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• About The Much Too Promised Land
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Full Interview. (11:28)
 

Tavis: Aaron David Miller is a former State Department advisor who served six U.S. secretaries of state on Middle East issues. He is now a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center and the author of the new book, "The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for the Arab-Israeli Peace." Aaron David Miller, nice to have you on the program.

Aaron David Miller: It's a pleasure to be here, Tavis.

Tavis: I'm told that we are making a little bit of history in this conversation. In five years of doing this program, you now as the father of a former guest named Jennifer, represent the first father-daughter team we've had as guests on this program.

Miller: You were lucky. She's -

Tavis: - you win the prize.

Miller: Thanks.

Tavis: Your prize is this mug. When you leave, you get to keep this mug (laughter).

Miller: I'll take it. She's an extraordinary young woman who wrote a great book. I'm very proud of her.

Tavis: We enjoyed talking to her. Give Jennifer our best.

Miller: I will.

Tavis: This title, your book, "The Much Too Promised Land," a provocative title.

Miller: Yeah. I mean, I argue that Palestine was promised way too many times to too many people and that largely explains the conflict. Promised once by a Muslim, Christian and Jewish God; same promise to overlapping co-religionists and holy places. Another time by the British in the wake of the First World War, third time by the U.N. General Assembly in 1947 when they partitioned the country into a Jewish then Arab state, or at least that was the plan.

But it's the fourth promise, the American promise, that's the subject of this book and that promise is, "If you're reasonable, you Arabs and Israelis, and you agree to negotiate and split the difference, we, America, will be there to help you deliver what neither God, the Brits nor the U.N. could" and that's essentially the concede of the book.

Tavis: And what do you make of these various promises obviously not kept?

Miller: Well, I think it underscores how complex the history of this tortured piece of real estate really is. It's got a religious dimension, Muslims, Christians and Jews. The same promise was made to the same holy sites, same piece of territory, by presumably the same God. The Brits were going to try to protect their empire from Suez to India and made conflicting promises.

The U.N. tried its best, but in the end, the plan to partition this piece of real estate into a Jewish and Arab state didn't work out. So that left America, when the British withdrew in the wake of the Second World War with what I call the fifty - and it's getting now to be a hundred - year headache that is in large part, to some degree, our responsibility, but we've got commitments and interests there and we can't walk away from them.

Tavis: I want to come back to our responsibility a little later in this conversation. By my count, twice you said, "This piece of real estate." I don't think you meant this. I want to give you a chance to unpack it, but I want to understand more of what you mean by that.

For me, it's really not just a piece of real estate. Again, I don't think you meant that, but I'm coming to this because there really is no other piece of real estate quite like this in the entire world, which is in part what leads to the text all these years later.

Miller: That's absolutely the case. I mean, it's the much too promised land by God and also by a national group. I mean, you have the political Zionists emerging in the late nineteenth century, the Jews deserve a state. You have the Arab nationalists campaigning on Arab nationalism. So you've got conflicting religious and national and territorial promises over a tiny piece of real estate that has tremendous resonance for the western world, tremendous resonance.

Tavis: When you say, "Much too promised by men," I get that. By men, by heads of state, by negotiators, I get that. When you say, "Much too promised by God," you got to unpack that one for me.

Miller: Well, let me give you an example. There's a thirty-five square kilometer area in Jerusalem on which sits two of the holiest mosques to Islam and below which sit the remains of both the first and the second temples holy to the Jews. Now that's overlapping sacred space. Same God, presumably for Muslims, Christians and Jews, is making contradictory promises to religions. Both the Jews and the Muslims believe that they should assert sovereignty over that area.

Americans, July 2000, President Clinton trying to unwind this thing. We're trying to convince the Israelis and the Palestinians to take sovereignty which they both claim and give it back to God. Maybe that'll fix the problem. If that wouldn't, we try to offer the Palestinian sovereignty above ground and offer the Israeli sovereignty below. So we're trying to divide up Jerusalem as if it were a piece of salami.

Frankly, as Americans, I admire our practicality and our optimism, but our split-the-difference mentality doesn't always work when you're dealing with conflicts driven by memory, religion and history, and this is one of those times.

Tavis: Given your comment now, if we leave man out of this for the moment and stay with your formulation for the moment which is much too promised by God, given how we each value our faith, whatever that faith might be, I could take your comment to suggest that this problem will never be solved.

Miller: You know, I get up every day and I got up every day for twenty-five years. Part of me thought that that absolutely is the case. Part of me thinks that Jerusalem history teaches us that it's not to be shared. Jerusalem is to be possessed either in the name of God, the tribe and the religion.

But most of me got up for all those twenty-five years thinking to myself, "These are reasonable people. They're good people. They're people caught in a tragic conflict and maybe, just maybe, we can find a way to reconcile the perfect with the good."

If somebody asked me, "What's the most important piece of advice that I'd offer to anybody entering negotiations?" it's this. Don't make the perfect the enemy of the good because, when the perfect becomes the enemy of the good, nothing happens.

Nobody in life, I don't care if it's in your professional life or your personal life or your business life, nobody gets a hundred percent. Life is about trying to find the balance between the way the world is and the way you want it to be. Somewhere in that balance lies a solution to this conflict.

Tavis: I grew up in a very fundamentalist Pentecostal church learning and reading and studying the Bible certainly where this topic is concerned, so I come to this conversation after many years of my own religious upbringings and feelings and beliefs.

That said, as I became an adult and was able to expand my understanding and my study of this more broadly, in my adult lifetime, part of what I think the problem has been and continues to be is that the players are all wrong. And by that, I mean that the players at the state level. On either side of this question, so often are the wrong people to bring this about. Am I on to something here?

Miller: Well, the problem is wrong and right. I mean, you're talking about leaders who get to be leaders of publics either through the process of struggle, democratic elections, but who emerge essentially as legitimate leaders reflecting all the perfections and imperfections of their respective people. What we know about this is that, when we have made progress - and there haven't been that many times.

An Israeli-Egyptian peace treaty, March of 1979. You had two very strong leaders, Anwar Sadat, an amazing man, and Menachem Begin, a tough Israeli Prime Minister. They did a deal over a peace treaty that actually has endured. King Hussein and the late Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli Prime Minister, in October 1994, they did a deal over a peace treaty between Israel and Jordan which had lasted.

So when you have leaders who are willing not just to be politicians, but to move from the politician to the statesman, to really understand the strategic importance of peace, you can make progress. But those leaders don't come along very often. That's the point.

Tavis: That's my point. For much of my adult life - and we ain't got to call the names. We'll just pick up where you left off, and everybody knows who we're talking about. Many of those players have been the wrong people.

Miller: Exactly. You know, I can't explain why that is. This is a very difficult neighborhood. People have been in conflict, they suffer historic trauma and historic wounds, they represent constituencies that have suffered. They have to reflect the pain to some degree, but only when they rise above that pain and are able to see the needs of the other side, even regardless of how tough they are, then and only then do we have progress.

Tavis: You, as I mentioned earlier, have advised six secretaries of state. I don't want you to rank them from first to worst, but tell me what has made those who have been good on this issue good and what has made those who've not been so good on this issue not so good.

Miller: A really good question. I'm a baseball fan, so in this book, I have a peace process Hall of Fame. Three Americans get in. Two Republican secretaries of state, Henry Kissinger and James Baker, and one Democratic president, Jimmy Carter. The only one of those three I worked for was Jim Baker. But all three of them have what I call the four T's.

They were tough enough. They gained the trust of the Arabs and the Israelis. They were really tenacious, they didn't give up. And they had an exquisite sense of timing. They knew exactly how not to over-do it or under-do it. And as a consequence of those four T's - and we haven't seen those four T's recreated in an American president or secretary of state since the first President Bush and his very able Secretary Jim Baker.

I'm prejudiced too. There's no question. Jim Baker was a very effective Secretary of State. He was serious, he had the support of his president and he was tough enough and understanding enough to work with the Arabs and the Israelis.

Tavis: Your Hall of Fame status inferred on Jimmy Carter notwithstanding, when he wrote this most recent book for which he came on this show, "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," the Jewish lobbyists certainly tried to rip him apart for that text.

Miller: Well, there's a lot of people - Carter deserves an enormous amount of credit for what he did. He's the only American president actually to broker a final peace deal between Egypt and Israel, an enormous amount of credit. But I have to tell you - and I've spoken to President Carter, interviewed him for this book along with most of our other presidents with the exception of Bill Clinton.

Jimmy Carter, to a certain degree in my judgment - and I told him this personally, so I'm not embarrassed about saying it - has lost some sense of balance here. This conflict is a conflict between an occupied nation, Palestine, and a threatened nation, Israel.

Sometimes Jimmy Carter, when he talks about this problem, only really understands and emotes for the occupied nation and you can't do that. To achieve Egyptian-Israeli peace, this guy had to be fair and he had to reflect the needs of both sides. Sometimes in his discourse these days, he only reflects the needs of one.

Tavis: Did you see that? I didn't see that when I read his text. Maybe in certain conversations, one may come across with that. When I read the book, I didn't read it that way. Is that how you read his text?

Miller: It's really less the book. I read the book. It's less the book than some of his public statements.

Tavis: In the book, I thought he made an attempt to be fair and balanced.

Miller: No, I think he did.

Tavis: Anyway, that's Jimmy Carter's book, but he ain't on the program tonight, with all due respect to the former president and a Nobel Laureate. The guest tonight is Aaron David Miller and his new book is called "The Much Too Promised Land: America's Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace." His daughter was on the program some time ago and now he makes an appearance, like daughter, like father. I'm glad to have you on.

Miller: Tavis, it's a pleasure.

Tavis: Good to see you.