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CNN Live At Daybreak

Reporter's Notebook: The Middle East Conflict

Aired July 04, 2001 - 07:38   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.
COLLEEN MCEDWARDS, CNN ANCHOR: All right, we're going to switch gears a little bit here. We're very fortunate to have CNN correspondent Jerrold Kessel of our Jerusalem bureau with us today. And this gives us a rare opportunity to talk with him about what it's like to cover the Middle East. We want to make the most of that.

Thanks very much for coming in, Jerrold.

JERROLD KESSEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Nice to be here.

MCEDWARDS: Cease-fire or truce in place, fragile as it may be, but what do people say to you? I mean, what is the mood?

KESSEL: You know, everything is now concentrated on whether the cease-fire is working or not. And that is, of course, the issue since the United States got involved, is the cease-fire going to hold? People are hoping in a way it is, but they don't really believe it.

But the focus that there has been now over the last few weeks on the question a cease-fire does it hold, what does it lead to, is kind of masking what this nine months of battles has been all about. In a sense, it's opportune to say, today Fourth of July and U.S. Independence Day, in a sense look in the long term, this nine months of the intifada, the war, the battles there have been between is almost a battle -- both sides see it as a battle for their independence, ironically.

The Palestinians say this is about getting rid of the Israeli occupation, establishing their state in the West Bank and Gaza, Jerusalem, as they see it, and they say they want to do that and they want to do it on terms -- equal terms, not to be dictated by the occupier to the occupied. But they still see it as independence. But ironically, the Israelis are seeing it in the same way from their point of view.

MCEDWARDS: And is that expressed to you as you cover the stories? Is it expressed to you that way by the people on the street? Are they in step with the political leadership or what sort of disparity do you see?

KESSEL: Yes, I think almost in a way they are ahead in terms of mood, and that mood is also despondency, which is kind of reflected in the fact that the leaderships aren't able to solve the problem one way or another. And this question of independence, it's certainly on the Israeli side in the way they relate to the Palestinians.

In the beginning they saw this as they divide -- the Israelis divide their wars of the past into political wars of choice and wars of no choice. This one they saw as a war of no purpose, because they said, well, we were ready to give the Palestinians independence, and they didn't seem to want it. And they now fear that as it has dragged on that the challenge has become not only about Palestinian independence in the Palestinian areas as they want to see it, but about questioning Israel's basic existence. That's the way the Israelis see it.

So those elemental battles, the elemental dispute is coming to the fore in the psyche of people in a way that makes all this bitterness and anger even more deep than it is because the cease-fire is failing or not.

MCEDWARDS: And how -- I mean, how much more difficult has it gotten for people in the last several months? We see the pictures here all the time. We see people throwing stones. We see the checkpoints. We see Palestinians who don't have freedom of movement. We hear from Israelis who feel insecure about their own homes.

KESSEL: It's a deep, deep fear and a deep, deep antagonism as a result that because the conditions are also difficult. The Palestinians are suffering enormously economically, the freedom of movement, as you pointed out, is very, very onerous and the economy is absolutely in tatters.

Now, the Israelis have this fear, this insecurity that has crept in, and this absolutely deepening the animosity. But it goes beyond the immediate pressures and the immediate suffering and pain. There's a distance from the fact and a discrepancy with whatever people felt about the hopes of peace, these -- or the reality of peace, there were those hopes there, and these hopes have been so shattered that this has engendered a real deep antagonism that in the past, we were partners.

We were looking even to the other side's pain. Now each side is hunkering down in its own pain, in its own version of the past, its own hopes for the future, forget about the other side. And that deepens the animosity and deepens the anguish and lessens the hopes.

MCEDWARDS: I'm wondering how it is for you. I mean you've got one of the toughest assignments in the world, there's no doubt. And I wonder how you feel when you hear, you know, as we hear it back here, so detached, so removed. We hear the rhetoric on both sides, that I think, you know, for a lot of people has gotten to sound ridiculous -- when each side says if only the other would stop the fighting, things would be all right.

KESSEL: It's become more difficult, as I say, because of the switch that there was this hope, where the people really believed in the peace or thought practically the other side was not making it up, they regarded -- they were beginning to regard the other side as their partners for the first time in this long, long battle. And now, in a sense, that's the most encouraging thing that happened over the last seven years before this intifada from time that the Oslo peace process took root, was that each side began to perhaps not accept, but acknowledge the other side's pain, suffering, and legitimacy of it.

They began to understand it. That's gone out of the window, and that makes it very, very hard because you see each side absolutely determined and believing in the rightness of their own side and their own cause, and disbelieving that the other side has any cause, and that's very problematic and a very despondent atmosphere.

MCEDWARDS: Right, all right. Thanks very much for your time this morning. Jerrold Kessel, we look forward to you reporting from the region as always -- appreciate it.

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