Every Day Is Extra

by John Kerry

  I understand why Israel is, for so many, the shining city on the hill.

  On the other side, I really didn’t know much about the Palestinians until I went to the U.S. Senate. Most of us in my generation were introduced to Palestinians through the news stories of Yasser Arafat, the PLO and Abu Nidal. In my visits to various Palestinian communities—Ramallah, Jericho—I learned more about Palestinian aspirations, about everyday life. I met some who had become wealthy in business. I met more who had very little, particularly young people. Their plight spoke to my fundamental sense of fairness.

  It always bothered me when I drove by Israeli checkpoints and saw long lines of Palestinians, often women and children, waiting for hours just to go from one neighborhood to another in the West Bank. I imagined what it would be like if I couldn’t get from downtown Boston to an appointment in Charlestown without waiting in a three-hour line. I talked with people who couldn’t visit their relatives a couple of miles away in a land they had lived in for hundreds of years. I listened to them tell stories about sitting at checkpoints, unable to go to work, or the hospital, or the supermarket. I sensed the profound humiliation of their day-to-day lives. And I could see in their eyes a desire for the most basic things that most of us take for granted.

  These experiences were a stark reminder that the journey of the Palestinians had left them stateless—if not homeless—and at the mercy of what has been at times a very difficult occupation. While they were human beings who were trying to maintain some sense of dignity in the face of virtually total powerlessness, it was both immoral and counterproductive to resort to terrorism to address their concerns.

  To Americans, freedom means the ability to live in a democratic society, to have a voice in your government, to enjoy equal protection under the law. To many Palestinians, freedom means something much simpler. Freedom at the most basic level is the ability to move from one place to another, to travel outside of your country, to provide for your children. It’s stamped in the American DNA that we have the right to pursue life, liberty and happiness. For many Palestinians, that is a far-off dream.

  As secretary, my primary responsibility was to stand up for and defend our values and interests in the world. That job required me to be invested in Middle East peace on behalf of our country. But I was also personally invested. Israel is our most important ally and the only real democracy in the region. It is a vital U.S. interest to protect and advance Israel’s security. That’s why the Obama administration provided what Prime Minister Netanyahu himself stressed were “unprecedented” levels of security cooperation and assistance, including the biggest military aid package in history.

  I also felt strongly that one of the most important things we could do to support Israel was to help resolve the conflict with the Palestinians once and for all, so they could finally live in peace with their neighbors. Conversely, I knew that if we were to stand idly by and allow a dangerous dynamic to take hold in a region in which we have vital interests, we would be derelict in our responsibilities.

  In short, I wanted to pursue Middle East peace because the stakes were high and there were far too many ordinary Israelis and Palestinians—many of them kids—who had no role in this conflict but were caught in the middle and suffering as a result. No children—Israeli or Palestinian—should have to live like that.

  A trip I took as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee four years before I’d become secretary underscored to me just how dire the situation was—and how difficult the politics would be if I ever got a chance to be more directly involved in the diplomacy. It was 2009, just after a war in Gaza had ended and Israel was on the verge of electing a new prime minister.

  I was planning to travel into the Gaza Strip with Teresa. Gaza is one of the most godforsaken corners of the planet, home to one of the world’s densest concentrations of people enduring extreme hardships with few opportunities. Out of Gaza’s population of 1.8 million, 1.3 million people are in need of daily assistance—food and shelter. Most have electricity less than half the time, and only 5 percent of the water is safe to drink. And yet despite the urgency of these needs, Hamas and other militant groups continue to rearm and divert reconstruction materials to build tunnels, threatening more attacks on Israeli civilians that no government can tolerate.

  The people of Gaza were suffering under Hamas rule. I wanted to visit in order to measure the conditions, to understand better if there was a way to stop the escalating cycle of war.

  No U.S. delegation had been there during the eight years of the Bush administration. It was deemed physically unsafe. It was politically tricky to go into a territory essentially controlled by a violent foreign terrorist organization. I was aware of the risks, but I also suspected Hamas wouldn’t want to risk harm to a U.S. senator. We had worked out a plan to get in with the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

  The night before we left, I sat down for a drink with our ambassador to Israel, Jim Cunningham, and told him that I was planning to go into Gaza the next day. Jim didn’t mince words. “We can’t support your trip, Senator,” he said dryly. “We’re officially informing you not to do that,” which is diplo-speak for “We think this is a terrible idea, and if things get screwed up, it’s not our fault.” But a blanket no to an American senator just didn’t seem to make sense to me. Other countries’ leaders had been to Gaza.

  I said to Jim, “I know you’re formally required to tell us not to do this. But I’m going into Gaza tomorrow, and I’m just asking you man-to-man—what’s the security situation? Am I going to get my ass shot off?” As a career diplomat forced off script, he hesitated for a second, then he looked me in the eye, lowered his voice so nobody in the restaurant would hear and said something along the lines of “Ah, you’ll probably be all right. But I didn’t just say that.”

  That was all I needed to hear.

  The next day we boarded an Israeli military helicopter with Tzipi Livni, who was the leader most personally interested in pursuing peace with the Palestinians. We flew to Sderot in Israel, which had been the target of thousands of rockets over the last eight years. I wanted to see with my own eyes the life of Israelis under constant threat. Security officials told me that from the moment they know a rocket has been fired from Gaza, people have just fifteen seconds to find safety. We learned about children who had spent literally every day of their lives never more than fifteen seconds from grave danger.

  After our briefing, we left Tzipi in Sderot and drove to a gas station on the outskirts of the Kerem Shalom Crossing, from which we would head into the very place where those rockets came from: Gaza.

  I left my motorcade of large SUVs, together with all my security team, and climbed into a small UN vehicle—the smallest “convoy” I’ve ever been in—with virtually no security. We had a UN driver with a small sidearm. Nevertheless, I felt our exposure was an asset, not a danger. I thought the Palestinians would begrudgingly accept—not threaten—a high-level guest who was interested in learning about their situation.

  I’m no stranger to seeing the destruction of war, but I was moved by the enormity of the humanitarian crisis. It was like driving around in a postapocalyptic landscape from a Mad Max movie—but in a small white UNRWA Toyota.

  We visited a bombed-out international school and I thought: How could Hamas possibly justify using places like this to hide weapons or fire at Israel? What monsters could turn a place where little kids are educated into a staging ground for violence? At the same time, I felt deep frustration that so many innocent kids were trapped in a cycle of violence they had nothing to do with. When I passed a young girl playing in the debris on the side of the road, I wondered—as I had in Vietnam and Afghanistan—what do we look like to these people? I didn’t want her to see me as an anonymous face behind a bulletproof window, passing through like a ghost on my way to somewhere safer. I wanted to get out of the car and talk to that girl and try to bridge the enormous gap between a kid walking around in rub
ble in Gaza and a U.S. senator driving around in a convoy. I wanted to look her in the eye, hold her hand and let her know that my country cared about what she was going through.

  After a few minutes, I wasn’t willing to sit in that car anymore. It made no sense to enter Gaza but not actually see anything up close. I didn’t feel threatened. I didn’t think I would be attacked among a group of innocent people and in front of the cameras. I got out of the car with Teresa and started walking toward the school. A convoy of Palestinians that had been following us pulled up and jumped out. For a second, I wasn’t sure whether they wanted to talk or kick my ass, but then they took out cameras and started asking me questions. I did spontaneous but careful on-air interviews standing in front of the school, much to the concern of my staff. As one of them joked to Teresa, “In the best-case scenario we could be talking to members of a foreign terrorist organization on live TV; in the worst case, we are all about to die.”

  In the end, that trip had the desired effect. When I later saw President Abbas, he pulled me aside, put his hand on my shoulder and said, “I want to thank you for what you did. That picture of you walking amid the rubble was worth more to the Palestinian people than a thousand statements.”

  Abbas was a soft-spoken, longtime veteran of the Palestinian cause who had started out as one of Arafat’s deputies. Over the course of his career, he had consistently remained committed to achieving a negotiated solution with the Israelis. He actually helped pioneer that effort through the Oslo Accords. Above all, through all the ups and downs of war and divisions within his own political base, he had stayed steadfastly committed to a peaceful Palestinian state. Abbas could be a very frustrating guy to deal with and often said and did things that were entirely counterproductive to his objectives. At the same time, I also understood that he had a very difficult hand to play. He basically had no power with respect to Israel. Nor was he a natural-born politician. While Abbas was a veteran infighter in PLO and Fatah circles, he was not as comfortable with the day-to-day politics of the Palestinian people. He was a proud man, but at times he seemed worn down by years of frustration and beleaguered at his inability to show real progress for his people. Hamas and other extremists were violently acting out the frustrations that many Palestinians were feeling. Abbas was simply not willing to go down that path. For all the frustrations of dealing with him, he remained publicly committed to peaceful coexistence with Israel and, in fact, elevated security cooperation with Israel to its highest level ever.

  I wanted President Abbas to know that the United States would try to understand and work fairly with both sides. No progress would ever be made if we didn’t have credibility with both parties. President Abbas knew that I was a strong supporter of Israel, but my trip to Gaza helped build trust. The Palestinians needed to know—or at least feel—that I understood their perspective.

  The end of the war in Gaza had also brought Israel to a political crossroads, which I witnessed firsthand during that trip. Israelis had just gone to the polls in a tight election. President Shimon Peres had to choose between Bibi Netanyahu and Tzipi Livni to form a coalition. Tzipi had won one more seat in the Knesset than Bibi, which gave her the presumptive first chance to form a new government. But Bibi had the upper hand, because there were more parties on the center-right willing to join him.

  The night before I went to Gaza, I had dinner with Bibi at the David Citadel Hotel. We talked about what would follow if he became prime minister. We also talked about opportunities on the Palestinian issue. Bibi expressed his desire to end the conflict, but with his usual skepticism about the Palestinians—and the inevitable qualifying and temporizing about whether an agreement could ever work.

  I’d been hearing variations on this subject from Bibi for more than twenty years. We first sat down together when neither of us was in office. He was working in Cambridge, and we sometimes met for coffee in Harvard Square. We always had interesting talks. I enjoyed the give-and-take of a wide-ranging debate with him. He was funny and warm, with a great deep laugh. He was also careful with his words in the way of born politicians. Permeating all our conversations over the years was a genuine fear for Israel’s security. I didn’t always agree with him about how one achieved that security, but I appreciated his patriotism and commitment to his country. He had lost his brother Yoni in Operation Entebbe in 1976, a successful, daring Israel Defense Forces (IDF) mission to rescue Israeli hostages from their hijackers at an airport in Uganda. The cause of security was forever personal to Bibi. I respected that.

  In those years when we were both in the political wilderness, we consistently shared invigorating, fast-moving political and strategic exchanges. I remember once when he said to me, “You know, if we’re ever in a position to do things in our governments, I think we could accomplish a lot together.”

  I never forgot that, particularly when I became secretary of state and he was prime minister.

  It was always interesting to compare my conversations with Bibi about the Palestinians with my conversations with Tzipi on the same subject. Bibi’s attitude was “I’m open to solving this problem if I can have all my needs met.” That included his political needs with his coalition.

  Conversely, Tzipi’s attitude was “This problem is eating away at the soul of our country. We need to solve it and I believe it can be done.” Bibi was fond of saying, “Take all my excuses away.” Tzipi said, “We, Israel, need to solve this problem. And we need your help.”

  These contrasting perspectives were on my mind when we flew with Tzipi to Sderot in late February 2009. Israel was at a fork in the road—the path of peace or the path of entrenchment. The tension in Israel was palpable.

  Peres decided to give the nod to Bibi to form a coalition. I learned the news at the same moment Tzipi did, when we landed in Sderot. She was swarmed by reporters.

  I wasn’t surprised at Peres’s choice. Bibi was one of the better politicians I’d ever met. He was a consummate backroom wheeler and dealer. In a previous life, he could have been a great, old-time Boston ward boss with a cigar in his mouth, cutting deals. Tzipi, on the other hand, was first and foremost an advocate for peace. She was passionate about the policy and her country. Even as Bibi was passionate about Israel’s security, he was also passionate about the politics. Peres might have preferred Tzipi’s commitment to peace, but as president he could not ignore the fact that Bibi had a better chance of putting together a governing coalition.

  As the new government took shape, I sensed immediately that the road to peace with the Palestinians had just gotten a lot longer and a whole lot steeper. I knew from years of talking with Bibi that he was the more ideological of the two leaders. Bibi put together a broad coalition that included many on the Right who did not want a Palestinian state. But I also knew that Bibi cared about history. And I always thought it was worth testing whether—like Ariel Sharon—his bona fides on the Right might bring him to a Nixon to China moment. If I were ever in a position to work on the Middle East peace process directly, I certainly planned to find out.

  When I became secretary in 2013, I talked to the Obama administration’s special envoy for Middle East peace negotiations, my friend George Mitchell.

  I admired George’s negotiating skills. His attention to detail and his calm demeanor helped him through many tricky moments. He did a brilliant job negotiating the Good Friday Agreement in Ireland during the Clinton administration. George’s experience on the Middle East peace effort raised a number of cautionary flags. Most important, he warned against a massive amount of time and political capital being spent trying to achieve a partial settlement freeze as a precondition to negotiations. He also emphasized the importance of careful choreography in any one-on-one meeting between Bibi and Abbas. It was good advice.

  When I first met with President Obama in the Oval Office and expressed my interest in trying to reinvigorate a peace process, he was very skeptical. He had every reason to be. He felt burned from his efforts during the first term. I made the
case to him that new regional, security and economic opportunities could change the dynamic. I also talked to him about Bibi’s expressed willingness to make tough compromises for a lasting peace. I told the president I thought it was at least worth putting the idea to the test. He listened carefully. He then turned to me and said simply, “Look, I’m skeptical, but you have my support if you want to try.” And to his great credit, he always backed me on this issue when I needed it. The president gave me enormous latitude to try to push the process forward.

  After decades of starts and stops, near successes and missed opportunities, the basic elements of peace seemed fairly well established. But I knew that just trying the same thing that had been attempted so many times before wasn’t going to result in a different outcome. And there were the elements of the process that made the possibilities riper than before: regional support, economic initiative and, most important of all, security. I wanted our peace process to go deeper than ever before on each of these three lines of effort.

  First were the regional dynamics. In 2002, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia announced the Arab Peace Initiative, which offered fully normalized relations between all the Arab states and Israel once a peace agreement was struck with the Palestinians. I remember visiting Arafat’s headquarters in Ramallah in January 2002, one and a half years after President Clinton had brought the parties together for the Camp David Summit. A huge hole had been blasted in the side of the headquarters. It was less than two years before he died. He turned to me during the dinner and whispered, “I made a mistake in not accepting Clinton’s deal.” I already knew that one of the reasons Camp David failed was because the region wasn’t sufficiently engaged to give Arafat the political cover he needed. I was also mindful of the story of President Clinton calling then Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak from Camp David the night before everyone was to leave. President Clinton asked for Mubarak’s support and, according to Mubarak when he told me the story, he responded, “Support for what?” The message to me was clear. The groundwork had not been sufficiently prepared with Arab leaders in the region.