Doomed to Succeed by Dennis Ross

Author:Dennis Ross
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780374709488
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

The Road to Madrid

Within a week of the war ending, Baker launched an intensive effort at peacemaking that would lead to the Madrid Peace Conference. Baker made eight trips to the region over the next eight months to produce the taboo-breaking event.

The president and Baker had withstood any effort at linkage between Iraq and the Arab-Israeli conflict, but they felt obliged to act on peace, in part because they had quietly committed to Gorbachev that we would do so after removing Saddam from Kuwait. To be sure, they also believed there was an opportunity. In the aftermath of the war, the United States had unprecedented credibility with the Arabs: the president had declared that Iraqi aggression would not stand, and he mobilized the world behind a plan to make sure it did not. For the Israelis, we had taken care of one of their greatest military threats.

Earlier in November, I had met Eitan Ben-Tsur, the director-general of the Israeli Foreign Ministry. We talked about the likelihood of war with Iraq and what should be done in the aftermath on peace. Ben-Tsur felt that you couldn’t just repeat the effort for an Israeli-Palestinian dialogue; you needed an Arab state negotiation with Israel as well. This idea gave rise to the “two-track concept” I would present to Baker: we would pursue both Israeli-Arab and Israeli-Palestinian tracks of negotiations. Having just fought a war with the Arabs against “an Arab brother,” they should be prepared to join us now in trying to make peace. We could not ask the Israelis to negotiate with the Palestinians from the territories, who had cheered as Iraqi Scuds hit Israel, without showing that their Arab state neighbors were prepared to talk peace. But we could also tell the Israelis that the Arabs could not make peace with Israel unless there was a peace track for the Palestinians. The Arabs were angry at Arafat for siding with Saddam Hussein. Largely isolated in the Arab world and financially cut off by the Gulf Arabs, Arafat’s spoiling capability was reduced. As part of the two-track approach, I suggested mutual confidence-building steps to create a better context for negotiations and a regional, not international, conference to launch the talks.50

Baker accepted this approach. I joined him in briefing the president in Houston before our first postwar trip to the region to get his blessing for our presentation of this concept to the Middle East leaders Baker would shortly see. Ironically, while Bush was enthusiastic about this initiative, Brent Scowcroft was not, skeptical that anything would result from it. Baker asked Larry Eagleburger to talk to him before we saw the president, to ask him not to oppose it.51 In the Houston meeting, Scowcroft expressed his doubts that it would work but agreed that Baker should make the effort.

From the outset, it was clear that both Arabs and Israelis wanted to appear responsive to Baker—the demonstration of American power had produced this commonality in both sides. Initially, the Saudis, Egyptians, and even the

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