68. For the April 2001 report, see “Sharm el-Sheikh Fact-Finding Committee—The Mitchell Plan, April 30, 2001,” The Avalon Project, Yale Law School, accessed October 3, 2016, http://avalon.law.yale.edu/21st_century/mitchell_plan.asp. For Sharon’s Czechoslovakia speech—which, according to Sharon’s foreign minister, Shimon Peres, as well as a Sharon adviser who spoke to Abrams, was impelled by the news of an imminent US peace plan that would establish a Palestinian state—see Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Statement by Israeli PM Ariel Sharon–4 Oct 2001,” accessed October 2, 2016, http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/PressRoom/2001/Pages/Statement%20by%20Israeli%20PM%20Ariel%20Sharon%20-%204-Oct-2001.aspx; James Bennet, “Sharon Apologizes over Dispute with U.S.,” The New York Times, October 7, 2001. The United States postponed the plan and then took up a different one, the Roadmap, instead. For the Arab Peace Initiative, which was welcomed by the Security Council and included in the Quartet’s 2003 Roadmap (see below) as one of the foundations of a settlement, see Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “A Performance-Based Roadmap to a Permanent Two-State Solution to the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” April 30, 2003, accessed October 2, 2016, http://www.mfa.gov.il/mfa/foreignpolicy/peace/guide/pages/a%20performance-based%20roadmap%20to%20a%20permanent%20two-sta.aspx; “S/RES/1397 (2002),” United Nations Security Council, March 12, 2002. For the People’s Voice Initiative and its endorsement, see Abrams, Tested by Zion, pp. 84–85; Landau, Arik, pp. 457–58. For the Geneva Initiative and the official responses to it, see Abrams, pp. 85–86.
69. For text of the Roadmap, see above. For Israel’s reservations, see “Israel’s Road Map Reservations,” Haaretz, May 27, 2003. For Sharon’s statement to the Likud conference (“yes, it is occupation”), see Gideon Alon, “Irate Likud MKs Put PM on the Defensive,” Haaretz, May 27, 2003. For the Security Council’s endorsement of the Roadmap, see “Security Council Adopts Resolution Endorsing Road Map Leading Towards Two-State Resolution of Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” United Nations, November 19, 2013, http://www.un.org/press/en/2003/sc7924.doc.htm; “S/RES/1515 (2003),” United Nations Security Council, November 19, 2003. For Sharon’s statement to Bush (“better to take steps ourselves”), see Abrams, Tested by Zion, p. 131. In a 2004 interview with Haaretz, Sharon’s close adviser and chief of staff, Dov (“Dubi”) Weissglas, gave a similar explanation for the withdrawal: “In the fall of 2003 … Arik grasped that this state of affairs would not last. That they [the Americans] wouldn’t leave us alone, wouldn’t get off our case. Time was not on our side.” Ari Shavit, “The Big Freeze,” Haaretz, October 7, 2004.
70. On the origins of the security barrier, see Lev Luis Grinberg, Politics and Violence in Israel/Palestine: Democracy Versus Military Rule (New York: Routledge, 2009), pp. 78–81; David Makovsky, “How to Build a Fence,” Foreign Affairs, March/April 2004; Robert B. Lloyd, “On the Fence: Negotiating Israel’s Security Barrier,” The Journal of the Middle East and Africa 3 (2012); Shlaim, The Iron Wall, pp. 751–56. Israel began constructing a fence around Gaza shortly after the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994. In early 1995, Rabin established a committee to consider building a security barrier in the West Bank as well. A precursor of the West Bank separation barrier was erected between the Jewish community of Bat Hefer and the Palestinian city of Tulkarm in the mid-1990s. Tracy Wilkinson, “Some Israelis Hoping for a Concrete Line in the Sand,” Los Angeles Times, September 10, 2001. On the share of the West Bank separated by the barrier (the original route took up a higher percentage), see B’Tselem, “The Separation Barrier—Statistics,” July 16, 2012, accessed October 3, 2016, http://www.btselem.org/separation_barrier/statistics. On the opposition from settlers (one settler leader said that “a separation fence within Judea and Samaria and little [pre-1967] Israel would in effect establish that to the east of the fence the Palestinian state would arise, and to the west, the state of Israel would remain in what Abba Eban called ‘Auschwitz borders’”), see Grinberg, Politics and Violence in Israel Palestine, p. 221. For Sharon’s December 2003 speech, see Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Address by PM Ariel Sharon at the Fourth Herzliya Conference—Dec 18, 2003,” accessed October 3, 2016, http://mfa.gov.il/MFA/PressRoom/2003/Pages/Address%20by%20PM%20Ariel%20Sharon%20at%20the%20Fourth%20Herzliya.aspx.
71. For details on rocket attacks from Gaza (from 17 in 2002 to 123 in 2003 to more than double that number in 2004), see Israel Security Agency, “Analysis of Attacks in the Last Decade—Rocket Launching,” accessed October 3, 2016, http://www.shabak.gov.il/English/EnTerrorData/decade/Rocket/Pages/default.aspx; Israel Security Agency, “Analysis of Attacks in the Last Decade—Mortar Shell Launching Attacks,” accessed October 3, 2016, http://www.shabak.gov.il/English/EnTerrorData/decade/Mortar/Pages/default.aspx. For more on the first rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza (Hamas announced that it had fired a “Qassam 1” rocket at Israel in November 2001, and Palestinians began firing mortars at Israel and Gaza settlements earlier that year), see “Rocket Threat from the Gaza Strip, 2000–2007,” Israel Intelligence Heritage and Commemoration Center, December 2007, pp. 4, 6, 32. For Sharon’s first quote (“sorry, a relocation”), see James Bennet, “Angering Settlers, Sharon Says Most May Have to Leave Gaza,” The New York Times, February 3, 2004. For Sharon’s second quote (“friction between us and the Palestinians”), see Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “Address by PM Ariel Sharon at the Fourth Herzliya Conference—Dec 18, 2003,” accessed October 3, 2016. For more on Sharon’s reasoning at the time, see the comments by his adviser, Dov Weissglas: “Gaza cost us over 100 casualties that could not be explained, in the sense that [Sharon] knew that in the long term we will not stay in Gaza. However the final status negotiations start or end, there will be no Israelis in Gaza. So, what are the casualties for? And as to the internal situation, public support and public opinion regarding the government, we were in the very worst shape we had ever been.” Abrams, Tested by Zion, p. 90.
72. For Sharon’s stroke, see Conal Urquhart, “Israel Plunged into Crisis as Sharon Suffers Massive Stroke,” The Guardian, October 5, 2006; Harriet Sherwood, “Former Israeli PM Ariel Sharon Dies After Eight-Year Coma,” The Guardian, January 11, 2014. For Hamas’s victory, see Scott Wilson, “Hamas Sweeps Palestinian Elections, Complicating Peace Efforts in Mideast,” The Washington Post, January 27, 2006. For Olmert’s promise to withdraw from the West Bank east of the barrier, see Jim Rutenberg and Steven Erlanger, “West Bank Pullout Gets a Nod from Bush,” The New York Times, May 24, 2006; David Makovsky, “Olmert’s Unilateral Option: An Early Assessment,” The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, May 2006. For Olmert’s cancelation of the withdrawal plan after the 2006 Lebanon war, see Doug Struck, “Israel Shelves Plan to Pull Out of Settlements in West Bank,” The Washington Post, August 23, 2006.
73. For more on the fall 2015 violence, as well as the shorter-lived precursor that came one year earlier, see chapter 8. For the numbers killed during the first six months of the unrest, see Peter Beaumont, “Israel-Palestine: Outlook Bleak as Wave of Violence Passes Six-Month Mark,” The Guardian, March 31, 2016; “U.N. Expert Decries Israeli Soldier’s Killing of Palestinian Attacker,” Reuters, March 30, 2016; B’Tselem, “Five Palestinians Killed When Israeli Military Fired at Protesters Near Gaza Perimeter Fence, December 2015–January 2016, February 22, 2016. (Several of the Palestinians were Gazans killed by Israeli fire at protests along the border. Four foreign nationals were also killed. Other news sources stated that “at least 190”—rather than “over 200”—Palestinians had been killed during this period. Israel says that more than 130—roughly two-thirds—of the Palestinians killed were assailants.) For the third intifada statements, see, for example, comments by the Labor Party’s Omar Bar-Lev and Isaac Herzog, in Tamar Pileggi, “Labor Approves Herzog’s Unilateral Pullout Plan,” The Times of Israel, February 7, 2016; Daniel K. Eisenbud, “Herzog: There Must Be Immediate Disengagement Between Jews, Palestinians,” The Jerusalem Post, March 15, 2016; “More Israeli-Palestinian Violence Fuels Talk of a Third Intifada,” Reuters, October 10, 2015. For comments from senior generals on the need for larger political concessions, see statements by such figures as the head of military intelligence and the deputy head of COGAT in “IDF’s Plan to Beat Terror: Peace Talks with the PA,” Israel National News, February 22, 2016; “Senior IDF Official: Diplomatic Steps Have ‘Weight’ in Restraining Palestinian Violence,” The Jerusalem Post, October 28, 2015.
74. In late 2014, 38 percent of the Israeli public supported withdrawing from Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem as part of a peace agreement. By late 2015, 69 percent expressed support. Zipi Israeli, “Public Opinion and National Security, Strategic Survey for Israel 2015–2016,” The Institute for National Security Studies, p. 119. Numerous polls over the preceding years had shown large Israeli majorities opposed to dividing Jerusalem as part of a peace agreement. Polls by Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies from 1994 to 2012 found majority support for withdrawing from “Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem,” excluding the Old City, in only one year—2001, the first full year of the Second Intifada—when support was 51 percent. From 2004 to 2012, a separate question was asked about withdrawal from the Old City’s Temple Mount/Noble Sanctuary, and support never exceeded the level of 2004: 30 percent. “The Peace Index: July 2008,” The Israel Democracy Institute, accessed October 3, 2016; Yehuda Ben Meir and Olena Bagno-Moldavsky, “Vox Populi: Trends in Israeli Public Opinion on National Security 2004–2009,” The Institute for National Security Studies, November 2010, p. 80; Yehuda Ben Meir and Dafna Shaked, “The People Speak: Israeli Public Opinion on National Security 2005–2007,” The Institute for National Security Studies, May 2007, p. 56; Yehuda Ben Meir and Olena Bagno-Moldavsky, “The Voice of the People: Israeli Public Opinion on National Security 2012,” The Institute for National Security Studies, April 2013, p. 78. For text of the Labor Party plan and analysis of it, see Ameinu, “Labor Party Security and Peace Plan,” February 11, 2016; Ofer Zalzberg, “The Israeli Labor Party’s Separation Plan,” Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, April 2016.
75. The desire to deny the effectiveness of force can be found in groups and individuals who object to any pressure on Israel, such as AIPAC, as well as in groups that more narrowly object to violence or sanctions or boycotts. Individuals often claim that whatever methods of coercion they oppose on moral grounds also happen to be ineffective. This is an example of what Robert Jervis has described as “irrational consistency.” Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), 1976, pp. 128–43. For George W. Bush on “no daylight,” as well as the claim by the former Israeli ambassador to the United States, Michael Oren, that “no daylight” is a “time-honored principle in the U.S.-Israel alliance,” see Abrams, Tested by Zion, pp. 169, 308; Michael B. Oren, Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide (New York: Random House, 2015), p. 113. For more on AIPAC and its influence in Washington, see Connie Bruck, “Friends of Israel,” The New Yorker, September 1, 2014. The quote from the national security official comes from an interview with the author, Washington, DC, December 8, 2015.
76. For more on AIPAC, where Indyk was a deputy director of research, and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), where Indyk was the founding executive director and for which Ross wrote the first research paper, see “Martin S. Indyk—Biography,” Brookings Institution, accessed October 3, 2016, https://www.brookings.edu/experts/martin-s-indyk; “Dennis Ross’ ‘Doomed to Succeed’ Wins Prestigious Jewish Book Council Award,” Washington Institute for Near East Policy, January 13, 2016; Helena Cobban, “Confessions of an AIPAC Veteran,” The Nation, October 14, 2009. According to former AIPAC staffer M. J. Rosenberg, the Washington Institute was “created by AIPAC. How do I know? As an AIPAC staffer, I was in the room when AIPAC decided to establish WINEP.… WINEP was to be AIPAC’s cutout. It was funded by AIPAC donors, staffed by AIPAC employees, and located one door away, down the hall, from AIPAC headquarters.” Rosenberg quotes another AIPAC staff member who was present at the same meeting: “It was suggested … that we split the AIPAC research department into two parts, a minor part to service the legislative lobbying, and the major part to become a 501(C)3 that could raise big bucks tax-free, unlike AIPAC itself.” M. J. Rosenberg, “The Think Tank AIPAC Built: The Washington Institute for Near East Policy,” Political Correction, Media Matters Action Network, April 13, 2010. For Indyk’s quote, see Indyk, Innocent Abroad, p. 408.
77. For the quotes from Ross’s book, see Ross, Doomed to Succeed, pp. 50, 349. In the first quoted passage (“we never benefited”), Ross is speaking specifically of benefits that the United States received from Arab states. But elsewhere, such as in the jacket copy, he makes the broader claim that “distancing the United States from Israel … never yielded any benefits.” For an incisive review of Ross’s book, see Ahmad Samih Khalidi, “Fantasies of a Middle East Envoy,” The Cairo Review of Global Affairs, Spring 2016. For Ross’s statement to a Jewish audience at a New York synagogue, where he appeared alongside former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak and Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, see Philip Weiss, “Dennis Ross Tells American Jews, ‘We Need to Be Advocates for Israel’—and Not for Palestinians,” Mondoweiss.net, June 17, 2016. Weiss was the only journalist to report on the event. At the bottom of his article he noted: “The Central Synagogue has objected to us that the event was off the record. The invitation to the event did not say so, and when a synagogue brings in a foreign leader to attack the president’s foreign policy in front of 500 cheering people—with no demurral from the rabbi sitting at his side, after everyone in the synagogue has stood to sing the national anthem of that foreign country (yes, along with the Star-Spangled Banner)—other Americans have a right to know about it.”
78. Ross, Doomed to Succeed, p. 389.
79. Menachem Begin, The Revolt (New York: Nash Publishing, 1977), p. 36.
80. At several junctures, it seemed the PLO’s path to statehood would be closed, either through Israeli annexation, establishing limited autonomy led by local leaders in the West Bank and Gaza at the expense of the PLO in exile, or Israel and Jordan reaching a separate agreement over the West Bank.
81. In 1947, just under 32 percent of the population of Palestine was Jewish (630,000 Jews out of a total population of 1,970,000). In 1946, the figure was just under 30 percent. See Sergio DellaPergola, “Demographic Trends in Israel and Palestine: Prospects and Policy Implications,” American Jewish Yearbook, 2003, p. 11; Israel in the Middle East: Documents and Readings on Society, Politics, and Foreign Relations, Pre-1948 to the Present, Itamar Rabinovich and Jehuda Reinharz, eds. (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2008), pp. 571–72. On the figure of less than 7 percent of the land, see Rashid Khalidi’s response to Kenneth W. Stein, “Letters,” Journal of Palestine Studies 17, no. 4 (Summer 1988): 254–56; Gershon Shafir, Land, Labor and the Origins of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, 1882–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), p. 198; and for a similar figure—of exactly 7 percent—see Encyclopedia of the Palestinians, edited by Philip Mattar (New York: Facts on File, 2005), p. 125. On Israel outnumbering Arab forces at every stage of the 1948 war, see Avi Shlaim, “Israel and the Arab Coalition in 1948,” in The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948, Eugene L. Rogan and Avi Shlaim, eds. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 81. See also Mattar, p. 44; Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee Problem Revisited (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 16–17. Shlaim writes: “at each stage of the war, the IDF outnumbered all the Arab forces arrayed against it, and, after the first round of fighting, it outgunned them too. The final outcome of the war was therefore not a miracle but a faithful reflection of the underlying military balance in the Palestine theater. In this war, as in most wars, the stronger side prevailed.”
82. On the US and UK peace plan, codenamed Alpha, see Shapira, Israel, pp. 278–79; Michael R. Fischbach, Records of Dispossession: Palestinian Refugee Property and the Arab-Israeli Conflict (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003), p. 226. The plan also called on Israel to allow an international regime in Jerusalem, repatriate 75,000 to 100,000 refugees, pay £100 million in compensation for refugee property, and give up large parts of the Negev desert to Jordan and Egypt, creating a land bridge between the two. For the Shapira quote, see Shapira, p. 283, who writes on the same page: “the Sinai Campaign was a turning point in Israel’s standing in both the Middle East and the world. The IDF’s power and military capability convinced the Great Powers that Israel was there to stay, and would not disappear from the map.”
83. For the Khartoum summit and the statement from Aharon Yariv, see Shlaim, The Iron Wall, p. 277. For a more detailed account showing that Egypt and Jordan’s acceptance of Security Council Resolution 242 later that year was the culmination of the Khartoum Conference, not a contradiction of it, see Yoram Meital, “The Khartoum Conference and Egyptian Policy After the 1967 War: A Reexamination,” Middle East Journal 54, no. 1 (Winter 2000): 64–82.
84. For the number killed in Black September, see Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State, p. 267, who writes that the dead included over 600 Jordanian soldiers, 910–960 Palestinian fighters (of whom over 400 belonged to Fatah), and 1,500–3,500 civilians, mostly Palestinians in Amman. For the group that joined the pragmatic camp (the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine), see Sayigh, p. 683. For the quote from a deputy chief of the PLO (Salah Khalaf), see Rubin, Revolution Until Victory?, p. 37.
85. For the loss of hope in a liberation strategy of people’s war modeled on China and Vietnam, see Sayigh, Armed Struggle and the Search for State, p. 683. For the shift toward increasing terrorism, see Sayigh, pp. 280–81, 683–84; Rubin, Revolution Until Victory?, pp. 37–42. Sayigh writes that the final battle in Jordan “represented a defeat of the strategy of people’s war championed by the various guerrilla groups since 1967, and posed a fundamental challenge to their professed aims, political programs, and organizational structure.… The phase of revolutionary élan and fervor was over.”