What's the Hurry? ... Or Condoleezza Rice's Moment

June 2007 Atlantic Monthly

With Rumsfeld and Powell gone, and Cheney’s power diminished, this is Condoleezza Rice’s moment. Can she salvage America’s standing in the Middle East—and defuse the threat of a nuclear Iran? Behind the curtain in Washington and Jerusalem with the secretary of state

by David Samuels

GRAND ILLLUSIONS

.... Unlike Donald Rumsfeld’s finger- wagging, Rat Pack–era version of realpolitik, or Dick Cheney’s paranoia about mushroom clouds and sleeper cells, Rice’s views are the kind of optimistic stuff that mothers might wish their children were being taught in school.

Reminds me of her 2006 conversation with Cal Thomas:

... I just don't believe mothers want their children to grow up to be suicide bombers. I think the mothers want their children to grow up to go to university. And if you can create the right conditions, that's what people are going to do.

QUESTION: Do you think this or do you know this?

SECRETARY RICE: Well, I think I know it.

QUESTION: You think you know it?

SECRETARY RICE: I think I know it.

QUESTION: Is it because — do you think you know it because you want to believe it or do you think you know it because of conversations with tens, scores, hundreds

SECRETARY RICE ....I really believe that the people of the Middle East — not the extremists — want the same things that everyone else wants. I haven't seen a society yet where it wasn't true. Let me put it that way. I haven't seen a society yet where ordinary people, given an opportunity, wouldn't opt for a better life and for peace.

Back to Grand Illusions now, Samuels quotes an article Condi wrote in Foreign Affairs:

"American values are universal.”

Yeah right, that's why we call them American values. And her colleague Richard Armitage:

“I didn’t know that [Rice] had any strong views,” says Richard Armitage, Powell’s deputy, who did not think highly of her performance. “I mean, she was an expert in one country that no longer exists.”

And this is interesting, albeit terribly frightening:

When I asked Rice to name a book that influenced her thinking about the Middle East, she hesitated.... She finally mentioned the UN Human Development Report, which she said had opened her eyes to the dearth of patents issued in Muslim countries.

Oy gevalt. [Note to self: send Condi some books.]

Sorry to keep going off on tangents; the whole point of this post was to be Condi's "Grand Bargain" - which might better be called a "Grand Gamble."

The key to Rice’s new Middle Eastern strategy, which some administration officials hope will end in a “grand bargain” that will stabilize Iraq, keep the Syrians out of Lebanon, and force Iran to give up its ambitions to build a nuclear bomb, lies in a renewed drive to create a Palestinian state.

This is the price that Saudi Arabia and other Arab states are demanding if they are to support the administration’s stance on Iraq and Iran. For this diplomatic gambit to succeed, Rice will need to make swift progress toward solving a conflict where the prospects for peace look dimmer than they have at any point in the last 20 years, and where administration policy has lurched from failure to failure since she began her tenure as secretary of state.

And get this, keeping in mind that Samuels wrote it almost a year ago:

This past February, King Abdullah, tired of seeing Palestinians fighting Palestinians (and concerned that Hamas was drifting toward Iran, which had been providing Hamas with money, weapons, and military training), invited Hamas and Fatah to Saudi Arabia, where he brokered a power-sharing deal known as the Mecca agreement. Saudi Arabia also promised to deliver $1 billion to keep the new Palestinian government afloat. The Saudi deal is widely seen as a defeat for Rice, because it created a Palestinian unity government that does not recognize past agreements with Israel and whose prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, a member of Hamas, proclaims the Palestinian “right” to “resistance in all its forms, including popular resistance to occupation,” which extends to suicide attacks against Israeli civilians.

Rice was caught on the horns of a fateful dilemma. The United States could choose to do business with the Palestinian unity government, pleasing the Saudis and gaining Arab support for future diplomatic and military moves in Iran and Iraq, at the cost of legitimizing terrorism. Or the United States could refuse to deal with Hamas, angering the Saudis and risking the collapse of its strategy. The road that Rice chooses to take is likely to determine the course of our relationships in the Middle East for years to come.

In Jerusalem with Rice in February of last year, Samuels found

a copy of Friday’s State Department Rapid Response sheet lying on the ground. “Message: Americans do not want to see Palestinians killing Palestinians. Palestinians should be living in peace among themselves and with Israel,” the document instructs, quoting Rice. “We will wait until the government is formed and then we’ll make a decision about how to deal with that government.”

Oy oy gevalt.

Another aside, I'm afraid, but one that might interest dedicated long-term BtB readers:

Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post, a youthful-looking reporter in an open-necked blue-striped shirt, is Rice’s favorite.

I like reading these insider atmospherics, as Samuels tags along to Ramallah.

Upstairs in Arafat’s old meeting room, Abbas and Rice sit side by side in off-white armchairs, a crappy coffee table and a Palestinian flag between them. Above Rice’s head are twinned portraits of Arafat and Abbas, who is also known as Abu Mazen. The dreary floor-length drapes are closed to keep out the light and discourage snipers. The coffee table has been dressed with a little American flag, and the requisite box of tissues.

The beige sofa to Abbas’s left hosts his top advisers: Yasir Abd Rabbo, who dresses like a British Marxist academic; Saeb Erekat, one of the lead Palestinian negotiators at Oslo and Camp David and a frequent guest on CNN; Mohammed Dahlan, the leader of the security forces in Gaza that are still loyal to Fatah; and Nabil Abu Rudeinah, Abbas’s spokesman, each of whom occupied the exact same position when Arafat was alive. So much for the American-led program of political reform.

At the suggestion of the Americans, I am told, all of the Palestinians had their cell phones taken away before the meeting and were issued legal pads on which to take notes.

.... The hallways are lined with depressing abstract art, long Oriental runners, and men with guns. I sit in the cold briefing room downstairs with the other reporters, one of whom is phoning in his story. “She thanked him for his personal commitment,” he says. “That’s it.” Then he hangs up.

The room we are in, with a camera-ready blue backdrop, professional briefing podium, and powerful overhead television lights, looks nothing like the room I remember from my previous visits. “Look behind the curtain there,” says Charlie Wolfson of CBS, pointing to a 15-foot-high blue fabric screen. “That’s the old backdrop,” he adds, as I walk around the screen to see the familiar portrait of Arafat and the wall-size mural of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. “It wouldn’t do to have Rice standing there with Abu Mazen,” Wolfson cackles.

Two other reporters are arguing over whether the Muqata has WiFi. “I get decent WiFi sitting over here,” Glenn Kessler says, looking up from his laptop.

Later, Rice has dinner with Danny Ayalon and Dov Weissglas, "Sharon's fixer in chief." Samuels writes of Weissglas:

* * *

In a bizarre and boastful interview published on October 8, 2004, in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz .... Weissglas came off as an alternately comic and unsettling character, drunk on his own importance and desperate for approval. But the most famous and controversial part came when he described the intent of the letters that he and Rice had drafted for their bosses’ approval. It was Sharon’s view, he explained, that Palestinian terrorism was not the result of specific political grievances but of a deep-seated and eternal Arab hatred of Jews, and that no arrangements for Arab sovereignty over a slice of Palestine would end terror.

From Israel’s perspective, the real purpose of the exchange of letters, and by extension of the entire disengagement plan, could be found in the diplomatic sequence they established: Since Palestinian terrorism would never end, Israel would never be obliged to withdraw from the West Bank. “The disengagement is actually formaldehyde,” Weissglas told Haaretz. “It legitimizes our contention that there is no negotiating with the Palestinians.”

“There will be no timetable to implement the settlers’ nightmare,” Weissglas boasted, “and the rest will not be dealt with until the Palestinians turn into Finns. That is the significance of what we did. The significance is the freezing of the political process. And when you freeze that process you prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state and you prevent a discussion about the refugees, the borders and Jerusalem.”

* * *

And then along came Olmert.

Lots of interesting stuff, but I'll drag you through no more of it. Instead, I'll use the blogger's friend: Read it all.

I was going to go from Condi's Grand Illusional Bargain to Ziad Asali's speech at the University of Jordan, March 30th, but I have a headache coming on and am reminded of all those dirty dishes downstairs. We had 18 people last night - Chai - and it was great. and went late. And now I'm starting to feel it. Maybe some leftover chopped liver will put me right. Or a nap.