Press Room

AAI in the News

C-SPAN: Washington Journal

Interview With James Zogby
Posted on Tuesday June 3, 2003

MR. PETER SLEN: Joining us now is James Zogby of the Arab American Institute. Good morning. Thanks for joining us.
MR. JAMES ZOGBY: Good morning, Peter.
MR. SLEN: I’d like to start with the lead editorial in The Washington Post this morning, “The Arab Obligation.” “Recognizing that the absence of Arab support helped doom previous attempts at a settlement, the Bush administration has rightly insisted on participation by Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and other Arab countries. “They should support a two-state solution and condemn violence, strongly support Mr. Abbas, block funds to Palestinian extremists, and hold out the prospect of normal relations with Israel. The Arabs have promised to do all these things, but they have yet to make a sufficient effort.”
MR. ZOGBY: Well, they have promised to do them all. The Beirut Summit last year actually took an unprecedented stance, indicating that the conflict between Arab states and Israel was not an existential conflict, and that they would recognize two states, but that it was dependent upon the outcome of, in fact, a two-state solution, that when Israel withdrew from the territories, when a comprehensive peace was established, that they would normalize, and that was their vision that was very similar to the president’s vision.
So I think that the Arabs have done what they can do at this point. What’s necessary now is to move the process forward and get to the two states.
MR. SLEN: Are they giving sufficient support, in your view, to Mahmoud—MR. ZOGBY: Oh, absolutely. And they continue to recognize Yasser Arafat as the elected president of the Palestinian people, but they see Mahmoud Abbas as the prime minister, and they have been supporting him. Certainly, the Egyptian intervention helped move that process along. And the fact that they’re all meeting today with President Bush in Egypt, I think, makes that clear.
MR. SLEN: Wall Street Journal: “Will Arafat pull the rug out from under the peace talks?” What’s the role of Yasser Arafat?
MR. ZOGBY: I don’t think Arafat’s going to pull the rug out from under anything. I think this is a question of American resolve and Israeli and Palestinian performance. If this Bush administration is committed to making this process work, and puts muscle behind it, no one pulls the rug out and the process moves forward. But if, in fact, there is no movement forward, if, three months from now, the situation on the ground is pretty much as it is today, you can go looking for boogey men, as people no doubt will, and blame this guy or that guy.
Arafat’s always the favorite one to point a finger at when things go wrong. But it would not be fair to say that Arafat will pull the rug out. The question is, will the administration push this process forward? I think he has the will to do it, I think the president has the ability to do it. The question is, are we going to be in a different place in a couple months from now?
MR. SLEN: I want to get our callers involved. We’re talking about the Middle East peace talks with James Zogby of the Arab American Institute. 202 is the area code, 585-3880 if you support the Palestinians, and if you support Israel, 202-585-3881. We’ll begin taking your calls right away.
According to Glenn Kessler, in The Washington Post, he says that President Bush often has a viscerally negative reaction when officials try to delve deeply into issues such as the final borders of Israel and a Palestinian state, or the status of Jerusalem, that are central to the conflict. Is it important that he get into the details?
MR. ZOGBY: At some point, I think the president has to. The roadmap, as it’s currently structured, leads the parties back to the negotiating table, but once there, could result in the same kind of impasse that we saw two years ago. At some point, the United States has to do more than put forward a vision. It has to put forward some practical ideas on how to get to that vision.
President Clinton did that, but he did it too late in his administration. Remember, he issued his plan, really, just about three weeks before he left office. And I think it was not possible, at that point, for either side to see that what Clinton had put on the table could ultimately be achieved before he left office. And as President Clinton noted at the time, when he left office, the plan was off the table.
So it came too late. But I think President Bush is going to have to do some of that before too long. I think he has an idea in his mind, and clearly, we get from that article what he thinks ought to be the final outcome. He thinks settlements are going to have to probably be returned to Palestinians—he called them housing projects—for a future Palestinian state.
So he has an idea, but I think he’s going to have to be a little bit clearer than that. Maybe this is not the time, but at some point, he ought to do it.
MR. SLEN: What was your reaction to Ariel Sharon’s statement on the settlements and the use of the word “occupation?”
MR. ZOGBY: Well, it was an earthquake in Israel among the right wing, and certainly helped reinvigorate a debate in Israeli society.
MR. SLEN: What was your reaction?
MR. ZOGBY: My reaction was that it was an earthquake. It was very significant. And I can recall being in these debates over the last 30 years, when supporters of Israel would say, “How dare you call it an occupation.” Well, now, the prime minister of Israel calls it an occupation.
He attempted, somewhat lamely I think, to explain himself away in the days that followed, but I think that the point was clear: this is an unacceptable situation. He understands that, having tried to administer it now for more than two years. And Israel needs to find a way out, and I think President Bush is providing them with a way out. The question is, is there going to be the will to, in fact, take this opportunity to move forward?
MR. SLEN: Atlanta, Georgia, you’re first up.
Q: Hi, how are you two doing this morning? I have a problem with Sharon and his administration, just like I have a problem with Bush and his administration here. Mr. Zogby, are you Jewish?
MR. ZOGBY: No.
Q: Okay, great. All right.
MR. SLEN: Why is that great, caller?
Q: Well, I just rather him not be Jewish.
MR. SLEN: Why?
Q: Because I don’t want to offend anyone. But anyway—MR. ZOGBY:—say a nasty thing about Arabs, maybe. Listen, let me just make a point. I think that we’re really beyond personalities now in this situation. And my suggestion is that this is not about Sharon, it’s not about Arafat, and it’s not about President Bush. It’s really about moving forward the roadmap, which is an internationally guaranteed document.
I mean, the Europeans, the United Nations, the Russians and the Americans have all endorsed it. What we need to do is find a way to translate it into a real path and put pressure behind it in order to make it real for the parties.
MR. SLEN: Bethpage, New York. You’re on the air. Good morning.
Q: Yes, Mr. Zogby. Good morning.
MR. ZOGBY: Good morning to you.
Q: I’d like to talk to you about what I see as some of the origins of terrorism. Although I don’t condone terrorism, either on Israel or Palestinians’ part, our foreign policy—I don’t blame America first, I blame Republicans first. If George Bush had not extorted the Taliban, before 9/11, for an oil pipeline, I don’t think that Al-Qaeda would have attacked us.
I think we should investigate George Bush for his involvement in the provocation of 9/11. Thank you and have a good day.
MR. ZOGBY: Well, you know, I think that any reasonable look at what happened at 9/11 finds that the group that did it certainly can claim causes, or reasons, or motivations. But at the end of the day, it was an act of terrorism that took the lives of innocent people. It was inspired by hate; it was inspired by anger. And it was not, in any way, shape, or form, a morally acceptable act.
It took the lives of innocent people who are no longer with us. These people used American freedom to kill American people. And I don’t think that finding fault or blame with anyone other than the 19 guys that flew the planes, and those who sent them, is an appropriate response.
MR. SLEN: Maui, Hawaii. Good morning.
Q: Hi. I have a question about Daniel Pipes’ nomination to the Peace Institute. And how do you feel about that? And would he be a problem in the future?
MR. ZOGBY: Well, I think that there’s a problem with the Pipes nomination, to be sure, and we’ve made that point clear both to the committee and to those in the press who’ve talked to us about it. The simple fact is that the Peace Institute has a mission, and Mr. Pipes’ writings and work are not compatible with that mission.
He has incited against Arabs and Muslims, and he does not share the approach of reconciliation or finding peaceful approaches to resolving differences between people. And therefore, I think the nomination simply doesn’t fit.
MR. SLEN: What’s the role of Syria in all this?
MR. ZOGBY: Well, Syria has an outstanding issue with Israel. They came awful close in the last administration, and I think could do so again. It’s interesting that there was an article in The Post today that you have in front of you, David Ignatius’s piece, I think, that the Syrians would very much like to get an accommodation.
And I think that Ignatius actually has an interesting roadmap on his own to present, which I would hope, at some point, the administration would follow suit on. You can’t solve the Arab-Israeli overall problem unless you also solve all of the separate tracks. The Lebanese, Syrian, and Palestinian tracks are the remaining ones. The Jordanian and Egyptian ones have been solved.
But a comprehensive peace, which I think is in the interests of everyone, including Israel, requires that the Syrian track be solved as well. And there’s a way to do it. The Syrians have made it clear that they too do not have an existential difference with Israel. It’s not an either/or. They want an accommodation. We’re simply haggling right now over where the line’s going to be.
MR. SLEN: Pulaski, Mississippi, you’re on the air with Jim Zogby of the Arab American Institute.
Mississippi, go ahead. We’re going to go ahead and move onto Columbus, Ohio. Good morning.
Q: Good morning. I’m an American Palestinian, okay. And my question is, why the American media did not bring anything about what’s going on in Palestine now, since they have been demolishing and killing, and curfew, no electric, no water, no whatsoever?
MR. ZOGBY: I couldn’t agree more, and I think that there is a problem of coverage, and there always has been a problem of coverage. Suffering that is experienced on the Palestinian side has rarely been brought home to the American people—70 percent unemployment and 60 percent of the people below the poverty line, and the humiliation of the daily treatment of people at roadblocks, house demolitions, land confiscations.
I know it all, you know it all, but I don’t think it’s been brought home enough. I found an interesting piece in the newspaper today about Crown Prince Abdullah and his meeting with President Bush, bringing the president pictures of Palestinians and the treatment that they’ve received, and the impact that that apparently had on President Bush.
President Bush, like a whole lot of other folks here in America, don’t know what people in the Arab world know and see. This is a situation that has created suffering on both sides, Israelis and Palestinians. Two sides are afraid, two sides, in fact, have suffered, and we have to find a way out for both sides. And that, hopefully, is where we can come. I think we have a long way to go, but the roadmap does, in fact, present us with a start.
MR. SLEN: Tel Aviv, Israel, is what my screen says. Is that correct? Are you calling from Tel Aviv?
Q: Yes.
MR. SLEN: Caller, are you in Tel Aviv right now?
Q: Yes, I am.
MR. SLEN: How are you watching C-SPAN?
Q: My satellite, and listening to your interesting show, and wanted to just make a comment. If there won’t be any continuance in the roadmap, and the words that Ariel Sharon said about occupation, until there will be a complete cease fire and breakdown of the Hamas, of the jihad, of the al-Kazeem (ph), any one of these groups, we have to completely surrender, give his weapons. We will not move anything, we won’t give any one of the territories until you will stop bombing our kids, killing our wives, kids, and blowing up restaurants in Tel Aviv, in Haifa, or in the settled area.
MR. ZOGBY: And let me tell you that I think that that’s very clear about the roadmap, is that the killing has to stop. And there are burdens placed on both sides. The killing has to stop, and the assassinations have to stop, and the house demolitions, and the settlement expansion has to stop. And these are reciprocal steps that have to be taken by both sides in order to shore up and strengthen the resolve of the different sides to move forward.
There are simultaneous burdens placed on both sides. It is difficult right now for the Palestinian Authority to exercise the kind of control that you would like, and that I think that everyone would like, including the Authority would like, precisely because they’ve been so weakened. They’ve been weakened politically by the resentment and anger that Palestinians are feeling because of what they’ve been through over the last two and a half years.
They’ve also been weakened structurally by the fact that, in many cases, what’s been targeted have been police barracks, and police checkpoints, and the Palestinian police themselves. It was interesting that just at the point when the new interior minister in Gaza, Dahan, was beginning to take steps to move forward, one of his top lieutenants was arrested by the Israelis and humiliated, and let go.
But Dahan came back to the Israelis and said, you know, “I can’t do anything here unless you folks ease up and let us do a job.” And so, I think that there’s a problem here. What President Bush has done with the roadmap is laid out reciprocal requirements for both sides. We need to be encouraging both sides to move forward so that Palestinians are strengthened enough to move, Israelis feel confident enough to move, knowing that we’re going to have some problems. But we have to make a resolve to get out of this hole that we’re both in together.
MR. SLEN: Caller, are you still with us?
Q: Yes.
MR. SLEN: Are you a supporter of Ariel Sharon?
Q: Yes, very much so.
MR. SLEN: What was your reaction to his use of the word occupation in talking about the settlements?
Q: Well, I mean, first of all, I think he’s completely right: the Palestinian people need to have a state. There’s no way that another country, another nation can control the population. But at the same time, you cannot prove a point by blowing up buses. You know, you kill, you know, so many people, just because you wanted to prove that you want a state.
MR. ZOGBY: At the end of the day, we’ve come to a conclusion—I think we all have to come to the conclusion—that Palestinian violence is not going to end the occupation, and Israeli violence, countermeasures, are not going to make Israel more secure. What’s going to make it work is mutual recognition and taking some tough steps on both sides. And that’s what the roadmap is about. We ought to give it a chance to work.
MR. SLEN: Poughkeepsie, New York, you’re on the air. Good morning.
Q: Hi. I’m sorry to see that C-SPAN has screeners asking people what their questions are before they call in. That’s something new, and that’s something I don’t like. I’m going to ask the question I was really going to ask before your screener asked me. And I’d like to ask Mr. Zogby, I think Zionism is a racist cult in total control of American media, and I’d like to ask Mr. Zogby, how much influence does this Zionist control over the American media have over U.S. policy and election of American politicians?
MR. ZOGBY: I wouldn’t be on C-SPAN right now if there were this kind of control. I think the fact is that the media process is open and available. There is, of course, an issue of how politics works and how historical narratives come to be accepted on all sides. In the Arab world, and in much of Europe, people understand and accept the Palestinian narrative of history. Here in the United States, in fact, the people accept an Israeli narrative of history.
In part, Arabs haven’t done their job here, and in part, Israel didn’t do its job well in Europe. But I think that to sort of create myths of control doesn’t really help us understand the process as it’s worked. It’s an open process here. We just haven’t taken enough advantage of the openness of the process to engage in the policy debate. We’re doing it now, and with some success.
I think as you look at the polls, you see that American people today support Israel more than they support Palestinians, but overwhelmingly want the president to put pressure on both sides, overwhelmingly want a two-state solution, overwhelmingly want a way out of this conflict. And I don’t think that comes with mythic control by one side or the other.
I think we’ve all had recourse to this over the years to sort of generalize and “mythify” problems. There really are, I think, concrete processes that have brought us where we are. The question is, how do we take advantage of the openness here and move forward?
MR. SLEN: Starkville, Mississippi, you’re on with Jim Zogby.
Q: Yes, I was calling in regards to a comment from someone else. I was sitting here, and I’ve been observing the news here lately, and it’s appalling to me that before 1948, Israel wasn’t even nowhere on the map. It was put into power by America, which represents the mother heart [sic], and in the Bible. So I’m wondering, if America is supporting Israel, are these people actually Hebrew Israelites, or are they the synagogue that Satan talks about? Because the Palestinians, ever since that the laws of Judaism transferred, when Halie Selassie was crowned king of kings in 1930, he was crowned king of Israel, king of the Jews. Now, I don’t understand how all of these people are over here, and they’re killing people in the name of Judaism, in the Moses. These are not the laws of true, original Judaism.
MR. ZOGBY: The history of the partition in 1948 is a real process that took place from the beginning of the last century up to 1948. Arabs didn’t accept it because it was giving land away to people who were living there, who had come in as immigrants, some refugees of the holocaust and some there as settlers, who come with the sole design to establish a Jewish state on what was Arab land.
The partition was not viewed by Arabs as something that they could support, and they objected to it. The United States recognized and accepted a partition, and the consequences are what we’re living with today. The fact is that we now have to find an accommodation, which is really interesting—is that for the first time since 1948, all the parties in the region, Arabs, generally, Israelis and the United States, which is a key negotiator, accept, for the first time, the fact that there ought to be two states.
That’s a historic first, even though the Likud Party is now saying a Palestinian state. What we’re doing right now is trying to figure out where the lines ought to be. I think that those of us who know what a viable Palestinian state ought to look like realize that it needs to be based on the 1967 borders so that Palestinians have adequate land and freedom to move.
But remember, before 1948, there were no states. It was just Palestine, and it was an occupied British mandatory region. The partition was supposed to create two states. They didn’t come into being. But now, for the first time, everyone accepts that outcome. We now have to get down to the business of making it real.
MR. SLEN: Kingston, New York. Good morning.
Q: Yes, hi, James.
MR. ZOGBY: Hi.
Q: Hi. It’s a pleasure to talk to you.
MR. ZOGBY: Thank you.
Q: I subscribe to your email alert and try to keep up with what your organization is doing, and I wish you great success and good luck—MR. ZOGBY: Thank you.
Q: And what you’re trying to do is a monstrous task in the sense that you’re in a difficult situation, partly, I don’t know if it’s media, I don’t know if it’s just our Western American perspective, where we have a difficult time, the average American has a difficult time understanding, or sympathizing, or identifying with Palestinians. And I think what you’re doing is wonderful, because you’re attempting to clarify and to bring some light and intelligence to that whole arena.
But I know I’ve been following this issue now for over 25 years, and I can remember, I would cut little articles out of the newspaper, where it would say, “an Israeli soldier,” but then, the Palestinian was always referred to as a terrorist.
MR. ZOGBY: Right. You know, I wrote an article a number of years ago asking the question, “Are Palestinians Human Too?” I mean, given the way the issue was relayed in the press, you get a sense that Israelis are human beings and Palestinians were a problem. They weren’t viewed as real people. The equation was Israeli humanity versus the Palestine problem is the way to peace.
And, in fact, what we’ve had to do all these years is try to humanize the Palestinian side of the equation to recognize that there are two human parties in this conflict, and both of them have to be recognized and given legitimate rights. Otherwise, there is no solution.
I think we’re getting there. It’s been tough. Certainly, the press coverage of Palestinians, as an earlier caller noted, has not helped. It has dehumanized Palestinians and not allowed their real suffering to come through. But hopefully, we’re going to get beyond that. We have to get beyond that, because ultimately, the future of the region, the Middle East region, is dependent upon whether you have an Israeli-Palestinian peace based on recognizing the humanity of both sides.
MR. SLEN: President Bush in blunt talked to Arab leaders, according to Associated Press. President Bush has been telling Arab leaders they can’t let a few killers, a few terrorists, block peace with Israel. Who is against this roadmap?
MR. ZOGBY: On the Arab side, official Arab side, no one. Frankly, they’re all supportive. But there are extremist groups who, either because they have an extremist ideology, do not want to recognize Israel or, on the Israeli side, there are extremist groups who do not want to recognize the sovereignty of Palestinians over what they call Judea and Samaria. And so, extremists groups on either side, motivated by an ideology that denies the legitimacy of the other side are going to oppose the roadmap.
There also will be a large center on both sides, who lack confidence that the administration is serious enough or that the other side is serious enough. They’ll accept the vision, but they’re not confident that there’s commitment either on the other side or on the United States’ side to implement the vision.
MR. SLEN: Is there an 800-pound gorilla on the Arab side that needs to be active in the process to have peace?
MR. ZOGBY: You know, if I look at an 800-pound gorilla in this situation, it’s despair, and it’s anger. And what we have to do is recognize that unless we deal with the despair, we will not solve this. Something has to occur on the Palestinian side to create a sense of hope, to rekindle, on their side, a sense that tomorrow can be better than today. They don’t believe it right now.
And if you can do that, if you can get young Palestinians back to work and create a sense that their future can be a better one than their past and their present, it doesn’t matter who or what tries to stand in the way. They’ll mow them down to get to peace, because they really want a life like everybody else’s life. They just don’t believe that it can be theirs.
They’ve been through 10 years of peace, during which settlements doubled, during which more roads were built cutting up the West Bank and Gaza into little pieces and ribbons that we’re seeing now, during which houses were demolished and people were less free to move about. So they saw peace and it didn’t work, and the intifada is a response to that. What we now have to do is tell them peace can be real, and your lives can be better.
MR. SLEN: Atlanta, good morning. You’re on the air.
Q: Yes, I have been listening to the conversation from both sides, and I think a lot of good points are being made on both sides. My only concern—and I wish there could be—but my only concern is that it does not seem like, that they’re just going to be satisfied with having a place of their own. But really, the bottom line is, they want Jerusalem. And I don’t think that that’s ever going to come about.
It would be nice if it could be settled that way. But they’ve also got to recognize that Israel does have a right to be there too.
MR. ZOGBY: Well, I think that they have done that, and there will be a recognition—there’s a need for recognition on both sides, that both sides have equal rights that have to be respected and recognized. For example, in Jerusalem, there’s just no question that the eastern side of Jerusalem is Arab. You know, ask any person from west Jerusalem when’s the last time they were in east Jerusalem: they just don’t go there.
They know that the city’s divided. They know that there’s an Arab side and a Jewish side, and vice versa the same. We just have to recognize and deal with the reality that Arabs have rights in Jerusalem just like Jews have rights in Jerusalem. We came awful close to a solution. We’ve just got to get back there again and inspire confidence that it can work and be different.
MR. SLEN: Next call for Jim Zogby, Sterling, Virginia. Good morning.
Q: Good morning. I wanted to ask if the U.S. is an honest broker? Just a few weeks ago, 10 billion extra aid was given to Israel, when $75 million—I can’t remember the exact number—was cut from veterans’ benefits. That’s actually the way the administration talks about supporting the troops overseas, putting them in harm’s way and cutting their benefits.
And all the states are in trouble, education is in crisis, and this money, our tax dollars, instead of going to our education system, our troubled states, is going to supply them for the occupation.
MR. ZOGBY: Well, let’s just be clear about the aide program. Israel gets about 3 billion in military and economic assistance. I think that the new program you’re talking about provided an additional 1 billion in direct assistance. The other 8 or 9 billion was in the form of loan guarantees that will be spread out over a few years. Even though they’re loan guarantees and not direct assistance, I think that there ought to be some conditionality there.
And it ought not to be the conditionality we’ve used in the past that never worked. When we say to Israel, “We’ll give you the money, but don’t use it on settlements,” what we ought to be saying is, “Stop the settlements, stop doing things that inhibit peace, before you get any assistance.” And frankly, the assistance programs we use have oftentimes been taken advantage of with no positive outcome.
We need to be a little tougher, actually, a lot tougher in how we use—we’re tough on the Palestinian side, we’re not tough enough on the Israeli side. You know, I look at it this way. There are two symmetries in the way American policy approaches the Middle East. With regard to pressure, we put all the pressure on the Palestinian side and very little on the Israeli side. And with regard to compassion, we give all the compassion on the Israeli side and too little on the Palestinian side.
Balancing the compassion and pressure, I think, would help really move the situation forward. And from the polls that I see, that’s what the majority of the American people want.
MR. SLEN: Jim Zogby has a doctorate from Temple University, a department of religion. What was you doctorate in?
MR. ZOGBY: I did my doctoral work in comparative religions. Islamic studies was my specialty. I did some post-doctoral work at Princeton on religious revitalization movements. It’s a fascinating way to take a look at some of these extremist groups and currents that are developing in the region today. And I just finished a—MR. SLEN:—You said before we went on the air that you attended Catholic schools.
MR. ZOGBY: I did. Which is why I print my name James, but I’m called Jim. I don’t like the informality of seeing it in writing, Jim. I also just finished a stint at Davidson College, in North Carolina, where I was a visiting professor of public policy, the James K. Batten Professor—a wonderful opportunity after 25 years of working full time in Washington to sort of reintegrate myself with my academic work and put my policy work together with the academic work and see where it all came out. It’s a good thing to take a break once in a while.
MR. SLEN: Next call, Alexandria, Virginia. Good morning.
Q: Yeah, good morning, Dr. Zogby.
MR. ZOGBY: Hi. How are you?
Q: I am a fan of your institution. I support that.
MR. ZOGBY: Thank you.
Q: So my question is, if Arafat is the only elected leader in Palestine, and the U.S. government shut him down from attending or any taking part of this negotiation, so do you think it’s fair to the Palestinian people, who elected Yasser Arafat as their president, but not attending any peace movement now?
MR. ZOGBY: You know, I couldn’t agree with you more that Arafat’s the elected leader of the Palestinian people and clearly plays a role. I don’t think you’d get an argument from anyone on the Arab side, including Abu Mazin, Mahmoud Abbas. He understands and agrees with that.
The disrespect shown to Arafat simply does not work. If we want to achieve this peace process, then more respect needs to be shown to the man. However, Abu Mazin is the prime minister. He has the support of President Arafat, and he has the support, I think—well, he clearly has it of the legislative council, which wanted reform, which wanted change, which wanted a new government.
They now have a new government. He needs to be supported as well. I don’t think that it is inconsistent to, on the one hand, recognize President Arafat as the elected leader and Abu Mazen as the head of the government right now, who is, in fact, negotiating this process. We need to simply find a way to move forward with this and make it work without showing disrespect to President Arafat. That’s simply not going to help us at all.
MR. SLEN: Why is Mahmoud Abbas also known as Abu Mazen?
MR. ZOGBY: Well, he’s the father of Mazen, and Abu is an honorific title given to a person at the birth of their first son.
MR. SLEN: What should we call him? Officially, he’s Mahmoud Abbas.
MR. ZOGBY: He’s Mahmoud Abbas—that’s his name. And it’s a familiar term. It’s been used as a “nom de guerre” as well. But formally, he’s Abu Mazen. That’s his name.
MR. SLEN: What’s his background, very quickly?
MR. ZOGBY: You know, I don’t know.
MR. SLEN: All right. Detroit, good morning.
Q: Good morning. From where I sit, I think—and I’m not saying this lightly—that I know who I would vote for president, Mr. Zogby. Why don’t you run? I feel like if we had someone as diplomatic as you, and as learned as you, and as cool-headed as you, and even-handed as you, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in now.
I do think, although, that Israel has provoked Palestine when they moved in on their territory. I mean, I wonder how Americans would feel if a bulldozer came down Jefferson Avenue and just tore up their neighborhood, and now said, “This is mine.” I mean, you need to think in terms of humanity.
The Palestinians have probably, absolutely no hope. And when you don’t hope, and you don’t have any hope—and speaking as an African American who was in the civil rights movement, I know exactly how that feels, and I know exactly what you cannot do to perpetuate peace. And I’d like to say one more thing.
Mrs. Clinton, when she was running as senator in New York, came out and said long ago that there should be two states, and Israel needs to make peace with Palestine, not the other way around. And she got the Jewish vote. So that tells me a lot.
MR. ZOGBY: Well, look, we’ve polled, and we’ve polled both Arab Americans and American Jews, as well as the rest of the country, and it’s fascinating. There’s a poll actually up on our website at the Arab American Institute that makes an interesting observation that American Jews and Arab Americans both fundamentally agree on the need for a two-state solution, on recognizing the rights of Israel and the Palestinians, and of recognizing the fact that the administration needs to be tough with both sides to make this work.
I think—and I thank you for your compliments. The only thing I’m running for right now is trying to get through the summer to vacation time to go away with my family. But at the present time, one of the things I think we need to do is recognize that most Americans want the president to be tough with both sides and make this stick, because I think most people are just tired of this conflict and want it to be over, want justice for both sides.
We need to support the president and push him to push both sides to make peace. About Abu Mazen, though, or Mahmoud Abbas, he has been one of the founders of Fatah with Yasser Arafat. I don’t know what he did before the 1960s, in his earlier—we know Yasser Arafat was an engineer. I just don’t know what Abu Mazen was as his chosen profession before he became a leader in the Palestinian movement.
MR. SLEN: If Yasser Arafat inserts himself into this process, what will be the U.S. reaction?
MR. ZOGBY: I would hope that we do not overreact. I think that we have overreacted to date. This is not about personalities. This is about a process that needs to have discipline from the United States side to work. And so, I’m hoping that we don’t personalize it. Just as it would be unfair to personalize it on the—look, there’s a whole lot of Palestinians who simply cannot stomach the thought of somebody meeting with Ariel Sharon given his record, going back to the late 1940s and 50s.
There’s no doubt he’s committed atrocities against Arabs and Palestinians, and they have a historical memory of that. But to personalize this conflict is to lose the ability to focus on the endgame. So I don’t think we need to do that. We have a prime minister. There is a new cabinet. The Palestinians are moving forward. There’s no need to, in fact, for us to insert Arafat.
What we need to do is strengthen the resolve of Palestinians to move forward by translating real progress on the ground so that they can take the tough steps they need to do to move forward. They’re not going to move forward unless they see real progress happening.
MR. SLEN: About five minutes left with our guest. Kansas City, you’re on the air.
Q: Yes, good morning, Mr. Zogby.
MR. ZOGBY: Hi.
Q: It’s always a pleasure to hear you speak. Does the roadmap address the economic viability of a Palestinian state? I’m supremely confident that we can have a two-state solution. However, what is the 10 or 20-year long term perspective, without subsidization from wealthy Arab states, how is the Palestinian state going to survive economically?
MR. ZOGBY: You know, interesting question, and it’s something that we failed to recognize, I think, during the last administration. I was actually heading a project with former Congressman Mel Levine called Builders for Peace during the last administration. We worked with Vice President Gore and others in the administration, Ron Brown, the late Ron Brown, to deal with these economic issues.
The big problem is that unless a Palestinian state is truly sovereign, it cannot economically prosper. And by truly sovereign, I mean that it needs to control its own borders. If you can’t import raw material and export finished product, if Palestinians aren’t able to make separate business deals with the outside world, if they always have to go through an Israeli middleman, if the Palestinian economy, in other words, remains subordinate to Israel, then you’re not going to create jobs, you’re not going to create hope, and you’re not going to create the viability Palestinians need.
If they can’t import from Jordan and export through Jordan, which they can’t do now and weren’t able to do even during the best years of the peace process, then it’s simply not going to work. And that’s what we have to do, is have a truly viable Palestinian state, where people have access to the outside world and can do business.
Because as was pointed out to me, actually, three days after the Oslo Agreement was signed by Nabeel Shaath, who actually was one of the negotiators there—he was on my TV show, which I have a weekly call-in show in the Arab world—he was asked the question, “What are you going to do when the first bomber hits?” And Nabeel looked straight at the camera, as I’m looking straight out at you right now, and he said, “Look,” he said, “If this works—and I think it will work,” he said, “A year from now, our young people will have jobs, our farmers will be back on their land, and,” he said, “Our people in the cities will be building the infrastructure of a future state.”
Two years to that day, he was back on my show. A bomb had gone off in Tel Aviv I think it was. And he had a picture in The New York Times, I’ll never forget, of 20,000 young men in Gaza shaking their fists in the air in support of the bomber. I asked Nabeel, “What happened?” He said, “What happened was those young folks never found jobs, in part because of the closure, in part because we never were able to get direct investment, because we could not attract investors into a place where we didn’t control the borders, where we weren’t able to guarantee them access to the outside world.”
“And therefore,” he said, “Unemployment has doubled, settlement size has increased,” at that point, “by 30 percent. We’re less free, we have less hope, and so,” he said, “when the bomber strikes, people don’t turn to us and say ‘stop them, because they’re threatening everything we’ve won.’ Instead, they say, ‘we’re with the bombers, because peace has been of no benefit to us at all, and the young people are despairing.’”
And so, we have to translate on the ground the prospects of peace into real benefits of peace, so that Palestinians will feel they have a stake in this process. They don’t right now. You know, imagine what unemployment for a decade is like at levels of 50, 60, 70 percent. Young people in Gaza have never had a job in their lives, and no prospect of a job, because there’s no economy.
And so, we’ve got to take that seriously. If you have no job, you have no hope, you have no future. And therefore, you have real trouble brewing. We’ve got to make some difference in the lives of people, and I think that that’s the goal that we need to set our mind to, is not just achieving a state, but a viable state with an economy not tied to day labor jobs in Israel, as it is right now, but tied to real growth on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank, where people have a future.
MR. SLEN: Oakland, California, good morning.
Q: Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking my call. Thanks for C-SPAN. Hey, listen, you know, in a month or so, I’m going to be 50, and this is something that I’ve been watching all my adult life. I’ve watched this, you know, as an American, I’ve watched it all my life. And I really, I have kind of a shocker of an idea here, but my solution for this whole problem over here is just to buy the Israelis out: you pay them to leave.
The Arab community, the Palestinians, the Muslim people, they’re not going to stand for Western people with very different values taking over their front yard.
MR. ZOGBY: Well, that was true during the British mandate period. But look, a state of Israel exists, it’s real, and there are people who’ve been born there now for many generations, and it’s their home. Where I think you have supporters, even in Israel, is that you’ve got to buy people out of the West Bank. In other words, settlements simply are not going to help this process move forward.
But no, Israel exists. The Arab states are ready to recognize that. The Palestinians have recognized that. And this is not about westerners or easterners or anybody anywhere. This is about, Israel has a right to exist, at this point, Palestinians have a right to exist, at this point, in two separate, independent, viable states. We’ve got to find a way to make it real.
Otherwise, we’re going to get to the point, in just a very short period of time, where, in the land of Palestine or Israel, the land that was the British mandatory Palestine, you will have more Palestinians, more Arabs than you have Jews. That is what this occupation is about. And frankly, at that point, one man, one vote, or a South African model is exactly where you’re going to be.
That’s something that most Israelis don’t want, which is why some extremist parties there talk about expelling Palestinians. But frankly, two states—we’re at the last chance, I think, to have two separate states right now, and we need to take advantage of it.
MR. SLEN: Last call for Jim Zogby, Scarsdale, New York.
Q: Hello, Mr. Zogby.
MR. ZOGBY: Hi.
Q: You know, I find it difficult to say I support Israel without saying I support the Palestinians also, because we can’t have one without the other. But I think we can also say that it’s not an Israel-Palestinian problem, but rather, an Israel-Arab problem. There is a culture in the Dominican Republic, for example, where getting to be a great baseball player is your ticket out of poverty. In the Arab world, it’s been get your family out of poverty, become a suicide bomber and earn a reward—whether it’s in heaven or on earth, I’m not sure.
But, you know, the solution that I have won’t necessarily be implemented. What we need are people in between the Israelis and the Arabs. We need Colombians, Peruvians, Chinese, Indians, living in between them, whether it’s on a few meters or a half a mile strip, to actually physically separate those people.
MR. ZOGBY: You know, Palestinians asked actually more than a decade ago during the violence that ensued in the 1990 build-up to the last Gulf war, they asked for international peacekeepers. We still think that that would have been an important idea then. I think it probably still is now. International peacekeepers can be very important. But I agree with your first comment: you can’t be for one, at this point, without being for the other. And so I almost objected initially to your lines being pro-Israel, pro-Palestinian. The question is, who’s for peace and who’s against peace? Who supports the roadmap of the president for two states, and who supports continued occupation or continued warfare that takes us nowhere but this continuing spiral of violence that takes lives on both sides?
I want to thank C-SPAN for the opportunity to do this, and thank the calls. Checkout our website. You’ll see some interesting material on the website about the roadmap, and you’ll also see some links to the Israeli press and the Arab press, and articles about how both sides are viewing it. I think we’ve got a chance here, and we have to take advantage of it.
Thanks.
MR. SLEN: Jim Zogby, thanks for being with us this morning.
MR. ZOGBY: Thank you.