James Wolfensohn: West can't win by starving the Palestinians
Palestine-Israel-USA, Politics, 5/2/2006

James Wolfensohn, the Special Envoy for Gaza Disengagement, part of the so-called Quartet group (gathering US, EU, Russia, and UN), for dealing in the Palestinian Israeli conflict said the West cannot win by getting all the kids out of school or starving the Palestinians, just to punish their elected representative, Hamas.

Wolfensohn on previous occasions had hinted at his apparent frustration for not being provided the tools and powers needed to do an effective job.

Wolfensohn was previously the head of the World Bank.

Yesterday, Wolfensohn held a press conference with US Secretary Of State Condoleezza Rice.

Wolfensohn said "It's been a wonderful, more than 12 months now, since I took on this job and I'm grateful to you and to the President for the honor that you showed me by asking me to participate. As all of you know, it's been a fairly difficult period, but one in which I think we have made quite a lot of progress.

"But in the recent two or three months, the political events are such that I think the issues above my pay grade, these are issues between the Israelis and the United States, the principals if you like, and with the government of Hamas having taken over with the Palestinians, it's a very difficult moment to be able to try and negotiate any independent type of arrangements that would affect the future of Gaza and the West Bank, because of the emphasis that Hamas puts on the destruction of the state of Israel and the less than communicative relationship with that state. So it seemed to me that this was a good moment to offer my resignation to the Secretary and to the Quartet, but with the caveat that if they think, at any stage, that I can be of help and conditions change and they would want me to do it; that I would be honored and delighted to do it. So Madame Secretary, let me thank you and the President and say it's been an experience that I greatly appreciated."

Wolfensohn was asked about the US economic pressure on Hamas and if it will either weaken or strengthen Hamas? And about what will US General Dayton's role be."

Rice said "on General Dayton, we are assessing that situation. There obviously continue to be security concerns on the ground as well. If we believed that conditions were such that a special envoy could really do his work at this particular time, we wouldn't be seeking a replacement. Jim Wolfensohn, I hope, would be staying. And so that's why there isn't a replacement. What we need to do is to try, over the next period of time, to get the political conditions right so that we can move forward."

Rice added "Nobody wants to be in a situation in which the prospects for the two-state solution, to which we are all devoted, do not seem immediately before us. And so we're going to work very hard on trying to get the political conditions right. We just have a new -- we'll just have a new Israeli Government at the end of this week. We would hope to have discussions with them. We continue to hope that Hamas will take the will of the international community seriously and set the minimum conditions for engagement with a partner that the Quartet has laid out. And if those political conditions can come into place, then perhaps we can move forward. But it is really right now the absence of appropriate political conditions."

Rice said "But let me be very clear. We will continue to work with President Abbas who is after all the elected president of the Palestinian Authority, and to see what we can do to support him and to help -- to see what he can do to help create those conditions as well. Finally, we are accelerating our efforts to get humanitarian assistance to the Palestinian people because we do not want the Palestinian people to suffer. They have needs and we're going to try to meet them."

Wolfensohn said "I would simply like to say that I think this last statement by the Secretary is really crucial because it would surprise me if one could win by getting all the kids out of school or starving the Palestinians. And I don't think anyone in the Quartet believes that to be the policy, although sometimes it is made to appear that that's what it is. I think that's a losing gambit.

But I do think that the Palestinians need to understand that it is not business as usual. Here you have a Palestinian group which has said that it wants to destroy its neighbor. And I guess if Canada did that to the United States or New Zealand did it to Australia, the reaction would not be very positive in terms of the other state and that's what you're finding here. I think the Palestinians need to understand and to accept that the future has to be one where the issues, however difficult, need to be resolved, but that you don't start by telling the other side that you're going to shoot them. I find that quite understandable and I think the situation that we're now in is to try and find our way through that situation to a point where there can be a negotiated solution that is acceptable to both sides.

Asked about the Palestinian territories, and if things are reaching a crisis point, Rice said "I'm first concerned that we find ourselves in a situation in which the world is united on the need for a negotiated solution and on a two-state solution and where one of the presumed parties will not accept the existence -- even the existence of or the right to exist of the other party. We've simply got to get through that. It can't be business as usual."

Rice said "We are looking to see what we can do to continue to help the Palestinian people, to continue to help Mahmoud Abbas, because he is the elected president. But the goal right now has to be for everyone to send as strong a message as possible to Hamas that -- and by the way, it's not the United States; it is the international community that's sending this message that the best interests of the Palestinian people are served by a peace process and by constructive engagement with their Israeli neighbor. After all, there are important links between these economies, between these territories that cannot be severed. And the interests of the Palestinian people are best served that way and you can't have that kind of relationship if you don't believe in the right of the other party to exist."

Previous Stories:
  US - Israel react to Hamas official leading Palestinian security   (4/21/2006)
  Hamas accuses US of pressuring Palestinian groups   (3/21/2006)
  Haaretz: Jimmy Carter: Colonization of Palestine precludes peace   (3/18/2006)

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