Aaron Miller leaves the State Dept; discusses the reasons for the current situation; tells the Jerusalem Post that before any progress can be made the Palestinians will have to give up on the intifada. According to the poll I just posted, they're not even close yet.
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US ex-mediator says PA must abandon violence
WASHINGTON
Before any progress can be made toward resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Palestinians will have to abandon armed struggle as a means of trying to achieve their political goals, Aaron Miller, the veteran US Middle East peace mediator, told The Jerusalem Post.
"If you're going to move forward, you're going to need a wall-to-wall agreement on the Palestinian side to recognize what a disaster the last two and a half years have been," said Miller, who left his job Friday as senior adviser for Arab-Israeli negotiations at the State Department to become president of the Seeds of Peace conflict resolution organization.
Miller, who spent two decades working on the Arab-Israeli conflict at the State Department, was the last significant mediator from the Clinton administration left in the government.
While there will continue to be Palestinians who will carry out acts of terrorism with support from abroad, Miller said, the Palestinian leadership has to reassert a "monopoly over the sources of violence in their own society."
He also said that the dialogue between Hamas and the PLO over the strategy of the uprising - centered around intermittent talks in Cairo - "has to be ended by a commitment to abandon armed struggle... Armed struggle has essentially not just taken them farther away from their goals; it has delegitimized a legitimate cause."
In a wide-ranging interview, Miller reflected on the breakdown of the 2000 Camp David talks, his own personal errors, and missteps of the negotiations, most notably, the decision to shift the focus from Israeli-Palestinian negotiations to Israeli-Syrian negotiations in 1999 and 2000.
Miller says he does not "put a great deal of stock" in what he calls "quick, magical, or external fixes" to the conflict.
Among those ideas aired in recent months have been dispatching international peacekeepers to the West Bank or setting up a trusteeship in the territories, as has been recommended by his former fellow negotiator, Martin Indyk.
"These are all tempting ideas, because people are suffering. I just don't think they are practical," he said.
With Israeli elections pending and a war with Iraq seemingly imminent, it would be fruitless for the US to try to launch any kind of new peace initiative at the moment, though Miller says he still believes that a negotiated settlement is possible and the only way to end the conflict. He rejects the notion of unilateral separation as a possible solution, an idea advocated by Labor Party leader Amram Mitzna.
"If you tried to recreate an environment for permanent-status negotiations now you would fail big time. And we can't afford to fail. You can't go again at permanent-status negotiations and not succeed," he said.
Miller highlighted the importance of US President George W. Bush offering a Middle East initiative - his June 24 speech of last year in which he called for the creation of a Palestinian state within three years - so early in his presidency.
Asked how the US could still help achieve that goal after Bush called on the Palestinians to elect new leadership not corrupted by terror, Miller said he believes "there are plenty of Palestinians who are associated with the Palestinian Authority who are still viewed as credible and serve as points of contact."
Of the failed Camp David 2000 peace summit, Miller criticized the Palestinian "passivity and lack of responsiveness." PA Chairman Yasser Arafat, he said, did not need to sign an agreement - "there was no comprehensive deal to be signed" - but he needed "to be responsive and initiate authoritative positions." At the same time, former prime minister Ehud Barak created "certain tactical problems which were very significant," which included focusing on the Syrian track and ignoring the Palestinian track for months.
"I would argue to you that the environment in July 2000 was not amenable, as amenable as it could have been, in large part because of the decision to focus on Syria," Miller said.
By focusing on Syria - culminating in a failed presidential summit in Geneva in May 2000 - the US peace-brokers were diverted from the Palestinian issue.
More importantly, the Syrian track, which focused on the notion of a full Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, "elevated the June 4, 1967 borders to a level of primacy."
"The deal offered on the Golan was so good, that when Arafat saw the 90-91 percent [he was being offered of the West Bank], he concluded, 'Hey wait to a country that won't allow its foreign minister to shake the hand of an Israeli leader, which is running a proxy war against Israelis in southern Lebanon, they're willing to give 99% plus and yet I'm being offered 91%?'" said Miller.
Miller said that he had little hope that the Israeli-Syrian talks the US mediated would succeed, since the track lacked the combination of secret negotiations and public diplomacy that accompanied Israeli peace deals with Egypt and Jordan and agreements with the Palestinians.
Miller said, looking back, that he "really underestimated how nasty, entrenched, and complicated" the conflict is.
"I spent most of my years trying to convince people why something could happen, not why it couldn't happen. I think in many respects I got far too caught up in the world of the possible," he said.
He now heads to Seeds of Peace to tackle the Middle East conflict from a new perspective - trying to train young leaders who will be able to"transcend their own environments" and make courageous political decisions.
jpost.com |
