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| INTERIM AGREEMENT | |
 October 23, 1998 
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MARGARET WARNER: And we get three perspectives: Hisham Melhem is the Washington correspondent of the Lebanese newspaper As-Safir; Robert Satloff is the director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy; and Dean Fischer is diplomatic correspondent for Time Magazine. Dean Fischer, first, quickly lay out first, what were the key elements of this deal? |
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Concessions |
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MARGARET WARNER: Rob Satloff, the President said today that both sides had to made some very hard choices. What was the hardest choice that Benjamin Netanyahu had to make on behalf of Israelis?
MARGARET WARNER: And what was the hardest choice that Yasser Arafat had to make? HISHAM MELHEM: Well, he had to forego a clear commitment from the Israelis to withdraw the third time and to define the area that they will withdraw from and the third stage before the final talks begin. MARGARET WARNER: So there's no commitment on that at all?
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| Why Now? |
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ROBERT SATLOFF: Well, there's a couple of elements to that. First of all, of course, it takes more than one to make the deal. For Netanyahu it clearly took a long period of time inside Israel in order to convince many of his own supporters that giving up 13 percent of land was worth fulfilling old promises that were not yet kept. The Americans told him over a year ago - almost a year ago that they believe that only by giving up 13 percent could this process go forward. This brought in a year of clash between the United States and Israel than before that that the United States told a certain percentage of land to have to withdraw from. It took a long time for Netanyahu to accept that, to get a deal that merited that sort of major concession. MARGARET WARNER: Was there a similar struggle for Yasser Arafat, or has he wanted this deal for a long time and been ready to make these concessions? HISHAM MELHEM: Look, I mean he has to face a stark reality five years after Oslo, and now with the 15 percent they would control 18 percent in five years after Oslo. Five years after Oslo, Palestinians have gotten poorer than before, more marginalized than before. You cannot say the same thing about the Israelis. So he is in many ways desperate to come up with something tangible for his own people. He is losing confidence with many people. He has to deal not only with the opposition from Hamas, but he has to deal with the growing frustration and disillusionment of his own supporters. He did not deliver enough for them after many years of struggle. And that's why he has to accept that deal. And he came here trying to show the Americans and the Israelis and the rest of the world that he's extremely flexible. He accepted practically every compromise presented to him by the Americans. And the way he addressed the Israelis today, it's clear, this is a man who's most - most of these people are still under occupation, he's telling the occupiers no more violence, no more confrontation, your safety is as important as our safety. I mean, sometimes you have to be Gandhian to say something like that. And that's why I think - I think he believes it. Whether he delivered 100 percent is maybe debatable, but it's in his own self-interest to deliver - to deliver all this, but he has to do it in a way that would preserve the dignity of his own people and not plunge the Palestinian society into civil war. MARGARET WARNER: You've all been covering this or observing this process for a long time, and Dean Fischer, what struck you about the ceremony that we just saw? We only showed a snippet of it, but did the atmosphere suggest to you that each of these men has made a sort of fundamental step or any kind of attitudinal change?
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| Jonathan Pollard | ||||||||||||||
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MARGARET WARNER: Why did Netanyahu raise this Pollard matter at the time he did? ROBERT SATLOFF: Well, my understanding is, in fact, that the Pollard matter has been on the table in various ways for longer than just today, that it was raised when Netanyahu met Clinton two weeks ago in Washington, and it was raised again throughout the past week. Evidently the Israelis believed that there was a commitment from the Americans that in exchange for not pressing the Palestinians to turn over one of the key Palestinian terrorists, or not having them arrest the Gaza police chief, that they would go to the Americans and say, all right, we want Jonathan Pollard for this guy and for the 700 Palestinians that we're releasing. And so it became part of a three-way deal. Now, regrettably, there was clearly some miscommunication about whether the deal was struck, whether the President merely offered to give a sympathetic review regarding Pollard, and what we saw today was how even Middle East deals - even when on the verge of breakthrough -- can fall apart because of this sort of complication. DEAN FISCHER: But my understanding is that the issue of Pollard wasn't even raised until the sun was rising over Wye Mills this morning and after everybody else thought that the deal was struck and Arafat had left. HISHAM MELHEM: During the talks, when we covered the talks at the Wye, nobody leaked or hinted that Pollard is part of the equation, especially when it comes to Palestinian prisoners and detainees. This has nothing to do with what Pollard did. And this is an American-Israeli issue. Pollard is an American citizen who did something. He's a spy. He's convicted. And many Palestinians were puzzled and angered because he was linked and introduced as a factor in negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians. And the whole deal was for a while a hostage to a spy, a convicted one. MARGARET WARNER: And why was this so important to Netanyahu?
MARGARET WARNER: So what does this bode for (a) the ability of both Netanyahu and Arafat to sell this deal to the constituencies - the need to sell it -and to move on to final status talks in a meaningful way? DEAN FISCHER: I have to assume that the appointment of Ariel Sharon as foreign minister is going to help Netanyahu enormously selling the deal to his right-wing constituents. As far as Arafat is concerned, it seems to me that he can point with pride to the fact that he will be getting Palestinian prisoners back. There will be some form of safe passage guaranteed for Palestinians traveling between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, and he will have the prestige of the new airport. MARGARET WARNER: Hard to sell? HISHEM MELHEM: For him? MARGARET WARNER: Well, will it be hard for Arafat to deliver on the security assurances that he's given? I mean, he's agreed to round up a lot of these suspected terrorists and essentially put them on trial, has he not? HISHAM MELHEM: Already he's been subjected to a great deal of criticism and most of it is correct from human rights organizations abroad, as well as Palestinians and the rest of the world. Many people are very concerned about involving the CIA directly and detaining people, naming names, maybe supervising interrogations, and designing the whole crackdown - to destroy what they call here in Washington and Israel the infrastructure of Hamas, whatever that means. Are we talking about mosques? Are we talking about clinics? Are we talking about schools? I don't know what that means. Palestinians have been jaded by the Israelis. They don't believe until this moment - notwithstanding all this euphoria and the handshaking - we've been jaded by this. We've seen it before, and one should not be swept away by the emotions of -- the immediacy of the emotions. Unless you have a serious implementation on the security - on withdrawal, it will be very difficult for him to deliver on security. And he has to do it in a way that will not look in the eyes of his own people as he has - as Arafat becoming the enforcer for the Israelis. Already, he's been accused of being the enforcer for the Israelis. And that's why he's - he's walking on thin ice here, and he has to calibrate every move he makes. He has to justify it to his own people and he has to tell them, look, the Israelis are committing, are withdrawing, and they are keeping their word. The problem is he has to deal with the legacy of distrust with Netanyahu. We did not have that case when he was dealing with Peres and Rabin. |
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| What Now? | ||||||||||||||
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MARGARET WARNER: Do you think this is the hardest part of this deal to implement this security part? ROBERT SATLOFF: I think this is where the deal can very well fall apart. We now have the Americans filling the gaps between two parties who don't trust each other, and we have -
ROBERT SATLOFF: I think the last week has underscored the fact that the two parties don't trust each other, so now we have on the ground in an unprecedented way American officials who will determine and resolve disputes - the most minute disputes - which Palestinian has too much blood on his hands to serve to the Palestinian police? Has a Palestinian served enough time in jail for him to go out? These are like individual disputes that are extremely political and explosive, and disputes like this have the very real possibility of ending this process because of a lack of confidence in the implementation very early on. The key really is the implementation. Every one of the items on the agenda here was agreed 19 months ago and still hasn't been implemented. MARGARET WARNER: All right, gentlemen. We have to leave it there. Thank you all very much. |
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DEAN
FISCHER: Well, essentially, it's a trade-off between a handover of land
by the Israelis for promises of a crackdown on security by the Palestinians.
These elements are embodied in a proposal that the United States has
advanced and has been under discussion for upwards of 18 months now.
So there's nothing fundamentally new to the parties, themselves, about
what's involved. Specifically, Israel is expected to hand over 13 percent
of the West Bank land it now occupies, and the Palestinians for their
part have promised to crack down on the suspected terrorists and to
confiscate weapons in the hands of people that they are not supposed
to be in the hands of. And this proposal, this idea is to be monitored
and verified by the CIA, which is quite a departure for that agency.
In addition to that, the Palestinians have extracted a promise from
the Israelis for the release of several hundred Palestinian prisoners,
who are currently in Israeli jails. They have been promised provisions
for safe passage, that is to say transport, travel between the West
Bank and the Gaza Strip. And for Israelis, the Palestinians have agreed
to revise the PLO charter, sections of which call for the destruction
of Israel. 
ROBERT
SATLOFF: Well, coming into this -- this Wye Plantation summit the Israelis
had given the Americans already a very major concession, and that was
the 13 percent redeployment that Dean talked about, on top of which
is also another 14 percent of the West Bank, which goes into total Palestinian
control. So at the end of this agreement the Palestinians have six times
as much land under their total control -- from 3 percent to 18 percent
- than they had under the Labor government. So that's a major concession
from the Israeli perspective. The other big item that the Israelis conceded
on, if you will, were demands for the extradition or transfer of Palestinian-accused
terrorists from the Palestinian Authority for trial in Israel. Instead,
the Israelis accepted a lesser formula, which will have the CIA supervising
Palestinian trials of these terrorists to make sure that they are tried
and that they serve their jail terms. 
HISHAM
MELHEM: Well, they said that they will discuss it, but the Israelis
have been saying we will withdraw from 1percent only, and this is unacceptable
to the Palestinians. The Americans have advised them to say that we
will withdraw from a "significant" piece of territory. And this is not
defined. Of course you have to accept a great deal of infringement on
his authority, whether by the CIA and other authorities, to implement
what the Americans and the Israelis have been asking him to do for sometime,
which is to crack down on the militant opposition to his piece - bid
with the Israelis. There is here a very a major risk for him that if
you cross a certain line, that he would cause an uproar in the street,
and the Palestinians will get closer into what many fear as a mini civil
war. This is a very tricky endeavor that he is going to undertake in
the future. Also, there was no clear commitment on the sea port, and
there were still few loose ends. I mean, keep in mind, this is an agreement
to implement a previous agreement, and the political landscape of the
Middle East is littered with broken agreements, unfilled pledges, and
that's why the devil now is in the implementation and upholding the
details, because had they implemented Oslo, had the Israelis withdrawn
before and delivered on their commitments, we would be now discussing
final status issues and not interim agreements. 
MARGARET
WARNER: Why do you think, as Dean Fischer pointed out, this - the outlines
have been out there for months and months and months - why did finally
Mr. Netanyahu make this deal? 
DEAN
FISCHER: Well, I'm struck by the ceremony and how harmonious it was.
I think that obscured the reality. As Hisham was saying, it seemed to
me the Palestinians were pursuing a policy of sweet reason by agreeing
with just about every proposal the Americans put forward. That was certainly
not true of the Israelis, and in fact, in spite of the kind words for
both delegations, there is a strong undercurrent of anger on the part
of the Americans toward Israel partly precipitated by the threatened
walkout that Netanyahu undertook on Wednesday and then also by the introduction
of the Pollard affair, which was referred to at the top of the program.
These are issues in the case of Pollard, it was totally extraneous to
an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. And it provoked a
lot of anger on the part of the Americans. 
ROBERT
SATLOFF: Well, for Netanyahu, this is an important issue because it
goes to this - one of his constituencies in Israel that he thinks he
needs in order to validate this agreement. There are two key aspects
of this agreement. One is he has a new security plan validated by Ariel
Sharon. It's good enough for Sharon, it's going to be good enough for
any hard-line guy in Israel. Secondly, he has finally formal revocation
of the PLO charter and possibly Jonathan Pollard's release. That covers
him on his ideological flanks. Security and ideology means that Netanyahu
is safe politically in Israel. 
MARGARET
WARNER: Still?