called me a few days before and invited me to visit Washington. How could we use this visit to advance the cause of peace?
Prince Saud Al-Faisal, the wise and experienced foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, came over during the summit and suggested to me that we carry a message from the summit to President Obama. We invited the foreign ministers from Lebanon, Qatar, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Egypt, as well as the secretary-general of the Arab League, to come to Jordan to work out a joint Arab position. Some of these foreign ministers had also been in contact with British foreign secretary David Miliband, who was actively involved in efforts to revive the peace process.
The ministers (other than the Syrian foreign minister, who was unable to attend) met in Amman on April 11. They discussed talking to the United States about a number of confidence-building measures between Israel and the Arab states that might be offered in the event that Israel should freeze its settlement construction in antic.i.p.ation of resumed negotiations, allowing a return to the situation before the outbreak of the second intifada in 2000. Those measures would include revitalizing some of the ties that had been developed in 1994 after our peace treaty with Israel. At that time Israeli trade offices were opened in some Arab countries; there was increased movement of people and goods, and Israeli visitors were welcomed in Arab countries even in the absence of diplomatic relations. But most of that had ended abruptly in 2000 after the breakdown of the Camp David negotiations and the outbreak of the second intifada. The trade offices were closed and there was little or no interaction between Israel and Arab countries, other than Jordan and Egypt, but our relations with Israel had also suffered. What we were offering was not normalization, but measures to serve as a positive background to negotiations.
I agreed to convey this proposal to the new president.
In late April 2009, I arrived in Washington, the first Arab leader to visit the White House since the election. I met with Obama privately in the president"s dining room, a small room next to the Oval Office. The atmosphere was refreshingly relaxed. President Obama is knowledgeable about the world beyond America"s borders and balanced in his approach. A personable man, he gives the impression that you and he are old friends. He told me that he was facing many challenges in the Middle East, but before discussing them, he wanted to hear what I had to say.
I told him that I believed it was imperative to relaunch negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians as soon as possible. We would have to move forward quickly on a two-state solution, as the growing antagonism between Israel and the Palestinians was throwing the whole notion of a negotiated agreement into question. Further undermining the situation was the cancer of Israeli settlements spreading across the Occupied Territories.
I said there was an increasing pessimism among Arab leaders about the possibility of peace. Since the Gaza war, some had even urged that the Arab Peace Initiative be withdrawn. But others were still hopeful and put stock in his early engagement with the peace process. If the Israeli government were to take a bold step, I said, such as freezing settlement construction, which the Palestinians, the Arabs, and many in the international community had long demanded, then we would be prepared to return to the spirit that had existed before the second intifada and would offer some concrete confidence-building measures to help improve the environment for the resumption of peace talks.
Drawing on my past experience, I then spoke to him candidly about the new Israeli prime minister, who was scheduled to visit Washington a few weeks later. "Mr. President," I said, "Netanyahu will come to you and he will want to talk about four things: Iran, Iran, Iran, and the claim that he has no Palestinian partner." I said it would be a mistake to focus the conversation on Iran. The best way, in my view, to address all the major issues in the Middle East would be to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As to a Palestinian partner, I said, this partner would be greatly empowered if the Israelis would for once get serious about peace. In fact, one could argue that since Sharon"s election in 2001, the Palestinians had not had an Israeli partner for peace.
The president said he would not jump to conclusions before Netanyahu"s visit, and that he would give him the benefit of the doubt. But he added that he planned to be tough on settlements. I reminded the president that I had experience with Netanyahu and urged him not to take everything the Israeli leader promised as certain. He had reneged on many previous commitments. The president said that he would vigorously pursue a two-state solution.
Our private meeting ended not long after that and we joined our staff members for an expanded discussion. The meeting was followed by a press conference at which Obama said: I am a strong supporter of a two-state solution.... What we want to do is to step back from the abyss; to say, as hard as it is, as difficult as it may be, the prospect of peace still exists-but it"s going to require some hard choices, it"s going to require resolution on the part of all the actors involved, and it"s going to require that we create some concrete steps that all parties can take that are evidence of that resolution. And the United States is going to deeply engage in this process to see if we can make progress. I am a strong supporter of a two-state solution.... What we want to do is to step back from the abyss; to say, as hard as it is, as difficult as it may be, the prospect of peace still exists-but it"s going to require some hard choices, it"s going to require resolution on the part of all the actors involved, and it"s going to require that we create some concrete steps that all parties can take that are evidence of that resolution. And the United States is going to deeply engage in this process to see if we can make progress.
I took heart and dared to hope that we would soon be back at the negotiating table in earnest. I said that the task at hand was to sequence events over the next two months in order to allow Israelis and Palestinians and Israelis and Arabs to sit around the table and move this process forward.
Next I headed to the State Department to meet with Secretary Clinton. We had first met many years before, under very different circ.u.mstances, and it was good to see an old friend while on official business. We talked about how to improve conditions for the Palestinians and how to create the necessary environment for a successful agreement. I said that I believed the Palestinian National Authority was a credible partner in the peace efforts and that we would work together with other Arab countries to sh.o.r.e up support for the government of Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad, who had submitted his resignation to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas to allow for the formation of a unity government with Hamas. But talks with Hamas were not getting anywhere. A few weeks after we returned from the United States, Abbas moved to form a cabinet without Hamas, and Fayyad was sworn in as prime minister on May 19. His government, which enjoyed the support of most Arab countries, would be a ready and able partner in the peace process. Fayyad is committed to peaceful negotiations as a means to solving the conflict with Israel on the basis of the two-state solution. In his first term as prime minister, which began in June 2007, after the Hamas takeover of Gaza, he won the respect of Arab and Western governments for building Palestinian inst.i.tutions and ensuring good governance.
Although the region had suffered from a brutal war in Gaza in January, in many ways the prospects for peace were better than they had been in a decade. We had a new American president who had immediately begun to engage seriously with the peace process, and who intended to approach the Muslim world on the basis of mutual respect and shared interests. We had a supportive Palestinian leadership, which was ready to make sacrifices for peace. And we had the strong support of the wider Arab world, which had signaled its desire to normalize relations with Israel and fully integrate it into the region on the basis of the Arab Peace Initiative.
The one wild card was the newly elected Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. In his previous tenure as prime minister, he had gained a reputation as an aggressive hard-liner, unwilling to compromise. As I headed back to Amman I wondered whether the previous decade had changed him. I would have to wait and see.
On May 14, Netanyahu flew to Amman. I was not particularly optimistic about the meeting, as our previous interactions had not been productive. We began with a tete-a-tete. Netanyahu seemed a little uncomfortable, perhaps also remembering our last encounter.
"Mr. Prime Minister," I said, hoping to break the ice, "congratulations on your election." He smiled noncommittally and I decided to dive right in. "I know that for you the life of every Israeli is sacred," I said, "but I believe that the best way to protect your citizens is to come to terms with the Palestinians, to make a just and enduring peace based on the establishment of a Palestinian state." I told him my goal was to help forge a peace between Israel and the Arabs and said that Arab countries were committed to a comprehensive peace, which would allow Israel to have full, normal relations with Arab and Muslim countries, not just an exchange of emba.s.sies and icy stares. I said I strongly believed that peaceful relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors would ensure our collective security and bring economic benefits for all. I spoke of the benefits to the Israeli economy of Arab investment and the potential for Israeli investment in the Arab world.
Once Netanyahu understood that, regardless of our differences, I was trying to find common ground, he began to relax. He told me that, at fifty-nine, he was almost as old as the state of Israel. And he believed that this was the first time in his almost sixty years that he had seen Israel and the Arabs face a common threat. I had warned President Obama that Netanyahu would most likely try to focus their discussion on Iran. Now he was doing the same thing with me.
"If you want us to feel that Iran is a common threat," I said, "we will first have to solve the problem at the heart of our region"s woes, and that is the Arab-Israeli conflict. It is what matters most to us, and it is what you can do the most to impact." I urged him to take serious steps toward reaching peace with the Palestinians and told him he would have to stop building new settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as they were eating away at land that should be part of the future Palestinian state and threatening the viability of a two-state solution. I also stressed the need to understand the sanct.i.ty of Jerusalem to all Muslims and to halt all unilateral actions in the holy city.
Netanyahu told me that there were some things he could not say in public, because of domestic political pressures. So talking about the need for a two-state solution and a freeze on settlements would not be easy for him. But he wanted to move forward and said he understood the importance of peace.
"If you genuinely want peace," I said, "there are some important signals you can send to the Arab world. Convince us that you are committed to making something happen in the next several months. Otherwise the support of all Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, for the Arab Peace Initiative will start to wane."
Our meeting went much better than I had expected. Netanyahu came across as a different man from the one I had known ten years before. He did not reject everything I said out of hand. He seemed eager to make progress, but I knew that the proof of his intent would be in his actions, not his words.
After forty minutes alone, we moved into an expanded session with members of our staff. We had begun to discuss the details of the peace process when Netanyahu said that he intended to focus on the economic track.
I argued that economic opportunities could not be an alternative to political independence for the Palestinians. "What about the political track?" I pressed. "Given your history, the Arabs expect you to focus on economic and security issues at the expense of peace talks."
Netanyahu took my comments in stride and said that perhaps he should start with the political track. But he offered no concrete indication of what he might be prepared to do.
"That would be the prudent thing to do," I said, hoping to hammer the message home.
Once he had left, I reflected on where we stood. Netanyahu was a right-winger through and through, but I hoped we would be able to work together to bring a lasting peace to the region. We had the Arab Peace Initiative. We had an engaged U.S. president. Was it too much to hope that we might also have a pragmatic Israeli prime minister who would want to leave behind him a legacy of peace?
Chapter 27.
Fortress Israel or a Fifty-Seven-State Solution?
Throughout the spring and early summer of 2009, I remained optimistic that we were on the brink of a breakthrough. There were reasons to believe that the Americans would roll out their peace plan soon. On June 4, three weeks after Netanyahu"s visit to Jordan, President Obama traveled to Cairo to deliver a major speech to the Arab and Muslim world. The president spoke about the urgent need to bring peace between Israel and the Palestinians, saying: But if we see this conflict only from one side or the other, then we will be blind to the truth: The only resolution is for the aspirations of both sides to be met through two states, where Israelis and Palestinians each live in peace and security.That is in Israel"s interest, Palestine"s interest, America"s interest, and the world"s interest. And that is why I intend to personally pursue this outcome with all the patience and dedication that the task requires.
Yet as June became July, and July became August, the progress we had hoped for a few months earlier began to look ever more distant. The Israelis refused to commit to a total settlement freeze-a necessary element in the eyes of the Arab world for creating an environment conducive to serious talks. The Israeli position defied the direct demands of President Obama, the European Union, and the rest of the international community. But this almost unanimous international stand did little to change the position of Netanyahu, who would only go as far as announcing, on November 25, 2009, after much arm-twisting by the United States and very public confrontation, a ten-month partial moratorium on the building of new settlements in the West Bank. This moratorium excluded building in East Jerusalem and did not apply to twenty-nine hundred buildings already under construction.
The peacemaking efforts appeared deadlocked, and the hope of a breakthrough was fading. The credibility of Obama and moderate Arab leaders in the Arab world was dealt a blow. We were not working in a vacuum, and spoilers in the region did not waste any time in attacking the whole peace process as a faulty approach that was yet again proving ineffective in ending the occupation.
At one point there were indications that an American peace plan would be announced in late September when world leaders, including Israeli prime minister Netanyahu and Palestinian president Abbas, would gather for the UN General a.s.sembly meeting in New York. At Obama"s urging, Abbas and Netanyahu held their first meeting since Netanyahu"s election six month earlier. But the meeting produced no results. The Israeli government would not do what was necessary to restart peace negotiations. In addition to the halting of settlement building, the Palestinians wanted the Israeli government to confirm that it recognized previous agreements. They also demanded a clear Israeli commitment to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state on the territories occupied in 1967 with agreed-upon land swaps. Netanyahu was adamant that he could not change his position on settlements and he would not commit to previous agreements or to any terms of reference for the negotiations.
Ever since Israel occupied the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 1967, successive Israeli governments have approved the construction of settlements in occupied Palestinian territory. There are now about one hundred and twenty settlements and around a hundred "outposts," Israeli communities built in the West Bank by Israeli settlers without official Israeli authorization, as well as more than twenty settlements in Jerusalem-altogether housing more than half a million settlers, over two hundred thousand of whom live in Jerusalem. These settlements are illegal under international law, as they have been built on land from which the UN has repeatedly called on Israel to withdraw. A freeze on settlement building was an essential component of the road map of 2003. The Palestinians" position has been that ending both the construction and expansion of settlements is a necessary prerequisite to successful negotiations. The problem is that the settlements are undermining the viability of a sovereign Palestinian state. Israel likes to present a settlement freeze as a major concession (and one that, so far, it has been unwilling to make), but in fact it would simply be abiding by international law.
In the weeks leading up to the UN General a.s.sembly meeting in September 2009, despite intense American pressure, Netanyahu refused to agree to a total settlement freeze. In fact, new settlement construction was authorized. The problem these settlements presented to the Palestinians and their Arab supporters was obvious: How could Mahmoud Abbas sit down and negotiate a peace agreement with a partner who was daily creating new facts on the ground that were changing the demography and geography of the very land where the Palestinian state would be established? If the Israeli government were truly committed to a two-state solution, why would it continue to build settlements on land that would belong to a future Palestinian state? Was the Israeli government building free housing for the Palestinians? Not likely. Its refusal to halt settlement activity raised legitimate doubts about its commitment to the creation of a Palestinian state.
On September 23, President Obama delivered an important speech. In his address to the UN General a.s.sembly, he declared: We continue to call on Palestinians to end incitement against Israel, and we continue to emphasize that America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements.The time has come-the time has come to re-launch negotiations without preconditions that address the permanent status issues: security for Israelis and Palestinians, borders, refugees, and Jerusalem. And the goal is clear: Two states living side by side in peace and security-a Jewish state of Israel, with true security for all Israelis; and a viable, independent Palestinian state with contiguous territory that ends the occupation that began in 1967 and realizes the potential of the Palestinian people.
In this speech and in that of June 2009, Obama set out U.S. policy in clear terms. We in Jordan describe this policy position as the "Obama terms of reference" for negotiations to reach a just and lasting peace that would be in the interests of Israel, Palestine, America, and the world.
As the hope of spring turned into the disappointment of fall, the American administration became preoccupied by a whole raft of urgent problems: Afghanistan and Pakistan; new developments in Iran"s nuclear program; health care reform, which Obama placed at the top of his domestic agenda; and the continuing global economic crisis. These remained the overriding concerns for the United States through the first months of 2010, preventing the administration from giving the peace process its full attention. By now we were facing a major crisis. As encouraging as Obama"s words had been, they had done very little to change the reality on the ground. Frustration replaced hope.
As this book goes to press, we are just one year short of the twentieth anniversary of a peace process that started in Madrid in October 1991. But the contrast between now and then could not be greater. We are in a far darker place than we were nearly twenty years ago. Then, Palestinians and Israelis met face-to-face to begin negotiating a shared future. Both sides looked to the future with antic.i.p.ation. By any measure we have regressed when we no longer speak of direct negotiations but of "proximity talks," as an intermediary (the United States) shuttles between Israelis and Palestinians.
The proximity talks initiative emerged in early 2010, following a nearly yearlong effort by U.S. Middle East special envoy George Mitch.e.l.l to launch direct negotiations. Thus far, his efforts have not produced the necessary progress, as Netanyahu has essentially maintained his uncompromising position on settlement building in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and continues to refuse to resume negotiations on the basis of the agreements the Palestinians reached with previous Israeli governments after the Oslo Accords.
All Arab states backed the Palestinian leadership"s partic.i.p.ation in the proximity talks as an alternative to no talks at all, with the hope that they would soon transition to direct and serious negotiations. But we knew we were grasping at straws. We supported proximity talks because we believed a vacuum in peace efforts would only benefit hard-liners, who would exploit the failure to revive the negotiations to push their extremist agendas. And Netanyahu would benefit most from a Palestinian decision not to engage in proximity talks. As he came under increased American and international pressure for continuing to build settlements and thereby blocking the resumption of negotiations, he was eager to provoke the Palestinians and Arab countries into withdrawing from the peace efforts, so that he could once again claim he had no negotiating partner.
In April 2010, I traveled to the United States and met with President Obama in Washington. Again, the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was at the center of our discussion. We were both disappointed and concerned that more progress had not been made in the last year and hoped that the proximity talks would soon pave the way to direct negotiations. After the meeting, it was clear to me that the United States was not yet ready to roll out its plan to push the parties toward a final settlement. The administration wanted the parties to begin proximity talks and would then a.s.sess the situation at some point before throwing its own ideas into the negotiations.
I came out of the meeting a.s.sured of the president"s continued commitment to resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. But I knew that it would be some time before real progress could be achieved, given Netanyahu"s intransigence. Accordingly, I felt that our task would be to keep the hope alive until America was ready to bring its full weight to bear on the parties to resume serious negotiations with the intention of advancing toward a settlement. The region could not afford to lose hope yet again. That would mean war.
Back in March, right when U.S. vice president Joe Biden was visiting Jerusalem, the Israelis announced plans to build sixteen hundred new settlement homes in occupied East Jerusalem. The Israeli move embarra.s.sed and angered the vice president and effectively challenged American authority. George Mitch.e.l.l canceled his next trip to the region and Hillary Clinton called Netanyahu to lodge a formal complaint. Harsh exchanges followed between Washington and Tel Aviv. The diplomatic row came on the heels of a very public disagreement between the U.S. administration and Israel the previous fall over the question of a settlement freeze, amid increased international criticism of Israel for derailing the peace process. The European Union was particularly vocal in slamming Israeli settlement policies and their impact on peacemaking efforts. On December 8, 2009, during the Swedish presidency of the EU, its Foreign Affairs Council expressed serious concern about the lack of progress and called for the urgent resumption of negotiations that would lead "within an agreed time-frame to a two-state solution with the State of Israel and an independent, democratic, contiguous and viable State of Palestine, living side by side in peace and security."
The council said that "settlements, the separation barrier where built on occupied land, demolitions of homes and evictions are illegal under international law, const.i.tute an obstacle to peace and threaten to make a two-state solution impossible." It urged the government of Israel "to immediately end all settlement activities, in East Jerusalem and the rest of the West Bank and including natural growth, and to dismantle all outposts erected since March 2001," as required by phase one of the road map of 2003.
The council noted that it had never recognized Israel"s annexation of East Jerusalem, emphasizing that "if there is to be a genuine peace, a way must be found through negotiations to resolve the status of Jerusalem as the future capital of two states." In subsequent statements, the EU strongly condemned Israel"s announcement of new settlement plans.
In April 2010, former Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni lamented Israel"s deteriorating standing in the international community. "The world today," Livni wrote in an article, "does not, at best, know what the policy of the Israeli government is, and, at worst, does not trust its intentions."
Shortly before my trip to Washington, I attended an Arab League Summit meeting in Sirte, Libya. The summit reiterated its support for the Arab Peace Initiative, but with every pa.s.sing day that sees no progress, pressure builds to abandon negotiations as a means to solve the conflict. Tensions in the region are running high on more than one front. Gaza continues to be a virtual prison, with its more than one and a half million people living in desperate conditions. Jerusalem is a tinderbox and Israel is playing with fire by trying to change its ident.i.ty and empty it of its Christian and Muslim population through house demolitions and evictions, and by refusing to allow Arabs to build in the city. Further afield, on the Lebanese-Israeli front, we appear to be on the verge of witnessing another confrontation as Israel continues to occupy Lebanese territory in the south and Hezbollah develops its military capabilities. In the background of all of this is the crisis with Iran and its implications for regional security.
Proximity talks were officially launched in May after a number of visits by Mitch.e.l.l to the region. Abbas went into the talks with the support of the Arab League, whose ministerial committee on the Arab Peace Initiative met on May 1 and said it would reconvene in four months to a.s.sess progress. The hope was that these talks would agree on terms of reference for direct final status negotiations.
We supported these talks, as they seemed to be the only alternative to complete disengagement, which would have been a dangerous blow to our decades-long efforts to achieve peace. The hope was that the talks would bring the two sides close enough for them to resume direct negotiations. And yet by July, no agreement had been reached on the terms of reference for direct negotiations. Jordan"s position was that failure was not an option, and we continued to work with all parties to ensure that progress was made to bring the Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table.
Senator Mitch.e.l.l worked with the Palestinians and the Israelis to an agreement on conditions for the resumption of direct negotiations. His efforts. .h.i.t a deadlock. The Palestinians wanted the proximity talks to address the borders, security, refugees, Jerusalem, and other complex final status issues. Abbas presented Mitch.e.l.l with fully developed position papers on all these issues. He told him that he wanted borders and security addressed first, because an agreement on the borders of the future Palestinian state would facilitate the resolution of the problem of settlements, while an agreement on security arrangements would tackle Israel"s top concern.
Netanyahu, however, would not engage in any substantive discussion on the issues. He continued to speak in general terms about his commitment to peace but would not put any ideas on the table. He held that such engagement would have to be made in direct negotiations.
The Palestinians and others in the region were growing more frustrated by the day with the failure to make progress. Hopes that the U.S. administration would salvage the situation by putting forward its own proposals to get the process moving vanished as Mitch.e.l.l and other U.S. officials made it clear that Washington would not risk offering proposals that either party could reject out of hand.
As the September deadline for the end of the settlement moratorium loomed, in what many in the region saw as a major turnaround in the U.S. position, Washington stopped demanding a total freeze of settlement building as a requirement for the two sides to engage in direct negotiations. The Obama administration started to push for a resumption of direct talks even absent a settlement freeze, and to pressure Abbas to agree to the new terms. The Palestinians argued that they could not directly engage the Israelis without ending settlement activities or at least announcing clear terms of reference for the new round of talks.
All of us who had supported the proximity talks were severely criticized by those in the region who believed the exercise was futile. Abbas in particular was accused of succ.u.mbing to U.S. pressure and compromising the interests of his people. He felt it would be political suicide for him to move to direct negotiations without identifying as the objective of these negotiations the establishment of a Palestinian state on the basis of the 1967 borders with minor land swaps. The picture was getting bleak again. But we knew we had to keep the hope alive to find a way out of this hole. Abandoning the process before exploring it to the fullest was not an option. This would have meant surrendering the region to a state of hopelessness that would put it on a new vicious course of conflict and war.
On July 23, I received a phone call from Obama. The president was by now determined that direct negotiations were the only way to break the impa.s.se. He reiterated his commitment to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, stressing that he would go all the way to make sure a solution was reached. But unless the Palestinians agreed to talk to the Israelis directly, his administration would end its involvement in the process. Obama was clear: the Palestinians could either work with him to solve this issue through direct negotiations and count on his full commitment, or walk away and be on their own. The president delivered the same message to other leaders in the region.
A choice had to be made. Three days later, on July 26, I received Abbas in Amman. We agreed that the conditions were not ideal for transitioning to direct negotiations. Netanyahu"s refusal to accept the earlier terms of reference and to stop building new settlements was discouraging, as was the unwillingness of the United States to commit to rolling out its own bridging proposals to rescue the negotiations should they reach a dead end. But to say no to Washington would be very costly to the Palestinian people and their quest for statehood. Abandoning the peace process was not a decision to be made lightly. The biggest winner would be Netanyahu, who would blame the Palestinians for aborting the peace efforts, and would go on creating new facts on the ground that would make the establishment of a Palestinian state impossible. At the same time, the Palestinians could not justify moving to direct negotiations that would reinvent the wheel, disregarding progress made in previous rounds of talks over the two decades since Madrid. We agreed to explore all possible options, and to consult with other Arab leaders over the next steps. We also agreed that discussions with the American administration to find a way out should continue.
The next day I received Netanyahu in Amman. It had been over a year since his last visit, and I felt that the time was right for another face-to-face discussion, given the urgency of the situation at hand. In a one-on-one conversation we had before meeting over lunch with our staff, I told the prime minister that we had a unique opportunity to give our people the peace that they yearned for. If we missed this opportunity, the Israelis, the Palestinians-all of us in the region-would have to live with the terrible consequences of more devastating wars. Netanyahu again spoke in broad terms about his government"s commitment to reaching a peace deal with the Palestinians. But he said Israel must be a.s.sured of its security first. I told him that reaching a peace agreement with the Palestinians within a comprehensive framework that would ensure normal relations with all Arab and Muslim countries would be the best guarantee of Israeli security. I urged the prime minister to halt the building of settlements so that serious discussions over borders and other essential issues could begin.
Over lunch with our staff, we discussed the economic potential of the region in the event of a peace agreement. Netanyahu spoke of his plans to build railroads up to the borders of Jordan and Syria. I mentioned that Jordan too was in the process of building railroads that would link up with a new Saudi railroad to the southeast and with Syria in the north. If we had peace in the region, Israel could link to our railroad and thus be connected with the Arab countries in the Gulf and with Europe through Syria. But under current circ.u.mstances, Israel"s railroad network would stop at its border. We discussed other regional infrastructure projects that Israel could plug into if we succeed in reaching comprehensive peace. I was hoping that by emphasizing the willingness of all Arab and Muslim countries to build normal ties with Israel and by highlighting the great potential of regional cooperation, I would encourage the Israeli prime minister to take the necessary steps to push the peace efforts forward. The meeting ended in a positive spirit as we discussed the potential for growth in bilateral economic cooperation between our public and private sectors. But we needed more than lofty visions of future economic cooperation to get us out of the bind we were in. And positive words had not translated into actions in the past. But the stakes were too high and I was determined to leave no stone unturned in my efforts to push for progress.
In the meantime, pressure on Abbas was mounting. Before a meeting of the Arab League Follow-Up Committee on the Arab Peace Initiative in Cairo on July 29, Abbas spoke of the difficult choices he was facing. "Never in my life have I been faced with as much pressure as that the United States and the European Union are currently putting on me to resume direct negotiations with the Israelis," he said in a press interview. The moment was critical and the Arab foreign ministers meeting in Cairo realized that. After long discussions and hard work by Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinians, among other moderate countries, the foreign ministers agreed to the principle of resuming direct negotiations, but said it was up to Abbas to decide when to do so. The ministers drafted a letter that would be sent to Obama outlining the necessary conditions for the talks to resume. Among these were the articulation of clear terms of reference for the negotiations and the halting of settlement activities. Abbas was empowered by the Arab League to a.s.sess the situation and decide accordingly whether to hold direct talks with the Israelis or not.
On August 12, I met with President Mubarak in Cairo on the quickly developing situation. Mitch.e.l.l and other U.S. officials had floated the idea that Egypt or Jordan host the relaunching of the direct talks and that Secretary Clinton be invited. We both felt this was not sufficient. If the talks were to be resumed, we agreed, the United States must have ownership of the process. President Obama would have to demonstrate his full support of the process if it were to have any realistic chance of success. That meant that Obama would have to either host the relaunching event in Washington or attend the event if it was to be hosted by Egypt or Jordan. We also agreed that a formula would have to be found for giving the Palestinians some a.s.surances about the terms of reference for the negotiations. After the meeting with Mubarak, I met with Abbas, who was also in Egypt to see Mubarak.
Mubarak, Abbas, and I all recognized that continued U.S. engagement in the process was essential. And we did not want the Palestinians to be blamed for the collapse of peace efforts. Creative ideas were needed to ensure that the negotiations would not be a futile exercise that would trigger another endless process and compromise Palestinian interests.
In the days that followed, and after intense discussions that involved many Arab countries, the Palestinians, the Europeans, and the Americans, it was agreed that the talks would resume in Washington on September 2, following a relaunching event hosted by Obama the previous day and attended by Mubarak, Abbas, Netanyahu, Tony Blair (representing the Quartet of the European Union, Russia, the United States, and the United Nations), and myself. Before that, the Quartet would set the stage for the negotiations by issuing a statement declaring that the objective of the negotiations was to reach a final settlement on the basis of a two-state solution.
On August 20, the Quartet issued a statement in which it reaffirmed its members" support for "direct negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians to resolve all final status issues." The Quartet reiterated positions it had adopted in previous statements, particularly those announced in Moscow on March 19, 2010. These stressed that negotiations should "lead to a settlement, negotiated between the parties, that ends the occupation which began in 1967 and results in the emergence of an independent, democratic, and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbors."
The Quartet called on the Palestinians and Israelis to join in launching direct negotiations on September 2 in Washington. It expressed its "determination to support the parties throughout the negotiations, which can be completed within one year," and urged both sides to refrain from provocative actions and inflammatory rhetoric. The Palestinians considered the Quartet"s statement to be terms of reference for the negotiations.
Invitations to the negotiations were issued by Secretary Clinton on the same day. In the letters she sent to the Israelis and the Palestinians, Clinton emphasized the commitment of the U.S. administration to a comprehensive Middle East peace. She said, "As we move forward, it is important that actions by all sides help to advance our effort, not hinder it. There have been difficulties in the past; there will be difficulties ahead. Without a doubt, we will hit more obstacles. The enemies of peace will keep trying to defeat us and to derail these talks. But I ask the parties to persevere, to keep moving forward even through difficult times, and to continue working to achieve a just and lasting peace in the region."