Volume 67, Issue 4

Transcript: Keynote Address by Dr. Gideon Doron

Gideon Doron is a professor of political science at the University of Tel Aviv and the president of the Israeli Political Science Association.  “September 11 -- One Year Later: Responding to Global Challenges” took place from Thursday, September 12, to Saturday, September 14.

Gideon Doron: …Every young generation has the responsibility to make this world a better place to be in. This is what I teach my children and my students, which are, I guess, the same thing for me. And I'm sure that Dr. Ashrawi does the same with her students. So wholeheartedly I support and I accept what she is saying. So to try to understand why I was not convinced by Dr. Ashrawi -- and perhaps to offer some alternative explanation...
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Yesterday, Dr. Ashrawi emphasized and drew sympathy to the misery of her people and their suffering during the ongoing Intifada. She mentioned the killing of innocent citizens, including children. She blamed the Israeli occupation -- one has to have a heart of stone not to empathize with her description. She failed, however, to mention the responsibility of the Palestinian leadership for bringing about this condition upon the people. She failed to emphasize how leaders have done nothing to change this condition -- how corrupted they are, how the billions of dollars that were transferred to them by international organizations over the years were used, to put it mildly, for non-humanistic purposes. And this is a position that is not my position, which is heard by many, many Palestinians.
Dr. Ashrawi also failed to mention that the situation among the Palestinians is not much different than the ones experienced by people of Iraq -- we heard it in preponderance yesterday -- or of Syria or Iran or some other places in the Middle East, where people are ruled by cruel and murderous despots, who because they have absolute control over national resources, they frequently benefit from the despair of their people. And thus in order to avoid starvation, people must show complete loyalty to their rulers. Saddam Hussein perfected this mechanism of control. Yasser Arafat -- because he's not so rich -- lags behind. This may sound to you as over-simplification of a complex reality, but the point is as Emmanuel Kant observed in his essay on "Perpetual Peace," that the despots do not bear the personal costs associated with their aggressive behaviors or decisions. Israeli current policy, to restrict the movement of Arafat, is deduced from this Kantian notion. Let him bear some of the cause of the conflict, and let us prevent him from doing the thing that he likes most, which is to fly around to world capitals and enjoy VIP services while his people are suffering.
My government apparently believes that keeping him in one place may lead him to change his mind -- to become less aggressive. Indeed, I believe, most Palestinians, like most Israelis, like most Americans, like most people, are not political -- they value the routines of their lives and care for their families. But unlike the Israelis and the Americans, and with all the criticism -- right or wrong -- that we have concerning the quality of our leadership, or if you want, the values that they hold, in the Palestinian case we are talking about something, something completely different. It's a class by itself. As a matter of routine, Arafat lies, deceives, manipulates -- and is actively involved in terrorism since the founding of Al Fatah organization 1964. To remind you, we know that an Intifada is the backbone of the PLO and the PA. We tend to forget those acts of terrorism are not new for the Israelis. They began long before we took control over the West Bank and the Gaza strip as a consequence of the 1967 Six Day War.
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Because most of us have already internalized much of the cost of terrorism...we tend to forget who is responsible for it. We do not necessarily think of terrorism in the context of Palestinian strategy when we innocently go through security in airports all around the world. We forget the terrorist incidents that involved Swiss Air, TWA, Air France, British Airways, Lufthansa, and of course El Al, that occurred during the early 1970's and were initiated, many of them, by the Palestinians.
In 1969 when I was a student at Hebrew University, I decided to cut out of a very boring class -- it happens [laughter] -- so I convinced a friend of mine, an English woman who came to study in Israel, to join me in the cafeteria. While sipping our coffee, a bomb exploded next to us, and several students -- like you -- were badly hurt. I still have some scratches from that incident. Immediately, all universities and schools in Israel were surrounded with high fences and security forces. And you cannot walk since then into a university without showing first the contents of your belongings. Most people in Israel have already forgotten this incident that ignited this policy of fences. However, yesterday, I saw here a package, and I got frightened, and then I remembered I was in America. However, the fences and the security around the university did not help another friend of mine from those days, Levina Shapira, who was killed in a similar terrorist explosion in a cafeteria at Hebrew University just a couple of months ago. I guess a number came up on the roulette of death that Arafat designed for us. We tend to forget the cost of terrorism because it is diffused. It behaves like air pollution -- like public goods -- or rather I would say like public 'bads.' While it directly affects some, it indirectly affects everyone. On Tuesday I saw a poll whereby 69 percent of New York residents worry about future terrorist attacks. I was told at Yeshiva University, where I am currently teaching a course, they spent after September 11th millions of dollars on security. You should have seen what's going on there. It's like a protected fortress. Each student, I believe, has to add some small amount to his/her tuition so as to cover those extra costs of security.
In Israel we're used to it. In many public places, we're asked to pay this terrorist tax -- in coffee houses it's about $1 -- so we pay this terrorist tax when we travel, when we build our homes with an extra room for shelter against nuclear attack. It's not academic for us. When we design tall buildings, it's not academic for us. When we participate in sports events and so on and so forth -- almost every walk of the Israeli life is protected against terrorism. This approach seems to me -- and I hope not -- may spread also to other places in the West unless we decisively act against its sources.
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 When grand coalitions form in parliamentary democracies, one cannot expect the governments to initiate constructive policies. One should only expect them to react to existing threats, to the survival of the political system. That is what happens in Israel. Sharon enjoys great popularity, and he seems to be relatively successful in reducing the perception of threat to our existence. In general and over the past two years, we encounter very interesting statistics in Israel. About 70 percent of the Jewish population would support going to war if so asked by our government. But the same figure, in fact the same people more or less, support peace with the Palestinians.
I read this finding as a desire of the people to reduce -- one way or another -- the absurdity associated with their lives. The only serious political debate that goes on in the country is taking place between those on the right, who hold the position that we should talk peace with the Palestinian only after they stop terrorizing us, and those on the left who say that we should talk while they are terrorizing us. The wall-to-wall coalition holds the first position. Parties on the left, including three Arab parties, hold the second position. Nobody's talking anymore about development of trust between the Israelis and Palestinian, which was the basic ingredient of the Oslo Agreement. Instead we are talking about the size of the walls that we should build so as to separate and protect us from these people. So what is really going on?
I've three...I have several explanations, but I choose three. The first is an optimistic one. I'm using Dennis Stein, the internationalist's notion that bargaining is a long process that will end when all claims and demands of the parties involved will be satisfied. The points of negotiation in Oslo, Washington D.C., Cairo, Camp David, Taba, and other places are just points in the process in bargaining. When Arafat refuses and resorts to terrorism and aggressive leverage in the process, he expects to get a better deal. And lo and behold, he is usually successful, but he could not get a better deal than the Clinton plan -- I just mentioned some of the elements. In this context, the demand for the right of return is just -- from the Palestinian point of view, using this perception -- a bargaining strategy. Well, the Israelis do not read it this way. We care about our democracy, we care about our well-being, and we care about our lives. We respond accordingly. From this perspective as a bargaining -- bargaining is a long process -- we heard about the Saudis' peace initiative, we observed Mubarak's interest and involvement in the process, all at the time, even King Hussein, days before he was dying, came down to Washington -- or came up to Washington -- to help put some leverage, you know, influence -- persuaded people to come together. But from this perspective, Dr. Ashrawi, myself, you, all of you, are also part of the process of bargaining that goes on in the Middle East. Because in this process one tactic, as you say, is fighting over public opinion, and if you convince the people on set -- one system of opinions -- then you get one result. If in another context you get different results...so that's what's going on. And you didn't know that you're involved in process. But this is optimistic assessment, because it assumes that the conflict is just over territories and thus sooner or later a solution will be reached.
I've another explanation, I can't tell you when it will be reached, but it will be reached. I've another explanation. It's also a simple one and also contains some hope. It follows the logic that is presently being formulated by Professor Bruce Bueno de Mesquita of Stanford. It basically asserts that some revolutionary leaders, like Arafat, are rigid terrorists who cannot or do not want to make a conversion into institutional leaders. And in our case, he doesn't want to become a leader of a small poor country, albeit independent. Presumably, it is more attractive for Arafat to be an international celebrity then a head of a small, insignificant state. His people who depend on him follow suit. His opposition, in the form of the Hamas or the Islamic Jihad, compete with his organization the position of influence amongst the people. The more Israelis they kill, the higher respect they obtain among the Palestinians, the more they are able to recruit volunteers to their cause. In the trade-off Arafat must make between a civil war against fundamentalists -- as he committed himself in the Oslo Accord -- and international war against Israel, he chose the latter. Although he's moving away from obtaining the goal of an independent state, he can still sustain some form of social solidarity as a result of having a common enemy, which helps to preserve his leadership. Let me cite Dennis Ross on this point. "Arafat's whole life has been governed by a struggle and a cause. Everything he has done as a leader of the Palestinians is to always leave his options open -- never to close the door. He was being asked here at Camp David, 'you've got to close the door,' for to end the conflict would mean to end himself. Therefore he needed to re-establish the Palestinians as victims. And unfortunately they are victims...and we see now in a terrible way."
The third possible explanation is a bit more complicated. I call it "a clash between different perceptions of the future," not a clash of civilizations as Huntington proposed. We all live under the shadow of the future. We make decisions in the present, with different pictures of the future in our mind. If we are optimistic about the future, we use a different discount rate for this decision as compared to a situation when we are pessimistic. We behave accordingly. Optimists are usually risk-takers. Pessimists are risk-averse. The logic deduced by this mode of behavior is called, in economics, "rational expectations." You will invest in the market when you believe that good times are coming. And you will keep your money out when you think the future is about to be rainy. In the Israel democracy, many optimists became pessimists. They gained experience. Even many of those who, during the 1990's, banked high hopes in the Oslo Agreement lost their faith in the intentions of the other side. With the exception of some small radical groups, we've become present-oriented with regard to the Palestinians, having one main goal of protecting ourselves and our children. It is only a matter of time until the small Zionist entity will disappear. The Shahids, those human missiles that explode themselves among us, are only a product of this vision. They are promised a better life in heaven, their families are granted financial support on earth. But again as I said, it was the understanding of all parties involved in the 1993 agreement that the Palestinian Authority will take care of the ambitions of its radical elements, and we will take care of ours. Instead Arafat made a strategic choice to join them. He does not want to go down in history as one who gave up to the Jews -- he said so numerous times. So it is a pessimistic explanation because it doesn't involve territories as in the first explanation, and it does not involve waiting for Arafat's replacement as in the second explanation, which is the position that is being held now by the Bush administration. It basically tells us that this protracted conflict is not about to end in the foreseeable future. I hope that I'm wrong.
In conclusion, I would like to provide you with another piece of information about myself. Between 1995 and 1999, I served in a position equivalent to that of FCC commissioner, and from that perspective, I must say that Arafat is perhaps the most successful terrorist of all time. This was because he was able to keep the saliency of the Palestinian issue high on the international agenda for almost 40 years. Local conflicts such as those taking place in the Sudan, Spain, northern Ireland, India, Chechnya and other places do not draw as much attention and for such a long and persistent span of time. Because of his success, many people believe that the conflict between Israel and Palestine is the main source of instability in the Middle East. It is not. People forget the eight years of war between Iran and Iraq during the 80's, Iran against Kuwait in the 90's, Egypt vs. Saudi Arabia in the conflict over Yemen during the 60's -- and of course, domestic violence in Lebanon, Syria, Egypt and so on and so forth. Again and again, in all those incidences and conflicts, Israel was not involved. It's like 'batteries are not included.' Only lately -- it was last year -- Mr. Arafat was upset from his first place in the international media by a new champion of the sky -- Mr. Bin Laden. And Bin Laden, as we see and can read, is facing a serious competition from another celebrity -- Mr. Saddam Hussein. I would therefore like to suggest that to finance the global dialogue organization, Dr. Ashrawi should talk to her leader, Arafat. She should ask him to give her the money that he falsely obtained as a Nobel Prize for Peace winner. He's no winner. He will never win. Thank you. [clapping]

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