Diplomats Find Passion in Search for Peace

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Diplomats Find Passion in Search for Peace

Aaron Miller (left), Dennis Ross (right), and Martin Indyk (lower) are the U.S. peace processors who were instrumental in negotiating the Hebron accord.

He had an hour left before the deadline. The American peace broker looked around the negotiating table, through the cigarette fog, and started counting bodies. He needed 10 Jews by midnight.

Aaron Miller ticked off the U.S. ambassador, the chief U.S. Middle East coordinator, the U.S. legal adviser, the deputy U.S. consul general. He counted the Israeli negotiators, and himself, of course. That made 10 -- the quorum needed for a Jewish prayer service.

"Martin," Miller whispered to Martin Indyk, the U.S. ambassador to Israel. "I've got to do this."

Indyk called for a break. The Israelis and Palestinians had been haggling over the security arrangements for Hebron -- no detail was too small. Miller withdrew to the ambassador's library to fetch some prayer books and yarmulkes. His mother had died in November, two months before; following tradition, Miller had to recite the mourner's kaddish prayer at a Jewish service every day before midnight.

"Sanctified be His name," Miller read from the Hebrew.

"Amen," the nine others replied.

"May He who makes peace in Heaven bring peace to all of us," Miller said, "and to all of Israel."

"Amen," they responded.

The two Palestinian negotiators stood off in a corner, curious. There was Dennis Ross, the U.S. Middle East coordinator, the chief mediator in their stone-old dispute with the Israelis, the bland and wildly sane arbiter, mumbling an ancient Hebrew formula along with Israel's minister of defense.

There were times when the act might have burst a blood vessel. Or prompted charges of bias. Or confirmed the claim, spread in the Arab press, that American policy in the region was being run by a cabal of the "Four Rabbis."

But at this moment, the Palestinians were moved, watching the tall, skinny foreigner perform this deeply personal act. One of them murmured: "Here is a Western man who is praying every day for a year to honor his mother." How unusual for an American, how passionate for a diplomat.

These diplomats are not standard government issue. Miller, Indyk and Ross are members of a fraternity, a group of friends in their mid-forties who have obsessed since their mid-teens over Israel, Palestine and their stiff-necked peoples.

Dubbed the "peace processors," they have survived changes of administration and political party, both in the United States and in Israel. They have worked behind the scenes on nearly every Mideast diplomatic breakthrough of the decade, most recently and publicly on the Hebron accord. Today America is more involved in the process than ever -- nudging Israel together with the Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese -- and the peace team is increasingly in demand. They have blended their personal and professional goals to such a degree that, as Indyk says, "I never think about life after the peace process. Life is the peace process."

And, most provocatively, they have broken the decades-long Arabist lock on Middle East policy, and punctured the State Department's conventional wisdom that one can't be a committed Jew and a trusted broker. In fact, the peacemakers say -- to the chagrin of their critics -- their diplomatic successes come not in spite of their religion but because of it.

"There is a natural bond between Jews and Arabs -- strange as it may seem," Indyk says. "At bottom we are Semites. We are cousins, and despite the conflict, there is a basic easiness on a social, cultural level."

After the brief prayer service ended Miller returned to the bargaining table alongside the others. The quibbling went on until 3 a.m. Finally, the Palestinians and Israelis produced a list of points they agreed upon. Then the Israelis started quarreling among themselves over who had the authority to sign the document. And the Palestinians refused to initial anything unless the Israelis did so.

They had an agreement but no one would sign.

Dennis Ross, exhausted and stinking of old smoke, took his pen, pushed aside the coffee cups and pistachio shells and scribbled out his name. The Israelis and Palestinians would not commit. Damn it, he would.

A Lesson Learned

It wasn't peace, in fact, that brought their lives together, but war.

Aaron Miller remembers the silence before the sirens uncoiled. He was living with his wife, Lindsay, in Jerusalem, a honeymoon year away from their hometown, Cleveland, studying for his doctoral exams in history; she was teaching English to adults. On the afternoon of Oct. 6, 1973, they were relaxing in the living room, reading. It was Yom Kippur, Israel's most sacred holiday, which meant no cars were on the roads, no buses, no noise.

A few blocks away, 22-year-old Martin Indyk was lounging around in his apartment, listening to the radio. He had moved from Australia to Israel to enroll in a graduate program in international relations.

The two men wouldn't meet until 15 years later in Washington. But the afternoon the sirens blared, they both scuttled into Jerusalem bomb shelters. And their year of study, romance and desert hikes turned into a year of war shortages and blackout curtains.

Syria sent 130,000 troops to battle, Egypt 330,000. The Israeli army called up its reserves, the universities canceled classes. Indyk volunteered as a trash collector for the Jerusalem municipality, smelling of curdled milk, hanging off the back of a garbage truck driven by a retired army general. The Millers filled in for kibbutz workers. Lindsay toiled in a plastics factory, Aaron in a plant where he jumped on piles of cotton, pounding them into bales.

Dennis Ross, meanwhile, had just returned from Israel. His girlfriend, Debbie, was studying in Jerusalem. Ross followed her there, and with the holy city as a backdrop, he proposed. They moved to his native California, to UCLA, where he began his doctoral work in Soviet studies. His best friends were Israelis. When the war broke out, he suffered along with them, 10 time zones away, fearing for their relatives' lives.

"Soviet studies didn't have the same level of immediacy or poignancy," Ross says. He understood Russia's strategic value, but it lacked the human dimension. "With Arabs and Israelis there is a warmth -- I found that more true than in other regions. Being Jewish added to my interest. It didn't create the interest, but it made me care more about the problem."

Much as Munich was a formative experience for diplomats before them, the 1973 Arab-Israeli war helped shape the thinking of these three. Israel, following its territorial conquests in the 1967 war, should have been at its most secure. Lindsay Miller remembers how the old ladies in her apartment building shrugged off the sirens. "Oh, nothing happened in '67," the women said. "We won't go down to the shelter."

But this war turned much grimmer than the last. Indyk recalls hearing the roar of C-130s overhead, watching the U.S. transport planes as they delivered American spare parts to the desperate Israelis. It was a defining moment in Indyk's life, he says. "I became convinced of two things: One, intellectually and emotionally I would do what I could to resolve the conflict. And two, the U.S. was critical -- for Israel's defense, and to end the conflict."

The way to achieve that, the three analysts had determined, was not through Israel's territorial expansion, but by a fair deal with the Arabs. Each man had followed a separate career path -- through think tanks and government agencies, the National Security Council and university posts. (Ross and Miller have been at the State Department on and off since the early 1980s; Indyk joined the NSC in 1993, a week after becoming a U.S. citizen.)

But they all arrived at the same conclusion: A settlement will be achieved not by squeezing Israel, as Arabists advocate, nor by coddling Israel, as the Zionist lobby might like, but by cajoling the Jewish state to take "baby steps," just like, Indyk says, the psychologist in the movie "What About Bob?" Or to take an "incrementalist" approach, a term Ross prefers, a technique he observed at UCLA, watching the tiny daily plot advances on "General Hospital."

Early on, the team raised hackles, and still does, in some corridors of the State Department. It rejected the traditional State assumptions of the '70s that the closer America is to Israel, the further it is from the Arabs and its interests in the oil-rich Persian Gulf. Instead, they argue that the greater America's support for Israel, the more risks Israel will take for peace. And that, in the end, serves everyone's interests.

Indyk presses his palms together and says: "I've always thought there was a certain destiny about the fact that we're all on the same team."

Not that they think uniformly. Indyk tilts toward the Israelis, Miller toward the Arabs, and Ross balances in between. They are competitive and argue nonstop, whether strolling in a Jerusalem park past the statues of the three green mules, or in the heat of negotiation, passing notes rapid-fire.

But for better and for worse, they are wed to the process, and to each other. For years, Indyk and Miller carpooled their children from suburban Maryland to Georgetown Day School. In 1991, during the Madrid peace conference, the first face-to-face meetings between Israeli and Arab leaders, their wives gathered in Chevy Chase for dinner, to cheer their husbands on the television screen.

And there was the phase called "bar mitzvah diplomacy." The peace team's sons and daughters happened to celebrate their bar mitzvahs and bat mitzvahs when the Syrian-Israeli talks were in a deep freeze. Not ones to waste an opportunity, the team invited the Israeli and Syrian ambassadors to the affairs and got them talking over the whitefish salad. After attending Indyk's synagogue, the Syrian ambassador called his foreign minister in Damascus to report a startling fact: When Jewish people pray, they ask for peace.

"I'm not sure where the line is between professional and personal involvement in this issue," Miller says, clicking his trademark turquoise worry beads, a present from a Palestinian negotiator.

Lindsay Miller is active in Seeds of Peace, an American organization that brings together children from Israel and Arab countries. Their 17-year-old daughter works as a summer counselor for the program.

"I keep telling people I'm on the real peace track," says Lindsay. "The real peace is when we get these kids to know each other."

Ross, meanwhile, vacations with his family in, of all places -- Israel. Once, he brought his wife and children to a beach resort in Eilat, while the Palestinians and Israelis were negotiating at a nearby hotel.

"It worked great," Ross says without a trace of irony. By day, he took his three children to the dolphinarium. By night, from 10 till 3, he huddled up with Abu Allah and Uri Savir, his voice cockpit-calm as always, assuring both sides that the deal would fly.

For the families, it is hard sharing Dad. When Indyk crawled into bed after concluding the Hebron accord, he expected congratulations from his wife. Jill sat up in bed and teased him, "I know where you've been. I saw you kissing Yasser Arafat on CNN." Indyk's two teenage children flick channels when they spot their dad. Miller's young son once left him this note on his door: Dear Dad, I hate you. And I hate Jim Baker. I hope he fires you. Love, Danny.

And when the umpteenth phone call from Yasser Arafat interrupted yet another game between Ross and his 8-year-old daughter, she looked up and said: "Daddy, did you ever think to tell him that if they just made peace, they wouldn't have to listen to all your boring talk?"

Ross paused, and said he'd give it a try. He's tried everything else.

Giving Birth

The problem is, the two parties do not trust each other. So the Americans dance all night between them, witnessing more Jerusalem sunrises than most native Jerusalemites.

Even when he's at home in Bethesda, Ross spends countless nights wrapped in his bathrobe, sitting in his kitchen nook, engaged in cell phone shuttle diplomacy. A Palestinian and an Israeli representative half a world away share a cellular phone, while Ross scrawls notes and gauges the approaching dawn by the number of headlights sliding across his kitchen window.

Sometimes, Indyk says, "the image that comes to mind is a circus master. All these players in the ring. We crack the whip and get them to move around in an orderly fashion." Other times, says the ambassador, who pledged to quit smoking if they clinched a deal, he feels more like a midwife, "helping them give birth to a new agreement." Push.

The challenge, he says, is to get them to deliver on their own.

If they have a team slogan, it is "It Can Be Done." The gold-lettered sign sits on Ross's desk in Washington, a present from the Saudi Arabian ambassador at the Madrid conference. (By strange coincidence, it is a variation of the motto coined by Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism: "If you will it, it is no dream.") If they have a uniform, it is grad student casual; during talks at the Wye Plantation on Maryland's Eastern Shore, Ross declared "No ties at Wye" and then beat the Israelis at pool and invited the Syrians to play ping-pong.

Each member fills a different role. Indyk has the best public persona. There's a smile dug out in the middle of his face, and while light disappears into Ross's and Miller's eyes, it emanates from Indyk's. He is up for the job of assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, but for now, as ambassador, his domain is Israeli politics. These days that means bonding with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu over kosher McDonald's hamburgers. But it also meant, Indyk says, assisting Leah Rabin from the operating room after she said goodbye to her assassinated husband.

Miller, Ross's deputy, is the "what if" guy, the brainy historian who stands back and looks for broader implications. At a recent midnight meeting in Amman between Arafat and Jordan's King Hussein, Miller sat in the palace and stared at the men, wondering if there ever would be two leaders so serious about doing a deal. "I remember thinking, time is not our ally. We've got a moment here, we can't lose sight of it," he says. Miller wears a friendly, vulnerable expression, and a floppy brown haircut 20 years out of style. One imagines that no one had the heart to tell him.

Ross leads the team, not through force of ego but by gentle manipulation. He has no vanity, no jaw jut. His face is narrow, shaped like a wedge, the kind that keeps doors from slamming shut. When riots broke out last September and the peace foundered, Arafat and Netanyahu petitioned President Clinton to send in Ross, who has become the one man both leaders can tolerate, in part because his style doesn't threaten their own sense of power.

"Dennis Ross, as you know, is thin and lanky, but we used to call him Hercules," says Netanyahu.

In short, Ross is the opposite of Clinton's other regional troubleshooter: the blustery Richard Holbrooke, who worked on the Bosnia issue and calculated that public pressure would move the parties. Ross figured that in the Middle East, private negotiations work better.

When Ross briefs journalists, he is deliberately dry and elliptical. You might say he lives by the motto "dull and proud." It has served him well. He has thrived under presidents from Jimmy Carter to Ronald Reagan to George Bush to Bill Clinton and is expected to be named counselor with broad portfolio to Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. During the 1992 presidential campaign, Ross worked for Jim Baker, trashing Clinton's record on foreign policy. When Bush lost, Baker approached Warren Christopher.

Baker recalls: "I said I thought there ought to be some continuity, particularly in the Mideast. Nobody was any better than Dennis at knowing where the bodies are buried."

Christopher was dubious. "There was a natural question in my mind," Christopher says. Then he met with Ross, and listened to him talk. "He was absolutely dedicated to the peace process, and that would outweigh everything. I never made a better decision than to keep Dennis."

Christopher brought Ross along on his frequent missions to Damascus. Ross padded happily around the plane in bluejeans and sneakers, but the talks with Syrian President Hafez Assad were formal and unyielding. The dignitaries always sat side by side, with Christopher on Assad's left.

One day, they walked in, and Assad asked Christopher to sit on his right.

Ross was hopeful: "Are we to make anything of that? Are you moving politically?"

No, Assad said. His doctor had ordered him to switch seats. So many talks with the Americans had given him a stiff neck.

A Question of Faith

But what does it mean, to have a nearly homogeneous Jewish peace team? (U.S. Consul General Edward Abington, Arafat's main Jerusalem contact, is not Jewish.)

"The fact that Middle East diplomacy is being run by three Jewish people is an extreme irony," says Robert Kaplan, author of "The Arabists," a diplomatic history. "Because throughout the '50s, '60s and '70s, the Near East affairs bureau of the State Department had a reputation, only partly deserved, for being hostile to Israel."

For the players themselves, there is an obvious tension. They say that their religion is largely irrelevant.

Not so to others, particularly their political enemies -- Jews on the far left and the right, and Arabs who feel there is an unfair imbalance.

Last week, ultra-right-wing Israeli parliamentarian Rehavam Zeevi complained, using an old Eastern European slur, that Netanyahu was being influenced by the U.S. ambassador: "In the wee hours of the night, he gets phone calls from that Yid, Indyk." An embassy source said that Indyk, "as any Jew, is hurt by such an antisemitic statement."

The attacks are nothing new. In 1989, Ross and Miller -- along with an Orthodox Jewish Foreign Service officer, Daniel Kurtzer -- were accused of being "self-hating Jews." They had crafted a Baker speech that rocked the American Jewish community, asking Israel's leaders to renounce "the unrealistic vision of a greater Israel." An aide to Israel's then prime minister was quoted in the Hebrew press, calling them "Baker's Jew boys."

"That's crazy, to say they were doing `Baker's dirty work,' " Baker says today. "I don't know whether they called them `the Jewish mafia' or what, but I had three extremely talented assistants."

Truth is, hard-line Israelis weren't the only ones crying "Jewish mafia." Within the State Department, some old-guard Arabists chafed at having their crown jewel of diplomacy handed to a group of Jews. And the Palestinians balked at the 1994 Tunis talks: Why, they demanded, were the American mediators asking for kosher food when the Israeli team was not?

Over the years, Middle East hands have grown used to the trio, but some misgivings linger. "A Palestinian leader told me in the heat of the Hebron talks, `We are negotiating with two Israeli teams -- one displaying an Israeli flag, and one an American flag,' " says Khalil Jahshan, president of the National Association of Arab Americans. The absence of any Arab Americans on the team is particularly troubling now, says Jahshan, in light of Albright's recent discovery of her Jewish roots: "It reinforces the stereotypes, the long-held conspiratorial theories in the Middle East that there is some sort of undue Jewish influence in Washington."

And yet the Arab voices are divided, as much as the Jewish ones. "They are honest to their missions," says Abu Allah, a former Palestinian negotiator. "They are fair, whether they are Jewish, Muslim or Christians. Without the Americans, there will be no peace."

The fuss is enough to send a diplomat running for cover. No wonder that when first approached for an interview, Ross blushed deeply, Miller's mouth pruned up, and Indyk crossed his legs and muttered through a clenched smile, "No good can come of it."

These guys are happiest out of the spotlight and under the Mediterranean sun, driving their convoy of Chevy Suburbans between the principals. Ross loses his luggage -- no problem -- he borrows a black jacket from a hotel waiter to meet the prime minister. Indyk tells Arafat about the movie "Groundhog Day" and suggests that they print T-shirts emblazoned "Another Hebron Day."

Even a security alert fails to deter them. One afternoon, in the middle of a team meeting at their Jerusalem hotel, bodyguards advise them to evacuate. They spill onto the street, blinking in the daylight, their legal adviser toting every version of every agreement in a briefcase that weighs 25 pounds. Miller reviews some points from a White House memo. Ross dials Jordan on his cell phone, and checks in with the king. Within minutes, they have set up a sidewalk stand for peacemaking.

Taxis cruise past, pedestrians amble by. The Americans work on, oblivious. They have too large a chunk of their lives on the line, too much at stake to abandon the day.

As Indyk proclaims, every time they hit a wall: "The peace process is dead. Long live the peace process."

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