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| Volume VIII, March 2001, Number 1 |
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| The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict |
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| Shlomo Gazit and Edward Abington |
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The following is the edited text of a discussion held
November 28, 2000, at the Sadat Forum at Brookings, cohosted by Richard Haass,
vice-president and director of Foreign-Policy Studies at the Brookings
Institution, and Shibley Telhami, the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and
Development at the University of Maryland. For a printable pdf version of this article, click here.
SHLOMO GAZIT, former chief of Israeli Military Intelligence
I will begin with a summation: First, I am an optimist. The way I see it, the peace process -- the
political process -- is not dead. On the
contrary, what we see now in the recent outburst of violence, the so-called
al-Aqsa intifada, is not the breakdown of the process; it's a continuation of
the process by other means. The turning
point was not Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount. The turning point was the Camp David meeting in July, which made
Chairman Arafat reach the conclusion that the Israeli offers didn't present an
acceptable solution -- and if these were the most moderate, most flexible, most
forthcoming Israeli proposals, from a left-wing prime minister, then it was a
non-starter. Arafat's intention and
goal was not to give up Camp David, only to change the rules of the game:
returning to the use of force and violence. Not with any expectation that he could force Israel to change its
position, but with a hope that the use of force would bring an international
intervention that would be more favorable to the Palestinians.
At present, we are in a kind of a tug-of-war between the two
parties. The question is, which party
will have more patience? Which party
can hold on longer in that war of harassment, pressures, stress, casualties and
so on. What will come first? Will it be Palestinian fatigue or an Israeli
military blunder that will allow the invitation of an international
intervention?
I am a strong believer that we are in the very last phases of
the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Palestinian‑Israeli conflict. I have not mentioned the word "peace." I do not believe that peace is in the cards
between Israel and our Arab neighbors in the foreseeable future. We can only speak of a political settlement,
and this is a lot. This does not mean
that at the moment we reach an agreement and the document is signed it will not
be called a "peace treaty" between Israel and Palestine. But it will not be "real peace," anymore
than the treaty of Versailles was real peace. We are not going to see in the Middle East the kind of relationship
developing between Israel and our neighbors that the United States has with
Canada or that we now see in Western Europe. For this we shall have to wait decades or even generations. But the political settlement is very close,
and it is a vital precondition for the transition in the future to real peace.
EDWARD ABINGTON, former U.S. consul-general in Jerusalem; political
consultant to the Palestinian National Authority
I would agree with General Gazit that Camp David was the
proximate cause of the uprising, though I still believe that the two sides came
tantalizingly close to an agreement. If
you look at what was discussed there, it's easy to see what the outlines of an
Israeli-Palestinian agreement have to be. Whether it will happen is another question. I credit Ehud Barak with real courage in terms of what he put on
the table in Camp David. For the very
first time, the two sides sat down and seriously discussed the issues that had
been taboo before: how to share
Jerusalem, how to deal with the refugee question, how to deal with settlement
borders, and the nature of the Palestinian state and its relationship with
Israel.
The way it ended was unfortunate and partly responsible for the
violence that we're seeing today. Essentially, Clinton and Barak put Arafat in a corner. They said, take it or leave it. If you leave here without taking it, then
everything is off the table; there is no agreement until everything is agreed
to. I think Arafat was not prepared to
conclude a deal at Camp David. The
Palestinians proposed to Clinton a two-week adjournment so that the
parties could go back and consult, which is Arafat's normal practice when
considering important decisions in the peace process.
He wanted to hold consultations with the Arabs, with Mubarak and
others. He wanted to go around to the
Security Council members. He suggested
that they come back to Camp David and see what they could do. When I talked to Yasser Abd Rabbo and Saeb
Erakat after the Camp David summit, they were saying, we have a deal; there'll
be another summit; we can wrap up the remaining issues. I think the Clinton administration made a
serious mistake when on the day that the summit ended, President Clinton blamed
Arafat for the failure of the summit. It confirmed in the Palestinian mind that the United States and
Israel were ganging up on the Palestinians to accept a deal that wasn't good
enough.
We hear that no Israeli prime minister has gone as far as
Barak. That's absolutely true. I give great credit to Barak for his courage
and the vision that he laid out. But it
wasn't quite enough. Any deal that
takes place between Israelis and Palestinians not only has to be acceptable to
the Israeli body politic, it has to be acceptable to the Palestinian body
politic. Arafat is autocratic, but he
has to have Palestinian public opinion with him.
He rules by consensus, not fiat. I think he genuinely felt that what was on the table was not good enough
– in terms of Jerusalem, the refugee issue or territorial contiguity in the
West Bank. Having said that, I still
feel that the Palestinian negotiators thought there was a good chance they
could wrap this up by the close of the year, that by sitting down with the
Israelis and by continued American intervention, it might be possible to
produce a framework agreement.
Unfortunately, it all unraveled after Camp David. And there are things that are taking place
in the current fighting that are extremely disturbing. Increasingly, Palestinians see settlers as
fair game; they're out to shoot and kill them. I cannot overstate the deep resentment that Palestinians feel toward the
settlements and the settlers. They view
the ongoing process -- settlement expansion, the creation of new settlements,
the confiscation of Palestinian land, construction of roads to build
bypass highways -- as fragmenting the West Bank and putting them
into Bantustans. It's difficult to
explain to an American audience how Palestinians really feel about this. You have to pass through the IDF checkpoints
on a daily basis, sometimes two and three times a day, to sense the feeling of
Palestinian humiliation at the hands of the Israelis.
American policy over the past seven years has hidden behind the
Oslo process. Once the Israelis and the
Palestinians agreed to Oslo, we didn't have to tackle the hard issues of
Jerusalem and settlements. We could say
that these are final-status issues; the Palestinians and Israelis have agreed
to negotiate them. The United States
could duck the issue.
When I went to Jerusalem as consul-general, I was told by
people like Dennis Ross and Martin Indyk, you can't talk about Jerusalem as
occupied territory anymore, you can't talk about settlements as illegal. Settlements became not illegal, but a
problem, whatever that means. East
Jerusalem and the Palestinian role in East Jerusalem were ducked totally by the
American administration. To Barak's
credit, he put these issues on the table and, for the very first time since the
Oslo process began, dealt with them in a serious way. But the inconsistency of continued Israeli settlement expansion
and land confiscation in the West Bank eroded Palestinian public support for
the peace process.
One can talk about the shortcomings of Palestinian leadership,
and they are many. I have talked
repeatedly with Arafat about the need to outline a vision that Israelis could
relate to of what peace would look like between Israel and Palestine. He could never do it, and I don't think he
ever will do it. I've talked to him
about the need to build a constituency in Israel that supported the peace
process, that wanted a separation between Israelis and Palestinians. But he failed to address that constituency
in Israel. I talked to him many times
about government, about the need to build Palestinian institutions. I argued that a Palestinian legislature that
really had power would strengthen his hand in the same way that Israeli prime
ministers work with the Knesset. I
didn't make much progress on that front either.
But in terms of undermining the confidence of Palestinians
in the peace process, the ongoing building of settlements has been very
corrosive. I was consul-general in
1996, when the tunnel was opened in the old city of Jerusalem. As disturbing as the ensuing violence was,
what we're seeing today I find much more troubling. Palestinians increasingly see settlers as fair game. The other thing that's disturbing is that
many of the attacks are carried out not by Fatah members who came from Tunis,
but by the people who have been through the first intifada. I have met a lot of them in the course of my
visits to Gaza, to Nablus, all over the West Bank.
Many have been badly mistreated in prison. They speak English, and are realistic; they
want to get on with their lives. I
found them to be surprisingly non-antagonistic towards Israel. But don't underestimate their toughness. These people have been through the crucible,
and they are very determined. I think
that this is the group that are carrying out many of the attacks. Arafat does not control them; they are doing
it on their own. This is a very
dangerous development, because if these people really go all out, they will be
extraordinarily difficult to control.
The other thing that I find disturbing is the way that the IDF
and Barak have gone after Arafat and Palestinian institutions and the peace
process. The disproportionate
Palestinian casualties that we are seeing today are very much a result of IDF
lessons learned after the 1996 violence triggered by the tunnel affair.
The IDF told us at the time -- our military
attachés in Tel Aviv reported this -- that if there was going to be a repetition
of Palestinian violence, the IDF would use heavier weapons with the objective
of inflicting more casualties on the Palestinians and minimizing IDF
casualties. In fact, that's what has
happened: IDF casualties are fewer, Palestinian casualties are much greater.
This has fueled a cycle of violence and a
tremendous distrust of Barak among the Palestinian leadership.
Ironically, Barak sees himself as acting
with moderation in the face of pressure from the right wing; some of the IDF
take a much harder line on Palestinian resistance.
The Palestinian leadership, including Arafat, see Barak as having
declared war on the Palestinians and profess to see little difference between a
Barak prime ministership and a Netanyahu or Likud prime ministership.
It's going to be extremely difficult to break through this wall
of distrust on both sides. On the
Israeli side, this stems from incidents such as the destruction of the Yeshiva
at Joseph's tomb in Nablus and the brutal murder of two Israeli soldiers in
Ramallah. On the Palestinian side,
Israel's use of snipers has created very heavy Palestinian casualties, a large
number of people who are going to be maimed for the rest of their lives,
attacks against Fatah leaders and so forth. It's going to be extremely difficult to reestablish the kind of trust that
you need to get back to the negotiating table.
I do not think Arafat is going to be able to go back to the
status quo ante. The Palestinians think
that Oslo has resulted in an unending series of negotiations and agreements
that have not been implemented, and that it has been a ruse enabling the
Israelis to expand settlements and seize Palestinian land.
They want an end to Israeli control over
their daily lives and an end to the settlements.
They have very little trust in the American role.
This is an issue that the next administration will have to
grapple with, whether they want to or not. There will have to be some changes in the way that the peace process is
structured. One thing that can
realistically be done might be an international presence in the West Bank and
Gaza. We should not dismiss this out of
hand. Observers were used in Hebron
after the 1994 massacre of worshipers at the Ibrahimi mosque. They can be used as a fig leaf for the two
sides as they climb down from the tree.
Another thing that can be done to help bring the two sides back
to the table is to find a place for a European role in the negotiations.
I don't think this is an
insurmountable task. It would be
helpful to both the Israelis and the Palestinians.
It would give Arafat the kind of cover that he needs to go back
to the talks. Finally, there's the
issue of what happens to settlement construction during this period.
If Palestinians see settlement construction
and expansion continue, it's going to be very difficult for them to think that
the Israelis are serious about this process. There are opportunities, but there are great dangers in terms of the
violence. People have cried wolf in the
past, but the Palestinian issue spills over into the broader Arab world.
Communications technology has brought this
conflict into the homes of millions of Arabs on a daily basis.
They're seeing the clashes on Al Jazeera, on
MBC, etc. It's putting Arab governments
under real pressure. There is also the
danger of spillover into Lebanon and Syria.
DR. TELHAMI:
General Gazit, you said Arafat found what was offered
at Camp David unacceptable and needed to strengthen his position to be able to
get a favorable deal. Where is the
wiggle room in the Israeli position as you see it?
A second question, on military strategy: Is Ed right about the
way the military establishment has internalized the lessons of '96, about how
to respond to the violence? Another
aspect of that is the issue of the military establishment's fear that Israel
today does not have an effective deterrent. Because of the psychology of the withdrawal from Lebanon and of the
intifada itself, the Arabs think the army is weak, therefore it is asserting
itself to establish deterrence. How is
that affecting the Israeli calculation? My third question is on unilateral withdrawal.
Do you see that as a possibility?
GEN. GAZIT:
I was taking the long view regarding the
Israeli-Palestinian prospects in the coming five years.
Perhaps the most dangerous thing that all of
us are doing is to take press headlines seriously.
I'm talking about tomorrow, about the process.
What is happening today is a continuation of
the political process by other means. The purpose did not change. It
is to achieve a political settlement. Now, where do I see a deal? Barak, with all his weakness, has been preparing Israeli public opinion
by slaughtering three sacred cows: borders, settlements and Jerusalem.
Unfortunately, Arafat has done nothing in
the direction of preparing Palestinian public opinion for whatever difficult
decisions Palestinians will have to make. If there is no compromise on the Palestinian side, if it is just an
expectation to move the clock back to 1967 or perhaps to 1947, then there is no
deal.
Let's begin with what is possible.
There is no deal possible today that says this is the end of the
conflict, and there are no more Palestinian hopes, desires, dreams,
expectations or demands. We shall have
to reach a partial agreement with some problems left open.
I believe the deal will be based on the
borders of 1967, with some very important -- not cosmetic -- modifications,
changes that will include a major part of the settlers -- not the settlements –
within the future borders of Israel. Will it be 4-6 percent of the territory of the West Bank?
This will be decided in the agreement.
If we take from the West Bank 120 square
kilometers, we should give the Palestinians 100 square kilometers
elsewhere. In my opinion, the Arab area
that urgently needs territory is the Gaza Strip.
The deal will be this: no settlements left beyond that line, but
this will happen only after they agree. I don't see any unilateral removal of settlements before we have an
agreement. I don't believe that any
Israeli government would move settlements because of pressure from Palestinian
violence. Lebanon and the West Bank are
two different problems; don't try to make any analogy.
DR. TELHAMI:
When you said there has to be a deal in order for
Israel to give up what we call the outpost settlements, are you saying it has
to be a formal agreement?
GEN. GAZIT:
No doubt; a
formal agreement, a signed contract. Number two, I believe that the problem of the Palestinian diaspora, the
"right of return," will not be resolved at that phase.
From the Israeli point of view, there is
100-percent consensus: no "return" and, what is more, no "right."
We, the sovereign state of Israel, will
decide who can come into Israel. I'm
not referring to family reunion, humanitarian cases and things like that. Number three, Jerusalem will have to be
redivided, a city serving as two capitals, not according to the 1967 line, but
according to the new demographic reality in that city.
Number four, there should be clear borders
separating the two states. An
Israeli-Palestinian or Middle Eastern union as in Western Europe today may
occur in the twenty-second century, but not today.
Today, I want to see two states separated by a clear border, with
economic agreements, with controlled traffic of goods and people.
And last, no agreement can be implemented
unless it is accepted by both sides. It
cannot be an Israeli agreement imposed on the Palestinians, nor a Palestinian
agreement imposed on Israel. If it is,
it won't last, and will probably never be signed.
From the military point of view, the Israeli defense forces
have clearly learned the lessons of the 1996 spell of violence.
We are not going to fight a war with the
Palestinians by throwing stones just because they choose to use that
weapon. But we are not employing
Israel's full military capability. We
are trying to fight in a way that should minimize casualties on the other
side. Still, the imbalance of
casualties is unfortunately very serious. However, we are not going to sacrifice an Israeli whenever a Palestinian
is hit only because of our desire to have good public opinion.
This is no way of making war.
When I look at the wars we had in the past –
in 1956, 1967 or even 1973 -- there was no balance of casualties.
As to the perception of deterrence, we have never had a
perception of deterrence when it came to terrorist activities.
Israel has a deterrence capability when we
talk about war and the balance of forces, not when we are dealing with
low-intensity violence, not when we are dealing with terrorist activities.
We know it, and I'm afraid we have no way of
achieving that sort of deterrence.
Lastly, I do not believe that the Israeli government would
accept unilateral withdrawal of its presence and settlements anywhere before
there is an agreement. A unilateral
withdrawal today means that we have been thrown out, that we were forced to
withdraw. And if we can do it in the
Gaza Strip, we can do it tomorrow elsewhere. This is an option that does not exist.
MR. ABINGTON:
Speaking about what Gen. Gazit sees as the outline
for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement, I basically am in agreement.
As a former head of military intelligence,
of course, he was taking a strategic view. In a sense, I was also taking a strategic view.
I've dealt with Palestinian issues on and
off for 30 years, starting in 1970 with Black September.
As I've thought about this, from my
experience in Jerusalem and before that in Tel Aviv, I think that the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict is about control -- Israeli control over the
Palestinians in so many different spheres, political, economic, borders,
security, et cetera, and of continued Palestinian fighting against that
control. The big question to me is whether
the Israeli military, political and intelligence establishment is willing to
give up control over Palestinians so that they have a viable independent
state? That is the big unanswered
question, and it makes me somewhat pessimistic about where we find
ourselves. Control extends to the issue
of settlements and to how the IDF deals with demonstrators.
By no means was I suggesting that there
should be a parity of casualties, but this issue of control is central to the
Palestinian-Israeli conflict.
DR. TELHAMI:
On the international role, do you see the
fact-finding committee headed by former Senator George Mitchell as a way to
open a new avenue that would be constructive?
MR. ABINGTON:
As to the issue of the fact-finding commission, I
think it could play an extremely useful role, but it depends on whether the two
sides allow it to play that role. Will
Israel allow it to be a truly independent committee of inquiry, to look at the
causes of the violence and make recommendations on how to prevent it?
My guess is that if the commission does that,
it's going to come down very hard on both sides.
But will it be able to play a role?
The Palestinians are skeptical about it.
They don't have much faith that the American
administration is going to allow it to take a balanced look.
You're talking as though there are two parties here
who have control of the situation and are able to mobilize support behind a
position. Arafat was in town a week and
a half ago and was asked: Is there a strategy behind this so-called
intifada? He did not answer that
question. I was left with the feeling
that he was not only unwilling, but maybe unable to answer it.
It seems to me that there is a strategy
behind this violence: to get a better deal with Israel by bringing in the
international community. But I'm left
with the uneasy feeling that the leader of the Palestinians doesn't really have
a strategy.
To what extent is Arafat in control of this intifada?
When I was in the Middle East about a year
and a half ago, and I was stunned in talking to secular Arabs, at the extent to
which they were unwilling to accept a better deal with Israel.
Might this violence get out of control?
Can it be pushed in directions that we can't
predict?
GEN. GAZIT:
You have brought up two possibilities.
I have a third.
The intifada may help Arafat to explain why he has accepted a
compromise: "We have done our best, but we have taken so many casualties, there
was so much suffering, it can't go on this way; this will have to be left for
future generations." This is another
possibility. The number one question
that we, the Israeli people, are asking ourselves is this:
let's say that we are 100-percent flexible
and go back literally to the borders of 1967. Let's say that we allow the right of return of every single refugee who
wants to come back. Will this indeed be
the end of the problem, or will they say, what about Jaffa?
What about Haifa?
I don't have an answer. As long as we are strong enough, I'm not much concerned.
But what are the intentions, the plans, the
desires of the other side? I once heard
Arafat say, "you don't even allow me to dream."
Okay. As long as it's a
dream, go ahead. But if it is a
strategy, we are facing a very serious problem.
MR. ABINGTON:
I don't think Arafat has a strategy other than to
regain the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. I see him as a tactician who takes the daily situation and tries to make
the best out of it. If you look at it
from his point of view, what does he gain from this?
A lot of international attention, which he probably wants.
The Palestinian issue is certainly front and
center in the Arab world in a way that it hasn't been for the last ten
years. In that sense, he has gained.
But Arafat knows that the violence is
dangerous. It can escalate and get out
of control and threaten everything that he's tried to achieve over the last
seven years. Is he in control?
Not entirely, I think.
In 1996, when I sent a cable to the State
Department, I said the situation on the Palestinian street was very bad,
because they feel that Netanyahu is trying to delegitimize Arafat and the
Palestinian Authority. A spark can
set it off. That was a month before the
September 1996 violence. I would point
out that in 1999 there were only two Israelis killed by Palestinian terrorism,
the smallest number since 1967. So
obviously, the Palestinians, working with the Israelis, have the capacity to
control terrorism. Arafat is not
totally in control of these elements, particularly in the chaos that we see
today. I think he is also not in control
of the intifada activists, who are angry, who have guns.
But if the situation can be de-escalated, he
can reassert control.
It has taken us nine years, since 1991, to realize
that the United States is not an honest broker.
What would you advise the new president to do to gain the
confidence of the Palestinians? Assemble a new peace team?
MR. ABINGTON:
One thing that's critical in dealing with the
Palestinians in my experience is to develop a relationship of trust and
empathy. That doesn't mean that you
have to accept their positions, but if they feel that you really understand
where they're coming from on issues like settlements, refugees, Jerusalem
and so forth, you can go in and give them very tough messages.
Establishing the kind of personal relationships
with Palestinians that build up this trust is extremely important.
I don't think that the next administration
can turn a blind eye to Israeli actions that undermine the process.
How do you do this? Obviously, public confrontations are no-win situations.
General Gazit mentioned the 1974
"reassessment." I was there, standing
behind Henry Kissinger as he got on the airplane in March 1975, after that
version of the Sinai negotiations had failed. He talked about going back for a reassessment of policy.
It was seen as a heavy-handed threat against
Israel. It didn't work.
But you have to be honest with them.
There need to be more critical discussions
with Israeli leaders. I think that that
is a shortcoming of Bill Clinton in dealing with Barak.
His relationship with Netanyahu was so bad
that, when Barak was elected, it was assumed that he would move toward peace on
his own. It didn't happen.
I'm not saying that the solution is going to come through the
United States. It will not.
The solution has to come from Israelis and
Palestinians. But we need to be honest
in the way we discuss these issues with both sides.
We have been short of the mark in both dealing with the
Palestinians and the problems that I referred to earlier, and in dealing with
the Israelis on things like settlements, implementation of agreements, and the
ways that they undermine the process.
SHLOMO AVINERI, professor of political science, Hebrew University of
Jerusalem; former director general, Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs
I agree with General Gazit that we are in a Clausewitzian
situation. We are not at the end of the
peace process, but our past decision to use violence was a continuation of the
peace process by other means. I am less
optimistic after listening to Ed. Arafat wasn't able to take as satisfactory what was offered by
Barak. I think I understand why.
I cannot see a situation now in which Barak
or any other Israeli government is able to offer more to Arafat than Barak was
able to offer at Camp David. The Barak
government is at an end; we're going to have new elections.
Between now and then, no Israeli government
will have the legitimacy, never mind support, to make more concessions than
Barak was ready to make. I thought that
if he came back with a deal, he would probably get a majority.
Not any more.
The Palestinians at Camp David behaved the way they behaved in
1947. I understand Palestinian behavior
in 1947, but the consequences may be the same.
I need to be convinced that at the moment any sort of agreement is
possible. I cannot imagine that any
Israeli government would get parliamentary, let alone popular, support for any
sort of agreement, whether with the PLO, the PNA or Arafat.
The only way to stop the current violence is
to do something unilateral that will be harsh on the Palestinians and on some
Jewish settlements, will combine dovish elements, but may disengage the close
proximity at the root of the daily clashes and killings.
I'm afraid that there is no Israeli
government that can agree on anything at the moment, let alone an Israeli
government that is ready now to offer more than what was offered at Camp
David. The problem is perhaps the
American government, perhaps Barak. All
of us who supported Barak realize that we are at the end of the process.
There will be a Palestinian state, but it
cannot at the moment be achieved in any way that will get Israeli political
support. It can be achieved by an
Israeli unilateral withdrawal, where the quid pro quo on the Palestinian side
would be a government with the responsibility of a state.
We have an address, not a process.
The Oslo process was aimed at creating
confidence-building measures. We now
have less confidence than we had the first day after Oslo
Any American administration that would now suggest that an
agreement is possible is going to walk into a trap.
Disengagement may be possible, lowering the level of violence,
putting an end to the killing, allowing the wounds of both sides to heal.
And perhaps two, three, four, five years
down the road we can pick up the pieces again.
Palestinians would have a state of their own, truncated, problematic,
but not as part of the agreement. I
need convincing that any Israeli government can now offer any agreement that
would be acceptable to Arafat, who did not accept what was offered to him in
July. Barak went very far, but the
positions are unbridgeable. With
the violence and the pain on both sides now, and with the suspicion of both
sides, I think that we should forget about any sort of agreement and seriously
think about whether controlled disengagement is a possibility.
MR. ABINGTON:
I don't have the same take on Camp David.
The Palestinians made concessions; both
sides were moving forward. My
discussions with American and Palestinian negotiators after Camp David revealed
they felt that there was still Israeli flexibility on some issues.
And we have to remember that what was
discussed at Camp David wasn't even put on paper.
It's not as if this was a draft agreement that Arafat
rejected. He said before
Camp David, I don't want to go; it's not well prepared, and I'm going to
get blamed. Madeleine Albright promised
him in Ramallah that if it ended without agreement, he would not be
blamed. The day it ended, he was blamed.
The Palestinians could see the outlines of
an agreement and believed that one was possible, but during that window after
Camp David, unfortunately, it was lost.
Is it possible to recreate that?
I honestly don't know. Can any
Israeli prime minister go back to or even beyond Camp David?
I don't know, and I fear not.
A controlled disengagement with a truncated
Palestinian state is a recipe for continued turbulence.
It won't solve problems; it will only lead
to more.
General, you said that it's inconceivable that there
would be unilateral withdrawal at any point, and yet a lot of inconceivable
things have happened in the last decade or so in the region, one of them being
unilateral withdrawal from south Lebanon.
This was previously unthinkable.
What is the mood in Israel now in terms of taking casualties?
How long can Israel continue this fight with
the Palestinians without shifts in public support?
How significant is the withdrawal from southern Lebanon in the
Palestinian psychology?
GEN. GAZIT:
Let me begin with some observations.
Barak has no chance whatsoever to be
reelected unless he turns these elections for prime minister into a
referendum on an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians.
So there is a possibility, and I believe
that he will do his best to try to reach such an agreement.
He has the chance of winning the election if
he is in support of more or less the kind of deal I was referring to: stopping
the violence, deciding on future borders, some compromise on Jerusalem, leaving
the refugee problem to future generations or future governments.
Israeli public opinion is really
surprising. Last Friday, when I left
Israel, two different papers had more or less the same public-opinion poll:
Barak has no chance to win the elections, but a strong majority in Israel is in
support of a political agreement with the Palestinians.
Number two, I do not see the possibility of
a unilateral Israeli withdrawal, not as part of that agreement, before the
elections. It will be committing suicide
if Barak decides to do it. He will be
attacked by the opposition; we can never afford to support it, even if it is
the right thing to do. This is
irrelevant. Only after the elections,
not before -- or as part of an agreement.
If Netanyahu were the next prime minister, would you
say the same thing?
GEN. GAZIT:
If Netanyahu were running for election today,
definitely.
MR. ABINGTON:
South Lebanon is not a comparable situation.
The Palestinians I've talked to, thoughtful
ones, say there is no comparison, for one very important reason.
Hizballah has the support of the Lebanese
government, the Iranians and the Syrians.
The Palestinians know that the Israelis can seal off the border.
But that doesn't mean that some
Palestinians, particularly the ones with guns on the street, think that by
inflicting unacceptable Israeli casualties over a period of time that they can
drive Israel out. I think that would be
a very dangerous miscalculation, because Israel would react in a very different
way than it did in south Lebanon.
The pessimism is deepening.
I think both sides are more out of control than either speaker
has indicated. My question to General
Gazit is a military question. Let's
assume that the Israeli government is in a state of suspended animation for a
few months, until there's a new election, and assume that the Palestinian
situation is rather out of control. And
let's assume that we have the same amount of continuing violence.
What would you say the likelihood is in an
area like, let us say, the area around Beit Jala that we might see a massive
exodus of Palestinians because of the continuing clashes?
How would this play internationally?
Regionally?
And with the Americans and the Israeli public?
[See the Bleier article in this issue.]
GEN. GAZIT:
I don't expect to see a massive exodus of
Palestinians. It's not southern
Lebanon, where we saw hundreds of thousands of Lebanese leave.
They have nowhere to go.
And I'm not talking about individuals that
would say we can remain in Beit Jala as long as this exchange of fire goes
on. They will go to relatives in
another village somewhere else. No
exodus across the borders. Very
possibly, we will see individuals who are saying, why should I remain
here? I have the possibility of going
to France or Lebanon or the United States on an individual basis, not as an
exodus. By the way, some have already
done that.
MR. ABINGTON:
I agree with General Gazit.
I do not see the possibility of a real exodus of
Palestinians. I think they learned from
'48 and '67 not to leave their homes, because they know they may not be able to
come back.
As one in the media who has followed Arafat from one
defeat to another, from Black September all the way to Tunis, my observation
is, there's never been a leader who has gained more from defeat.
We have thought this man was finished many
times over. He somehow has always
managed to turn military defeat into political victory.
Ed, when you bring up the need for European
participation in some future peace process, it was always my understanding that
the Arabs accepted U.S. mediation not because they thought that America was
neutral or independent, but because they knew it was the only country that
could pressure Israel into some sort of compromise.
Europe has never been in that position.
What clout would they have?
GEN. GAZIT:
As to European intervention, let me begin with the
so-called observer force or any sort of an international force.
For the last six years we have had observers
in Hebron. What was the achievement of
these observers? They haven't produced
anything. They have not minimized violence
in any way. It's only paperwork; every
few months they write their report.
Israel receives the report; the Palestinians write their report.
But nothing is done.
We have already had more than 50 years'
experience with all kinds of observers -- armistice, foreign commissions, etc.
They are incapable of separating a state and
a civil resistance. They are wonderful when
you have two parties -- two states -- that have decided to reach a political
agreement but want someone in-between for a while.
By the way, why do we need such a force in Sinai today, after 20
years? It's totally obsolete.
Did they stop Israel from moving into
Lebanon to have a full-fledged war there?
No.
MR. ABINGTON:
As to the observers in Hebron, they accomplished one
thing: they were the fig leaf that allowed the Cairo negotiations to continue,
which led to the successful Cairo agreement of 1994.
I see observers as the fig leaf that might allow Israel and the
Palestinians to get back to negotiations, to climb down from the tree that
they're in now. Certainly, they did not
play a particularly useful role. They
certainly don't stand as a barrier between Israelis and Palestinians.
As to the Europeans at the peace table, it depends on how you
structure it. If it's the French
competing against the British, et cetera, you won't have constructive European
involvement. But if you have an agreed
role for the Europeans to play, it's possible that they can deal in a
constructive way with the Palestinians, in a way that will help both the
Israelis and the Americans move this process forward.
The reason the United States is in the peace process was because
the Palestinians thought that we could move the Israelis.
Over time, they lost confidence in our
ability to influence the Israelis, and that's why there are questions about
America's role today. That's why I
think that a European role could be helpful in getting the two sides back into
negotiations.
Were there inhibitions or restraints on the use of
snipers that have now been abandoned?
Why do we now have this shift to "standoff" weapons?
Was there a decision that breaking bones
simply wasn't good enough, that you now have to have some demonstration
killings by snipers? What accounts for
the change?
GEN. GAZIT:
It is a question of tactics, yes: to minimize, on the
one hand, innocent casualties and, on the other, having learned the lesson that
helicopters are very, very bad from the media point of view, to minimize the
use of combat helicopters against Palestinian targets.
How long can Israel sustain this?
I don't want to say 300 years, but we simply
don't have an alternative. We cannot give
up here; for us the West Bank is the very existence of Israel.
As I understand it, at the end of Camp David, Arafat
and his people felt they could go home, spend two weeks, come back and present
a counterproposal. What would that
counterproposal have looked like? Would
there have to be some changes because of what's happened over the past two
months?
MR. ABINGTON:
People say the Palestinians -- Arafat -- made no
concessions, no counterproposals. But
what did he agree on at Camp David? He
essentially agreed to a demilitarized state, a normalization of relations with
Israel, and some Israeli settlements on the West Bank being incorporated into
Israel in return for a land swap. He
agreed to the concept of Jewish neighborhoods in East Jerusalem becoming part
of Israel. And he agreed to the concept
that a shared Jerusalem could be the capital of Palestine and the capital of
Israel. He agreed that the Kotal and
the Jewish quarter would be under Israeli sovereignty.
Arafat moved a long way.
And on the refugees, he agreed more to the
principle of the right of return than to actual return.
So there was definite flexibility in the
Palestinian position at Camp David.
What remained to be done?
The Palestinians could not accept one thing: Israeli sovereignty over
the Haram al-Sharif. And everyone,
certainly the media, have said that that really torpedoed Camp David.
A couple of weeks after Camp David, there
were some tantalizing signs out there.
Arafat said the OIC (Organization of the Islamic Conference) should have
custody, and then that the Jerusalem Committee of the OIC should have
custody. That meant Morocco, Saudi Arabia
and Jordan. The Israelis were talking
about some kind of Security Council role, then about a joint role for the
Security Council, the OIC, the Jerusalem Committee.
They were still negotiating the issue of security arrangements in
the Jordan Valley, and the Palestinians were saying yes to Israeli
early-warning stations but no to an Israeli military presence in the Jordan
Valley.
But the Israelis said that Palestinian neighborhoods like Sheik
Jarrah and Salah ad-Din, where you go from the Damascus Gate up to the American
colony, would be under Israeli sovereignty but Palestinian administrative
control. Palestinians wouldn't buy
that. Their experience in Jerusalem is
that if they don't control the land -- building permits and land use -- they
don't control anything. That's what
they learned from 33 years of Israeli control of East Jerusalem.
I think the outlines of a deal were there; the negotiators felt
they were making some progress. But
that's hindsight, and violence has taken place since then.
Can any Israeli prime minister come back and
put the same offer on the table?
GEN. GAZIT:
The answer is, no.
But I wonder about the Palestinian side?
MR. ABINGTON:
The Palestinians are not going to accept a deal that
doesn't give them sovereignty over the Palestinian area of East Jerusalem.
They are willing to agree to a lot of
things, like the land swaps, about incorporation of Israeli settlements under
certain conditions. Both sides have
made tremendous progress. But has the
sense of confidence been irreparably damaged as a result of the violence in the
last few weeks? One thing I've learned
in 30 years of dealing with Arab-Israeli issues is, never say never.
You say that wars, terrorism, violence have
irreparably damaged the prospects. But
there is an impetus towards peace, and sooner or later the parties will get
there. The question is, how many bodies
will they have to step over?
DR. TELHAMI:
I asked Arafat when he was here a couple of weeks ago
what his understanding was of what was offered to him on the Haram
al-Sharif/Temple Mount? He took out a
very small notebook, almost the size of a card.
It was his notes from Camp David.
He said, here is the offer as it came to me delivered by the
Americans and the Israelis: You shall be custodian of the holy places; you
shall have the right to fly the Palestinian flag over the mosque under Israeli
sovereignty. That was all -- under
Israeli sovereignty. He said that was
absolutely unacceptable. I said, what
about the dual-sovereignty idea and the postponement idea?
He said the dual-sovereignty idea did not
come up; it came after Camp David. It
was never really put forth as a proposal at Camp David, that the postponement
idea was casually mentioned by Clinton after the collapse, sort of on the way
out. Arafat thought it was not
possible. I asked him, what did you
offer? He said, I accepted Israeli
sovereignty over the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter.
I said, what about the Armenian Quarter,
because there were rumors about it. And
he said, they asked for sovereignty over the Armenian Quarter.
My answer to Mr. Clinton was, my name is
Yasser Arafatian.
MR. ABINGTON:
I don't know
if people have read the series of six or seven articles that are translated
into English by Akram Hania, who was at Camp David, one of Arafat's very close
advisers. They are obviously from the
Palestinian point of view, but it is the most authoritative account on what
took place at Camp David [available from the PNA].
DR. TELHAMI:
Let's discuss "coordinated unilateralism."
I think it's not workable, at least in this
environment, though there may be a time for it down the road.
How can you have a Palestinian state with
open borders, with no restrictions by Israel, while the settlements are
there? It's hard to envision how that
could function. There has to be a state
for it to work. If that state is going
to exist without an agreement with Israel, it's going to be a state that might
build its own army. It's going to have
international access without Israeli intervention.
How could Israeli governments allow that without an agreement?
RICHARD HAASS:
An idea that people like me have put forward is not
that Israel simply look the other way.
In any sort of tacit diplomacy, we put down markers.
We say, we would be willing to countenance a
state, and we would not take active action against it so long as . . . .
You would put down certain conditions and
certain limitations. The Palestinians
would then say what actions on the Israeli side they might find acceptable or
unacceptable; what things they would resist, what things they would live
with. Under this type of scripted
unilateralism, you still have an element of give and take.
There's a bit of negotiation.
What's key is its informality.
At the end of the day, you don't require
either side to formally say, please sign.
You say that they're aware of it; it's transparent; there are no
surprises, and they can live with it.
There is an equivalent in the U.S.-Russian relationship
regarding nuclear weapons. We can't
negotiate a new START agreement, but we agree that we would tell them we're
moving down to these levels of offensive forces; we're going to introduce this
kind and this number of defensive forces at this rate.
This is what we're going to do; please come
and verify it. It's totally
transparent. And if they say certain
things, we should say, you should know that if you do that, it's going to
increase the amount of defense we feel compelled to do.
It would be the same thing with the Israelis
and the Palestinians. Israel would say,
you should know we're not going to permit this type of weaponry to go in there;
we're still going to control access to that.
It might be that people couldn't live with certain things, and they'd say,
we're going to use force if you try to do this.
Fine, you've got to live with that.
DR. TEHLMAI:
Let me give you an optimistic scenario that is more
in line with what Shlomo Gazit was saying about Barak's options. It's clear
that Barak's best shot at winning an election is going to be by having an
agreement. I don't agree that neither
side could do better than they did at Camp David.
What was offered by the Israelis formally at Camp David was 90
percent of the West Bank, not 92, not 94, not 96 percent.
The Israeli public, according to what was
leaked, believe it could have been up to 96.
The Palestinians never offered more than 2 percent of the West Bank
coming under Israeli control. I think a
formula is possible to accommodate more Palestinian concerns, particularly in
terms of the land-exchange idea. That's
an area where Barak has more leeway than he offered at Camp David.
Jerusalem is now the hot issue, it's not postponable.
So either there will be a little more give
on the Israeli side, or it won't happen.
Can Barak do it? It depends on
what "give" means, and what Arafat will give in return.
I think Arafat's big card is the refugee
issue. I agree with Shlomo Gazit,
that's the absolute red line for Israel.
No Israeli government is going to be able to accept major Palestinian return.
I think Arafat is actually seeing the
possible exchange. He wants to be able
to go home and say, I liberated Jerusalem.
He is, in fact, making Jerusalem the issue.
He's enabling himself to address the refugee question in a way
that he was not able to do at Camp David.
And I think Barak can give more on the Jerusalem issue than he was able
to give. There were a lot of ideas out
there that were within the realm of possibility.
The Israeli position, by the way, moved after Camp David.
The dual-sovereignty issue was proposed
after Camp David. The possibility of
international control came after Camp David.
And the Palestinian position moved after Camp David.
So it's not inconceivable that they can have
another shot at it. From Barak's point
of view, this is his best shot.
There'll be a referendum, and the Israeli public could very well reject
it. But it's better for him to go with
something in hand than nothing at all.
Arafat risks losing control without an agreement.
He doesn't have full control now, and he
risks losing it completely. From the
point of view of Palestinian and Israeli elites, the problem is bigger
than that.
I disagree with Shlomo Gazit that this is another cycle of
violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and it might take another year or
two, three, four or five. There has
been a great deal accomplished in the past 20 years toward framing the conflict
as a nationalist struggle rather than an ethnic one.
We have succeeded in framing it in terms of a Palestinian state
manifesting Palestinian nationalism and a Jewish state expressing Jewish
nationalism, which lends itself to reconciliation and shared territories.
Once you go back into an ethno-religious
conflict, you go back to 1948 or beyond, in ways that will take another
generation to reframe.
The Palestinians now see settlers as fair game; from the
Israeli point of view that's ethnic strife – attacking Jews because
they're Jews. And Jerusalem has turned
into a religious issue. The framing of
the uprising as the "al-Aqsa intifada," not as the Palestinian intifada, is
very different from 1987. This is an
intifada over al-Aqsa. That's why it
mobilized the public and brought in a lot of people from outside the
Palestinian areas. The longer this goes
on, the greater the likelihood that there will be a religious-ethnic framing
that does not lend itself to the kind of solution that is now available.
That's a serious danger.
So you might have elites on both sides
rallying behind an agreement that still preserves the nationalist framing,
because it's the only way to have a peaceful reconciliation.
Therefore, there might be another shot in
the next couple of months.
How might this happen?
The new U.S. president has observed that what has happened in the past
months is the turning of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict into an Arab-Israeli
conflict that involves major American interests, including the military
presence in the Gulf and relations with other Arab and Muslim countries.
He has to worry about it.
The Middle East is on the agenda of the new
president in ways we didn't see a few months ago.
It's no longer just about peacemaking.
The president is not likely to want to get into this peacemaking process,
because there's too much risk. So, he
will be glad to delegate to Bill Clinton in his final days at the White House.
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