Indyk: Other matters more important that Bibi’s ‘Jewish state’ demand

Ruthie Blum Liebowitz of the Jerusalem Post has a lengthy interview with Martin Indyk, former U.S. ambassador to Israel and head of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. Among the interesting exchanges is this one, where Indyk says Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as a Jewish state is a distraction from more pressing matters — or as he says, " it’s much more important to get the Palestinians to give up the right of return than to say that they accept Israel as a Jewish state":

JP: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak responded to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s speech at Bar-Ilan’s Begin-Sadat Center by saying that demanding of any Arab leader to recognize Israel as a Jewish state aborts the peace process. Given your diplomatic dealings with Mubarak, what do you think about that statement?

MI: It’s a pity that this issue has been raised in this way, because of course Israel is the state for the Jewish people. I mean, if it’s not that, what is it? In a two-state solution, with one of those states for the Palestinians, what is the other one for?

So, while Israelis are trying to get a clear understanding of what exactly the Arabs are recognizing, the Arabs – whose narrative enables them to accept Israel as a state in general – do not accept the Zionist narrative. They therefore find it very hard to accept that kind of add-on to the requirement that they recognize Israel. They don’t accept that Israel was created, on the backs of the Palestinians, as an answer to the problem of the Holocaust – the very narrative that Obama talked about in his speech.

But another way of looking at this has been articulated by [former Ariel Sharon adviser] Dubi [Dov] Weisglass, who argues that it’s up to Israel to define itself; it doesn’t require others to say that it is a Jewish state. And when Arabs don’t use those exact words, it is seen as an indication that they don’t accept Israel. Yet Egypt has been at peace with Israel for over 30 years. So, it’s really an unfortunate diversion that leads to a cul-de-sac, from which there’s no way out for either side. I wish there was a way to put it aside for the time being, and deal with it over centuries. There are practical matters that need immediate attention, particularly the need to resolve the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. In this context, it’s much more important to get the Palestinians to give up the right of return than to say that they accept Israel as a Jewish state.

Indyk also talks about where he thinks former President George W. Bush made mistakes in the Middle East, here telling a story about how former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was willing to agree to a temporary settlement freeze if the president was willing to crack down on the Palestinians’ violence and terror:

JP: As you describe in your book, it’s not as though things were so hunky-dory at the end of Bill Clinton’s presidency, either. What difference would it have made had it been Obama, rather than Bush, succeeding him?

MI: Obama’s priority would have been to stop the violence. Once the intifada broke out in October, that’s what Clinton should have been focusing on, rather than trying to make a deal. And that’s what Bush should have been focusing on, as well.

I was ambassador at the time, and worked closely with Sharon, who was the prime minister. Sharon wanted the American president to intervene to get Arafat to stop the violence, because he understood that Israeli force would not do it. He realized that Arafat used Israeli retaliation as a way of building sympathy for the Palestinians in the world of public opinion. This is why he decided not to retaliate for the [June 1, 2001] Dolphinarium bombing in Tel Aviv, in which 21 people were killed. Hoping that the US would start cracking down on perpetrators of violence on the Palestinian side. He said, "There is wisdom in restraint."

But Bush wasn’t interested.

George Mitchell was here then – a product of the Clinton administration, who had set up the commission to look into the origins of the intifada and make recommendations as to how to stop it. Ironically, the Mitchell recommendations were for Israel to stop settlement activity, including natural growth, and for the Palestinians to stop the violence and start dismantling the infrastructure of terror.

I went to Sharon – I didn’t have instructions from Bush, because, as I said, he wasn’t interested – and I said, "The president wants you to accept these recommendations."

Sharon was so concerned about keeping sweet with the president – not allowing any daylight to show between them – that he said, "OK, we’ll talk to [housing minister Natan] Sharansky, and see what it means, and how to do it."

He then told me, in front of Sharansky, "If the president wants this, I’m ready to do a moratorium for six months on settlement activity, provided that the US gets the Palestinians to stop the violence and dismantle the infrastructure of terror."

Sharansky was apoplectic. He said, "How can you do that?!" And Sharon answered, "[Menachem] Begin did it; I can do it."

Had we had a president at that time who was ready to take advantage of this situation, he could have stopped the violence at that point by getting Arafat to live up to his commitments. 

And Indyk, who served as a surrogate for Obama late in the campaign, says he has some hope that the president may be able to bring the two sides together:

Finally, with today’s cast of characters – Obama in Washington, Netanyahu in Jerusalem and Mahmoud Abbas in Ramallah – what’s your prognosis?

As the current events in Iran illustrates, you can never tell what is going to happen. Something always turns up. It’s usually bad. But occasionally, you get a Sadat who comes to Jerusalem. Why did that happen? Because an American president, Jimmy Carter, went off to Damascus, to try to get the Syrians involved in the Geneva Conference, and Sadat looked at this, and saw how the Syrians were going to be able to veto and constrain his desire to make peace, and he said, "The hell with that; I’m going to Jerusalem to deal with Israel directly."

Then, Bill Clinton went off to Damascus to try to make peace between Israel and Syria, and Arafat turned up on the White House lawn. When we went off to Syria again, [Jordan’s] King Hussein ended up on the White House lawn. So, it’s unpredictable. But, if an American president invests his energy, and puts the prestige of his high office and the influence of the United States into the effort, all the leaders in the region will have to recalculate. Then, just maybe, he can get that galloping horse to go past their windows, and put them in a situation where they can jump on it.

One thing I do know is that if Bibi Netanyahu decides to be that kind of leader, he can bring the Israeli people with him in a way that Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres and Ehud Barak found very difficult to do, by definition, because they were from the Left, while Netanyahu is from the Right. And there were parts of his speech that seemed to indicate he was prepared to be that kind of leader. But he can’t do it on his own, nor will he, unless he’s put to the test. And Obama fully intends to put him to the test – as he does to all the Arab leaders.

So, we’ll see. If you were a betting person, you wouldn’t put much money on it. Nevertheless, Obama’s determined. He understands that he has to be persistent, and that will require everybody else to change their calculations.