Interview with Avi Shlaim

96 Middle east Policy, Vol. XVi, No.3, Fall 2009 © 2009, The Authors Journal Compilation © 2009, Middle East Policy Council IntervIew: IsraelI new HIstorIan avI sHlaIm Dr. Shlaim is a fellow of St. Antony’s College and a professor of international relations at Oxford University. Born in Baghdad and reared in Israel, Professor Shlaim is numbered among Israel’s New Historians, who have challenged traditional assumptions about Israeli history. He is the author of Lion of Jordan: King Hussein’s Life in War and Peace (2007) and Collusion across the Jordan: King Abdullah, the Zionist Movement and the Partition of Palestine (1988). He was interviewed for Middle East Policy on June 15 in his office at the Middle East Centre of St. Antony’s by Roger Gaess (AQABA9@aol.com), a freelance journalist. MEP (Gaess): What is the mood of the Jewish Israeli public now in terms of pros- pects for peace with the Palestinians? SHLAIM: The mood of Israelis today is one of very great uncertainty. For the last eight years, under the Bush administra- tion, Israel had a completely free hand to do whatever it wanted. It was America’s close ally in the “War on Terror.” Even the offensive in Gaza didn’t meet with a single word of criticism from the Bush adminis- tration. But now there is a new American administration that seems to have very definite views on the urgency of the settle- ment between Israel and the Palestinians. The speech that President Obama delivered in Cairo on June 4 was a landmark. It out- lined a way forward. The foreign policy of his Republican predecessors was lopsided, tilting heavily toward Israel. Obama redressed the balance and articulated an even-handed policy. He focused not just on Israel and its needs but equally on the Palestinians — on their plight, on their his- tory, on the Nakba, on their national rights and on the need for justice. He spoke not only about a Palestinian state but used the word “Palestine.” Consequently, the mood in Israel is one of uncertainty and concern because all Israelis, what- ever their political affiliation, know that America is the only friend they have in the world, and that they can no longer count on automatic American support. American support means everything to Israel: economic support, military support and diplomatic support, including the use of the veto in the Security Council of the United Nations. That’s the most crucial relationship for Israel in world politics. And because of the nature of the American commitment to Israel, the Israelis could ig- nore what everyone else said. They could ignore UN resolutions, they could ignore the European Union and its preferences and advice, they could ignore the Quartet. They completely ignored the Quartet’s roadmap because America was behind them. Now they are not so sure that America will continue to back them in the same unquestioning manner, and they are worried. There are already Israeli voices saying Netanyahu has mismanaged the 97 iNterView: shlaiM relationship with America, that the special relationship between Israel and America is in danger because of Netanyahu, and that’s the context in which he made his speech on June 14. MEP: Israeli governments have long characterized security as the core issue. They’ve seen the settlements as a means toward somehow achieving security rather than the obverse. Is there a long-term view within the political elite or the public about what the outcome of this approach is going to be? Do they think they’re just going to wear down the other side and end up with something that’s incontestably secure from their point of view? SHLAIM: Security for Israel is a non-is- sue. Israelis keep banging on about securi- ty, but it’s a red herring. It distracts atten- tion from the real issues, which are Israeli territorial expansionism and the settlements, which are illegal. The Israelis demand 100 percent security for themselves, which in this case means zero security for the Pales- tinians. So it’s not Israel that has a secu- rity problem, it’s the Palestinians who do, because no one protects their security. And the Israeli concept of security is profoundly problematic, because for a state to have security it must have definite recognized borders. Israel had such borders until 1967. These were based on the Armistice Agree- ments that were signed in 1949, at the end of the 1948-49 war, by Israel and all its neighbors — Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Egypt. These are the only internationally recognized borders that Israel ever had, not least because they were negotiated under U.N. auspices. And these are the only bor- ders that I personally accept as legitimate because they were negotiated. They were not imposed by one side on the other. After the June 1967 war, Israel refused to return to the previous borders, but it has never said where the new borders should be. It negotiated a border with Egypt in 1979 and withdrew to the international border. Since then it has had a peace treaty with Egypt and that peace has held. In 1994, it signed an agreement with Jordan that settled all their outstanding issues, and it has had a stable peace with Jordan ever since. If Israel wanted peace with Syria, it could have it tomorrow, but there is a price tag, and the price tag is clear cut: complete Israeli withdrawal to the borders of June 4, 1967, complete withdrawal from the Go- lan. If Israel agreed to that, it would have peace with Syria. The most difficult problem with bor- ders involves the West Bank because Israel has been building settlements there since soon after the 1967 war. A few years ago Israel started constructing a wall on the West Bank which, whether it is officially stated or not, marks the final border that Israel envisages. But the trouble with this stance is that it’s unilateral. This is unacceptable to the Palestinians, because where do they get their security? This is the problem about the Israeli concept of se- curity, that it doesn’t make any allowance for the other side and doesn’t recognize any national rights of the Palestinians. It’s a unilateralist position. So, in answer to your question regard- ing what the Israelis think in the long term, I would say that the Israeli right — the Likud and the parties further to the right, the parties that are in the present coalition — don’t have a solution to Israel’s security and they don’t have a solution to how to bring peace because they are unilateralists. The trouble with unilateralism is that Is- rael’s solutions are not acceptable to even moderate Palestinians. To have an answer 98 Middle east Policy, Vol. XVi, No.3, Fall 2009 to Israel’s security, there must be a negoti- ated agreement, and Israel isn’t ready for that, so the dilemma will continue. I want to make one last point. Security isn’t a zero-sum game. Security should be a positive-sum game. It isn’t just a military concept where you have military superiority over the other side. Israel has that, but there are other dimensions to security, including the motivation of the other side. If the party on the other side of the border has no problem about you, as in Europe within the European Union, then the secu- rity problem is solved. But if the other party hates you and wants to upset the status quo and wants to hurt you, then you have a security problem. So the dilemma that Israel has is that it doesn’t have a satisfactory concept of security, and Israel’s leaders don’t have a solution to this problem. They are the proponents of the doctrine of permanent conflict. What they say in effect is that there is no diplomatic solution, no compro- mise solution, and therefore Israel has to continue to live by the sword. MEP: I’m guessing from what you’ve said that there’s little sense of urgency to solve the problem. I’m also wondering: Is the Israeli public more progressive than the leadership, or vice versa, or are they both on the same track? SHLAIM: There is a complete disjunc- tion between the public and the leadership. This is nothing new; it is inherent in the Israeli political system, which is a pure proportional-representation system. It reflects mathematically the votes cast in the country. This system encourages the proliferation of political parties, and it’s meant that never in Israel’s entire history has any one party held a majority. All governments are by necessity coalition governments. The internal composition of a coalition often militates against any territorial compromise because there is no agreement among the coalition par- ties on what to concede or what not to concede, so they just agree to proceed on the basis of the lowest common denominator. What is interesting is that the Israeli public has always been more dovish than the leaders of the Israeli right. Take the Oslo Accord of 1993. Two-thirds of Israe- lis were in favor of the Oslo Accord. Sev- enty percent of the Palestinians supported the accord. And ever since Oslo there has been pretty solid public support in Israel for continuing with the process, for ending the occupation, for very substantial Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and the emergence of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. Every time there was a suicide bombing, the percentage would temporarily drop right down, but basically two-thirds of Israelis are in favor of a substantial withdrawal and a two-state solution. But the leadership is much more hawkish, more intransigent. The problem is that the Israeli political system doesn’t translate the majority view into a coherent foreign policy. The foreign policy of the government today is much more hawkish than the majority of Israelis. My own view is that there has been a Palestinian partner for peace since the Palestinian National Council meeting in Algiers in November 1988, but no corresponding Israeli partner for peace. 99 iNterView: shlaiM MEP: Does the current weakness of the Labor party contribute to the overall prob- lem? And, by implication, what will it take for the Israeli left to have a resurgence? SHLAIM: From the long historical per- spective, the decline of the Labor party is spectacular. The labor movement estab- lished the state of Israel. All the founders were from the labor movement. And for the first 30 years of Israel’s history, Labor was the dominant political party. Then, in 1977, for the first time, the Likud party under Menachem Begin came to power. That was a watershed. Ever since 1977, the Labor party has been in decline. Sometimes it’s entered into a national unity government. For example, during 1984 to 1988, there was a national unity government of Labor and Likud with a rotating premiership. That was a government of immobilism. There were two foreign policies; Labor and Likud neutralized one another, so all they could agree on was the status quo. There was no Israeli diplomacy during those four years. Then, in 1992, the Labor party under Yitzhak Rabin was elected, and there was a new government with a clear mandate to pursue peace with the Arabs. Yitzhak Rabin was not just a Labor party leader, he was a national leader. He was a former soldier, a former chief of staff, and he enjoyed cred- ibility as someone who wouldn’t sacrifice Israel’s security, that Israel’s security would come first. But his aim and his mandate were to bring peace with security. That is what Oslo was all about. Rabin, unfortu- nately, was assassinated. He was assas- sinated not by a Palestinian nationalist, but by a Jewish fanatic whose aim was to kill the peace process. He achieved his aim. He killed the peace process by killing its most credible proponent. And after a very short interregnum when Shimon Peres was prime minister, the Likud under Benjamin Netan- yahu came back to power. The Labor party did get back into power in 1999, because people were so disenchanted with the Likud and Netanyahu, but with a reduced majority. Labor Prime Minister Ehud Barak was very promising when he started — a soldier who wanted to turn to peacemaking — but he was an incompetent politician, and his government fell in the aftermath of the Camp David summit of July 2000. That marked another very important chapter in Israel’s political history. Barak was serious about a final peace settlement with the Pal- estinians. He went to Camp David with a package that touched on all the final-status issues: Jerusalem, the settlements, the 1948 Palestinian refugees and borders. But the Camp David summit failed, and I think the main person responsible for that failure was not Yasser Arafat, but Ehud Barak. What is important is what Barak said afterwards to the Israeli public. He said, “I made a generous offer to Yasser Arafat, and Yasser Arafat turned me down flat and made a strategic choice to return to violence. I made the most generous offer that any Israeli prime minister has ever made. There is no Palestinian partner for peace.” All Israelis — left, right and cen- ter — accepted this claim, this false claim, by Barak. My own view is that there has been a Palestinian partner for peace since the Palestinian National Council meeting in Algiers in November 1988, but no cor- responding Israeli partner for peace. But the Israeli public accepted this claim that there is no one to talk to, and this was the reason for the defeat of Labor in the 2001 election. Given that the Israelis believed there was no Palestinian partner for peace, they needed someone who was good, not at negotiating with the Palestinians, but good at killing Palestinians. So they voted 100 Middle east Policy, Vol. XVi, No.3, Fall 2009 for Ariel Sharon in 2001, furthering the decline of the Labor party. Labor doesn’t have an alternative to offer the Israeli elec- torate, and it’s ended up serving as a junior member of right-wing coalitions. MEP: So essentially Barak shot Labor in the foot? SHLAIM: Yes. MEP: Do you think Barak believed what he said, or was it just a face he wanted to present to the public so that he didn’t look like he was incompetent at Camp David? SHLAIM: Barak is a politician who failed. He went all out to achieve a final settlement with the Palestinians and failed. Therefore, he wanted to shift the onus for failure unto Yasser Arafat. Unfortunately, Bill Clinton helped him in this. One reason for the failure of Camp David was Ameri- can mismanagement. Barak also made a big mistake, and that is that at Camp David he simply presented a take-it-or-leave-it package. But he also demanded that the Palestinians accept and sign on the dot- ted line that they have no further claims on Israel. This is it. They don’t get any more territory, and there is no Palestinian right of return. Paradoxically, it’s Barak’s insistence on finality, a final end to the conflict, that sabotaged the possibility of an interim settlement. If he had said, all right, you can have a Palestinian state with interim borders, and we will continue to negotiate about Jerusalem, about settle- ments and about the right of the refugees, but in the meantime you’ll have a state with provisional borders and we will continue to cooperate — there could have been a settle- ment. But it’s because he insisted on an ideological settlement of the conflict that he defeated the possibility of a political settle- ment. This conflict is so deep, so profound, that there cannot be an ideological end to the conflict. Both sides would still have their narrative, they would still have their aspirations. So all you can hope for is a limited interim settlement. If you reject that, then you end up with nothing, as Barak did. MEP: Were the Palestinians open to an interim settlement? SHLAIM: Yes, they were. The Oslo Ac- cord shows they were open to this pos- sibility. The accord spoke of an interim period of five years of Palestinian self-gov- ernment and after that all the options were open, including an independent Palestinian state. Nothing was ruled out, and nothing was determined. The Palestinians worked on this basis and proved themselves as reli- able partners for peace during the transi- tion period. There was very close security cooperation between the two sides, and terror was reduced almost to zero. What the Palestinians expected under the Oslo Accord was that, in return for recognizing Israel, in return for giving up their claim to 78 percent of historic Pales- tine, they would get the right to establish their independent state on the remaining 22 percent. The reason the conflict continues is not lack of moderation or lack of sincer- ity on the Palestinian side. It is that Israel under the Likud, under Benjamin Netanya- hu, reneged on Israeli commitments made under Oslo. Netanyahu, until recently, rejected even the idea of an independent Palestinian state. MEP: The Israeli public seemed very quick to accept Barak’s version of why Camp David failed. I’m puzzled why that happened so easily. 101 iNterView: shlaiM SHLAIM: There isn’t an easy answer, but one answer is the American role in Camp David. Ehud Barak had proposed the sum- mit, a make-or-break summit. He persuad- ed Bill Clinton to convene the summit, and Clinton invited Yasser Arafat. Arafat said, we’re not ready, the Israeli and Palestin- ian positions are too far apart, we need to do more groundwork before we have a summit, and if we have a summit meeting and it fails, it will make things worse, not better. Clinton said to him, Okay, come to the summit, come to Camp David, and if it fails there’ll be no finger pointing. No one will blame you. So Arafat came in good faith. Barak came with his package, but he refused to negoti- ate with Arafat. So, for 14 days, nothing much happened, and the summit failed. Both Barak and Clinton immediately pointed the finger at Arafat and said it’s because of him that the summit failed, and the Israeli public ac- cepted that as the true explanation. MEP: Will Netanyahu use the reelection of Iran’s Ahmadinejad as further cover to avoid dealing with core issues of the Arab- Israeli conflict? The Israeli daily Haaretz recently reported the results of a survey commissioned by the Institute of National Security Studies at Tel Aviv University. It indicated that one in five Israeli Jews thought that a nuclear-armed Iran would attack Israel, and that three in five Israeli Jews would support a preemptive strike to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weap- ons. Does the Israeli public have a legiti- mate fear of Iran? SHLAIM: There is a genuine Israeli fear of Iran armed with nuclear weapons. It is regarded by the majority of Israelis as an existential threat, an unacceptable threat. Is it a legitimate fear? I think not. First of all, Israel has a monopoly of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, and Israel has threatened Iran’s security, so you could equally say that Iranians have a legitimate fear of the Israeli nuclear arsenal. Iran needs nuclear weapons for deterrence, to deter Israel from attacking them. Secondly, there is the question of whether, if Iran ac- quired nuclear weapons, it would use them against Israel. I think it’s completely out of the question. The Iranian leaders are not crazy. They know that Israel has nuclear weapons; they know that Israel wouldn’t hesitate to use them if attacked and that Israel would have the capacity to retaliate. It would be suicidal for Iranian leaders to attack Israel with nuclear weapons. As I see it, the worst-case scenario of Iran