Interview with Amb. Pickering on "A Last Chance for a Two-State Israel-Palestine Agreement"

We spoke yesterday afternoon with Ambassador Thomas Pickering. Pickering is a former ambassador to the United Nations, Russia, India, Israel, Jordan, El Salvador and Nigeria. He also served as Under Secretary of State under President Clinton. Pickering was one of ten distinguished signers of a policy paper developed by the US/Middle East Project.

Pulse: One of the more intriguing points that is made in the US/Middle East Project paper is that the Obama administration should shift its objective from ousting Hamas to modifying its behavior. Does this mean the US should drop the 3 conditions altogether, and just focus on Hamas not engaging in violence?

Pickering: I think that the paper does move in that direction with perhaps a willingness also to accept participation in the peace process in some form as a part of what it is we would ask. This is with the realization obviously that if it's successful and if as Hamas - at least in part has said - that they're prepared to deal with a settlement worked out by Fatah by Abu Mazen, and one that passes through a referendum process, then a recognition of Israel will be a fait-a-accompli, or would be self evident. So we, in that sense, have felt that this was a way to try to find moderates, and there are them, in Hamas and bring them into the process rather than continue to try and freeze them out in the cold. Having spent almost 25 years dealing with the peace process, before the PLO followed the same route (of recognition of Israel) I can tell you it wasn't a very useful process in effect to try to seek to find people who could negotiate for the Palestinians but who weren't being identified with or weren't part of the Palestinian establishment, and I think we're facing the same problem with Hamas.

Pulse: Also, the paper essentially encourages the Palestinian unity talks, or encourages the United States not to discourage the unity talks.

Pickering: At a minimum we should do no harm. And maybe at a maximum, we should find quiet and private ways off the tube, if I can put it that way, to assure people that if these newer conditions are met - the non-violent participation in the peace process - then these people would have a role in the future of the country.

Pulse: Can progress really be made in the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks if the current Fatah-Hamas divide continues?

Pickering: It seems to me to be very difficult to see how any progress can be made if in fact a big share of Palestinians who live in Gaza and, at the moment at least, have elected a Hamas government but remain completely out of the process in terms of their involvement and ostracized from the process, can make it happen. We are in this awful conundrum that we face in the Middle East from time-to-time where the one side is determined to pick the negotiator from the other side, and that's a very difficult proposition. And of course, just as with al Fatah, as with the PLO in the past, the individuals committed despicable acts and did awful things before they became part of the process. We seem easily to forget once we cross that awful divide. But it is important to be able to have people who are at least prepared to negotiate on the other side engaged in the process and who represent the ability to bring along the masses on the other side when the negotiation is completed. Otherwise the negotiation process doesn't mean much.

Pulse: One of the striking comments in the paper is that "the next 6-12 months may well represent the last chance for a fair, viable and lasting solution." What do you think are realistic steps within the next 6-12 months that could keep the two-state solution alive?

Pickering: I think that 2 or 3 things are important within the next 6-12 months as I sort of set out in my blog article. One of those is to see whether we can encourage, on both the Israeli side and on the Palestinian side, an ability to put together a viable negotiating team that represents a combination of the majority of the people and the sense of reality. And secondly perhaps to introduce into the equation, as I imply in my blog, a kind of framework idea or framework proposal that would not attempt to eclipse negotiations, but to focus and to center negotiations on the perfectly important issues that have to be resolved and to, if I can put it this way, to canalize them so that in fact the boundaries of negotiation, or possible negotiation, are much clearer to the parties and that the proposals and ideas that go beyond the boundaries of the negotiations become almost self-evidently non-starters.

Pulse: The paper notes the influence of "militant settlers" and stresses that Israel will need US support to make the "painful compromises." What do you think the US should do, if anything, to ensure Israel dismantles illegal outposts, unnecessary roadblocks, and ceases settlement construction in the West Bank?

Pickering: My view is that those are terribly important issues to set the stage for the negotiating process. On the other hand, even if resolved, they will not resolve the problem. So I think the United States should make polite and strong efforts to attempt to get Israel to stop settlement expansion, something that governments coming and going would agree to as a major prerequisite. And put in place what I would think is essentially a real-time aerial surveillance mechanism that we can share with the Israelis on a regular basis as well as a reporting system - both from Israeli sources and from on-the-ground sources - so that we have what I would call an activist monitoring capacity with respect to settlement enlargement and settlement expansion rather than the situation where we set down to principles, we agree to principles and then they turn around and have them ignored. I think that's extremely important. I think at the same time we ought to push the Palestinian side extremely hard, particularly if the settlement expansion commitment can be made real and genuine, to stop violence as much as we possibly can. We know that neither of these two is going to be perfect and I wouldn't wait for the perfect apotheosis of each, but I would certainly expect that there would be significant efforts made on both sides to cut those down. These should not be massive distractions from the other two fundamental pieces I talked about, but should accompany them and should continue to be a work in progress as things proceed. Good reports of progress in those areas are as important as having achieved nirvana or perfection on either of them.

Pulse: One other intriguing note is a suggestion in the paper that in the context of a negotiated settlement, an American-led UN-mandated, multinational force could be employed for a transitional period leading to full Palestinian control over their security. Is this something that you think Israel would go for? And if so, is this something that the US might even consider with regard to Gaza borders and security?

Pickering: I think that the force that we talked about would be applicable to the settlements and all the regions, and to answer the last part of your question, I think that an international force is needed to give credibility. Israel would prefer obviously to have an entirely Israeli operated, mandated, owned and run force to ensure its own security and everyone understands that. I have always believed that if Israel had a choice, the choice would turn to the Americans, and therefore the suggestion is made in the light of that experience just as they did in the Sinai for the monitoring stations and so on, and that that combination could be helpful with multilateral forces and observers in the Sinai, whose mission is essentially an international presence with an American role, but not a predominantly American presence. This would perhaps be more American and would involve maybe even NATO as another major part of the force with the US obviously as a leading NATO nation working on the arrangement. I also wonder whether over a period of time one could not adopt a notion of mixed patrolling of some kind. That is, that in connection with a force maybe on both sides of the agreed lines, '67 plus or minus we could call it, there ought not to be some Israelis and some Palestinians in some capacity to ensure in fact that there is complete transparency, that issues are dealt with immediately and that the two of them get used to operating together. One of the principles here that obviously is being put forward is probably a demilitarized Palestinian state, but it doesn't mean that the Palestinian state will have no security forces or no security responsibilities. Obviously I think it's in everybody's interest that they would and those forces and those people responsible would perhaps be part of a tri-partide patrolling arrangement, with an international force, Israel and Palestinians, along with maybe monitoring stations which could be manned by the three parties as well. Because I think transparency and communication and rapidity of reaction are all things that provide for a basis for a more solid effort at maintaining stability and peace under the very difficult period of very difficult conditions obviously that will pertain if an agreement can be worked out.

Pulse: What is your analysis of the Egypt-Israel peace treaty on its 30th anniversary?

Pickering: I think it's been a tremendous contribution to stability in the region despite the fact that it hasn't achieved the kind of ultimate level of cooperation envisioned by any of the parties, and certainly the US, in part because there remain serious reserves on the Arab side about the unfinished character of the peace and in part a continued dispute over that have added to the difficulty, the burden that this peace treaty has to carry in terms of being able to sell itself particularly widely among Egyptians, and now to some extent because of discouragement among Israelis. My feeling, however, is that if you go back and examine the last 30 years of the Middle East and postulate the Middle East without that peace treaty, it would be a very, very different place, a much worse place, and some people might find that hard to imagine, but it would have been a much more difficult situation for everyone in the region and for the US.