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CNN Live Sunday

Interview With Tony Karon of TIME.com

Aired March 31, 2002 - 18:15   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.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: The new issue of "TIME" magazine focuses on the continuing crisis in the Middle East, and in particular, as you can see on cover there, the besieged Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Well, Tony Karon is the world editor of TIME.com, and he joins us this evening. Good evening, Tony.

TONY KARON, TIME.COM: Good evening, Carol.

LIN: All right, you look at the situation here. Yasser Arafat, cornered by Israeli troops and tanks, talking to reporters via candle light or flashlights -- from a public relations standpoint in the world community, how is he doing?

KARON: I think he's doing pretty well from a world standpoint, because, essentially, the theatricality of this, you know, Arafat being the besieged one with an Uzi on the desk and the candle light and saying, you know, I am besieged, but I will see this through. And certainly, for most of the international community there's a sense that the escalation that the Israelis are undertaking right now is not going to solve this problem, it's going to intensify the situation. And Arafat benefits from that. And so do probably the more radical voices in the Middle East.

LIN: And certainly doesn't that account for the increase in violence? Hamas has now said that they are promising an unrelenting series of attacks until the Palestinians get their statehood.

KARON: Correct. And I think what we have to understand about Hamas is that Hamas did not want a cease-fire between Arafat and General Zinni. Hamas did not want Arafat to meet Vice President Cheney, for example. Hamas' objective all along has been to stop any sort of activity toward a cease-fire and to make sure that there's no resumption of any sort of peace process. So it's not hard to understand that they would be taking advantage in this sort of situation.

The real problem for Israel, I think, is that as Israeli reporters said on Friday, Sharon talks about the infrastructure of terror. The infrastructure of terror in the Palestinian territories is the people themselves. Somewhere up to 85 percent of the Palestinian population supports violence as a means of actually ending the occupation, as they see it.

LIN: Which doesn't necessarily mean that 85 percent of the people are willing to go out, strap explosives to themselves and blow themselves up. I mean, everybody has a different way of expressing that feeling. But given the dynamic that you have just painted on the ground, does President Bush have any other choice here than to get more proactive?

KARON: Absolutely. There's no question that President Bush needs to come forward with something more than the United States has done up until now, because you see the situation where the White House is saying Arafat needs to do more, Arafat needs to exercise (UNINTELLIGIBLE), at the same time as the Israelis are telling the media that Arafat can't go to the bathroom without their permission.

Plainly, there's something wrong with this picture. I think essentially what we're dealing with here is a breakdown of the Oslo process from the beginning. And there were two fundamental presets of the Oslo process. One is that the Palestinians would renounce violence, and the other was that the Israelis would renounce the occupation. And really I guess what a lot of the media are saying is you need both of those elements in play now. To simply insist on an end to violence and not link that to the question of the occupation is simply not going work with the Palestinians.

LIN: So what about this idea of having U.S. troops or U.N. peacekeepers on the ground? I mean, don't you think that it is now at the point where that may very well be the only solution?

KARON: Well, that's certainly something that the Palestinians and Arafat would have hoped for quite a long time and it's something the Israelis won't look on very kindly.

I think the real issue here is the question of where the boundaries are drawn, that essentially between the green line and Israel there's no border right now. In other words, the West Bank and Israel are not separated by a border and a fence. The question is if there were international troops deployed, along what border would they guard? And that really comes back to the question of what is the long-term perspective here? Are we talking about a separation into two states and a border between them, which I think most people believe now would require some sort of international policing, or is Israel determined to actually remain within the West Bank and Gaza as it is at present?

LIN: But you've got a situation here where at some point there's going to be a tipping point, right? I mean, the troops and tanks surrounding Yasser Arafat, Arafat holed up in his compound without electricity, possibly running out of food. You've got Israeli troops now making incursions in ever widening areas around the Palestinian territories. At what point, what is going to be the breaking point here? What do you see likely to unfold and happen in the days and weeks to come?

KARON: Well, I think what Sharon is doing now is what he promised to do three weeks before Zinni's mission, which was to deploy a lot more force in order to smash what he sees as the infrastructure of terror among the Palestinians, and more importantly to hammer the Palestinians to the point where they accept Israel's terms for a cease-fire.

LIN: But what makes him think even historically that that's going to work? It didn't work in the past?

KARON: Well, that's really the problem. A lot of senior Israeli military people are saying this war is unwinnable. You can't really fight a war on these terms, on the basis of, you know, overwhelming majority of the population of the West Bank and Gaza essentially supporting the militants.

LIN: So where does that leave us then, Tony?

KARON: Well, I think essentially what it's going to require is the Bush administration to bring both sides back to basics and really to restate those fundamental commitments that started Oslo. Are the Israelis and the Palestinians prepared to accept a land for peace deal? A land for peace deal is essentially Palestinians renounce violence and Israelis renounce occupation. Both sides agree that there's a way...

LIN: I'm sorry, Tony, let me interrupt there, because we've been hearing this so many times. And I think what gets confusing here is at this point, I mean, when the intifada broke out 18 months ago, the Palestinians, as I understand it, were frustrated because despite the Oslo peace accords, nothing was really changing in their lives. I mean, so they get territory, but they don't have rights. You know, they get land to grow their tomatoes, but they can't sell that tomato unless an Israeli signs a piece of paper.

And what the Palestinians are saying right now is that they don't want a cease-fire until there is a commitment by the Israelis to say, all right, you give us a cease-fire and we will put statehood on the table. We will have a political discussion about the Palestinian state. Why can't that happen?

KARON: Well, right now I think you have -- that can't happen because the Israeli leadership -- and I think the Bush administration may be supporting them in this -- are saying that to do that might be to reward terrorism or to reward violence. Of course, what the Palestinians have said, as Senator Mitchell noted, was that to simply accept a cease-fire without that linkage is in their terms to reward occupation.

And I think the standoff really is one that the United States is going to have to resolve, because right now who's being rewarded are the most hard-line people of both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide, but also Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein and the Iranian hard-liners and everybody else who doesn't want to see the situation resolved.

LIN: You know what's really interesting, though, the way I read it in today's "New York Times," Anthony Zinni only has a mandate to go to the Palestinians and the Israelis to talk about a security plan and a cease-fire. When the Palestinians asked him, well, we can't give you a cease-fire unless you tell us how we can get statehood on the table, he said, you know what, that's up to you, the Palestinians, to talk about with the Israelis. I am here just to talk about a security plan. What sense does that make at this point?

KARON: That is basically an unattainable situation. And really, I think it would do the Bush administration well to heed the advice of Israeli -- long-time Israeli peacemakers such as Foreign Minister Shimon Peres who has insisted all along that no cease-fire -- and the heads of Israeli intelligence and security services -- that no cease- fire is going to maintain unless it's linked to a political process.

So really until that comes back into play, nobody gives the cease-fire any chance. It's simply at the moment spinning wheels.

LIN: It certainly feels that way. And people are dying in the process. Thank you very much, Tony Karon, from TIME.com. We'll look forward to more of your coverage as well.

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