Tested by Zion (35 page)

There is a myth that, from the day of the elections, Bush policy was to destroy any Hamas government and undo the election results. In fact, the policy was to destroy any Hamas government that remained committed to terrorism and eliminating the State of Israel, but not before testing whether Hamas could be moved away from those positions. The Russians and others sent messages to Hamas that were supposed to say, “We can work something out if you will accept the Quartet Principles” but more likely suggested to Hamas that Russia would seize on any gesture to break up the unified Quartet position toward Hamas. As Condi Rice described it, Hamas “missed an opportunity because I think early on, particularly through the Russians, the Quartet tried to send
signals that if they would accept – even kind of make a feint in the way of those conditions, then there might be something for them…even an inch in that direction.…[W]e were kind of holding the fort, because the Quartet was looking for
any
sign that Hamas was going to come over.”
⁹

Various face-saving devices were offered to Hamas: Hamas could say it would be bound by all agreements Arafat had signed, or that it accepted the right of the PLO to negotiate a binding agreement with Israel. Hamas could have invented all sorts of ambiguous formulations, allowing those who wanted to engage with it to say, “See, this is new, let's build on it.” Hamas might have dissected the principles, arguing that the three were not of equal importance: Surely the abandonment of terrorism and violence was fundamental, and the issues of “recognition” of Israel and the exact Hamas position on previous agreements were complex and could be negotiated later. But that, of course, would have required at least a commitment to abandon violence and terror once and for all, something Hamas was entirely unwilling to make. Instead, Hamas stood firm on its own principles and, as Rice said, “that really took the air out of the talk-to-Hamas movement.”
¹⁰
The Quartet solidarity, especially the apparent toughness of the U.S. and European positions, was a gift to us from Hamas.

Interlocutors with the terrorist group found that its Charter reflected not the ravings of a few Hamas founders but rather the views of its top officials. Hamas had omitted its call for an end to Israel from its election manifesto but made clear that its basic views were unchanged. There would be no end to terrorism: “We will not stand against the resistance, we will not condemn any operation and will never arrest any mujahed [holy warrior],” said Khaled Meshal, a top Hamas leader. “Anyone who thinks Hamas will change is wrong.”
¹¹
Instead, Hamas said a long-term truce was possible only if Israel withdrew to 1967 borders – meaning not only all of the West Bank but also evacuating all of the Old City of Jerusalem including the Jewish Quarter – and recognized the “right of return.” With this demand, Hamas rejected all three of the “Quartet Principles.”

Back home after the Quartet meeting in London, we continued to elaborate a way forward. One option was to separate the executive and legislative branches of the PA government; it was not a pure parliamentary system because it had an elected president with considerable power. We could continue to support those organs that were under the presidency. Because the president was, under the PA Basic Law, commander in chief of the security forces, perhaps we could say that all the security organs were part of the executive branch and not under the PLC, to be led by Hamas once it convened. We could work with Abbas, refuse absolutely to work with Hamas, insist on the Quartet Principles, and force Hamas to make a choice. The position we were taking had full congressional support as well, and both houses of Congress adopted resolutions stating that “no United States assistance should be provided directly to the PA if any representative political party holding a majority of parliamentary seats within the PA maintains a position calling for the destruction of Israel.”

Here was part of the notice that USAID put out describing what was and was not permissible:

1. Contact with PA Ministries: No contact is allowed with PA officials under the authority of the Prime Minister or any other minister. Contact with all officials in these ministries, including working-level employees, is prohibited.
   
2. Contact with the PA Presidency: Contact is allowed with the Palestinian Authority Presidency and agencies under his authority, including the Office of the President, Presidential Security, General Intelligence, Governors and Governorate staff, the Attorney General's Office, and the Palestine Investment Fund (PIF). This list may be updated from time to time.
   
3. Contact with Independent PA Entities: Contact is allowed with PA offices and officials that are independent of the Prime Minister and cabinet ministers. This includes: The Palestinian Judiciary, including the Higher Judicial Council; Members of the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), PLC staff, and officials under their authority who are not Designated Terrorist Organization (DTO) members or affiliates [All PLC members elected on the Hamas-affiliated ticket and their staffs are off-limits] and Independent agencies, including the Central Elections Commission; the Independent Citizens Rights Commission; the General Audit Authority/External Audit Agency; and the Palestinian Monetary Authority. This list may be updated from time to time.
   ¹²
   

There is no path to statehood through violence and terror, Secretary Rice put it when we met in her conference room, so what we are doing is the only way forward toward peace. When the King of Jordan visited on February 8, the president told him that Hamas could obviously not be a partner for peace if its platform calls for the destruction of Israel. Expect a tough American line on this, he explained to the king. Our goal remains the same: peace, the two-state solution. But I can't force a peace deal if the situation is impossible, the president said, and things will move according to reality in the region, not the American political calendar. I am not going to try and force a solution to get a Nobel Peace Prize, he told Abdullah.

The following day, Tzipi Livni, who had been named Israel's foreign minister, visited the White House and the president reiterated that we would not yield with regard to Hamas. He did not think the Palestinian people would turn to the Hamas philosophy, he said, because there was such a large, secular, educated middle class. But if they do, he told her, just finish building the wall. Of one thing the president was sure: This was no time for any disagreements or tensions with Israel. Reviewing a memo we at the NSC had written about Hamas, his only comment was that, above all else, we should be sure that there is no daylight between the United States and Israel.

On February 18, the PLC convened and Hamas took over, with a clear majority of 74 of 132 seats. In the month since its election victory, it had
remained true to its “principles.” Those who were surprised by this misunderstood the nature of the group. Hamas was not a political party but rather an armed terrorist organization that espoused a militant and extreme Islamist view. Yet the search for “moderates” inside Hamas continued, especially by some bureaucrats from Europe and the UN. Abbas, in his speech opening the parliamentary session, was clear: The PA was bound by agreements previously signed.

By contrast to what happened in the PA, Israel's elections on March 28 were no surprise: Kadima won the most seats. The new party took 28 seats in the 120-member Knesset, meaning that Olmert would need to cobble together a coalition. Labor came in second with 20 seats and would obviously be part of that coalition. The very next day, March 29, the new PA cabinet was sworn in, under Ismail Haniyeh as prime minister. The cabinet had 24 members and Hamas provided 19 of them. Several technocrats and one Christian were added to the mix.

David Welch and
I went back to the region on March 30. We had the unhappy task of telling President Abbas that the $50 million given to the PA must now be returned, if there was anything left. The way our lawyers saw it, there was no alternative. Abbas and
Fayyad, who had no desire to leave money in the till for Hamas, complied – and we found that very little of the money had been spent. We told Abbas about our legal debates, which were still somewhat unsettled: Exactly which PA organs could we fund and to what extent? Actually, the debates were leaning toward funding the presidency, but we did not want to risk building up expectations we could not meet so we left it vague.

Back in Jerusalem, Weissglas was still in the Prime Minister's Office, but he was a Sharon guy. This position would not last; once Olmert assembled his own team, Weissglas would be out. Tourgeman's fate was less clear because he was a career diplomat. Weissglas explained to us that the new Israeli cabinet would be different. Sharon had truly dominated his government; Olmert would not. There would be much more politics, with everyone wondering when the next election would come. Typically, he told us, a new prime minister governs for a year or at best two, and then enters the election cycle. Olmert was committed to withdrawals in the West Bank, said Dubi, but he would find it much harder to implement them than it would have been for Sharon. Welch and I then met at length with officials of Israel's National Security Council (a group that sometimes advised the prime minister but was more often kept quite distant from the corridors of power), and found that they had devoted tremendous efforts to studying withdrawals in the West Bank – how to sequence actions, what to do and where, how to maintain security, and what locations could not be given up at all.

As I reflected on the meetings with Israelis, it seemed to me that the Israeli right had not had a conversion to believing in Palestinian statehood. Instead,
the conversion had been from believing in “Greater Israel,” including the West Bank, to believing in separation from the Palestinians. Statehood was, to them, a tactic to achieve separation, and if Hamas were to be in charge of the state or even a major force within it, they would drop their support for that tactic. That would be the end of the Roadmap. But it might not be the end of separation; it might not mean staying in every place in the West Bank they then held. So while further disengagement might not produce a Palestinian state in accordance with the Roadmap, it might well produce real separation on the ground – already achieved in Gaza, next in the West Bank or major parts of it. To me, this suggested a way forward because any Israeli pullback in the West Bank, involving tens of thousands of settlers, would necessarily take years: We should continue to support Abbas against Hamas (despite all his weaknesses, Abbas was all we had), continue the pressure for Fatah reform, and try to beat Hamas in the next election and make its January victory a one-time fluke. I did not believe Hamas would change, but trying to create internal splits within Hamas was a no-lose proposition; that effort too could go ahead so long as it was Hamas that bent its principles, not the PA. Americans would have no part in that “split Hamas” effort, but Russia and other governments, including the Arabs, were going to try anyway.

Three weeks later, Welch and I traveled to London for a quiet dinner with Weissglas and Tourgeman. Weissglas spoke with great seriousness about Olmert's new approach: what Olmert had renamed
hitkansut
or “convergence,” replacing Sharon's term “disengagement.” The first step would be a Gaza-style compensation law for the West Bank, which would lead some significant proportion of settlers to leave – a fourth, a third, perhaps more. There were thousands who would leave now if they could, but there were no buyers for their houses, especially those in outlying settlements. This law would be implemented without any coordination with the PA, of course, said Dubi, but if there were at some point a new Palestinian government without Hamas, Israel could reengage with it. All this would take plenty of time anyway and required completion of the fence – a 9- to 18-month proposition itself. Israel could withdraw from up to 90% of the West Bank, about 12% of which was west of the fence; there could be further bargaining down the road. As to Jerusalem, Weisglass said that the municipality was too large and its borders should be adjusted; it now took in too many Arab villages and even a refugee camp at Shuafat. He did not suggest that the Old City or Holy Basin would be affected or shared with the PA.

For this withdrawal to happen, he said, the United States would need to commend Israel for such a pullback and support it, as it did in Gaza. In turn, Israel would state that a final status agreement was still needed and that everything had to be negotiated. Yet the key was the status of the major settlement blocks. As part of such a huge pullback in the West Bank, he said, we will annex these blocks and we will want U.S. support. That's the price of getting us out of the West Bank now. We are getting nothing from the Palestinians, so why do this? The only compensation is from you, the United States. We have
to be able to persuade Israelis that we are getting out of 90% percent of the West Bank so that our hold on the other 10% will be better, stronger. Look, he said, Camp David would have given the Palestinians maybe 94 or 95% of the West Bank; under this approach, they will have us out of 90 or 91%. So we are arguing about 3% only. And we could say something about swaps, so some of that could even be remedied.

But Israel won't do this without you, Weisglass continued. We need coordination and we need your approval. Otherwise, we're going to be in a kind of confrontation with you, and all these moves would be without compensation. Now is the time to do it – under Sharon's shadow and while Bush is there, and before it's too late.

Welch and I did not respond because we had no authority to do so. Moreover, it was not entirely clear for whom Weissglas spoke: Was this really the Olmert plan? And even if it was, Olmert had no government yet and coalition negotiations were still continuing, so who could tell what compromises might come in the future? Finally, Weissglas was a terrific negotiator and might well be staking out some positions he planned to trade away later. I could not see the administration supporting formal Israeli annexation of the major settlement blocks, but I could see some compromises that would allow us to support the basic plan – especially if it was the only game in town.