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MIDDLE EAST PEACE:

THE TIME IS NOW

MAY 3, 2011

12:45 P.M.

BRUSSELS, BELGIUM

WELCOME/MODERATOR:

Jan Techau

Director

Carnegie Europe

SPEAKER:

Marwan Muasher

Vice President for Studies

Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Transcript by Way With Words

Transcript Not Checked Against Delivery

JAN TECHAU: My name is Jan Techau, I am the Director of Carnegie Europe. I’ve been here for the last six or seven weeks; it’s all still fairly fresh. I’m slowly getting into the swing of things, which is mostly due to my great team here - thanks for setting this up. Thanks for coming here, even though we had a slight, little glitch in the invitation with the Wednesday and the date which didn’t quite match. I’m glad that you all found it and it’s Tuesday! Thanks for being here. The Middle East is the one policy area where political observers over the last 30 years have grown most cynical about. You could never lose money by being cynical about the Middle East and the prospects of the peace process and so on. All of a sudden, since January, this region is a source of hope, of great hope, and optimism again. We’re all wary of whether we’re going to hit the wall again and then have to grow even more cynical, or whether this kind of sense of hope, this feeling of Arab Spring, as they call it, can be sustained. We would like to talk about a very specific issue today with Marwan who has joined us, and that is how this sense of hope and how the Arab Spring, these uprisings and these reform movements, could possibly be linked with the peace process, the one thing that has been obsessed about in the Middle East over the last few years. Marwan is correctly suited to do so; Marwan is the vice-president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He oversees our Middle East programme, which has a centre in Washington but also, of course, the Middle East centre in Beirut. We’ve had many experts here in this building over the last few weeks who’ve tried to give us an idea as to what to do and how to read the situation and Marwan has overseen all those activities on Carnegie’s side, and it’s great to have him here. He was a director at the World Bank; he was also, of course, a Jordanian foreign minister, and so he’s both somebody from the region but also somebody with a Washington perspective and with a think-tank perspective. I would like Marwan to give us a couple of introductory thoughts as food for thought, to start from how this is the time for peace in the Middle East now and how the two movements or how the two aspects are interlinked, and then maybe also commenting on some of the more recent things, yesterday’s big news, of course, and then maybe also the Hamas thing that we’ve seen over the last few days. We start with that; then it’s up to you – prepare your questions and fire at will. I’ll pick you then and then we’ll get into some kind of fireside chat, without the fireside, I guess, but some kind of good interaction. We want this to be an informal kind of format, and then, hopefully, get you back on the street a little bit wiser afterwards. Marwan, thanks for being here, and, please, the floor is yours. MARWAN MUASHER: Thank you so much, Jan, and thank you all for coming; it’s always a pleasure to be here in Brussels. It seems to me that every time I leave Washington, there seems to be new crisis in the Middle East, and it’s either that every day there is a crisis in the Middle East or I’m the problem, I’m not sure which. At any rate, as Jan said, I think the international community in general, the EU certainly, and certainly the United States, is in the process of revising their policy regarding the Middle East. The old policy was one that attempted to achieve stability in the region but attempted to achieve it, at times, over the reform efforts, and whenever stability disagreed with reform, stability always took priority.


The peace issue, on the other hand, was pursued without sometimes acknowledging the linkages that exist between the issue of peace and between that of reform and that of stability. I think that any new policy that is adopted towards the Middle East needs to be a policy that looks at all these three issues, understand that they are interlinked, and does not look at them as compartments but in a more holistic way. What I say is that whereas the objective of stability has not, of course, changed - both here in the EU and in the US - instead of attempting to do stability over reform and peace, I think the new objective should be stability through reform and peace. In other words, that true stability in the region will only come if there is a serious reform process that takes on in the Middle East but also - and this is the component that I would like to talk about today – also stability that comes through peace. The peace element is something that has not yet produced results and there is a big debate going on, certainly in the United States, and I suspect here as well, where some people say this is not the time to push the peace process forward. This is a time where things are in flux, this is a time where we don’t know who the emerging regimes are, we don’t know who we are dealing with, and therefore it is better to wait until the dust settles before we push a peace process forward. I cannot disagree more with this approach. In my view, any policy, first of all, that ignores the peace component is going to be a policy that will fail to gain credibility with the region in general, with the Arab public, in particular. Imagine a situation where the US and the EU plan to regain their credibility with the Arab publics and in doing so argue that if you are an Egyptian yearning for freedom then we support you; if you are a Libyan yearning for freedom we also support you; but if you are a Palestinian yearning for freedom, it’s complicated. That’s not an argument that will win the hearts and minds of people in the region. It’s not just trying to win the hearts and minds of the Arabs that is only important, it is also to win a two-state solution that is also in Israel’s interest. I think that Israel needs to read the situation carefully and understand that the Arab world post-January is not the Arab world that existed before January, and that if we wait until the dust settles, my prediction is that the dust will not settle on the side of peace. You will have emerging regimes that are more democratic and, therefore, that will have to be more responsive to public opinion: public opinion in two or three years - public opinion is already critical of Israel – in two or three years. If the occupation continues, public opinion will be more far more critical of Israel than it is today. Israel’s concern of critical Arab governments around it will become a self-fulfilling prophesy if they wait two or three years before the peace process is addressed in a serious manner. We have now also another development which is coming, and coming soon, which is the UN vote on a Palestinian state, coming in September. The UN vote was something that I think very few people took seriously in the last few months, until recently. It was seen as a desperate move by the Palestinians to gain independence on paper but not much beyond that, but the situation actually is changing. It is changing not only because you have seen now cracks in the international community regarding this – eight Latin American countries already recognise the Palestinian state – but now you are seeing some members from the European Union starting to change their minds. Britain, France and possibly others are now seriously talking about recognising a Palestinian state come September, not because they like to do unilateral moves but because in the absence of a peace process, and in absence of negotiations, people feel that the status quo is not sustainable.


The status quo will not be sustainable. In other words, there is a new element, not just on reform, that is taking place in the Arab world, but I think also on peace, which is the street. The street, which has not moved in the past in Arab countries, today is moving, and I believe that come September, if there is no serious movement on the peace process, the street will not allow the international community the luxury of time. If the street sees that in other Arab countries change was possible through peaceful means, I think the street also in the Palestinian territories will move and will not wait two or three years until the dust settles or until a solution is found. For all these reasons, I think movement on peace now is going to actually help the process of reform, because it will help establish a better, a healthier relationship between the Arab world and the rest of the international community. It will attempt or it will result in an agreement before the window closes on a two-state solution. The window is closing very, very fast, so it’s not like we have all the time in the world. We don’t have two or three years to do [unclear] it. Movement on peace will help create a better atmosphere in the region regarding also the other issues of reform. Non-movement on peace now will create a very hostile environment in the region, certainly towards Israel, and certainly an environment that will not be conducive to any agreement, in my view, on the Arab-Israeli conflict. I am going to stop here, because I want to be brief on purpose, and just offer these thoughts and engage in discussion with you as to what you think about this. This is not conventional wisdom and I totally understand that. I totally understand the difficulty involved with moving on peace now, but my point to you is that, as difficult as movement on peace today is, it is the less difficult option of all the other options that we have, because the other options, in my view, will prove to be far more difficult on the issue of peace than the one that I am outlining now. Thank you. JAN TECHAU: Marwan, thank you for describing the larger mechanics of the situation as it is now. Just maybe a quick follow-up from my side, to get slightly more specific, especially on the parties themselves, the Israelis and the Palestinians have to somehow make use of the situation as it now. Why should the current Israeli government, which was very much determined to sit the Obama administration out and which has made the calculation that the status quo is actually better for them than changing anything, fundamentally reconsider their position? Likewise, on the Palestinian side, the strategy that has been described as Fayyadism – not doing open resistance any more but rather doing state-building – is that going to be rewarded? Is that something that has encouraged the Israeli side or not? It’s ambiguous. Give us the reading why these two parties involved should change their positions. MARWAN MUASHER: The Israeli government will not change its position, pure and simple. Left to their own decisions, they are not going to engage in a process. In fact, the Israeli position, interestingly, has shifted; the position before the uprisings in January was that Israel cannot sign a peace agreement with dictatorships; they need to wait until there are democracies in the region before they sign peace agreements. Today their position is exactly the opposite: we cannot sign peace agreements with democracies, these are not stable; we need stability before we sign peace agreements. Left to the Israeli government, they’re not going to do anything, especially this government – I’m not talking about any Israeli government – but this particular government does not seem interested in an agreement. This is a classic case, in my view, for the intervention of a third party led by the United States. We all know what the solution looks like; it’s not that anybody is going to reinvent this solution.


This solution is a mixture of agreements that have already been reached through negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis over 17 years. There is hardly a stone that has been left unturned. Coupled with the Arab peace initiative, because that provides the regional safety net that both parties need, Palestinians need an Arab cover so that when they make the compromises necessary for peace they will not be called traitors by the Arab world. The Israelis need the Arab cover, frankly, so that in return for compromises on their behalf, they are not going to get peace with only part of the Palestinians but peace and security with the whole Arab world. Both sides need this Arab government. Both sides feel today that such a solution is not attainable and only if a third party such as the United States, possibly with the Quartet – in fact, preferably with the Quartet – would put a package on the table that convinces both sides that, indeed, such a package is possible, until they do that, left to the parties alone, I agree with you, they will not move. To wait until the stars are aligned with both parties, to wait until such a time when you have a willing Israeli government and a willing Palestinian government, means to kill the two-state solution. I keep coming back to this point. Those who want to wait ignore the fact that we do not have the luxury of time with us anymore. We did not have it before the Arab uprisings of January, but, particularly after the Arab uprisings, there is an element today which is dictating the pace; and it’s not the governments who are doing so, this time it is going to be the street. JAN TECHAU: Thanks. I see a couple of hands; these two: first the gentlemen and then… URI MESSER: Hi, I’m Uri Messer from the Mission of Israel. Thank you for speaking. Just a quick question, it won’t take a lot of time; you mentioned the position of the Israeli government, the government that I represent at least. In as far as I can remember, the Israeli government and Israeli prime ministers were always elected with a very clear programme and platform calling for security but also peace. It’s a mainstay of Israeli policy ever since at least that I can remember. My question is: should we focus on the current government, or this or other government? Maybe we should focus on the Israeli public opinion and what guarantees the Arab side and, specifically, the Palestinian side can provide the Israeli public opinion, which obviously wishes to achieve this two-state solution. Next week we’ll be celebrating our 63rd independence of the State of Israel and I think that it crosses the political map left and right. The current government as well has voiced its opinion that the two-state solution is the way to go. What guarantees can the Israeli public receive from Arab countries in the context of this Arab Spring, and, specifically, from the Palestinians who are currently going towards this so-called reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah? JAN TECHAU: I think we’ll take the second question and collect, or would you like to answer right away? MARWAN MUASHER: No. JAN TECHAU: I think the second one and then we go for answers. Yes, please? MARTINA WEITSCH: I’m Martina Weitsch from the Quaker Council for European Affairs based here in Brussels. I’m encouraged to hear you plead for peace now and not put it on the back burner. I think that


you’re absolutely right, strategically that’s the right position, but I also think that it’s morally and ethically the right position to take. The question is: what’s your recommendation to the European Union in its political role in the context of that conflict? What should they do now, specifically, in order to help move the situation forward towards peace? MARWAN MUASHER: Thank you very much. To the diplomat from the Israeli Embassy, I’m very glad that you asked this question, because I think that public opinion is, indeed, what we should be aiming for, not Israeli public opinion only but Arab public opinion as well. I hope Israel understands, particularly after January, that Arab public opinion, if Israel thought it did not matter before, certainly matters now. Certainly, the position of Arab governments today is going to be more responsive to their public opinion than it was before. The Arabs have attempted very clearly to address Israeli public opinion through the Arab peace initiative which has promised security and peace not just to the Arab states neighbouring Israel but to all Arab states, those that have a territorial conflict with Israel and those who don’t. It actually went beyond that and it promised security guarantees for all countries in the region, including Israel. If you read between the lines, you will understand that that includes the transformation of Hamas and Hezbollah into political organisations and not military ones. I am of the view that any package on the table – any package on the table – should be presented to the Israeli public and to the Palestinian public as well for a referendum before it is agreed on, because otherwise people will say this is the work of governments that don’t represent us. In my own view, any package on the table that is a combination of what I talked about – an Arab peace initiative and the agreements that have been reached between the parties – in my view and those of the polls, that we all see that a majority of the Israeli public is going to accept it, and a majority of the Palestinian public will accept it. Both polls are clear on these issues; the polls tell us two things and they’re mirror images of each other; one, they tell us that a solid majority on the Israeli side and a solid majority on the Palestinian side believe in a two-state solution. The polls also tell us that a solid majority on the Israeli side and a solid majority on the Palestinian side don’t believe such a solution is possible. This is a classic case for a third party to intervene, put a package on the table and show both sides that such a solution is, indeed, possible. Then it should be, by all means, presented to both publics for approval. Even Hamas said, very clearly, that if the package is accepted by a majority on the Palestinian side, they will accept it. They are on record as saying this, which, frankly - I’m not, as you all know, a supporter of Hamas - but it is beyond what some Israeli parties inside the Knesset have said. I think that’s the way to go, because, frankly, I am sceptical that the present Israeli government will accept this package. I think that the Israeli public opinion will; I’m sceptical that the present government will. What is the recommendation to the EU? My recommendation to the EU, as well as to the US – but I’ll make the differentiation – is not to leave the peace component outside any revision of the neighbourhood policies or of EU policy in general regarding the Middle East. If we attempt to talk about stability and reform only and tell the people of the region that the peace component is outside this equation, it’s a policy that is doomed for failure.


The EU has always taken the position that on this particular issue they look for [unclear], and that is fine, but that does not mean assuming a passive attitude. It does mean to push, to argue, to support a proactive policy regarding peace with the US but to also understand, as I said, that leaving out this component is not going to result in a successful policy. JAN TECHAU: Marwan, just really quickly: you’re talking about outside interventions and one of the parties strictly… if we look at the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, one of the outside powers from the region that were always very constructive in this, and even the anchor for the peace process, was Egypt. Now Egypt is, of course, in turmoil and we have no idea where it’s going. What’s the role that you would assign to Egypt, and is it possible to play that role? Is it capable of playing that role at the moment given its own issues? MARWAN MUASHER: I think it is. Egypt is a major party in the conflict; it’s actually even more important now than it used to be. In the last few years we’ve all seen, actually, the Mubarak regime sort of withdrawing from the peace process and focusing most of its energies on the succession issue. Egypt has not played the kind of role recently that it played in the past. Egypt was not, for example, the Arab party that pushed the Arab peace initiative; that was Saudi Arabia. Now Egypt is coming back into the fold. Nabil Elaraby, the Egyptian foreign minister, is on record in the last few days saying that Egypt favours an international conference. Today, to go, an international conference would do just do that, would be convened not just between the Israelis and the Palestinians but also with Arab state participation, to be convened with the aim of solving the conflict. No one in the region, certainly not from the Arab side, is interested in a process anymore; no one is interested in a process. That, people now see, has resulted only in the continuation, not just the continuation of that status quo, but, actually, the deterioration of the status quo, with settlers today in the West Bank over 500,000 people out of a total population in the West Bank of 2 million - 25% of the West Bank today is settlers - as opposed to a number of 250,000 when the Oslo process started. The status quo is not a static status quo. No one on the Arab side wants the continuation of this process. People want to move to conflict resolution not to conflict management through a never-ending peace process. JAN TECHAU: There were two questions on that side; this gentleman with the glasses and then the gentleman behind him. ANDREAS FIEDLER: Thank you. Andreas Fiedler from the European External Action Service. I would like to come back to the third party engagement you just touched upon, because you made some recommendations to the EU but you did not elaborate on the US side. You said in your food-for-thought opening that the process should be US-led, and we don’t have two or three years of time, but if I see the US today, in the coming 18 months probably will be election campaigns, so how does this fit in the urgency of time? MARWAN MUASHER: There is a serious debate in the US now about this, frankly, just as there is in Israel also, because in Israel I think there proponents of both points of view, those who want to wait and those who don’t. Let’s focus on the US today.


There are those who want the peace process to move forward now; they want the president to lay out a vision. They want that vision to be followed by actionable steps, in other words, not just lay out a vision but laying out steps that need to be taken, so that you move to conflict resolution. They argue what I have been arguing, that a new relationship with the region is going to mean that the peace component is key. They argue that the US does not want to repeat the Iranian experience of having supported the Shah for such a long time in the past that they ended up alienating the Iranian public in return for decades, at least since Moussa Sadr [unclear] days. Then there are those who argue that this is not the time to do this, that this is one more complicating factor, that there is a presidential campaign, as you said, that is going to dictate that we wait until at least the presidential campaign is over. Where the dust will settle on these arguments, I don’t know. I have my guesses, but let me keep them to myself. My point is not to predict which of the two arguments will prevail; my point that I’m trying to make is, if people are waiting for a better time to solve the peace process, this better time is not going to come. Waiting is not going to result in a better time; there is no better time. There wasn’t a better time before the Arab uprising started in January, because the window of a two-state solution was closing, in any way, without the complicating factor of the uprisings. With the uprisings now, we are going to face in a few years, if we are passive and wait for the dust to settle, a region that is far more critical of Israel than it is today. People can choose whatever policies they think are in the best interests of their nation; all I’m saying is that I do not see a better time to move than now and unless we move now, I see that the window on peace, realistically, would have been closed. JAN TECHAU: It’s his turn now, then it’s yours. TIM JONES: Thanks very much. Tim Jones, I work for the European Union Counter-Terrorism Coordinator, and I’ve got two questions about the implications of democratic reform, one sort of concrete and the other one perhaps rather metaphysical. The concrete one is, in terms of understanding the Arab street, how high is the Middle East peace process really in the ranking of demands? The reason I ask this question – I come from the United Kingdom – if we had a democratic control of the foreign policy of the United Kingdom, we’d probably have left the European Union ten years ago, but the fact is that the government understands that leaving the EU, although it’s something everyone tells the opinion pollsters they want, in terms of their actual day-to-day concerns, it’s not very high. My understanding of the process, particularly the processes in Egypt and Tunisia, is that these are motivated by complaints about corruption and failure on the economic front. In order for Egypt to grow economically, they need various things to happen, including the growth of the tourist trade not least. It’s not going to be in their interests to make too much noise about this, so while they might get rhetorically more active, actually, in concrete terms, is popular pressure really going to have that much of an effect on the new governments, or is it rather the case that in the past the dictatorial governments have allowed the Arab-Israel issue to be used as a control valve, because they didn’t want people demonstrating about corruption but they could safely let them demonstrate about Israel to a certain degree and in that sense perversely they actually encouraged greater public activity, which in fact, now in the democratic dispensation will become a side issue? That’s the concrete question.


The more metaphysical question is: what is democracy going to bring the Arab world in the frame of, if you look at Israel, what advantages does Israel have from being a democracy which the Arab countries don’t have? It seems to me in that dispensation, one theme which has always been the case is that Israeli nationals have always been free to say what they like about almost anything. Historically, Arab citizens have never felt that freedom, so political engagement has been very difficult. Now that you’ve let the valve off in the Arab world, a lot of steam is going to go out in all directions, but as you were saying in terms of engaging public opinion, is this actually a necessary process that will have to happen before a peace process becomes durable? Thanks. MARWAN MUASHER: With respect to your first question, I actually agree with all your arguments, and I disagree with your conclusion. Yes, the Arab street has not mentioned Israel once in its fight against corruption. It’s the same argument that you go to a movie with your wife, you watch a romantic movie and you talk to her about the movie, you don’t bring up your children’s grades in school. It’s not because you don’t care about your children’s grades, it’s because the context is not there. People now are calling for dignity, are calling for better governance. That doesn’t mean they don’t care about the peace process; it’s not the proper context. This is not about Israel. People in the Arab world, I assure you, can walk and chew gum at the same time; they’re not one-dimensional in that they only can care about one issue at a time and they have to choose whether it is the peace process or governance. They can care about both. This is not the venue today – Tahrir Square was not the venue to talk about Israel, it was the venue to talk about governance. I assure you, when Arab regimes emerge in Egypt, in Tunisia or elsewhere and when they are asked about the peace process, they are going to have an opinion. That opinion is going to be far more critical of Israel than it is today. I’m not suggesting that by guessing but by looking at the polls, look at all the polls in the Arab world that show what are the priorities for people. The number one/two issue - sometimes it’s one/two, sometimes it’s two/one – is economic conditions, basically governance, and Palestine. If you look in Egypt, if you look in Jordan, if you look elsewhere, these are the number two issues. I think it’s a mistake for people to read that just because the uprisings did not mention the peace process that people don’t care about it. I think that’s the wrong conclusion to draw from this. What will democracy bring the Arab world? Once again here, people don’t have the Israeli model in mind in the Arab world when they talk about democracy, whatever that model is. They just want to be heard, they want to have a voice in the decision-making process of their countries, they want dignity. It’s very much about dignity, as much as it is about economic conditions, what we are seeing in the Arab world. We’ve seen… in Egypt, a lot of them were youth, were middle class, were… It’s not just about economic conditions, it’s about dignity, it’s about a feeling that there’s a degree of low governance in the Arab world that the new generation is simply not going to put up with. The best description I have heard of what has happened in Egypt is by an acute observer of Egyptian politics, and she said, people feel in Egypt, the parents feel that this is not a revolution by the youth against their parents, they feel it’s a revolution by the youth on behalf of their parents. What their parents could not do their children did, and the parents are very proud of it, very proud.


That’s what I’m saying – there is a need for better democracy, and whether the street today… just because the street today is not calling for peace does not mean that we wait until they do, because if we wait they will not call for peace, is what I’m saying. You have to understand that today the occupation is no longer acceptable, not that it ever was. People today feel that they have given this process all the time that was needed; it has brought them no closer to peace and it is not going to be acceptable from now on. With the added element, in my view – we were talking about Bin Laden yesterday – there’s a feeling now in the Arab world that change is possible through peaceful means. The whole doctrine of Al Qaeda is being undermined now, because Al Qaeda’s message to people was, the only way you can change things is through violence, and through violent violence. That message has been diluted to a great extent. People in Egypt saw that they could change their system in three weeks, without any violence, and even when violence was applied to them they did not hit back. That’s a very powerful message that I do not think will escape the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. JAN TECHAU: I have now four more questions, but let me have a quick follow-up on the Palestinian side. We’ve seen a bit of a rapprochement between Hamas and Fatah. Is this Hamas moving because they see that under different circumstances they need to change their business model, or is this just window-dressing? Is this sustainable, because, obviously, if that has some substance to it, it will be key to the peace process as you’re describing it? MARWAN MUASHER: I remember when I was here in February I was asked the question several times, and it’s a question I’m always asked: don’t you think that peace will not be possible without the inclusion of Hamas? How can the Palestinians reach peace with Israel if a part of them is against it? I say this because if the objective is to bring Hamas into the fold in any peace agreement, I think what we have seen is potentially positive. I don’t agree with Hamas tactics at all, I don’t agree. I am on record, when I was in the Jordanian government, on record inside my own parliament as saying suicide bombings are wrong: wrong on a moral platform and on a political platform as well. I think it would be also a mistake to jump to conclusions before we know all the facts. One, as we all know, under present Palestinian law, the responsibility of negotiating with Israel does not rest with the government, it rests with the president and the PLO, and that is something that has been devised a long time ago. Salam Fayyad, if you remember, never once participated in a negotiating session; it has always been the responsibility of Mahmoud Abbas; and this is One. Two, we haven’t seen the new Palestinian government yet. The talk is about a technocrat government with people who don’t have blood on their hands. Let’s wait and see – what is the composition of the new government and what is demanded - before we jump to conclusions and say, this is a negative development. In my own view, there will not be peace until Hamas is included, and if this is a way to include Hamas, then, potentially, this is a positive development – potentially, I say, because we have to wait and see what the composition is. JAN TECHAU: Thank you. I have four fingers up, now it’s five. I think we’ll collect those five really quickly and then we’ll do a comprehensive round, and then we’ll do a speedy escape to the next meeting. Let’s collect these first. It’s you first, I think. MARTIN LOOS VAN JURGEN [unclear]: Yes, thank you. Martin Loos Van Jurgen [unclear]. You mentioned Bin Laden; could you just say a few words – how do you read the perception in the Arab world, in the West, about


the killing of Bin Laden, and how do you think that might affect the context, the political climate, for future peace talks? Thanks. JAN TECHAU: It’s this gentleman next. RICHARD WRIGHT: Richard Wright, External Action Service, Conflict Prevention. I’d like to take up a point that the Israeli colleague said, that Israel will have to be convinced that the security arrangements in place in a two-state solution are satisfactory so that the security of the state is preserved. This seems to me a very crucial issue and at the moment the balance of risk, it seems to me, is on the side of those in the government, anyway, who believe that probably the status quo is safer than opting for a two-state solution which contains risk. My question to you: what can be done in order to try to satisfy the understandable concerns of Israel on security? What do you think the international community will have to offer in order to bring that about? JAN TECHAU: This lady over here unclear. RENEE EARLE: Hello, Renee Earle for the US Mission to the EU. Just a quick follow-on, actually, as it turns out; you had mentioned a package that the United States and preferably the Quartet might bring to the table. I’m assuming that’s a package that they couldn’t refuse, in that case, or at least that there’s a big stick. I, actually, was wondering if you could share with us your thoughts on what such a package might actually contain. JAN TECHAU: This gentleman over here, and then the final one goes to the gentleman in the rear. AMBASSADOR MONTASER OKLAH AL-ZOUBI: Thank you. I’d like to visualise an outcome and then get your feedback on, your Excellency. Prior to January 2011, in the eyes of the international community and the world, Israel was, and still is, the most advanced democracy in a region that lacked a lot when it comes to democracy. Now, after January 2011 there are emerging democracies within the Arab world, and in the event that the two-state solution is not reached, it implies de facto the one-state solution, which implies implicitly that further degradation to democracy within Israel as compared to a region that is really enjoying, as you call it, an Arab Spring or a further enhancement and further democratisation processes that are taking place. Now, how would the Israelis see themselves in this context and how the international community will eye Israel in the context of a one-state solution that experiences and will definitely experience further degradation to the democracy that they have enjoyed and have been characterised with throughout as compared to a region that is really lagging behind in this area? Thank you. JAN TECHAU: I think we’ll take one more and then it’s up to you again. MOHAMED-RAJA’I BARAKAT: Thank you very much. Mohamed-Raja’I Barakat. Mr Muasher, you were ambassador of Jordan in Tel Aviv and you know very well the Israeli public opinion. How can you explain the fact that after every Arab initiative or every hope to have peace, when there are elections in Israel Israeli public opinion votes against peace? Concerning the guarantees, I think the most important guarantees that Israel has – Israel has a very strong army with 300 atomic bombs, and as guarantees you have many Arab initiatives, especially the


last one, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia initiative, which was adopted by all Arab League countries and they agreed to recognise Israel and to establish relations, and Jordan and Egypt have relations and they signed agreements with. Now we have to move towards peace, but what we can do as Arabs so as to move towards peace? What can we give more than we have given until now? Thank you. JAN TECHAU: Marwan, you have ten minutes, just after which… MARWAN MUASHER: Very quickly, and I’ll attempt to answer all of them; Bin Laden – I was just reading polls in the Arab world today about Bin Laden and the polls suggest clearly that there is a solid majority in the Arab world against Bin Laden and his tactics. That does not mean that there isn’t a minority that supports his views, because they see him as standing up to America, etc, but let’s remember Bin Laden killed more Muslims, more Arabs than Americans. The most spectacular thing, of course, was 9/11, but it’s a fact that Bin Laden killed more Muslims and more Arabs than… and in different parts of the Arab world; in Jordan certainly, in Morocco, in Yemen, in Saudi Arabia, in different parts of the Arab world. Whereas he certainly used the frustration that some Arabs had to recruit people for his mission, he ended up really using them to kill fellow Muslims and fellow Arabs rather than any other nationality. To my knowledge, he has not killed a single Israeli as well, so those who say that he was working for the Arab-Israeli conflict, I’m not sure Bin Laden killed any single Israeli. Israel needs to be convinced on a two-state solution the issue of: what can we do to convince Israel of security? That’s, I think, a very important question. Now in the Arab peace initiative there are security guarantees by all Arab states. Now you might tell me Israel does not believe in things on paper – fine. When you sit down for an agreement, I maintain that the Arabs are willing to accept any security guarantee that Israel wants in return for a Palestinian state. Then we can sit down and look at… anything that Israel wants in terms of security will not become an issue if the occupation ends. What will become a security issue is if the occupation does not end. Then it becomes a huge security issue for Israel. It’s the old argument of what comes first, security or peace? I maintain that the Arabs are ready to give Israel the security guarantees it needs; the question becomes: is Israel ready to end the occupation? I think that’s also a fair question to ask. Thoughts on the package; I’m not inventing the wheel again. Take the Clinton parameters and mix them with Arab peace initiative, warm them up a little bit on fire and you have it. I don’t need to invent the wheel. Those who say this is imposed ignore the fact that this is the result of 17 years of negotiations, it hasn’t been [unclear], and ignore the fact that President Clinton did this ten years ago. Why is this such a far-out idea when it was done by the US ten years ago? I think it’s very possible to put such a package on the table. The ambassador’s point, I think, is very well taken on Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East, that the notion that Israel puts forward, even if you agree with this, this is not going to last, as you said. There will come a time, and soon, when you will have many emerging democracies in the Middle East coupled with an Israel that occupies another people, and how will that sound in a few years? Israel neither will be able to say, I’m the only democracy, nor will be able to justify the occupation, and that is another sort of thing that will play against the security of Israel in the future.


Let me just say this: new realities cannot be addressed by old policies. I think what everybody needs to understand – Arabs, before anybody else, but also Israelis and the international community – that you cannot attempt to start to solve problems through old policies. The world has changed, and while we might not know yet the full implications of that change, the fact is there is no return to an Arab world before January of this year. If we keep attempting to solve these problems using our old thinking on the matter, I’m afraid we’re not going to succeed. Israeli public opinion votes against peace – I don’t think so. Yes, I was Jordan’s first ambassador to Israel and, yes, it was a different era, but I still maintain that Israeli public opinion wants peace. They’re very worried about security and I think that Israelis – it’s my personal view – are short-sighted when it comes to their security; they look at next week or the next two weeks, they don’t look at ten years down the road, 20 years down the road, when there will be an Arab majority inside Israel, and what does that do to Israel as a state. You talk about security issues for Israel – by the year 2020 the number of Arabs inside territories that Israel controls, i.e. Israel, West Bank and Gaza, will be more than the number of Jews by 2020. We’re talking nine years from now. Time is not on the side of Israel if we are talking about the death of the two-state solution, but I remain convinced that Israeli public opinion, the majority of it, wants a two-state solution and wants peace. I think I’ve answered everything. JAN TECHAU: Marwan, this is splendid. I’d love to continue doing this for a while – I have a number of questions myself – but we have to be in a taxi in about ten minutes again for the next meeting. Thank you very much for all of your questions and thanks for being very patient with us. Watch out for announcements on more debate at Carnegie Europe about the region; we will draw from the Carnegie pool of expertise and we hope to see you back here. Thanks again and a successful day. MARWAN MUASHER: Thank you very much.

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