THE WILLIAM
JOVANOVICH SYMPOSIUM
COLORADO COLLEGE
September 12-14, 2002
| Gideon
Doron is a professor of political science at the University of Tel Aviv
and the president of the Israeli Political Science Association. “September 11 -- One Year Later: Responding to Global Challenges” took place from Thursday, September 12, to Saturday, September 14. Introductory remarks were made by CC President Richard F. Celeste. Doron's speech is followed by a Q&A session. President Celeste read questions from the audience. President Celeste: Students, faculty, staff, special guests, -- particularly Jerry and Anabel McHugh who are back today -- and our neighbors and friends. I want to begin by welcoming you in this audience or in Shove Chapel who have joined us for the first time this morning. We are delighted to have you share in the excitement of this Jovanovich symposium…and exciting it is. Yesterday we spilled out of not one, but two, venues during the kick-off keynote. As we began, I urged the members of the Colorado College community to engage deeply in this three-day event. And engage you have. In conversations with demonstrators on Armstrong Quad, right here in the afternoon and evening as you came by the hundreds to hear and dialogue with our distinguished panelists. Every student who stopped by to talk with me during my office hours at Worner Center yesterday afternoon had attended Dr. Ashrawi's speech, either here or in Shove. And nearly everyone I spoke with -- students, faculty, staff, and alumni -- radiated pride in this extraordinary engagement of mind and heart. This morning we continue and welcome to our learning community today's keynote speaker, Dr. Gideon Doron. Once again we are treated to the insights of someone equally at home in the worlds of academe and politics. Dr. Gideon Doron received his bachelors and masters degrees in political science and public administration from Hebrew University. Then he journeyed to this country where he earned his Ph.D. in political science at the University of Rochester. His bi-national teaching career includes stints at Suny Binghamton, Hebrew University, Haifa University, and NYU. In the mid-1980's, Dr. Doron founded the first graduate program in public policy in Israel. And later its first graduate program in political communications. Dr. Doron is on a sabbatical from Tel Aviv University working at both NYU and Yeshiva University. Since the early 1980's Dr. Doron has served as a political consultant to prominent figures from mayors to ministers, including Israel's finance minister from 1990, the ministers of housing, science, economics, and foreign ministers between 1996 and 1998. Dr. Doron was Yitzhak Rabin's campaign strategist for the 1992 elections. Somehow Dr. Doron has still found the time to author dozens of articles and a dozen books and edit three volumes. Some of his recent titles include "Strategy in Elections," "Awaiting Representation," "Politics of Women in Israel," "Public Policy and Electoral Reform" (a book that is selling very well I think in Florida, today) [laughter] and forthcoming, "The Politics of Bereavement." As you know, Dr. Doron has twice been elected president of the Israeli Association of Political Science. As you may not know, Dr. Doron is now working with American, Israeli and international colleagues who share a concern about the future of the state of Israel and have founded the Center for the Study of Democracy and Citizens Empowerment at Tel Aviv University. Dr. Doron, we are excited to have you join us this morning and look forward to your thoughts about how we move away from terror and conflict in the post-9/11 era and toward a more peaceful world. [clapping] Gideon Doron: Good morning, it's Friday the thirteenth. My name is Gideon Doron, as you heard, and according to the New York Times, I'm considered to be a "great person." Being a "great person" [laughter], when I was asked to come and speak at an academic meeting -- a small academic meeting in Colorado Springs' college -- I immediately agreed. In May, I was in another meeting in Colorado, in Vail Colorado, and it was so beautiful, so unbelievably beautiful country, landscapes -- I said, 'Well, of course, I'll come.' And then, 'Who's going to be there, what's the conference about?' So the only name that I received was the name of Dr. Hanan Ashrawi. I must admit that in no way I'm a political equivalent of Dr. Hanan Ashrawi. I must -- as a matter of fact, I know of no one that could be considered as an equivalent to this very unique person. She's a professor of English literature, a resident of Jerusalem and indeed, as far as I know, the only woman ever to rise on her own rights and her own talents to such a prominent political position in a male-dominated Arab world. And I think [clapping] it's a... Dr. Ashrawi is, no doubt, the best spokesperson I've heard for the Palestinian cause. Compared to other leaders, she's like, how would I put it, a Gulliver among the little Lilliputians. And if she couldn't convince you to support a cause, nobody will. Therefore, like you, I've listened very carefully yesterday to what she was saying. I took notes. And to put it in a polite manner, I was not convinced. So, in effect, I fail to understand what exactly the Palestinian cause is. What does the leadership really want? I have no problem, even though I am an Israeli, to accept many of the terms that she was using. I'm for peace, even though I'm Israeli. I'm for justice. I'm for human rights. I'm for accountability, civil society, global dialogue, two-state solution, pluralism, democracy, collective responsibility, altruism -- is that all? I'll say it again -- tolerance, respect, right to know. I'm all avidly against violence, hate, poverty, terrorism, suicide bombing, the fact that God is said to be or to take sides in conflicts. I'm against illiteracy, military occupation, victimization, revenge, violence (did I say violence?) -- you know again, I'm against violence. And I'm for students, like you, that are involved and want to change the world to make this world a better place to live in. Of course, I'm a product of the sixties and still have all Bob Dylan's records. [laughter] I don't have a record player, because you know technology you can't find... Every young generation has the responsibility to make this world a better place to be in. This is what I teach my children and my students, which are, I guess, the same thing for me. And I'm sure that Dr. Ashrawi does the same with her students. So wholeheartedly I support and I accept what she is saying. So to try to understand why I was not convinced by Dr. Ashrawi -- and perhaps to offer some alternative explanation, let me start again and re-introduce myself. And with your permission I will do my speech with some personal reflection about myself. So in my new introduction I am still a great person [laughter] -- you can take it from me, it was written in the New York Times, the most credible newspaper [laughter]. I'm a third son of two refugees from Poland who barely made it to Palestine just before the beginning of the destruction of the Jews in Europe. The rest of my parents' family were murdered in concentration camps. My parents worked day and night so that their children would have a future. It is exactly what my brothers and I do for our children. We are quite a typical case in Israel...so typical you may consider it banal. As a matter of fact, the majority of Jews in Israel are refugees, or children of refugees, who came from 130 countries. About half of these Jewish refugees came from Arab countries. They left all their property and belongings behind. In Israel those refugees moved into what we call "transition camps" (Maabarot). In the seaport of Tel Aviv there was...I would say that the entire country during the early fifties was one big transition camp. Therefore, you know, we needed clothes, so in the seaport of Tel Aviv there was a huge hanger full of clothes that were collected from all over the world, and it stood there like a gigantic Salvation Army center. And today, I believe it is a discotheque. And my mother went there and got me a t-shirt, I remember, with the Ohio River printed all over -- and because it was American, I became very popular in school. I wore my brother's shoes, and when my feet grew, my father cut their front so that my toes could stick out. And I can go on and on tell you poverty stories, but that's not the point. There is a nice story: for my brother's Bar Mitzvah I got an apple, and it was so rare in Israel so I shined it for over a month. I didn't dare to eat it, to bite it even...and as I said, it is a banal story. Everybody in the country was more or less in the same situation. [inaudible] I've been to propose, we weren't poor. We weren't poor because we believed in our future. We had no choice but to believe in our future. Also, everybody else, almost everybody else around was in a similar situation. We worked hard, and we got out in a way of individual and collective poverty. Consequently, Israel has usually been considered among the family of nations a success story. We lead the world with our sophisticated high-tech technology...and our signs -- technology, earth and socio-services -- are said to be among the most advanced ones. I've counted over 120 Israeli-based companies that are being traded in Wall Street. So with an average income, average annual GNP per capital of over $15,000, we are placed well among some middle-sized West European nations. In comparison, one cannot applaud the performance of our neighbor Egypt, with an annual average GNP per capita of less than $500. Or that of the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Gaza strip, whose size of the population is about half of ours, but the economic size is less than 3 percent. We have no natural resources except our people. So that personal motivation, hard work, social responsibility, and some government and individual initiatives were conducive for our remarkable advancement. Consequently, we serve as a model to be imitated for under developing countries. I, myself, during last year met with delegations from Nigeria and Brazil who were interested in regional development. I also met with a group from China whose members wanted to know how socialist regime like theirs could initiate a process of democratization without losing the political hegemony. Tough! Why is this description relevant? Because today we have so much to offer. Until 1999, when the first Intifada broke out, there were about 200,000 Palestinians working in the Israeli labor market. After '93, when the so-called Oslo Peace Process was initiated, a similar number and perhaps even greater one returned to work in our markets. Today, there are no Palestinian workers in Israel. Over 10 percent of the Israeli labor market, and according to some estimate as much as 15 percent, consists of legal and illegal foreign workers who come to us from Thailand, the Philippines, Romania, Portugal, many African countries, and even from Jordan, with whom we've had peace since 1994. Today, after two years of indiscriminate terrorism, the vision of Shimon Perez, our Foreign Minister, of a new Middle East, which is essentially an integrated economic market like a European one, sounds to most Israelis like one of Isaac Asimov's fantasies. And when all this economic and social advancement was going on in a small ant-like steps in Israel, many of the Palestinian were sitting...sorry...but were sitting over 50 years of transition in refugee camps -- in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, and of course in the West Bank and the Gaza strip. And instead of taking command over their lives, they preferred to depend on outside financial support and blame Israel for their misery. Yesterday, Dr. Ashrawi emphasized and drew sympathy to the misery of her people and their suffering during the ongoing Intifada. She mentioned the killing of innocent citizens, including children. She blamed the Israeli occupation -- one has to have a heart of stone not to empathize with her description. She failed, however, to mention the responsibility of the Palestinian leadership for bringing about this condition upon the people. She failed to emphasize how leaders have done nothing to change this condition -- how corrupted they are, how the billions of dollars that were transferred to them by international organizations over the years were used, to put it mildly, for non-humanistic purposes. And this is a position that is not my position, which is heard by many, many Palestinians. Dr. Ashrawi also failed to mention that the situation among the Palestinians is not much different than the ones experienced by people of Iraq -- we heard it in preponderance yesterday -- or of Syria or Iran or some other places in the Middle East, where people are ruled by cruel and murderous despots, who because they have absolute control over national resources, they frequently benefit from the despair of their people. And thus in order to avoid starvation, people must show complete loyalty to their rulers. Saddam Hussein perfected this mechanism of control. Yasser Arafat -- because he's not so rich -- lags behind. This may sound to you as over-simplification of a complex reality, but the point is as Emmanuel Kant observed in his essay on "Perpetual Peace," that the despots do not bear the personal costs associated with their aggressive behaviors or decisions. Israeli current policy, to restrict the movement of Arafat, is deduced from this Kantian notion. Let him bear some of the cause of the conflict, and let us prevent him from doing the thing that he likes most, which is to fly around to world capitals and enjoy VIP services while his people are suffering. My government apparently believes that keeping him in one place may lead him to change his mind -- to become less aggressive. Indeed, I believe, most Palestinians, like most Israelis, like most Americans, like most people, are not political -- they value the routines of their lives and care for their families. But unlike the Israelis and the Americans, and with all the criticism -- right or wrong -- that we have concerning the quality of our leadership, or if you want, the values that they hold, in the Palestinian case we are talking about something, something completely different. It's a class by itself. As a matter of routine, Arafat lies, deceives, manipulates -- and is actively involved in terrorism since the founding of El Fatah organization 1964. To remind you, we know that an Intifada is the backbone of the PLO and the PA. We tend to forget those acts of terrorism are not new for the Israelis. They began long before we took control over the West Bank and the Gaza strip as a consequence of the 1967 Six Day War. During the sixties and the seventies, Palestinian sites in Lebanon, Syria, and other places become training centers for international terrorism. In those places, Germans, Italians, Japanese, and Irish next to Arab extremists were trained in the art and craft of the murderous profession. This I must remind you was taking place before Jewish settlements were founded in the West Bank by a moderate labor government. The government wished to use them so as to put bargaining pressure on King Hussein of Jordan, who until 1988 was the servant/parent area. The bargaining idea was that the settlement will make the King realize that if he doesn't come to peaceful terms with the Israelis, he may lose control over the western part of his kingdom. So like Anwar Sadat in 1979, the Egyptian president, with regard to the Gaza strip, also Hussein of Jordan in 1988, with regard to the West Bank, decided to rid himself of that area. These settlements, we have learned yesterday, become a source of rationalization for terrorist activities. But you can not rationalize nor justify terrorism. And you cannot use them as a cause for terrorism because Israel agreed again and again, since 1993, to withdraw from all of them once peace is obtained. So how can we explain what is going on? Because most of us have already internalized much of the cost of terrorism...we tend to forget who is responsible for it. We do not necessarily think of terrorism in the context of Palestinian strategy when we innocently go through security in airports all around the world. We forget the terrorist incidents that involved Swiss Air, TWA, Air France, British Airways, Lufthansa, and of course El Al, that occurred during the early 1970's and were initiated, many of them, by the Palestinians. In 1969 when I was a student at Hebrew University, I decided to cut out of a very boring class -- it happens [laughter] -- so I convinced a friend of mine, an English woman who came to study in Israel, to join me in the cafeteria. While sipping our coffee, a bomb exploded next to us, and several students -- like you -- were badly hurt. I still have some scratches from that incident. Immediately, all universities and schools in Israel were surrounded with high fences and security forces. And you cannot walk since then into a university without showing first the contents of your belongings. Most people in Israel have already forgotten this incident that ignited this policy of fences. However, yesterday, I saw here a package, and I got frightened, and then I remembered I was in America. However, the fences and the security around the university did not help another friend of mine from those days, Levina Shapira, who was killed in a similar terrorist explosion in a cafeteria at Hebrew University just a couple of months ago. I guess a number came up on the roulette of death that Arafat designed for us. We tend to forget the cost of terrorism because it is diffused. It behaves like air pollution -- like public goods -- or rather I would say like public 'bads.' While it directly affects some, it indirectly affects everyone. On Tuesday I saw a poll whereby 69 percent of New York residents worry about future terrorist attacks. I was told at Yeshiva University, where I am currently teaching a course, they spent after September 11th millions of dollars on security. You should have seen what's going on there. It's like a protected fortress. Each student, I believe, has to add some small amount to his/her tuition so as to cover those extra costs of security. In Israel we're used to it. In many public places, we're asked to pay this terrorist tax -- in coffee houses it's about $1 -- so we pay this terrorist tax when we travel, when we build our homes with an extra room for shelter against nuclear attack. It's not academic for us. When we design tall buildings, it's not academic for us. When we participate in sports events and so on and so forth -- almost every walk of the Israeli life is protected against terrorism. This approach seems to me -- and I hope not -- may spread also to other places in the West unless we decisively act against its sources. I will say here I completed my Ph.D. at the University of Rochester, where I was trained by the late William Riker, the father of rational choice approach in political science. Even though I am a trained rationalist, it seems the collapse of the Camp David talks between Israel and Palestinians in the summer of 2000, and the second Intifada broke out -- I fail to understand what the Palestinian leadership really wants. Everything they asked for in the Oslo Agreement was promised -- and perhaps I should say guaranteed -- that they would obtain. They rationalized the terrorist activities by the presence of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, but their promises to help Barak reaffirmed our commitment we made in the Oslo Agreement, an agreement I must remind you which was co-signed by the United States, Russia, later also by Egypt and Jordan. And in that agreement we explicitly promised to dismantle most of those settlements. We tend to forget that, in 1996, we had already pulled out from most of those occupied territories. Barak only offered to speed up the process to submit to the Palestinian Authority 98 percent of that area and to compensate him with Israeli territories for the remainder. To even let them have control over Temple Mount, moreover -- even worked to find a reasonable solution for the permanent refugee problem. We only asked in return for a formal commitment and a public declaration to be made by Arafat that because all of the Palestinian demands were met, he calls for termination of the conflict. Arafat refused. So weeks later, during Barak's political campaign, the two delegations, the Israeli and Palestinian, met again in Taba. My colleague Professor Shlomo Ben Ami called the Israeli delegation in Taba, in American basketball terms, the "dream team" of peace lovers. All Israeli proposals were bluntly rejected. It is quite possible that both Barak and Ben Ami, who at the time served as a foreign minister, are lying. It is quite possible that Dennis Ross and President Clinton are lying. It is quite possible Arafat tells the truth, that in fact the Israelis and the Americans did not offer anything and only said so publicly. Indeed there is not written evidence for those offers. In such a case one would expect the rational people to publicly say that what is saying that is offered, they accept. Instead, we got a flat rejection. Later President Clinton proposed a plan -- a very simple plan more or less -- whatever is Jewish remains Jewish and whatever is Arab goes to the Palestinian Authority, including control over Temple Mount. Arafat refused. Moreover Clinton's plan talks about international, not Israeli, presence in the Bikka Valley, continuity of territories, and so on and so forth. Arafat made a big issue out of the question whether the Wailing Wall is really Jewish. And then came Tennet and then came Zini and then came so on and so forth. The Israelis are saying 'yes' and the Palestinians are saying 'no.' They demanded the right of return of millions of Palestinian refugees to Israel knowing very well that nobody in Israel -- left or right -- is crazy enough to accept. Just imagine millions of Palestinians with relatively huge families (about 60 percent of the Palestinian population is under the age of 18) on our welfare rolls and a transfer of the Israel democratic political power to the Palestinians -- this is crazy. They told the world the Intifada broke out because Sharon, then the leader of the opposition, provoked them by entering Temple Mount on September 28, 2000. Even though it's a ridiculous reason in my mind, some people still cite this event as the true cause of the Intifada. Suppose this is true. Let's suppose for the sake of argument that Sharon really intended and actually provoked the Palestinians. Will thousands of Palestinians in Israel have to lose their lives because of this mistake? Did not both sides sign and committed themselves to resolve disputes through established conflict-regulating mechanisms? The Israeli voters perceived Barak's tireless efforts to pursue peace as pathetic. And therefore 60 percent elected, in January 2001, the 1973 war hero Ariel Sharon as the Prime Minister. And Sharon, as expected, built a grand coalition consisting of most parties in our parliament to be sure the coalition was constructed against the Palestinian terrorism. This political structure is quite a typical and almost an instinctive response of democracies in times of great crisis. The tough Churchill was backed up by a grand coalition against the Nazi's. General Eisenhower was elected to stand tough against communist threat of the early fifties (we heard a lecture yesterday). And if you wish, President Bush obtained wall-to-wall support of the Congress for his policy against Al Qaeda. When grand coalitions form in parliamentary democracies, one cannot expect the governments to initiate constructive policies. One should only expect them to react to existing threats, to the survival of the political system. That is what happens in Israel. Sharon enjoys great popularity, and he seems to be relatively successful in reducing the perception of threat to our existence. In general and over the past two years, we encounter very interesting statistics in Israel. About 70 percent of the Jewish population would support going to war if so asked by our government. But the same figure, in fact the same people more or less, support peace with the Palestinians. I read this finding as a desire of the people to reduce -- one way or another -- the absurdity associated with their lives. The only serious political debate that goes on in the country is taking place between those on the right, who hold the position that we should talk peace with the Palestinian only after they stop terrorizing us, and those on the left who say that we should talk while they are terrorizing us. The wall-to-wall coalition holds the first position. Parties on the left, including three Arab parties, hold the second position. Nobody's talking anymore about development of trust between the Israelis and Palestinian, which was the basic ingredient of the Oslo Agreement. Instead we are talking about the size of the walls that we should build so as to separate and protect us from these people. So what is really going on? I've three...I have several explanations, but I choose three. The first is an optimistic one. I'm using Dennis Stein, the internationalist's notion that bargaining is a long process that will end when all claims and demands of the parties involved will be satisfied. The points of negotiation in Oslo, Washington D.C., Cairo, Camp David, Taba, and other places are just points in the process in bargaining. When Arafat refuses and resorts to terrorism and aggressive leverage in the process, he expects to get a better deal. And lo and behold, he is usually successful, but he could not get a better deal than the Clinton plan -- I just mentioned some of the elements. In this context, the demand for the right of return is just -- from the Palestinian point of view, using this perception -- a bargaining strategy. Well, the Israelis do not read it this way. We care about our democracy, we care about our well-being, and we care about our lives. We respond accordingly. From this perspective as a bargaining -- bargaining is a long process -- we heard about the Saudis' peace initiative, we observed Mubarak's interest and involvement in the process, all at the time, even King Hussein, days before he was dying, came down to Washington -- or came up to Washington -- to help put some leverage, you know, influence -- persuaded people to come together. But from this perspective, Dr. Ashrawi, myself, you, all of you, are also part of the process of bargaining that goes on in the Middle East. Because in this process one tactic, as you say, is fighting over public opinion, and if you convince the people on set -- one system of opinions -- then you get one result. If in another context you get different results...so that's what's going on. And you didn't know that you're involved in process. But this is optimistic assessment, because it assumes that the conflict is just over territories and thus sooner or later a solution will be reached. I've another explanation, I can't tell you when it will be reached, but it will be reached. I've another explanation. It's also a simple one and also contains some hope. It follows the logic that is presently being formulated by Professor Bruce Bueno de Mesquita of Stanford. It basically asserts that some revolutionary leaders, like Arafat, are rigid terrorists who cannot or do not want to make a conversion into institutional leaders. And in our case, he doesn't want to become a leader of a small poor country, albeit independent. Presumably, it is more attractive for Arafat to be an international celebrity then a head of a small, insignificant state. His people who depend on him follow suit. His opposition, in the form of the Hamas or the Islamic Jihad, compete with his organization the position of influence amongst the people. The more Israelis they kill, the higher respect they obtain among the Palestinians, the more they are able to recruit volunteers to their cause. In the trade-off Arafat must make between a civil war against fundamentalists -- as he committed himself in the Oslo Accord -- and international war against Israel, he chose the latter. Although he's moving away from obtaining the goal of an independent state, he can still sustain some form of social solidarity as a result of having a common enemy, which helps to preserve his leadership. Let me cite Dennis Ross on this point. "Arafat's whole life has been governed by a struggle and a cause. Everything he has done as a leader of the Palestinians is to always leave his options open -- never to close the door. He was being asked here at Camp David, 'you've got to close the door,' for to end the conflict would mean to end himself. Therefore he needed to re-establish the Palestinians as victims. And unfortunately they are victims...and we see now in a terrible way." The third possible explanation is a bit more complicated. I call it "a clash between different perceptions of the future," not a clash of civilizations as Huntington proposed. We all live under the shadow of the future. We make decisions in the present, with different pictures of the future in our mind. If we are optimistic about the future, we use a different discount rate for this decision as compared to a situation when we are pessimistic. We behave accordingly. Optimists are usually risk-takers. Pessimists are risk-averse. The logic deduced by this mode of behavior is called, in economics, "rational expectations." You will invest in the market when you believe that good times are coming. And you will keep your money out when you think the future is about to be rainy. In the Israel democracy, many optimists became pessimists. They gained experience. Even many of those who, during the 1990's, banked high hopes in the Oslo Agreement lost their faith in the intentions of the other side. With the exception of some small radical groups, we've become present-oriented with regard to the Palestinians, having one main goal of protecting ourselves and our children. It is only a matter of time until the small Zionist entity will disappear. The Shahids, those human missiles that explode themselves among us, are only a product of this vision. They are promised a better life in heaven, their families are granted financial support on earth. But again as I said, it was the understanding of all parties involved in the 1993 agreement that the Palestinian Authority will take care of the ambitions of its radical elements, and we will take care of ours. Instead Arafat made a strategic choice to join them. He does not want to go down in history as one who gave up to the Jews -- he said so numerous times. So it is a pessimistic explanation because it doesn't involve territories as in the first explanation, and it does not involve waiting for Arafat's replacement as in the second explanation, which is the position that is being held now by the Bush administration. It basically tells us that this protracted conflict is not about to end in the foreseeable future. I hope that I'm wrong. In conclusion, I would like to provide you with another piece of information about myself. Between 1995 and 1999, I served in a position equivalent to that of FCC commissioner, and from that perspective, I must say that Arafat is perhaps the most successful terrorist of all time. This was because he was able to keep the saliency of the Palestinian issue high on the international agenda for almost 40 years. Local conflicts such as those taking place in the Sudan, Spain, northern Ireland, India, Chechnya and other places do not draw as much attention and for such a long and persistent span of time. Because of his success, many people believe that the conflict between Israel and Palestine is the main source of instability in the Middle East. It is not. People forget the eight years of war between Iran and Iraq during the 80's, Iran against Kuwait in the 90's, Egypt vs. Saudi Arabia in the conflict over Yemen during the 60's -- and of course, domestic violence in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and so on and so forth. Again and again, in all those incidences and conflicts, Israel was not involved. It's like 'batteries are not included.' Only lately -- it was last year -- Mr. Arafat was upset from his first place in the international media by a new champion of the sky -- Mr. Bin Laden. And Bin Laden, as we see and can read, is facing a serious competition from another celebrity -- Mr. Saddam Hussein. I would therefore like to suggest that to finance the global dialogue organization, Dr. Ashrawi should talk to her leader, Arafat. She should ask him to give her the money that he falsely obtained as a Nobel Prize for Peace winner. He's no winner. He will never win. Thank you. [clapping] Question and Answer SessionPlease note that President Celeste asked questions written by students, faculty, and community members.President Celeste: Both Jews and Muslims have commented that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not about religion. How can one justify that separate faiths don't even enter the picture when so much religious rhetoric is spoken on both sides? Professor Doron: I think that part of it is definitely… I want to say, God forbid, you know, this conflict is just, you know, one religion against the other. I'm using God to explain it better. I think there is a strong religious element, that we cannot avoid it, which makes this conflict a more extreme one. A conflict that's like a conundrum that's impossible to solve, because what are we facing? We are facing religion, a religious doctrine, as absolute truth. And you cannot convince religious people to change the truth, to bargain, to compromise. So as I say, God-forbid that we are talking about two religions; but we can't ignore the religious element on the Jewish side and on the Islamic side. OK I'm taking the Christian out of the picture, out of respect, but there are Christian elements too. President Celeste: Dr. Ashrawi yesterday outlined three points as being the nature or elements of the solution to the conflict, at least from her perspective. These were the implementation of UN resolutions, the re-establishment of 1968 borders and the refugee question -- actually 1967 borders -- and the refugee question. Could you comment on those three elements? Professor Doron: I don't have to comment. It was signed. It was agreed again and again -- those points. There is nothing to talk about. We can't reopen everything. I mean, we will reopen if there is progress. But all those issues were taken care of -- thousands and thousands of hours of negotiations over those issues. People signed, everybody signed. The only thing that we want is for Arafat to come and say, "We accept. Let's finish with it. Let's start with our normal life." That's all what it is. But if Hanan Ashrawi is willing to do it, I will vote for her, but I promise you that...[clapping]...no...I will vote for her, no charge, [clapping] to become prime minister or president of Palestinian people. President Celeste: Don't...don't... Professor Doron: I promise here... President Celeste: Don't...You're going to make your political career more difficult, if you make that offer, so we don't... [inaudible joking and bantering] President Celeste: A concern among us and others, and many others in the peace movement, has been that Israel would compromise the moral principles upon which it was founded. Is that now happening? The second question is how do Israelis rationalize disregarding Palestinian human rights and U.N. resolutions for Israel to stop the occupation? Dr. Doron: I'll answer the second one -- It's again and again, since 1996 we pulled out. The settlements were there, and it was understood and signed that we'll retreat. There was the planning and a bunch of plans and talks. That was the understanding, so the question of occupation is really, it's not on the agenda. It's being popped up again, okay, as if nothing happened since 1993. So in this respect the moral issue is a very sensitive issue because as we see, we question ourselves, even in America now after 9/11 -- we question ourselves, we are in dilemmas. All of us want to be moral people, but we engage in war against people that are not similar, that are not maintaining the same rules of the game that we are. And we have problems. And I'll pose a dilemma -- the life of Saddam Hussein vs. the lives of millions of Iraqis. It's a big dilemma. We don't want to kill leaders, of course. That's not the game in international relations. Okay, but think about it. Is it moral to let this guy live while oppressing, suppressing -- putting starvation to millions of people -- killing them, shooting them? Or maybe it's moral to get rid of him one way or another. So those are [inaudible] it is right in a sense. You are so lucky here. Okay, that we don't have to, that we can talk about those dilemmas as if they're theoretical. For us they're not. And we really, you know, I have all empathy with the miseries of the Palestinian people and yet, I just told Professor Suny yesterday that I'm afraid of, you know, of becoming -- the more killing that is going on, we'll empathize less with the other side. Because it is our children or their children -- that's quite normal. President Celeste: The next time Israel has elections, would a new government be likely to follow Sharon's policy toward the Palestinians? Professor Doron: Yes. As I said, if you follow, we're talking about times of war, perceptions of great crises. I believe that this is really an almost instinctive response of democracy. We will form a wall-to-wall coalition. And this coalition can only react, and it makes no difference who will be the leader of this coalition. We chose Sharon because he's the toughest guy in the street. But it makes no difference. As long as this conflict is going on, that is our democratic response to the threat, okay, and therefore in many ways, it's up to the environment, the threat that we're experiencing. The larger the threat, you know, the moral option, or the more possibilities for a normal coalition, a coalition that will initiate some moves. The higher the threat, the possibility is greater for a right-wing coalition. Tomorrow's might be even worse than the position that Sharon is taking. President Celeste: What do you think about Dr. Ashrawi's comment yesterday that peace is not something that is imposed by the strong on the weak? Professor Doron: Well...empirically it's not so correct. You posed two cases, two important cases, this is American. I'm not blaming you for this imposed peace -- forced peace and democracy on dictatorships -- one case was Japan the other case was Germany. So, yes, you can. At times it's better to have peace by negotiation between democracies and so on. But what basically I'm saying is, we're not going to do the job for them. We did it, you know, to protect ourselves, and I don't see -- when we are being terrorized, you know, what would you do? The position of the left is to put up a wall and let them do whatever they want to do. It's like the Chinese wall, as if it protects anybody, but that's the position -- separation. President Celeste: There are a couple of questions that take us beyond the direct situation between the Palestinians and Israelis. There has been quite a bit of discussion, as you know, about Iraq during this symposium. Do you feel unilateralism is an international criminal act (I think is what he asks), but how do you feel that this applies to possible U.S. unilateralism in Iraq? And another question from someone in the community says that if the United States attacks Iraq, will Iraq try to retaliate, in effect, against Israel rather than the United States? Professor Doron: Well, they did already. It is not a theoretical question. It is a working assumption. The minute the United States will attack Iraq, Iraq will attack us. Therefore, when I say that we are paying a so-called terrorist tax and building a nuclear shelter at home, that's what I mean, there is no doubt we were ready during 1991 when 50 missiles were shot at Israel -- 50 missiles! So that's not a theoretical question. That there's danger, yes. That's definitely the working assumption. Okay, when he goes he will try to take us with him. But it's not only Iraq, it's Syria and Iran and Libya and, okay, so on and so forth. It's not only Iraq. President Celeste: Something you did not address in your talk is that Palestinians are living under a military occupation that is more and more oppressive. Is terrorism, therefore, in a sense, a response to that condition. How do you address that? Professor Doron: Yes, they are living now under this presently military occupation, of course. But we were out, and we came in June because that's when we find out that the only way to prevent terrorism is to go in and control it ourselves. We asked for Arafat to do it. You promised. You committed yourself. Do it. Fight. Control. Say, well, I can promise you -- I forgot the citation -- I can promise you 100 percent for efforts but not 100 percent success. And the failure is our lives. So it went, over and over -- we saw it over again all over the news. And the decision was to go in and take control and do his job, and that's what we're doing. Basically what we are saying, you know, if it would be quiet, we'll pull out. And it's quiet, so we're trying to pull out -- every time we're pulling out, another terrorist attack, so that's basically what's going on. President Celeste: Do you see any parallel between the right of Jews to return to their homeland and the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homeland? Professor Doron: Which is where? Which is where? I would like to go back to Poland. My parents came from Poland. You see, all those issues -- we're reopening issues that we've discussed over and over again. And if we're looking for a solution, we will never get to a solution. Now to the point, with all respect, it depends on what point in history are we talking about, in cutting and starting to evaluate the situation. I mean we were at the end of the process, and now we are starting from the beginning. Okay, it's like you see, you give the rights to the Mexicans to return back to Mexico, to -- sorry, to California -- or things like this. We built, we fought, we accepted in 1947, in 1949, we accepted all of the outcomes. The Arabs refused. We accepted. In the war of '49, we won. I'm sorry. I'm apologizing, okay, we won. While we won we expanded our country by 30 percent -- according to partition claim. You want to go on and on and on... Of course, the Clinton proposal, the Clinton solution was that they have the right to return to Palestine, to independent Palestine, okay, not the right to return to Israel. Dr. Ashrawi was saying yesterday that she's for pluralistic Palestine. I was shocked. I thought that she's talking about the Authority, Palestine, you know, the 22 percent that she was talking about -- then I thought that she's talking about Israel (to myself, Israel is a pluralistic country). There are a million Arabs, Palestinian/Israeli in Israel. There are about, what, 60 or 70 thousand Christians, maybe more -- no, there are more because the Russians are coming -- most of them are non-Jews. So what are we talking about? The right to return to Palestine, yes? Define what Palestine we talking about. Not to Israel. President Celeste: I'm going to put three questions together, because I think they're related, from three of our students. How do you think Israel should go about changing Palestinian perspectives to get at the root of the terrorist attack? That's the first question. The second question is, given the extent of volatility of the conflict, does Arafat have the power at this point to end it? And the third question: It seems that Israel holds all of the cards -- a strong economy, military strength, high foreign aid and a good government, high water allocations etc. Is there anything that Israel can do to ease the Palestinian situation in spite of poor leadership on their side? Professor Doron: Three questions...I don't...If you could moderate, like Dr. Ashrawi, the leadership, we would be safe. Okay, you replace this corrupted leadership that exists now. We will not be safe, so they'd have to bring up their own people. We are not going to interfere. We can't interfere in their lives because, independence, you know. I met over the years so many talented, educated Palestinian people that I don't think we have a problem with that -- and this leadership, you know, openly liberal, should guide those people. But, unfortunately, many of them don't have the power to do it. And we cannot do it for them -- so this is one thing. The other two questions, related to the power, the asymmetry of the relationship -- we are so powerful and they are not. Thanks God. Okay, I would not like to be on the other side of the table. And from this position of power, as I said, you know, Shimon Perez came with fantastic ideas, economic ideas. I myself worked to put together some hospitals in between. But, you know, once you encounter terrorists -- basically, at least initially, it came as an extremist group until it moves and spread onto other groups, you lose all your initiative, you lose all your willingness. Is Arafat able today to do something? I don't know. I don't know. We don't know. Basically everybody is waiting for him, including many Palestinians, to leave the political scene, to go away, to retire, one way or another. So this question was relevant two years ago, but not now. President Celeste: Does America have a responsibility or perhaps a role to play in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? What should that be? Professor Doron: If we define -- I have to restore again my theory type of analysis -- the present dilemma, which basically develops on lack of trust, then you bring in a third party to bridge -- that's what America was doing, since '93. Arafat's position initially was to bring in foreign powers. Okay, in the Clinton proposal there is some suggestion about international powers. It's good, it's okay -- that's not the position of my government. However, I'm not sure that Americans quickly -- they've not committed themselves to solve, to get involved in the situation. They are not ready. And one of the reasons, as I said before, a pessimist is an optimist with experience. That experience, you remember, the war in Lebanon -- 275 American soldiers were killed while they tried to separate during the Reagan administration, right? Let's separate and aid the forces. I'm not sure that we can ask you to do the job for us. That was our position since the beginning of the state. We are responsible; we'll take care of it. Okay, we will ask the Americans -- the good services of the Americans or anybody -- to come after we negotiate. We agreed and maybe to bridge, okay, some differences, which are usually about five or ten meters. But not to get involved in the process. President Celeste: You've been on your feet now almost an hour and a half, and we've had the half hour of questions, but I want to give you a final question that was really a question I put yesterday to Dr. Ashrawi as well, it came from one of our students. And that is, as someone who spends a great deal of time interacting with students yourself, both in this country and in Israel, what are the particular skills or strengths you would encourage our students to develop in order to contribute to the work of building peaceful solutions, whether that's in the Middle East or in other parts of the world? Professor Doron: It's a wonderful question. I would say that obtain or get tools of analysis. I'm not talking about values, because who am I to tell you what values you should hold? But to get tools, tools of analysis so you know when you're being manipulated and when you are not being manipulated. So you know what is visible and not visible, what is political and what is academic. And with those tools you will be less naïve when you encounter a very complex situation. I try to simplify now a very complex situation. I'm not sure that I've convinced -- with enough time to convince you -- but you have to understand what type of data we're talking about. How perception, different perceptions or understanding or different reading of data, changes the situation, changes the outcomes. And I think this is, you know, being more educated, less naïve, and I think this is the power you should bring to the world because you don't know how fortunate you are in America as students. Just go travel. The rest of the world looks nothing like the United States. The rest of the world, nowhere, has the freedom that you enjoy. Here in America, you know, everywhere, this is. You know why people don't like America? Because you have it all. Okay, and that's basically what it is, you are. I heard some of the questions yesterday and the responses, and it's fantastic. And you know, as I said, the hope is in you. You work out your freedom of thought, get the tools and change the world. [clapping] © 2002 by Colorado College |
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