Tested by Zion (5 page)

Within days of the 9/11 terror attack, the Bush administration began to regroup, but its focus was on Al Qaeda and the sanctuary the Taliban were providing it. As Bruce Riedel recalled,

It was, from the beginning of October until the middle of December, all Afghanistan. People now, as is usually the case, think this was easy and it unfolded like clockwork. This was all being made up on the spot. These were plays that were being called at the line of scrimmage, and it was a lot messier and a lot more confusing and didn't look like it was about to succeed until well into middle-late November. And that's what the president and vice president were focused on.
¹

Richard Haass, who had been in charge of the Middle East in George H. W. Bush's NSC eight years before, agreed that Israeli-Palestinian matters were peripheral at that moment: “After 9/11 what everyone focused on was counter-terrorism, Afghanistan, homeland security; I was put in charge of Afghanistan, and there was no linkage to Israel and its neighbors. There was no way, no one, even the most fanatical peace processer, could claim that what motivated Osama bin Laden was his commitment to a Palestinian state. So it was all just pushed back.”
²

Yet some at the State Department did indeed make just that claim. There was much discussion of “why do they hate us so,” and many of the proposed answers fit conveniently into boxes that had long filled the minds of “Arabists” in
the department. Surely the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and America's “excessive” support for Israel were the explanation for Islamic terrorism, and surely a new “peace process” was the solution. Powell himself told the president that “we need a serious Arab-Israeli peace initiative” shortly after 9/11.
³
This came as no surprise, as Douglas Feith, then undersecretary of defense for policy, ruefully explained: “What does the State Department want to do? What it
always
wants to do. It wants a major Middle East initiative. This has been the case for decades, over and over again. When there was a Cold War,
that
was the reason to do it, and when the Cold War ended then
that
was the reason to do it. And
before 9/11
that
was the reason to do it and after 9/11
that
was the reason to do it.”
⁴

The intellectual battle lines were becoming clear. If the problem was one of Islamic extremism
, a “war of ideas” would be required, aimed at strengthening Islamic moderates in this battle within the Islamic world. We would need to focus on matters like Saudi financing of extremist groups, getting Islamic governments to silence mullahs who preached hatred and violence against America, and how new generations of young Muslims were being educated. Although this was an internal Islamic conflict and America as a majority Christian country had a limited role to play, the stakes were too high for us to sit by. The alternative view was that we were pursuing policies that made Muslims hate us, so we would need to review and perhaps change those policies. The problem was not Muslim extremism but Muslim anti-Americanism, and the antidote might be changes in American conduct, not least in America's “one-sided” support for Israel.

The consensus at State leaned to the latter view, fortified by a similar consensus in Europe – where support for Israeli security was lukewarm at best and protests against Sharon's actions to stop the intifada were widespread. Powell cited the European pressure for engagement in the “peace process” at a meeting with Bush held soon after 9/11, assuming this pressure would be a trump card. Here again, the split between Powell's and Bush's views and Powell's apparent inability or unwillingness to adjust even after 9/11 were evident, because Bush did not acquiesce: Instead, he replied, “You know, when I hear the Europeans talk about Israel, they just sound anti-Semitic.”
⁵

As that reaction by the president suggests, 9/11 did not push President Bush and Vice President Cheney into a reexamination of U.S. support for Israel. Their attitude toward Israel's fight against terror did indeed change when America found itself in a similar struggle, but they became
more
supportive of Israel rather than more questioning of America's closeness to the Jewish State. Over time, for example, the White House abandoned the ritual intonation that “the cycle of violence must end” whenever Israeli actions against terror resulted in Palestinian casualties, and the White House then imposed the ban on State. In the Bush-Cheney view, we were not engaged in a futile “cycle of violence” but in a war imposed on us by enemies. Our actions in Afghanistan (and later Iraq) also brought civilian casualties; we and Israel were in the same boat, and it was a “war on terror,” not a “cycle of violence.” Similarly, criticism of Israeli assassinations of Palestinian terrorist leaders came easily at first, but once the United States began the hunt for Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar, that criticism could not be justified. The White House abandoned it, substituting instead the formula, “Israel has a right to defend itself” – just as did the United States. In his memoir, President Bush sums it up: “I was appalled by the violence and loss of life on both sides. But I refused to accept the moral equivalence
between Palestinian suicide attacks on innocent civilians and Israeli military actions intended to protect their people. My views came into sharper focus after 9/11. If the United States had the right to defend itself and prevent future attacks, other democracies had those rights, too.”
⁶

While the United States suffered only one terrorist attack in 2001, in Israel the intifada continued throughout that summer and fall. There were 12 attacks in July, 15 in August, and 11 more in September. On October 2, 2 were killed and 15 injured in a grenade and gun attack. For Ariel Sharon, the struggle against terrorism was the main task he faced, and any new policies being developed in Washington after 9/11 were as likely to be harmful as they were helpful. Although there was an evolution in Bush's thinking, Sharon could not yet see it. He knew that Arab states and America's European allies were pressing Bush to crack down on Israel and its efforts against the intifada, claiming that doing so was the key to fighting al Qaeda; he was aware of the calls for some new “peace process” as well. Gen. Kaplinsky explained that Sharon “felt that the American administration is going to sacrifice Israel in order to create a new coalition in the Gulf area. And he said, ‘They're going to give the European countries what they want concerning Israel – put huge pressure on us.’ And he understood that they want to achieve relations with the Saudi Arabia – better relations. Better relations with Egypt. And that's what led…to the ‘Czechoslovakia’ speech.”
⁷
While his team fiercely debated what he might say, Sharon wrote out the words himself. On October 4, after a terrorist attack at a bus station, he voiced his intentions defiantly:

Today, Israel suffered another heinous Palestinian terrorist attack, which took a heavy toll – three dead and seven wounded. All efforts to reach a ceasefire have been torpedoed by the Palestinians. The fire did not cease, not even for one day. The Cabinet has therefore instructed our security forces to take all necessary measures to bring full security to the citizens of Israel. We can rely only on ourselves. We are currently in the midst of a complex and difficult diplomatic campaign. I call on the Western democracies, and primarily the leader of the Free World – the United States: Do not repeat the dreadful mistake of 1938, when enlightened European democracies decided to sacrifice Czechoslovakia for a ‘convenient temporary solution.’ Do not try to appease the Arabs at our expense – this is unacceptable to us. Israel will not be Czechoslo-vakia.
⁸

The immediate American reaction was tough: The White House press secretary said, “The president believes that these remarks are unacceptable. Israel could have no better or stronger friend than the United States and no better friend than President Bush.” In fact, Sharon's decision to refer to the Munich agreement with Hitler had been spurred not primarily by what was happening in Washington, but by a telephone call he had received from the German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer. Fischer reported on a conversation he had had with Syrian President Assad, who told him “he has always been against terror,” and the call concluded with Fischer demanding of Sharon, “You have to make concessions to the Palestinians.” A furious Sharon saw the pattern
emerging: Europeans and perhaps now Americans would believe the Arab propaganda, overlook the terror campaign against Israel, and demand that Israeli concessions be the coin of appeasing the terrorists.
⁹

Yet the final impact of the “unacceptable remarks” was positive because they sparked more frequent contacts between U.S. and Israeli officials – between Rice on the U.S. side, and Ayalon and
Genger on the Israeli – to avoid such public differences in the future and reach a better understanding of how American policy was developing. Genger, as a private citizen, was especially free to be undiplomatic: “Arie Genger, who was very close to the Prime Minister – because he came from the private sector and was not holding any official position – he told Condi things that I think nobody else told her. He was very straightforward, he told her exactly what he thinks, he could have told her ‘you're making mistakes,’ he shouted at her, and she shouted back.”
¹⁰
This became the key channel in U.S.-Israeli relations, not the established, official communications via the State Department.

In Israel, terrorist attacks did not diminish. On October 17, a cabinet minister was assassinated by two shots to the head outside his room at the Jerusalem Hyatt Hotel. On October 28, 4 were killed and 40 injured by a bomb at a bus stop. On November 4, 2 more were killed and 45 injured in a shooting attack on a bus in Jerusalem. When President Bush delivered his remarks to the delayed opening session of United Nations General Assembly on November 10, he spoke primarily of the war against terror. In passing, he addressed the situation in the Middle East, and although he did not speak directly to the terrorist attacks against Israel, his words did telegraph the policy that was to come:

The American government also stands by its commitment to a just peace in the Middle East. We are working toward the day when two states – Israel and Palestine – live peacefully together within secure and recognized borders as called for by the Security Council resolutions. We will do all in our power to bring both parties back into negotiations. But peace will only come when all have sworn off forever incitement, violence and terror.
¹¹

Peace would not, in this understanding, come when new negotiations had been concluded, and it was not the product primarily of diplomacy. Nor would it be the product of additional Israeli concessions. Instead, peace would come only when the Palestinians had abandoned terrorism. Yet the meaning of Bush's words was far clearer in retrospect than it was at the time. The reaction to his speech focused on the war on terror and America's campaign to topple the Taliban, and the words about the Middle East – even the announcement of support for a Palestinian state – were hardly noticed. To Colin Powell, therefore, it was high time to explain more fully what American policy in the region would be. A source close to Powell explained his view:

In the fall he felt under considerable pressure from his Arab friends and others and people in the United States: “What is your policy?” And he felt a speech had to be given. Somebody had to say what we were trying to do, where we were, what did we
think about Palestinians, what did we think about Israelis, what did we think about all of this. There had been not a single word that represented the administration's policy or point of view. So he arranged to give a speech…and everybody sort of went along.
¹²

On November 19, Powell spoke at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, and the Middle East was his central topic. He made a clear and tough demand that Palestinian terror end:

The Palestinian leadership must make a 100 percent effort to end violence and to end terror. There must be real results, not just words and declarations. Terrorists must be stopped before they act. The Palestinian leadership must arrest, prosecute, and punish the perpetrators of terrorist acts. Whatever the sources of Palestinian frustration and anger under occupation, the
Intifada
is now mired in the quicksand of self-defeating violence and terror directed against Israel. And as President Bush has made clear, no national aspiration, no remembered wrong can ever justify the deliberate murder of the innocent. Terror and violence must stop and stop now.

Yet Powell also demanded that “[c]onsistent with the report of the committee headed by Senator George Mitchell, settlement activity must stop,” used the terms “occupation” and “Israel's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza,” and said flatly that “the occupation must end. And it can only end with negotiations.” The security work of George Tenet and the recommendations of the Mitchell Report
would be the basis for moving forward. The objective of U.S. policy was now clearly Palestinian statehood. Palestinian leaders “must make clear that their objective is a Palestinian state alongside Israel, not in place of Israel, and which takes full account of Israel's security needs,” while Israel “must be willing to…accept a viable Palestinian State.”

On the core issues, Powell was vague: Jerusalem was “a challenge”; for Palestinian refugees there must be “a just solution.” Similarly vague was how to get to this new destination. Although Powell said that “the United States is ready to play an active leadership role,” all he could offer was that “President Bush and I have asked Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Bill Burns to return to the region later this week for consultations.” To this he added, “Retired Marine Corps General Anthony Zinni has agreed to serve as a senior advisor to me, with the immediate mission of helping the parties achieve a durable cease-fire and to move along the lines of the Tenet security work plan and the Mitchell Committee Report.” This was just more of the old medicine. Zinni was being sent to the region, where he would work with “senior-level committees” that Sharon and Arafat were forming. Although in this speech Powell was clearly reasserting his own bureaucratic ownership of the “peace process,” how he intended to move forward remained unclear.