Tested by Zion (30 page)

So the Israelis were opposed, all across their broad political spectrum, to allowing such groups to join in the PLC elections and run as if they were normal political parties. Sharon's view was not only the perspective of the Israeli right; the Israeli left also shared it. The left had championed the Oslo Accords
, which had clearly and intentionally barred terrorist groups like Hamas from participating in elections until they disarmed. In September 2005, Yossi Beilin, a participant in Oslo and now head of the leftist Meretz Party, wrote, “There can be no doubt that participation by
Hamas in elections held in the Palestinian Authority in January 2006 is a gross violation of the Israeli-Palestinian interim agreement.…That this military organization, appearing as a political party, is allowed to abuse democracy is a prize for terror and violence.” This was not simply a matter of principle and of fealty to Oslo: Beilin and others on the left feared that if Hamas, PIJ, and similar extremist groups found a place in the PA political system, all hopes of future peace negotiations would be dashed. As Beilin put it, “Hamas’ entrance into PA institutions is liable to cast a veto on future peace moves, without eliminating the option of violence.”
¹⁸

Sharon, long a pariah internationally, had a brief moment of popularity when he attended the UN General Assembly in mid-September 2005. He met not only with President Bush but also with dozens of foreign ministers and prime ministers who joined in congratulating him for the Gaza withdrawal. No doubt he enjoyed it, though what he thought privately of some of those now coming to pay court can only be imagined. A Quartet statement issued after it met on September 20 took into account the Israeli complaints that they never got any credit:

The Quartet recognizes and welcomes the successful conclusion of the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and parts of the northern West Bank and the moment of opportunity that it brings to renew efforts on the Roadmap. The Quartet reiterates its belief that this brave and historic decision should open a new chapter on the path to peace in the region. It paid tribute to the political courage of Prime Minister Sharon and commends the Israeli
government, its armed forces and its police for the smooth and professional execution of the operation.…On settlements, the Quartet welcomed the fact that, in areas covered by disengagement, Israel has gone beyond its obligations under the first phase of the Roadmap.
¹⁹

At that same Quartet meeting, it had begun to shift its position and, more important, that of the Americans, on Hamas's participation in
the elections. The Quartet statement quoted earlier also included this text:

The Quartet calls for an end to all violence and terror. While the PA leadership has condemned violence and has sought to encourage Palestinian groups who have engaged in terrorism to abandon this course and engage in the democratic process, the Quartet further urges the Palestinian Authority to maintain law and order and dismantle terrorist capabilities and infrastructure.…The rule of law through authorized security institutions is fundamental to democratic practice.

Yet what Secretary General Annan said to the press at the conclusion of the meeting was a bit different and went further in suggesting that Hamas might participate in elections:

The Quartet discussed armed groups and the political process. The Palestinian Authority leadership has condemned violence and has sought to encourage Palestinian groups who have engaged in terrorism to abandon this course and engage in the democratic process. Ultimately, those who want to be part of the political process should not engage in armed group or militia activities, for there is a fundamental contradiction between such activities and the building of a democratic State.
²⁰

This statement was the product of the usual Quartet negotiations and pre-negotiations. “Quartet envoys” – meaning David Welch and
me for the United States, the EU envoy in Jerusalem, the United Nations special envoy for Middle East peace, some Russian functionary, plus assistants to all of us – would meet a day or two before the Quartet Principals met. That meeting could be anywhere: Jerusalem, Berlin, New York, Moscow, London; this was a floating crap game. We envoys would meet; then the Principals would meet and (usually) approve a statement we had drafted for them; then they would hold a press conference, where Kofi Annan would read the Quartet statement; and then the Principals would answer questions from the media. The Principals were the U.S. secretary of state, the Russian foreign minister, Kofi Annan (and later Ban Ki-moon), and a team of European officials – because Europe did not speak with one voice. Sometimes the formula seemed to be “the less influence you have, the more people you send to the meeting.” But Quartet meetings did allow us to bind the Europeans to formulations and positions that were far more balanced than they would otherwise have taken, and they had the same effect for the Russians. If we were not exactly all united, at least we were not taking manifestly contradictory positions, undercutting each other and making American diplomacy that much harder. This was true most of the time; in those press conferences, it was not
hard to see where the papering over differences had taken place and where apparent consensus was belied by very different underlying views. The Israelis hated the Quartet and refused to meet with it; their view was that American positions were constantly being watered down by the Quartet, and there was some truth in that.

This Quartet statement was at first glance odd: The sentence “The rule of law through authorized security institutions is fundamental to democratic practice” read like something out of a civics text. Sure, true, fine, but so what? What was the Quartet trying to say? Missing was a flat requirement that groups that “have engaged in terrorism” must stop doing so – must lay down their arms – before they can “engage in the democratic process.” There had in fact been language to that effect in the draft Quartet Statement, but participants in the meeting knew that Abbas wanted Hamas to participate and believed elections would be illegitimate if they were prohibited from doing so. If the Quartet said that groups must disarm or at least announce they were abandoning terror before they could field candidates, would that not be undermining Abbas? Rice instructed David Welch to leave Kofi Annan's conference room, where we were meeting, and call Abbas. Welch reached him and got the Arabic equivalent of “Yikes” when Abbas heard the proposed wording. Don't put it in, he said, or people will think I don't want Hamas to participate.

UN Under Secretary General for the Middle East Alvaro de Soto described in his final report how Quartet principals decided to handle the touchy situation:

[T]he Principals deliberated and, after consulting by telephone with Abu Mazen, agreed to a formula which consisted of Secretary-General Annan reading to the press…a sentence – not included in the written statement that was issued – in which the view was expressed that the forthcoming Palestinian legislative elections should [be] seen as a stage in Palestinian evolution toward democracy, and that the question of participation should be left to the Palestinians themselves, notwithstanding the “fundamental contradiction” between participation in
elections and possession of militias.…Even accounting for the diplomatic prestidigitation, this was a far-reaching move by the Quartet, by which the Palestinians were given a pass on the requirement, spelled out in the first stage of the Roadmap, to disarm militias.
²¹

In her memoir, Rice concludes that this equivocation had all been a mistake: “In retrospect, we should have insisted that every party disarm as a condition for participation in the vote.”
²²
We should have, and I wish now that I had protested more strongly back then. But at that time, in the usual postmeeting press conference, Rice went even further toward accommodating Abbas's view: “This is going to be a Palestinian process and I think we have to give the Palestinians some room for the evolution of their political process. We hope that the elections can go forward and that everyone will work to make those elections go forward.”

The Israelis were getting the same message about the American view and were acquiescing to it. “In September 2005 at the UN, we had a meeting,” Shalom Tourgeman explained, “Dubi and myself, and Condi, and Welch, in
New York, in which she said, ‘This is the wish of the President’ and we were forced to accept it. In New York we came to Sharon and we told him, ‘Look, this is what was in the meeting,’ and he said, ‘Well, I’m not going to fight it. I mean, this is what the Americans want, and this is what the Palestinians want – I’m not going to fight it, though I think it's a mistake.’”
²³

On September 28, Secretary Rice addressed the gathering celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, demanding that the Palestinian terrorist groups be disbanded, as the Roadmap required. On Hamas and the elections she said this:

There are periods of time of transition in which one has to give some space to the participants, in this case the Palestinians, to begin to come to a new national compact. But I cannot imagine, in the final analysis, a new national compact that leaves an armed resistance group within the political space. You cannot simultaneously keep an option open on politics and an option on violence. There simply isn't a case that I can think of internationally where that's been permitted to happen.…It is absolutely the case that you cannot have armed groups ultimately participating in politics with no expectation that they're going to disarm.
²⁴

This message gave the Palestinians a bit of room: Apparently, Hamas could participate if someone had an expectation that, in the end, they would disarm. Then one might call its participation in elections the first step in that process. The key word was “ultimately.” From the Israeli perspective, this was a clear U.S. retreat because “ultimately” could mean a very long time. Rice insisted that the words had meaning: There had to be reason to believe participation was part of the process that would lead to disarmament.

A few weeks later, the Palestinians came to Washington once again, and that was the message Secretary Rice delivered to Abbas at dinner on September 19, the night before he saw the president. There are plenty of transitional cases, she said, but the group must agree to the goal; Hamas cannot participate unless there is an
expectation
they will disarm. But Abbas disagreed: Even the new Rice/Quartet position was too strong for him. No, he said; I want them in, not out. I don't want them to be martyrs who were refused any role by us. Then once they're in, and part of the political system, we'll say no one can be in politics and have guns too.

Jake Walles, then serving as consul general in Jerusalem, flew back to attend the meetings with Abbas and described them later:

He believed Hamas should participate. That they needed to be brought into the process and defeated. That if they left them out, they would be a spoiler – he didn't want them to be a spoiler. He said that once the election was over, the first thing that the new PLC will do is to ban the militias – so there will be one gun, one authority. So he said all the right things.…[P]ractically speaking, after that we had basically acquiesced in Hamas participating in this election.
²⁵

The notion that Hamas would win a majority of seats and could prevent such a law banning militias did not seem to enter Abbas's mind or ours. Our concern, once that decision was taken, was to prevent Hamas's participation
in the government to be elected unless Hamas renounced its goal of destroying Israel, renounced terrorism, and accepted that it must disarm. There could be no coalition or unity government in which Hamas participated, in our view, unless Hamas met those conditions. In that sense, our focus was shifting from the election to the postelection period. But it is obvious that even here we fell far short and should have stated clearly
before
the election that, however the vote went, we would not engage with Hamas and would oppose its participation in the government until it disarmed. We did not do so because Abbas wished us to avoid the degree of clarity that might give Hamas an excuse for refusing to participate in the election at all.

Abbas met the president the following day, where he got another pep talk about making difficult decisions. The president was optimistic: There was a real opportunity now. Abbas spoke mostly about the elections and the Hamas role. The culture of violence had surrounded the Palestinian cause for decades, he said, but there was change. The truce had lowered the level of violence. PA police were slowly but surely enforcing a new rule against the carrying of guns in public. Municipal elections had been held successfully during 2005. Now came the PLC elections, and he did want some of the armed groups to participate. Either they were inside the system or sat outside it criticizing. If they were inside, they would be participating in accordance with their true size, not the size al Jazeera gave them. So the election gives me a chance, he said, to send a message: Everyone can participate in political life but subject to law and in their true size.

Abbas and his men made it clear again that barring Hamas participation was anathema to them because such an election would delegitimize Abbas. An election in which the main opposition is barred? The Arab Middle East had had dozens of such elections; that was the way tyrants stayed in power. Moreover, Hamas would obviously be beaten in the elections, which would greatly strengthen Abbas and Fatah and the PA. If we absolutely insisted that Hamas be barred from running candidates, the Palestinians said, it would be better to cancel the election. The United States bought the argument. Although Hamas as a party would not present candidates, people linked to them, supported by them, and known at least to be fellow travelers of Hamas would be able to run. Forced by the Palestinian logic to choose between canceling the elections entirely or allowing Hamas-linked candidates to run, we chose the latter and decided not to have a confrontation with Abbas. In retrospect, the decision was wrong both in principle and in practice.