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The Search for a Palestinian Partner

[Ha'aretz] Interview with Dr. Uzi Arad by Ari Shavit - Dr. Uzi Arad served in the Mossad for more than 20 years and later initiated and managed the annual Herzliya Conference on national policy. He now heads Israel's National Security Council. He said in an interview published Friday: Regrettably, we have not so far been successful in bringing about Arab internalization of our right of existence. I have not yet encountered an Arab personage who is capable of saying quietly and clearly that he or she accepts Israel's right of existence. I don't see among the Palestinians a process of truly drawing closer to acceptance of Israel and peace with Israel. I also do not see a Palestinian leadership or a Palestinian regime but a disorderly constellation of forces and factions. There is no Palestinian Sadat. There is no Palestinian Mandela. Abbas is not vulgar like Arafat and not militant and extreme like Hamas. But even in him I do not discern the interest or the will to arrive at the end of the conflict with Israel. On the contrary, he is preserving eternal grievances against us and intensifying them. The more Israel moves toward the Palestinians, the more they move away. And they do that because even the moderates among them do not really want a settlement. At most, they are striving toward a settlement in order to renew the confrontation from a better position. The majority of Israel's governments insisted that Israel would stay on the Golan Heights. That is also the position of the majority of the public. If there is a territorial compromise, it is one that still leaves Israel on the Golan Heights and deep into the Golan Heights. If you want to enforce the clauses of the Roadmap, you have to enforce all of them. And security violations are more serious than building violations: Kassam rockets kill people, settlements do not. If they come to us and count every settlement, they have to apply the same indices and the same principles to the Palestinians. If there is an Israeli-Palestinian settlement that will lead to the establishment of a Palestinian state, Israel's membership in NATO and a defense alliance between Israel and the United States should be part of the quid pro quo that Israel will receive. Serious experts who are not Israelis look at the Middle East and say that if Iran is nuclear in 2015, the Middle East will be nuclear in 2020. And a multi-nuclear Middle East is a nightmare - five or six nuclear states in a jumpy and unstable region.
2009-07-10 06:00:00
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