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| TROUBLED LAND | |
 October 25, 2000  |
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A conversation about the Middle East crisis with Samuel Lewis, former U.S. ambassador to Israel.
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GWEN IFILL: With me is Ambassador Samuel Lewis. He served as U.S. Ambassador to Israel during the Carter and the Reagan administrations, and director of the State Department's policy planning staff during the first year of the Clinton administration. He's now senior policy advisor for the Israel Policy Forum. Welcome, Ambassador Lewis. |
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| The Middle East: At the brink of the abyss? | ||||||||||||||||||||
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U.N. General Secretary Kofi Annan said last week that the situation right now in the region is at the brink of the abyss. Do you agree with him?
GWEN IFILL: We all followed very closely not only the Camp David peace talks but obviously the efforts in Sharm el-Sheikh to try to get this back on path. Do you think that there is any hope left for that peace process? Was the Camp David help or hurt? SAMUEL LEWIS: I think there is still for a peace process. I think the Oslo formula we've been operating on since 1993 is in dire straits -- but not dead because the basic concept is still there -- the concept that the two peoples have recognized each other, and committed to negotiate sharing a co-existence in Palestine. But, I do think also that the Camp David meeting both moved it forward and moved it backward. GWEN IFILL: In what way? SAMUEL LEWIS: At Camp David really for the first time, some of the issues that had been talked about and around in private meetings for years, finally became subjects of negotiation on the table. And that's good. It was time. It was past time to really get down to these cases of precise borders, refugees, settlement blocks.
SAMUEL LEWIS: Well, Jerusalem is the exception. You see, I think all of us who have dealt with this issue over the years have believed that you had to leave Jerusalem until the very end because it was so explosive. Once you got all of the other pieces in place, for defining a Palestine, then maybe you could tackle Jerusalem. If you did it prematurely, it could blow up and I think that's really what happened. But I don't think it was easy to avoid it by the time Camp David took place. And let me tell you why. I was very upset months and months ago, when Yasser Arafat began to make Jerusalem the headline in all of his speeches and public statements about the peace process. And he raised expectations sky high, that when they got to negotiating, he would have all of East Jerusalem in the Temple Mount for his capital. By the time you got to Camp David, it couldn't be ignored. It was sitting right there in the middle of the table. And although our delegation, I know, was just as wary as ever about bringing it forward, Prime Minister Barak also felt that it was important to try to get everything dealt with, having been through years of working around the edges. And Jerusalem was part of the everything. |
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| How helpful was Camp David? | ||||||||||||||||||||
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GWEN IFILL: Former Secretary of State Shultz said on this program earlier this week the Clinton administration simply overreached with Camp David. Do you agree with that? SAMUEL LEWIS: I read his -- I read the transcript. I missed the program but I read the transcript. And I want to say first that I worked for ten Secretaries of State. George Shultz and one other would be my models of great statesmen. I have great admiration for Secretary Shultz. But I've also never hesitated to say when I thought he was wrong and that's one reason that I liked working for him for several years. I think he's wrong in this case. And I think he really misstated the history because he implied that all of a sudden, we just decided to go for broke without doing the necessary preparation beforehand.
And it was clear that if that happened, and if the violence that was already going on grew over the course of the summer, leading up to that event, the Israeli reaction to that independent state would have been unilateral acts, which would have sparked just exactly the kind of uprising that we're now seeing. To head that off, it was time to try to get the parties together, at the summit, and make a maximum effort to head off that disaster. I don't think it was overreaching. It didn't work. But, you know that doesn't mean it was wrong to try. GWEN IFILL: You talk about where we stand now and the violence which is going on now. Three discouraging signs since Sharm el-Sheikh, Barak declaring a timeout in the peace process; Arafat working with members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad who were released from prison and working with them to, as he puts it, you know, resist Israeli oppression; and the U.S. -- and the coalition government between Sharon and Barak that they are attempting anyway to hammer out. Do any of these three elements point toward peace? SAMUEL LEWIS: No. Although I think the timeout, you know, is a fact. Declaring it didn't make it happen; there is a timeout because they can't talk rationally to each other at this moment. And everybody's energies, including the president's, are now devoted toward damage limitation, toward trying to get the violence stopped for a while. And then you begin to feel your way back into the kind of smaller steps that George Shultz talked about. That's the second best thing. But it is the only thing to do at this moment. Now, I'm not at all sure, incidentally that this coalition government is going to come about. My old adversary and sometime friend, Eric Sharon, has wanted to get like Likud into the government and get himself in as kind of a co-prime minister and head off Netanyahu's return to party leadership. But also it is clear his party is not at all sure that's the right thing to do. And I think this may turn out to be one of those big scares that doesn't actually happen. |
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| Is the U.S. responsible? | ||||||||||||||||||||
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SAMUEL LEWIS: I don't think so. No, I don't think so at all. You know, it is interesting, Gwen. Back in the '70s and '80s, Republicans made a lot of hey -- about accusing the Democrats of always blaming America first. And in this era, foreign policy failures, and there have been some, and this is one, it is all too often we hear the reverse. I mean, I believe that ultimately, these decisions are made by forces and people in the area. We do our best, and I think President Clinton has really gone incredible distance to try to help achieve this peace, but, so far, it hasn't worked. GWEN IFILL: How broadly do you define this area this region? Secretary Shultz defined it to include Iran and it raised questions about Vice President Gore's alliance with the former Prime Minister Chernomyrdin in allowing arms sales to Iran. Does that have any effect in your opinion on what's happening there right now? SAMUEL LEWIS: Well, Iran is part of the Middle East, certainly. But I don't think that has any effect on this set of issues we're talking about. I really don't. I think that the Iranians are spoilers in the Arab-Israeli conflict in a different way. They have been supporting the Hezbollah and encouraging renewed problems on the Lebanon border even after the Israeli withdrawal. They are supporters of the Hamas. But, I don't see any real connection between that particular subject and the subject we're dealing with. |
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| What to expect next? | ||||||||||||||||||||
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GWEN IFILL: What has to happen now? Does the United States play a role in what happens now in the next few steps in this process?
GWEN IFILL: In your opinion there is still a way to bridge that abyss? SAMUEL LEWIS: I think that there is a way to stop before going over the edge. We're not quite at the edge yet. But, it's looming. But you're not going to be able to get back to real peace negotiations for many months, and I'm afraid there is going to be a lot of violence before that happens. GWEN IFILL: Ambassador Lewis, thank you very much for joining us. SAMUEL LEWIS: My pleasure. |
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SAMUEL
LEWIS: Yes, I do. I think he put it very well. I have been an optimist
for 20 years on the Israeli peace process ever since I first went to
Israel in 1977. And I've seen a lot of progress -- many setbacks --
but steady progress overall. And I've rarely been as upset and pessimistic
as I have been in the last three weeks. I think we really are very close
to an abyss. 
GWEN
IFILL: Jerusalem. 
Now
I think it is probably true, it would have been preferable to have another
month, particularly to work on the Arab capitals, and some of the Arab
leaders who needed to support Arafat, if Arafat were going to make very
difficult compromises, especially on Jerusalem. But what had happened
was, the process had been going on for months, and getting more and
more stalemated and violence was breaking out, and Arafat had set this
deadline of the 13th of September. And he was going to declare the independent
Palestinian state agreement or no agreement. You couldn't ignore it
because he'd promised to do it before, and put it off before, and it
would be hard for him to postpone it again, even though that's, in effect,
what eventually he did. 
GWEN
IFILL: Is the United States, in your opinion, in any way complicit in
the current violence, what's going on there now?
SAMUEL
LEWIS: Well, we can't avoid it. I mean, I think the role is the one
that we're trying to play, which is keep exhorting both sides to try
to live up to the rather shaky commitments they made at the Sharm el-Sheikh
conference just a few days ago. And it is clear that both sides are
worried about the abyss. You know, I'm not sure who is worried the most,
but I know both sides worry. And our role at this point is just with
the help of Kofi Annan and everybody else, you can mobilize, to try
to bring home to these two parties, both, just how tragic this abyss,
that looms, can be for them. And ultimately, it will be for them, not
for us.