Nor was this massive undertaking stalled any longer by a lack of funds.
To the contrary, Mordechai realized, the newly pacified, post-Saddam Iraq was about to reemerge as a giant of the oil-producing world. Trillions of dollars would soon flood into the barren crescent of the Tigris and Euphrates. And when that happened, how long would it take for the once and future power known as Babylon to rise like a phoenix from the ashes, just as the ancient Hebrew prophets had foretold?
7
“Wahid to Mohandis, do you copy?”
“Go ahead, Wahid.”
“I have a visual on the target. He is inbound to your location.”
“How long?”
“Three minutes.”
“Very good, Wahid. All units, stand by.”
It was Ibrahim Sa’id’s first visit as Palestinian prime minister.
And the world was watching.
Ever since the Saudis had extended an invitation to the late Yasser Arafat’s successor, rumors had been swirling that perhaps the royal family was considering reestablishing diplomatic relations with the Palestinian government. In recent years, Saudi leaders had heatedly denounced the Palestinians for signing an interim peace agreement with Israel and forming the Medexco joint venture with a Russian Jew named Dmitri Galishnikov that had created an oil and gas behemoth rivaling their own.
Others speculated that the Saudi royals merely wanted a face-to-face showdown with a man routinely denounced in the Saudi media as a “traitor” and “Zionist conspirator.”
Either way, Ibrahim Sa’id believed the invitation alone was a significant development, and he had accepted without reservation. Now, gazing out the window on the half-hour drive from King Khalid International Airport to the five-star Al Faisaliah Hotel in downtown Riyadh in a gorgeous new Rolls-Royce sent by the foreign minister, Sa’id steeled himself for the conversation that lay ahead.
It was time for the Saudis to rein in their Wahabbi mullahs, who preached hatred and violence.
It was time to stop funding Al-Nakbah and any other terrorist group still on their payroll.
It was time for the Saudis to either invite Palestine and Israel into OPEC or help disband the cartel altogether.
And it was time for the Saudis to join Egypt, Jordan, and the Palestinians in signing a formal peace agreement with Israel, exchanging ambassadors and building economic and cultural bridges between their peoples.
This was the only way to ensure regional stability and keep the radicals at bay, and it was long overdue. But he could only imagine the icy reception that lay ahead.
Long before becoming the Palestinian prime minister, Sa’id had made his fortune in the Persian Gulf as the founder and CEO of the Palestinian Petroleum Group. He understood the politics of the Gulf, and he had no illusions about the Saudi leaders. They were not interested in peace. They were not even interested in power, per se. They were obsessed with wealth, and they would do whatever it took to protect what they had and expand it beyond measure.
Sa’id and his advisors had pored over Arafat’s personal files over the past several years since his death. They knew almost to the dollar how much money the Saudis had been pumping into Arafat’s coffers to pay suicide bombers, and buy weapons from Iran, and keep Arafat’s widow surviving in Paris on $1.7 million a month.
But the stunning discovery of black gold in Israel and the Palestinian Authority had turned nearly every Muslim, Christian, and Jew in both countries into a multimillionaire. Suddenly the Palestinian government didn’t need Saudi money. Suddenly the Palestinian prime minister was a big player on the world political and economic stage. And suddenly the Saudis wanted to talk.
“Ithnan to Mohandis.”
“Go ahead, Ithnan.”
“Target is passing me.”
“Copy that. All units stand by. Two minutes — I repeat — two minutes.”
His gamble was not without risks.
But Sa’id, now sixty-three, had always been a risk taker. Born dirt poor in a West Bank refugee camp, the youngest of six children, this quiet, unassuming, owlish entrepreneur now had everything a man could want. He was married to a beautiful, satisfying wife who had borne him four sons. He was the richest Palestinian in the world and was now leading his people out of the deserts of despair into a future so many Arab leaders had long promised but never delivered.
Early in the process of negotiating the Oil-for-Peace deal, Jon Bennett had asked Sa’id how it was possible that a moderate Ramallah Muslim would even consider doing business with a bunch of secular Israelis and an evangelical American president, given the history of the region.
His answer had intrigued both Bennett and McCoy.
“Vaclav Havel once said, ‘The real test of a man is not when he plays the role that he wants for himself but when he plays the role destiny has for him.’ I believe that, Jonathan, or I would not be here today.
“I grew up a stranger in a strange land — my own. Occupied by the Babylonians and the Persians, the Egyptians and the Ottomans, the British and the Jordanians, and now the Israelis. My father was a real estate agent. What can I say? He was right. The three rules of real estate are location, location, location. I always wondered, what is the big fuss about? Why are we all fighting about land that has so little intrinsic value? If you want to fight about something, you know, fight about the Gulf. Where there is gas. Where there is oil. Where there is wealth. To me, that made more sense.
“But, of course, the battle for the Holy Land has always been the hottest here — in this place, on this land, in these hills, in this city — even before we discovered oil and gas. Why? I have never been able to explain it. But I have come to believe that there’s something supernatural at work here, Jonathan. Unseen forces are at work — angels and demons, powers of darkness and light — that move quietly and mysteriously, like the wind.
“You cannot see the wind, but you can see its effects. So it is with these unseen forces battling for control of this land. They are real, and they are alive, and they are shaping events here, turning some men into heroes and others into fanatics. And I believe they are locked in some kind of cosmic, winner-take-all battle that is yet to be decided. I don’t pretend to understand it. But I believe it, because I live here, and I know this is not a normal place.
“And do not ask me how, but something inside of me tells me that good will triumph over evil. That this oil deal is going to go through. That we are going to help people become richer than they’ve ever imagined. That we are going to help people see the value of working together in a common market, for the sake of their children, even if they and their parents and their parents’ parents have been at war for generations.
“Look at the French and the Germans. Look at the Japanese and the Koreans. They all used to hate each other. They fought wars of annihilation to wipe each other off the face of the earth. And now they live in peace. Why can the Palestinians and Israelis not do that? There is no reason. And I have this dream that the time to do it is now.”
Bennett had thought about that, then looked straight into Sa’id’s eyes and asked, “And if we all die in the process of trying to make it work, what will you say then?”
McCoy had winced at Bennett’s bluntness, but Sa’id did not blink at all.