Tehran launched a propaganda campaign to make him a living legend. Feature films, television “documentaries,” and books were devoted with one simple message: while secular ideologies, from pan-Arabism to Arab socialism, had failed to liberate an inch of Arab territory, Islamism—in its Iranian Khomeinist version—working through Hezbollah, had achieved “total victory” over Israel in Lebanon.
Now, on that February day in 2006, Hezbollah, working with Hamas, was preparing to launch an even greater assault on the Jewish state. For the eight men ensconced in their first class seats on the way to Houston, the hope was that they could thwart that attack.
The seating arrangement on the plane was a reminder of the deep divisions that divided their people and why they had agreed to make their long flight to Houston. The four Israelis sat on one side of the cabin, the Fatah group on the other. During meals and visits to the bathroom, they exchanged little more than polite conversation. But for the most part, they either dozed or studied the documents in their briefcases.
During the past weeks there had been discreet contacts with Edward P. Djerejian, the sixty-five year-old former United States ambassador to Israel and Syria. He had been approved by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to act as moderator for the discussions that would take place at the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy in Houston. It is widely regarded as one of the most secure think tanks within the United States. The choice of Djerejian was also an astute one. An experienced Arabist and also trusted by Israel, he was calm and his authority was accompanied by a sense of humor. He had told Dr. Rice, to whom he would report progress, that “it’s going to be like chairing the United Nations.” One of Djerejian’s first tasks would be to tell the two teams that he would be totally impartial. It was a necessary reminder: for the past several decades the centerpiece of America’s Middle East policy had revolved around its relationship with Israel. While there had been what former CIA director, George Tenet, had called “blips on the radar,” the combination of Washington’s unwavering support for Israel, and its own efforts to spread democracy through-out the region, had inflamed Islamic opinion. In Arab capitals the bond between the two countries was seen as based on shared strategic interests and the demands promoted by the powerful Jewish lobby within the United States. Even though other special-interest groups had some effect on aspects of U.S. foreign policy, none had managed to convince Americans, as the lobby had, that America’s interests and those of Israel were essentially identical.
That fusing began after the October War in 1973 when Israel had been seriously threatened by superior Arab forces. To ensure that could never happen again, Washington had provided the Jewish state with a level of support far greater than it had given to any other nation. Since then, Israel had received over $3 billion in direct assistance—worth about $500 a year for every Israeli man, woman, and child. The largesse was particularly striking as Israel was, by the new millennium, a wealthy industrial country with a per capita income equal to that of Spain or South Korea. Other countries in receipt of U.S. foreign aid tend to receive the money in quarterly installments. Israel, on the other hand, gets its entire appropriation at the start of each fiscal year. This enables Israel to earn valuable interest on the stock markets of the world using money it will only later drawdown.
There are other terms which give Israel “favored status.” It is allowed to use 25 percent of its allocation to subsidize its own defense industry; again, no other nation is allowed to use U.S. funds for that purpose. Neither does Israel have to account for how the money is spent; this makes it hard for Washington to prevent the allocation being only partly used for purposes, which Israel opposes, such as building settlements on the West Bank. Moreover, Washington has encouraged Israel’s burgeoning defense industry to use a substantial amount of the annual budget it provides to develop the latest weapons systems. Some of these have been created from material stolen from the United States (see chapter 10, “A Dangerous Liaison”). The United States has also given Israel, at production costs, Black Hawk helicopters and F-16 jets. To top it all off, it has given the Jewish state vital intelligence it refuses to share with its NATO allies and has continued to allow Israel to increase its arsenal of nuclear weapons.
On the day their aircraft headed out from Ben Gurion airport, the men in their First Class armchairs would have seen on their left the distant outline of Dimona, the country’s nuclear facility where over two hundred kinds of nuclear weapons were stored in 2006.
