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Q&A WITH ZAIN VERJEE
Q&A
Aired December 10, 2002 - 12:30:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JIM CLANCY, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): In Israel, suicide bombings deliberately target innocent civilians without mercy. Condemnations and regrets, but no one held accountable.
ZAIN VERJEE, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): In the Palestinian territories, curfew enforcement and antiterrorist operations claim a mounting toll. Unarmed men, women and children shot and killed; the mistakes are buried.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Most of the people who are targeted were Palestinian gunmen, terrorists.
YASSER ARAFAT, PALESTINIAN LEADER: It is (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The secretary-general is gravely disturbed.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A more forceful and visible intervention.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I hope that the turning point will come as soon as possible.
CLANCY: On this edition of Q&A, is it time for international intervention in the Middle East?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
Welcome to Q&A, once again.
No end of violence in Israel or the Palestinian territories. The Israeli Defense Forces say troops in southern Gaza shot and killed a man overnight after an explosive device was detonated and Palestinians opened fired on them.
VERJEE: But Palestinian sources say that just the day before a mother of seven and a mentally handicapped man were shot and killed in separate incidents in the West Bank.
CLANCY: And they say on Sunday a Palestinian woman was shot dead and her three sons wounded. The Israeli army says it is investigating.
VERJEE: Meanwhile, those behind Palestinian suicide bombings, attacks on settlements, still being sought, still not brought to justice, while the civilian death toll on both sides rises.
CLANCY: Our question this day, really, is it time for the international community to step in? How should they step in?
Well, first, to set the stage, let's go to New York and to someone who's looked at both sides, Ken Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch.
Mr. Roth, thanks so much for being with us again.
KEN ROTH, HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: Thanks for having me.
CLANCY: We've all heard it over and over again, people, you know, we see the killing, Israelis, Palestinians, murdering each others children. People throw up their hands and they say they've been doing this for thousands of years; they're going to continue to do this as long as they're living side by side. Is that really an abdication of the responsibilities we have?
ROTH: I do think we have a responsibility to press both sides to try to curtail the killing of civilians, and unfortunately, neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians have done a very good job of policing themselves.
If you look, for example, at the major incidents of the last year, in the Israeli case, it was probably the dispute over the Jenin refugee camp, and Human Rights Watch was in the Jenin refugee camp, even though the UN fact finding team was denied access. We found that on the Israeli side, there were clearly war crimes committed.
Civilians were killed. Civilians were used as shields for soldiers who would shoot over their shoulders. Medical access was denied. These are all clear violations of the Geneva conventions.
To our knowledge, no one has been disciplined or punished for those abuses.
On the Palestinian side, the terrible events of the last year have been the use of suicide bombings to attack civilians, and Yasser Arafat and his Palestinian Authority have pursued, if anything, a revolving door attitude toward prosecution. That is to say, when the international heat is up, a few people might be arrested and detained for a while, but they're then released. They have not used the prosecutorial capacity that they had, even in 2001, before a lot of their infrastructure was destroyed, they didn't use it to consistently and vigorously go after the people who are behind these war crimes and crimes against humanity.
VERJEE: What's going to change that on both sides, that they would take policing themselves more seriously?
ROTH: They clearly need pressure, and frankly there is plenty of leverage that the international community has.
If you simply look at the amount of money that goes to support the Israeli government or the Palestinian Authority, it would be quite simple to begin seriously conditioning that international assistance on a serious prosecutorial effort to go after the people on both sides who are responsible for the killings of civilians.
Let's bring in the two men now who are living at the center of the conflict. From Jerusalem, Daniel Taub, a senior Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, and from Ramallah, the West Bank, Ghassan Khatib, labor minister for the Palestinian Authority.
Daniel Taub, let me start off with you, what we heard a moment ago, that the Israeli side is not policing itself seriously, there are not enough serious fact-finding investigations into what's going on, and no one is really being held accountable.
DANIEL TAUB, SR. ISRAELI FOREIGN MINISTRY SPOKESMAN: I think that's absolutely not the case.
We take our obligations very seriously indeed. In fact, even though these attacks against the Israelis are ongoing, since the outbreak of the current wave of violence we've had some 250, 300 investigations into Israeli contact. We've had some 30 indictments filed against Israeli soldiers, including some very serious soldiers, and we've had people sitting in prison, because we take these things very seriously.
And that of course is in stark contrast to what we see on the Palestinian side.
We just heard on the news that Fawad Shivaki (ph), who was the mastermind behind this Iranian ship of heavy weaponry being delivered to the Palestinian terrorists has been ordered released by a Palestinian judge, and only today, of course, we managed to finally arrest the murderer, the brutal murderer of Shel Havit-Pas (ph), a 10-month-old baby who was shot by a Palestinian terrorist, this same terrorist who was arrested by the Palestinians and immediately released.
So I think I have to say that although both sides have to hold themselves accountable, there's really no symmetry here. There's symmetry for another reason as well, which is that unfortunately, in trying to defend ourselves against terrorism, civilians can get hurt and killed. For us, that's a tragedy.
But when Palestinian terrorists succeed in killing a civilian, that's not a tragedy. Unfortunately, it's a victory. And we see their posters being put up in Palestinian schools, we see Palestinian leaders hailing them as heroes and martyrs.
So really, I can't accept -- although both sides obviously have to check themselves, that there is a symmetry here.
CLANCY: Now, you have outlined Israel's case here. But let me say what concerns a lot of people and an Israeli human rights group, B'Tselem, documenting one case here where gunfire is used to enforce the curfew.
Let me read from their report, which says on the 21st of June this year, a number of Palestinians left their homes in Jenin after they thought the curfew had been lifted. Skipping down here, they went into the market to buy food. A tank that had been in the area drove towards them and fired two shells and opened machinegun fire. It killed four Palestinians, three of the four were children.
Who's in the dock over that one? Tank fire enforcing a curfew. Who gave the orders for that?
TAUB: I'm not aware of the details of the specific case, but we do have investigations and indictments in process for situations where weapons were used inappropriately, but we have to remember, the reason for the high.
(CROSSTALK)
CLANCY: Are tank rounds an effective way, a fair way, of enforcing a curfew?
TAUB: There is no democratic country which has yet found an effective and humane way of dealing with terrorists that deliberately hole themselves up in civilian areas, hiding behind innocent men, women and children.
It's not our choice to be in these areas. It's the choice of the Palestinian terrorists to come and blow themselves up in the heart of our cities, and it's their choice to hide themselves in the hearts of their cities.
What we have to do is to try as carefully, as cautiously as we can, to find effective ways of dealing with that. There are no perfect ways. We make mistakes. But one of the crucial differences between Israel and the Palestinian side is how we deal with those mistakes.
We deal with those mistakes by very painful internal inquiries, by investigating, by prosecuting, even by sending senior officers to sit in prison.
Unfortunately, that's not what we're seeing on the Palestinian side. The Palestinian.
VERJEE: Well, let's get the Palestinian side in here.
Ghassan Khatib, let me ask you, what is it that the Palestinian Authority is doing to move against the organizers, planners, supporters of suicide bombings?
GHASSAN KHATIB, PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY LABOR MINISTER: Well, unfortunately, at the time being, the Palestinian Authority cannot do much. Number one, because the Palestinian security has been completely crippled by the Israeli bombardments.
And on the other hand, the Palestinian territory of the West Bank is completely under direct Israeli military control and occupation, and this Israeli occupation has unfortunately released the Palestinian Authority from any responsibility.
Now Israel put itself in the place of the responsible party for the security in the occupied territories.
But may I explain three major differences between the Palestinian violence, which I criticize and condemn and hope to see an end for, from the Israeli violence which I also think that it should come to an end.
Number one, the number of Palestinian civilians who are killed by the Israeli violence, civilians, are three times the number of Israeli civilians killed by Palestinian violence.
Number two, this ongoing violence from the two sides is happening within the context of the Israeli illegal occupation on the Palestinian occupied territories.
And number three, the violence happening from the Palestinian side is done by groups that is in the opposition side to the peace process and to the Palestinian Authority. But in Israel, the violence and the killing is happening by the Israeli government and by the Israeli army.
VERJEE: OK. OK. But how many Palestinian suicide bombers, Palestinian terrorists, have you arrested and put in your jail in the last few weeks?
KHATIB: May I bring to your attention that Israel has almost demolished every single prison that we had, and whenever the Palestinians would establish a place for the police, it will be immediately a target for the Israeli purchase and bombardment.
Even the criminals whom are arrested for criminal charges like theft or so are not in jails now in Palestinian because there are no prisons, because all prisons have been bombarded by the Israeli army and.
(CROSSTALK)
VERJEE: So if you don't have any prisons, are you cooperating with the Israelis or with any other entity to bring these people to justice? I mean, we heard a moment ago from Ken Roth, saying the Palestinians arrest people, they arrest suspects, they detain them for a while, and then they release them.
KHATIB: This is not correct. There are Palestinians who were convicted of acts like this who have been in prisons for years, until the Israelis reoccupied the Palestinian territories, which ended up by having us with no security and with no prisons, and with no courts, actually.
So if the Israelis are willing to end their occupation to the Palestinian territories, and to resume a meaningful peace process of the kind that can bring back the hope to the Palestinian people of a peaceful end of occupation, then I think the Palestinian Authority will be able to do successfully the security job that they did successfully for (UNINTELLIGIBLE) years during the healthy period of the peace process.
CLANCY: All right, let's bring in.
KHATIB: As long as Israel is insisting on.
CLANCY: Let's bring back in Ken Roth here, because, Ken, I think -- and you're familiar with this debate. You're familiar with everything that's been said right here. After all, it isn't my fault, it's his fault.
ROTH: Let me address both sides if I could.
First, with respect to the Palestinian representative, he's quite correct that it's very difficult today for the Palestinian justice system to work because it's been largely demolished and because many of the Palestinian towns are now occupied, but that is no excuse for the complete failure to pursue suicide bombers in 2001 when the court system was largely functional. Why wasn't any serious prosecutorial effort made then?
And even today, probably the most important thing that the Palestinian Authority could do would be to make a clear declaration that somebody who dies deliberately killing civilians is not a martyr. Will the Palestinian representative make that statement? We will no longer glorify suicide bombers by calling them martyrs.
Similarly, with respect to the Israeli representative, the Israeli government always says, look, there are 200, 250 cases in which people have been disciplined or prosecuted. The vast majority of those are for things like desertion or ordinarily problems of army discipline that have nothing to do with the killing of civilians.
What I'd like to know is, why has nobody been disciplined or punished for the clear cases of war crimes that Human Rights Watch itself was able to document in quite a bit of detail in the case of the Jenin refugee camp?
He talks about the Palestinians hiding behind civilians. We have documented cases in which Israeli soldiers stood behind eight Palestinian civilians, firing over their shoulders at Palestinian fighters. That is a clear war crime. Why have those people not been disciplined or punished?
CLANCY: All right, those are questions we're going to have to answer in a moment, because we've got to take a break.
After the break, we're going to pose this question: should the international community make its presence felt, given the recent events in the Middle East?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JIMMY CARTER, FMR. US PRESIDENT: It's like a festering sore in the world that not only creates violence on both sides, or innocent civilians being killed by suicide bombers and by Palestinians being killed, but it spreads its animosities almost throughout the world.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CLANCY: Welcome back to Q&A and our look at whether now is the time for an increased international presence in the Middle East to try to prevent civilian casualties.
VERJEE: With us, Ken Roth, of Human Rights Watch, Daniel Taub, of the Israeli Foreign Ministry, and Ghassan Khatib, of the Palestinian Authority.
Ghassan Khatib, let's just address some of the questions that Ken Roth brought up just a moment ago.
Are you ready to declare that Palestinian suicide bombers that kill innocent Israeli civilians are not martyrs but murderers?
KHATIB: The Palestinian Authority do condemn these acts and never considers those persons are martyrs. And that's a fact. You can go back to the records and find that happens after every one of these suicide attacks.
But that is not going to solve the problem. The Palestinian Authority has been condemning every single act, but that's not useful. That's not enough.
I don't think that this is the way to end the suffering of the civilians on the two sides. I think there are two things that need to be done in order to end the suffering of the civilians.
Number one, a third party, like the United States or the United Nations, has to come strongly against the two sides targeting the civilians of the other side in order to reach an agreement to avoid the civilians of the two sides this suffering.
CLANCY: All right.
KHATIB: Number two, and that should compliment number one, there should be an initiative, a political initiative that can bring back the hope to the Israelis and to the Palestinians of a possible peaceful way of achieving their legitimate objectives.
If there is no peace process that can make this promise, and if there is no agreement in which the two sides will commit themselves to avoid targeting the civilians of the others, then all these condemnations and all these declarations are going to be useful for the media, but it's not going to save any human life.
CLANCY: All right, Mr. Taub, the question to you -- and, you know, we talked about the whole situation that is faced. You said that there's all kinds of indictments, that there are investigations underway. Once again, turning to B'Tselem, you know, there was an incident, August 11, 2002, Tulkarem, an Israeli taxi went in there. The taxi carried a reporter for "Haaretz," an Israeli citizen. Soldiers fired on that taxi, and indeed there was a recommendation that they should be prosecuted.
And it leaves the impression, according to B'Tselem, of very different treatment if someone in the occupied territories that's an Israeli gets targeted by Israeli and whether that person is a Palestinian.
TAUB: I don't think that's the case.
We do have difficulties. We have difficulties quite frequently, because we don't have the cooperation of the local population or their lawyers in conducting the investigations.
But I don't think Ken Roth, unfortunately, is fully updated here. The majority of the investigations that I refer to were not for what you might call the lesser offenses, like desertion or even dealing with property, but were actually for violence and improper use of weapons. And in every case where we have information, where we have evidence, where we're able to prosecute, obviously that's what we want to do.
But I have to respond to Mr. Al-Khatib -- for him to say -- just on this point -- I'm sorry, but I do have to say that for him to say that the Palestinian Authority is condemning terrorism on the day after Yasser Arafat publicly declared that he regards any action, any attack on the Israelis over the green line as being an act of self-defense, really absolutely (UNINTELLIGIBLE).
VERJEE: All right. All right.
TAUB: Similarly, the excuse of.
VERJEE: All right, I just want Ken Roth to come here.
Ken, how is a third party, an intervention from outside, going to resolve what clearly appears to be an unsolvable situation?
ROTH: Well, I think that one of the big problems is that each side tends to point to the abuses by the other side. The Israelis say look, we're facing suicide bombings, so you have to understand if we're using harsh means to respond.
The Palestinians say, look, if there's an abuse of Israeli occupation, you have to understand if we're using suicide bombings to respond.
There is a need to break through that deadly logic, because frankly, unless Israel strictly upholds the Geneva conventions, it is undermining the very legal standards that explain what's wrong with suicide bombing.
Similarly, unless the Palestinians uphold the Geneva conventions, they're undermining the very standards that explain what's wrong with Israeli settlements and with the Israeli occupation overall.
So there is a need for someone to come in and remind both sides of the international norms that most of the international community subscribes to and to insist that each side begin respecting those rules as an essential first step toward trying to resolve this intractable problem.
CLANCY: Daniel Taub, will the Israeli side entertain the notion of somebody coming in, an independent investigation of all of these cases? You say you can't talk to the Palestinians; get somebody in there who can. Let them also interview the Israeli soldiers involved. Would you accept that?
TAUB: I'm not sure that there's any example, unfortunately, either in history or in the world today, of an international presence that was able to come in and stop terrorism.
We do need international guidance on how to move forward.
CLANCY: But that's not the question, though. Would you accept this? To investigate it.
TAUB: The question isn't what is needed to investigate at this stage. The question is what is needed in order to help us move forward.
CLANCY: OK. So that's a no.
TAUB: . we have Israel, which is a public, open democracy.
CLANCY: That's a no. Ghassan Khatib?
TAUB: No. We're open to the.
CLANCY: Ghassan Khatib, same question. Are you ready to accept independent investigation? Obviously, Ghassan, Fatah knows which doorbell to ring in order to get to the people that are behind the suicide attacks. They just held a conference with them in Cairo.
KHATIB: It's not that we only accept that. We also are demanding that.
We demand an international inquiry that will have the international law and the relevant Security Council resolutions as a criteria of judging what's right and what's wrong. And in this regard, it's useful to remind that we shouldn't mix the cause with the effort. The occupation.
VERJEE: All right, we're going to have to leave it there.
KHATIB: . is the cause of this ongoing violence. Especially that it's a violent occupation.
VERJEE: Ghassan Khatib, Daniel Taub, Ken Roth, thanks a lot for talking to us on Q&A. Good to have you all on.
CLANCY: All right. Serious subject.
Those are out questions for right now.
VERJEE: We'll be right back with yours, so stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CLANCY: Welcome back to Q&A.
Time now to hear some of your thoughts on the issue.
Viewer May calls for international intervention, and she writes, "To blame each side is not the issue. Unfortunately, nothing has been accomplished to prevent any more killing of innocent people."
VERJEE: Nokahi suggests that the ". behavior of the Israeli army has induced suicide bombings because the Palestinians can do nothing except that. People all over the world will be against the United States until the United States stops its double standard for Muslims and non-Muslims."
CLANCY: Now, yesterday we focused on disarming Iraq. Aftab, in Pakistan, said several United States claims in 1990, including that 1/2- million Iraqi troops were massing on the Saudi border later proved false. "This time," he says, "George Bush, the younger, claims Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction, whereas Saddam denies possessing such weapons. Who do we believe? Why not let the United Nations Security Council decide"?
VERJEE: And on the day that former United States President Jimmy Carter received the Nobel Peace Prize, Stan, in England, asked "What happened to presidents like Jimmy Carter"? He says, "Americans are not hated in the world, but the Bush administration is. America cannot win this war. The consequences of an attack on Iraq are too terrible to even contemplate."
CLANCY: All right, now let's go back over -- we've got another hour of "YOUR WORLD TODAY" coming up; Daljit and Michael are here to join us and give us a preview.
MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, guys. Greetings.
DALJIT DHALIWAL, CNN ANCHOR: Hi, guys.
HOLMES: What a fascinating Q&A. Great show, you guys.
DHALIWAL: Certainly was.
HOLMES: Well, when we come back, we are going to be doing a variety of things. Of course, lots of live reports from the United Nations, also from Iraq, and we'll be talking about Israeli politics with Jerald Kessel as well, because the parties Likud and Labor have now elected their candidates.
DHALIWAL: Candidates, yes, and the elections are coming up in January.
We're also going to be looking at the decision of the United States Federal Reserve. It's going to be making its announcement on interest rates pretty shortly. We're going to have that, but we're also going to be looking at the economies of Europe and the United States and what they can be doing to stimulate a bit more activity.
More on that in a moment.
HOLMES: Back soon.
END
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