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American Morning
Two Dead in Jerusalem; Interview of Alon Pinkas, Israeli Ambassador
Aired January 23, 2002 - 09:11 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Up front this morning, another deadly round of revenge between Israelis and Palestinians.
Two Israeli women were killed, and dozens of others wounded yesterday when a gunman opened fire on a crowd of Palestinians -- excuse me, pedestrians in Jerusalem. Israeli police shot and killed the gunman.
The attack came on the heels of an Israeli raid on a Hamas explosives lab in the West Bank. Jerrold Kessel joins us this morning from Jerusalem with the very latest on that -- good morning. What is the latest?
JERROLD KESSEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Paula. Well, to judge from what the U.N. special envoy in the area, Terje Roed Larsen, who I was talking to just a few minutes ago, was putting it, he described it in very, very ominous terms.
He said the situation is like teetering very much on the edge of a precipice, on the edge of the abyss, he said. Now, perhaps there is a degree of undiplomatic hyperbole, exaggeration, in the way Larsen described the situation, but it is rather grim.
And you do see, on the streets of Jerusalem, the Israeli cities today, a sense of heightened alert, heightened security in the wake of the declaration by the militant Islamic group Hamas that its engaged in all-out war situation with Israel.
The attack in Jerusalem, as you mentioned, yesterday, the gunman affiliated to an offshoot of the Fatah movement of Yasser Arafat, firing at random into people at the bus stop, and into stores in the center of West Jerusalem, killing two and wounding more than 30 before he himself was killed, and the Israelis very much alert.
But Israel is not simply sitting back passively on the defensive. It has been engaged in some very aggressive actions of its own. The foremost of which was yesterday the -- what the Israelis called a preemptive strike against a bomb factory of the Hamas in the town of Nablus on the West Bank. Four members of the radical organization were killed there.
The Israelis say they forestalled the making of a number of bombs, and of course, the unrelenting pressure that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is keeping up on Yasser Arafat with the Israeli tanks perched ominously within eyesight, just outside Yasser Arafat's West Bank headquarters in the town of Ramallah.
The talk among the very highest echelons in political and military in Israel is of not just keeping this kind of pressure on Yasser Arafat, but of possibly going further, and of even trying to push him into permanent exile and undercutting his Palestinian Authority.
But the Palestinian leader is not really sitting quietly by. He's rather defiant, even though he is very much in isolation. He has been talking defiantly of the -- referring back to the time when Israeli tanks surrounded in Lebanon, in Beirut, 20 years ago, saying he outlasted that very much, and look where I am now, he says, and he's been very, very defiant, almost saying as if Ariel Sharon has overplayed his hand, that of Palestinian perspective.
But, a very volatile standoff with one word common on the lips of people on both sides, and that one word is, "escalation."
ZAHN: All right, Jerrold Kessel. Thank you very much for that update.
That, of course, leads to the big question this hour: Is Yasser Arafat a terrorist? That is how former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak describes the Palestinian leader, and Barak says he must now be treated like a terrorist. Arafat, meanwhile, says he is willing to die a martyr.
Joining me now, Israeli counsel general, Ambassador Alon Pinkas -- welcome back.
ALON PINKAS, ISRAELI COUNSEL GENERAL: Good morning, Paula.
ZAHN: You just heard the characterization of an official that just spoke with Jerrold Kessel saying that you're on the edge of abyss.
PINKAS: Right.
ZAHN: Is he right?
PINKAS: He's right, but we've been there before, and we were smart enough and common sense -- governed our actions to step back. But Arafat --
ZAHN: Is there any common sense governing anything right now? I mean, you've got the Israelis saying that they are going to do something in retaliation for these attacks yesterday on these pedestrians. At the same time, you have this Hamas leader declaring outright war on Israel.
PINKAS: You're absolutely right. It just shows that Arafat may be willing to die like a martyr, but he is certainly not willing to live like a statesman, like a realistic and reasonable person. He reminds of the former prime minister of Mauritius (ph), I think, who said, "we're on the brink of the abyss, but we're determined to step forward," and that's exactly the way he has been behaving the last several months.
ZAHN: But what do you want from him right now? I mean, we just heard Jerrold Kessel's report. People describe him as being basically in a state of house arrest, stuck in the West Bank. Do you want him -- to force him into exile, as some of the Palestinians suggest?
PINKAS: No. We don't want to force him into exile. We're not into forcing him into exile or building his authority. This is absolutely, unequivocally up to him. He still has the opportunity, if he puts his mind to it -- I'm sorry -- to quell down on terrorists, to dismantle the infrastructure, to do something.
However, all the indications that we have in the last several days, and yesterday's attack is an expression of it, is that he is planning or is sitting quietly idle when a comprehensive terror campaign is being launched, and you mentioned the Hamas, which declared an all-out war against Israel. We have very, very low expectations from him at this point.
ZAHN: Low expectations. What was your response to his comment -- I'm going to put it up on the screen -- where he talked about defending a Palestinian state, and perhaps down as a martyr.
He said, "I swear to God, I will see the Palestinian state, whether as a martyr or alive. Please God, give me the honor of becoming in the fight for Jerusalem."
You just characterized him as planning. Will he become a martyr in some, you know, big grand finale?
PINKAS: Good for him. I mean, the tragedy that he's bringing on the Palestinian people is second to none, in the 20th and 21st century in terms of a supposed leader leading his people. I don't know what it is that he wants. We do know something very simple, he can -- he could have had a Palestinian state at Camp David. He did nothing to show up to those negotiations.
There were several rounds of negotiations -- I know, I hate going back to that again and again and again, and supposedly we have to look forward. Fine. But we can't look forward without asking him, where the hell where you at Camp David? Where were you in last 15 months? What have you done for your people? And he wants to with a martyr, he wants to die gracefully for the Palestinian cause. Fine.
ZAHN: Ehud Barak's rhetoric has really heated up. He, of course, was a peace partner with Yasser Arafat at Camp David. Let's roll for the audience a little bit of what he has had to say, most recently, about Yasser Arafat. Let's listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
EHUD BARAK, FORMER PRIME MINISTER OF ISRAEL: We found that this man, he looks like a terrorist thug, he walks like a terrorist thug, he quips (ph) like a terrorist thug, so he's a terrorist thug. (END VIDEO CLIP)
ZAHN: Were those appropriate remarks...
PINKAS: Yes.
ZAHN: ... from Mr. Barak at a time when you say you don't want to force Arafat into exile. You think he is the man with the answers.
PINKAS: He was the man with the answers. And the question was put forth by Clinton and Ehud Barak, the former prime minister of Israel at Camp David. Arafat never responded. Never came up with a counterproposal.
Is he a terrorist thug? Yes. He is a terrorist thug. What can we do? Look, we knew that he is a terrorist, Paula, when we engaged in this peace negotiating process in 1993. We knew that he -- about his background, we knew about his inclinations, we knew about his dysfunctional political leadership when we got into Camp David in July of 2000, but we thought that he had left terrorism behind.
We thought that he seriously bid farewell to arms. We found out that you can take Arafat out of terrorism, you cannot, apparently, take terrorism out of Arafat.
ZAHN: Final question for you, because you just referred to him in sort of the past tense. Is there a general acceptance among the Israeli leadership that there's going to be someone else that you are going to be negotiating with down the road?
PINKAS: Politically, yes.
ZAHN: How soon?
PINKAS: I don't know.
ZAHN: And who will it be?
PINKAS: That's up to the Palestinian people.
ZAHN: Who would it be?
PINKAS: I have no idea. I can tell you, there's no Thomas Jefferson next in line to replace him. However, that doesn't mean that there's aren't more reasonable, realistic people out there. We're talking about him exhausting his political usefulness. He's just outlived it. What can you do?
ZAHN: We're going to have to leave it there this morning. Ambassador Alon Pinkas. Good of you to join us. Appreciate your time.
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