FIRlnGLlne WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR. RITA HAUSER, SIDNEY ZION

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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. 0 FIRlnGLlne HOST: GUESTS: SUBJECT: WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR. RITA HAUSER, SIDNEY ZION "ISRAELI LOGJAM: WHAT NOW?" FIRING LINE is produced and directed by WARREN STEIBEL. This is a transcript of FIRING LINE program # , taped at HBO Studios in New York City, January 19, 1999, and telecast later on public television stations. Copyright 1999 FIRING LINE Transcripts and videocassettes are available through Producers Incorporated for Television, 2700 Cypress Street, Columbia, SC

2 i MR. BUCKLEY: At least once every year we turn our attention to the Israeli question, most pointedly today because there's a real logjam there. There are the Wye accords, w-y-e accords, reached between Prinie Minister Netany.ahu and Arafat under the auspices of President Clinton. But when time came to implement these accords, the political situation imploded and Mr. Netanyahu ca.iled for elections. These will come in May. Until then there is no clear guideline on Israeli policy. But here on Firing Line we give you such stellar adyice as you've got before from Rita Hauser and Sidney Zion, skilled and learned antagonists: Mr. Zion tends to believe that Israel has yielded too much; Ms. Hauser, that only cooperation will lead to a durable modus vivendi. Sidney Zion, in the unlikely event you've forgotten, is a journalist and a lawyer, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and of the Yale Law School, and has worked for The New York Times now writes a column for the New York Daily News, and is the author of several books, including a biography of the late Roy Cohn. Rita Hauser is president of the Hauser Foundation and of counsel with Stroock, Stroock and Lavan, a New York law firm. She is a graduate of Hunter College with a doctorate in political economy from the University of Strasbourg in France and an LLB from Harvard and the New York University Law School. She has been intimately engaged in Mideast diplomacy and was US representative to the UN Commission on Human Rights as early as I begin by asking Ms. Hauser, Is it correct that Mr. Netanyahu has attempted to live by the provisions of the Oslo accords? MS. HAUSER: Yes and no. He was very much opposed to them. When he became prime minister he was obligated to live up to those parts which are binding on Israel as a matter of Israel having signed th~ accords. He tried very hard to wiggle his way out. Under some pressure from the United States and other quarters, he did go along with some of the provisions, and each stage, each step has been very much pulling teeth. The last effort, as you said, Bill, was at Wye in Virginia--Mary1and rather. In an effort to get the parties together, he finally agreed at Wye to do a number of things including another disengagement or pullback by the Israeli troops. He did one and then he faced a revolt by the right-wing members of his coalition. He tried to wiggle out again, and the end result was that he didn't carry out very much of Wye. Wye basically collapsed, and his government has collapsed. And as you said, now Israel is facing a very difficult election. MR. BUCKLEY: Do you view his behavior as recounted by Ms. Hauser as backing off his obligations? MR. ZION: I viewed it entirely differently. I believe that from the beginning of Oslo until today there has never been a reciprocity on the part of the Palestinians. And chapter, verse is there. From the start it never happened. And now after Wye, it still hasn't happened. They still haven't arrested the terrorists that they claimed they were going to arrest. They still are doing nothing about the arms. They're letting Hamas murderers out on the streets, and the head of Hamas, their leader, he got out. That's the point. Bibi got elected not to destroy the peace process but in order to make it

3 work, but he has done that. Every pullback that he was supposed to do was all conditioned on them doing what they said they would do. But it's not looked at that way from the State Department or the White House. They want Israel to keep doing this and keep it going and now, recently, they're even saying that Israel is not telling the truth when they're claiming that the Palestinians aren't doing what they were obligated to do. But it's so clear that they are telling the truth that I don't know how guys in the State Department don't just turn to stone when they make those outrageous comments. We know. Remember in Wye? We're going to arrest-there's a list of 30 terrorists, and instead of turning them over to Israel, which Oslo required and which they agreed to, they would turn them over, or at least show the United States that they had them. But that hasn't happened. Nothing ever happens. And every time they sell the same piece of rug. So I don't look at it that way at all. I think that the Israeli people elected Bibi because they were very sick of a one-way street here, and of course there was all the terrorism coming from the other side. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, they made the revision in the charter that was demanded, didn't they? MR. ZION: The revision in the charter, I think under great pressure, was accepted by Bibi, but nobody wanted to look at the credentials of these guys, by the way. There were 300 people on the Palestinian National Council from out of the country; only 25 of them were there. And they're still using the old one on the web site. They're still using, on their official website, the old charter. So okay, it was agreed upon. I never thought that was the number one thing in any event, but anyway, let's just say okay that they did, but there are plenty of other things that they haven't done, and they understood when they did that they got a piece. MR. BUCKLEY: You know-- MR. ZION: And as soon as they do the next thing, they'll get more. MR. BUCKLEY: Ms. Hauser, this sort of running question brings to mind something that Norman Podhoretz said a year or so ago. He said, You know, the only way to judge the Palestinians is to liken them to the North Vietnamese, i.e., they are absolutely and totally determined to eliminate Israel. That's what they are going to do if it takes them 100 years. Under the circumstances, any diplomatic fireworks simply have to do with a prolongation of the techniques of the evasion. MS. HAUSER: I-- MR. BUCKLEY: Now is that so or can the resoluteness of the Israeli state temper that determination? MS. HAUSER: You know, I don't share Podhoretz's view one iota. I don't know how anyone can continue to pretend that this teeny little entity called Palestine is a threat in any shape, form, or substance, to Israel, which is the single largest military power in the region. It ranks among the great military powers of the world. It has every capacity whatsoever to put down any combination of forces. This teeny little entity that has now got a couple of enclaves, like little Bantustan, striving to form a 2

4 minuscule state for its people that would be demilitarized, that would have no effective means of attacking Israel, remains somehow-- MR~ BUCKLEY: But it can't protect itself against terrorists. MS. HAUSER: It cannot protect itself against terrorists; neither can Israel. When Israel was in full and complete control of the West Bank, it couldn't prevent all acts of terrorism. Terrorism will end to a large degree when the political issue is resolved and the two nations, Palestine and Israel, come to live together. That's been the guiding idea of almost everybody who has understood the peace process. MR. ZION: Well, where is this demilitarization? They are already militarized. MS. HAUSER: They have a police force. MR. ZION: They have a police force-- MS. HAUSER: They have nothing more than a police force. They have no-- MR. ZION: They've got 40,000 men under arms. That's a police force as big as New York's. MS. HAUSER: They have rifles-- MR. ZION: Police force-- MR. BUCKLEY: One at a time. MS. HAUSER: They have rifles. I mean, it's ludicrous, it's ludicrous to argue-- MR. ZION: Anti-tank missiles. MS. HAUSER: It's ludicrous to argue that Palestine remains in any measure a military threat to Israel, which is in the hyper-sophisticated, ultrasonic everything that there is in weaponry. It's a David and Goliath if there ever was one. MR. ZION: And who won that one? MS. HAUSER: The problem with Bibi was that he was unable.to keep all the promises he made, because every day he made different promises. He made promises to the United States, he made promises to the Palestinians, he made promises to the Israeli people and then promises to his coalition partners, who were made up largely of rightwing and nationalist forces. MR. BUCKLEY: And they were mutually incompatible? MS. HAUSER: And they were all incompatible and finally it blew up. If one reads the Israeli press, which I do daily, it is extraordinary, the degree to which he has been called names by the Israeli press beyond anybody's comprehension. 3

5 MR. BUCKLEY: Shamir called him the "angel of destruction." That's his party leader. MS. HAUSER: He's called a liar, a cheat, perfidious, a man who basically lost the support of his public because he didn't live up to any of his coherent promises. Now this new election is a very interesting one. It remains to be seen whether or not some new forces will come into play. Both big parties, Likud and Labor, have been--both of them--losing strength with time in favor of smaller parties. They have a very strange election system, which everyone seems to feel is a mistake, this direct election of the prime minister. There are now three people running for it. I mean, there are many more, but three principal people: Bibi, Barak, the head of the Labor Party, and this new general just out of the army, Shahak, who is a peacenik and really belongs in the Labor Party. How this is all going to cut itself up between now and May is a big question mark. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, Sid knows the answer. MR. ZION: No, I don't, but I will tell you this. Apparently the polls are running very close and it's even possible that Netariyahu will get elected again. I think everything that you said--a lot of the things you said about Bibi, I've said I think he hasn't. But I don't say about double-crossing the Arabs, he has double-crossed his friends right and left and his character is very much to be questioned. And as far as--1 want people to understand that the Israeli press is almost entirely left-wing and peacenik. It is much different than the rest of the country, which is split in half. They are not split in half, and they were against Bibi before they were able to call him the angel of death and before anything. So we ought to keep in mind that they would make Tom Freedman look like a Likudnik, some of those guys. Oh, what they say. You can't imagine what they do. But in any event I think that the electoral system needs cleaning up big-time. It doesn't work this way. It didn't work so good before. The direct election of prime minister is just the prime minister and then the parties, you can vote for any party you want, and that's made more and more problems. MR. BUCKLEY: But the prime minister has to have a government. MS. HAUSER: Yes, but-- MR. ZION: He has to have a government, but the things they have like proportional representation raised to the highest color, you know. MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. MR. ZION: One-and-a-half percent gets you a C. And it doesn't work. It doesn't work and you are always at the risk of losing your, you know, base support. And so that's much of what happened here. They might have had a unity government but I think nobody trusted Bibi and maybe if they did, they might have had that. MR. BUCKLEY: To what extent is Netanyahu bound to the strict interpretation on conversion? Is the party backing that insists that a conversion can only legitimately be done by an orthodox rabbi, does that translate into an important political factor? 4

6 MS. HAUSER: Well, what's happened for Bibi is that he has had to make a lot of concessions to the orthodox, who make up a good part of his coalition, and to the hyper-nationalists who may or may not be so religious. And they constantly put forth this issue of, Who is a Jew? And it poses, of course, enormous problems in terms of both the Israeli public but certainly the Jewish Diaspora and certainly the American Diaspora which strongly opposes the attempt to define a Jew as narrowly as the bills that have been put in the Knesset. It's a very difficult situation because Israel is now in what many writers are calling the post-zionist phase. Zionism was an enormous success. Its goal was to create a viable Jewish state for the Jewish people. It's done that. It's a big economic success, it's a political entity that endures, and as I said before, it's an enormous military power, thanks in large part to US support. The question now is, What is Israel's mission in a post-zionist world? And most serious people that I lmow and respect certainly feel as I do that it's aim should be to find a way toward peace with its neighbors for the very long run. And the party that it is most entwined with, integrally entwined with, are the Palestinians. Two people who share the same land, who come from the same history and who have the same desires. I have never understood the objection to the creation of a mini-palestinian state that can give the Palestinian people a sense of their own identity and nationhood. As long as the adequate securities are there, that does not pose any serious military threat to Israel. MR. BUCKLEY: Sort of an Austria solution? MS. HAUSER: Yes, a small state that poses no threat to anyone in the region. MR. BUCKLEY: Have you got a problem with that? MR. ZION: Sure, because it's not going to end up--we don't lmow where it's going to end up, by the way, this small state business. They've got their eyes over on the East Bank, which was historically Palestine, and under the mandate it was Palestine and if the king dies, nobody lmows what will happen. This could be a much more terrific problem than people imagine. Also what kind of a state would it be? If it has real sovereignty, will they be allowed, you know, to bring in immigration all they want? They're claiming four or five million people on the outside. That'll bust loose. You've got another real problem. You've got a problem in northern Israel where many people are Arab-Israelis. Suppose they say, We don't want this any more; we want to join your state. A lot of things weren't thought out here. There's a lot of trouble here. There's water supply questions. There's, no matter what you say, a military question. Let me put it this way. In the 1973 war, the Yorn Kippur War, Israel almost lost it. They would have lost it, I think they would have lost it if they hadn't controlled the West Bank, because they couldn't take a war on that front. Now you don't know what's going to happen if they don't control the West Bank any more, and the king maybe, like he did before when he went to Iraq, can switch in a minute, and Egypt is already threatening to switch in a minute. All these things-- Look, these are somewhat of a parade of horrors, but they are things I don't think were thought out when Oslo went into effect. These are the things-- First, let me say this, Rita, and you know this is true. When you say why can't they do it, Israel is the first country to ever, ever offer land for peace. In the whole history of the world nobody ever did that. So let's not just denigrate what they've done. And the fact that Shimon Peres wasn't ab~e to get it done, I think, had a lot to do with his closing his eyes to the terrorism, 5

7 and it finally upset a tremendous majority of the Jewish vote, because they said, You can't keep saying nothing will stop the peace process when people are blowing up Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. And that's where the reciprocity came in. That's what the whole thing is about. I agree with a lot of what you say about Bibi, but I do think that in the end it's not going to be a whole lot different. Barak would make a difference, I think, but the way the government, the way this election shapes up, it may not be. MR. BUCKLEY: Do you think that tacitly Arafat encourages terrorism? MR. ZION: Tacitly? He did whenever he wanted. I think he can turn it off and on. He's done it before. I think if he doesn't stop it, it happens. I don't think Hamas is so separate. There's a lot of-- You should see what we never see in the US press, which is the daily statements in the controlled Palestinian newspapers, unbelievable attacks on Israel, major-league anti-semitic and of course they're now talking about they want the '4 7 borders, you know. So hey, the minute they ate declared.a state, 98 or 99 percent of the world will recognize them right away and start putting up embassies all over the joint, right? And then people say, Well, if they get too tough, Israel can always go back in. Let me remind you about this. Every time Israel was attacked, the Security Council of the United Nations paid no attention to the attacker and just condemned Israel for responding to the attack. In all the big wars even. Now then, with the United States--and this is a real danger--with the United States being the uncle, the rabbi, of both parties now and more, tilting more to the Palestinians--it's clear cut, since these last few months with Clinton, and now if there's a terrorist attack and any effort is made to seize back some land in the West Bank, it will go to the United Nations Security Council-- MR. BUCKLEY: But what-- MR. ZION: --and then it's up to the United States every time to veto, and what if they don't and then there are sanctions? These are big problems. I don't know how anybody could not know they are problems. MS. HAUSER: The Oslo process foresaw that there would be long negotiations in the final stages dealing with the questions of borders, refugees, water. All of that has been put on hold since Bibi came in. There have been a few desultory meetings but nothing has happened. Everyone recognizes that the big questions were put off to the end - the very difficult negotiating questions. But you have to have good faith in negotiations, and most of the world, including I think our own president, privately, and the State Department, have concluded that Bibi didn't negotiate in good faith. MR. ZION: And that Arafat did. They're claiming that. MS. HAUSER: No, Arafat certainly has his shortcomings. Whether or not he can always control all of the terrorists is an open question. I know him fairly weil and I see him regularly and we discuss these issues. I think he is desperate to control terrorism. He understands that when terrorism takes place it hurts the Palestinian cause far more than it can ever hurt Israel. Terrorism is terrible, but the end result is some civilians killed in a marketplace. MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. 6

8 MS. HAUSER: For the Palestinians it undermines their entire position. So you've got a very complicated set of equations. There is no perfect answer. MR. BUCKLEY: Is there a-- MS. HAUSER: I do want to say one thing though, that Sidney always reargues the last war as most generals. You know after the Gulf War, every general in the world sat down and said what's the meaning of warfare? And among those who looked at it most closely was the Israeli military high command and general staff. War is no longer land next door, tanks. War is missiles. War is two seconds away. War is a totally different phenomenon than it was in 1967 and everybody in the region understands that if Israel's worried about anything, it's worried about.iran, it's worried about a resurgent Iraq, it is not, I underscore not, militarily in any way worried about the Palestinians. There is no way the Palestinians can threaten the integrity of Israel. There may be terrorism that can't be fully controlled, all admit that's in the nature of the problem. And I still come back to my deep-seated feeling that when you finally bury the hatchet and you give the other side a good part of what it's seeking, identity, respect, nationhood, that goes a very long way toward dealing with the terrorist issue. MR. ZION: Well, I know one thing, that the Gulf War proved that just missiles don't win them. You still have to have armies, so it's not so true that all you have to do-- MS. HAUSER: I know. MR. ZION: --is think about that. MS. HAUSER: Israel is worried about the capacity of the larger--that's why it takes such a deep interest in what's happening with the efforts to control Iraqi rebuilding of any kind of weapons of mass destruction. MR. BUCKLEY: Is there a consolidation of American Jewish sentiment on these questions? MS. HAUSER: The over-- Yes. MR. BUCKLEY: In the last ten years,.would you say that more and more American Jews are satisfied that Israel is safe and are therefore looking for strategic reconciliation? MS. HAUSER: Without question. The overwhelming majority of American Jews, by every poll ever taken, were strongly in favor of the Oslo process, they would like peace to go forward, they certainly do not enjoy the idea of any president publicly pressing Israel but the latest polls show that if he pressed both sides, they would be perfectly happy. I think there is no question that this country was overjoyed when Oslo occurred-- MR. ZION: Yeah, but at that point-- MS. HAUSER: --and with the handshake on the lawn. 7

9 MR. ZION: --but not so overjoyed when the bombs started dropping Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. MS. HAUSER: No, you know, as I said-- MR. ZION: I don't know the latest polls. MS. HAUSER: All the polls show that. I've seen the latest polling data. It's very difficult to control the terrorist element, and nobody has a defining answer for that. MR. ZION: There is no doubt about that, if you Say to people, Do you want to stop this whole process, they'll say no. And they'll say no in Israel too. I would think maybe 75 percent. MS. HAUSER: Correct. MR. ZION: And here for sure. Those are not questions we're talking about now. We're talking about why is the thing being stopped. And you're saying it's being stopped because of Israel and I'm saying it's being stopped 90 percent because of the Arabs' failure to do what they promised to do. They could have had this thing right now easily, in fact they could have had this thing in 1979 when it was offered practically to them by Sadat in the agreement with Begin, but they didn't want it. They said no, no, no, they always said no. Now finally they said yes, and then became--after the yes, all kinds of things had happened. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, that's what negotiation consists.in, right? Facing the results of empirical experience. In search of a little perspective, does the Irish question shed any light? I don't think that terrorism was sanctioned by either side, do you? MS. HAUSER: Well, certainly not since the accords were reached. MR. BUCKLEY: No, but I mean even before. MS. HAUSER: Even before it's not likely. MR. BUCKLEY: They were IRA types and so on and so forth. MS. HAUSER: Yes. And there are always the extremists within the IRA, for example, who have not accepted the accords, and who'll do everything they can to defeat them. MR. BUCKLEY: And yet do we assume that at certain stages the terrorism in Israel was sanctioned by Arafat? MS. HAUSER: Yes. Certainly long ago there was no question about it. But when they turned the corner and determined to change their policy and he renounced terrorism and was pushed to make a greater and greater effort to gain control of the elements of terrorism that exist within the Palestinians, a great deal of progress has been made. In fact, the Israeli military, every few months, issues their public report after it's given to the cabinet on the degree of cooperation between the Israeli security and the Palestinian police, and the level of it has risen very considerably. There is no question 8

10 about it. You only read, Sidney, about terrorist acts that have taken place. You don't read about the hundreds of acts that have been thwarted. And they have been thwarted because the Palestinians have given relevant information to the Israelis and together they have managed to-- MR. ZION: The generals I talk to tell me that-- MS. HAUSER: --break up cells. MR. ZION: --what happens now that's different is that-- They say when we tell them MS. HAUSER: It works both ways. MR. ZION: --where they are, they'll get them. MS. HAUSER: It works both ways. MR. ZION: But they have not destroyed the infrastructure and apparently are not willing to do it. By the way, I remember one time 20 years ago I interviewed Anwar Sadat in Egypt, and he said something I have never forgotten, and I think it's the problem here, the basic problem. When I asked him what he thought of the PLO, he looked up at the sky and he said, 'The PLO is an umbrella with holes in it. You can't do business with that." MS. HAUSER: That ~as 20 years ago. MR. ZION: And it's still an umbrella with holes in it. Because still their excuse is, It's not us, it's Hamas. You know, you don't care who kills you when you die. MS. HAUSER: Well, I would like to say that I think as difficult a situation as this has been--some people would say it's a hundred years war, depending on when you date this, let's say--there's no other recourse but to continue to try to find a peaceful modus vivendi between these two people. They are destined to live together. There is no way in which Israel can continue to dominate the liyes of Palestinians. Within Israel itself, as Sidney made reference, particularly in the northern area, Israeli-Arabs, who are Israeli citizens, are a very strong portion of the population, a majority in the northern region. They are now about 20.percent of the Israeli population. MR. BUCKLEY: And breeding fast. MS. HAUSER: They have a much higher demographic rate than most of the Jews except for the very Orthodox Jews. So over time there necessarily will have to be an accommodation, not only with the Palestinians but because of the larger number of Israeli-Arabs who are citizens of IsraeL MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. MR. ZION: And so you cut off half of Galilee and let them join the others there-- MS. HAUSER: Well, you know-- 9

11 MR. ZION: --and pretty soon you're going to salami that thing up pretty good. MS. HAUSER: No, you're going to wind up one day with two people living together in-- MR. ZION: What about Jerusalem? How come we haven't discussed that? MS. HAUSER: Jerusalem is a very difficult situation, so it was also left to final negotiations because no one had an easy answer. J3ut there's a plan that's been floating around that was done by Abu Majen --??--for the Palestinians and Yosi Balen --??-- for the Israelis which makes a lot of sense. They will draw a line, and the eastern part, which is really almost Ramallah if you know the geography. The Palestinians will call that Jerusalem and say, It's our capital, and what is the rest, the Israelis will call our Jerusalem and it's capital. MR. BUCKLEY: So it's kind of a matter of nomenclature. MS. HAUSER: It's a matter of nomenclature and living together and figuring out a way to make something adjustable. MR. BUCKLEY: Thank you very much, Ms. Hauser; thank you, Sidney Zion; thank you, ladies and gentlemen. 10

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