Posted on 11/15/2005 3:14:06 PM PST by Pikamax
Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2005 How Rice Won a Mideast Deal Behind the scenes of the Secretary of State's all-nighter to open Palestinian border crossings By ELAINE SHANNON/JERUSALEM
When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived at Palestinian Authority headquarters in Ramallah Monday morning, Palestinian Finance Minister Salam Fayad knew it was her 51st birthday. He said he had a present that wouldn't exceed the government gift limit. He reached into a brown paper supermarket bag and pulled out a shiny green bell pepper.
“These are really good,” Fayyad said. “These are not quite ready yet. In two more weeks they'll be ready for export. If we succeed, they'll be exported. And that will mean a lot to a bunch of farmers.”
Fayad didn't need to spell out the rest. Getting the pepper crop to market may have been as important for the Secretary of State as it was for Palestinian farmers: She considers a stable, self-sustaining Palestinian economy a cornerstone of the prospects for achieving peace via Palestinian statehood, and until other industries took root, Gaza's harvest would be a key component of the local economy.
Two weeks earlier, Rice had been warned by James Wolfensohn, the former World Bank chief sent by the U.S. and its allies as a special envoy to help reboot the Palestinian economy, that Gaza's harvest, which was almost due, would be likely to rot in warehouses. That was because Israel, which controls all access points into the Palestinian territories even after withdrawing from Gaza, and the Palestinian authority had been unable to reach an agreement that would let inhabitants of the territories travel and trade. The two sides were inches from a deal, Wolfensohn said, but were hung up on details.
"We need to try to close it," Wolfensohn had urged Rice. "If you're the Secretary of State of the United States, I would have to say there's a little more clout associated with that. And therefore, to push it over the edge one need not envoys but Secretaries of State."
Rice agreed. The Secretary of State, a diehard Cleveland Browns fan, put it this way: "Sometimes the last yard is the hardest." Also, she said, details weren't trivial: It wasn't unreasonable for Israelis to be obsessed with security, nor for Palestinians to be equally prickly about sovereignty and independence.
When she joined the talks, Israel was insisting that its own security personnel continue to screen the gateways, particularly the currently closed Rafah crossing linking Gaza to Egypt. The Israelis wanted to post surveillance cameras at the crossing to screen for suspicious individuals, weapons and even large sums of cash that could finance terror cells. But the Palestinians balked, arguing that this amounted to occupation by proxy
Wolfensohn had proposed to break the deadlock by having European personnel police the Rafah crossing, but the Israelis still insisted on access to the surveillance camera video feeds and computer data streams at the crossing. Also, the Palestinians wanted to have final authority. The Palestinians also complained the harvest couldn't wait for the months it would take to comply with Israeli demands that they install state-of-the-art scanners to screen trucks. So Wolfensohn threatened to walk, leaving the two sides, as he recounted over the weekend, to "blow each other up."
On Monday, Rice met with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as well as with other senior officials, and also with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, pressing both sides to find the "will and creativity" to open not only Rafah but all the gateways in and out of Gaza and the West Bank.
As the odds on achieving a deal fluctuated all day, Rice's stubborn side kicked into high gear. "I'm not going to leave here until we get an agreement," she told an aide. She decided to delay her departure for Asia and return to Jerusalem after paying a condolence call on Jordan's King Abdullah in response to the Amman terror attacks.
When she returned from Jordan around 10 p.m., success was far from certain. "It will take all the power of the United States to push this one," said a Palestinian official.
But Rice was, says a State Department negotiator, “totally relentless.” She deployed her full arsenal of pesuasive techniques alternating between charm, relentless badgering and the intimidating suggestion that the most trusted advisor of the most powerful leader in the world was not going to leave town until she got what she came for. "When she focuses on something," says a U.S. official present, "she will use whatever it takes."
She gathered with other U.S. diplomats and Palestinian representatives in her suite for intensive talks over three hours, using a secure laptop to make line-by-line changes in a draft "agreement on movement and access." A top-level Israeli team arrived at her hotel about 1 a.m., producing a round of "elevator diplomacy" between Israeli and Palestinian delegations ensconced on different floors of the hotel. While she waited for one group to go and the next to arrive, Rice, full of nervous energy, paced the hall, popping in on junior staffers as they typed or proof-read. “Condi never got tired, never lost her edge or here sense of humor,” says a State Department negotiator. By 4:30 am the parties had agreed in principle. Rice allowed herself a two-hour nap, then went back into meetings until the six-page agreement was ready for release, shortly after 10 a.m.
The document commits Israel to permit the immediate export of the pepper crop and the rest of the Gaza harvest "on an urgent basis." By Dec. 15, Israel agreed, Israeli border authorities would process 150 export trucks a day through the Karni commercial crossing into their territory, and by the end of next year, that number would increase to 400 trucks a day. Israel also agreed to allow the movement of bus convoys between Gaza and the West Bank starting Dec. 15, allowing travel between Palestinian territories physically separated by Israel.
Israel agreed to allow the Palestinians to begin building a seaport and not to interfere with its operation. The document also committed the sides to serious talks on the construction of a Palestinian airport.
The security-sovereignty deadlock was resolved in a compromise in which the Israelis agreed to cede responsibility for camera surveillance and watch-list screening at Rafah to European personnel, while the Palestinians accepted that the Europeans would have final authority to order extra searches and computer checks on people and vehicles traveling from Egypt to Gaza.
Condi Rice put her reputation on the line for this mission and, for the moment, it appears to have paid off. “That we could get this done opens an international passage for the Palestinians, the first time since 1967,” says a State Department official. “For 38 years, Israel has controlled entry and egress for every Palestinian in the territories. And now they get to do it themselves, approximately 60 days after the Israelis departed Gaza.”
The Americans didn't get everything they asked for. “But we got a lot,” the official says. “What we wanted to do here is prove that things could be put together.”
The Secretary of State eschewed terms such as "breakthrough," warning that the test of the deal lay in its implementation. She has asked Wolfensohn to monitor progress and report to her every two weeks, vowing to return if necessary. "I think there's a chance," she said cautiously, "that if we can get through what were issues about how Gaza is going to operate, perhaps we can return to the bigger issues"
Rice's all-nighter demonstrated the extent of hands-on diplomatic effort required to get the two parties to achieve what she conceded was just one step towards the goal of establishing a Palestinian state that can live in harmony with its Israeli neighbor. Once the drama of its 13th hour surprise ending fades, the episode may be a sobering reminder of how long and arduous the journey remains — and of how much more may be required of the Bush administration and its successors if progress is to be sustained.
The article is a report on a TV documentary done in Israel. It is from a pro-Zionist webzine (he thinks Sharon is giving away "their land").
You guys all do the same thing. Start baiting with insults and spamming with your own propaganda. Well, go for it. I've got faith in the readership.
exactly...
If Israel was true to its spiritual legacy....surely Hevron and the Patriarch tombs would be more secure than the Fort Apache that it currently is.
To fixate on Gaza in light of Hevron is case closed in court that Israel has a focus problem.
They are really a Hellenist/Jew society now.
Days of Herod are back.
Yet as a Hellenist machina...Israel is a fabulous peice of work.
It may suck on the spiritual level...yet on Spocks 3d chess set.
Little Israel is a Giant in tech prowess and fiscal projection.
Frankly...Israel blew it in 67.
That was their time window to clean the south 40.
They didn't....they went soft...and now they live with the ground reality.
Their only course is to stay knit to the U.S. and be alert and ready.
Democracy format is going to tumble Allahs moon children.
Yet it is working...and will require sustained engagement over decades.
One thing Israel should be thankfull for if they do not see it....is in how President Bush has cut U.N. and Euro's out of the Jerusalem Gambit.
This is still the IED which could devastate Israel...and hopefully no U.S. admin ever gives Jerusalem away.
Israels citizens will answer the siren just as former generations to defend her.
yes...threaten Israel,....and Lions come charging out!
In recent years....Israels greatest threat lay in Syrias ageing missile firechain.
U.S. and Israel both worked together on tunneling ordinance..even nuclear.
U.S. signed off on generous supply of U.S. ord...coupled with what Israel develops themsleves [Which is world class].
Israel is fine...and can endure the knife cuts of the deranged neighbours.
It wasn't too long ago that Russia was flooding the M.E.. with weapon systems and inciting the Muzzies to go on Israel.
President Reagan busted Russia like a bare knucle dock fight.
Bush 41 gave America back her pride in Desert storm.
President Bush current show cased Americas prowess and determination to all the scheeming beholders.
Israel has a good freind in the U.S.
The U.S. is not asking a hard thing of Israel currently.
New things and change are allways upsetting.
The mature find their way thru it.
Do tell.
That certainly should not be allowed on FreeRepublic.
Why don't you quote my vile insults to women? You can go back to as long as I've been on FR- many years. Astonish me.
What I am especially good at- you have no idea how good- is spotting liars from their first sentence.
We fully expected to have problems. Our booked driver went to the wrong hotel so we engaged a willing but nervous Tel Aviv taxi driver to take us to the check point. No problem at the checkpoint at all, except a very long line. There were MANY tourists there from Europe and Asia. Our guide had lived in Philadelphia for years just minutes from where I was born. He had contacted old friends of my FIL (a Dead Sea scholar who had spent much time in Israel/Palestine) by email and they turned up and begged us to join them for dinner and later arranged our trip to Jericho, a rare privilege for anyone. I had always thought these people were monsters. They have some strange and some mistaken ideas, kind of like Democrats. The funniest is they do not believe "Bush lied" about WMD. They think Saddam tricked Bush, Tony Blair, et al by "talking tough" into believing he had WMD, when all he had was "pathetic scuds" that were "hunks of concrete dumped on Israel" and was a total bust in Gulf War I. Yet they will not admit Saddam was a POS even though he caused them to lose good jobs in Kuwait and caused them to return to relative poverty in Palestine.
They also think American casualties in Iraq are far higher than they are. Most interesting, they cannot imagine why the US would fear Iraq; they told me with a straight face that all the nations of the world combined could not harm the USA, which would always be a sheltered place.
The West has misdiagnosed the root cause of Jihad. They believe, Rice included, that the primary (not the only reason) reason the terrorists terrorize is because of the Palestinians.
Solve the Palestinian/Israeli issue, and one has solved the greater issue of jihad. Once the Palestinians are given what they want, then the attacks will end...even against Israel.
Now, why the Israelis are pushed is two-fold. One, they are the only reasonable party in the negotiations. Listening to the Palestinians spokesmen is a clear sign of that... never has so much been gained by lies...
And...I think there is a great sympathy for the Palestinians...
The land is not contigent on whether the American Secretary of State negotiates with the Israeli government.
According to the Bible... the land is contingent on Israel's obedience to the Law of God...
One does not have to do with the other...
If probably wouldn't hurt you to put things into there proper context...
The land is contingent on Israel's obedience to the Law of God... nothing more, nothing less.
It is not contingent on whether or not the Secretary of State "forces" (how is she doing that by the way) Israel to give it up.
I love Rice! Especially with fried chicken!
Umm, no. Actually the 1929 Chevron massacre taught Jews about Arab terror very well.
Any culture that produces young men who would run over a young woman with a bulldozer is not worth supporting.
Any culture that tells its adherents in its places of worship to go into the streets and murder all the Jews they see is not worth supporting.
I engaged in vile insults against a woman AND her family on this very thread? Then it should be easy to quote me and get me booted from FR.
Quote my vile insults. Please.
But, I wonder if pointing out inconsistencies in a defamatory story about an Israel experience counts as vile insults.
Is your Arabist propaganda as valid as your accusation against me? I hope that question itself is not also characterized as a vile insult.
I believe however some would consider your accusation a vile insult. I would just consider it par for a Arab propagandist.
No "you guys" all do the same thing -- trash Israel AND the US.
Did you catch this part in the article you linked in post #134?
"They were to be used in a mass atomic experiment with an entire generation of Sephardi youths to be used as guinea pigs. Every Sephardi child was to be given 35,000 times the maximum dose of x-rays through his head. For doing so, the American government paid the Israeli government 300 million Israeli liras a year. The entire Health budget was 60 million liras. The money paid by the Americans is equivalent to billions of dollars today."
So you think the US Government paid the Israeli Government to irradiate Sephardi children? So it is not only the Ben Gurion Government but the US you are trashing here. You hate them both? Is that correct?
I too have faith in the readership and they won't like this slander of the United States one bit.
Yeah, yeah. And I can come back and say the Balfour declaration and the increasing Zionist population, with their Haganah, provoked them. We can argue forever on this. I prefer to discuss history rather than argue about it, or get into flame wars like these other two clowns want.
How about we stipulate that Jews were discriminated against by the Ottomans, and by the European Christians, which led to some Jews pursuing Zionism? I will argue that Balfour was a mistake, which produced the mess we have now. T.E. Lawrence wanted the British to do the right honorable thing, called for by Godly British Imperialism, and civilize the Arab lands. IIRC, he wanted to leave the Jews throughout the lands (as they were then) because they were a good organizing and productive influence. Had the Brits heeded his advice, history may have been much less disasterous for the ME, and the world in general. Radical Islam would not have arisen. Ataturk's example may well have been the norm, and we'd all be in paradise.
Didn't happen that way. Frankly, I'm of the opinion that Israel should be reduced to a "Vatican City" type enclave and the rest of Palestine become a NATO protectorate with a secular constitutional tripartite limited government. That won't happen, of course. So about all I can do is wish Condi the best of luck. There are a great many people over there that don't want peace. But who knows, maybe someone over there will actually rediscover the meaning of their religion and quit trying to claim land grants that not even all Jews agree on, and quit spewing hatred and bigotry towards religions that share the same root.
How about we stipulate that Jews were discriminated against by the Ottomans, and by the European Christians, which led to some Jews pursuing Zionism?
It is alot older than that. Religious Jews pray for a return to Zion thrice daily.
I will argue that Balfour was a mistake, which produced the mess we have now. T.E. Lawrence wanted the British to do the right honorable thing, called for by Godly British Imperialism, and civilize the Arab lands. IIRC, he wanted to leave the Jews throughout the lands (as they were then) because they were a good organizing and productive influence. Had the Brits heeded his advice, history may have been much less disasterous for the ME, and the world in general. Radical Islam would not have arisen. Ataturk's example may well have been the norm, and we'd all be in paradise.
TE Lawrence couldn't even get Arabian Penninsula politics right. He had no understanding of the influence of Wahabism and was blindsided by the rise of the Saudis.
The Muslim Brotherhood (Al Ikwan) was founded in Egypt in response to Ataturks destruction of the Caliphate.
But for Israel, it is far more likely that they would be a unified Sunni Islamist regime from Iraq to Morocco.
Didn't happen that way. Frankly, I'm of the opinion that Israel should be reduced to a "Vatican City" type enclave and the rest of Palestine become a NATO protectorate with a secular constitutional tripartite limited government. That won't happen, of course. So about all I can do is wish Condi the best of luck. There are a great many people over there that don't want peace. But who knows, maybe someone over there will actually rediscover the meaning of their religion and quit trying to claim land grants that not even all Jews agree on, and quit spewing hatred and bigotry towards religions that share the same root.
You are utterly clueless about Judaism and Islam.
Israel is a trinity of People, Torah, Land. You cannot divide these.
On the other hand, Muslims explicitly are commanded to rule the world.
Furthermore, Islam and Judaism/Christianity do not share the same root. They cannot by Islam's and Judaism/Christianity's own tenets...
That is why there is Radical Islam...
Who set up the PR junket?
I don't know anything more than you do about the veracity of that article. I posted it because your article showing Ben Gurion to be a ruthless backstabbing bastard reminded me of it.
Well I don't think I'm "utterly clueless", but neither do I rate myself a scholar on those subjects. You, on the other hand, know it all.
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