At around 5:30 p.m., Rania, Pope Benedict, some of our advisers, and I got into a large motorized buggy and rode down to the Baptism Site, where the pontiff blessed the foundation stones of two churches, one Latin, the other Greek Melkite.
Jordan’s religious tolerance and diversity come as a surprise to many in the West. I remember when in July 2005, Tom DeLay, a member of a movement called the Christian Zionists, who are strong supporters of the state of Israel and oppose the creation of a Palestinian state, visited Jordan as part of a trip to the Middle East. We met in my father’s old house in Amman, and DeLay, Republican majority leader in the U.S. Congress at that time, wasted no time in telling me what was on his mind. “I am very concerned about the treatment of Christians in Jordan,” he said. As it happened, a few of the Jordanians who were with me in the room were Christian, and they began to smile. Oblivious to this, DeLay grabbed my hand and said, “Do you believe in Jesus?” looking earnestly into my eyes. “I believe in Jesus Christ as the Messiah,” I replied, freeing my hand from his grasp. In fact, all Muslims believe in Jesus as the Messiah and revere him as a Spirit of God and as the Word of God as well as a great prophet and messenger of God. “Listen,” I said, “if you’re worried about Christians in Jordan, you can ask around here—some of the people by my side in this room are Christian.” Then I told him how Jordan takes very seriously its responsibility of protecting Christian rights within Jordan, and also in Jerusalem. I am not certain that DeLay understood or accepted my assurances. I do know that his delegation included no Muslims. Just a few months after his visit to Jordan, DeLay, a vocal evangelical, was indicted by a grand jury in Texas on charges of money laundering and violating campaign finance laws. He subsequently resigned as House majority leader and later gave up his seat in Congress.
But the pope was well aware of Jordan’s diversity. His visit was a joyous time, and a celebration of Jordan’s religious tolerance. It came at a very good time, and the pope’s message of peace and spiritual reconciliation between Christians, Muslims, and Jews complemented our efforts in the political sphere to bring about a political reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. It was hard to miss the significance of the pope’s religious pilgrimage, which started in Jordan and ended in Jerusalem, by way of the West Bank. His visit helped inspire all of us who were searching for peace. And we needed that inspiration, for the path to peace had been riddled with potholes and perilous detours.
PART VI
Chapter 24
The End of an Era
Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon had been in office for three years by the time we first met. His policies in the West Bank and Gaza had created so much tension in the region that it had been politically almost impossible for us to meet earlier. But in early 2004 I invited Sharon to Jordan in an effort to break the stalemate in the peace process. He flew into Amman by helicopter, landing at the headquarters of the General Intelligence Department.
A man with a fearsome reputation, Sharon had served in the Haganah, the Jewish underground resistance that fought Palestinians and later became part of the Hebrew Resistance Movement against the British. He led Israeli Special Forces Unit 101, conducting clandestine raids against Arab targets, and was involved in the attack on Qibya in 1953, when scores of Palestinian civilians were killed. Sharon was infamous across the region for allowing the massacre of some eight hundred Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. No Arab will ever be able to forget the searing images of the slaughtered mothers and children of Sabra and Shatila.
Extremists will always criticize me for meeting with Israeli leaders, especially those with a history of violence like Sharon, who to most Arabs is a mass murderer and a war criminal. But leaders do not have the luxury of choosing their counterparts. I do not get to choose the Israeli prime minister. Only the Israeli people can do that. But I can choose how Jordan behaves toward its neighbors and decide how to build upon my father’s legacy of peace. Although there might be some emotional satisfaction in refusing to meet Sharon, it would be short-lived and self-defeating.
We had invited Sharon to Jordan because we felt it was essential to somehow reboot the peace process. I had strongly objected to many of his actions and policies, and I hoped to persuade him that the only way to ensure lasting security for Israel was to forge a peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors. My father had interacted with Sharon when he was a minister in the Netanyahu government in the late 1990s and had passed along an insight into his character. He had told me that if Sharon committed himself to something, he would stick to it. He was a man who kept his word.
Although I did not know Sharon personally, I had benefited from the respect he held for my father, and for Jordan. As I sat opposite him in a meeting room at GID headquarters, I told him that my father had said he was a man who would keep his word. So that was how I wanted to begin the relationship, I said.
Sharon seemed shy and somewhat reserved and kept looking down as he spoke. “I care about the security of Israel,” he said, “but I also care about the safety and security of Jordan.”
I knew that the true national interest of Jordan, and of Israel, would be served only by reaching peace between Israel and the Palestinians. I tried to convince him of this, but by the end of the meeting, after a lengthy discussion of Israeli actions in the Occupied Territories and the need to take effective steps to create an environment conducive to the resumption of serious peace negotiations, I was quite certain that Sharon did not share my view.
Our next encounter, on March 19, was a secret meeting at his ranch in the Negev Desert. By inviting me to his personal farm, where his wife was buried, Sharon was sending me the message that he was a friend to Jordan and hoped to put old hostilities behind us. Times were very tense. The construction by Israel of the wall dividing the West Bank had begun, and the belief in the region was that the Bush administration wanted to bring about “regime change” in the Palestinian Authority and had little interest in getting the parties back to the negotiating table. All the while, Israel was building more illegal settlements in the West Bank and consolidating its hold on the Occupied Territories. The settler population in the West Bank and East Jerusalem stood at around 265,000 at the time the Oslo Accords were signed in 1993. The number had risen to about 365,000 in 2000, and to over 400,000 in 2003. This growth was a reflection of the fact that Israel never stopped building new settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, a politically incendiary move. The building of new settlements was alarming not just because they were eating away at land that should belong to the future Palestinian state, but also because it was a clear indication that Israel was not committed to a two-state solution.
We had gone to Sharon’s ranch to discuss his recent proposal to pull Israeli troops out of the Gaza Strip and some parts of the West Bank. I told him that any such move should be coordinated with the Palestinian leadership and the Egyptians, and that it should be the beginning of a comprehensive Israeli withdrawal from all occupied Arab territory. It should not simply be a unilateral withdrawal by Israeli forces so as to transfer Israeli settlers from Gaza to other locations in the West Bank. I felt as though we were making some progress in building a working relationship that could ultimately help push the peace efforts forward. But in my neighborhood, appearances can be deceptive.
One of the problems with the Israeli government is that everything leaks. Although our meeting was supposed to be secret, a confidence-building measure that would allow us to discuss ways of moving toward a settlement with the Palestinians, news of the trip was leaked to the Israeli press. Shortly afterward the Israelis assassinated Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the head of Hamas, with a Cobra gunship as he was leaving a mosque in Gaza. Nine innocent people were killed along with the blind, wheelchair-bound Yassin. The assassination of a quadriplegic in his seventies seemed heartless even by Israeli standards. I was infuriated by the murder of Yassin and knew it would open up another cycle of violence. B
ut I was also furious because the operation had taken place so soon after my visit. The next month the Israelis assassinated Yassin’s successor, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, sparking renewed violence in the West Bank and Gaza. The Americans did not condemn either assassination and vetoed a UN resolution doing so.
Israelis often, whether on purpose or not, seem to schedule important diplomatic meetings a few days before conducting controversial operations. One recent example was the meeting between Turkey’s prime minister Recep Tayyep Erdogan and Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert in December 2008, a few days before the Gaza war started. Erdogan was furious. He felt the Israeli government was trying to create the impression that he had given his tacit consent to the Gaza attack.
The assassination of Sheikh Yassin was emblematic of the morass of Middle East conflict: one side acts rashly and the other overreacts in return. The path to peace is littered with roadside bombs. The only law that is followed is one whose logic leads to unintended consequences. After the Israelis assassinated Rantisi, Hamas had to find another leader. Who did they turn to? None other than Jordan’s former guest, Khaled Meshaal.
In April 2004, I was again scheduled to meet with President Bush at the White House. I planned to push to restart the peace process and hoped that the president would take a broader view of the challenges facing our region. Before my arrival, Bush welcomed another visitor, Prime Minister Sharon. During that visit, on April 14, an exchange of letters between Bush and Sharon was made public. In the days leading up to the visit, Sharon had pressed the president to reveal America’s positions on several issues and to support his unilateral disengagement in Gaza. Bush’s secret assurances amounted to a major shift in American policy. In his formal letter to Sharon, Bush promised U.S. support for Israel’s retention of some West Bank settlements and ruled out the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their former homes, saying that they should settle in a future Palestinian state. The U.S. administration was prejudging one of the most controversial topics in the whole peace process. Bush said: The United States is strongly committed to Israel’s security and well-being as a Jewish state. It seems clear that an agreed, just, fair and realistic framework for a solution to the Palestinian refugee issue as part of any final status agreement will need to be found through the establishment of a Palestinian state, and the settling of Palestinian refugees there, rather than in Israel.
The whole Arab world exploded in anger. It was clear to me that the Bush administration intended to back Israel right or wrong, so I told the White House that I was canceling my meeting. They were stunned. Few people ever turn down a meeting with the American president, and fewer still cancel meetings that have already been scheduled. But I had to make my point. I could not condone the shift in U.S. policy implied by Bush’s letter. The peace process was frozen, and despite the best efforts of the Arab states to make a new push for peace, all we were getting were one-sided pronouncements and more violence.
One month later I went to Washington to try to reverse the change in American policy and was partially successful. In our joint press conference, which reiterated the substance of letters we had exchanged before my visit, Bush reaffirmed that he would not prejudge the final status talks. I restated Jordan’s position that any Israeli withdrawal should follow the parameters of the road map and lead to the creation of a Palestinian state on the basis of the 1967 borders.
In October, Yasser Arafat was flown to Paris for medical treatment after his health speedily deteriorated. He slipped into a coma and died the following month. His body was flown to Cairo, where he was given a military funeral. An Egyptian plane then took his body to the Sinai, and Jordanian military helicopters carried it from there to Ramallah for burial. The helicopter landed as a distraught crowd of mourners surged forward, desperately trying to get one last glimpse of their beloved leader. Whatever the world may have thought of Arafat, he was a hero to the Palestinian people and his passing marked the end of an era.
Mahmoud Abbas (known as Abu Mazen) was elected president of the Palestinian National Authority the following January. For decades, Israel had claimed that Arafat was a barrier to peace. Now, with his passing, they would have one less excuse for failing to deliver on their promises. Abbas assumed the leadership of the PNA at one of the lowest points in the peace process. The challenges before him were enormous. He had to fill the vacuum left by Arafat and rebuild Palestinian institutions that had been systematically destroyed by Israel in the past few years. The new Palestinian leader also had to work to put the peace process back on track. From the day he assumed office, Abbas sought a political settlement with the Israelis on the basis of the two-state solution. But he would be sorely disappointed.
In August 2005, the Israelis unilaterally withdrew from Gaza three days earlier than announced—without adequate coordination with the Egyptians, who share a long border with Gaza, or with the Palestinian Authority. The Israeli cabinet had voted overwhelmingly in support of this move the previous February. Sharon, the former champion of the settlers, had given the order to bulldoze their buildings and remove the occupants, by force if necessary. Although the withdrawal was welcome, the manner in which it was conducted was not.
By blockading all of the Gaza Strip’s entry and exit points, the Israelis had turned Gaza into a virtual prison. And when they withdrew in an uncoordinated manner, they created a security vacuum. This vacuum was soon filled by Hamas and the Islamic Jihad. It was a desolate scene, with heavily armed men moving through a landscape of barbed wire and ruined buildings. There was no management of the transition and no handing over of security and other responsibilities in a coordinated manner to Palestinian institutions.
A few months later, in November, Sharon split from the Likud Party and founded a new party, which he called Kadima. His decision followed months of political infighting with members of Likud over what was known as the “disengagement plan,” which involved the withdrawal from Gaza and the dismantlement of four settlements in the northern West Bank. Sharon was joined by key Likud members, including Tzipi Livni, who would later become foreign minister, and Ehud Olmert, the former mayor of Jerusalem, who was his deputy.
In early January 2006, Sharon suffered a stroke and fell into a coma. His duties were assumed by Olmert. It soon became clear that the old warrior would not recover, and Olmert officially became prime minister of Israel in April.
New leaders were taking over on both sides, and many in the region hoped this would lead to a fresh approach to an old conflict. Nowhere was that hope stronger than among those gearing up for the first Palestinian legislative election in a decade, which was slated for January 25, 2006. One of the parties on the ballot was Hamas, which had chosen not to take part in the 1996 legislative elections. Because of Hamas’s participation, the Israeli government considered not allowing Palestinians living in East Jerusalem to vote in the election (it considers East Jerusalem to be part of Israel). But in the end, they were allowed to vote.
Many Palestinians and others in the region argued that the conditions were not right for holding elections and urged that they be delayed. But the Bush administration disagreed with this suggestion. In a question-and-answer session with the State Department Correspondents Association on January 5, Condoleezza Rice said:I don’t really believe that we can favor postponing the elections because we fear an outcome.... [O]ur position on Hamas has not changed. It’s listed as a terrorist organization. We recognize that there’s a transition here going on in Palestinian politics. And so this is an internal matter for the Palestinians. We do believe that there should be the ability of everyone to participate—the Palestinian people to participate in the elections.
But what would the Bush administration do if Hamas won?
Many hoped and expected that Yasser Arafat’s Fatah Party would win the elections. Fatah had promised the Palestinian people statehood and freedom through the Oslo process, but the long-agopromised state was still a distant mirage and charges of corruption against Palestinian Natio
nal Authority officials were rampant. Many felt that Fatah had not delivered on its promises. So when the day came for Palestinians to go to the polls, they gave Hamas a decisive win. Hamas’s victory created a major problem. The U.S. government considered Hamas a terrorist organization and would have nothing to do with it. Many European countries followed suit. This in turn allowed the Israelis to freeze tax payments to the Palestinian Authority and to claim that they did not have a “partner for peace.”
Americans rightly extol the benefits of democracy, but democracy manifests itself in different forms in different cultures. If conditions are not right, it can cement divisions and fuel hatred. Part of the problem with the Bush administration was its cookie-cutter approach toward the concept of exporting democracy, which basically came down to holding elections. To my mind, developing an effective democracy is a journey. Voting in the absence of a widespread acceptance of democratic values and the existence of an independent judiciary can be a disaster. Democratic institutions are strengthened by the presence of a strong, effective middle class and reputable governing bodies. It is certainly a process that is more difficult to develop under an occupation that could, and would, destroy these institutions at will.
I do not think the Bush administration fully understood conditions in the region and thus it pushed blindly for early elections wherever it could. It sometimes seemed as if the administration was just seeking a quick win to feed the never-ending twenty-four-hour news cycle. But the problems in the West Bank and Gaza were not going to be resolved through the ballot box before the end of the Israeli occupation. If the foundations for a stable society are not in place, extremist groups will capitalize on popular frustrations to seize power. And once the radicals take control, they do not easily relinquish it.
Our Last Best Chance: The Pursuit of Peace in a Time of Peril Page 29
