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American Morning
Interview With Martin Indyk
Aired August 06, 2002 - 07:15 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: We want to get to the Middle East now, where violence continues to escalate. A secret meeting, though, happened on Monday between senior Israeli and Palestinian officials, providing of glimmer of hope in some corners now to a very desperate region.
Today, a Palestinian delegation will arrive here in the U.S. for meetings a bit later this week with the secretary of state, Colin Powell.
We are joined by Martin Indyk, former U.S. ambassador to Israel, our guest this morning in Washington.
Good to see you again, Ambassador -- good morning to you.
MARTIN INDYK, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO ISRAEL: Good morning, Bill.
HEMMER: What do you make of these security meetings? Is there truly a glimmer of hope in that, despite the violence that continues to rein the region?
INDYK: I think that what it reflects, Bill, is an exhaustion on both sides amongst the people. This battle has been going on for two years with horrendous loss of life on both sides. People are truly exhausted, and the politicians have to try to respond to that.
So the defense minister of Israel is meeting with the Palestinian security echelon. Some of them will be coming to Washington next week, as you said. And the overall effort is to see if they can work out a cease-fire, perhaps starting with Gaza first, where Palestinian Security Forces are still intact and where the Hamas leadership is based. But that would require the Palestinians to move against Hamas to stop them from carrying out this horrendous terrorism.
HEMMER: Do you think that the Palestinians are willing to do that?
INDYK: I think that they would be willing to try. I don't know how hard they would, in fact, try, because that's been a problem in the past. They would be willing to try, if the Israelis were prepared to pull out of the West Bank cities where they have been implementing a curfew to try to stop the suicide bombers. And there, you get to the catch-22 situation, because as soon as the Israelis start to ease up on the Palestinian population of the West Bank, the suicide bombers come back. So you've got to have a way of breaking this vicious circle of suicide bombings and Israeli responses by harsher clampdowns, and there, you need a mechanism, some real effort by the Palestinians with, I think, American, Egyptian and Jordanian involvement in a much more active way than we have seen up until now to try to get them to be effective in stopping the terrorism.
HEMMER: I want to know what your take is, though, on the Israeli strategy right now. The defense minister this week saying nobody enters and nobody leaves, talking about Gaza and the West Bank.
Let me just read you a paragraph here, the travel ban initiated which means that "Palestinians are not able to drive in the northern half of the West Bank into the towns of Nablus, Jenin, Qalqilya, Tulkarem and Ramallah." Now, that's an absolute freeze in my estimation. Does this strategy work?
INDYK: Well, we could add, Bill, that there is a curfew on as well, and Palestinians aren't simply -- not allowed to move out of their houses, except occasionally to get some food. And the reason for this clampdown is because of the wave of terrorist attacks that have occurred in Israel over the last couple of days, coming from the particular areas that you said.
The Israelis had eased up, because they can't keep 700,000 Palestinians under curfew indefinitely. And the problem is that easing up allows the suicide bombers to start to move back into Israel again.
The Israelis are also trying to put down a fence to separate the West Bank from Israel Proper. But that has caused a great furor in Israel today, because they are going to build 120 kilometers of fence, and they have only so far managed to build 2 kilometers, and it will take them another year to do so.
So they are fast running out of good options here. And the one hope, I think, is that the exhaustion on both sides will produce pressure, in the first case, on the Palestinians to try to stop the terrorists, to argue to the Hamas that this is doing great damage to the Palestinian cause, and that the Israelis can then reciprocate actions that the Palestinians take.
HEMMER: You just returned from Morocco. What are you hearing from Arab leaders there about the situation on the ground now?
INDYK: Well, I was at a conference there with Arab intellectuals. It was really quite depressing, Bill. The...
HEMMER: How so?
INDYK: The (UNINTELLIGIBLE) and anger towards the United States that is -- was expressed there, and I think felt all over the Arab world, is very, very strong. It's a kind of dialogue of the deaf. We say we have been attacked, and we have to defend ourselves against this terrorism. There is no good or bad terrorism. It's all terrorism against innocents. They say, you know, that we are insensitive, we are arrogant, we are trying to dictate to them, and that we are not sufficiently active to solve the Palestinian problem.
The interesting thing, though, is when you say, OK, you know, we'll take some of the blame. What will you take the blame for? They then star to talk about the sickness in their own societies and the need for democracy, and the need for American help to push their governments to open political space and to give more respect to human rights.
So there is a glimmer of hope there, too. But it all comes back, Bill, to an American engagement actively in terms of, in this case, pressing their governments to open up their political space and deal with their people more humanely and give them political expression. And on the other hand, more active engagement by the United States on the ground to help the Israelis and the Palestinians get out of these crises.
HEMMER: A dialogue to the deaf, your words. Martin Indyk, we'll talk again. Thanks for your time today.
INDYK: Thank you.
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