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CNN Live At Daybreak

Conflict in the Middle East: 'TIME' Reporter, Palestinian Legislative Council Member Hanan Ashrawi Discuss Next Step for Peace

Aired October 26, 2001 - 08:13   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: This could be a pivotal 24 hours in the Middle East. While Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon did not heed the U.S. demand that Israeli troops leave all Palestinian rural areas immediately, he didn't ignore the call either.

Israeli forces have pulled out of Beit Rima, a West Bank village. Sharon vows to leave other areas gradually, as long as the Palestinians meet certain conditions.

CNN's Jerrold Kessel maps it all out.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JERROLD KESSEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Israeli tanks still in Bethlehem and other Palestinian towns, but about to leave, probably -- possibly. Even as fighting continued to rage on Jerusalem's outskirts, Ariel Sharon's Security Cabinet, after a four- hour meeting, agreed unanimously to stop what's described as a phase pullout from the six West Bank towns where they've been entrenched, starting in Bethlehem, but on condition that Yasser Arafat's Palestinian police guarantee to keep the peace in the areas from which Israeli troops withdraw and also begin to move against Palestinian militants.

The nine-day assault in the wake of the killing of an Israeli Cabinet minister by a radical Palestinian group is Israeli's broadest defensive on Palestinian areas in more than a year of fighting.

As many as 50 Palestinians have been killed, gunmen and policemen, but also many civilian bystanders. A squad of diplomats drove into Bethlehem to underline the intensifying international pressure on Israel despite it. Israel ministers make plain that should their conditions not be met after the first phase of the pullout, the withdrawal would stop. Ariel Sharon appears adamant that even though he appreciates U.S. needs to keep fostering the coalition behind its global war on terror, Israel's deemed security interest will take precedence.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What the Israelis are saying is that the pressure on the Israelis to not upset the boat and on the Palestinians not to engage in terror should be equal, and that if you don't get this balance right, then you're in trouble, because if Palestinian terror is not controlled, Israel will feel that it has to respond. And there might be an escalating situation, which will, in fact, impact on the coalition.

KESSEL (on camera): Ariel Sharon insists he has no intention of holding onto Palestinian territory indefinitely or trying to unseat Yasser Arafat. But would top Israeli military commander's warning ominously that with withdrawal, fresh attacks by Palestinian militants could be around the corner, there seems no guarantee that, even if Israeli troops are withdrawing now, they won't be pushed in again.

Jerrold Kessel, CNN, Jerusalem.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZAHN: And obviously, for a story this complex, it's always extremely helpful to know exactly who the players are.

We turn to Joshua Cooper Ramo, "TIME" magazine senior editor for the world section to help us sort through it.

What do you think we need to know to keep this story in perspective?

JOSH COOPER RAMO, "TIME": I think the important thing that you're going to want to try and keep an eye on is who are the people on each side who you can look at to see whether or not this conflict is going to escalate or whether or not this phase Israeli withdrawal that we're talking about over the next week or so is going to lead to a calming of tensions in the region.

ZAHN: Let's just start at the top of the food chain.

COOPER RAMO: Sure. A few people to keep an eye on. One guy is a guy named Marwan Barghouti. Barghouti is a leader of the Tanzeem in the West Bank. During the first intifada in the late 1980s, the real violence was coming from students on the street, and during that time, Barghouti was one of the leaders of the students on the street. In the second intifada, the current intifada, it's been much more armed gunmen and Barghouti is a real leader in that group as well. Many of those groups have been resistant to respond to Arafat's occasional calls to decrease the amount of violence. So he's an essential guy to an keep an eye on.

ZAHN: Because they have what, no incentive to respond to this call?

COOPER RAMO: Yes, and there is a variety of reasons. One is they have no incentives. Second, they see this as an opportunity for them to increase their political standing among other Palestinians. And third, to some extent, some of these Tanzeem are involved in kind of pseudo criminal activities, and this is a great cover for them to engage in those things.

Barghouti is important to watch because the Israelis, some believe, are now targeting him for assassination, and if he is assassinated, it indicates a real shift in Israel's policy. In the past, their approach was they wouldn't go after the top guys; they would hit the leadership right at that level below the top guys. That's now changed, if they start hitting Barghouti. He's one of the big figures they're watching; if they're nailing him, it's a sign that the Israelis are getting much more serious about their targeted assassination policies.

ZAHN: Who else should we keep an eye on?

COOPER RAMO: A guy named Shaul Mofaz, who is the leader of the IDF. You could think of him as kind of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for Israel.

ZAHN: You don't hear a whole lot about this guy publicly.

COOPER RAMO: You don't, although you've heard a lot more from him publicly in Israel in the last week or so. He has been very aggressive in saying that the Israelis need to have a military policy that will go in and clean up Palestinian resistance.

He's important to watch because a lot of people felt that this latest incursion into the occupied territories by the Israelis was just going to be a chance for the Israelis to let off a little steam, that they would go in for a few days, They would make some arrests among leaders of Hamas, and the PFLP, and Islamic Jihad, and then pull out.

Mofaz has been somebody who has very aggressively said, in public this week, that's not enough, and one of the worries people had is that this thing that was intended to let off steam -- it was intended just to let the Israelis kind of vent their anger over this assassination -- would instead just get their blood heated up, and that may be what's happened. Mofaz's language will be essential in keeping track of that.

ZAHN: So walk us through the diplomatic dance over the next week or so. What do you expect us to see? Because there is now worried -- and we're going to go into this in greater detail -- that Israel is expected to pull out of these West Bank towns if a cease fire is in fact declared and enforced.

COOPER RAMO: That's right. It's going to be a phase withdrawal and what you have to understand about that, the important thing, I think for viewers to keep in mind about this Israeli approach over the last few days is they've gone in and they've encircled towns inside the West Bank that they believe were the source for terrorists coming inside Israel -- most notably for this assassination, but for a variety of other things. And their theory was if they could just surround the towns, there would be no way you'd be able to get people in and out.

The withdrawal that they're going to do is not going to be a simultaneous withdrawal where you just turn on the lights one morning and all the Israelis are gone. They're going to slowly just kind of unpack from around each town in these Israeli borders, and we'll see what happens after they unpack the first one, if there are people leaving the town they've unpacked to do terrorist activity inside Israel. It's going to be very hard for Sharon to continue with the rest of the withdrawal. So the diplomatic dance is going to be one of Arafat desperately trying to keep under control the terrorist elements inside his own society until there's been time for the Israelis to go through each one of those six towns and pull back. Once you're on the other side of that, maybe, maybe, if you're lucky, you start seeing movement towards the Mitchell Plan.

ZAHN: And help us better understand the tremendous pressure that President Bush has put on the Israelis, particularly when Shimon Peres, the foreign minister, was in town earlier this week.

COOPER RAMO: Yes, no question. As you know, the president came into a meeting that Peres was having with National Security Adviser Rice and said, in no uncertain terms, he wants the Israelis out of there, and you are causing huge problems for us.

In a conversation with Sharon earlier in the week, the president proposed a timetable for Sharon, and Sharon was quibbling with him. And the president said, Why are you denying me.

And Sharon said, I'm not denying you.

And the president said, If I ask you for A and you offer B, that's a denial, and of all the countries I'm dealing with in the world today, Israel is the only one that has done that.

So there is tremendous pressure from the White House to come in line, to stop having pressure on the Palestinians, because that's making the American alliance much harder to hold together.

ZAHN: So we need to understand, I guess, this back draft of more critical meetings being held in the Middle East. We're getting more and more information about that now. So you kind of expect this to happen, definitely this withdrawal?

COOPER RAMO: You'll see a phase withdrawal, and then the question is do you get step one of the Mitchell Plan? Step one of the Mitchell Plan is the renunciation of violence by both sides. It sounds easy; it's been incredibly hard to pull off.

ZAHN: Joshua Cooper Ramo, thank you again for your insights, appreciate it.

ZAHN: As we mentioned, Joshua and I, a second ago, we are getting word from "The Associated Press" that Israel is expected to start pulling out of West Bank towns, beginning with Bethlehem.

Joining me now for a Palestinian view of the situation is Hanan Ashrawi, a well-known Palestinian legislative council member. She is in Washington this morning.

Thank you very much for joining us this morning.

HANAN ASHRAWI, PALESTINIAN LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL: Thank you, Paula. It's my pleasure.

ZAHN: Oh, thank you.

First of all, your reaction to this report of this gradual movement away from these West Bank towns.

ASHRAWI: Well, we've heard this before, but unfortunately, we tend to be extremely skeptical, because this looks like a maneuver to try to deflect some of the American and global pressure, because Israel has been acting with total impunity and has been entirely uncooperative with the global effort to put an end to the Israeli massive assaults.

ZAHN: Wait, wait, wait a minute.

ASHRAWI: Yes.

ZAHN: Wasn't a key Israeli official just murdered?

ASHRAWI: Yes, but the question is how do you resort to collective punitive measures? We have had over 75 Palestinian political leaders and activists murdered by Israel. We have had over 750 Palestinians killed in cold blood by Israel, which is an occupying power with an occupation army. So in a sense, if an Israel life is worth making life miserable for all Palestinians -- and it gives itself the right to act with full impunity and to conduct assassinations, terrorizing our people.

ZAHN: What I want to try to do is get beyond what the Israelis would describe of propaganda on your part, and you would describe propaganda on their part.

ASHRAWI: No.

(CROSSTALK)

ZAHN: Take us to the next step. How do both sides dig out of this? What is the solution?

ASHRAWI: Paula, just let me make it clear that human lives are not propaganda. I'm just trying to clarify the issue to people who have not been exposed to the reality, the enormous cruelty, the tremendous pain of people living under occupation. This is not propaganda, and I think...

ZAHN: All right. But the Israelis...

ASHRAWI: Americans deserve to know the truth.

ZAHN: But the Israelis have long accused your side of committing terrorist attacks. I really want to move us this beyond this and talk about what you think is a true resolution. Do you see both sides resorting to the Mitchell plan and making some sort of declaration against violence? Is that conceivable?

ASHRAWI: Yes, the Mitchell plan has been in place for a long time. The will to implement it has been missing. The thing is Israel has tried to make it into a gradual condition and plan with sequential steps, and they positioned themselves in a way as to be the sole arbiter of whether they are satisfied with Palestinian behavior.

We have been asking for third-party involvement. We asked for international protection. We asked for American involvement directly. We wanted witnesses, because, suddenly, Israel cannot decide whether it can go ahead or not, given the fact that the Mitchell plan has very clear components that also call on Israel to stop the violence itself, to stop collective punitive measures, to stop the incursions and the military assaults against the Palestinians, and most importantly, to stop all of its settlement activities.

So Sharon only declared only verbally that he would accept it, but he hasn't implemented a single bit of it. The Palestinians have declared a unilateral cease-fire, even though the plan doesn't apply to people under occupation. And President Arafat asked the Palestinians not even to shoot back. We don't have an army, even when we are being attacked.

But at the same time, the Israeli incursions continue. The absent factor, first of all, is the political will; second of all, is the commitment to peace that has no vision for political strategy. We need that, and we need American intervention on the ground in a very decisive way.

ZAHN: So essentially, what you're telling me, then, is you believe the Mitchell Plan continues to be a non-starter?

ASHRAWI: No, no. It can be a starter, provided there is a will to implement it in its entirety as a package, not to be selective, not to make it subject to Israeli selectivity and priorities, but to deal with it as a whole, in order to deal with the latest deterioration under the volatile situation on the ground.

But what we need, really, is a global effort. We need an American perspective and an American peace initiative, if you will, that will address the permanent status issues and address putting an end to the occupation, implementing UN resolutions, ending this tragic situation of human misery that's threatening to spiral out of control and to destabilize the whole region, and, of course, to undermine American efforts and global efforts at combating terrorism.

So we need to ensure that there is a global rule of law that countries as well as individuals are held accountable, and that there is a serious global effort to deal with the real causes, which is the occupation, basically. That's all.

Just end the occupation, implement UN resolutions, get the Palestinians to live in freedom on their own land in an independent state with their own integrity and sovereignty, and there will be no problems whatsoever in the future.

(CROSSTALK)

ZAHN: But even President Bush has made it clear that he supports a Palestinian state...

ASHRAWI: Yes. ZAHN: ... if the security of Israel is protected in some way. I just need a final thought this morning...

ASHRAWI: Yes.

ZAHN: ... on what you can say about Mr. Arafat's inability -- he's certainly been accused of this -- of controlling the Islamic Jihad and Hamas. Can you tell us this morning he can control their actions and that he can absolutely ensure the safety of Israeli?

ASHRAWI: Well, of course, he has to assure the safety of his own people first. The thing is we are living in fragmented cities and towns. We are being assassinated. Our economy is destroyed. Our infrastructure is destroyed.

What do you mean by control? Is this a police state? No, we don't have a police state. We don't even have a state. The thing is how do you get people involved in a political process that would delegitimize violence of any type, including Israeli violence.

But I think the question is one of creating a viable alternative, a peaceful alternative, a peace plan with substance, with applicability on the ground, with total commitment, rather than allowing Israel to continue with its provocations and incursions and then say the victims have to lie down and die quietly.

There has to be an address of the real issues, and that means dealing with the occupation and Israeli behavior, but not distorting internal Palestinian realities in a situation that is already painful, already fragmented, and close to destruction.

ZAHN: Ms. Ashrawi, unfortunately, we have to cut short our conversation here, because of some breaking news. Thank you, though, very much for joining us this morning.

ASHRAWI: OK, Paula. Thank you.

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