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CNN Sunday Morning

Interview with Marc Ginsberg

Aired March 31, 2002 - 18:02   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.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Continuing our coverage of some breaking news out of the Middle East, yet another suicide bombing attack. According to Ariel Sharon's spokesperson, at least 14 people are now dead in the wake of this suicide bombing attack in Haifa, the port city in Israel; a popular weekend destination for Israelis.

Occurred at a restaurant called the Matzoh restaurant. Rescue workers are still on the scene there, as we look at some videotape which has been coming in from Israeli television all this morning East Coast time; obviously the afternoon in Haifa. Perhaps as many as three dozen injured, many of them seriously. We are obviously monitoring this very closely as this, in the context of the Israeli encirclement of Yasser Arafat's compound and incursions into other portion of the West Bank controlled by Palestinians.

And Marc Ginsberg, one of our analysts who has been with us all morning is back with us now. And where we left off, Marc, before we went to Mike Hanna for that update in Jerusalem was the issue of the U.S. role in all of this. General Zinni's mission, first of all, let's talk about that. Is he pretty much sidelined right now?

MARC GINSBERG, FMR. U.S. AMB. TO MOROCCO: Yes, he's sidelined because at this point in time he basically left on the table for the Palestinians a joint U.S. Israeli proposal for a cease-fire. And Mr. Arafat had rejected that -- or at least had not accepted it. So until the Palestinians accept the terms of an agreement that General Zinni was able to hammer out with the Sharon government, I don't know where General Zinni goes at this point in time with respect to his own objectives.

O'BRIEN: I would like to make a quick note to our viewers. We've already been getting some emails from you, and we invite you to participate in our program as we cover this breaking event. Our email address is Wam@cnn.com. If you have any questions for Marc or any of the other people we'll be talking to throughout the next few hours as we cover this story, we invite you to send them to us now. Once again, that's Wam@cnn.com.

Marc, the issue comes up -- and this was asked many times in emails yesterday -- as to whether the U.S. should actually start thinking about troops in the region. I imagine that that is not getting a lot of traction inside the halls of the Bush administration, nor is it really from any perspective -- anyone's perspective necessary.

GINSBERG: There's a difference, Miles, between troops and peace monitors and security monitors. I don't know if your viewers recall that Secretary of State Powell went out on a trip to the Middle East approximately a year ago. And it proposed to the Israelis that the United States and others put monitors on the ground as a way of imposing some accountability with respect to what the Palestinian security forces were doing and the Israeli checkpoint and army checkpoints were doing.

The Israelis rejected that proposal, and I do believe that it's something that we should at least begin thinking about, because maybe perhaps the Israelis have a change of heart about whether or not the United States needs to play a more active role. But at the point in time, the Israelis are doing militarily what they complain Arafat was unwilling to do militarily.

O'BRIEN: Explain that.

GINSBERG: Well the Israelis essentially were hoping that the Americans and the Israelis could pressure the Palestinian security forces to round up the key terrorist elements of Islamic jihad, Hamas and Al Aqsa Brigades. And as we know, Mr. Arafat has proven to be an untrustworthy jail keeper. It's been a revolving door, where he has arrested extremists and then let them back up.

But several of the last suicide bombers were bombers who had been under arrest by the Palestinian Authority and then re-released back to the Al Aqsa Brigade. So the Israelis have evidence -- clearly intelligence evidence here -- that Mr. Arafat has condoned this. And we're not hearing a lot about Israeli intelligence with respect to what it really knows Mr. Arafat has agreed -- has condoned or not condoned at this point.

O'BRIEN: Let's talk about Yasser Arafat's what appears to be change of heart. But maybe you can give us some insights into that. We are, after all, talking about a Nobel laureate, a person who won the Nobel Peace Prize. We're talking about martyrdom in his two-room office compound encircled by Israeli tanks. It's hard to even imagine that moment when he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

What changed? Does this go back to your point about Hamas and the radicalized faction there that perhaps didn't see him as the appropriate leader to the authority and this has hardened his position?

GINSBERG: Yes. He clearly was losing support under the daress of the Israeli occupation. Miles, the Israelis clearly have caused a significant amount of harm and pain and suffering to the Palestinian population. Mr. Arafat had an opportunity to say to the Israeli public right after Camp David -- this is Camp David of 2000, and I was at Camp David back in 1978 -- that he had an opportunity to tell the Israeli public "Look, I understand the importance of giving you a sense of security."

The reason why he rejected that offer was because - this is the offer that President Clinton put on the ground, and which was subsequently negotiated close to an agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians in Tabah, Egypt, just on the very twilight of the Clinton administration -- is because he could not accept the proposition that he had to go back to his population and ask them to accept less than what he claimed he was going to deliver to them. And that is the entire Israeli withdraw from the West Bank, from the Gaza strip, from Jerusalem.

What the Israelis were prepared to do was to give him a capital in East Jerusalem. They were not prepared to give him the complete West Bank. And, indeed, many of those settlements would have remained but he would have gotten perhaps 97 percent of the West Bank back.

And he rejected that. He's never really told his own population why he rejected that. And I mean that -- other than hearing the Palestinians complain a great deal about what the Israelis have done here, they have never gone back to their population and said why they rejected that, nor has Mr. Arafat conditioned his population to accept anything less than what he has demanded. And the Israelis now interpret that as going beyond the mere willingness to force the Israelis back to the 67 boundaries.

The Israelis are now convinced that Arafat was never prepared to accept a two state solution -- that is a Palestinian state and an Israeli state living side by side -- but that this is nothing more than an underhanded, conspiratorial, Arafat being the terrorist methodology to take control over whatever he could of the West Bank and then continue his resistance over Israel proper.

O'BRIEN: All right. Marc Ginsberg, some good insights there. We're going to leave it at that for now. We're going to keep you on line, so to speak.

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