"Hamas and the Two-State Solution: Villian, Victim or Missing Ingredient?"
Unedited Transcript
Fifty-Second Capitol Hill Conference Series on U.S. Middle East Policy
Hamas and the Two-State Solution: Villain, Victim or Missing Ingredient?
Speakers:
Sherifa Zuhur,
Research Professor of Islamic and Regional Studies, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College
Ali Abunimah,
Fellow, Palestine Center; Journalist; Founder, Electronicintifada.Com
Haim Malka,
Deputy Director and Fellow,Middle East Program, CSIS
Shibley Telhami,
Anwar Sadat Professor For Peace And Development, University Of Maryland
Moderator/Discussant
Chas W. Freeman, Jr.,
President, Middle East Policy Council
Rayburn Building, Goldroom 2168
Washington, D.C.
April 11, 2008
Transcript by:
Federal News Service
Washington, DC
CHAS. W. FREEMAN, JR.: Can I ask the speakers, please, to come up and take their places? Ali, Haim, where are you? All right. We're going to give it another minute or so, and then get underway.
(Cross talk.)
MR. FREEMAN: Well, it's approaching 9:30 Arab time, so I think - can I ask people, please, to turn off cell phones? I'll set a good example by doing that myself.
All right, everybody please take a seat.
Good morning, I'm Chas. Freeman. For those of you who don't me, I have the privilege to be president of the Middle East Policy Council, an organization with nearly three decades of history, which does three things. We come up here to Capitol Hill, to the heart of darkness, and try to light a candle of enlightenment by raising questions that are politically incorrect or neglected for public discussion, in the hope that we can produce a more enlightened and balanced debate on those questions.
Second, we take the transcripts, the edited transcripts of those discussions, and make them the first item in our quarterly, Middle East Policy, which I'm proud to say is the most-often cited in its field and very much worth reading. The unedited transcript, I should say, will be up on our website, which is MEPC.ORG within a few days after the event.
The third thing we do, which is less visible but perhaps, in the long run, most important, is to train high school teachers throughout the country about Arab civilization and Islam, and how to teach public school students about those important matters. We have a new program, which is to be web-based, and Barbara Petzen, who has joined us in sitting somewhere back there, is working hard on a revitalized and up-to-date curriculum, and a structure to ensure that it does not again get out of date, as our last effort in this regard did. We have trained 18,000 teachers throughout the country, and it's a unique program.
This brings me, of course, to the point that we are supported by donations, and anyone who wishes to give would be most welcome.
This is the 52nd Capitol Hill conference we've held. Today's topic is very timely. It is "Hamas: Villain, Victim, or Missing Ingredient?" Obviously, this is a question which is crucial for peace in the Holy Land and, more broadly, in the Middle East because the Israeli-Palestinian issue is the core issue which radicalizes the region and which energizes anti-Americanism into terrorism in the broader Islamic world. So there's a great deal at stake.
Many see Hamas as a pure villain. It has been branded by Israel, the United States, and some others as a terrorist organization rather than a legitimate movement for Palestinian independence or resistance against occupation. It is widely seen as extremist, and yet on many instances it has shown principled and disciplined restraint.
This is an organization which is Islamist, Sunni Salafi in orientation. Is it morally absolutist or is it, as it claims, a democratic party which is prepared to accept electorally determined alternation in office? It, of course, won the Palestinian elections rather decisively and remains very popular, but it is seen in neighboring countries, autocracies like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, as a major threat in that it appears to unite Islamism and democracy. It does not accept Israel's right to exist, but it does accept that Israel does exist and repeatedly states that it is willing to deal with Israel.
Is Hamas, the elected government of the Palestinians, a victim? It has been assiduously isolated and sought to be overthrown by Israel and the United States. It has, oddly, as a Sunni Islamist movement, been driven into the arms of Iran, having nowhere else to go. It is now the subject of a siege in Gaza, with many implying that the siege will soon blossom into a full-scale war. In any event, Hamas' ascendancy as an elected government in Gaza has been accompanied by new extremes in suffering for the Palestinian people.
Is Hamas the missing ingredient in peace? Can a peace process that excludes the elected majority government of Palestine work, or is it dead on arrival? If Hamas is not included somehow in whatever peace may eventuate, will it not have the capacity to wreck that peace? By what right do those who are not elected claim to speak for and negotiate on behalf of Palestinians?
These are not easy questions, and they are all at play. Former President Jimmy Carter is preparing to go to Damascus next week to meet with the exiled leader of Hamas, Khaled Mash'al, who may in fact have quite different views than some of the Hamas people within Palestine. There was a theory that the two parts of the movement are not in sync and that they may be pursuing different agendas. This raises, finally, the question of the role of Hamas more broadly in the very large Palestinian diaspora, whose acquiescence in any peace must also be obtained if it is to be secured.
These are a few of the issues we will talk about today, and there are many others. I think we have an extraordinary panel to address these. We will go in the order on the program, beginning with Sherifa Zuhur, who is a distinguished visiting professor at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, and who has come down here - I hope you didn't drive this morning - to join us from that distance. Sherifa has specialized in the study of Islamist movements and terrorism, and she will lead off with a history and some background on the Hamas movement.
She will be followed by Ali Abunimah who also, I'm happy to say, made it from Chicago, which apparently is not easy given the weather in Chicago. We're very pleased he was able to do this. He is the founder of ElectronicIntifada.com, a researcher at the University of Chicago, and the author of numerous books on the Palestine issue. He will talk about some of the current byplay between Hamas, Fatah, Israel and the United States.
Haim Malka, who is a journalist, who worked in Jerusalem for six years and is now at CSIS, a very distinguished figure in the Washington scene on this issue, will talk about an Israeli perspective on Hamas and on peace with the Palestinians, and what may or not be possible given attitudes on both sides.
And finally, last but certainly not least, Shibley Telhami, who really needs no introduction in Washington, will speak of Arab opinion on these issues. He is a very distinguished analyst, the Anwar Sadat professor at the University of Maryland, and is about to release a study of public opinion - I think Monday, so he's got the weekend to analyze the results, but maybe will give us a preview - of an analysis of public opinion through the Arab world on this and related topics. So I think we're in for a treat.
Now for a few rules: Each person will get 10 to 12 minutes, and although I have a bad back and will be jumping up and down accordingly, I promise to jump up and viciously remove from the podium anybody who goes over 12 minutes. So you're duly on warning. And I know Sherifa has written a small book which she intended to deliver, but I am hoping she will give us the synopsis and I won't have to throw her off the podium physically.
When we finish, we come to what is usually the most interesting part of the event, which is interaction between the panelists and the audience, and between the panelists themselves, on whatever it is that is of concern to those of you who have joined us. And thank you; we again welcome you for doing so.
When we come to that point, simply signal to me; I will note who you are and then I will give you a signal when the people before you are about to finish. And you can come up to a microphone - you will see a microphone over here - tell us who you are, try to be succinct and to the point. If you have a speech to make, do it somewhere else - (laughter) - and if you can, direct your question to a specific panelist so we don't have to guess who it is that you want to embarrass or put on the spot.
So with this brief introduction, let me invite Sherifa Zuhur to come to the podium and talk about the background, the history, and the origins of this very interesting and perhaps frightening movement, Hamas.
SHERIFA ZUHUR: I'm actually at the Strategic Studies Institute which belongs to the Army, so I have to say that I'm expressing my own views and not those of the Army or the Department of Defense.
The movement of the Islamic resistance, Hamas, reflects the unique circumstances marking the Palestinian experience; namely, their lack of sovereignty, the occupied territories, Bantustan's status, the deplorable condition of the Palestinian refugee communities throughout the Middle East, the factionalization of their leadership, and it is also one of the Palestinian responses to the Islamic awakening or revival that took place throughout the Muslim world. I will reflect on certain continuities in Hamas' history, but I will also point out that the movement has evolved and has been very flexible indeed.
Emerging from the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood in Gaza, Hamas bears all the hallmarks of the brothers, or Ihwan, who call for dalwal, reform, an Islamization of society, adana (ph), social justice, and hachmia (ph), the sovereignty of God, which can only be realized through the sharia. And like all Ihwan, they accept any Muslim who calls him or herself a Muslim; in other words, they are not a Takfirist group. They are not like al Qaeda; they are not like the Dalmoush-led (ph) Islamic army in Gaza and some other smaller groups. They do aim for a consensus; they do have somewhat of a democratic process and have always had in their organization intended to inhibit factionalism. They are pragmatic. They have avoided conflict whenever possible with countries other than Israel, and it hasn't always been possible.
Hamas embodied both Hassan al-Banna, the founder of the Muslim Brothers, vision of an Islamic populist movement and developed a revolutionary Palestine-first approach. So whatever its relationship has been to the political process, it has set about serving the economic, social, spiritual and political needs of the Palestinians and those of prisoners, a very large segment of Palestinian population being prisoners.
Some questions arose about Hamas. You know, why is it that Islamism, modern Islamism anyway, belatedly emerged amongst Palestinians? This really has to be answered by looking at the Arab nationalist orientation of the PLO and Egypt's, Jordan's, and Israel's controls over religious institutions and discourse. Certainly, Egypt tried quite hard to destroy the Ihwan, the Muslim Brothers, put them out of business. By the 1960s they had very little prestige in Gaza. And when the strong personalities shaping the organization, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, a quadriplegic, gaz (ph) and educator, returned to Gaza, decided to focus on his own field, and to create in it a response to the spiritual and psychological devastation after 1967.
He really faced an uphill task. The Ihwan of the West Bank were, if anything, perceived even more negatively than the Ihwan of Egypt. And so Yassin's efforts in the Islamic society and later in the organization called the Mujamel Islami (ph) were deemed nonpolitical by the Israeli authorities, who licensed these groups; that was serendipitous for him. And while providing social, economic, and medical aid, he and his cohorts tried to awaken an Islamist vision, and they did so through the printing and distribution of segments of Sayyid Qutb's book, "Fi Zilal Koran." Maybe you've heard of "Ma'alim f-il-Tariq," which was Qutb's more radical later book; this book is a remarkable, huge, elevated discussion of the art of the Koran, and it's interesting to start out that way.
As this happened, a lot of other things went on. Both in Egypt and Kuwait, young Islamist Palestinians began to disengage from the other nationalist groups and form their own organizations, and this also happened abroad, in the U.K. and elsewhere, later providing a much-needed layer of external leadership. In Gaza, the Ihwan were able to increase their presence in many mosques and began the project of the Islamic university, which was the first institute of higher learning in Gaza, where this pattern of rivalries with Fatah and manipulation by Yasser Arafat were very much in evidence. And this type of endeavor, stood in parties in Palestinian universities and secondary schools, were very important to Hamas throughout the '80s.
According to insiders in the organization, the group began planning for armed resistance long prior to the Intifada, but they knew they weren't ready. They began facing competition with another new group, Islamic Jihad. And when the Intifada began, Hamas announced its existence and proclaimed jihad as the vehicle for liberation, and that was really new for the brothers at that time. This was a period of trial and error for the organization; arrests by the Israelis, in 1988 and 1999 particularly, caused its leadership from then on to be mostly directed from outside. And the real outcome of the Intifada was a profound uncertainty and existential crisis for Hamas because it caused the Arab governments and the PLO to seek resolution in Madrid and then in Oslo.
So in the Oslo period, the group had a mixed experience. The deportation of 413 Hamas members to Lebanon in 1992 actually boosted the group's legitimacy, as did the Mish'al affair, when the Israelis tried to poison Mish'al in Jordan, and in Sheikh Yassin's tour of the Arab world. At the same time, Hamas faced virulent opposition from the PLO because Israel demanded that group contain them. And this was really aggravated in a number of incidents testing Hamas' line that it is a fraternal organization, that ultimately - and it has this line now - it does seek reconciliation with Fatah; after all, they have basically the same aim, which is to alleviate the Palestinian situation.
In the Oslo period, Hamas grew many services, attracted many educated groups, for example, an entire women's movement within it. And then, with the second Intifada and Hamas' increased actions against the Israelis and the inter-Palestinian strife and corruption prior to the elections of 2006, Palestinians really looked to Hamas an antidote for everything that was going wrong.
Its seemingly contradictory statements about a political solution are similarly rooted in its history. It has, at many different times going back to 1988, offered a truce to Israel, an interim peace, but at the same time its discourse also concerns an ultimate solution. And there are members who support a two-state solution and members who do not. What many people say is this is possibly modifiable by referendum; that's one thing that they talk about, but that a solution cannot exclude the rights of refugees or the status of Jerusalem.
So I am done. I will be happy to answer questions.
MR. FREEMAN: Thank you. You actually brought it in ahead of time, and it was a very useful bit of background for all of us on a very complex movement that is mainly caricatured in our press rather than accurately described.
I'll just make three observations about what you've said, which will, I hope, be taken up by Haim when he speaks. First, as I recall, in Saudi Arabia when I arrived as ambassador in 1989, the Saudis were severely restricting donations to Hamas on the grounds that it was a Shin Bet, Israeli internal security, front. And you reminded us that, in fact, the Israelis had a role in the beginning in facilitating, if not sponsoring, the growth of Hamas in order to build a kind of religious firebreak against the secular PLO. That's a great irony for which I hope heads have rolled in Shin Bet, because it didn't work out too well.
Second, this brings me to the point that you mentioned, the attempted assassination of Khalid Mush'al in Jordan. That actually was with a biological agent; I think it was the first time that biological warfare on an individual level had been practiced, and Prime Minister Netanyahu had to apologize and provide the antidote to that.
But that illustrates another point, and that is that it is hard to get a life insurance policy if you're a Hamas politician. And I mention this because if you go on the Middle East Policy Council website you will find interviews with a fairly large number of Hamas leaders, all of whom are now dead. Over the years we have interviewed them through professional interviewers, and I'm sorry to say that, essentially without exception, they've all since been murdered.
So with that, those few remarks taking up the time you didn't use, I will invite Ali to come up and talk about the current state of play.
ALI ABUNIMAH: Thank you very much, and good morning. I'd just like to add, like Professor Zuhur, that I speak for myself; I don't give the view of any organization. But I would like to acknowledge and thank the Palestine Center, where I'm a fellow, for their support that allows me to do my research.
I just returned two days ago from a visit to Jordan and Lebanon. I wasn't able to go to Gaza, but since I was in the area I wrote to a friend of mine in Gaza just to see how he was doing and to tell him that I wished I could be there. And he replied with a few lines that I wanted to share to you. He is an academic and a peace activist born and raised in Gaza. He says, "Dear Ali, it's so nice to hear from you and know that you are just around the corner. I really wish you could visit us here in Gaza. I know that it is wishful thinking, but one day we will see each other in person. I don't need to tell you how bad it is here. Things have deteriorated so rapidly. In addition to all the shortages you know about, now we have no fuel. The last time I drove my car was two months ago. I really don't know what more is needed for the international community to intervene; how many more dead bodies, I wonder. Anyway, my friend, they will not break our spirit."
I wanted to share that with you because I think it's so easy to forget that we are talking about entire human communities, cities, people, and how hard it is to talk about any solutions when the freedom to travel, to dialogue, to exchange ideas is so restricted and the importance, then, of events like this in allowing us to begin to break these taboos.
Since Hamas won the legislative election in the occupied Palestinian territories in January of 2006, the United States has attempted to isolate the movement in Gaza while propping up the leadership of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his electorally defeated Fatah faction in Ramullah, and the hope of reversing the election result and restoring Fatah to power. This has fit in with an overall U.S. strategy of fostering so-called moderate regimes in the region. These are regimes which are not defined by any democratic or human rights criteria, but simply by the criterion that they are allied with the United States and dependent on it to a greater or lesser extent. And the U.S. is, at the same time, determined to confront indigenous forces such as Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon, which the United States portrays not as indigenous movements with deep social roots, but merely as puppets of regional rival Iran.
This strategy has backfired spectacularly. In Palestine, Hamas has withstood an extraordinary military, economic, and political campaign waged against it by Israel with the encouragement of the United States. After Hamas' breach of the border war with Egypt last January, allowing hundreds of thousands of Palestinians to obtain basic supplies, Hamas is arguably more popular than ever. Meanwhile, the U.S.-sponsored peace negotiations between Israel and Abbas' U.S.-recognized Palestinian Authority have gone nowhere, and there is a growing realization that the policy has failed and it must change, but how it must change, the discussion is really only the beginning.
I won't go over all the background, but within just briefly, some context. Within weeks of the January 2006 election, Israel and the Quartet, which is the ad hoc group representing the U.S., the European Union, Russia and the U.N., had agreed to the complete isolation of Hamas unless it met certain conditions: renouncing armed struggle, recognizing Israel's main political demand that it has a right to exist as a Jewish state, and agreeing to abide by all signed agreements. No reciprocal conditions were imposed on Israel, which did not have to recognize Palestinian political demands a priori, was free to continue military attacks on Palestinians in occupied territories, and could violate signed agreements with total impunity.
It appears that these conditions were specifically tailored to be unacceptable to Hamas. The United States, in collaboration with Israel and elements of the Fatah leadership in Ramallah, put in place a siege to squeeze Hamas and the civilian population in Gaza in the hope that the population would turn against Hamas and back to Fatah. The United States also sponsored what amounted to an attempt at coup against Hamas by contra-style militias, which provoked Hamas' complete takeover of the interior of the Gaza strip in June 2007. And by now, I'm sure many of you have read the article "The Gaza Bombshell" in April's Vanity Fair, which details the background to this coup attempt.
This setback has prompted the U.S. to support even greater pressure on Hamas while trying to prop up Abbas and his Authority with more military and economic aid. In short, I think this will fail. I would argue that the only solution is indirect and direct engagement with Hamas.
One of the common claims of Israeli and other opponents of such engagement is that Hamas is an irrational jihadist organization with no identifiable or satiable political goals other than the destruction of Israel, as almost every newspaper article repeats whenever the name of Hamas is mentioned. However, Hamas is, as Dr. Zuhur pointed out, a complex, dynamic and diverse movement whose leadership has set its sights on a nationalist political strategy that cannot succeed without engagement with the group's adversaries, including Israel. And the group's pragmatism, in this sense, has been demonstrated by the numerous hudnas or ceasefires that it has repeatedly abided to and negotiated with Israel through intermediaries, including the current one that is more or less holding now. And of course, its election platform did not mention anything about the destruction of Israel.
In my remaining few minutes, I want to talk about a model that some Hamas leaders have put forward that I think should be seized on. This was put forward in an op-ed in the New York Times on November 1st, 2006, by a senior Hamas advisor, Ahmed Yousef, in the Gaza Strip, and he says the following. I'm going to read three brief paragraphs and then close my comments. He says, "Here in Gaza, few dream of peace. For now, most they're only to dream of a lack of war. It is for this reason that Hamas proposes a long-term truce, during which the Israeli and Palestinian peoples can try to negotiate a lasting peace. A truce is referred to in Arabic as a hudna. Typically covering 10 years, a hudna is recognized in Islamic jurisprudence as a legitimate and binding contract. A hudna extends beyond the Western concept of a ceasefire and obliges the parties to use the period to seek a permanent, nonviolent resolution to their differences."
I'm skipping a bit; he says, "Whereas war dehumanizes the enemy and makes it easier to kill, a hudna affords the opportunity to humanize one's opponents and understand their position with the goal of resolving the intertribal or international dispute." He says, "This concept is not as foreign as it might seem; after all, the Irish Republican Army agreed to halt its military struggle to free Northern Ireland from British rule without recognizing British sovereignty. Irish Republicans continue to aspire to a united Ireland, free of British rule, but rely upon peaceful methods. Had the IRA been forced to renounce its vision of reuniting Ireland before negotiations could occur, peace would never have prevailed. Why should more be demanded of the Palestinians?"
This is one example of some very conciliatory and I think far-reaching ideas put forward by Hamas' leaders. Is it possible to find contradictory statements that appear more militant and more hard-line? Yes, it is absolutely, which is why engagement has to be reciprocal and gradual, and recognize that every political movement can only move as far as its constituency and its internal consensus will allow it. The British and U.S. governments recognized that when it came to the IRA, and recent revelations by Jonathan Powell, Tony Blair's foreign policy chief in the 1990s, have shown the extent to which the British government was prepared to negotiate with the IRA, even when there were no ceasefires. It seems to me a real folly to turn down these kinds of overtures when Hamas is putting them forward.
In terms of a solution, as Dr. Zuhur pointed out, there is a lively internal debate within Hamas on a two-state solution, on a one-state solution, on other kinds of solutions. In other words, the door is open if we collectively in the United States are prepared to go through it. Thank you.
MR. FREEMAN: Thank you. I think your ending remark is absolutely crucial because we live in a moment of great irony in which, for the first time, governments generally are committed to a two-state solution, while the sense in the region is that a two-state solution is becoming impossible to imagine. How can there be two states when one of them is limited to less than 11 percent of the original territory of the Palestine mandate? How can there be two states when one state has the sovereignty that we accord to Indian tribes, rather than the sort of sovereignty that is generally recognized internationally as pertinent to a state? And so, in a sense, the offer to negotiate that comes from some voices, important voices, within Hamas is not necessarily an offer that will stay on the table forever.
And with that we come to Haim Malka, who will talk about the Israeli perspective on Hamas, on the prospects for peace and for truce as these are evolving. I might note, not to steal Haim's thunder, that the latest polling data shows that 60-some percent of Israelis favor a dialogue with Hamas, so all is not lost on that score.
HAIM MALKA: Thank you. It's an honor to participate in such a distinguished panel. And obviously we all want to solve this conflict, but I think for the past 15 years of Arab-Israeli peacemaking we've been asking the wrong question. We've been asking how to get the quickest final-status agreement we can get. How can we get the two sides to come together and sign a final agreement when we should be asking, what kind of Israeli-Palestinian agreement we can actually get, given the difficult conditions on the ground and the numerous constraints.
I think there's a way forward, but we have to be realistic and practical about what can be achieved. Rather than push the sides to focus on a final status agreement at this juncture, Israelis and Palestinians should instead pursue a long-term ceasefire or truce which includes Hamas. Strategically, we're still trying to get to the same place; we're still trying to get the sides to a final-status agreement which will lead to a two-state solution. But the constraints to reaching that kind of agreement at the moment are too great.
Most important, perhaps, as we've been discussing, has been the rise of Hamas and its ability to thwart the negotiations through numerous rocket attacks. Those attacks can be treated by Israeli military incursions and military operations, but they cannot be eliminated using military means alone. The reality, as we've heard on the panel already, is that no viable Israeli-Palestinian political agreement can be reached without the cooperation of Hamas. Continuing to marginalize and boycott Hamas will only lead to more violence and stalemate.
But at the same time, there is no guarantee that bringing Hamas into a political framework will actually solve the difficult issues dividing Israelis and Palestinians. There is no guarantee that trying to bring Hamas into a political framework will stop the violence. But it has a much better chance of succeeding than the final status agreement. Hamas is not about to renounce violence or recognize Israel, and its inclusion in the political process will likely make a final agreement even more difficult to reach. A majority of Israelis are equally skeptical that the current formula of negotiations will actually lead to a comprehensive agreement which has a chance of implementation.
A truce has a much better chance of stabilizing the crisis by decreasing the ongoing violence. Over time, it could strengthen the development of Palestinian institutions, including a non-politicized security force, and could normalize Palestinian-Israeli interactions. It could even lead to Israeli military withdrawals to the pre-October 2006 lines and even beyond. The goal would be to create an interim accommodation and environment where serious negotiations could proceed without daily violence. It allows progress without forcing the two sides to compromise on existential and final-status issues which they're incapable of compromising on. Now, this is admittedly a difficult approach and it's fraught with danger, but I think given the many constraints that I've outlined it's probably the best option for moving forward.
So what are the basic terms of this truce? They've been debated in the press quite a bit over the last few months. The ingredients should include a ceasefire, meaning a halt to all Palestinian rocket and other military tacks against Israel; a halt to all Israeli military incursions in the Palestinian territories; a prisoner exchange, and lifting the siege of Gaza. It also requires a minimum of Palestinian unity, which is something that we haven't discussed yet today. Without an internal Palestinian accommodation between Hamas and Fatah, there can be no viable Israeli-Palestinian agreement of any kind.
So what does a truce not include? A truce does not require any direct U.S. or Israeli engagement or negotiation with Hamas at this time. It certainly doesn't preclude direct contacts, but what is more important at this stage is a credible mediator or intermediary to work out the terms. It also doesn't mean abandoning President Abbas and the so-called moderates. President Abbas should remain the key Palestinian interlocutor, but he should be prevented from working with Hamas and other factions to reach consensus on the many issues dividing Palestinians today. Most importantly, the U.S. should not block the resumption of a Palestinian unity government if that is what Palestinians conclude is in their national interest.
Now, ironically, a resumption of a Palestinian unity government or some kind of internal Palestinian accommodation will likely terminate the negotiation process underway between President Abbas and Prime Minister Olmert. That's not necessarily a negative development, in my opinion. I think it's better to have no negotiations than a negotiation process that only leads to more frustration, anger and violence.
Obviously, that is precisely the opposite of the current U.S. strategy launched in Annapolis. That strategy is based on further dividing Palestinians and has elevated the negotiations to a sacred status with the aim of reaching a framework agreement by the end of 2008. Such an agreement, if it signed by President Abbas and Prime Minister Olmert, will be so watered down that will be virtually void of any meaning. What the U.S. has failed to recognize is what Israelis and Palestinians need most today is not a shelf agreement but an end to daily violence and terror. That can only be achieved through a broader political strategy which addresses Hamas' control of Gaza and its permanent role within Palestinian politics and society.
Now, while the debate is heating up here in Washington, it's been ongoing and intense in Israel for quite some time, at least for the last few years. What is interesting, I think is that a gap has really emerged between Israeli public opinion and the position of the government and the military. Even cabinet ministers on the right, such as Shas Party leader Eli Yishai, several weeks ago made a statement to the press calling for the government to engage in direct negotiations with Hamas over the release of Gilad Shalid (ph). That's a significant shift for someone like Eli Yishai. As Ambassador Freeman mentioned, Ha'aretz newspaper poll in February stated that 64 percent of Israelis supported negotiations with Hamas over a ceasefire and a prisoner exchange. When it was broken down, over 50 percent of Likud voters also supported negotiations with Hamas over a ceasefire and prisoner exchange, which I think is a staggering number.
Israelis want an interlocutor that can deliver. They want an interlocutor that can implement an agreement that is reached, and they certainly don't believe that President Abbas is that interlocutor, and he certainly doesn't have the ability to implement any agreement. I think this also demonstrates the Israeli public's willingness to look at Hamas from a different perspective, to recognize that Hamas a role in some future Israeli-Palestinian accommodation, and that without Hamas' participation no progress can actually be achieved.
Now, the government and military are very skeptical. They have a completely different position. They see the conflict with Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups as an ongoing war, and they do not want to lose operational freedom against Palestinian militants. They also fear that a ceasefire will allow militants to retrain and rearm only to be stronger once hostilities resume.
Despite the periodic short lulls in the rocket fire which have been brokered over the last several years, the military is convinced that a renewed round of intense escalation is only a matter of time. And they look at the example of Hezbollah which stockpiled weapons and built up its infrastructure after the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000 and its performance in the 2006 war and they see that as a very troubling precedent.
On the political level, the prime minister is wary of legitimizing Hamas and weakening President Abbas. The political echelon interprets any ceasefire arrangement as throwing a lifeline to Hamas at a time when it is seen as struggling in Gaza. And also there are significant fears of growing Iranian influence in the Palestinian territories.
Now, these are all valid concerns, which I think must be addressed. Just because we think Hamas should be included in the political framework doesn't mean that that framework will necessarily succeed. It's been nearly two years since Gilead Shalid was kidnapped by Hamas and other Palestinian factions. And all efforts to broker a prisoner exchange have failed. Even the political lulls we've seen in the fighting have also broken down prematurely and have had limited success.
At the same time, the hardliners in Hamas, especially the military commanders in Gaza, are growing stronger; they're growing louder. And some factions within the military leadership may oppose a truce. The political leadership, including the exiled leadership in Damascus, is going to have a difficult time trying to sell the concept of a truce to the military leaders in Gaza.
So when we examine Hamas' role, we should have very modest objectives and be realistic about the challenges of including Hamas in a political framework. Rather than waste our efforts on a comprehensive agreement which is beyond reach at the moment, we should promote a long-term truce which includes Hamas and which could eventually set the stage for a more meaningful final-status agreement in the future.
The challenges to reaching a ceasefire are significant and the window of opportunity is shrinking. While there is no guarantee this approach will succeed, any policy without a clear strategy to deal with Hamas will undoubtedly fail. Though it may be difficult for U.S. policymakers to fathom this, I think we should urge them to support efforts to end the violence at all costs. Thank you.
MR. FREEMAN: Thank you, Haim. I think it's interesting that there seems to be a sense that we need to find a new framework for dealing with this issue. And I gather that everyone who spoke believes that Hamas is, so far - Shibley will, no doubt, contradict us - believes that Hamas is a missing ingredient, but is unsure whether it's a villain or a victim and believes we won't find out until we give it a try.
In this context, it's striking that the United States, in many respects, appears as a spoiler that is against the majority opinion on both the Israeli and the Palestinian side. The effort to destroy the Mecca initiative of Saudi Arabia to bring about a unified government in Palestine was quite intensive on our part. There's a question which I think Haim raised, which is whether we wouldn't be better off stepping back and not interfering quite so much in the region. The Saudi initiative in Mecca, of course, had multiple motivations. One was to avoid leaving the field to Iran and to give Palestinians an alternative to Iran that they don't currently have.
The second, to be candid, I believe was the desire to infect the rather politically appealing clean-government image of Hamas by associating it with the rather dirty image of Fatah, the hope being that if you get a healthy movement in bed with an unhealthy one then the disease will prove catching and the healthy movement will be weakened. In any event, I would come at last to the question of whether, as you put it, Haim, no negotiations in some circumstances might be better than negotiations that do damage. I wonder, in that context, whether there really are negotiations going on. But we can talk about that in the Q&A and comments session.
Shibley Telhami, as I said, has just completed a - or just received the results of an extensive polling operation in the region. And I wonder, Shibley, whether you can confirm the sense that many of us have that in the forthcoming Palestinian election, Hamas is likely to show very well?
SHILBEY TELHAMI: Thanks very much, Chas. And thanks also to Anne Joyce who helped organize this and has been really a remarkable editor of Middle East policy over the years. And she deserves a lot of credit. I am also proud to be speaking in this building where I once had an office in the golden era of this establishment when Lee Hamilton was the chairman of the subcommittee on Europe and the Middle East and when, in fact, there were a lot of informational hearings. You know, this kind of hearing could have been held by a subcommittee. At that time, there were hearings on things like the water problem in the Middle East and economic challenges in the Middle East and all sorts of things that I personally also helped organize at that time. So it's a nice feeling to be back here.
One does not have to glamorize or defend Hamas to note that U.S. approach to Hamas has failed. And one shouldn't glamorize Hamas. Hamas does target civilians, and that is morally unacceptable under any circumstances. And a secularist is inevitably uneasy about an Islamist or any religious party because one does not know whether in the end they would abide by the democratic rules or whether they would impose sharia law, which is uncomfortable for most people - frankly for most Palestinians who are not religious. Those things are legitimate concerns to debate and think about and talk about. But the facts are the facts. And if you look at where we are, it's a policy failure, no doubt.
Let's begin with Annapolis. When Annapolis was held last November, the theory behind it was, after the Hamas takeover of Gaza, that this is a way to bolster the moderates in the Middle East to show that moderation and peace pays and that militancy does not; and so in some ways, to make it more difficult for Hamas and make it - reward the moderates who would be negotiating, open up a new peace process with the government of President Mahmoud Abbas to show that moderation works.
Well, we know the results, obviously, and particularly because there is no significant peace move. But we can look at the public opinion polls as they have shown over the past year and a half, I would say. And here, I want to say that I am going to be releasing the 2008 public opinion polls in six Arab nations. This is a very significant poll of 4,000 people on a lot of issues, not only on the Arab-Israeli issue but on Iraq, Iran, attitudes toward the U.S., global issues, regional issues, very complex. We're releasing it on Monday at 2:00 p.m. at the Brookings Institution and we'll have it available after that. I'm still analyzing the data so I'll just make some references to attitudes toward Hamas specifically from this data.
But even from last year's poll, which I conducted in November, December of 2006 actually, released in February of 2007, when you asked people to take a position on the Palestinian issue, what you had in the Arab world outside of the Palestinian areas, what you had is a majority of people saying they support a national unity government above all. But of those who didn't support a national unity government, who took sides with Hamas and Fatah, by a wide margin, they supported Hamas over Fatah at that time.
What we see in the results - and I don't have the final results, but I did look at them to say with confidence -that this year you have something very similar, where of those people who take sides, between Hamas and Fatah, more people take Hamas' side over Fatah's side in Arab public opinion. And this is confirmed by my most two recent trips to the Middle East including just a couple weeks ago in Saudi Arabia, in terms of how I was reading public opinion. And when I say public opinion, I should say that government obviously have taken different positions. We're talking here about public opinions.
Governments, particularly those that are friendly with the U.S. certainly don't want to see Hamas win. They're threatened by it. And some of them want to deal with it because of reality, but they don't want to see it have an advantage. So it's a complicated picture in relation to them. But public opinion is no question. If we're looking at weakening Hamas in public opinion and showing that moderation pays, that's certainly not the outcome that we have in public opinion across the Arab world, at least in the six countries that I have surveyed, which include Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, and Lebanon.
Now, why might you ask? And let me give you four reasons, context for Arab public opinion. The first is really not so much about Hamas and Fatah. If you recall that the Palestinian elections were held in the context of the American advocacy of democracy, this was the issue. The United States said in fact some of the justification for the Iraq war was spreading democracy in the Middle East. And clearly, it was very high in the articulated agenda of American foreign policy, spreading democracy in the Middle East.
By the way, the Arab public, in every poll that I've conducted since 2003, the Arab public never believed that, never believed that democracy is a real objective of American foreign policy. But the justification for holding elections, including the Palestinian elections was in fact the spread of democracy. And if you recall, there were people in the discourse here and abroad who said we've seen that before; we've heard it before, particularly in the late '80s with Bush one. But then, when Islamists starting doing well, we backed off. And of course, that's what happened in part.
And President Bush said, no, we will not this time back off. We will let democracy play itself out. And of course, Hamas gets elected and we know what the result was in terms of immediate confrontation. So there's a broad sense that we're not allowing democracy to stand. There is even more frustration because when you make something an objective, state it, they don't believe you to begin with. And then, when you say you should believe me anyway, and you have another result that reconfirms their views, the intensity is even higher.
The second, I think, in all of the polls that we have - Arab public opinion, by the way, based on last year's poll and this year's poll, a majority of Arab public opinion is prepared for a two-state solution based on the 1967 border. The majority is prepared for a two-state solution. But when you ask them whether they believe it's going to happen, a large majority don't believe it's going to happen. So in essence, they want it but they don't believe. See, very similar actually to the Palestinian-Israeli kind of attitudes where you have a majority of people who think - who want a two-state, but they don't think it's going to happen.
That's why you can be pro-peace and support militancy - support militancy because that's the instrument by which you're going to make the other do what they otherwise don't want to do because you don't believe they're going to do it. And that's true in Arab public opinion, confirmed in the last two polls. You have those two trends that explain it.
And the third is there is no confidence in American foreign policy; when you look at the public opinion, 70 percent say they have absolutely no confidence in the United States of America. So anything that is associated with the U.S. is not - people don't have faith. So if you ask them to have faith in the peace process, they obviously don't have faith in agreements because of previous behavior, but they don't have confidence in American policy, in American diplomacy. And that's showing.
And even worse than that, when you ask them, name the two biggest threats to you personally, the vast majority name Israel and the U.S. Iran does not get that big a share. It gets something like 10 percent. But the U.S. is named by over 80 percent of people as one of the two biggest threats to them. So the public opinion sees the U.S. as a threat. And it's very hard to see how you can have confidence in foreign policy when you see the U.S. as a threat. For all of these reasons, clearly the policy is not working.
Now, what is on the table now? And I just want to say two things to finish. First, I think the choice is not between talking to Hamas and not talking to Hamas. I think that is a procedural issue. That is a procedural issue. I think the choice - the problem isn't whether you talk to someone or not. You can have somebody else talk to someone. It is whether you find an accommodation for them in your paradigm, whether you can see a place for them down the road, whether you set up to test them in a way that makes them party to a package. And I think the problem in American foreign policy has been that there was no such place.
In essence, policy really since the election of Hamas has been to bring them down. And that is, I think, the problem. And that hasn't worked, and I think right now the choice is to find a way to at least have them engage in a process or to accept the notion that they could be accommodated in the process. And I think that might entail encouraging something that we have discouraged, which is having somebody like the Saudis or the Egyptians renegotiate a deal between Hamas and Fatah and construct a peace process based on the notion that Hamas simply cannot be defeated because even if it is defeated militarily, there is widespread grassroots support for it. And it is very hard to envision in this environment any peace deal that could hold while Hamas or its supporters can be spoilers.
MR. FREEMAN: Thank you very much. We now come to question and comment time. I already see one hand from an old-timer who knows how to get in first. And before we go to him, I wish to remind you, please, when you ask your question, identify yourselves and, if possible, direct it to a panelist.
Jeff, why don't you come up because you did get in first.
I want to pick up, first of all, before we start, on something Shibley pointed to, which I heartily agree with, and that is the important role that informational hearings in this chamber can have. I think, in a time of trouble like the 1960s, of the important role that Senator Fulbright played in educating the American public to external realities, which we had systematically not understood. And I hope that in the new Congress that will be coming into office next year after this year's elections, we will see a return to the practice of attempts at education of the public by non-partisan, but systematic exploration of issues, including this one, which is very, very crucial. And I would like to commend all the panelists for getting us off to a good start with that.
Q: Thank you. Jeff Steinberg, EIR Magazine. I guess my question is primarily directed to Haim Malka, but I would welcome comments from the other panelists as well. Probably I would take exception to Chas's comment towards the beginning that the Israelis maybe made a mistake by their initial sponsorship of Hamas in the form of licensing to various charitable organizations because it strikes me that the more time that passes, the further we get away from any kind of feasible two-state solution settlement with the continuing expansion of the Israeli occupation and buildup of more and more parts of the West Bank, kind of paralleling the process that has occurred on the Golan Heights.
So what strikes me is that the idea of focusing on achievable goals - hudna, things like that - really perpetuates an Israeli policy of buying time to absolutely nullify any prospects of a legitimate two-state solution, whether it is by deepening economic infrastructure and more of the territory, political-targeted assassinations, first of Fatah, and now of Hamas leaders, to ensure that, at every step along the way, the moderates are eliminated and the more radical elements tend to gain the upper hand through the reactions, plus elimination of many of the most competent leaders.
So, that's my question - aren't we really talking about a continuation of an Israeli strategy that assures no possibility of peace?
MR. FREEMAN: I take it that you align with the 70 percent of people in the region who want a two-state solution, but believe it won't happen?
Haim? Better press the button to get yourself on the air. Okay.
MR. MALKA: There we go.
In essence, I think Israelis - the majority of Israelis, the Israeli political establishment, the Israeli military establishment, has understood and recognized that they need to withdraw from a majority of the West Bank. And Ariel Sharon recognized that; the Kadima platform recognized that. I think that is something that the Israeli majority has come to accept.
Now, how you get to that point is a question that is continuously debated. My point is that the current formula for negotiations - of trying to get to an agreement where Israelis and Palestinians are forced to compromise on the final-status issues, is perpetuating the current situation as well.
So it's a question of: Which perpetuates it more? What is - what is more achievable? Should we be trying to focus on the final-status agreement, or should we try to get some sort of an interim phase where Israelis and Palestinians can start working out some of their issues? So, I think the status quo of negotiations, where we are at, perpetuates the status quo just as much.
MR. FREEMAN: Sherifa?
MS. ZUHUR: I just wanted to go back to that original point. It's a little more complicated than saying that the Israelis facilitated the growth of Hamas. I mean, the simple answer is they were very concerned with the PLO at the time and identified them as the terrorists. But the complicated things - I mean, there were the al-Mujama al-Islami was licensed, and the license was taken away. And then, through particular contacts, Yassin was able to restore it.
But, really, Israel has never had a unified policy, either on Islam, Muslims, or, really, on Palestinians - they're different, you know, warring groups. And the irony is, even within Israel there is an Islamist movement, a strong Islamist movement, and it was able to come in contact with Hamas only after 1967, you know, rose. And it came about because of the complete suppression of Islamic education and religious institutions.
So in the West Bank and Gaza, after '67, the particular authorities who were there at the time, who were different then - like the Ministry of Minority Affairs within Israel had been - said, no, no, no, we need to have civil society groups growing. So, that's the, sort of, area in which you could say, well, there was some facilitation.
MR. TELHAMI: Yeah, I want to say that certainly the Israelis are capable of thinking strategically in the long term - and they have, and that there's a lot of evidence that they have at various stages. But, more often the Israelis are certainly capable of shooting themselves in the foot. (Laughter.)
And I think this is one of those cases. I don't think it's by design. I think one of the saddest things about Israeli politics - I mean, Israel has never had a single party have a majority in the Knesset since it was established 60 years ago, and it's always a coalition government. And they really don't have a solution, other than a two-state solution, for the long haul.
And I think that, not only the public understands, I think political elites actually understand it. I think even, maybe, the prime minister actually understands it. But they're incapable of making even the smallest - seemingly smallest decisions like removing roadblocks and stopping settlements, even in the middle of a peace process. Which shows a profoundly, you know, complicating, you know, problem in their politics.
And that's why I wonder whether the limitation of Israeli politics will ever produce the kind of transformative leaders that would make decisions on the question of state identity and ultimate borders. And that is why I don't believe it'll happen from the region, I think, in the end, without mediation from the outside. It just simply can't happen.
MR. FREEMAN: Ali, do you have a comment?
MR. ABUNIMAH: Yes. I think the danger that the questioner points out is real. We've seen Israel use the excuse of a so-called peace process to further entrench colonization and apartheid, and to complete, really, the goal that was set out from the beginning of the Zionist movement of transforming a majority, non-Jewish country into a majority Jewish country.
And that work is proceeding apace. We've seen that since Annapolis. So a hudna - or a cease-fire, long-term cease-fire, by itself, is not enough, although I agree that that has to be a first step.
I do think that the challenge for all of us is to broaden the horizons of our discussion. So much of the policy discussion is framed in the context of looking only at the occupied territories, and will there be a Palestinian state there, or not. And that's a mistake because the existential crisis that Israel faces - and has faced from the beginning, is how to impose a Jewish state on the reality of a country where the majority population is not Jewish and does not want to live in such a state.
That question was deferred for several decades because of the large-scale, forced exodus of Palestinians. It's now back on the agenda because, through the passage of time, Palestinians are once again on the cusp of being a majority between the river and the sea - which is why we have to be much more broad-minded. If Israel withdraws tomorrow from the West Bank and Gaza Strip - not very likely, I'll admit - it doesn't solve the conflict. As has been pointed out, there is an Islamist movement in Israel. There are more than a million Palestinians in Israel who are challenging the nature of the Israeli state as one that excludes them by law from all the privileges and rights of citizenship.
So, the point I'm making here, in sum, is that when you look - and I keep coming back to it because it's the topic of my research, what they did in Northern Ireland was they had to come up with a framework that dealt with the issue of fundamental rights and equality, but that existed within fundamentally opposing world views of Irish nationalism and the desire for Irish unity on the one hand, and fierce loyalty to the British state and to partition of Ireland on the other. And they did something pretty remarkable, which is to come up with a workable government that gives equal rights to every citizen, but has deferred those fundamental existential questions to some future time, and to a democratic decision. And that's really the term we have to be thinking in.
MR. FREEMAN: Sir?
Q: My name is Dan Pollack (sp).
I wanted to get clarification on a comment that Mr. Abunimah said. I think he said that Hamas is portrayed as irrationalist and jihadist - and I think I've heard that in this building as well. And I guess maybe the reason for that might be that, many people are aware - I happen to be a member of the Lions Club, and in the Hamas Charter, the Lions Club and the Rotary Club are said to be agents of Zionist world takeover.
So, I think a number of members of Congress are probably members of the Lions Club or the Rotary Club, and that's probably part of the irrationalist part. And, correct me if I'm wrong, but the jihadist part appears to be correct too. So, I think I heard all of the panelists say that there are elements of Hamas that are like that, and others that aren't, but how can the members of Congress, for example, expect to deal with them when they might themselves be Rotatarians (sic), or Lions Club members, and, you know, not, kind of, be made fun of, frankly, for trying to reach out to people who claim they're part of international Jewish conspiracy?
MR. ABUNIMAH: Sir, I am very happy to correct you. The refrain that we hear constantly is, you know, the "Hamas Charter." And if we were at such a hearing 20 years ago, we would have heard the same refrain about the PLO Charter.
If I want to dredge up a lot of, not just ancient, but current documents from Israeli leaders, from Israeli coalition partners - or recent coalition partners like Moledet, or Yisrael Beitenu, or some of the other parties, the National Union, that call for the expulsion of all Palestinians; that claim that all the land between the river and the sea was given to - amazingly, they believe that it was given to Israelis by God, and not to all the human beings who live there, a very strange and exclusivist viewpoint. There's no shortage of such things.
The point I would make is that movements change - social movements change. If the British government had looked only at the statements made by IRA leaders in the late 1960s or early 1970s, there would have been no peace process; there would not be a celebration next month - presided over by George Mitchell, of 10 years for the Belfast Agreement and a successful peace process.
What was understood in that case - what was understood in South Africa, is two things: One, peace is made with your enemies, not with your friends; and the other is that you have to look for where the change is. If you want to look only at the Hamas Charter that was written by one person in 1988 - under Israeli occupation in the Gaza Strip during the middle of the Intifada, and ignore the vast body of internal debate, and development, and thought that has happened in the subsequent 20 years, then I guarantee you you will get nowhere and you will never find an opening.
And I'm not that enamored of the Israeli government, personally - that's not a secret. But I don't presume to believe that Palestinians have a right to choose the representatives of the Israeli people. You have to work with what's there. And if you are determined to move forward, you have to look for where the openings are and talk about them.
MR. FREEMAN: Sherifa?
MS. ZUHUR: I think, you know, there is some problem with discussions of jihadist groups in this post-9/11 environment. And Hamas certainly - Hamas leaders and those I've interviewed, you know, have an element of defensiveness. They feel that they have to respond to these comments about the Charter, and to these comments that portray them as a movement like al-Qaeda.
So the Charter, as was pointed out, is the work of one individual. Hamas does not use it, and its pronouncements today. There are many other more important documents. The best review of what - you know, what has changed, I think, is produced by Azzam Tamimi in his book on Hamas. There is also a very good book by Khalid Hroub, who discusses how these standpoints have changed.
In the words of certain Hamas leaders, their point to me, to emphasize, was, really, yes, we are an Islamist movement - yes, you know, we are a child of the Ihwan. But, believe me, we are a political movement. Our goals are political and our goals are human rights, freedom of movement, you know.
And so these are, these are issues, you know, that are very strangely absent from the discussion in the American media, where we're reading about a jihadist movement and - you know, are people going to give up jihad, forgetting the long time dispute about how jihad must be implemented; and, you know, what it really means to Muslims as the struggle to practice their faith; and how do you practice your faith if you don't have personal freedom or any political rights. That's the - you know, that's the response.
MR. FREEMAN: Shibley, do you have a comment?
MR. TELHAMI: Yeah, just a few quick points.
I think sometimes we kind of get a little confused in this debate because it becomes so emotional. I think the question is not whether the U.S. should embrace Hamas, or think Hamas is a good movement, or whether Hamas should be a friend of the U.S. - that's not what's on the agenda. The issue is whether you deal with them.
And dealing with someone is not about embracing them, or accepting them, or liking their agenda. We've, we've dealt with Stalinist Russia, and Maoist China, and we've had dialogues and conversations. So, first of all, let's not get confused. You know, we're not - it's not, it's not about necessarily embracing someone when you talk to your enemy - just as Obama's suggesting talking to Iran.
Second -
MR. ABUNIMAH: Well, not to Hamas. (Laughs.)
MR. TELHAMI: Well, you have a theory on this, so. (Laughter.)
If Israel were to negotiate with Hamas tomorrow, I think we would support it. And that should tell us something about, you know, this concern that was just raised because I don't think it's a real concern.
And the third, I think Israel is never going to make a deal with Hamas unless Hamas changes its position on accepting Israel. I mean - and no one would expect them to. I mean, you're not going to sign a peace deal with a party that's going to reject your existence. So, the question is not - and Israel is justified in not signing a deal with Hamas, but it's about talking, it's not about signing a deal, it's about talking. And, again, we forget that, in the end.
And, finally, the point that Israelis - when they take a position which says we'll never talk to Hamas unless they do X, Y, Z - the Israelis are a negotiating party with the Palestinians, they take negotiating positions. They should. Sometimes they're tough. They change their minds when they give in. It's not always a (principle/principal ?) position. But our role is very different from the Israeli's role - we're a mediator, and we're a facilitator, and we're looking after our own interests. So, the question of equating our position, necessarily, on this one with the Israeli position is - it has to be thought out because we have a different role to play than the Israelis have on this issue.
MR. FREEMAN: Ali, did you want to make another comment, or?
MR. ABUNIMAH: No, let's - let's hear - (inaudible) -
MR. FREEMAN: Fair.
Q: Thank you. Mustafa Malick (ph) is my name. I'm a journalist and researcher. I forgot my original question, but - (laughter) - coming back to the question of jihad, it is only maybe in this room, and the pro-Israeli, and some American groups who think jihad is an illegitimate instrument.
Historically, jihad has been a very legitimate instrument of social and political struggle and change in Muslim world. And it is the Americans who magnified jihad in Afghanistan, called them mujahedeen. And so jihad is not terrorism; it is a freedom struggle.
The question is that about whether to include Hamas in a dialogue that is important, or whether it will lead anywhere I have, I have doubts about it unless the reality is, on-the-ground change. Why should, without violence of jihad, Israel talk about it? Even now the support in Israel for talking with Hamas is because of the rocket attacks. And, historically, I don't know - from the American revolution up until today, in Indian independence movement - no colonial power ever left without violence of jihad or freedom struggle.
So, the question is, the last question - I have a question: You said that the reality on the ground, that now 39 percent of the population of the old Palestine is Palestinian, and at the rate it is increasing. Within 11 years - Professor Telhami knows better, I'm talking about 2003 - I mean, statistics of the United Nations - majority of the population will be Palestinians in old Palestine.
Is there - what will that situation look like? Why should Hamas, or any Palestinian or Arab opinion, accept a two-state solution and 11 percent? What do you see down the road - realistically, not talking about - where do you see it is possible in this generation to reach a settlement? Or we have to wait for the next generation when the demography change? Would that - does the military or diplomatic solution to the Palestinian problem work with that - it has to be demographic solution? Thank you.
MR. FREEMAN: I think it's fair to say that no one ever negotiates unless they believe that they must do so to gain something. Or, that if they don't negotiate they will lose something - which is why armed struggle occurs in the context of negotiations, and why - illegitimate as it may seem at the time, it is usually, ex post facto, legitimized if it succeeds in producing a negotiation.
Ali?
MR. ABUNIMAH: Yeah, that's some excellent points raised there.
Just one thing - I'm not sure if I misheard you. Currently, the Palestinian population in historic Palestine is 50 percent. And that includes Israel and the occupied territories, it doesn't include the refugees and the diaspora. If you include them, then the Palestinian population is two-thirds, and the Israeli population is one-third - just about what it was in 1948. That balance has remained constant.
All negotiations depend - whether you're negotiating to buy a new car, depend on both sides having some bargaining strength. The Palestinians have some bargaining strength. Certainly the demographic shift back in their favor is part of that bargaining strength. And the Israelis recognize that, which is why they're eager to put some sort of stamp of approval to legitimize the status quo.
But there are other kinds of power, as Ambassador Freeman mentioned, armed struggle is one of them. And historically we have seen that liberation movements, however you view them, are always defined by the colonial power or the occupying power as terrorists, and by themselves as liberation movements.
And almost always we see the transition from terrorist to statesman occurring. The first modern example of that in the Middle East was when Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir - who carried out assassinations, killings, murders, bombings against civilians, and British officers in Mandate Palestine, became the internationally respected leaders of Israel - prime ministers.
We saw that again when Nelson Mandella - who was called by Dick Cheney a "terrorist," and the ANC was called a terrorist organization, has become the most beloved figure in the Arab - in the world. We saw the same with Yasser Arafat - where every Israeli school children was practically taught that he was a devil, embraced by Israeli leaders, perhaps even before he was embraced by many Palestinians. And we saw that in December when Martin McGuinness, the former second in command of the Provisional IRA, was received in the White House as the deputy first minister of Northern Ireland.
There is a pattern here. But that pattern doesn't start to change. The change in perception doesn't begin to happen until there is a stalemate, until both sides recognize that there's no such thing as victory, and that both sides have more to lose from refusing to talk - refusing to make a deal which serves the interests of both peoples, than continuing to fight. And I think the potential for that shift is there in Palestine, and that's why we're here having this discussion today.
MR. FREEMAN: Haim?
MR. MALKA: Thank you. I think the question that I discerned was, why negotiate? It's - it is in the interests of both sides to negotiate. And I think we also forget that, should the negotiations falter - should a negotiation or an agreement get to the point where it becomes obvious that there is no agreement, the Israelis still have other options.
Now, they don't talk about these options very often. The political establishment and the military establishment has tried to discredit these options and put them on the back-burner. But there is still the option of a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from parts of the West Bank. And that is a card that the Israelis continue to hold onto, despite the negative developments that have come out of the unilateral withdrawal from Lebanon, and the unilateral withdrawal from Gaza.
It's been discredited - the concept has been discredited within Israel. But people are starting to talk about it again. There are discussions about it under the surface. And should the negotiations get to a dead end, and leaders and the population recognize that there is no option for an agreement, the Israelis still could decide to withdraw to the line of the wall or the fence. And I think that's a real option for the future.
MR. FREEMAN: Shibley?
MR. TELHAMI: Well, first of all, there is no real Israeli unilateral option. I mean, people may talk about it, may think about it. I don't think anybody really believes this could work. I mean - and not simply because they don't see the Gaza and Hezbollah example in Lebanon not working, but because if you pull out without an arrangement, a peace agreement, then you're still in a state of war.
And if you're in a state of war - in an anarchic environment that you leave behind, inevitably those who are going to come after you are going to get stronger over time because you can't help it. So, you either are going to have to go back in - like the Israelis are now talking about going back into Gaza, which doesn't solve the problem, it complicates it even more; or you have a problem like you now do.
I don't - I mean, with all that threat - I don't think it's a credible threat. I think, frankly, in this, in this generation there's only one possible solution that elites have accommodated themselves to. You can talk about it as being fair, or unfair, or just or unjust, but there's only one possible solution, and that is a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza, side by side with Israel. That's the only viable option still.
And, yes, people are losing faith in it. And that's part of the problem It's not just that it's becoming less possible because of changes on the ground, but I think with - the public still wants this as an option. But a large number of people are thinking that it's no longer viable. And more importantly, I think if you look at elites, many of the elites who have embraced this option are now bailing out on it.
And that's when it starts being troubling because you start detaching yourself from that, and linking yourself to some other kind of option. And, frankly, there aren't many - for the Palestinians, that the only option to go is a One-State. That is not something the Israelis could possibly accept. And so what you end up having is a situation of continued violence.
Now, that's the reason - while it's not in the short-term, it's always hard, without the immediate urgency, for people to make concessions on the basis of future pain. That is part of the problem for every negotiation. You know, where, how do leaders - because every concession is costly. Is a leader going to make a concession on the basis of future pain that they see almost as inevitable? And that has been the problem. That is why I do not believe, personally, that the dynamics of conflict, in and of themselves, are going to lead to an automatic solution.
Look, we've done this scientifically. I've studied this with a group of scholars - including my colleague Joshua Goldstein, over a period of 20 years from 1979 to 1998. We've done 20 years of action and reaction, to study daily behavior on the Arab-Israeli front. And what we found is that, despite asymmetries of power, each side responds, in kind, to the other. Tit-for-tat becomes the norm over time, and that - and despite the fact that they're worse off the morning after, they don't learn to cooperate.
There is - with or without conflict, the fact is you can escalate violence, but the Israelis may not learn from that that they should make a deal, they may learn that they should do something else. And we've seen that in the past. That is why I don't think that the solution is built into this conflict. I think it has to be exogenous. It has to come from some other factors.
And that's why I think American mediation is indispensable. There's nothing in the dynamic of this conflict, including violence, that is going to lead to an automatic solution which says, let's cooperate because we're both worse off than they were the day before.
MS. ZUHUR: I agree with Shibley that a solution will require strong involvement from the international community and also the Arab states. The reason for that, I think, is you're trying to shift two different types of strategic thinking. Israel claims that it has changed its strategic thinking, that's why it proposed a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza without any speaking to the other side.
And it began to pursue some other things - you know, a wall, okay, perimeter. Perimeter defense is not a defense of your population. It does not involve a political solution. And, indeed, the population centers in Israel were vulnerable to the kind of attacks and suicide attacks.
So, on the Hamas side, you know, they saw, look, you know, the only time where any concession - any movement towards negotiation came, were as a result of the First Intifada, and as a result of these attacks in the Second Intifada. So, one of the leaders, I said - I had spoke to said, so which language will Israel ever understand? The language of negotiation or the language of jihad? I'm trying to speak the language of negotiation, where am I getting?
MR. FREEMAN: I think - to round this out and then call on the young lady who's been waiting so patiently - we have to remind ourselves that there is a broader context. There are 300 million Arabs. And Israel needs to find acceptance in the Middle East from its neighbors - and from Arabs and Muslims in particular, or it can never be secure. You cannot live in a house in a neighborhood with your gun drawn 24 hours a day, and hope to survive forever.
And I think the issue, therefore, is that it is not responsible for the United States, as a friend of Israel, to encourage the Israelis in the notion that military security equals security. That way there will be no peace. There will be no acceptance of Israel, by the Arabs or by the Muslims - including the Iranians, and the Indonesians, and others, if Israel does not find a way of coexisting peacefully with the other inhabitants of the land in which it has established itself. And that is a fact. And this context, more than anything, ought to drive American consideration of the need for mediation.
Miss?
Q: Thank you. I'm - (inaudible) - from the Saudi Press Agency. And, actually, my question is something that the panel just touched upon.
And what is the role of the Arab states in helping to - not legitimize Hamas, because I think they already have that legitimization, but to kind of bring them into the mainstream, and, kind of, even bring them into the negotiations, because it seems like they are marginalized?
And, how do you do that, given each Arab state's political situation - you know, all the politics that plays into it - who they can talk to; how they can talk to other people? And how would that all factor into tangible results? Thank you.
MR. FREEMAN: I think it's a very good question. I would note that, as I said at the outset, most Arab states and their leaders are very skeptical, or even antagonistic to Hamas. So this illustrates the point that was made earlier by Shibley and Ali, that you don't have to like someone to recognize the need to factor them into the equation.
And would either of you like to -?
MR. TELHAMI: Sure. I just want to say, I mean, if you look back, you know, we seem to think that there haven't been episodes - just even since Hamas got elected in January, 2006, where there was, there were different approaches. I think, even when Hamas won and people were surprised, an envoy who went to see the president, an American envoy said that the president's first reaction was, maybe it's all for the better, maybe we'll see - maybe if, now they can perform; they now have to, they have to govern.
Well, that's kind of - that was an attitude, actually, reflected in immediate - the immediate reaction of many Arabs, Arab elites, was, you know, maybe it's a good thing. Let's see if they can - if they can do it. Let's test them. Let's see if they govern. In fact, there was optimism, actually, immediately after that. I attended a regional conference just a couple weeks after the election, with people from all over the region, in Doha, Qatar. And there was tremendous optimism this was going to happen.
It didn't happen. And even the Egyptian government, the Jordanian government were prepared to mediate. There was a sense that that might happen. But we decided that this is not going to work. And remember, there was a Hamas government, that Abu Mazen - President Mahmoud Abbas and the Palestinian Authority accepted the, accepted the elections.
There was a Hamas government, with President Mahmoud Abbas as president, and Ismail Haniyeh as prime minister. And the initial inclination of President Abbas was: Let's see, first of all, they will be tested and they will find out how difficult it is to govern. But maybe I'll do the negotiation - they don't have to do the acceptance, but I'll do the negotiation. And then they'll be able to say yes or no to - just, kind of, the model that he's pursuing then.
We went against that. And when Hamas, when things heated up - and the Saudis took an initiative to bring them together. As Chas. said, the aim at the time, I think, in large part - I don't know about the infection theory - (laughs), Chas., I'm not sure about that - but, certainly they were worried that Hamas is going to fall on the lap of Iran. They didn't think it was a natural alliance, but they thought that if they're isolated, then they're going to create that link.
And the Saudis were already kind of taking a position - very tough position, against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and they wanted to not create this kind of alliance that ultimately emerged. And they succeeded. But we did not accept that. And we didn't - we didn't believe that this is something that we could deal with. So I think the problem isn't just Arab governments.
It is, in part, that - they haven't done enough across the board on the Arab-Israeli issue. Sometimes they try, and then they don't maintain the campaign. But the fact is, we haven't facilitated that. And most of them are tied to us, and to our policy because the Israelis ultimately are the ones who are going to implement whether there's going to be sanctions against Gaza or not; whether there are going to be sanctions against Hamas or not. And so it's very hard for Arabs to succeed in a strategy of mediation between Hamas and Fatah, or even directly with Hamas, without cooperation from us.
And what I was told was that, when the president went to the Middle East on his last trip, and met with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, he did ask them not to try again to mediate between Hamas and Fatah. So, clearly, that is, we're not - we're taking an active role, not just a passive role, in making sure that that is not an option that's on the table.
MR. FREEMAN: In all fairness to the to the Saudi mediation at Mecca, I think the principal motive was two-fold: And that was, first, to end the fighting among Palestinians, which was a nauseating spectacle; and second, to help produce a viable negotiating partner for a peace process which, at the time, did not exist. But it had additional motives, as I suggested.
And Shibley is right, we acted to frustrate it. I think, in this context, it's noteworthy also that the ultimate answer to your question is implicit in the Beirut Declaration of the so-called Arab peace plan, which is not really a plan but an incentive for Israelis and Palestinians to reach agreement, which would then trigger normalization by the entire Arab world with Israel.
That proposal is now in some difficulty, as frustrations mount. It would be a shame if that offer of acceptance to Israel, by the region, were to go off the table. That is a distinct possibility as time passes.
Ali?
MR. ABUNIMAH: Yes, I'd just make a couple of quick points. One, I think the Saudi role in negotiating the Mecca agreement, which ended the fighting and brought in the national unity government in February, 2007, was a very positive thing. It was largely supported by Palestinians, and it was a very rare act of independence by an Arab state. And that points out the broader context.
Of course, we know that it infuriated the United States, and Condoleezza Rice - and inspired her to accelerate her plan to support the militias to overthrow Hamas. But the overall Arab context is very depressing otherwise. You have a slow-rolling collapse of the Arab regimes - their legitimacy. They have failed to govern - we talk about Hamas being tested by governance, they've failed on so many measures to fulfill the promise that they set out for their people in the post-colonial period.
And now we're seeing a slow-rolling succession crisis where so many of the republics are becoming, effectively, monarchies. We see that happening in Libya; we see it happening in Egypt; we see an attempt to make that happen in Lebanon. And all of this is rolling on.
And then superimposed on that you have what the U.S. is doing, on a local scale, in Palestine and Lebanon, of picking winners - picking one side and declaring the other side to be the enemy. And this is not just groups, but with reference to half the population of those countries. We see the U.S. attempting to impose, on a regional level, the use of a very ugly and counterproductive sectarian discourse to divide Arab states into so-called "moderate Sunni states," and so-called "extremist Shi'a" states or entities. A very, very negative development.
And we saw partly the result of that in the last Arab summit in Damascus, where half of the leaders didn't show up. And I think - I'm not sure if Dr. Telhami's polls with confirm this, but probably the vast majority of Arab public opinion doesn't think it would have made a difference if they did show up.
MR. FREEMAN: Haim?
MR. MALKA: I think an Arab role - a strong Arab role is key to bridging some of the gaps between Hamas and Fatah. Those are obviously very deep divisions between them, and it's unlikely that all of their issues will be resolved. But it is important to have a strong Arab role. The Mecca agreement was probably the best development that had come along over the last few years, and unfortunately that was undermined.
One of the points that I think would strengthen Arab mediation would be coordination. And that was one of the problems of Mecca, was that there was very little coordination between the Saudis and the United States, and even Israel. So, coordination is an important factor.
Reaching out more to Israel, by the Arab states, on this issue would also help. But, I think it's also important to recognize that Mecca didn't come out of a vacuum. It really built on the Prisoners Document that was negotiated by Hamas and Fatah, and other Palestinian factions within Israeli prisons. And so Palestinians themselves have been working on these issues, and trying to work on resolving the deep issues, and that's important and the Arab states need to strengthen that effort.
Q: Hi. My name is Peter Spalding. I'm a retired Foreign Service officer. I was one who sees Hamas as an opportunity and not an opponent, and one who believes what Martin Buber, the father of the philosophy of dialogue, said - reconciliation breeds reconciliation. I think right now - I'm looking forward to when we reconvene this same group after the election, where America once again is a partner. We can just - talk can actually have an effect.
I was touched by Mr. Abunimah's contact with your friend. It appears to me Gaza is approaching a Darfur-esque situation. One thing we haven't mentioned is economic assistance, a donor's conference for Gaza. People have to realize that we're not going to get anywhere - we can talk about all the frameworks and everything else - until we get the Arabs, Saudis, Americans, even Israelis to say, let's have a donor conference in a peace framework and then we can go from there and negotiate a two-state solution or whatever it's going to be. But I haven't heard anybody mention economic rehabilitation of Gaza. I'm wondering what you think of the possibilities of that, even though maybe not until after the next election. You can tell who I support. But that's beside the point.
Is there any role for an economic conference?
MR. FREEMAN: Who would like to address that?
DR. TELHAMI: First of all, let me talk about the humanitarian issue. I think one of the tragedies of the discourse about Hamas is that it has kind of hidden what should be an obvious humanitarian crisis that we have in Gaza. And by the way, not just in Gaza. West Bank as well, although Gaza obviously to a significant - much, much worse. And also we forget, by the way, the Lebanese Palestinian refugees, who are in an increasingly difficult environment. We just forget that.
We have a true humanitarian crisis that is kind of being covered up by this debate about Hamas, and it's really unfortunate, particularly for people who are concerned with the humanitarian issues. I think one of the things that needs to be put up there in the debate is this humanitarian crisis. Regardless of whatever politics is, we have a real tragedy on our hands and it can get worse and we need to deal with it. I agree with that.
The problem with separating economics from politics is that you're going to end up facing up the reality. If the Israelis are going to impose - Gaza is not a state. Gaza is still, in the end, under Israeli sovereign control. Still occupied territory. Israel pulled out, but Gaza doesn't have access to the outside world without the approval of certainly the Israelis, but also the Egyptians. Egyptians in a way are obligated not to because through their treaty with Israel they're obligated not to allow Gazans to go through.
So in the end it's really about the Israelis because if the Israelis are going to impose a fuel blockade, as they are now, or any other kind of economic blockade, it's going to work, no matter what if you're going to send aid to Gaza and the Israelis don't want it to go in. And then there's the implementation problem the humanitarian organizations face. Who's going to do it? How do you do it without rewarding Hamas? And part of it is built-in contradiction because if policies to show that Hamas is failing, part of the failure is the misery. So if you improve the economic conditions in Gaza, aren't you showing that Hamas is succeeding?
That's where it's very hard to separate policy from the economic issue. I mean, there's a built-in contradiction, and in the end politics trumps in this particular case.
MR. FREEMAN: I'm very struck by your comparison with Darfur and I feel obliged to note the key distinction. The United States may be guilty in the case of Darfur of failing to take action, but in the case of Gaza we are directly supporting the siege with an ally. We are directly involved and therefore accountable for what is happening there. That is to me the crucial distinction which ought to weigh heavily on our conscience.
Ali, then Haim.
MR. ABUNIMAH: I also appreciate the comparison to Darfur, and particularly I think in a case where a civilian population is terrorized in a systematic way by an unaccountable government. The Save Darfur movement has demonstrated the legitimacy of divestment and sanctions on college campuses across this country, and that has been supported by many people here on Capitol Hill, and that is a good model that many activists for Palestinian human rights and peace between Israelis and Palestinians are trying to follow. And the Save Darfur movement has blazed that trail by establishing the legitimacy of boycott, divestment, and sanctions in such cases.
What I want to say about economic and humanitarian aid is that for many Palestinians - and there's some research evidence that shows it's a majority of Palestinians at this point - they have come to believe that the role the so-called international community has played these 15-odd years since the peace process started is to subsidize Israeli occupation. There's a real danger that - I mean, that humanitarian is such a lovely word and we all feel good about it, but these are not humanitarian crises. The Palestinians are not victims of an earthquake or a tsunami or global warming. The starvation, the hunger, the suffering is a result of policy choices made in the defense ministry in Tel Aviv, made in the cabinet room in Jerusalem, and there is one government in the country that decides whether people in Gaza eat or not, whether factories get raw materials or not, whether there's fuel or electricity.
It seems to me that allowing that to do that and simply trying to throw in some aid as a palliative will simply get them off the hook. We have to understand the political and deliberately inflicted nature of the so-called humanitarian crisis and address that, and we need to end the subsidy of Israeli occupation. Israel cannot continue to occupy and colonize and destroy while the European Union and other countries come in and pick up the mess. There has to be - these things have to be tied together. We cannot keep funding Israeli occupation.
MR. FREEMAN: Haim.
MR. MALKA: Thank you. Obviously the economic component and economic rehabilitation is a serious component of any kind of development. I think to place the blame for the siege of Gaza on one party I think is only part of the picture. As Ambassador Freeman said, the United States policy is also supporting the siege. The international community, the European Union is supporting the siege. And every party to this conflict is basically manipulating the humanitarian crisis and the siege for its own purposes. Israel certainly, the Egyptians. Hamas, which is limiting certain goods to come in to Gaza. President Abbas and the PA government in Ramallah has been accused, and there is evidence that they are withholding medicine shipments, food shipments, and putting pressure on the Israelis as well to limit the flow of goods into Gaza. So I think it's important to recognize that every single party involved is manipulating this crisis.
MR. FREEMAN: Which is pretty sickening. Sherifa.
MS. ZUHUR: I think an economic solution is part of the political solution ultimately. It will have to be dealt with because so many things have happened. I'm thinking back before the withdrawal from Gaza. I went there and I was interviewing the Malasi (ph). I don't know if you know who they are. They're Bedouin in the middle of the Gaza strip and they've been trapped there for decades, not able to go - a lot of them have homes in Khan Younis. They're not allowed to go there. They're within this little strip of land. Their income used to be from sandy agriculture, which was taken over by settlements, and fishing and boating. So they thought when they heard about the withdrawal that they'd be able to begin fishing again. We have this whole vision of Gaza as maybe Arab tourist site, or things that could - none of that happened. And instead worse happened.
The whole idea of Palestinian economic dependency on Israel, this is very important. Workers are not going to be able to go into Israel. This is a decision made in the Knesset that instead other forms of labor, whether Asian labor or Ukrainian labor or whatever, is going to substitute. So this is something that has to be part of the overall view.
And the last serious discussions were in the Oslo period. RAND did a very important study looking just at the West Bank. And because of the STAR plan and all the settlements and so on, you have dislocation of one area from another. So you can't really function as an economy until you look at all these things, even without the current crisis. And in the current crisis you have Hamas' various charities completely shut down. It affects not only this situation, but look at the Muslim charities in the United States as a result of accusations of they're being arms of Hamas. So if you want to donate to something, you have to be very, very careful or you're going to be giving material aid to terrorism.
MR. FREEMAN: Yes. You've been waiting.
Q: I almost fell asleep there for a moment.
MR. FREEMAN: I saw that. (Laughter)
Q: Gene Bird from the Council for the National Interest. I must say, this is an amazing appearance on the Hill, and of course we all know that it takes probably a seminar every week in order to move Congress in any direction. Probably we'll never move this administration.
I wanted to say two things. One, that my secretary in New Delhi, who'd just come out from New York when I was dictating a short memorandum regarding Palestine, and I sent it several times. She brought it back, P-A-L-E-S-T-E-I-N. I called Muriel and I said, Muriel, you've just solved the Palestine problem.
I'd also like to tell a very quick story on Zuhar (ph). We interviewed him two years ago in some depth in Gaza, and he said, yes, right on this spot my son - and he picked up the portrait of his son - was killed by an American missile fired from an American plane, piloted by an Israeli pilot. Now, you know, when you have leadership of this kind that has the experience of dealing with the United States and some of the things that we have allowed to happen in not just Palestine but probably that's the leading one, you wonder if we can ever have a positive influence on what's happening, or just delay, delay, delay.
I'd like to ask the question of Haim about coalition, and anyone else who'd like to answer. We've talked about the Mecca agreement. Last week Ms. Rice was in Jerusalem and she was asked if there could be a ceasefire, which of course might lead to a coalition. She said just one word - no - in a very, very decisive way. I think this is an example of closed thinking on the part of this administration, to the point where it's becoming kind of absurd to have a peace process. I'm constantly being pushed by some of my 5,000 supporters across the country to look seriously at a one-state solution.
Could a coalition be put together, in your opinion, and would that be a step towards a negotiator on the Palestinian side that would be perhaps able to come to autonomy of state, two-state, or a one state with two states in it? Shimon Peres once said back in '93, eventually it will come down to the Jewish colonists - he didn't call them colonists; we like to call them that - Jewish colonists on the West Bank voting for two members of parliament. One in the Knesset and one in the Palestinian parliament. There would be two parliaments. And the Palestinians on the West Bank will vote for two members, one in Jordan and one in the Palestinian parliament.
Could you answer that question about one state and coalition?
MR. MALKA: As I said in my presentation, I think a Palestinian unity government is a requirement for any progress on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, and any efforts to get to an Israeli-Palestinian agreement, whatever that agreement might be, whether it's a final status agreement at some point down the road, or an interim agreement, truce, or hudna. It's important.
Whether that can happen, I think, is debatable. I think there's a debate going on right now whether Palestinians themselves can bridge some of these deep problems that are separating them, that are not just about the elections in 2006, that go back over a decade, if not more. Hamas very much sees itself as the alternative to the secular nationalist agenda of the PLO and the Fatah, and Fatah doesn't want to recognize that it has lost its monopoly over the Palestinian Authority, over the governing institutions, over the security forces. And those are some pretty significant issues.
So whether those gaps can be bridged I think is a major question mark. If they can't be bridged then I don't think we're going to get even a long-term ceasefire or hudna. But it's clear that that has to happen so Palestinians themselves can determine their own red lines for negotiations. And that will have to be towards a two-state solution. I don't believe that a one-state option is really a solution to anything. I don't see it within the realm of possible because, as Shibley noted earlier, the Israelis will not accept that, and I believe will do anything it takes to prevent that.
The wall in part, or the fence, is in part a way to demarcate a future border. Whether that's agreed upon or not agreed upon, it will essentially be a de facto border from the position of the Israelis, and that will prevent the creation of a one-state solution.
MR. FREEMAN: Shibley?
DR. TELHAMI: Yes. I want to say something more about the introductory kind of remark about administration policy, and particularly now in the last year. I have been critical of administration policy really throughout this administration. But I'm always struck when there's an effort, or an apparent effort to give it a chance to try, and particularly when we all call for it to try.
Now if you ask me as a political scientist what's the prospect that something's going to happen this year, I would say it's not very high. I wouldn't place much hope on it. But I wouldn't say it's zero, and that's important. I want to just say something about it. In fact, I'm actually a little bit concerned about what might happen. I think we might fall into the trap of just saying there's nothing at all that can be done, with all the limitations.
I worry about - let me tell you how I see this, particularly for the next administration. We have an American election. The first fight in any administration is for the priorities of the president. What is the president going to work on, that he or she are going to think are the top priorities for the United States of America? And by the way, if they don't think Arab-Israeli peacemaking is a priority, it's not going to work. It doesn't matter what they do, it doesn't matter whether they have a special envoy or not. It is not easy to succeed in this issue. In order to succeed you need the weight of the presidency. In order to put the weight of the presidency successfully behind what you do, you have to decide it's a priority.
And no matter what we do, we're going to have two immediate priorities, which is Iraq and the economy. Doesn't matter what we do in Iraq, even if we disengage it's going to be a priority for several years before you fully disengage, and the economy is in trouble. So there will be a fight for the other priorities. What else are you going to put on the table of the next president?
How this administration finishes on this issue matters a lot for the conclusions of the next president, whether this issue should be a priority for the president or not. And if you look at what happened with the previous case, when Clinton left office and it was seen to have been a failure at Camp David, and the intifada emerged and the confrontation between the Israelis and the Palestinians. President Bush came in and said, you know, I'm not going to touch it. He tried hard and failed, I'm not going to touch it.
If we have another president who looks like he tried hard and failed, I don't care whether it's Obama or Clinton or McCain, and they look at the record, it's not going to look good. So it's very important actually how this administration finishes on this issue. Even if we don't call it a success, you don't want to have a total disaster on your hands because if you do, you're going to have an immediate disinclination by the next president to deal with it.
Therefore, I think you have to be pragmatic about what could be achieved so that there will be continuity into the next administration, so the next administration comes in with something on the table to deal with, to work with, to say, I can put this on my agenda. I think there are possibilities. It isn't going to be something like a peace treaty that's immediately implementable, but it is possible to envision that you can get Israelis and Palestinians - at least the Israeli leaders, the Israeli prime minister and President Mahmoud Abbas to agree to some very important parameters of final status. More importantly, to have the president of the United States commit for very clear principles on borders, on refugees, on Jerusalem. In a way that could in a way define what the next president of the United States is going to have to do.
So I think we don't want to be too cynical, and we don't want to wish failure, even though we've been critical of policy and we know that the prospects of that are not very high, but the reality of it is, if the U.S. is seen to have put a lot of energy into it and failed, the cost is way too high for everybody who really wants to see peace. The president has repeatedly said he intends to do something before he leaves. I don't think it's just talk. I think he might believe it. He may not fully understand what it entails. (Laughter.) I think he clearly believes that this is something that's important.
He is intending to go there in May, and I suspect that he's going to do a little bit more than that in the coming months. So I think that we should not just look at this entirely in a cynical - through a cynical lens.
MR. FREEMAN: Haim again, and then Ali.
MR. MALKA: Thank you. I just wanted to pick up on Shibley's point, which I agree with. It's not only the United States president that wants a success here. It's the Israeli prime minister and President Abbas. They have both tied their political fates to the success of these negotiations. They really have not a whole lot else to show for themselves, either economically or socially or political. And therefore, they are very much in favor of trying to reach some sort of agreement.
But again, as I also mentioned, trying not to be cynical but the agreement that they will actually reach will probably be so watered down that it will have very little meaning and we have to question what the utility or the benefit of having that kind of agreement, which many people may be very skeptical of.
MR. FREEMAN: This raises the obvious point that a two-state solution that is not acceptable to the majority of the people on both sides would be worse than no agreement at all. Ali?
MR. ABUNIMAH: That's where I come in. Well, obviously many of you will know what I think on this issue. I think it's a mistake historically and morally to condition what we think is possible based on what we think the strong would accept. If we did that, then there would still be slavery in the United States. That wasn't given up without a fight. There would still be Jim Crow, where segregation was called a way of life and something that mayors and senators and presidential candidates and members of Congress strongly endorsed and supported.
The Ku Klux Klan, which once had 5 million members, making it the most - the largest political organization in the history of the United States, would still have its influence. Women would not vote. There would have been no end to apartheid in South Africa. There would have been no end to Unionist dominance in Northern Ireland. The list can go on and on.
So we cannot limit our imagination to simply what we think those who hold the monopoly on power today will accept. Of course Israelis would not accept a one-state solution today. Israelis do not accept a two-state solution today. Because what they call, or what the majority think is a two-state solution is just apartheid packaged as a two-state solution. And many Israelis aren't even prepared to be that generous with the Palestinians.
So a real peace agreement will depend on a shift in the balance of power until Israelis understand that they have more to lose from maintaining the status quo than changing it. And that's what happened also in apartheid South Africa. One year whites voted 70 percent for the national party, the party of apartheid. A year later 70 percent voted in a whites-only referendum to end apartheid, when they understood they had more to lose from hanging on than from embracing change with all its risks.
A point that Dr. Telhami made is that the elites - and I agree with him completely - have persuaded themselves that a two-state solution is the only possible outcome, and I stress the elites. Because everywhere else this debate is lively. As Mr. Bird (ph) said, his members all over the country are demanding debate and change and new thinking.
I travel around this country to college campuses all over the place, and across this country students are debating a one-state solution, a two-state solution, alternatives to it. In the Gaza Strip there is a group organized for a single democratic secular state along the lines of post-apartheid South Africa. Within Hamas there is a discussion about models for multi-ethnic democracy and how Islamist ideology can be adapted to that. Among Palestinians in the West Bank it's happening.
A few months ago I participated in an ongoing dialogue with Palestinian and Israeli intellectuals and activists and others, and we came up with something called the one-state declaration that begins to lay out principles for an alternative. So everywhere this debate is happening. And it's creeping up. And simply dismissing it is not going to work.
But I do suspect that the last place it will happen is here in Washington. Nevertheless, that doesn't mean we shouldn't continue it in the rest of the country and the world, and open our imaginations to alternatives that give Israelis and Palestinians what they both fundamentally need - equal rights, security, autonomy in terms of their language, their culture, education, whatever it is. The form of how that can be arranged is limitless. We will not get there unless we engage in the discussion.
DR. TELHAMI: Can I just say something on elites versus public opinion. That's actually very important to connect. You're absolutely right about elites, but actually it's also about public opinion. If you look at Khalil Shikaki polls among Palestinians, it's still a robust majority supporting a two-state, yes. There is still an increasing number who think it's not going to happen, but there's still a majority. In the Arab public opinion, still a majority support the two-state.
But I want to tell you something about the findings about what people think if the two-state collapses. If the two-state solution collapses, I have a specific question - what do you think would happen? There will be a one-state solution and the Palestinians would simply give up, or there will be protracted conflict for many years to come, or the status quo would continue. I give them four choices.
MR.: I want -
MR. TELHAMI: Tell me what the answer is on that. Very few people believe the Palestinians would ever give up. It's actually in like 4 or 5 percent. So that's not something that public opinion in the Arab world believes. But only about 10 percent, if my recollection of this is - it's something around 10 percent who believe there will be a one-state solution. A majority believe there will be a protracted conflict, bloody conflict for many years to come.
What I want to say about that is that's the way the public sees it. Now I think among Palestinian elites, even some Israeli elites, and some other elites around, as you get into - as you start believing that a two-state is not going to happen, then where are you going to take refuge? I think the only intellectual position for the Palestinians is going to be in a one-state, and many people who support them is going to be a one-state.
The question is whether that's going to happen in Israel in the short term. I think if anybody thinks it's going to happen, doesn't understand the strength of the Zionist movement for much of the 20th century. So is it going to happen without a big fight, if it's going to happen at all? The outcome of those kind of fights historically, while sometimes we have been very happily surprised, as we were with South Africa, they don't always end up nicely. If anybody thinks that you know where it's going to end up, I think they don't know history very well because you're selective in choosing history. We don't know.
But there is, at a minimum in the foreseeable future you are going to go into protracted conflict. That may be the outcome because in fact if the two-state solution collapses, psychologically and practically, that's what we're going to face, whether we want it or not. It's not something that we have to make it a policy.
But if you're mediating - if you're mediating - if you're mediating, if you are someone who wants to see an end to this conflict relatively soon and you want it in the fairest possible and the short term, there's only one address for you, which is the two-state solution. Until you give up on it. Until you say it's not going to happen and therefore I'm going to change.
MR. ABUNIMAH: Let me address some of those points, if I may. First on public opinion. I do look at Dr. Shikaki polls and all the other polls regularly, and the last poll of Dr. Shikaki, support for a two-state solution in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip was 50 percent. A remarkably low number, given the billions of dollars that are invested by a very large peace process industry, and telling us that this is the only possible solution. A very poor result, given the investment in the two-state solution.
And in 10 years of Dr. Shikaki's polling, even with all the questions about the methodology, support for a two-state solution in the occupied territories has rarely exceeded the low 60s. Meanwhile, support for a single democratic state, there's not been much polling that gets into the detail of what that looks like, but we're clear that it's a state for both peoples - hovers between 25 and 35 percent, a remarkably high figure given the fact that there isn't a single political movement in the mainstream that is actively advocating this. A remarkably high figure given the fact that we're being told constantly that there's no alternative.
Among Palestinians inside Israel, Palestinian citizens of Israel, there is overwhelming support for the principle of a state of all its citizens, equal rights, and the discussion is now moving toward a single state in historic Palestine. You have seen the documents that have come up in the past year. Nobody ever polls Palestinians in the diaspora because we like to pretend they don't exist because they're such an inconvenience to the two-state solution. But there we know the fundamental issue is the right of return, which is incompatible with a two-state solution. And we also know that there is an increasing debate in the diaspora for a one-state solution.
You're absolutely right - we don't know what the outcome will be, when the two-state solution collapses. It's already collapsing. The hegemony of this idea is under threat. It's time to recognize that and to begin to embrace alternatives.
I keep coming back to South Africa or Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland, people used to say there is no possible solution. Now we have the equivalent of a Likud-Hamas coalition in Belfast. South Africa, people used to say there will never be a transition to democracy; as soon as blacks get power, they will take their revenge on whites and throw them into the sea. The end of the story has not been written, either in Northern Ireland or in South Africa. But these are two examples that did defy the worst predictions.
I think the worst thing we can do at this moment, when the hegemonic idea is collapsing before our very eyes, is to close our minds to alternatives and to close our minds to discussion which says, look, this is what Israelis need to have a safe, secure, and happy life. This is what Palestinians need to have. Are there alternatives to the one that has failed for 70 years, since the first partition proposals were put on the table in 1937 to 2008? A peace process that offered us a Palestinian state in 1999, and then in May 2002, and then by the end of 2005, and then by the end of 2008, and now we're told that we might have an outline agreement in 2009. And then another administration will come along for eight years, and in the last three months we'll be told nobody say anything or disturb anything so that the administration that takes office in 2016 can have a clear shot at the two-state solution.
Let us have a real debate about this. There is no other issue, not Social Security, not health care, not any other foreign policy issue where we decide there is only one possible solution and close our minds to all the alternatives.
MR. FREEMAN: Young lady, you've been conducting a sit-in while we go on and on. Would you allow Sherifa to say a word? And then you will have the last one.
MS. ZUHUR: I just want to say, I admire your passion for the possibility of the one-state solution, but I would like to see people focus on our subject today, which is bringing in all Palestinians to whatever solution or whatever discussion it's going to be. Because I think there is a real danger, you know, in this administration's approach to the region. And the way that this issue has kind of disappeared from much of the U.S., and people are talking about Tibet, and Palestine is almost forgotten. And this is just - I think that rather than the what and the how, and I'm not sure whether Haim's idea that simply moving along with the hudna is the right one, but I do think that predicting on the basis of what a president will do, and what's the least possible we can get is wrong at this moment.
We saw Blair go as a special emissary and say proudly that he wasn't going to speak to Hamas. Where does that get us? So maybe there do need to be outside actors. Definitely everyone does need to open their imaginations, but I think it's more imminent that something needs to move very soon.
MR. FREEMAN: Thank you. You've been very patient.
Q: I definitely do not mind waiting my turn to ask a question of such scholars. I appreciate it. My name is Quiana Bradford. I'm a U.S. Foreign Service officer. Dr. Telhami, you said earlier in your opening statement that one of the main things that you have from your public opinion poll - and I know you're still doing your analysis; I look forward to reading it on Monday - is that the Arab world does not believe that the United States is out for democracy, is out to bring democracy.
What in your opinion has been our biggest failure in giving that message to the Arab world, and how can we do that better?
DR. TELHAMI: Well, you know, it really hasn't been our priority. I mean, they're right. We say that but it really hasn't. By the way, when you ask them what do you think the top priorities are, they think controlling oil, helping Israel, and dominating the region. Those are the things that they think are important.
But let me tell you why they say that, why they don't believe us. They don't believe us at some level for obvious reasons, that is, initially our vision of the democratic examples of Iraq, Palestine, and Lebanon. Those are the three big elections that we, you know, kind of celebrated as indications of the post-Iraq war changes. And from the Arab point of view, Iraq is a total disaster, humanitarian disaster. Eighty percent of the Arab public thinks that Iraqis are worse off than they were before the Iraq war.
If you are a president of Syria and you're telling your public, do you want Damascus or do you want Baghdad, they'll take Damascus over Baghdad any day of the week. So clearly those models have not been good.
Second, and this is where I think we've been in some ways not fully honest with ourselves. The reality of it is, when you go to the region, 90 percent of the public oppose the Iraq war. Ninety percent of the public oppose our policy on the Arab-Israeli issue. Ninety percent of the public saw our war on terrorism as a war on Islam, the way we defined it initially. And you go to the governments who themselves didn't think the Iraq war was a good idea and told you so, but you say, I'm going to do it anyway and I need your support. And these strategic allies go along with it because they have no strategic choice really but to go along with it.
And what happens in between? They say, we're nervous about it. First of all, you're going against the public opinion. Second, even as they hold elections, you know, superficial elections in some cases, you have - they're increasingly nervous and they unleash the security services and they pre-empt opposition, they arrest people to make sure that there is no revolt against them. So that's exactly what happens.
So when people see what we do, our strategic objectives trump our democracy policy almost every day of the week, particularly when you're at war. The priority for the United States of America now is not democracy. It's the Iraq war and it's the war on terrorism, and those are the ones that get all the top priority in the relationship directly. So our relationship with Egypt, our relationship with Jordan is first and foremost not through the NGOs or the little economic aid that we gave for democracy NGOs. It is through the military-to-military relations, and the cooperative relationship for the passage of U.S. ships through the Suez Canal. Intelligence, which is extraordinarily important.
So in essence you are supporting and strengthening the very institutions that you're trying to weaken in democracy. Those are the state institutions that seem to be the institutions of repression in many of these countries. And you inevitably strengthen them by virtue of your military priorities and strategic priorities. So in fact, whether or not we believed it or not, many in the Arab world, even governments, didn't believe that we were doing it as a matter of strategic policy. Arab governments believe this was used as an instrument with them to make them cooperate strategically, to in essence tell them, to show that we're prepared to undermine them unless they cooperate. And they use the Libya example as an example, where there's no real profound change in the Libyan domestic structure of power that we can call we have democracy, but clearly there was a change of policy based on their strategic cooperation. That's the sort of level they thought the U.S. was trying to do.
So in essence, public opinion is not wrong in the fact that it hasn't in effect been our policy, at least in the way it was implemented.
MR. FREEMAN: We have come to the appointed hour and I think the discussion has been earnest and erudite and eloquent and often wise. I would like to thank the panelists very much for it. (Applause.)
I think they have made a case that the next president, whoever he or she is, is going to have to deal with this issue, as well as the few others that are on the national agenda. I would remind you that dealing with this issue is not an automatic priority for the next administration, as has been said.
The next president will confront recession; inflation; budget, trade, and balance of payments deficits; a collapsing dollar; pension systems that are in a state of grave jeopardy, with many collapsing; a healthcare and insurance system which are escalating costs without escalating care delivery; collapsing infrastructure in the United States - bridges, potholes, and other things falling down; and a process of de-industrialization that is deeply disturbing to our workforce.
The constant threat of retaliatory attack by those we offend abroad in the form of terrorism; the issue of Iraq; the war in Afghanistan; which is not going anywhere terribly attractive at the moment; the question of Iran; the transatlantic relationship, which is in a state of decay; the re-emergence of a quasi-czarist Russia; difficulties in our relations with Latin America; uncertainties in our relations with China, particularly after the Olympics and all the shenanigans around them; a strategically perplexed Japan, and an international monetary reserve system that no longer functions.
I think the case has been made, however, that the Arab-Israeli issue deserves a high place, even in that formidable list. And I wish whoever is president well. Thank you. (Applause.)
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