JERUSALEM – Due to the nature of the case, preventive diplomacy does not often lead to splashy headlines for the practitioner.
In his nearly six years as the United Nations’ leading envoy for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Nickolay E. Mladenov has quietly worked behind the scenes to help keep the Gaza Strip from boiling, the possibility of a two-state solution to preserve and build support for Israeli-Arab normalization as a very preferable alternative to the Israeli annexation of West Bank.
But he achieves at least one achievement that qualifies as conspicuous: he deserves the respect of almost everyone he has dealt with, many of whom regard each other as enemies.
“A very honest broker,” Rami Hamdallah, a former Palestinian Authority prime minister, called him.
“I was personally dependent on him,” said Moshe Kahlon, a former finance minister.
“A man of integrity,” said Jason Greenblatt, the former Trump administration envoy.
“We are proud to have known him,” said Khalil al-Hayya, Hamas’ deputy leader in Gaza.
Mr. Mladenov, 48, whose last day at work on Thursday, is returning to his native Bulgaria, after suddenly bowing to another sensational order in Libya to fight what he describes as a serious health problem.
In a two-hour exit interview, he recalled that he was surprised at how irrelevant he initially felt when he arrived in Jerusalem in 2015 as special UN coordinator for the Middle East peace process – a post created in 1999. was when there was another peace process.
His predecessors generally functioned as accessories, experts said, shooting down statements that tended to criticize Israel but rarely ventured from the sidelines. Israelis fired the UN – ‘Um’ in Hebrew – with a tart ‘Um, shmum’.
“This mission was very isolated from any high-level interaction,” he said. Mladenov said. “Nobody took it seriously. Basically, one side expects you to just repeat what they say, the other side expects you to leave, and that’s it. ‘
He did neither.
In 2016, he wrestled with the Middle East Quartet of Mediators – the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations – to issue a groundbreaking report on concrete steps that with little hope of a breakthrough the possibility of a two-state solution.
The action in the absence of negotiations was contrary to the then diplomatic doctrine, which believes that the resumption of peace negotiations is the most important and the way to resolve everything.
“I do not think that is how it works,” he said. Mladenov said. “You can have the best buy in the world,” but as long as Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are in conflict, he said, “congratulations on its implementation.”
His approach has since been widely accepted.
One recommendation of the Quartet, which called on Israel to cease its settlement business on the West Bank, was hardly new. But another – who called on the Palestinians to “stop the incitement to violence” and condemn “all acts of terrorism” – demanded a shift in everyone’s position, ‘he said.
It requires less leap for mr. Mladenov. As Bulgarian foreign minister, he worked with Israeli officials in the wake of a 2012 suicide bombing in Burgas that killed a bus driver and five Israeli tourists, an attack attributed to Hezbollah.
As the UN envoy, he caught a flake over his bluntness. “I’m not talking about this conflict in the usual way,” he said. “You can not go to a restaurant in Tel Aviv, shoot at people and later tell me that it is legal resistance. No, it is not. “
Mr Mladenov was equally spared when Israeli settlers burned a Palestinian family alive. And after Israeli soldiers killed a 15-year-old boy from Gaza during border demonstrations in 2018, he tweeted, “Stop shooting at children.”
“If you as the UN are not clear where you stand on these things, you can not be credible,” he said. “And I suppose I’m critical of the Israelis and the Palestinians, where I felt they did things wrong, and welcomed them when they did well – I think that’s a novelty in this frozen conflict.”
He also did things quietly.
In Gaza, an area constantly on the brink of another war, he made it his mission to avoid one.
In 2018, the Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank, tried to subdue its arch-rival Hamas, which controls Gaza, by withholding money for the power plant in Gaza and cutting its Gaza payroll. Gaza’s economy was on the brink of collapse. Then came violent waves between Gaza and Israel – border killings, arson balloons and rockets.
But while Egypt was mediating, Mr. Mladenov put an end to the Palestinian Authority and arranged for the Qataris to provide the necessary funding to keep the lights on and to make money flow into Gaza – while keeping Israel and Hamas more or less on the same page.
Nimrod Novik, a veteran Israeli peace negotiator, said Mladenov sees how he can set up his arguments in terms of each party’s interests. “You can say to the Israelis, ‘Look, life in Gaza is so miserable,'” he said. Novik said. “Or you could say, ‘Gaza is about to explode in your face, but if we do one-two-three, we can get quite a few months of calm, so help me to help you.'”
Mr Mladenov said he feared another war in Gaza could return the world to its “usual talks on this place”, which condemned the hope of peace talks, leaving a “Somalia on the doorstep of Israel” which, refraining from condemning Israel from all over the Arab world and donor countries to pay to rebuild Gaza as they did after the war in 2014.
It would have been much easier to ‘sit on the sidelines and preach,’ he said, but ‘preaching never gets you anywhere.’
“I come from the Balkans,” he said. “We have changed boundaries. We fought over holy places, languages, churches. We have been exchanging populations for 100 years, if not more. And if you carry that luggage, it helps you to see things differently. This is not a conflict where you can come in and just draw a line. It’s emotional. ”
‘I know from my own experience that when the foreigners you quote come to tell you what to do, you just shut them down. You are like: ‘Thank you very much’, he added. “You can not preach to these guys. Remember, they’ve been doing this for half a century. ‘
Last spring, according to insiders, Mr. Mladenov was one of the first officials to conclude that no deterrent would prevent Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from fulfilling his promises to annex West Bank territory, but that it might be possible to let him fall to give up. annexation for a greater price: normalization with Arab states that Israel has long avoided.
The annexation plan “gained momentum”, he said. “And if that happened, it would be terrible for Israel.” Forget another ceasefire in Gaza, he said. Imagine the global condemnation.
“My thinking was: if this is the wrong way to go, but you can see why it is attractive to certain sections of the population, what would attract a larger section that is not destructive, but actually constructive?”
He did not claim credit for the transactions that Israel entered into. But he worked to build a constituency for the idea of using normalization as a root to reward Israel for the annexation.
“There were some people who were caught off guard by this,” Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of President Trump, told the White House team in the Middle East. “He saw what we were doing. We trusted him, and he would give us constructive feedback. ”
The Palestinians saw these transactions as a catastrophic betrayal, but Mladenov argued that normalization would also be beneficial to them.
‘OK, now it’s very emotional. “The Palestinians are very angry,” he said. ‘But remove the emotions and think: Who is most effective when they try to pressure Israel to do certain things? Egypt and Jordan. If four, six or ten Arab countries have embassies in Tel Aviv, you want them to be on your side, right? ‘
“You now have a treaty,” he added. “It’s a big thing. Neither Israel nor the Arab countries will want to destroy it. It gives certain countries leverage in Israel. If you are the Palestinians, you really want to explain to your Arab brothers and friends what your positions are, and bring them back to the table on your side of the conversation. ”
Mr Mladenov was not a supporter of the Trump peace plan. But he said the changes were ongoing, creating exciting opportunities for his successor as UN envoy, Norwegian diplomat Tor Wennesland.
“This is a different world,” he said. Mladenov said. “And you know, with all his faults, it might be better.”