Is unilateral withdrawal the answer for Israel?

Cohen, Stephen P. ; Telhami, Shibley ; Peri, Yoram 等

The following is an edited transcript of the twenty-eighth in a series of Capitol Hill conferences convened by the Middle East Policy Council. The meeting was held on March 22, 2002, in the Rayburn House Office Building with Chas. W. Freeman, Jr., moderating.

CHAS. W. FREEMAN, JR., president, Middle East Policy Council

We are here today to talk about a possible way out from a situation that has agonized people in the region and disturbed many throughout the world, including most Americans. The past 18 months of the al-Aqsa Intifada have seen something like 1100 Palestinians die at the hands of the Israeli occupation forces or settlers; perhaps 350 Israelis have died from terrorist bombings and other attacks. Some 30,000 or so Palestinians have been grievously wounded to the point where they require long-term care; perhaps as many as 10,000 Israelis have similarly been wounded. The campaign of terror against Israel and Israelis has been more than matched by the reign of terror in the occupied territories. Israel's decision not to grant sanctuary in the occupied territories has meant that there is no sanctuary anymore in Israel, and it may be only a matter of time before the terror that has gripped Israel and Palestine spreads abroad, as it has in the past.

It seems, looking at the last 18 months, that escalation accomplishes little but counterescalation; that revenge accomplishes little but the incitement of revenge against it. The two sides seem to be out of ideas and locked in a dance of death that may prove morally fatal to both of them. The innocence of the victims of both sides of this struggle is a constant reminder of the horror of war, but it also causes each side to forfeit, not gain, the sympathy it might otherwise have. The attitudes on both sides--far from wavering or softening in response to suffering, have hardened.

The horror of people in the Arab world at this is real. It led recently to the Saudi Arabian crown prince, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, putting forward a simple proposition described by his foreign minister as complete peace for complete withdrawal. This proposal has not been correctly understood by many in the United States. It is not a move to appease opinion here. It is a rebuke to an inadequate American peacemaking response to the escalation of violence in the Holy Land.

On the Israeli side and among the Jews of the diaspora in places as remote as South Africa and as close as Washington, DC, the events in the Holy Land have led to a crisis of conscience and a concern about the possible moral suicide of the Jewish state. In this context, the idea of a unilateral Israeli withdrawal from the 22 percent of the former Palestine mandate that Israel took in 1967 has gained currency. I commend to your attention an interview in Le Monde in December with Ami Ayalon, the former head of Shin Bet, better known for torturing Palestinians than sympathizing with them. Mr. Ayalon in that interview lamented the inability of his countrymen to come to grips with the realities of the struggle in which they were engaged. He advocated a unilateral withdrawal followed by immediate Israeli recognition of whatever Palestinian state was proclaimed and a negotiation to establish borders with it. Mr. Ayalon, if I understood him correctly, felt that this was the only viable option now before Israel.

We're here today to discuss whether this is, in fact, in any sense a real option. Perhaps it is not. What are the advantages--for Israel, for the Palestinians, for the United States, for others in the region--of unilateral withdrawal, and what are the risks that this might entail. How can the advantages be maximized; how can the risks be minimized? Could this work? Could it gain Israeli support? Could it gain Arab support? Would it engender an effective Palestinian and Arab response? If this is an option that is real and viable, what should the United States do? How could we help? What responsibilities would we have? What could Arabs, including Palestinians, do to encourage Israel to seriously consider such an option? What responsibilities must they assume to make it work?

Crown Prince Abdullah's initiative foreshadows an Arab response to withdrawal from the occupied territories. He offers not only to normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, but to lead the Arab world in general in achieving full normalization of relations with Israel. But what assurance is there that this offer would actually be implemented, and what response to unilateral withdrawal might Israel expect from Palestinians? How would the Palestinian leader and the Arab world deal with the extremists among Palestinians, who have made it clear that they will not reconcile themselves to the existence of a state of Israel in the 78 percent of the territory that Israel took upon its establishment?

STEPHEN P. COHEN, national scholar, Israel Policy Forum; president, Institute for Middle East Peace and Development

There's no question that we're all looking not only for an end to violence, but an end to occupation and the setting up of a real, peaceful relationship between two states, neither of which dominates the other. The question is, how do we get to that, and how do we get to it as soon as possible? The idea of unilateralism--and there are many forms of it in Israel today--comes out of two instincts within the Israeli population. One is that the occupation and all it means has to come to an end; the other is the belief that it is simply impossible to convince Israelis that there is a partner among the Palestinians for a negotiated agreement. Unilateralism is as much an act of despair as it is an act of hope, and as much as I would like to be a supporter of an idea that comes from many intelligent and morally sensitive people in Israel, I think it's deeply the wrong idea.

What we need is a negotiated solution that is led by an "imposing" process. Unilateralism is an escape from the reality that these two nations--the Israeli and the Palestinian--are intertwined and that their self-determination and existence will continue to be intertwined. Unilateralism tries to avoid the fundamental problem of reconciliation by thinking that we can have an Israeli-Palestinian agreement, an Israeli-Arab agreement, even a Jewish-Muslim agreement without reconciliation of this protracted societal conflict.

The Zionist movement and the Palestinian national movement were born in this conflict, and the identities of these peoples are deeply entwined with it. Therefore, the notion that it can be resolved by the unilateral action of one without the active participation of the other only perpetuates the deepest myth that both these peoples hold about each other. It does not break this myth, and it is this myth that must be broken.

Both of them have come to believe that the highest level of national heroism that they can reach is military heroism in acting against the other. It is this ideal image, too, that has to be replaced by the images created by Sadat, by Rabin, by the idea that it is the transformation of the military self-image into that of negotiated peacemaker that is essential in order to bring about an end of conflict.

There is no question that Israel requires--deeply requires--a boundary, a physical boundary, a boundary of identity. There is also no question that the Palestinians require a normal national state, both to express themselves and to rid themselves of their victim mentality and the sense that the responsibility for their future lies in somebody else's mistakes. Only by creating this boundary in a situation in which the two parties agree will we also create a boundary between these anachronistic national identities and the national identity that must emerge out of an agreement between them.

We have a more difficult problem than is sometimes thought about when people try to end violence and draw a boundary. The boundary has long since been drawn. This was acknowledged again by Abdullah and has been the basis of every serious Israeli-Arab negotiation, starting with that between Israel and Egypt. It is not the boundary that is a mystery; rather it is whether or not these peoples can come to recognize the legitimacy of the other's national narrative as a reasonable and legitimate reading of their own history--difficult as that narrative is for the other to swallow. We have here a typical example of the kinds of conflicts that we face in the twenty-first century. It is a conflict in which change within each society is as necessary as change between them, and the two are deeply intertwined.

This conflict is the harshest point of contact between the world that was changed in Europe by World War I and World War II and the world of the Middle East, which was not ended by World War I. This is the tragic relationship between the West and the Middle East. As a result of World War I, two exhausted empires, Britain and France, took over the region, conquering it almost as an afterthought and then, being unable and unwilling to provide the resources to develop those areas, left a vacuum in which America has become an empire despite itself. Americans don't want to be an empire, and the region no longer wants to be ruled by an empire. But America has inherited the mantle of influence, the burden of empire, and the hatred directed toward an emperor.

In this crucible of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we have a problem that is far beyond the local conflict between these two problematic national identities. It is a conflict that has a deep impact on the life of many of the countries around them and on the relationship between the United States and the region, and therefore, the United States and the world.

Imagining that this is going to be resolved by some heroic action of the reconstructed Israeli left bringing about a unilateral withdrawal of Israel from the territories is one more fantasy that we have existed on for too long. The United States is going to have to face up to the fact that we need an imposing process to bring about a negotiated solution, and we'd better get to that as soon as possible.

Saudi Arabia has now indicated, through the crown prince, that it is willing to join with the efforts of Egypt and Jordan, who preceded it, in trying to bring about a resolution of this problem. We now have the chance to use our three primary relationships in the region--with Israel, Egypt and Saudi Arabia--to bring about an end to World War I. We know the boundaries; it's time to create them.

AMB. FREEMAN: I think you are arguing that, as the poet said, good fences make good neighbors, that a negotiation to build a fence is necessary to build the right fence, that peace requires reconciliation, and that reconciliation requires contact, discussion and the development of empathy. It's clear that you, like many, strongly prefer a future for Israel which more resembles Athens than Sparta. The bad news, if you are right, is that the United States cannot escape the moral and political responsibility to lead the parties in the right direction.

SHIBLEY TELHAMI, Anwar Sadat professor for peace and development, University of Maryland; senior fellow, Brookings Institution

I would like to begin by endorsing the bottom-line conclusion that Steve Cohen started with; that is, unilateralism is escapism. It isn't going to work. It is pretending that there are easy answers. Worse, I think it is likely to exacerbate the problem. It is much better to make the difficult decisions that have to be made instead of going into a process that will perhaps ultimately be destructive for both.

First, a bit of historical perspective. This is not a new idea. Unilateralism has been there every time there was a frustrating environment in which Israelis and Palestinians, Israelis and Arabs, were involved. People didn't think an agreement possible and considered unilateral withdrawal as a possibility for getting out of it. Going back to 1993, in fact, when there was some escalation in Gaza and occupation was getting uncomfortable--it didn't look like there was a possibility that the Madrid negotiations were going to lead to anything--the Gazit Plan was put forth for unilateral Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

In March 1993, I was a member of a second-track diplomacy group sponsored by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The Israelis and Palestinians authorized a couple of tracks to pursue behind the scenes a possible agreement. There were three of us Americans on that track, with three Israelis and three Palestinians. One of the Israelis was Shlomo Gazit, and the Palestinian group included an emissary of Yasser Arafat--this was before Oslo. Gazit opened the session by bringing forth a very detailed Israeli unilateral withdrawal plan. He wanted to view it with the Palestinians, saying, this is what we might do, therefore, how do we minimize the mess if we do it, so there would be some coordination so as to prevent it from exploding? The Palestinians had no interest in it. The whole thing was preempted by Arafat's emissary, who suggested that the Palestinians preferred even a limited negotiated settlement on Gaza-plus than unilateral Israeli withdrawal, and he put forth a number of arguments as to why. It was clear that that was the Israeli preference from the outset; Rabin resisted the idea of unilateral withdrawal.

The idea of unilateral withdrawal was always there in the Lebanon arena prior to its actually being completed on Barak's watch. It had been discussed in Israel for many, many years. In fact, there was a debate about unilateral withdrawal prior to Barak's taking office. I wrote a piece in the Los Angeles Times on March 7, 1999, arguing that it was a bad idea to have unilateral withdrawal. Instead, it was much better to actually reach an agreement with Syria. I concluded, though, that the primary reason for Israeli reluctance was the consequences for Israel's strategy of deterring violence against its people and military, especially in the absence of full peace with the Palestinians. Israel fears that a unilateral pull-out from Lebanon would revive the intifada and increase militancy among Palestinians.

Only by pushing forward to implement a negotiated agreement can Israel reduce its diplomatic dilemmas and open the door for a comprehensive peace with all its neighbors. I understood very clearly the consequences. When you pull out, it's not going to end the problem if you don't have peace agreements. It may be interpreted that you are pulling out under duress, and that undermines your deterrent capability, which has been the Israeli military argument all along.

The argument put forth on behalf of a military solution on the Palestinian side is that south Lebanon shows that in fact Hizballah succeeded in driving the Israelis out, and that there are people who would learn the same lesson if Israel were to withdraw from other lands. This is a conclusion that is inevitable.

Let me work out that scenario a little bit. Presumably, if Israel withdrew from parts of the Palestinian territories, it would be only limited parts. It's not going to have a negotiated settlement, so it's going to leave in a way that would suit its interests most. Therefore it's not going to be sufficient for the Palestinians. It would not be sufficient for a viable Palestinian state or to satisfy Palestinian demands.

What would be the result? The Israeli public's view would be, well, we gave them a state, and, look, they're not satisfied. On the Palestinian side, it is going to be, first they are pulling out because of military pressure, and therefore, it works; second, they're not giving us enough, so we're going to put more pressure on them. Meanwhile, if you have a unit that is relatively independent--although it is hard to imagine that Israel is going to allow international access to those territories, because of the weapons issue--there would be more capacity for the Palestinians to carry on with the military struggle. So a dynamic is set-up that is more sell-destructive for both sides. It's not going to work for the Palestinians because it's going to result in the Israelis increasing the calls for "transfer" which now gets almost 40-percent approval in Israel. The idea of expelling the Palestinians out of the territories was absolutely marginal only a few years ago.

Any unilateral withdrawal, even a limited one, would probably entail having to dismantle settlements, because otherwise it is impossible to contemplate even a semi-independent entity. So there would be a political price anyway. Any Israeli government is going to have to pay a political price to give the impression that it is making major concessions, but not to give Palestinians enough to be satisfied. So the chance of further military confrontations would be maximized.

It makes a lot more sense to sit down with the Palestinians and make the concessions that are necessary to draw final boundaries. You may have a staged agreement where you leave one or two issues out to negotiate over a longer period of time. But it makes a lot more sense to do that than to engage in the self-defeating escapism, as Steve Cohen put it, of unilateral withdrawal.

AMB. FREEMAN: Perhaps the point is being made that if the occupation and the settlements are themselves forms of violence, simply ending some of the occupation and some of the settlements is not going to lead to an end of violence in the other direction, and you can't escape the requirement for negotiating the terms of mutual coexistence within that land.

YORAM PERI, professor of political sociology and communication, Hebrew University in Jerusalem; senior fellow, U.S. Institute of Peace

I think that the idea is very bad, but I'll try to put out some other positions to examine the other thoughts about separation. I agree that separation started only when the probability for negotiations failed, which makes it a very sad situation. Separation began to take root in Israel in the last year as a result of two developments. The first is the increasing number of suicidal attacks. The second has to do with the perceptions that you presented, Steve--the failure in Israel of the idea of a new Middle East.

Most Israelis did not see the collapse of negotiations as temporary. They have changed their basic perception that Jews and Arabs, and Jews and Palestinians in particular, can live together. Even within the peace camp there are many people like Professor Shlomo Avineri, one of the leading theoreticians and intellectuals in Israel. He says we are not going to make peace with the Palestinians, so let's find a solution for living with them without peace. People do not believe that we can share a future together. If we cannot, at least let's live next to each other without war. Out of that despair comes the idea of separation.

On the other hand, there is the trauma of Lebanon. This was the worst for the military, which is against withdrawal. They think we have lost our position; if we withdraw once again, it will be even worse than that.

Separation is very complicated. In Israel, you have to distinguish between unilateral withdrawal and separation. More people talk about separation than unilateral withdrawal. Whether you use the word separation or unilateral withdrawal, the concepts have many connotations. You cannot really talk about one issue that everybody would agree on. Today a more topical issue is the buffer zone, which the cabinet has already agreed upon. There are about five different plans on that, which are almost in complete contradiction with one another. The buffer-zone idea falls into the realm of unilateral action taken by Israel.

Prime Minister Barak before the 2001 elections asked the deputy defense minister, Ephraim Sneh, to prepare a plan for withdrawal. He said in his plan that it should be a security separation, not a political separation. It should be taken step by step and should be done within three years. He didn't, however, say anything about the other topic: From what part of the territory? Where would the line be?

I brought with me a map which was put on the web by a group of Israelis who are supporting the idea of separation. It shows withdrawal to a line which is more or less along the green line with some major amendments. I didn't calculate it, but I guess it takes about 10-15 percent of the West Bank and shifts it into Israel. What are the other lines? We don't know yet, but more important than that is the question of the settlements that would be left in the West Bank after that separation or unilateral withdrawal. How many of them will remain? It's very unclear. Even the group that supports the separation and has this site (geocities.com\hafarada) doesn't say what the solution would be for the settlements that would remain on the West Bank.

Let me say a few words about the advantages and disadvantages of separation, as they are seen by Israelis, if we can generalize. The major advantage is, of course, limiting the number of attacks inside Israel. The strongest argument used by supporters of the idea is that in the last year there was not a single terrorist assassin coming from the Gaza Strip because there is a strict line there and a huge fence. Have a fence and there would be no more assassinations. The line is today about 480 kilometers, about 350 miles. Very quickly along this line 30 checkpoints could be built. You don't need more than 5,000-5,500 soldiers to guard such a border. You don't have to keep tens of thousands of soldiers in other activities, as it is today.

Another point that the advocates mention is that this line will prevent the slow movement of Palestinians from the West Bank into Israel. Inside Israel today are somewhere between 50,000 and 100,000 Palestinians--illegal, semi-legal, half-legal, legal, married to Israeli Palestinians. If you have this thick line, this process would stop.

For the Palestinians, according to that perception, it will stop the occupation. The Israeli military would be on the other side of the fence, and they would not feel the strength of the Israeli presence on them.

The last point I do support: It will change the psychological atmosphere in Israel of people who do not belong to the peace camp and will gradually move them to understanding that you have to leave the West Bank. There is something to that point.

The disadvantages are, as Shibley Telhami mentioned, that withdrawal will have a negative impact on Israel deterrence. It's unilateral and therefore not considered legitimate, either by the other side or by the world. Third, the Palestinians think that that's going to be the final line, which means that Israel will annex another 15, 20 or 25 percent. In addition to that, it won't stop the shelling of Israel. It's very easy to use the Qassim rockets to shell Israel.

What about Jerusalem? Can you separate Jerusalem? If you cannot withdraw from East Jerusalem and the surrounding area, it means that you have to incorporate a huge number of Palestinians into Israel, about 200,000 or more. If you do that, you do not separate Jews from Palestinians, so the whole idea falls apart.

We should continue to struggle for negotiations, and I am willing to accept even a partial agreement, which is less good than a final agreement, but better than separation or unilateral withdrawal.

DAVID E. LONG, retired U.S. Foreign Service officer--Sudan, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and Jordan

What, if anything, can the United States do about the mess that is occurring in the Israel-Palestine conflict? I'd like to start off by introducing a kind of framework within which U.S. policy has to operate. Most of the arguments that I've ever heard on U.S. policy have to do with the substance of the issues at stake. I would submit that the substance of issues at stake on the very best day make up 10 percent of the decisions made thereon, and that the other 90 percent of the basis of decisions on foreign-policy problems comes from a myriad of other considerations.

There is no such thing, really, as U.S. Near East policy. There are multiple U.S. Near East policies, most of them incompatible. The trick, therefore, in terms of operational policy, is to balance off competing and incompatible interests that are, to some constituency, quite legitimate. Whatever you come up with is U.S. Near East policy. The most difficult element, broadly expressed, is the Arab-Israeli problem. To try to further legitimate U.S. interests with Israel and to further legitimate U.S. interests with the Arabs is best done when tensions between the two sides are depolarized. When they are polarized, it becomes harder and harder, sometimes impossible. We are in a period right now when polarization--symbolically in the Palestinian intifada and the Israeli reaction--makes it very difficult for the United States to try to pursue its interests in the Near East in general. There is no possible way that the United States can unilaterally solve this problem, period. In fact, there is no way that the United States can unilaterally impose its will anywhere without at least a modicum of cooperation among those that it has to work with.

The elements that the United States has to look at policywise, therefore, can be divided into foreign-policy issues and domestic issues. The Arab-Israeli problem is basically a domestically driven issue for U.S. policy makers. The domestic issues are two: energy and elections. This is oversimplified, but energy is a key domestic issue. If we had another energy crisis, the elections would probably go to the Democrats in November. There's precedent for this. So if you are an administration looking for solutions, you're not going to want to do something that might make you lose elections in November.

The Arabs, the Saudis in particular, have one-fourth of the world's oil and the cheapest production costs in the world. Somehow, U.S. policy has to take that into account, not simply because of the interests of the Arabs, but because of the interests of all of us gas-guzzling consumers in the United States, who have the world's highest per capita consumption of oil.

Israel is also a domestic concern, politically, in how we formulate policy. Strong domestic ties to Israel are the driver of our policy toward Israel, by and large, not any overriding strategic interests in the region. How can we balance off these strategic and other interests in the region with a very strong domestic interest in making sure that this country that is our friend and ally is not threatened by disaster and the sort of strife that we see today?

In looking at that problem, I think that ideas like unilateral withdrawal are premature and perhaps irrelevant because they're having a war over there. The first step is, how do you stop it and what can the United States do, within the parameters and constraints of its own political system and its own political interests, to actually stop the parties from continuing this war? Our options are pretty limited. There are a lot of constraints on what is possible. Before you get into the long-range strategy of the peace process, you have to ask yourself, what can be done now to at least get to a point where people are not blowing each other up?

In that regard, I would first look at the leadership. On one side you have the administration of General Sharon. On the other you have a very weak, vacillating leader, Yasser Arafat. Anytime something happens--virtually every day--the Israeli reaction to Arafat is that he is a terrorist, that he is encouraging terrorism, that we can't deal with him, and we're not going to let him do this or that. On the one hand, Israel has sought to marginalize Arafat, and on the other, to hold him personally accountable for all Palestinian acts of terrorism. It is a policy of demonization of the enemy which has led to more terrorism, not less. I don't mean this in moral terms; I simply mean that if the United States is going to get the two sides to try to come to an agreement that will stick, we're going to have to have both sides able to deliver. Ararat, in today's conditions, cannot deliver anything.

Sharon also appears to hold the view that replacing Arafat will further peace. Realistically, Ararat may be flawed, but the alternatives are worse. It is crucial, therefore, to institute a process by which we can de-demonize him and put him in a position where he can deliver on a process to start the cease-fire. Once that's done, then we can go to the rest of it. I think there's plenty of precedence even prior to the intifada, to show that people would be willing to go back to the peace process. But now, with the polarization of the problem, our freedom of action is limited. The first place I would start would be to try to build up some kind of authority on the Palestinian side that can deliver; otherwise I think we're going to have a continued escalation of violence.

Q&A

AMB. FREEMAN: This discussion doesn't leave me with a great deal of hope that there is some magic solution to this difficult, longstanding problem. David has suggested that we may have to wait for new leadership, possibly on both sides. And he raises again the matter that constitutes the essence of the U.S. approach at present: the effort to craft some sort of cease-fire, the effort that General Zinni is involved in.

Here I have to confess my own skepticism. If the occupation and the settlements are themselves forms of violence from the Palestinian perspective, how can you have an end to violence that doesn't deal with the occupation and the settlements? Anything else is a one-sided truce, a pause to regroup for further fighting. And so I don't know whether the United States can get off the hook. I know from having been in the region as Vice President Cheney toured it that there is no receptivity to any agenda other than an American effort to resolve this escalating conflict. In fact, the general reaction in the region to suggestions that the United States should now proceed to attack Iraq was that this proposal was obscene in circumstances in which Palestinians and Israelis are dying in the manner and numbers that they are.

Everything points to the imperative of American engagement in an effort to try to help Israelis and Palestinians--and Israelis and Syrians, ultimately--to find a basis for coexistence, perhaps just security separation with no real reconciliation, which many of the proposals that Yoram Peri outlined seemed to envisage. In default of some mechanism by which to blast Israel into outer space and detach it from the region in which it finds itself, I suppose these proposals have some attraction. But in the absence of some way of doing that, we can't get away with doing nothing.

I'd like to lead off the question and comment session by asking Stephen Cohen a question. You referred at the outset to what you saw as the necessary structure for an American initiative that would replace the escapism of unilateral withdrawal with something more real, suggesting the proper approach would involve a U.S. effort to recraft policy and relationships, not just with Israel, but with Egypt and with Saudi Arabia. I wonder if you would like to be a little more specific about what you have in mind?

DR. COHEN: In this circumstance, the key is that the United States start talking more realistically and truthfully about the structure of the region and what is going to be necessary for the region to move out of this terrible carnage. The first element is that the United States has to start telling its own people, and the world, the basics about American interests in the region. I begin with the three countries upon which the United States has built three separate foreign policies in the Middle East. Those three separate foreign policies have been one with Israel, one with Saudi Arabia, and the three-quarters of one with Egypt--which has a much more complicated set of commitments and relationships in the region than either Saudi Arabia or Israel.

I believe that we should start to take seriously what Mubarak said--which is that it's time to start having real talk at a high level that cuts across the parties--and build on it. We do not now have individual leaders of the Israelis and the Palestinians who can inspire any trust in the other party. Let's put it in the most minimal way. We have to acknowledge that and say, how can we build a structure that will begin to have some credibility?

As difficult as it is to imagine a real cooperative relationship--first between Saudi Arabia and Egypt; second among Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United States; and third of all among Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United States and Israel--we have to do that. It's a necessity for us to break away from the self-destructive bilateralism that keeps producing wrong answers. That the notion that we're going to get Egypt and Saudi Arabia to endorse an invasion of Iraq could have gotten so far in the United States is an indication of how far we are from any realistic concept of the region. It's a fantasyland, but still widely believed in the United States. We still think we can force it to happen, and that it's an artificial belief in Egypt and Saudi Arabia that the solution of the Palestinian problem is important.

Finally, Saudi Arabia and Egypt are not willing to face up to the fact that the era of Arafat as a partner for Israel has run its course. This is not because there's a replacement for Arafat and not because in the Arab world there is any way of replacing him, but because we have to be realistic. Trying to rebuild the credibility of Arafat with American Jews and Israelis is going to waste us years and is going to produce an Israeli election that will be a disaster for everybody. That's why I'm saying we have to have some really hard discussion here. I spent a lot of my life trying to bring about the Israeli-PLO agreement, and I know now that, as close as we came, we can't do this as a bilateral process. Both the Israelis and the Palestinians need the embeddedness of their problem in wider realities: the wider Arab reality and the wider American reality.

As we're sitting here in the halls of Congress, let me say something still perhaps more controversial in the United States. It can't be that the Arabs and Israelis agree that Congress belongs to Israel and the administration is at play between the two. As long as that's the case, it isn't possible for us to really break out of the continuing crisis of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, which has been going on ever since it took over in the middle fifties after the British-French disaster at Suez. It has different names at different times. Sometimes it's called Iran, sometimes Iraq; sometimes it's called Palestine and sometimes Egyptian-Israeli war; sometimes it's called Syrian-Israeli war, sometimes Lebanon. But we have a continuing American Middle East crisis. We don't focus on it because we have other bigger problems we talk about. But after Bin Laden and September 11, it's time for us to put our full intelligence--not an agency but our minds and hearts--on recognizing that we have to finish World War I.

Woodrow Wilson, at the end of World War I, had a belief that the United States could be rich and powerful and not be an empire. His conception, of course, was rejected. But we haven't put in place another conception of how America can relate to that region. I believe that we have to start with the strong three relationships that the United States has built its policy on, understand those deeply, and rebuild them as consistent with each other. That's the only way that we're able to get out of our present crisis and come to a realistic place with the Palestinians.

AMB. FREEMAN: It is somewhat provocative in these halls of Congress to suggest that we should deal with the issues in the Middle East as a foreign-policy problem rather than as a domestic political issue. It's rather refreshing to hear that case made.

DR. TELHAMI: The issue of restoring some trust between the Palestinians and the Israeli leadership obviously is difficult, but I do not think that that can or should be a barrier to an agreement. I think that we don't understand, perhaps, the stakes. I have a different interpretation of how high the stakes are, not just for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, but for the Arab-Israeli conflict broadly, and also for American policy, generally, and maybe even the war on terrorism.

First, I think we are on a slippery slope toward a clash of civilizations. It's unavoidable if we don't stop the cycle on the Palestinian-Israeli front and move toward a solution. I don't think it's possible not to draw others in. Second, I think there is a scary sense of empowerment that is driven by globalization. I agree with Tom Friedman on this point, that the proliferation of technology and information has empowered individuals in ways that we have not seen. You have to see the suicide-bombing phenomenon in the context of that empowerment. It is much easier today to carry out violence than before. We've already seen in the past month the secularization of suicide bombings, with the two women and a member of the PFLP [Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine].

I would expect this phenomenon to spread beyond the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, perhaps inside the Arab world and beyond, and I see that as a real danger. If I had to make an assessment about the single most important issue that would help the United States in its broader war on terrorism, I would say the Arab-Israeli issue. Certainly that is a higher priority than the Iraq issue. I don't think the Arab-Israeli issue can only be seen as a corollary or an instrument in a confrontation with Iraq. It is much more serious. There is a paradigm collapsing, the paradigm of two states for two people. The state system, as Stephen Cohen pointed out in connecting it to World War I, is jeopardized for a lot of reasons.

I was giving a talk yesterday about 1974, when the Arab states in essence put an end to pan-Arabism in Rabat by acknowledging the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people. With that act, they anchored a state system that took away the pan-Arabism issue. The Palestinian issue was the core issue of the pan-Arab movement. In a way, the acknowledgement that the Palestinians represent themselves was an acknowledgement that Arab states represent themselves. It opened up the possibility for a bilateral treaty between Egypt and Israel. For the past two or three decades, essentially all of the negotiations have been based on that framework. But if that framework is collapsing, the stakes are very high for the entire system. I think there are ways of avoiding minimal trust. The comprehensive idea is there. You have an Arab plan, you can revive a broader peace process where the trust doesn't have to be only bilateral; it could be enhanced by external parties. One has to be innovative, but I think the stakes are higher than most people assume.

AMB. FREEMAN: There's actually a bit of a paradox in what you say. On the one hand, you correctly point out that the Palestinian resistance is nationalist in character, not religious. Just as there were kamikaze pilots who were not religious, there are Palestinian suicide bombers who are not Muslim in character. It is a struggle of nationalism, and yet at the same time, within the broader Arab and Muslim context, this struggle is increasingly polarizing. I agree with you, there is a grave danger that an essentially local struggle may become global in character.

Q: Is it possible to have an agreement without bringing in Hamas and Hizballah? If you do it with just Ararat, how lasting would it be? Both in the United States and Israel, I still see this fantasy that we can somehow avoid the core issues about refugees and East Jerusalem, if we can just find the right person.

DR. COHEN: I wouldn't rule out anybody from the attempt to solve the problem, if that's what they really want to do. I myself conducted discussions with Hamas in 1996, and I found that there were elements in Hamas that were interested in being a replacement for Arafat in negotiating. But what they were willing to negotiate, even if they replaced Arafat, was not an end of the conflict; it was an armistice at best. They felt that the structure of their movement would be fatally broken apart if they came in as part of a coalition with Ararat and not as his successor. I don't say that that's definitive. These were discussions of two generations ago in terms of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But I don't believe that at this time Hamas has anything like an articulated vision of living with a permanent Jewish state, and I do believe that Ararat has that. What I said about Arafat is not that I believe that there is now a replacement for him, but that insofar as what we're trying to do is to rebuild an Israeli negotiation with him, we are guaranteeing that that negotiation cannot go very far. And because it cannot go very far, it continues to recruit people who oppose the negotiation process, because the kind of negotiation that can be created between Sharon and Arafat is painfully limited and therefore seems an insult to many people who are uncertain which way to go.

I don't expect Egypt and Saudi Arabia to replace the Palestinian voice. What I would like to see happen with the United States is a really firm commitment to what I call an "imposing" process; a structure in which principles are established within which a negotiation can have some legitimacy on both sides. They have to take a much more active role, each of them with their own elements in the system. The Saudis have proposed an outcome and hope that they will be able to avoid getting involved in the process. The Egyptians propose a process but don't want to get involved in the Palestinian substance. The Israelis want to sit and make sure that the sitting replaces the decisions. The United States cannot accept those limitations from any of those three actors. It must break each of their taboos.

DR. PERI: Though I would love, theoretically, to see all participants in both camps negotiate, I think it's unrealistic. I would draw your attention to a development of the last few weeks, which is more realistic and more dangerous: many Palestinians see the last month or so as a victory. The fact that Israel withdrew from Ramallah a few days ago is seen by them as a victory. More and more I hear from my Palestinian friends that the idea of a war of liberation, Algerian-style, is becoming popular. If that is the case, it means, let's continue fighting and not negotiate.

The immediate impact of that is the position of the Tanzim today. The Tanzim is, within the central body of the PLO, an arm of Fatah, and they are becoming much stronger today. And Barghouti, the head of the Tanzim, is beginning to be seen as a possible heir to Ararat. Just five months ago he was not. We don't know for sure, but it seems that he doesn't want to negotiate because he tends to support the idea of the Algerian model. So, before reaching the Islamists, I'm afraid that we have to deal with the people who are more in the center and who have shifted to the right, in the same way that has happened in Israel.

Things are really bad. Look, for example, at the very negative impact of the second intifada on Palestinian society. One of the achievements of the first intifada was increasing the role of women. The intifada wasn't only a war against the occupier; it was trying to change society from within and to make women more equal. With the second intifada, they lost their case and have been pushed back to the kitchen. Now they're trying to show that they're equal by blowing themselves up just like men. It's a horrible vision of equality.

Both societies are going down horrible avenues because of the continuation of the conflict, and therefore we have to solve it.

MR. LONG: What real bottom-line items must both sides accept? Not terms terms of negotiation; I don't even think Prince Abdullah is talking about haggling over terms. He is talking in a much broader context: that there will be no ultimate settlement without certain basic desiderata of both sides being met. On the Palestinian side it is the right of self-determination; not the granting of sell-determination but recognition of the right of self-determination, including recognition of some rights of the refugees. This doesn't mean they all come flooding back. It's just a recognition that their grievances need to be assuaged. These are bottom-line things that must be addressed by the Israelis in order for there to be a settlement.

On the other side, the Israelis must have the Palestinians, and the Arab world in general, recognize their right not just the granting of a favor--to live in security with normalization of relations with their neighbors. You need on both sides people who will recognize these factors. On the Palestinian side, you can get a consensus--the legitimizing force in that culture--that recognizes the right of the Israelis to live securely in their own country. Then those groups like Hamas, who have a program of jihad, however you want to define that, will be pushed into the background. It is more important to look at bottom-line principles that Palestinians and Israelis must accede to, rather than getting mixed up in deciding which group should be involved in negotiating.

If you could get a consensus, either under Ararat or anyone else, that would be the force that is required to push this thing forward.

DR. TELHAMI: I just want to comment on what Yoram said about people internalizing the lessons of withdrawal as a weakness. Militancy works, and I see that as a problem, as I said in my presentation on deterrence. But I think we have to recognize that at the micro level this is always the case in every cycle of violence.

I've done a study with three colleagues, a statistical analysis of daily actions and reactions in the Middle East over a 20-year period. We published it in the Journal of Conflict Resolution in the fall, looking to see how the parties react to each other. They learn to respond in kind, tit for tat. Revenge becomes normalized, and--worse--they don't learn that they should cooperate, even if they're worse off the next day than the day before.

The cycle perpetuates itself, and the reason for it is three-fold. First, domestic politics pushes them to behave in ways that are irrational very often. They say, we have to do something because the public wants it, even if it doesn't work, even if it's counterproductive. Second, they say, if we don't react, the other side is going to think we're weak. We see this in Serbia and Bosnia and everywhere. Therefore, we're going to be even worse off if we don't react. Third, they always come up with the wrong analogy. The fact that they use an analogy like Hebron or Lebanon doesn't mean it's an appropriate analogy. In fact, they almost always use an analogy, and the Israelis are using an analogy now. The Israeli lesson isn't, we should withdraw, but the public says we should be even more militant, right? The support for militancy is stronger in Israel today. If you look at majorities who support a tough line, it is strong there, too.

It's a cycle, and you can't break out of it through an internal dynamic, because our research shows that they can't break out of it on their own. It can happen in two ways: either through some unusually courageous leadership, which is rare, or through external diplomatic intervention. The reason these things work is that they change the structure of the incentives and put on the table a political option. The reason people say militancy works is because in the back of their minds they're saying: nothing else is working; there is no political option. If you put a political option on the table, you revive a whole host of people who are not mobilized and lobbying for something--an alternative to militancy.

It's a very dynamic game, and the fact that you have this cycle and this psychology on the ground should not prevent the United States from putting a political option on the table. In fact, it argues for the opposite: in order to change the dynamic, you need to put a political option on the table. If you don't, the dynamic will continue to be self-destructive.

AMB. FREEMAN: I think that is in fact the reason that Crown Prince Abdullah took his initiative, the fact that with both sides out of ideas it was important to put a political option back into play.

DR. COHEN: The key psychological factor now is that the Palestinians feel they have won militarily against the Israelis. We should take that insight not as a negative, but put it in the context of the psycho-political brilliance of Anwar Sadat, who treated the first few days of the 1973 war as enough of a victory that he could produce a huge change in strategy. By declaring victory he could then move toward peace.

The Arab summit, under the best circumstances, offers that opportunity, that the Arab world would declare victory for the Palestinians and then put up the Abdullah proposal as a challenge to the world as a result of that Palestinian victory. Then, if we had American leadership, the beginning of a response to that declaration of victory, Israel would not be required to use superior force to show that it's a false victory. The United States would understand that it has to do what it was forced to do in 1973, to stop the Israelis from destroying the third army. This would create the condition where it had to sink in that Sadat had a victory, that Israel had to move in a different direction, that there had to be talks, that there had to be withdrawals. During this moment, when the Palestinians are feeling that they are not simply a ward of the world system but a victorious military force, there is an opportunity to give them the main thing that they lacked in the Barak-Arafat-Clinton negotiations: the dignity of having created their own state, not having it handed to them as some kind of gift from an American-Israeli diktat.

MR. LONG: The Israelis assume that they have moral superiority on their side and that the other side are terrorists. The Palestinians assume that they are the aggrieved party, that their country was stolen from them, and they demand it back. Each side is totally convinced of the moral superiority of its position. One of the hardest things for the United States to do is to assume moral neutrality, to assume that there is no moral superiority on either side. Both have very strong, justifiably moral positions, but an outsider must assume moral neutrality. That is the only way that as an honest broker we can break the ideological deadlock here.

DR. PERI: To show how much the two sides need a third party, there is a story about the suicide attacks. According to the Quran, Muslims must not touch a pig. Some Israelis said, let's solve the problem of the suicide attacks by putting a pigskin on the body of the bombers, so they won't be able to reach heaven. It was done three times. But after three times, a Muslim holy man found a solution to the problem and gave a special dispensation, so it's not valid anymore. Now even if pigskin is put on the corpse of the attacker, he will get to heaven. If we get down to these kinds of reason and logic, we really need someone else to help us to solve it.

AMB. FREEMAN: The questioner put his finger on a key dilemma that peace confronts. It's easy in the case of Israel to see where the legitimacy of the government that might make peace comes from. There are elections to determine who is in charge. When you negotiate with the government of Israel you are not negotiating with a political party but with someone who can bind all Israelis to an agreement. The importance of Yasser Ararat lies in the fact that he is the closest to having such authority on the Palestinian side. The question, however, remains whether he really does have that authority. We have heard over the past year or so two Israeli arguments simultaneously. One, Yasser Ararat is all-powerful; he could snap his fingers and end the violence immediately. Second, Yasser Arafat is irrelevant and powerless. Neither is probably an accurate description of the man and his role. But the question remains, who can speak for Hamas, for Islamic Jihad, for all of the parties on the Palestinian side who feel passionately about the issues? If not Yasser Arafat, then who?

NABIL FAHMY, ambassador of Egypt to the United States

May I ask the panel what the relevance of the U.N. resolutions is with respect to this issue? Do they believe that Resolution 242 is still valid? I raise the point because it is important to return to the fundamentals.

MR. LONG: I think 242 embodies a concept of peace that is still valid. I've tried to make a distinction between terms and broader concepts. One of the problems with 242 is that the lawyers have been interpreting what it is, haggling over specifics. My feeling is that if you look at 242 in terms of the concept toward which you must go to get peace, it is still valid. If you look at it as a legal document, it's been overtaken by events.

DR. COHEN: I believe more and more that we have to say 242, 242, 242, 242, and implement it now. It's the only thing on which there is any international consensus. It's the only mantra we can use, and we have to finally implement it, both in the West Bank and Gaza and in the Golan Heights.

AMB. FREEMAN: I will second that and add, Nabil, that two states are essential, as Ehud Barak discovered when it appeared that he might actually achieve agreement with the Palestinians. You need a state to make peace with, and only a Palestinian state can live at peace with the Israeli state.

DR. PERI: I think that we all agree about that. Sixty-five percent of Israelis today think that the Palestinian state is a solution, so we are beyond that. The two-state solution is the only way. 242 has some difficulties because of the dual interpretations of the question of the withdrawal from "territories" or all the territories. I would like very much to support the Clinton plan. I think it goes beyond 242 or towards the implementation of 242, and I think that's the best solution that is still available. Not that it's so easy to reach that solution these days in this climate, but I believe that for the long run we should go back to the plan that was ready for us in the last days of his presidency.

DR. TELHAMI: I agree with all that was said, but I think of it as even more important to implement 242 now, because I think the costs are very high. In this generation, it is impossible to contemplate any settlement except along these lines, in part because the whole idea of compromise between the Palestinians and Israelis is predicated on defining their struggles as nationalist struggles, and getting away from ethnic and religious rhetoric. If you put it back into an ethnic conflict, the right of return to all of Israel would become the dominant Palestinian demand, which is incompatible with the idea of a Jewish state.

If you start taking it into the arena of a religious conflict, it is hard to imagine how you can reach a compromise in this generation. But more important, if you look along the lines that I spoke about earlier, the notion of Palestinian nationalism manifesting itself in a state next to Israel is really the anchor of the normalization of the state system in the Middle East. If you unravel that, you unravel the entire package. You have a dynamic in the region that becomes very costly to the state system. In essence, with the failure of Camp David, the Arab states reassumed, in a way, responsibility for the Palestinian issue. That becomes something that is much bigger.

As for 242, I do think that it clearly is the issue. It's not just a matter of interpretation of "all" or "some." The notion that there has to be alteration based on the security needs of both sides is pretty much accepted. That had been part of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. The question of whether these are really disputable territories is different from how to implement a withdrawal from the West Bank and Gaza with alterations for security needs. That the ownership is disputed, rather than the boundaries, is a big distinction. I think that it is probably important now, in fact, that there is an Israeli initiative to focus on security needs and take away any other claims in interpreting 242--to focus on security rather than ideological claims or religious claims, because that is what 242 is. Essentially, it is talking about who owns the land, but not about the boundaries or where the boundaries should be drawn.

DR. PERI: But how do you decide the question of ownership of the holy places in Jerusalem?

DR. TELHAMI: I think that is a clear exception. Obviously, it's very important, but it's a question of fundamental use. The Western Wall is an area that is essential for Jewish worship. Therefore Israel has to guarantee the security of those people. It's not an essential security need for the Palestinians. So you can make a very good case on security, but it's very different from assuming that one has a right to sovereignty.

AMB. FREEMAN: To return to Nabil's original point, the fact that there is a consensus that 242--which had been forgotten; it's not even mentioned in the Mitchell Report, for example is once again central, and that there is a recognition that there must be a two-state solution, is exactly the sort of victory for the Palestinians that Steve Cohen suggested, very wisely, might justify a gesture from the Arab Summit.

AMB. FAHMY: Let me take a step back on this issue of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242. I agree with Shibley Telhami completely. 242 today, even the issue of whether it is "all" or "territories," was not meant to substantially change the land mass that was occupied. It was meant to take into account situations on the ground per se.

Years ago that was interpreted by Israelis to mean substantial change, and the issue of "disputed" versus "occupied" came up. What I'm arguing now is that, while there may be changes in some parts of the territory, they would be by mutual agreement between Palestinians and Israelis, and they would not be significant by any standard. They would be either humanitarian or for security purposes.

The Clinton proposals, which we supported as a basis for negotiations, didn't succeed because they did not have a fundamental component: the viability of the state. They talked about land, about percentages of withdrawal, but when you looked at the details, especially the Israeli interpretation of them, there was no contiguous land mass. The security dimension imposed by the Israeli negotiators at the time was so significant that you essentially had two state sovereignties on top of each other.

President Bush and Secretary Powell have talked about a "viable" state, and one or two of you have done the same. I believe we can achieve a viable state that will be very close to the percentages put forward by Clinton--probably more, but very close to them--as long as it is viable. That can be a solution on the basis of 242.

DR. PERI: I agree with you. I think one of the things that the administration should have done before, and should do today and should do tomorrow, is to change their entire attitude on economic support of the Palestinians. The more the Palestinians benefit from economic development, the more they will be willing to seal their negotiations in a peaceful way. One of the mistakes, both of the Israeli government in the past and the American government, is that not enough has been done about that.

DR. COHEN: I just want to say that what Nabil is doing here is to me a perfect example of the kind of role that I believe Egypt and Saudi Arabia can play now, saying things that are perfectly obvious, but which people cannot hear right now when they are said by Ararat. It is not to replace him, but it is to recognize they have to deal with the fears, not only with formal legitimacies. Nabil, you've played a very important role here, keeping us on the basics, and I believe that if we can get the United States to take seriously the possibility of using this moment to bring Egypt, Saudi Arabia, themselves and Israel to implement 242 and 338, we would have a very significant breakthrough, not only in the relationship between Israelis and Arabs, but in the relationship between the United States and the whole region.

AMB. FREEMAN: Are we now in such a sad condition that we're forced to deal with these issues as foreign-policy issues, rather than as extensions of domestic politics?

MR. LONG: I'd say both. The foreign-policy ramifications of where we find ourselves, though we didn't want to be here, are such that we're forced to do something, and the domestic political ramifications of that are bubbling now. But there is a growing consensus in the United States over the last three weeks--not just because of the Cheney visit--that we've got to do something. It is on the basis of this that I think the administration can proceed.

DR. TELHAMI: At the moment, I do not think that the Bush administration policy is mostly driven by domestic politics. There is no question that domestic politics continues to play a major role, but I think there are many reasons the Bush administration has not been more involved. First, they were pursuing a policy of "not-Clinton." They saw Clinton try and fail hard. They didn't want to emulate him, and they didn't like him to begin with. Second, in every single administration in the past, including the Clinton administration and the first Bush administration, the president hasn't wanted to tackle this issue. They think of it as a losing cause, then they learn how to deal with it. It took them a year, both of them, before they got involved. Third, a lot of people around the president believe that "the Arab-Israeli conflict is not ripe for a solution; and therefore, if you try you're only going to fail." Fourth, the Iraq issue was always the priority, even before 9/11, for this administration, but 9/11 has created an opportunity that did not exist, in terms of mobilizing the public and getting international support. Therefore, that became an even higher priority for the administration.

Finally, there is another assumption that began creeping into the minds of the elites here, particularly after 9/11, that the Arab-Israeli conflict is no longer so important in America's foreign policy, that it's not so connected to vital American interests. This has been a relatively new assumption. Since the 1970s, the American political mainstream has assumed that Arab-Israeli peace is an important American interest because it resolves the tension between U.S. economic, oil and strategic interests in the Arab world and the commitment to Israel. Without resolving them, you're going to have a problem in crafting an effective policy in the region.

There are a lot of people in this town, for a variety of reasons, asking questions about vital interests. I believe that the president did not initially believe that the Arab-Israeli conflict matters a lot, for oil interests or for the Iraq policy. In fact, he was extremely surprised when Crown Prince Abdullah last spring did not come to the White House to create a connection. It created dissonance in the president's mind, because he assumed that the Saudis only pay lip service to the Palestinian issue.

I believe that if the president himself had actually reached the conclusion that resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict is central for the war on terrorism, not only could he do whatever he needs to do domestically--because the political system is mobilized for the war on terrorism--but he would do it. I don't think he believes that. The question is why? Is he right? Is he wrong? It's a different question.

Did Cheney learn something on his trip about this issue? It's hard to know. Both Chas. and I just came from the Persian Gull, where the vice president was. It is obvious that at every single stop they talked to him first and foremost about the Arab-Israeli issue. The Iraq issue was secondary. In fact, he raised it in a very low-key way, although he raised it. It is quite obvious that the stories he was told in private this time were not substantially different in most places from the stories he was told in public. There are exceptions, but the discrepancy was considerably smaller than had been the case in the past.

Will he learn that, therefore, the administration should make this a priority issue? I'm not so sure. I think the creeping interpretation now is that the Arab-Israeli conflict is something of a menace to implementing Iraq policy, rather than an insurmountable obstacle. In that sense, what is needed is to do something about it, perhaps something incremental and modest, to make it less of a menace to the implementation of an Iraq policy, whatever that may be.

It's a fluid situation. I think it's wrong to assume that leaders have fixed opinions, even if they have strong views. They respond like everybody else; there is a learning curve. It is wrong to say, therefore, their views are unchangeable. It's very important to keep adding input into the discourse, to inform and broaden the horizons. David Ignatius had an interesting article about the bunker mentality in the government, which is understandable, given the horror of 9/11. You focus so much on preventing another horror that you don't expand your horizons. He thought that the vice president's going out there and listening was a good thing, and I think it is, too.

DR. COHEN: From my point of view, the failure is the failure of the peace forces--in the United States, in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, among the Palestinians and Israel. We have failed to demonstrate that there is a path that one could follow that would work, despite what we know about the present leadership, that would be able to produce risks that could be taken that would produce a positive outcome from the parties who are committed to doing this.

The thing that was important about Abdullah's speech is that it was the first time that somebody actually took a little risk on his own, not just saying to Bush, you take the risk. We know this was not on Bush's agenda. We know that he saw this as "Clinton tried, and we don't want to do what Clinton did." That was the background, not the story. The story is that those of us who believe in this have to create a convincing scenario, and we have not done so.

I'm sorry that the Egyptian ambassador left, because I wanted to mention to him that I feel that Mubarak in his visit here did not take a risk. What we needed after Abdullah was not for Mubarak simply to endorse Abdullah. We needed Mubarak not just to bring the old idea of Israel meeting with Arafat in Sharm el-Sheik, which was clearly not going to happen. It's not that it was the wrong idea, we just knew that it was not going to happen. We needed him to do something which said he, too, is willing to take a risk. There are lots of different ways he could have done it, but he didn't.

This is first of all a domestic American problem. We know that there are American Jews, American Arabs, Americans who are committed to various countries in the Middle East, who have relations in various countries in the Middle East, who care about this. But we all work separately. We are never willing to put aside our own particular interests in order to create a powerful coalition. Therefore, it's very easy for business as usual to continue. Unless there is a powerful coalition of all the Americans who want to see this situation change, it's not going to change. Unless there is a coalition of all of the people in the region, all the leaders in the region who want to make a change, and each of them is willing to take a risk, it won't happen.

I don't think we're going to get this administration to make this a top priority until there is a convincing scenario, and I think it's the responsibility of those who really want a change to find an American coalition and then to find a regional coalition that is willing to take risks to make it happen. We know where we want to go. We know what the outcome is that we're looking for. We don't have to fight about that anymore. What we have to do is to overcome our resistance to recognizing that we can't do it alone, that we have to do it together, that we have to create the kind of structure that would surprise American public opinion and political leadership, both here and abroad.

AMB. FREEMAN: I cannot imagine a statement with which I am in more profound agreement than that. I think it brings us to a very appropriate stopping point in this discussion. I would like to commend the panelists for an extraordinarily high level of discourse, which I found very illuminating and instructive. I'd also like to thank, in his absence, the ambassador of Egypt for taking the active role that he did.

It seems to me that addressing this issue is a moral imperative for Americans. Inactivity, default on our moral responsibility, as was brought home to me in recent discussions with people in the Gulf, is very costly to other American interests. Therefore we should not wait for the magic of some unilateral solution from one side or another, but should do what Steve urged us to do, which is to help the parties craft a solution they will not find on their own.