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CNN Saturday Morning News
Interview With Shibley Telhami
Aired January 26, 2002 - 08:05 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: Now to the Mideast crisis. The U.S. faces a diplomatic dilemma over whether to cut ties with the Palestinian Authority. And meanwhile the fighting goes on. Israeli war planes struck Palestinian security installations in the West Bank and Gaza late yesterday and each side blames the other for the escalating violence.
CNN Jerusalem bureau chief Mike Hanna with details.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MIKE HANNA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Another senior Palestinian militant killed by Israel and once more cries of revenge, revenge reverberate in a funeral procession. Bakr Hamdan was a commander in the armed wing of the radical Hamas movement. Accused by Israel of planning a number of terror attacks, his car was hit by a missile fired from an Israeli combat helicopter in Gaza.
In a separate incident overnight, two other Hamas militants were shot and killed by Israeli forces. Self-defense, says Israel. More provocative assassinations, say Palestinians.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We are going to escalate our activities. We are going to escalate our resistance. We are going to retaliate for everybody, every Palestinian.
HANNA: A few hours later an explosion in downtown Tel Aviv. Police say a man leaning against a motor scooter detonated an explosive device. He killed himself and injured more than 20 bystanders. It was, say police, a suicide bombing.
The Palestinian Authority condemned the attack and condemned, too, the assassination of individual Palestinians. But the Israeli government says the Tel Aviv attack is further evidence that the Authority itself is involved in a campaign of terror.
DORE GOLD, SHARON ADVISER: This is part of a deliberate strategy of escalation by all the Palestinian organizations against the people of Israel. Israel cannot accept this and Israel will have to defend its population.
HANNA: Israeli tanks remain in the West Bank city of Ramallah, where Yasser Arafat is still under virtual house arrest. The restriction on Arafat's movement is justified, says the Bush administration, which has also been muted in its criticism of the recent Israeli killings of Palestinian militants.
(on camera): To Israeli approval and Palestinian dismay, the U.S. is reviewing the nature of its relationship with the Palestinian Authority, even contemplating the suspension of diplomatic ties. The danger in this, argue Palestinians, is that the U.S. would no longer be seen as an honest broker, with deeply negative consequences for attempts to negotiate an end to the incessant conflict.
Mike Hanna, CNN, Jerusalem.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
O'BRIEN: So what is the future of the relationship between the U.S. and Yasser Arafat? Should the U.S. suspend ties with the Palestinian Authority?
Joining us from Washington to discuss those issues is Shibley Telhami. He is a professor at the University of Maryland in College Park.
Good to have you with us, professor.
SHIBLEY TELHAMI, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND: A pleasure.
O'BRIEN: First of all, do you think it is wise for the Bush administration to sever all ties with Yasser Arafat? And secondarily, do you think the administration will?
TELHAMI: Well, first of all, if we base our relations with nations around the world on the basis of the failings and shortcomings of leaders, we would really have a mess on our hands in our relationship with the international community and certainly we would have a problem in the relationship with the Palestinians -- and the Israelis, for that matter.
I think what we have to do here is have a little sense of perspective. We have a cycle of violence that is practically impossible for the parties themselves to break out of. I've done a study over 20 years of daily interactions in the Middle East and this was with three other colleagues. And the data shows that what happens over time is that they learn to respond in kind. You can't break out of the cycle.
What you have is that revenge becomes normalized and they don't learn to cooperate, even though it is in their interests to cooperate. And that is under the best of circumstances. And these are not the best of circumstances because I think there is something bigger than Arafat and bigger than Sharon, for that matter.
Unfortunately, since the collapse of the negotiations, the Palestinians have assumed that they have to have some kind of military, violent option to affect their leverage and the Israelis more or less across the political spectrum, not just Sharon, have given up about dealing with Arafat.
So the Palestinians make half-hearted effort on the violence issue and the Israelis make half-hearted effort in giving Arafat any chance. Therefore, when you include the cycle of violence, it is practically impossible for them to break out of it and they need some kind of diplomatic intervention from the outside. And whether it's Sharon or Arafat is important to some extent, but it's not the main problem.
O'BRIEN: Professor, as, what you've stated is the conundrum in a nutshell. What is the Bush administration to do about it if the status quo is not working and also given the fact that it is, it's apparently very clear right now that Yasser Arafat and the Palestinian Authority were attempting to import a tremendous number of weapons recently and have denied that that ship, which was discovered in the Red Sea by the Israelis...
TELHAMI: Absolutely.
O'BRIEN: ... was, in fact, intended for terrorism in the Middle East. So I mean what you have is a situation where perhaps the Palestinian Authority has lost its credibility.
TELHAMI: No, absolutely, and this is a huge episode and I think it was a huge mistake and what is happening here is a problem of dealing with it. But we have to, whatever the U.S. does, it has to first and foremost ask what is the intended consequence. We can't just think about means -- what is the instrument of punishing -- but what is the objective of our policy?
And I think right now the issue should be first and foremost having a debate about what our objective should be but not what our actions should be. Because the consequences are very important.
Second, there are things that the administration can do in the short-term. I think it is reasonable for the administration not to send a special envoy back because both the Israelis and the Palestinians want this special envoy back apparently not in order to end the violence, but under, in order to, in a way, legitimize the status quo, and in the process the United States gets embarrassed.
It is reasonable for the Bush administration to withhold that mission until there are assurances from both sides that next time he goes, he's going to get something in return.
O'BRIEN: Professor, tell me, I just want to shift gears just a little bit, because however this all plays out, it is time to be thinking about a successor to Yasser Arafat. No matter what happens he is aging and is not in the best of health. Let's talk about some of the potential successors, whether that might be forced by some action by the Bush administration severing ties or whether it just happens. But let's talk, first of all, about Saeb Erakat, who is often mentioned as a successor. How would that change the dynamic?
TELHAMI: Well, first of all, let me just say that other countries have never succeeded in putting their own people in power and this is too premature. But having said this, clearly Arafat at some point, he's very old and he's going to no longer be the Pales -- the leader of the Palestinian people. And there is a process. The process in general is that the executive committee of the PLO would meet to select a new leader.
Arafat wears two hats. One hat is as the president of the Palestinian Authority, which is elected by citizens in the West Bank and Gaza, and also as Chairman of the PLO, which is an organization that represents Palestinians elsewhere.
And the PLO hat is more important. Therefore, typically the process will be through the executive committee. When you look at individuals, there are a number of individuals. Saeb Erakat is one of them. Certainly the deputy to Mr. Arafat, Abu Mazen, is one of them. The speaker of the assembly, the legislative assembly, is one of them, Abu Ala. You also have other people in the security services. You have other candidates that may not come up.
And I think that the real question is not so much who's going to lead, but what will be the options. You have occupation. You have a difficult environment. And whoever is going to be selected as the next leader of the Palestinians, when that happens, is going to have to have to deal with the issues at hand.
The strategic situation is the source of the problem even more so than Arafat, even though, clearly, he has shown many shortcomings over the years.
O'BRIEN: Sibley Telhami is a professor at the University of Maryland, an expert on the Middle East.
Thank you for being with us this morning on CNN SATURDAY MORNING.
TELHAMI: My pleasure.
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