Inside Story of How John Kerry Built an Israel-Palestine Peace Plan— and, Watched It Crumble
(This is a long read...frustrating but interesting)
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"The Explosive, Inside Story of How John Kerry Built an Israel-Palestine Peace Plan—and Watched It Crumble"
By Ben Birnbaum and Amir Tibon
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118751/how-israel-palestine-peace-deal-died
At around noon on March 20 last year, Air Force One landed at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport for Barack Obama’s first presidential visit to Israel.
The three-day trip had been billed as an Israeli reset—the newly reelected president’s bid for a clean slate with the Jewish state after four years of icy relations. Obama would lay a wreath at the tomb of Theodor Herzl, the father of Zionism. He would visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum. He would address an auditorium packed with Israeli students. And, of course, he would meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Before heading to Netanyahu’s office, however, the presidential motorcade took Obama to see his favorite Israeli: the country’s dovish 89-year-old president, Shimon Peres. As Obama stepped out of his car in front of Peres’s Jerusalem residence, he was greeted with a red carpet, along which a line of children stood waving Israeli and American flags and singing, “Heveinu Shalom Aleichem” (“We Have Brought Peace Upon You”). Inside, at a podium, Obama and Peres praised each other before a swarm of TV cameras. Later, in the presidential garden, they took turns shoveling dirt for a tree planted in Obama’s honor. And in the middle of it all, the two ditched the crowd for a meeting in Peres’s office. Four people joined: two Peres aides, National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, and new Secretary of State John Kerry.
“I want to focus on the peace process,” Obama told Peres as they sat down. “No one in the world understands it better than you.”1 Both presidents were firm believers in the two-state solution. And in pursuit of that vision, both had invested hope in Netanyahu, only to find themselves jaded. In 2011, Peres had conducted top-secret peace negotiations with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on the prime minister’s behalf, but called them off when Netanyahu’s backing wavered. Obama’s tensions with Netanyahu, meanwhile, had become fodder for Israeli comedians. After years of failing to get the parties back to the negotiating table, Obama had reportedly given up on a peace deal. But he brought a different message to Peres that day: “Everywhere I go in the world, people talk about it,” he said. “The international community waited for the U.S. elections to be over, and then the elections in Israel—and now it’s expecting us to lead an effort towards peace. I want to go for it.”
Fortunately for Obama, “going for it” would require little time and political capital. In Kerry, he had someone eager to expend his own. Kerry recognized the foibles of Abbas and Netanyahu, but also their merits. In the former, Kerry saw a leader well ahead of his public on the subject of peace with Israel—and who, at age 77, might not be around much longer. And in the latter, he saw an uncontested prime minister, who, if only persuaded to make the tough compromises most of his countrymen were prepared to accept, could shepherd a deal through the landmines of Israeli politics. Above all, in the weeks since assuming office, Kerry had become convinced that the parties didn’t have much longer to craft a two-state solution. As he would say at a House hearing the following month: “I think we have some period of time—in one to one-and-a-half to two years—or it’s over.”
Back at Peres’s office, the Israeli president saluted Obama and Kerry for taking on the decades-old conflict. He had known almost every president and secretary of state since John F. Kennedy. And he had seen most of them parachute into the world of Middle East peacemaking, only to walk away frustrated and empty-handed. But he shared Kerry’s sense of urgency—and, strangely, his optimism. He told Obama that Abbas remained “the best peace partner Israel could hope for” and that Israel's recent elections—which had forced the right-wing Netanyahu into a more centrist coalition—presented an opportunity that shouldn’t be missed.
“I’m glad you think so,” Obama said. “John is going to be here a lot over the next few months.”
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http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118751/how-israel-palestine-peace-deal-died
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