FIRlnGLlne HOST: ANTHONY LEWIS, SIDNEY ZION SUBJECT: "IS THE PEACE PROCESS IN ISRAEL DEAD?" PART I

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1 The copyright laws of the United States (Title 17, U.S. Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. If a user makes a request for, or later uses a photocopy or reproduction (including handwritten copies) for purposes in excess of fair use, that user may be liable for copyright infringement. Users are advised to obtain permission from the copyright owner before any re-use of this material. Use of this material is for private, non-commercial, and educational purposes; additional reprints and further distribution is prohibited. Copies are not for resale. All other rights reserved. For further information, contact Director, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford University, Stanford, CA Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. HOST: 0 FIRlnGLlne GUESTS: WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR. ANTHONY LEWIS, SIDNEY ZION SUBJECT: "IS THE PEACE PROCESS IN ISRAEL DEAD?" PART I FIRING LINE is produced and directed by WARREN STEIBEL. This is a transcript of the FIRING LINE program #2638 / 1127, taped in New York City on May 28, 1997, and telecast later on public television stations. copyright 1997 FIRING LINE Transcripts and videocassettes available through Producers Incorporated for Television, 2700 Cypress Street, Columbia, SC /

2 MR. BUCKLEY: The suspicion is widely held that the peace process in Israel is breaking down. The Oslo accords, dating back to 1993, committed both parties, the Palestinians and the Israelis, to joint action intended to observe the various UN resolutions, calling, among other things, for the restitution of most of the 1967 frontiers. And the Palestinians were to come up with a means of satisfying the Israelis that their security interests were intact. With the election of 1996, the process appeared to be breal<.ing down. Most viewers believe this to the responsibility of President Benjamin Netanyahu. Others believe that the hard, semi-hidden resolution of Arafat and his key backers remains-- that it always was to drive the Israelis into the sea. The polarities here described aren't being defended verbatim by our guests today, two of whom will share the first hour. Anthony Lewis, the well-known colwnnist for The New York Times, is a critic of extravagant Israeli behavior. He is a graduate of Harvard and of the Harvard Law School and a lecturer in constitutional law at Harvard and at Columbia, and the author of several books. Sidney Zion has also been with The New York Times as legal correspondent between 1965 and He is a graduate of the Yale Law School, a former US attorney in New Jersey, a columnist for The New York Daily News, and also the author of several books. Let me begin by asking Mr. Lewis: What, in your view of it, was the primary reason for the rejection of Mr. Peres in the Israeli elections of a year ago? Was it the intention of the voters in Israel to undermine the Oslo accords? MR. LEWIS: I don't think that was the intention. The country is very, very closely divided, a few percentage points, in election after election, the difference between Labour and Likud. And so it takes only a little to tip one way or the other. And this election followed on some terrible acts of terrorism by Barnas, which, in my view and I think the general view in Israel, tipped the election against Peres. MR. BUCKLEY: So there is a sense in which the stage craft of Arafat had as one of its results the ascendancy of Netanyahu. 1

3 MR. LEWIS: Well-- MR. BUCKLEY: If they had kept it calm for a reassuring few months that might have made a difference? MR. LEWIS: Well, no, I don't agree with that, because the people who did the acts of terrorism, the followers of Hamas, are opposed to Arafat and opposed to the peace process and are his antagonists. So I believe that he would like very much for them to have remained quiet. Now one view is he should somehow have kept them under control, but that's easier said than done. Israel hasn't been totally successful in preventing terrorism, and Arafat hasn't either. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, Mr. Zion, you've never been convinced, I gather, that Arafat doesn't in fact control Hamas. Am I correct? MR. ZION: I think that it's a close question. Many of the Hamas people are part of the PLO, part of it. I remember one time interviewing Mr. Sadat in Egypt and I as~<.ed him what he thought of the PLO. And he looked up at the sky and he said, It's an umbrella with holes in it, and you can't do business with that. So, if you always say-- MR. BUCKLEY: But he did. MR. ZION: No, he didn't. He didn't, but Israel did. And I think what happened with Shimon Peres was that he didn't enforce the Oslo accords. I don't believe the Israeli people voted against the Oslo accords. I think they voted for reciprocity, which was part of the Oslo accords. And the problem was that the Palestinians were not performing their obligations under it. It is, after all, a bilateral contract, the treaty, and they were supposed to do certain things; and they did none of those things. They didn't even really get rid of the covenant that calls for the destruction of Israel, but other than that, they didn't turn over prisoners that they agreed to. There's a whole list of prisoners that they were going to turn over to the Israelis; they didn't do any of that. MR. BUCKLEY: So your point is, they are in default under the terms of Oslo. MR. ZION: They were in default, and I think that what happened was that 2

4 the constant statement, every time some bomb went off--and you know, that was a terrible winter, where bombs were going off in the middle of Tel Aviv- and the mantra became, Nothing could stop the peace process. And finally it turned off a lot of people. Now it's true the election was close, but that's because about 98 percent of the Arab-Israeli vote-- MR. BUCKLEY: Joined the other side, yes. MR. ZION: --went to Labour, but it was a pretty big landslide for the Jewish vote. Now that, a couple of years before, even a year before, this was a very popular process. I think what happened was they realized they were given land for terror and not for peace. And remember that Arafat was also going around, as he does today--as he did the day of the rose garden: In Arabic, he says, this is only a stage in the conquering of the whole country. He has a map in his office without Israel on it, just Palestine. And the constant speech making, which again, he was supposed to have stopped, and agreed to stop in Oslo, went on and on, so finally people said, It's not working, and we can't just go on and keep saying nothing can stop the peace process, like it's the Army Air Corps or something, you know. It's not a song, it's a reality, and that's why he won or lost. MR. LEWIS: We-- MR. BUCKLEY: It-- Sorry. MR. LEWIS: We could sit here and throw brickbats and say who hadn't done what. The Oslo understanding and the ones that followed it also called for Israel to provide safe passage between Gaza and the West Bank and an airport for the Palestinians to allow that and do many other things which have not been done. There have been faults on both sides. But essentially, Oslo was a bet on encouraging the best tendencies in the Palestinian polity and in Arafat. I happen not to believe that Mr. Arafat is a perfect person. Far from it. He has authoritarian tendencies that I find quite unfortunate. But Oslo was an attempt to produce a civil process in the Palestinian community and make it into a legitimate entity. And that failed because of terrorism and because of what Mr. Netanyahu has done since he took office. Let's focus on the present rather than on who flung who in the past. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, but do we have the following problem: that we have 3

5 seen how very easy it is to inflame both sides. We have the ironic master stroke of on the other hand, Mr. Ayyash with his machine gun murdering people, and then we have the slaughter of Rabin by a Jew who thought him too soft. Now does this simply tell us that it is going to prove impossible to so govern, whether on the autocratic side, Arafat, or on the democratic side, Israel, as to create the kind of peace that is necessary before a genuine modus vivendi can be engendered? MR LEWIS: Bill, I think that's a very fair and important question. Terrorists have a lot of power. With very few resources and very few people, they can upset. We've had assassinations in this country which have been--i don't have to remind you, they do a lot of damage. So yes, it's hard to stop. But I am not prepared to say, No, we must give up and give in to these terrible people. Of course not. You try to create the conditions in which the mass of people have a stake in peaceful development. I think Israel has a tremendously important stake, just to take that side of it. MR. BUCKLEY: Manifestly. MR LEWIS: --in peace. A country which is just on the verge of a real economic boom, high tech, it can only succeed if foreign investment comes in, and foreign investment will not come in if it's still, you know, in a state of semi-war. It can only happen at peace. Israel has a tremendous stake in peace. That's why I want it. MR BUCKLEY: Well, what about the extremes, Mr. Zion, that we seem to be able to put up with, like the torture business? According to the relevant agencies in the United Nations, what goes on in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv is torture, and it is, at least as on 60 Minutes last Sunday, it is defended by the man who is becoming ambassador to the United States on the grounds that although the genus torture is disapproved of, the tactical requirement is there when you have reason to believe that you can prevent further bloodshed. Now are we going to be able to come to terms with modifications of that sort? MR ZION: Well, first of all, it's a real hypocritical statement by the United Nations which only focuses on Israel. By the way, the Palestinian human rights organization just the other day--or was it yesterday?--said that there is torture going on much worse in the Arab prisons, where people are killed. Now this shaking, or whatever they're doing, and we're not allowed 4

6 to say that's okay, I would like to know what anybody would do if you knew that there was a bomb that might go off and people might get killed, I think we would have a little torture here. MR LEWIS: I want to stop you, Sidney-- MR ZION: But I don't want to justify it-- MR LEWIS: --because it isn't only when they know that there is a bomb. Eighty percent of the people who are subjected to that treatment in Israel are never charged with anything. MR. ZION: Where do you get that number? MR LEWIS: They are held for weeks and never charged with anything. MR ZION: We don't know that. I mean, that's-- MR LEWIS: Yes, we do know that. MR ZION: --what people are saying, but no one has ever proven any of that. I'm not for it, I don't agree with it. That's not the point. You can't equate it. It's not the same thing, and you can't equate the position of the terrorists coming out of the Palestinians, Ayyash, to the assassination of Rabin. These are two different things. They're really apples and oranges. By the way, there is an Ayyash Square in Jericho. They call it that. You will not see that pictured in The New York Times, but it's true. They have an Ayyash Square. Imagine that. This was the-- MR BUCKLEY: Well, now wait a minute. MR ZION: --engineer, the killer. MR BUCKLEY: Wait a minute. The assassin of Rabin wants to be a national monument. MR ZION: Well, he isn't. And that's the point. He is in jail and he is not any national monument. MR LEWIS: But there is a-- 5

7 MR. ZION: Arafat causes have martyrs-- MR. LEWIS: --memorial to Dr. Baruch Goldstein who killed dozens-- MR. ZION: There is no memorial to him, only the people there, not the government of Israel. MR. LEWIS: Oh, not the government. MR. ZION: There is a big difference. No one approved of that. No one approved of that. I mean, this is a big difference, between when the government does something and some religious fanatics do something. That is quite a different thing. But anyway-- Because you can't really equate what the refusal of Arafat and the PLO in general, the Palestinian authority, to do anything to give the reciprocity that they swore they would give. You can't say that that's the same as what you say, they didn't give them an airport. A lot of that was conditioned on what they would do. In fact, any other country would probably have suspended this whole thing on the spot. But who's suspending the talks? Arafat. What is he giving? He's getting. Now you've often mentioned that they only have three percent of the land, but 90 percent of the Palestinian people live now under the Palestinian authority. There is a lot of empty land, and they would probably get 90 percent of that if they would start doing what they promised to do. I don't believe America would ever go for deal in which it was so one-sided. Like Bibi Netanyahu said, We give and they take, that's the give-and-take of this deal. And that's why people are going a little wild about this in Israel and around the world in Jewish communities, because it doesn't look like a fair deal. It sounded good when it started, but it didn't end up that way, and I don't think that-- MR. BUCKLEY: Now that-- MR. ZION: --Netanyahu is to blame for this; they are to blame for this. MR. BUCKLEY: That strikes me as a little bit platonic-- MR. ZION: Platonic? MR. BU~KLEY: Yes, announcements of that kind. For instance, when the buildings went up in Jerusalem, you could say, Well, they had no right to be 6

8 upset by that, given that they were within the frontiers that were acknowledged as belonging to them. But in fact, the upset that happened was something that should have been anticipated by anybody with any diplomatic common sense. MR LEWIS: And was anticipated by the Israeli security services-- MR BUCKLEY: Correct. MR LEWIS: --who unanimously warned Prime Minister Netanyahu that big building in East Jerusalem would have exactly the effect it did have. MR BUCKLEY: So it was accepted as a provocative act, which in fact it was. MR LEWIS: Yes. Yes, of course, and it was intended as such, because Mr. Netanyahu's purpose--and this is where we come down to the real politics of the situation--is to prevent the existence of what was the premise of Oslo of a viable Palestinian homeland. Sidney says 90 percent of the population and so on. It's as if you were to say that Britain was to be for the British, but the British were confined to London, Manchester, Birmingham and Glasgow and everything else in between was held by some other country by armed force. These are little islands, urban islands, in the West Bank. MR ZION: Well, that's not so. MR LEWIS: Of course they don't regard that as a viable homeland. Who would? MR ZION: It's the empty land that you're talking about that isn't under Palestinian control at this time, but it will be if they go along, there's no doubt. MR LEWIS: Oh, I think there is a lot of doubt, Sidney. MR ZION: Oh, I have no doubt about that. MR LEWIS: Well-- MR ZION: As a matter of fact-- 7

9 MR LEWIS: --Mr. Netanyahu does, because he said so. MR ZION: Well, as to Jerusalem, now if they were to take the position that--what they are permitted to do, not only under Oslo, because it doesn't say a word about them not building in a neighborhood in Jerusalem--if they were to take the position that the fear of attack by terrorists would stop them, then what comes next? I mean, you could start to talk about the Galilee, which is largely populated by Arab-Israelis, which could be the next step. But you can't give in to terrorist demands like that. You have a right to build. It's just a neighborhood inside of Jerusalem. Was it provocative? In this sense it was, because they were giving a message to the Palestinians that you are not going to have what you keep telling everybody you're going to have and we never agreed to, a Palestinian state with a capital in East Jerusalem. That's the message, and they wanted to mal<.e sure they got the message. MR. LEWIS: Sidney, you say-- MR ZI<?N: Now what's wrong with that? MR LEWIS: --they didn't agree to it, and you say-- MR ZION: They never did. MR LEWIS: --nothing in Oslo stopped it. But Oslo explicitly reserved Jerusalem as a subject to be considered in the final status negotiations. MR ZION: But not any building in Jerusalem. And even though it did, at the same time, Shimon Peres and the late Rabin were saying, We will never divide the city. They kept saying that. MR. LEWIS: But Sidney-- MR ZION: You remember that? MR LEWlS: --they said it, but they left the issue open for negotiation. Arafat and company would never have signed an Oslo agreement that absolutely excluded thein from Jerusalem. It's not politically possible, because Palestinians want at least a small, symbolic place in Jerusalem. It's important to them. 8

10 MR ZION: I think they want more. I think they want the old city. I think they want East Jerusalem. MR LEWIS: They're not going to have the old city. MR ZION: I agree with you. I don't think this thing could ever-- The reason I never thought it could work and the reason I thought Jerusalem should have been first was because it was fake not to admit that that was the big issue. And it wasn't going to get any better. MR LEWIS: Bit it's an issue that can be settled. MR. ZION: I don't-- Well-- MR. LEWIS: Don't be a fatalist. MR ZION: Let's do it first, then, you know. MR LEWIS: I am talking about keeping up with the agreement. The agreement said nobody should do anything to upset the status quo pending negotiations. And Jerusalem was a subject for the final status negotiations. And upset the status quo? This certainly upset the status quo. It was a provocation, as Bill said. MR BUCKLEY: It seems to me you've got to encourage conciliatory sensibilities in a situation like this, and it seems to me plain that Mr. Netanyahu has not done that. MR ZION: Well, because he came against the background of one after another violation of the accords by the Palestinians and one after another almost daily speech by Arafat and his associates claiming that they are going to have the whole country, and they are certainly going to have the Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its base. Now you know, Bibi has also got politics to worry about too. The people that elected him--many of the people that elected him, because he was elected by a large conglomeration of people, and he did run on a peace platform too. I never forget that, and I don't think people should. But he's got a base that particularly doesn't want any land to go to the Palestinians. He also has a wide base that says Jerusalem must be involved, and that's pretty much- very big. That may be as much as 90 p~rcent. 9

11 MR. LEWIS: Sidney, how about-- MR. ZION: What is he supposed to do? MR. LEWIS: How about admitting that both sides have political problems? MR ZION: But there's-- MR. LEWIS: And that just as Mr. Netanyahu, as you accurately say, has some extreme nationalist forces in his coalition-- MR. ZION: Right. MR. LEWIS: --so Mr. Arafat has to worry about extreme nationalists on his side, and if he makes a speech throwing them a bone, it's not so terrible. MR. ZION: I think it's more than throwing ~em a bone when you call Ayyash a martyr and every time a guy commits suicide in a suicide bombing, you either go to his funeral or send flowers-- MR. LEWIS: Do you think it was wise-- MR. ZION: --in praise of-- I mean, you know-- MR. LEWIS: Talk about martyrdom, do you think it was wise for the Peres government --I personally think it was the most absolutely foolish mistake Mr. Peres ever made-- MR. BUCKLEY: To do what? MR. LEWIS: --to authorize the assassination of Mr. Ayyash, who was a terrorist, but I think it was very foolish to kill him as it was done, because it led to an extreme reaction and a martyrization of a man who should not have been a martyr. That's my view. MR. ZION: Well, there again, I'm not sure Peres actually had very much to do with that. He may or may not have. MR. LEWIS: Oh, he approved it. Absolutely. 10

12 MR. ZION: He did approve it. MR. LEWIS: Yes. The prime minister approves all such operations. MR. ZION: Well, again, this guy-- I mean, this guy was a terrible killer. MR. LEWIS: Well, he was. MR. ZION: So what would you do? I mean, you know. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, what-- MR. ZION: Do you just back off? MR. BUCKLEY: What does America do is probably something we should come to. We have taken the position that Netanyahu presents certain problems. At the same time, there has been no change in the fundamental American position, which is, as a guarantor of Israeli survival. Now we've recently agreed to cut back by $500 million our--what?-- $4 billion or $5 billion annual grant. Is that, in your judgment, a form of pressure, and if so, is there a para-political purpose or design in that retrenchment? MR. LEWIS: I don't think it had that purpose. If so, it was well concealed, and it hasn't produced any of the explosion you might expect. I think the money was needed for certain other urgent purposes, and you have a situation where you really can't get any additional foreign aid money, and so some was taken from the two biggest-- MR. BUCKLEY: Egypt and Israel. MR. LEWIS: --grants, Egypt and Israel. I don't think it's a wise idea, nor do I think President Clinton would do it, to use the pressure of aid money to try to create a c~ange of policy in Israel. It was tried once long ago by Henry Kissinger, it didn't work, it's not going to work. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, what instruments, in your judgment, are useful in applying pressure against Israel if it is viewed as being anti-conciliatory in general posture? MR. LEWIS: I don't think pressure works as such. I think I would like to 11

13 see the United States state its position. Take, for example, Sidney's view that Jerusalem should have come first. You know, without endorsing it, I just give that as an example of the sort of position one could take. We have never--and we have our reasons--stated what we think the likely outcome should be of peace in the Middle East, you know, what should be the main elements. We've always deferred: Let's wait and see what the parties do. Now it's wise to let the parties do the leadership. I think that's been wise. But when you are at a stalemate, as we are now, where the trust between the two sides has absolutely evaporated, we may have to come forward and say, Now wait a minute, this is what we think ought to happen; it's good for both of you. MR. BUCKLEY: Have you got any objection to that? MR. ZION: Well, I think-- I have no objections to-- MR. BUCKLEY: It depends on what is said. MR. ZION: Yes, I don't think that we should really take a major role in this thing. I really don't think it will work. I don't think you can force people to get together if they don't want to do it. Now I do think that we are putting a certain amount of pressure on Israel. For example, a rumor got floated that made big news in The Washington Post that there was another Israeli spy-- mole--in the United States government. It was a complete fake, but it came big time in The Washington Post. The idea of moving this big story about Israeli torture onto page one everywhere. There is big pressure coming in other ways, they're trying to do things to Israel in a more subtle way than just money. I don't believe, by the way-- MR. BUCKLEY: Why? MR. ZION: --that Israel needs the money. Because I think that there are major elements in the administration and in the State Department that have never liked Israel too much, have always thought it was a thorn in our side and an annoyance, and resent the fact--or what they call a fact--that there is a big Jewish lobby in America. MR. BUCKLEY: I've been hearing this since MR. LEWIS: Sidney reminds me-- 12

14 MR ZION: You remember that with Bush-- MR LEWIS: --of the Alben Barkley story, which it takes too long to tell, but the punch line is, "What have you done for me lately?" Sidney, the United States has supported Israel since the day of its birth with the most extraordinary aid and moral support and weapons and every other thing-- MR. ZION: Well, let me-- MR LEWIS: --and we are 100 percent committed to Israel. MR ZION: --talk about-- MR. LEWIS: What are you talking about? MR ZION: Because from the day of its birth they put an arms embargo, America did, on Israel, they didn't give it one rifle until after the '67 war. MR LEWIS: That's-- MR. ZION: So don't make it like that. And we have also supported the Arab world big time. MR LEWIS: Didn't President Truman recognize Israel on the day of its founding, an act-- MR ZION: And the next day-- MR LEWIS: --that absolutely established Israel? MR ZION: And the next day put an arms embargo on them. MR LEWIS: Let's come back to the point on which I could agree with you, Sidney. MR. ZION: What's that? Let's agree. [laughter] The Supreme Court or what? MR LEWIS: I agree with you when you mentioned the mole story in The Washington Post. I thought that was a bad story. But I don't think it was 13

15 put there by the United States government. I think that's just silly. MR ZION: Well, the woman-- MR LEWIS: It was a piece of bad editing, that's what it was. MR ZION: The woman at The Washington Post didn't make it up. Somebody had to leak that to her. And it was fake. Totally fake. MR LEWIS: Well-- MR BUCKLEY: Look, are you suggesting that the editor in charge of that issue gave it its prominence because he was harboring anti-semitic instincts? MR ZION: I don't think anti-semitic, but there is-- MR BUCKLEY: Anti-Israel? MR ZION: --a tendency not to like Israel in The Washington Post. Read the editorials. There is a double standard here always. You can see it everywhere. MR LEWIS: What you see-- It bothers me, "not to like Israel." When I write something about the peace process, people say, You're anti-israel. Well, I happen to have a view that Israel is much better off at peace and it would be better off with a Palestinian homeland with which it could have reasonable relations. That's not anti-israel; it's just disagreement with somebody's view, like Sidney's. You're entitled to your view-- MR ZION: Sure. MR LEWIS: --I'm entitled to mine. It's not anti-israel, it's just a different view of where the best policy lies. MR BUCKLEY: Well, do you think that, quite the opposite of what Mr. Zion is saying, in fact hobbles our foreign policy, i.e., makes us too much pushovers in our role in the Middle East because we are afraid of being designated as anti-israel? MR LEWIS: I think that we are so committed by long habit and many, 14

16 many agreements and undertakings--since, as Sidney said, the 1967 war, that's true--that you can't really change that policy. Yes, there is some tendency to wony about the political repercussions at home if there were to be some drastic action, but it's not in the cards, because Israel is a democracy that we identify with for historical reasons and because it's more like us. We are not going to abandon Israel in the Middle East. No American government is going to abandon it, so that's just not practical to talk about.. MR. ZION: Between abandonment and-doing other things, there is a big stretch. I know they are not going to abandon Israel, but I do believe that you just have to look at what Bush did a few years ago with those settlements, when he froze all the money right after the Gulf War because they were going to build settlements, and he just froze the money and claimed that the Jewish lobby was going after this one lonely guy, and did brealc loose a whole lot of anti-semitism that might have been latent in the country, enough to even scare Bush. I'm saying that it's delicate stuff, and though I never would consider you or anybody else to be anti-israel in any way. In any way. Because I know that you're not. We just look at it in a different way. MR. LEWIS: Right. MR. ZION: I do think that sometimes there is a double standard used, even by you sometimes, in how you criticize the Israelis and you don't often criticize the Arabs. Once in awhile you do. MR. LEWIS: Oh, Sidney. MR. ZION: I think there is another way to look at it-- MR. LEWIS: I've just finished-- MR. ZION: --when you do look at it-- MR. LEWIS: --roundly criticizing Arafat for his treatment of Dab Kutaba, a Palestinian journalist. I've had five columns in the last year criticizing Palestinian government abuses of human rights. Corne on. I don't like abuses of human rights, whether they are-- 15

17 MR ZION: I know that. MR LEWIS: --Israeli camps or Palestinians-- MR ZION: We always agree on that issue. MR LEWIS: --or Syrians or whoever they are. MR ZION: Yes. MR BUCKLEY: Well, the settlements are interesting. Here is something on which America did take a very definite policy-- MR LEWIS: Yes. MR BUCKLEY: --i.e., this is a part of the Oslo evolution, and to the extent that it was defied, we had to have sanctions, and Bush experimented with them. Unfortunately we have run out of time. Thank you so much, Sidney Zion; thank you so much, Mr. Lewis; ladies and gentlemen. Stay with us. 16