How Rice Won a Mideast Deal

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.

Sorry, Father In Law. We have traveled all over the world and always wanted to go to Israel, of course. Some other travelers we knew were meeting there in Tel Aviv, with an Israeli organizing standard tours for us. He said we'd be killed if we went to Bethlehem but another in our group had had a friend go recently without incident, so we hired a guide there via internet and were delivered to the checkpoint by a Tel Aviv taxi driver who picked us up later and took us back to the hotel. Shortly before we left, we found the son of Daddy's friend via email and the guide arranged for him to meet us at the Church of the Nativity. He invited us to his home in Bethany where we had dinner after the disastrous Jerusalem tour and sent us to Jericho with his cousin where we also picked up his nephew and they showed on the sights in my pix posted earlier. We have travelled millions of miles and never been on a package tour, always going off on our own or hiring individual guides for special things we want to see. I should have known better to sign up for those things with our Israeli friend and just done our own thing but it sounded so good on paper and we'd be with friends, but who knew it would be a bust? Anyway, we'll know better next time, stay in Jerusalem and really dig in, go on some day trips and we'd like to do Jordan and Petra also. Actually, I just read the excavations at Ur in Iraq are open again and our servicemen in the area can tour that, cool, huh? If you haven't been, the excavations under the Vatican are fabulous, too.

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.”

Deuteronomy 2:14 And the time we took to come from Kadesh Barnea until we crossed over the Valley of the Zered was thirty-eight years, until all the generation of the men of war was consumed from the midst of the camp, just as the LORD had sworn to them.

See you at the Tick Tock Diner !

The next time you go, try to see Mount Carmel and Mount Tabor, especially Tabor. Those have pretty churches and beautiful views, and you might find some of the villages around those mountains interesting, as Druze live near Carmel and Bedouin live near Tabor. Sepphoris near Nazareth has incredible floor mosaics, and whatever you do, don't miss the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. It is awesome.

http://www.gemsinisrael.com/archive.html

Yes, the Shrine of the Book containing the Dead Sea scrolls is at the Israel Museum. An exhibit of the scrolls was in Mobile, AL last year and I missed it, but as luck would have it, an exhibit will be in Charlotte, NC next year and I will make sure not to miss it. The Shrine of the Book was closed when I visited the museum in 2004, and I also didn't get to see it in 1998.

This is what happens when you put an expert on Soviet affairs into a role of Secretary of State who's major challenge is to deal with Islam. She has no experience on the subject and she's proved it.

The Soviets were generally held to their agreements, such as removing Cuban missles, because of the principle of Mutually Assured Distruction. The Soviet government also ran the show.

Islamic terrorism is different. The leaders are not necessarily linked to the government but usually allowed to conduct their business freely. So it is a lot harder to acxuse the Islamic government of terrorist-related activities. Normally, the Islamic government, like Pakistan, makes a lot of noise that they are trying to "control terrorism," but in reality do nothing. Additionally, even if Abbas has good intentions, he does not have the power to control factions like Hamas.

There are other reasons why our support of Israel has been lackluster. With the Soviet Union, we had no economic interest in the Soviet Union. In Islamic states, economic interests helps to keep our heads in the sand. Our economic dealings with Saudi Arabia gives them a pass for promoting jihad, building mosques across the US, and distributing islamists reading material at those mosques. Our relationship with OPEC/Saudi Arabia affects our dealing with the PLO. Business interests prevent the US from being overtly pro-Jewish, but voters are largely pro-Israel, so government officials try to sit on the fence. At the end of the day, Israel gets the shaft even though we make it seem like real peace is being made.

Bascially what we need is economic divestment from the Middle East. The freer the US economy is from OPEC, the easier it will be to support Israel. This should have begun on September 12th, 2001, but there were too many people making easy money from Saudi oil to let this happen.

"The US government roasted a bunch of people in Waco, Texas too. "

You appear to be a moral equivocator. You think paying to irradiate children is the same as what happened in Waco. I see them as very different moral problems, the former (irradiation) being exponentially worse than the latter (Waco). And you think the Israeli "terrorists" of yesterday are the same as the Palestinian terror jihadists of today.

Normally I see this kind of moral insufficiency on the left. Aside from whatever other disagreements I have with the left, this, to me, is their greatest failure. By example, it allows them to equate Saddam's killing with US action in removing Saddam. They per force must resort to exaggeration and lies to make unequals meet in their fabricated moral landscape.

"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."

Two problems with that statement. One, I do know about the lack of veracity of that article on irradiating Sephardi children. It is BS.

Two, my condemnation was of Rabin for the Altalena. PM Ben Gurion was NOT "a ruthless backstabbing bastard." He was in the midsts of negotiation when Rabin pulled the trigger. Even those who support PM Begin and the Irgun do not consider BG the same as Rabin. Considering them the same is more moral eqivalency.

"And I can come back and say the Balfour declaration and the increasing Zionist population, with their Haganah, provoked them."

Jewish population as a "provocation" for killing them? Where have I heard that before?

"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."

I don't understand. Israel should be a Jewish State the way Vatican City is a Catholic State? Israel already is a Jewish State. What in your definition is "Israel" and what is "Palestine?" Are you proposing here the elimination of the Jewish State of Israel?

"I used to defend Israel until fairly recently. After seeing the incredible amount of bigotry coming from the Zionists here on FR, coupled with reading some of the Israeli web sites, I have changed my mind."

Does the above opinion constitute your earlier "defense" of Israel or your changed mind? Which came first your proposal about an Israel Vatican City or the Zionist and Israeli web "bigotry" you saw. I can see a causal connection between the two.

The average Israeli is not remotely religious

This is a truly misleading statement.

The Israelis in my family are "secular" Jews. When I visited Israel, there were Shabbat dinners each of the three weeks I was there. (Two households.) Maybe they didn't regularly attend services on Saturday or any day, except the holidays, but they and everyone else greeted one on Friday after about 10 AM with, "Shabbat Shalom."

One of these folks recently visited me here in the US. She went with me to shul on Saturday morning and clearly knew what was going on. She found her own way to a shul in NYC the week after, but I'd guess she hasn't been back to her own shul in Jerusalem since (Sept). Is she one of your not remotely religious Jews?

ML/NJ

especially the Orthodox who rate very low in Israeli society

Here you are correct, IMHO. A couple of years ago an 18 year-old female family member visited me for a day. When she departed her destination was someplace in Brooklyn so I drove her there. On our way we drove through an Orthodox neighborhood. When she saw her first "black hat" her reaction was one of disgust.

(Mine own is Kol Yisroel Havayrim, BTW.)

ML/NJ

If you state 20% are observant, is that not the same thing?

Just so you know I attend sevices which run three hours plus nearly every Saturday morning. This morning I attended (because I was asked to do so) a weekday morning service which ran about 50 minutes. I have and have read/consulted more than 50 books on Torah alone (Gen, Ex, Lev, Num, Dut). Yet I am not considered "observant."

ML/NJ

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