provisional borders, and significant withdrawals in the West Bank and Gaza, but it would not mean dealing with all the most sensitive final status issues (including Jerusalem) or a full withdrawal to whatever the final borders would be. The borders of the Palestinian state would be provisional, but I thought Sharon envisioned this temporary situation as lasting for many years, perhaps decades – until the terrorist groups had truly been disbanded and a working Palestinian state structure was in place. Peace, quiet, and separation from the Palestinians were his goals, I thought, not a final status agreement. He seemed to me to be looking at the issues like an old general, not an ideologue; he wanted practical solutions and above all security.
On the Palestinian side, we still did not know whom we were dealing with – Arafat or Abbas. How successful the efforts to move power away from Arafat andhis “security” gangs would be was still entirely uncertain. I did not think Abbas wanted a final status agreement any more than Sharon because then he would have to face extremely difficult compromises that he lacked the legitimacy to impose. Arafat, a charismatic leader with many means of persuasion at his disposal (including guns and cash), had backed away from such an agreement with Israel under Clinton. So perhaps the Palestinians too could find their way to an interim agreement that established a state with provisional borders and left the toughest issues for a later day. After all, that was the content of the Roadmap, to which all parties were now more or less pledged.
In fact, the Israelis had announced 14 objections to the Roadmap after its “official” publication. They insisted that it be clear Arafat was gone, not simply ruling from behind the scenes; they wanted clear action on terrorism, including arrests, arms seizures, and dismantling terrorist organizations; and they focused on an end to “incitement,” which meant eliminating a broad category of Palestinian broadcasts, textbooks, and publications that demonized Israel and taught each new generation that war and “resistance” were the proper attitude, not peace and coexistence with the Jewish state. Most of all, they insisted on the sequencing: There must be full completion of one stage before the next is opened. All of their objections were based on reasonable points, but it was too late to reopen the text of the Roadmap in the spring of 2003. The Israelis (and Palestinians) had been promised all along that the Roadmap text they were seeing was a draft that was open to amendment, but the text as drafted in the early fall of 2002 was final. The Israelis had a right to feel misled; the best we could do in response was the statement I negotiated with Weissglas that promised all of Israel's objections would be “addressed fully and seriously.” This left many Israelis, I was soon told, reaching for dictionaries;why would we “address” their objections? Why did they need an address, and who would be mailing responses to whom?
Rice and the Red Sea Summits
By early May, Rice's plans for the post–Iraq War meeting had gelled. Right after the G-8 summit in France, Bush would continue on to Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt. There he would meet with key Arab leaders – Mubarak, Crown Prince Abdallah, King Abdullah of Jordan – and the new face in town: Prime Minister Abbas. The following day he would proceed to Aqaba, Jordan, where he would meet separately with King Abdullah, Sharon, and Abbas andthen preside over a meeting with Sharon and Abbas together. It was critical that all of the parties say the right things about peace, so Rice engaged in a whirlwind of diplomacy. She browbeat the Saudi ambassador, Prince Bandar, into assuring that his head of government, the Crown Prince, would show up. She telephoned King Abdullah of Jordan on May 19 to get him to come to Sharm on June 3 and then hurry home to host his visitors the following day. She had the staff draft
On the Palestinian side, we still did not know whom we were dealing with – Arafat or Abbas. How successful the efforts to move power away from Arafat andhis “security” gangs would be was still entirely uncertain. I did not think Abbas wanted a final status agreement any more than Sharon because then he would have to face extremely difficult compromises that he lacked the legitimacy to impose. Arafat, a charismatic leader with many means of persuasion at his disposal (including guns and cash), had backed away from such an agreement with Israel under Clinton. So perhaps the Palestinians too could find their way to an interim agreement that established a state with provisional borders and left the toughest issues for a later day. After all, that was the content of the Roadmap, to which all parties were now more or less pledged.
In fact, the Israelis had announced 14 objections to the Roadmap after its “official” publication. They insisted that it be clear Arafat was gone, not simply ruling from behind the scenes; they wanted clear action on terrorism, including arrests, arms seizures, and dismantling terrorist organizations; and they focused on an end to “incitement,” which meant eliminating a broad category of Palestinian broadcasts, textbooks, and publications that demonized Israel and taught each new generation that war and “resistance” were the proper attitude, not peace and coexistence with the Jewish state. Most of all, they insisted on the sequencing: There must be full completion of one stage before the next is opened. All of their objections were based on reasonable points, but it was too late to reopen the text of the Roadmap in the spring of 2003. The Israelis (and Palestinians) had been promised all along that the Roadmap text they were seeing was a draft that was open to amendment, but the text as drafted in the early fall of 2002 was final. The Israelis had a right to feel misled; the best we could do in response was the statement I negotiated with Weissglas that promised all of Israel's objections would be “addressed fully and seriously.” This left many Israelis, I was soon told, reaching for dictionaries;why would we “address” their objections? Why did they need an address, and who would be mailing responses to whom?
Rice and the Red Sea Summits
By early May, Rice's plans for the post–Iraq War meeting had gelled. Right after the G-8 summit in France, Bush would continue on to Sharm el-Sheik, Egypt. There he would meet with key Arab leaders – Mubarak, Crown Prince Abdallah, King Abdullah of Jordan – and the new face in town: Prime Minister Abbas. The following day he would proceed to Aqaba, Jordan, where he would meet separately with King Abdullah, Sharon, and Abbas andthen preside over a meeting with Sharon and Abbas together. It was critical that all of the parties say the right things about peace, so Rice engaged in a whirlwind of diplomacy. She browbeat the Saudi ambassador, Prince Bandar, into assuring that his head of government, the Crown Prince, would show up. She telephoned King Abdullah of Jordan on May 19 to get him to come to Sharm on June 3 and then hurry home to host his visitors the following day. She had the staff draft
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