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THE WAR ON PEACE
MARCH 4, 1996
TRANSCRIPT
Elizabeth Farnsworth discusses the unravelling peace in the Middle-East with two former U.S. ambassadors to Israel; Sam Lewis served under Presidents Carter and Reagan, Edward Djerejian ended his two year term in 1994.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Both of our guests have been ambassadors to Israel. Sam Lewis served under Presidents Carter and Reagan and more recently was director of policy planning at the State Department. He is now a counselor to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Edward Djerejian was ambassador to Israel from 1993 to '94. He was ambassador to Syria from 1988 to '91. He also served as Secretary of State for Near East Affairs in the Bush administration. He is now director of the Baker Institute for Foreign Policy at Rice University in Houston. Thank you both for being with us. Amb. Lewis, let's continue this conversation that Charlayne was having with Mr. Rahman. Where do you think that the terrorism of this sort can be stopped or has to be stopped? Is this something that the Palestinian Authority can deal with? Is this something the Israelis have to deal with on their own? Do they have to act together?
SAMUEL LEWIS, Former State Department Official: I think they do have to act together. I don't think there's any chance of stamping it out perfectly even in that event for a long time, but the intelligence services of both Israel and the five intelligence services of the Palestinian Authority who have been cooperating need to cooperate a lot more closely. The Authority has to roll up some of these networks. The Israelis are in a wave of the kind of emotion that I think anyone can understand with 60 people killed in the last nine days and carnage all over the streets of the two major cities, and unless there is much more action than there has been on getting at some of the really bad actors, the Israelis will have no alternative but to try to do more, themselves, and I think that will have very adverse political consequences, but there won't be an alternative. It's got to be a cooperative job.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: But you said that even if they cooperate, you're, you're not optimistic that they can stop it, at least in the short-term?
AMB. LEWIS: Not totally, but, look, this is--no one has found the solution to the suicide bombers. But I think that the key here is to show enough success to restore a certain degree of confidence in the Israeli public that their security, personal security in their major cities, can be again given some confidence. If that doesn't happen, the peace process is finished.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Amb. Djerejian, do you have any comment on that--peace process finished unless there can be some kind of progress shown on terrorism?
EDWARD DJEREJIAN, Former State Department Official: (Houston) Well, I think we have to remind ourselves that the Arab-Israeli peace process has always been a race against the violence and terrorism on the ground, of those opposed to the peace process, and on the other hand, the forward movement, the negotiations, themselves. It has always been that way throughout the history of this peace process. And now we're seeing a very, an extremely tragic and rough patch in these negotiations. The people who are really behind these acts of terrorism are obviously enemies of peace. I agree with Sam Lewis there has to be more effective coordination between the Israeli authorities and the Palestinian authority, much more coordination, but on top of that, I think there has to be more of an internationally coordinated effort to get at the international financing and support mechanisms for specific groups that are behind these terrorist groups. So we need an effort on the part of the Palestinians. They have direct responsibility, and on the part of the Israelis direct responsibility for their own people, the security of the Israeli people, coordination between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, and then an international effort to try to get at support systems behind these groups. And here I think the United States could play a major leadership role.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Do you think that's one of the main things that the U.S. can do right now, is to provide intelligence and other means of getting at some of those networks?
AMB. DJEREJIAN: Well, it's not only providing intelligence, but it's really mobilizing the effort to try to stem the support that is being given to these groups, but at the same time--
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: You mean from the United States, or--
AMB. DJEREJIAN: Well, from wherever.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: --anywhere? Uh hun.
AMB. DJEREJIAN: Their financial flow is from the United States, from the Middle East, from other countries. There are weapons supplies. There is training. This is truly one of the greatest challenges that the international community has in a post Cold War era is actually these forms of terrorism, and in the Middle East it has a certain poignancy because certainly we have invested so much, the United States has invested so much in the Arab-Israeli peace process that at this very fragile stage I think the U.S.'s role is to maintain the structure of the peace process during this electoral period in Israel and during this period of incidence of terrorism to sustain it so that it can proceed.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Do you think it can be sustained in this period, given all these--
AMB. LEWIS: Well, I think it's possible. I agree with Ed, but I'd like to focus really on where the international problem is. There's a lot of evidence that the military wing of Hamas doesn't necessarily take it's orders from the political wing in Gaza, that, in fact, there is a leadership group of the military wing of Hamas in Damascus very closely tied in with the Iranians, and the Iranians are the major external supporters of international--
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Even though the ambassador--
AMB. LEWIS: --terrorism.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: --the ambassador said he did not have evidence that there was anybody in Syria? There is evidence?
AMB. LEWIS: He was quite careful about that, I think.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay.
AMB. LEWIS: And this is a clear diplomatic problem. Israel is negotiating with Syria for peace. We're a player in this. We--no one denies that Hamas leaders and leaders of a number of other anti-peace leadership factions reside in Damascus, nor is there much, much ambiguity about the Iranian support and maybe even direction of some of these groups. Now, how you mobilize international pressure on the headquarters of the military groups in the territories is tricky. The U.S. can't do it alone. Other Arab states, it seems to me, need to play an important role in this for those Arab states that are now signed onto the peace process, and many of them are, could have more influence than we, I would suspect, on this kind of problem.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And do you see any evidence that that could happen? Are you optimistic about that?
AMB. LEWIS: Well, I'm guardedly hopeful. Let's put it that way. We need to do a lot of diplomatic work. The Egyptians need to do it. The Moroccans need to do it. The Israelis need to do it with others. The Syrians need to be talked to. The Jorda--everybody has a role here, but unfortunately, nobody has much influence over Iran. And that's where I think the problem originates.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Amb. Djerejian, do you have anything to say to that? You were ambassador to Syria.
AMB. DJEREJIAN: Well, I think the, the role, the support mechanisms are diverse. The important thing here is that certainly we know that there has been Iranian funding of certain Palestinian extremist groups and certainly support. And we obviously know there's a direct tie between Iran and Hezbollah in the South of Lebanon, which is another dimension of the problem, not the Palestinian dimension but another dimension of the problem of terrorism and acts of violence. But the important thing here is that it's not good enough for just Israel or the Palestinian Authority, that it needs an international effort at the regional level, at the international level, a multilateral effort on the part of all the actors and players, and not only the parties involved in the peace process but also some of the countries in the world that have a state that is equal to ours in the success or failure of the Arab peace process. I'm talking about the Europeans, Russia, Japan, and others.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: I want to talk about the peace process. Do you think it can survive this, and in the election campaign?
AMB. DJEREJIAN: I think it can survive this but I think it is on life support at this moment. This comes at such an awful time in the electoral process. Shimon Peres was leading by 15 percentage points just nine days ago. Now, he's probably well behind. He is certainly at least even. And there's no way, if you have a more incidents like the ones this week, that B.B. Netanyahu and the Likud and the right wing coalition will not win. Now, assuming that were to happen--
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: There's no way they wouldn't win if this came out.
AMB. DJEREJIAN: They would clearly win if this continues, and Peres, who is the most devout advocate of the peace process, and his colleagues will do everything possible to avoid abandoning the peace process, but the Israeli public has lost confidence in peacemaking, and these waves of emotion have to be gotten over and digested to get back to a serious confidence in the peace process. And every terrorist incident starts a new wave. Now, I think it's possible, therefore, but I'm not very--I'm very, very worried at this moment that the peace process will gradually grind to a halt, and then after the election begin to recede.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And, Amb. Djerejian, if Mr. Netanyahu, the Likud candidate, won, what would that mean?
AMB. DJEREJIAN: Well, we have to be candid about this. Both Labor and Likud have a different vision of Arab-Israeli peace. Likud's vision of a comprehensive settlement is quite different than Labor's definition and vision of an Arab-Israeli settlement, both on territorial issues, on the issue of Israeli settlements, and a number of other issues, on the Palestinian front, on the Syrian front specifically. So the peace process would obviously take a different form if, if Likud came into power in Israel. And we have to be clear on that.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Might it stop altogether?
AMB. DJEREJIAN: I don't know. That's quite speculative, but certainly it would be an entirely different process than the one we have now under Labor.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What do you think that we'll see in the next--just briefly in the time we have left--that we'll see in the next month? What kind of a, of a declaration of war was made against the Hamas and other Islamic Jihad and other groups, what do you think we'll see? We've seen that there were a thousand Palestinians arrested today, or yesterday.
AMB. DJEREJIAN: I think you'll see, I think you'll see additional direct efforts by Israeli security forces to follow up leads, to roll up networks. You'll see less of them if there's more activity by the Palestinian Authority to do the same, but I think you'll see some, in any case.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Will we see anything then--
AMB. DJEREJIAN: I don't think--I really do think the Israeli government at this point has any political alternative at least to try and do everything it can to reassure its own citizens that it's doing everything possible to protect them.
ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay, thank you both very much for being with us.
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