President, Prime Minister Reaffirm Support of Palestinian State

RAY SUAREZ:

So how wide open is this potential diplomatic window for the Palestinians and Israelis, for the United States and Europe? For that we're joined by two long-time participants in Middle East diplomacy. Samuel Lewis is a former U.S. ambassador to Israel. Ted Kattouf is a former U.S. ambassador to the United Arab Emirates and Syria.

Gentlemen, so many people are saying that there's a significant window open at this time. In your view, is it?

SAMUEL LEWIS:

Yes, I think it is, Ray. I think there is a significant window. It's a window more, I think, for the Palestinians than for anyone else, but they're not going to be able to hold it open very long unless we follow up on some of the things the president said today and unless the Israelis do their part to make the window really a useful opening to the next phase.

RAY SUAREZ:

Ambassador Kattouf?

TED KATTOUF:

I think the president had it right. It's going to require the cooperation of all the parties to produce a real opportunity here. Clearly the death of Arafat has reshuffled the deck. There are people who served under Arafat, such as Abu Mazen and Abu Ala who very clearly want to sign on to a just and lasting peace. They are just the sort of men that Prime Minister Sharon said that he needed as a partner for peace. But there are a lot of Palestinians who are very suspicious of their leadership and they need encouragement. They need — they need to be moved towards elections quickly before violence breaks out.

RAY SUAREZ:

Did you see in President Bush's statement an indication that the United States is going to be a reenergized part of this process for a long time — the Bush administration had used Yasser Arafat as an excuse to not be heavily engaged.

TED KATTOUF:

Well, I think the president's words were very clear, that he hopes and expects to be engaged and be supportive. The only — you know, he did note that we can't impose a peace. That's true enough. But we can certainly do a lot to move a peace along. And nothing's going to happen without intense presidential involvement.

RAY SUAREZ:

Ambassador Lewis?

SAMUEL LEWIS:

Well, you know, we didn't hear anything really in the way of specifics about what we're going to do. There was no mention of new envoys. There was no mention except a passing reference to the game which is really in play, which is this engagement withdrawal of Israelis from Gaza. And I think this all sounded wonderful if you didn't know much about the details. But I can't help but be pretty skeptical. It's going to take an enormous effort by the U.S., no question. But the fundamental problems are there. They're not here.

RAY SUAREZ:

Well, President Bush was specific about his requirement that the Palestinians have an elected representative authority in place with whom to negotiate.

SAMUEL LEWIS:

Right.

RAY SUAREZ:

Does that oblige the Bush administration to do business with whoever gets chosen in that process?

SAMUEL LEWIS:

Well, I think they'll have to. I'm not sure that they're anticipating it being somebody they wouldn't like. And all the indications out of the territories at the moment is it will undoubtedly, almost surely be Abu Mazen who is certainly somebody we can do business with. The question is whether he will have enough legitimacy from those elections to get over the fact that he's really not a popular figure in Palestine at all; nor is Abu ALA, the prime minister. And they have to rely on a collective leadership, really, all of whom are people we can do business with.

But the problem is, you've got in Gaza in particular very large opposition to their leadership. And how the Hamas plays this election no one can at this point predict. Hamas must essentially swallow it and go along with it, otherwise Abu Mazen won't have enough prestige or authority or legitimacy to be a very effective president or negotiating partner.

RAY SUAREZ:

Ambassador Kattouf, do you agree whoever comes out of this process just isn't going to have the heft of a Yasser Arafat? He was somebody who incorporated many hats, he wore many hats; had a lot of power centered in himself and it looks like, as Ambassador Lewis suggests, that almost whoever follows him is going to be a lesser figure.

TED KATTOUF:

Without a doubt. Without a doubt. Arafat, as you indicated, embodied Palestinian nationalism. He basically created the Palestinian national movement. And nobody can hope to — there's only one father, if you will, of a country or of a movement, and Arafat is it, so very clearly those who follow, as Ambassador Lewis said, are going to have to somehow find a way to collectivize the leadership, work together, and this is not easy.

There's a lot of, Arafat deliberately played off factions against each other. He played off subordinates against each other. He gave them overlapping functions specifically because he didn't want any challenges and he wanted to be the ultimate dispenser of patronage and largess; that's why the bank accounts were with Arafat. This, this is a big job and that's why I believe that unless Prime Minister Sharon and President Bush are sincere in wanting this process to move forward, it won't.

RAY SUAREZ:

Ambassador Lewis, the last couple of years has been really tough in the West Bank and Gaza.

SAMUEL LEWIS:

Yes.

RAY SUAREZ:

Are those places so weakened, the political consensus there in such disarray that there might actually be a greater likelihood of doing a deal?

SAMUEL LEWIS:

Well, you might sort of hope so, Ray. But I don't know that that's the case. I do think the Palestinians are very weary with their own Intifada and eager for peace and quiet for a while. And they certainly are disoriented by the loss of their great leader. But that won't last very long, and when the political cross currents begin to flow again, you're going to have all of these personal rivalries make it very tough for whomever the next president is and for the prime minister and this other organization of Fatah, which is really the basis of — was the basis of Arafat's political power and is the core of the PLO.

Fatah is likely to be led by Farouk Qadumi, who is a dyed in the wool opponent of the Oslo process and of a two-state solution. And he's very likely to state in Tunis and you'll have a division within Fatah and therefore within the moderate center which is going to make it very much more complicated for the next leader of Palestine.

RAY SUAREZ:

Do you agree that it's that significant, that Fatah's leader would be elsewhere, outside the region?

TED KATTOUF:

Well, first of all, I'm not convinced that Farouk Qadumi will become the head of Fatah; Qadumi was somebody who rejected Oslo, he specifically stayed out of the territories. He thought that it would fail, that is Oslo. And he does, you know, he has run the various PLO legations around the world. But it's not clear to me who's going to emerge as head of Fatah.

Within the West Bank and Gaza, among the secularists, the strong men are people like Mohammed Dachlan in Gaza who, as I recall, had initially an alliance with the political leader Mahmoud Abbas for the brief time when he was prime minister. Jabril Rajub is another fellow on the West Bank that the Israelis, you know, he's not their favorite but he was the — both of these men were in Israeli prisons for a long time but they know each other; they can do business together. And frankly, the political leadership even with elections are going to need some reliable people to head the security services who are going to, while they'll have their own ambitions, are going to have to at least give nominal fealty to the political leadership.

RAY SUAREZ:

Well, we've talked about the United States and about the Israelis — the Palestinians. Let's turn to the Israelis now because they've had their own problems — recently deep divisions over the plan from Prime Minister Sharon to pull out of Gaza. Are they ready to get back in the process as well?

TED KATTOUF:

Well, I hope so. I hope so. I talked to a European diplomat recently who had been in Israel and the territories. He found Israeli officials as Arafat was dying much more relaxed, much more open to possibilities. But ultimately, the decision-making would seem to rest with Ariel Sharon. He is the only Israeli politician who has the stature, for instance, to go ahead with a plan like Gaza that would dismantle settlements. He was planning, it seemed, to do it very much unilaterally.

Now more than ever it's important that he coordinate with any Palestinian leadership that emerges. It's important that the Israelis not leave Gaza in a state where things just fall apart into warring factions. There have been some statements before Arafat's illness that gave pause, such as the advisor to Sharon, Dov Weisglass, who basically said, we can get out of Gaza; you know, that's good enough for this prime ministership. We don't have to do anything on the West Bank. We don't have to try to move the ball forward. I hope that's not the — that's the new opportunity presented is not looked at the way Weisglass described.

RAY SUAREZ:

Well, Ambassador Lewis, one of the questions persistently asked is: Does Ariel Sharon really intend to ever see a Palestinian state?

SAMUEL LEWIS:

He's never actually been against a Palestinian state so long as it's small and weak and not a threat to Israel. But the question is: Will he ever give up the West Bank or most of it? I doubt it. I don't think so. But the issue on the agenda for the next year is not an overall peace agreement. And that's why I think the press conference is almost a little misleading in its optimistic tone. Israeli politics being very complicated and what they are, Sharon is very likely to have to have either a new government or a major election by next March. He is determined to carry through on the withdrawal from Gaza and he's open now, I believe, to coordinating that with the new Palestinian leadership.

And the defense minister, Mofaz, has already given assurances they will cooperate and assist with making arrangements so the election can be carried out in a reasonable fashion. The issue on the table for the next 12 months is helping through the international community with the Egyptians and the U.S. to force a kind of rationality about this withdrawal that gives the Palestinians a real chance then to build the beginnings of their state in Gaza. And that's the agenda for the next year. Sharon may or may not be around a year or two years from now, but the next stage on the West Bank, I believe, won't take place under this prime minister.

RAY SUAREZ:

Do you agree with that, Ambassador Kattouf?

TED KATTOUF:

I'm afraid I do. I think Ambassador Lewis has analyzed the situation very well. Sharon has talked at various times about offering maybe 42 percent of the West Bank to the Palestinians — non-contiguous territories. He's been the architect in many cases of the settlement movement of military roads and other roads running across the West Bank, military encampments.

It's so bad that some Palestinians who have advocated a two-state solution are now saying maybe the only solution will be a one-state solution in which we're given our civil and political rights, which, of course, means that Israel would not be a Jewish or Zionist state any longer, which isn't acceptable, of course, to Israelis. So I think as unfortunate as it is, we have to use this time to get a Palestinian leadership in place and get this Gaza withdrawal done in the right way.

RAY SUAREZ:

Ambassadors, thanks for being with us.