US peace mediator views on current Palestinian - Israeli conditions
Palestine-Israel, Politics, 11/10/2000

U.S. Special Middle East Coordinator Dennis Ross speaking before the Los Angeles World Affairs Council on November 6, 2000, Ross said the barriers between peoples must be broken down and the "stereotypes that exist within the publics on each side" must be changed.

Ross said the Israelis and Palestinians interpret the violence that broke out at the end of September in ways that he said are "180 degrees different."

Neither side can impose its solution on the other, he continued, and there is no unilateral way to resolve the conflict, including a unilateral declaration of statehood or a unilateral separation.

The U.S. will continue to make the needed effort, Ross said, but in the end, "this is a peace that Israelis and Palestinians must make. If they're ready, it will happen. If they're not ready, it won't."

Following is the text of Ambassador Ross' remarks at the Los Angeles World Affairs Council November 6, 2000:

I don't know what's tougher-making Middle East peace or getting a pro football team to L.A. Until recently I probably would have said getting a pro football team to L.A. I may change that now.

Over the years I've given a lot of speeches on peacemaking in the Middle East, and there have been times when I've come and had to give speeches that were extraordinarily difficult. When I gave speeches after Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated I can tell you I've never had to face a more difficult time to give a speech. When I had to give speeches after four bombs and nine days in 1996 I also found it very difficult to give those speeches. Well, I come to you again at a time when it is difficult to give a speech about peacemaking in the Middle East. What makes it especially difficult is not just the circumstances on the ground. They would make it hard in any case. What makes it especially difficult is that in the last several months, and especially prior to the time this particular crisis on the ground erupted, we were for the first time in the history of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians dealing with the most existential questions between them, issues like Jerusalem and borders and settlements and refugees and security arrangements. We were dealing with them in a very serious fashion. So I faced what is almost a kind of paradox that, on the one hand, we are now looking at events on the ground that are extremely troubling to see--and I would even say disheartening for people like me who have worked in this for so long--and yet I also know where we were in terms of trying to reconcile the differences between the two sides.

It is, in fact, a paradox that the three days of September 26, 27 and 28, I was meeting with the negotiators on each side, going back and forward between them to see if there was a bridge that could be built to overcome the differences that existed. And at the end of three days of negotiations at that time--and again this is five weeks ago--all three of us felt that, in fact, we could see the way to an agreement, as difficult as it was, as hard as it was still going to be, as uncertain as it still might be--there was a sense among all three of us that this was something that could be done. That was five weeks ago and for me it feels like it's a different world in five weeks. So when I speak to you tonight I want to say a few things: I want to talk about how the Israelis and the Palestinians perceive and explain what has happened the last five weeks. I want to talk about the effect it has on peacemaking, and I want to talk about what, if any, choice there is in terms of pursuing peace.

Let me start with how the two sides explain and see what has happened in the last five weeks. Needless to say, what I'm going to describe represents views that are 180 degrees apart. When the Israelis look at what has happened in the last five weeks they see it as something that has been contrived. They see violence having been used as a device to try to affect the negotiations. They see violence being used as a device to try to change the balance of public opinion internationally.

They see violence being used as a device to create either a more favorable outcome from the standpoint of the Palestinians or an international intervention that will produce that. The Israelis believe that this is all taking place in a context where they have an Israeli government that has been more forthcoming, in Israeli eyes, than any Israeli government ever before. They wonder why this takes place, and they draw the conclusion that the Palestinians at this point either are not interested in peace or they have grave doubts about whether the Palestinians are prepared to live in peace. They look at these five weeks and they see commitments that have been made but not fulfilled, they see Israelis demonstrating, from time to time, restraint as in the case of the withdrawal from Joseph's Tomb in Nablus and they see a response that betrays the value of any restraint when they exhibit it. So the conclusion they draw is that they are now dealing in a circumstance where they have many more doubts about whether or not peace is possible with their Palestinian partners.

Well, I can assure you the Palestinians see it very differently. From the Palestinian perspective, the world looks 180 degrees different, as I've said. The Palestinians look at the Israelis and they say, the Israelis deal with us in an insensitive way and in an indifferent way.

They see the Sharon visit as somehow being allowed by the Israeli government, they see it as something that was designed to transform a political conflict into a religious conflict, they say that this was a visit whose purpose was to ignite great passions--and it did--and they see the Israeli response in the aftermath of that and the riots that took place, they see the Israeli response as one that is characterized by a use of excessive force. Palestinians look at Israelis and say "you use excessive force because you look at us somehow as subhuman." The level of Palestinian frustration and anger is deep; you don't turn on and off the kind of feelings that we have seen. That is a function of looking at a process that Eli was talking about that has lasted seven years, and the promise of that process, in their eyes, hasn't been met. They still see Israeli control, they still see Israeli check points, they still see Israeli settlement building. The conclusion they see at this point, the explanation they make for their public, is that the Israelis are pursuing a process that is designed to maintain control but not give the Palestinians their independence.

Now, when you look at it the way I just described it, I'm not describing it in terms of our views, or your views. I'm simply saying "What do I hear? What do we hear from the Israelis? What do we hear from the Palestinians?" And what we hear suggests that peacemaking is going to be very difficult now. What we hear indicates that the last five weeks have created a deep resentment, a sense of betrayal, mistrust and there are very deep physic wounds that are going to take some time to repair and to recover from. Notwithstanding that I can tell you that last week we had the acting foreign minister of Israel, Shlomo Ben-Ami, come to Washington and after he came we had Saab Erekat, the chief negotiator on the Palestinian side, come to Washington. They met with the Secretary of State and the National Security Advisor, and I spent a lot of time with each of them. I can tell you each of them said there's no choice but to pursue peace.

What we see now cannot be the future. What we see now is the tip of the iceberg of what things could become and it's not acceptable.

Moderates, they say, have to be more determined to press ahead, not less so. So there may be frustration, there may be anger, there may be mistrust, there may be great doubt, and yet they say, "Continue to work at it. Continue to proceed." And even though there's this frustration and there's this anger and there's this mistrust, the contacts between the two sides continue. Last week Simon Peres and Chairman Arafat got together and they forged a set of understandings designed to restore some level of tranquility and recreate a basis for reconciliation so that peace could again be pursued. There's obviously a lot of work to be done to reestablish that environment of tranquility. There's a lot of work that needs to be done to create a bridge from a psychology of confrontation and rage to a psychology of peacemaking. And yet as I've said they see the need to continue to do it.

Now why do they cling to that? Why is it so essential for them not to give up the effort and give up the hope? This is a rhetorical question, because I have the answer. There is a fundamental reality that has not been changed by the last five weeks. That fundamental reality is that Israelis and Palestinians live next to each other.

They are neighbors. It is an immutable reality. It cannot be changed.

You cannot wish one side or the other to go away, because they won't.

History and geography have destined them to be neighbors and they're going to remain as neighbors. So they have a choice. The choice is to live in perpetual struggle with perpetual pain, with perpetual victims, with shattered lives and shattered families and shattered dreams--or to live in peaceful coexistence. At Oslo, and Eli gave a little bit of the history, at least when it was launched in September 13, at Oslo a choice was made for peaceful coexistence.

Now one thing is very clear. Translating that choice into reality has proven very difficult and it has taken much longer than they thought.

They envisioned a five-year timetable, and we're in the seventh year.

They have created through the Oslo process a series of different agreements based on a bargain. The fundamental bargain of Oslo was recognition for Israel and security and the fundamental bargain for the Palestinians was recognition and a pathway to achieve their aspirations of independence.

They have negotiated five partial peace agreements on the way to what their objective is. The first agreement was in May 1994, although it was supposed to have been achieved by December of 1993. That created the Gaza-Jericho authority. The Palestinians established the Palestinian Authority in Gaza and Jericho at that time. The second agreement was the interim agreement at the end of September 1995. That extended the Palestinian authority to the key cities in the West Bank with the exception of Hebron. It also created, as you said, a process that was supposed to produce an evolution of Israeli authority to Palestinian authority, a gradual handover through three phases of further redeployment of territory that was to be worked out over time.

The Rabin assassination came, the four bombs in nine days came, Benjamin Netanyahu was elected as Prime Minister, and there was another agreement that didn't come until January of 1997, the Hebron agreement which brought the Palestinians authority over 80 percent of Hebron and which did work out a timetable, or a timeline, on further redeployments. The Hebron part of that agreement was implemented. The balance of further redeployments was something that didn't get resolved until the Wye agreement in 1998. That was supposed to produce, again, a balance of further redeployment for security. That wasn't fully implemented until the Sharm [al-Shaikh] agreement, which came with Ehud Barak and Chairman Arafat. But that agreement not only produced the first two phases of further redeployment, it also produced a commitment to achieve a framework agreement on all the permanent status issues by February and a complete agreement on all of the permanent status issues by September of this year. You may note we're in November of this year.

It has been very difficult to negotiate these agreements and this year we got in for the first time, to dealing with the existential question, which go to the heart of identity and security for the two sides. In the course of this year, the ability to negotiate on that was clearly limited. We watched the negotiations, took part in the negotiations, prodded the negotiators, did everything we could through the spring and into the summer. One of the things that we discovered is that on the issues, the core issues that were being negotiated, like Jerusalem, like settlements, like borders, like refugees, on those core issues it was very hard below the level of the leaders to negotiate at a level other than slogans. Now, slogans are fine.

Slogans defend positions. They encapsulate beliefs. But you don't make peace on the basis of slogans. You don't make peace through a reconciliation of slogans. You make peace by negotiating differences.

You make peace by reconciling different interests.

During the course of this year we faced two realities. One reality was we had to find a way to overcome their approach to the permanent status issues so that they didn't negotiate on the basis of slogans.

We also realized that there was a level of frustration on both sides about a process that was in its seventh year. For the Israelis, the sense that you would have another partial agreement was completely unacceptable. Why? Because they felt that the partial agreements constituted the equivalent of slicing up a salami. They would give more land, but what would they get in return? Would they get an end of grievance, would they get an end of claims, would they get an end of conflict? Not if it was a partial agreement. But the Palestinians were just as much against the ideal of a partial agreement, because they were in the seventh year of the process, and each partial agreement never seemed to be fully implemented. The promise of the process never seemed to be realized, the nature of Israeli control didn't seem to change, and from a Palestinian perspective, they wanted an agreement that would in fact produce what this process was supposed to produce in terms of responding to their aspirations.

Both from the standpoint of being able to negotiate beyond the level of generalities and slogans and from the standpoint of realizing that another partial agreement was not going to be accepted by either side, we realized that we would have to do something. That's basically what led to Camp David. At Camp David we did change the dynamic, we did break the stalemate and we did break the taboo on dealing with the hardest of the hard issues. For the first time in this process both sides dissected these issues, examined these issues. They laid out to each other what was possible and wasn't possible. They laid out to each other what they saw as being essential. They gave their explanations in a way they had never done before and progress was made on every single issue, but no deal was reached. In the aftermath of Camp David we continued to make the effort that led up to what I described before, the work at the end of September. Now we still had gaps. We had not overcome the gaps, but there was a sense of possibility. More than that, there was an understanding that the core needs of each side were clearer to each other, and certainly to us, than they had ever been before and ultimately the key is, can you reconcile the core needs, not what's desired, but what's fundamental.

Now if you ask me the question "Can you do that in the abstract?" My answer is "Yes." If you ask me the question "Can you do it in the aftermath of five weeks, the past five weeks, of violence and a cycle of violence and a cycle of grievance that has gotten worse?" my answer is "I don't know." But I can tell you this: There are certain basic truths that have to guide this process if it is going to succeed. The first truth is that this is going to have to be a peace not only of negotiators and leaders. It's going to have to be a peace of peoples and publics. One of the things we've seen in the last five weeks is what happens when the only people who are engaged in the process are the elite and when you don't engage the publics. One of the problems with Oslo, even though it was recognized, was that there has not been a people-to-people dimension that has been significant. Somehow, someway that has to change. This, by the way, is not a new theme. In fact, I think when I spoke [to the Council] in June of 1999 I talked about the importance of people-to-people.

We have not been able to translate that into a new reality. If what we're seeing now doesn't impress upon us the need to do it, nothing will. There has to be something that is done differently in terms of breaking down the barriers between people, there has to be something that is done differently that changes the stereotypes that exist within the publics on each side, and in the near term there's going to have to be something else. I described a sense of grievances that each side feels, that each side perceives, that each side describes to us, but they shouldn't be describing those grievances to us. They should be describing those grievances to each other. There should be discussion groups now that deal with all walks of life between Israelis and Palestinians so that they can talk with each other and not just at each other. So they can explain why they feel the anger they feel, why they feel the sense of betrayal they feel. It is not enough to tell others. They're going to have to tell each other, and that's one of the first truths. There's going to have to be a peace of peoples and not just of leaders.

A second truth about this process: There is no solution that can be imposed from without or from within. We cannot impose a solution. It will not endure. Nobody has a stake in a solution that is imposed from the outside. The first opportunity to break it, it will be broken. So there is no such thing as the imposition of a solution. But it's also true for the parties: it can't be imposed from within. The Israelis cannot impose a settlement on the Palestinians. There is no military solution to this problem. There's only a political solution. But the Palestinians cannot impose a solution on the Israelis. The intifada will not achieve Palestinian aspirations. It will delay the achievement of those aspirations.

There's a third truth, which is related to the second one. There's no unilateral way to resolve this conflict. A unilateral declaration of statehood is not going to resolve this conflict. Where would the borders of such a state be? Where would the powers of sovereignty be? You'll have constant tests and you'll have constant confrontation. It is equally true that there is no unilateral separation that can produce an agreement because again you'll have points of friction that would become constant tests between the two sides. There has to be a mutuality. Unilateralism will not resolve this conflict, but a mutual approach that in the end responds to the needs of both sides can and ultimately will because there is not an alternative and because they know there is not an alternative.

I can tell you that the basic outline of what was being developed by us at Camp David in the aftermath does respond to the needs of both sides. What I can't tell you is whether we can have an agreement on that basis in one month or two months, in one year or two years, or in five years. What I can tell you is that the basic outcome will be the same. The only difference will be that we'll have a lot more victims.

For someone like me it's unconscionable not to continue to make the effort when you know that that's one of the truths that we deal with.

We will continue to make the effort because it's the right thing to do. We will continue to make the effort but we'll make the effort not with an air of unreality and not with an illusion. In the end, if one side or the other isn't ready, it doesn't matter what we do. It matters what they do. It matters what they decide. So we will keep up the effort, we'll see what is possible, but in the end this is a peace that Israelis and Palestinians must make. If they're ready it will happen. If they're not ready, it won't. I'll stop here and take your questions.

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