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American Morning
U.S. Trying to Jumpstart Peace Process in Middle East
Aired January 03, 2002 - 09:43 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.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: The United States is trying to jumpstart the peace process in the Middle East. U.S. envoy Anthony Zinni begins a second trip to the region today.
CNN's Jerrold Kessel is live in Jerusalem. He joins us now with developments.
JERROLD KESSEL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Leon, Hello.
General Zinni, the retired Marine general, is back in the Middle East. He arrived about an hour or so ago in Tel Aviv and he went straight to meeting with the Israeli security officials to key their assessment of just how far the sides have gone to consolidate a cease- fire, which Mr. Zinni, when he was last here, was trying to get in place.
But you'll recall, that when he was last here for the three weeks he spent here, there were a slew of violent events, particularly a number of deadly suicide bombings by Palestinian militants that really lead to the truncation of that mediation mission first time round. And General Zinni went away rather disconsolate, and by and large, blaming mostly Yasser Arafat for failing to curb the militants.
But in the interim, we've had an important speech from the Palestinian leader back on December 16. And in those two and a half weeks since Yasser Arafat called for an effective and total cease- fire, there has been a major falloff in the number of violent incidents. The Israeli military acknowledging that it is down by more than 50 percent in the last couple of weeks of the violent incidents. And in this last couple of days, particularly this morning, the Israelis repaying that to some degree by pulling back their tanks on the fringes of several Palestinian towns on the West Bank where they have been encamped in the last several weeks.
They've also opened some of the bottlenecks at checkpoints in the West Bank, very onerous burden on ordinary Palestinians traveling around the West Bank.
But there is one place where Ariel Sharon, Israeli's prime minister, has not ordered the tanks and armored personnel carriers away, out of Ramallah on the West bank, where they've been located just several hundred meters from Yasser Arafat's headquarters. And Ariel Sharon says, Yasser Arafat isn't going anywhere. He's not able to leave Ramallah until he clamps down even further on Palestinian militants.
So as General Zinni arrives, big question of whether the United States will, if it continues to impose pressure on Yasser Arafat, or equally apply pressure to Ariel Sharon to consolidate this tentative cease-fire that is taking hold gradually.
And as General Zinni returns, there is also some new questioning about putting peace process and peace negotiations back on the map. But that in turn raising questions about the value and the effectiveness of maps in helping get agreements on the ground.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KESSEL (voice-over): From intricate sixth century mosaics to twentieth century imagery from space, from abstract Middle Age images through metaphoric projections back into the past. From carefully drafted maps of conquest to the shape of modern day peace agreements, maps through the ages, reflecting reality as it is.
MERON BENVENISTI, JERUSALEM HISTORIAN: Maps seem to be an accurate depiction of reality. They're not. They're not meant to be. There a way to project your own thinking on the landscape. But once you put it on paper and you put in names, and boundaries, and even icons, you can't live without ambiguity. So what you do, is you decide, this is it. And when you decide, you are hypnotized by your own drawing, and you forget how many value judgments you have made in drawing the map.
KESSEL: The famed Madabah (ph) map, the oldest known map of the Holy Land, uncovered years ago in a then-remote Greek orthodox church in Jordan. It reflects what is important for the Byzantine Church, the centrality of Jerusalem, and the church of the Holy Sepulcher, built over the site where Jesus was believed to have been crucified.
Its creators insuring how it fitted into the world around in terms of scale and prominence to suit their Byzantine masters, their map painstakingly compiled a century before Islam became the dominant force in the region.
A display of Holy Land maps through the centuries, now in the Israel museum, highlights the conquest, the reconquest, real and imagery, the changing of sovereignty, and of the dominating symbols showing the shifting contours in the unresolved battle for religious and political supremacy in the Holy Land.
MSGR. PIETRO SAMBI, APOSTOLICAL NUNCIO: They were producing what they have seen with their eyes together with their heart.
KESSEL: "Lies, damned lies and statistics" says Mark Twain, a maxim equally applicable to maps, some say. In that view, maps are a paradox. An accurate map, they say, must tell white lies.
Map makers often adjusting reality, not only for religious needs. One prime focus here, Jerusalem, everyone's Jerusalem, Jerusalem as the perceived heart of the world. Nowadays, Jerusalem perceived as the heart of the Arab-Israel conflict. After the 1967 War, Israel manipulated the city's map, when it incorporated the eastern Arab sector into its capital to make a new dividing line between Jerusalem and the West Bank.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And that time, when they drawn this map, they are looking for the future. They need Jerusalem as Israel needed capital of Israel, and they want a new settlement in this area, but they are not looking for Palestinian built area in that time.
KESSEL: Here today, one of the results of the last 15 months of confrontation, an Israeli military checkpoint, on the lines divided by the 1967 politically minded Israeli map makers, who ignored demography to achieve a purpose, to make redivision of the Holy City more difficult.
BENVENISTI: So you have a clash of maps. You have a clash of perceptions that draftsmen paint on maps, and suddenly, they become reality.
KESSEL: In this reality, road maps are quickly outdated. Here, just on the border, which Israel determined is Jerusalem's northernmost point work on a new road, an Israeli military checkpoint, a new fence, new traffic lanes, to make this a de facto border crossing in and out of Jerusalem in a way that paps the city from the West Bank.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KESSEL: So some of the problems, Leon, that lay down the road for would-be map makers of peace in this region. But General Zinni's more immediate task, to try to get a consolidated cease-fire going so they can get back, back to that process of mapping out a full-scale Palestinian-Israeli peace -- Leon.
HARRIS: Jerrold Kessel in Jerusalem, thank you very much, and Happy New Year to you, Jerrold.
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