Ally
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Obama personified these changes and cloaked them in virtuous mystique. To the unemployed crowding the corners of gentrified Georgetown, to the students facing uncertain futures, and the families of soldiers serially deployed overseas, he offered more transformations still. His declarations of “Yes we can!” belied the out-of-business signs I saw in the store windows near campus. On the rainy evening of November 2, I ducked into a Washington bar to hear the newly elected president address a quarter of a million euphoric supporters in Chicago. “Change has come to America,” Obama proclaimed. “America, I have never been more hopeful.” I watched as all the customers in that bar stood at attention, tears streaming down their cheeks.
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That radiant moment was soon eclipsed by plumes of white phosphorous. While planning our winter break on some silken Caribbean beach, Sally reflexively said, “No, let’s go home and visit the kids.” That was how, in the last week of 2008, I found myself back in Israel and once again at war.
The fighting broke out in Gaza, though its origins could be traced to Ramallah in the West Bank, the seat of the Palestinian Authority. Since Arafat’s death four years earlier, Mahmoud Abbas had presided over both the Authority and the PLO. In contrast to his predecessor, he opposed violence and declared his support for negotiations. Yet, despite his credibility as one of Fatah’s earliest members and the international legitimacy he gained as a man of peace, the seventy-three-year-old Abbas—familiarly known as Abu Mazen—was unpopular among his own people. They tired of Fatah’s corruption and despaired of a diplomatic breakthrough. When, in 2006, the Palestinians went to the polls, a majority voted for Hamas, the terrorist group that the Bush administration insisted on including on the ballot. Abbas, though, refused to accept the outcome, prompting a Hamas uprising. He managed to hold on to the West Bank, but in Gaza, Hamas gunmen hurled Fatah loyalists from rooftops and shot them in the streets. Israel, in response, blockaded Gaza, and Hamas intensified its rocket fire.
Israel paid an immense price for supporting Abbas, but he responded by turning his back on peace. In September 2008, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered to create a Palestinian state in Gaza, almost all of the West Bank, and half of Jerusalem. The plan gained the support of the Quartet, the consortium created by President Bush and composed of the United States, Russia, the European Union, and the United Nations. But Abbas never bothered to respond.
By December, with Hamas rockets pummeling the country’s southern half, a million Israelis were dashing for bomb shelters. Among them was our daughter, Lia, an undergraduate at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba. Olmert and his foreign minister, Tzipi Livni, practically begged for a truce. Yet the missiles and mortars kept striking—eighty-seven of them on the twenty-fourth, alone, the day our plane landed in Israel. Seventy-two hours later, Israel launched a counteroffensive against Gaza and I again reverted from Professor Oren to Major Oren, IDF spokesman.
Code-named Cast Lead—a reference to a hymn sung that Hanukkah week—the operation aimed at restoring peace to southern Israel. But bringing quiet meant silencing the Hamas positions embedded among Palestinian civilians. As in the Second Lebanon War, when Hezbollah pulled bodies from old graves and inflated the number of civilian casualties, Hamas accused Israel of committing numerous atrocities, including the killing of fifty children at a UN school. The media reported these fictions, often uncritically, generating international pressure on Israel to submit to a Security Council cease-fire.
The spokesman’s role was to bustle between journalists confined to a hillside overlooking the battles. Armed and helmeted, I interviewed throughout the night, with machine-gun fire for background. Once, while producers from an Arab news agency pinned a microphone to my ceramic vest, the rocket-alert siren sounded, meaning we had exactly fourteen seconds to take cover. I shouted at the producers, “Leave it, run!” and dragging sound equipment behind me, sprinted after them into a building site. We huddled together in the dust until the rocket exploded nearby and then, in a moment of coexistence, wished one another “mabruk” and “mazal tov.”
Far less heartwarming was the chronic trauma suffered by the residents of Sderot, the Israeli border town pounded for years by many thousands of missiles. A young woman standing next to me in the shelter as the siren howled pulled at her hair and screamed uncontrollably. She kept on screaming, even after the blast.
I left Gaza for Georgetown in the first week of 2009, arriving in the same disoriented state as when I departed Beirut for Princeton more than a quarter century before. The campus atmosphere was similarly poisonous and, entering my building, I had to step over supine protesters with signs saying “Dead Gazan.” Once again I had to snap out of it in order to defend Israel in public. Audiences had to be reminded of the myriad leaflets the IDF had dispersed warning Palestinian civilians to leave combat areas and about the operation’s unprecedentedly low ratio of civilian-to-combatant casualties. I had to relate the story of the West Bank Palestinian reporter who grilled me while on the air but, once off camera, whispered, “Whatever you do, don’t stop until you crush Hamas.” In spite of the uproar unleashed by Cast Lead, I expressed continued hope for a two-state solution, even though I still doubted whether any Palestinian leader was willing or able to sign on to one. In the absence of a negotiated agreement, I still believed, Israel should take measures that guaranteed our Jewish and democratic future.
The operation inconclusively dragged on, but its end was predetermined. Even if the IDF reconquered Gaza, no one—not the Palestinian Authority, no Arab government—would accept its keys. Most pressing was the need to conclude the fighting by January 20. Though rockets continued to smash into the south, Israel could not steal the spotlight from the inauguration of America’s forty-fourth president.
Unclenched Fist
Well before dawn we awoke and joined the silent procession to the Mall. The mood was solemn as Sally and I ascended through the cold roseate light to the Washington Monument. There, shivering shoulder-to-shoulder with more than a million Americans, we witnessed Barack Obama take the oath of office.
Whatever transpired later, that moment would remain for me resplendent. That sense of oneness—most of those crowding that hill were African-Americans—of hallowedness, and, yes, of hope. I still cherish the hand-warmers that well-wishers distributed for free, and the memory of a glimpse I caught of Obama as his motorcade passed. I would remember that day wistfully in the tempestuous times ahead. Yet, even at that uplifting moment, my thoughts vacillated between optimism and dread.
Throughout the campaign, Obama proudly recalled his Muslim family members and his childhood time in Indonesia, an Islamic state. He promised to close the Guantanámo detention camp for accused Islamist terrorists and replaced the Bush-era term “war on terror” with “the war on violent extremism,” because, the president said, America cannot make war against a tactic. Polls showed that significant segments of the American public believed that Obama, a self-described devout Christian, was in fact a Muslim.
Unfazed, Obama used his inaugural address to call for “a new way forward” with Muslims “based on mutual interest and mutual respect.” This appealed to those Democrats who believed—unfairly, I felt—that Bush had warred against Islam, and who shared Obama’s vision of renewal. I had no difficulty with Obama’s ties with Muslims or his offer to “extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.” And as someone who thought of himself as a natural link between two countries, I could hardly criticize anybody who offered to bridge two cultures. Still, I thought it unusual for a president to address the adherents of a faith as if their views were monolithic. I wondered about the ramifications of reconciling with a Muslim world widely opposed to Israel’s existence, and whether Obama’s desire to dissolve “the lines of the tribe” included my tribe, the Jews.
My concerns were heightened by a conversation held that January with one of Washington’s most incisive minds. David Rothkopf, my former Columbia roommate who had served as undersecretary
of commerce and director of Kissinger Associates, met me at a Thai restaurant. “The first thing Obama will do in office is pick a fight with Israel,” he told me, and I nearly spilled my curry. I knew there would be difficulties between Israel and the new administration, but did not think the clash would be so head-on and so immediate. “The previous administration was perceived as too pro-Israel,” he elaborated, “and Obama’s policy will be ABB.” The initials stood for “Anything But Bush.”
This prediction went a long way in explaining the president’s initial actions. He reportedly made his first foreign phone call to Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas—before Prime Minister Ehud Olmert—assuring him of America’s commitment to rebuild warstruck Gaza and pursue peace. The following day, Obama appointed former Senate majority leader George Mitchell as his Special Envoy for Middle East Peace.
Of Lebanese descent, Mitchell had tweaked Israeli sensibilities during the Second Intifada by exonerating Arafat of any involvement in the violence and calling for a total settlement freeze. Soon after his appointment, the new emissary announced that his mediation efforts would “incorporate” the Arab Peace Initiative. This Saudi plan, floated in the aftermath of 9/11 and later endorsed by the Arab League, called for normalizing relations with Israel in return for its withdrawal to the 1967 lines, including East Jerusalem, and a “just settlement” of the refugee issue. Though I thought Israel could have been more welcoming of the plan, focusing on the normalization and overlooking the provisions for borders and refugees, the government all but dismissed the initiative. But the Palestinians embraced the Arab League plan, and so did George Mitchell.
If less than enthused by Mitchell’s appointment, some Israeli officials looked askance at Obama’s choice for national security advisor. The post, which exerts immense influence on America’s strategic policy toward the Middle East, is crucial for Israel. And the president’s nominee, General James (Jim) Jones, had extensive Israel experience. Back in 2007, while serving as a special State Department envoy, Jones filed a sharply critical report on Israeli actions in the territories.
Further highlighting his new approach, Obama gave his first presidential interview to the Al Arabiya television station in Dubai. “I am absolutely certain that we can make significant progress,” he said of the peace talks he promised to resume. He also reemphasized his Muslim family connections and expressed his desire to restore America’s relations with the Middle East to what they were “twenty or thirty years ago.” The aspiration puzzled me. Twenty years earlier, I calculated, America bombed Libya and blew up Iranian ships in the Gulf. Thirty years ago, Iranian students overran the U.S. embassy in Tehran.
Such signs troubled several Israeli commentators, yet I still believed that a domestically and internationally popular president best served Israel’s interest. Rahm Emanuel’s appointment as White House chief of staff heartened me, as did Hillary Clinton’s as secretary of state. Especially encouraging was the return of my friend Dennis Ross, America’s most experienced practitioner of Middle East diplomacy, to the State Department as Clinton’s special advisor. To the interviewer in Dubai—and to listeners throughout the Arab world—Obama stated, “Israel is a strong ally of the United States [and] will not stop being a strong ally. And I will continue to believe that Israel’s security is paramount.” There would be friction, I assumed, but the alliance would ultimately hold.
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That proposition would be tested three weeks after the inauguration when Israelis went to the polls and returned Benjamin Netanyahu to office. Voted out as prime minister in 1999 after only three years in office, Netanyahu had subsequently served as foreign and finance minister and leader of the Likud. Now less beset by the coalition crises that burdened his first term, Netanyahu prepared to meet some of Israel’s steepest challenges. Along with renewing the peace process and meeting the Iranian nuclear threat, he faced the imposing phenomenon of Barack Obama.
The two men had first met in the summer of 2008, during Obama’s campaign stopover in Israel, when Netanyahu led the opposition. Their conversation, from what I could glean from the press, appeared friendly. Obama justified his support for negotiations with Iran. “Serious direct diplomacy is not because I’m naïve,” he explained. “[It] puts us in a stronger position to mobilize the international community.” He nevertheless upheld Israel’s right to defend itself, whether against Iran or Hamas. “No democracy can tolerate such danger to its people.” Now, half a year later, President Obama called Netanyahu to congratulate him and to reaffirm his commitment to Israel’s defense.
And Israel needed defending. Just then, a coalition of radical leftists, Islamic extremists, international forums, and European courts accused Israel of committing atrocities in Gaza. Israel’s longtime friend Turkey joined the attack. Furious that the recent fighting in Gaza stymied his attempts to mediate between Israel and Syria, and ideologically close to Hamas, Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan became flagrantly anti-Israel. On January 29, 2009, in the middle of a talk in Switzerland with Israeli president Shimon Peres, the burly Turkish leader stomped off the stage shouting, “When it comes to killing, you know well how to kill!”
Abbas, meanwhile, launched a legal attack against Israel. The same Palestinian president who quietly supported the blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza now called publicly for reconciliation with Hamas and an investigation into Israeli “war crimes.” More outrageously, this inquiry into Israel’s alleged atrocities would be carried out by the UN Human Rights Council.
Unique even by the UN’s anti-Israel standards, the UNHRC condemned Israel more than all other countries combined. Article 7 of its charter mandated an automatic annual censure of the Jewish State, and its special rapporteur on Palestine, Richard Falk, regularly compared Israelis to Nazis. Disgusted by its anti-Israel bias, President Bush withdrew America’s representative to the council. But that did not stop the UNHRC—with Abbas’s blessing—from charging Israel with crimes against humanity.
Into this diplomatic thicket rushed the new Obama administration. The president’s first trip abroad brought him, in early April, to Turkey. Describing himself as a bridge between the Western and Muslim worlds, Obama declared, “The United States is not, and will never be, at war with Islam.” He also expressed admiration for Turkey’s democracy and his personal regard for Erdoğan. “I’m not naïve,” Obama once again claimed, but many Israelis grew skeptical. They recalled that Erdoğan’s Turkey jailed more journalists than either China or Iran. They saw how, when asked by Turkish students to comment on the prime minister’s recent outburst against Israel, Obama simply replied, “I wasn’t there.”
Then, just as the UN Human Rights Council prepared to send its fact-finding mission “to investigate all violations of international humanitarian law by Israel,” the United States renewed its seat in the UNHRC. Susan Rice, America’s UN ambassador, asserted that “we believe that working from within, we can make the Council a more effective forum to…protect human rights.” But all of the Israelis I spoke with believed that America’s membership in the UNHRC would do nothing to improve the council’s anti-Israel record. Rather, they added, the presence of a U.S. representative in the organization would merely legitimize its bias.
No less perplexing for Israelis was the administration’s policy on Iran. The International Atomic Energy Agency—the UN’s nuclear watchdog, the IAEA—reported that the Iranians for the first time had produced enough low-enriched uranium for one bomb. Near the western city of Arak, they roofed a heavy-water plant, preventing satellites from observing work on what the IAEA assumed was a plutonium bomb. All of these activities, from Israel’s perspective, had a single purpose: to obliterate the Jewish State. Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made no effort to dissemble his desire for Israel’s disappearance. He repeatedly denied the Holocaust, while simultaneously asserting that “the illegitimate Zionist regime is an outcome of the Holocaust.” This was the Iran with which President Obama now pledged to reconcile.
Perhaps not surprisingly, the main target of American displeasure at this point appeared to be Israel. The crux was the question of peace with the Palestinians. If President Bush demanded that the Palestinians renounce terror and embrace democracy before receiving peace, the new administration expected Israel to make the first move. Israel, Obama insisted, must suspend all settlement construction and endorse the two-state solution. But such concessions were too much to ask of the head of the newly elected leader of Likud, especially so soon after Abbas had turned down Ehud Olmert’s offer of Palestinian statehood. Netanyahu also suspected that Abbas would merely pocket any Israeli concessions and still refuse to negotiate. And Abbas did not trust Netanyahu to give him more than Olmert proposed. “I will wait for Israel to freeze settlements,” he told The Washington Post. “Until then, in the West Bank we have a good reality…the people are living a normal life.”
Nevertheless, the new administration continued to lean on Netanyahu. In his repeated visits to Jerusalem, Senator Mitchell pressed the prime minister to announce a settlement freeze and commit to creating a Palestinian state. “A comprehensive peace in this region is in the national interest of the United States…and of the entire region,” the special envoy declared. “A two-state solution is the only solution.” But Netanyahu resisted this pressure, insisting instead on Palestinian recognition of Israel as the Jewish State, and stoked the president’s ire.