JERUSALEM – Preventive diplomacy, by its nature, does not usually generate flashy headlines for the practitioner.
In his nearly six years as the United Nations’ top envoy to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Nickolay E. Mladenov has worked quietly behind the scenes to help prevent the Gaza Strip from boiling, preserve the possibility of a two-state solution and build support for Arab-Israeli normalization as a widely preferable alternative to Israeli annexation of West Bank lands.
But he achieved at least one achievement that qualifies as attractive: he earned the respect of almost everyone he dealt with, many of whom consider themselves enemies.
“A very honest broker,” Rami Hamdallah, a former prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, called him.
“I personally depended on him,” said Moshe Kahlon, a former Israeli finance minister.
“A man of integrity,” said Jason Greenblatt, a former Trump administration envoy to the Middle East.
“We are proud to have met him,” said Khalil al-Hayya, Hamas’s deputy leader in Gaza.
Mladenov, 48, whose last day of work was Thursday, is returning to his native Bulgaria, after abruptly withdrawing from another high-profile mission in Libya, to tackle what he described as a serious health problem.
In a two-hour exit interview, he recalled being surprised at how irrelevant he initially felt when he arrived in Jerusalem in 2015 as a special UN coordinator for the Middle East peace process – a position created in 1999, when there was still a peace process.
Its predecessors generally functioned like flies, experts say, issuing statements that tended to criticize Israel, but rarely ventured out on the sidelines. The Israelis rejected the UN – “One” in Hebrew – with a sour “Hum, shmum”.
“This mission was very isolated from any kind of high-level interaction,” said Mladenov. “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 convinced the Quartet of Middle East mediators – the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations – to publish an innovative report on concrete measures that, with little hope of progress, could at least preserve the possibility of a solution of two states.
Acting in the absence of negotiations contradicted the diplomatic doctrine of the time, which argued that the resumption of peace negotiations was fundamental and the way to resolve everything.
“I don’t think that’s how it works,” said Mladenov. “You can have the best deal in the world,” but while the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza are at odds, he said, “good luck with their implementation.”
Since then, his approach has gained wide acceptance.
A recommendation by the Quartet, urging Israel to stop its West Bank settlement venture, was nothing new. But another – calling on Palestinians to “cease inciting violence” and condemning “all acts of terrorism” – called for “a change in everyone’s position,” he said.
It required less jumping for Mr. Mladenov. As Bulgarian foreign minister, he worked with Israeli officials after a suicide attack in Burgas in 2012 that killed a bus driver and five Israeli tourists, an attack attributed to Hezbollah.
As a UN envoy, he was criticized for his candor. “I don’t talk about this conflict in the usual way,” he said. “You can’t go into a restaurant in Tel Aviv, shoot people and then tell me that this is legitimate resistance. No, it’s not.”
Mladenov was equally unforgiving when Israeli settlers burned a living Palestinian family. And after Israeli soldiers killed a 15-year-old boy from Gaza during border protests in 2018, he tweeted: “Stop shooting children.”
“If you, as the UN, are unsure of your position on these things, you cannot be trusted,” he said. “And I suppose to be critical of Israelis and Palestinians, where I felt that they did the wrong things, and to welcome them when they did the right things – I think this is something new in this frozen conflict.”
He also did things in silence.
In Gaza, a territory permanently on the brink of another war, he took it upon himself to avoid it.
In 2018, the Palestinian Authority, which controls the West Bank, was trying to strangle its archrival rival Hamas, which controls Gaza, to submission, withholding money for the Gaza plant and reducing its payroll. Gaza’s economy was on the verge of collapse. Then there were waves of violence between Gaza and Israel – border murders, incendiary balloons and rockets.
Still, with Egypt’s mediation, Mladenov managed to get around the Palestinian Authority, causing Qataris to provide vital funding to keep the lights on and money flowing in Gaza – while keeping Israel and Hamas more or less the same. page.
Nimrod Novik, a veteran Israeli peace negotiator, said Mladenov saw how to structure his arguments in terms of the interests of each party. “You can say to the Israelis, ‘Look, life in Gaza is so miserable,'” said Novik. “Or you can say, ‘Gaza is about to explode in your face, but if we do one-two-three we can gain a few months of peace, so help me to help you’.”
Mladenov said he feared that another Gaza war would let the world return to its “usual talking points about this place”, condemned any hope of peace talks, left a “Somalia at Israel’s doorstep”, attracted Israel’s condemnation from the other side The Arab world and dissuaded donor countries from paying to rebuild Gaza the way they did after the 2014 war.
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 changed borders. We fight for sacred places, languages, churches. We changed populations for 100 years, if not more. And when you carry that luggage, it helps you to see things a little differently. This is not a conflict where you can enter and just draw a line. It’s emotional. “
“I know from experience that when foreigners in quotes come and tell you what to do, you just close them. You’re like, ‘Thank you so much,’ ”he added. “You can’t preach to these guys. Remember, they’ve been at it for half a century. “
Last spring, sources said, Mladenov was one of the first officials to conclude that no impediment would prevent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from fulfilling his promises to annex the West Bank territory, but that it may be possible to induce him to give up annexation for a prize greater: normalization with the Arab states that had long avoided Israel.
The annexation plan “was gaining momentum,” he said. “And if that happened, it would be terrible for Israel.” Forget another ceasefire in Gaza, he said. Imagine worldwide condemnation.
“My thought was, if this is the wrong way to go, but you can see why it would be attractive to certain parts of the population, what would be attractive to a larger part that is not destructive, but really constructive?”
He did not claim credit for the deals Israel did. But he worked to build an electorate for the idea of using normalization like a carrot to reward Israel for abandoning annexation.
“Some people were taken aback by this,” said Jared Kushner, son-in-law of President Trump, who headed the White House team in the Middle East. “He saw what we were doing. We trusted him and he gave us constructive feedback. “
The Palestinians viewed these deals as catastrophic betrayal, but Mladenov argued that normalization would be beneficial to them as well.
“Okay, now it’s very exciting, the Palestinians are super angry,” he said. “But put those emotions aside and think: Who is more effective when trying to pressure Israel to do certain things? Egypt and Jordan. If four, six or ten Arab countries have embassies in Tel Aviv, you would like them to be on your side, right? “
“Now you have a treaty,” he added. “This is a big thing. Neither Israel nor the Arab countries will want to ruin it. This gives certain countries an advantage in Israel. If you are Palestinians, you will 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 fan of Trump’s peace plan. But he said the ongoing changes are creating exciting possibilities for his successor as a UN envoy, Norwegian diplomat Tor Wennesland.
“It’s a different world,” said Mladenov. “And you know, with all its flaws, it can really be better.”