When Realpolitik and Humanitarianism Meet

I've got a copy of Wolfensohn's autobiography, A Global Life, and he goes into detail about the Gazan greenhouse project, which he directly supervised as a representative of the Quartet (the peace-seeking unit that comprised the US, Russia, the EU, and the UN), in Chapter 17, 'A New and Different Challenge'. According to him, the 2005 withdrawal led to 'a day or two of Palestinian looting', and 'during this period, some damage was done to the greenhouses, but they came through essentially intact. Peace was restored not because of an Israeli military presence but because Palestinians recognized that if they wanted to have any hope, they needed to create a peaceful environment and the opportunity for economic development'. The damage was soon fixed, and the Palestinian government built security fences around the greenhouses.

However, 'Gaza had been effectively sealed off from the outside world since the Israeli disengagement, and the humanitarian and economic consequences for the Palestinian people were profound'. This was a problem for Wolfensohn's greenhouses since the primary utility of their harvests was as trade goods, and they only had a limited amount of time to get the crops out of Gaza before they would spoil.

Negotiations stalled (and Wolfensohn expresses doubt about how interested Likud and the Bush administration really were in the peace process), and he was slowly frozen out (Condoleeza Rice blew off his requests for assistance with the greenhouse situation and failed to invite him or the European negotiating team to the final talks between the US, Israel, and Palestine - he later discovered that the Palestinians were then separated from the negotiations between the US and Israel, with no deal forthcoming). Things didn't improve from there ('I was working on behalf of the Quartet for economic development, not as part of an American peace initiative, and the Quartet was not seen as a player - it was only the United States that counted'), and whilst the deal hammered out at the meeting was mostly identical to the one the Quartet wanted, it had one important difference - the US was in charge of implementing it, not the Quartet, who now only had an advisory role.

This was kind of a big deal because the US proceeded to do jack shit. 'In January 2006, after there had been little or no effort to enforce the agreements, almost none of the deadlines set by the Rice Agreements had been met. The only crossing that was fully functioning since its opening on November 26 was the Rafah crossing to Egypt, where the EU and several of its member states had quickly established an efficient Border Assistance Mission to support Palestinian border police and ensure security'. The Karni crossing for agricultural goods (which was obviously of predominant importance for Wolfensohn's greenhouses), meanwhile, operated slowly and infrequently. Rather than making the $100 million a year they had when they were run by Israeli settlers, the greenhouses were instead losing $120, 000 a day.

'I visited the crossing several times. The procedures at Karni - spreading out perishable cargoes of goods on sun-exposed blacktop for lengthy inspections - meant that routinely 10 percent or more of a shipment was spoiled before it even left Gaza. Fruit was rotting on trucks or in the fields because it could not be exported, and there were no local markets in Gaza capable of absorbing the product, even at severely discounted prices.'

Wolfensohn's greenhouses ceased operations shortly after Hamas took power. Despite indications that Hamas wanted to talk with the Quartet, the US elected to back a Fatah coup attempt (detailed in this Vanity Fair article) to take the Strip back, and that meant no more aid to Gaza. 'At the beginning of February, my colleagues in Jerusalem learned that the Americans had made a decision to close down our offices. I was furious. It was insane to close down the operation so soon after the Palestinian elections. We had no idea what would happen next, and it might be useful to have a Quartet team on the ground. This was not a question of lack of funding, and the State Department knew this. The Quartet had just received notice of a donation of a million dollars from Russia, which was still unspent. The office could have remained operational well into the latter half of the year. The truth was, the Quartet office no longer had a role if the United States, Israel, and Fatah had taken matters into their own hands. If there were plans to invade Gaza, our small initiative would be a liability, and my colleagues would be in danger.'

The greenhouse initiative died after that. With the Israeli blockade in full force and no foreign aid to help absorb the massive economic losses from their continued operation, they were quietly shut down. Wolfensohn does not believe it was ever intended to succeed - 'in the end, the Quartet was a necessary camouflage for US initiatives'.