Edited Transcript of Remarks by Khalil Jahshan
'For the Record' No. 282 (2 August 2007)

According to Khalil Jahshan, what is happening in Palestine today cannot be adequately analyzed or understood in isolation of the wider developments throughout the Middle East. The Palestine issue has been and remains the central issue in the region. Jahshan, who spoke at the first lecture of the 2007 Palestine Center Summer Intern Series, 'The Future of Arab-Israeli Peace: Challenges and Perceptions,' discussed the dynamics of the Middle East since 2006 with a focus on Palestine.  He addressed the role the U.S. plays in the Arab-Israeli conflict and the evolution of Palestinian politics from the time Israel was created in 1948 to the January 2006 Palestinian parliamentary election, which put Palestinian politics, for the first time since the creation of the Palestinian National Movement, in the hands of Hamas, a non-secular group.  Mr. Jahshan also analyzed the history of Palestinian politics and the eight stages of its development.

The Palestine Center
Washington, DC
10 July 2007


Khalil Jahshan:

Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be at the Palestine Center again. I appreciate the invitation of the Summer Intern Group to come and meet with you today to discuss what I believe is a very important topic'not just for me personally because of my long-term vested interest in Palestinian affairs but equally important for the country at large, in the sense that our interests in the Middle East center around the Palestine issue.

Unfortunately, the fact that the conflict has escaped a solution for such a long time and has continued to impede, if you will, our interests in the region, whatever these interests are, has come back to haunt us as a nation. Whether we are involved in the Gulf, whether we are involved in North Africa, whether we are involved in any other part of the Middle East, the fact that this conflict, or this issue, the Palestine issue, has been festering for more than 50 years has not served our national interests well.

This is particularly true since we have unilaterally declared ourselves 'the sole legitimate peacemaker' in the region and have not allowed any other party to have an equitable and meaningful role in partnership with us in trying to resolve the conflict. Whenever a party tried to do that when we were bored, distracted, or busy with our plate too full with other challenges, we tended to let them dabble with the issue but simply in a limited role or capacity. We have allowed the E.U. or more recently the Quartet to clean after us, to carry a broom and a dustpan and pick up whatever we leave behind as the region drifted into chaos. But whenever things get serious, we always ask others to get out of the way, as if it's our sole domain and personal responsibility to single-handedly 'father and mother' any peace initiative in the region.

Levi gave me a very ambitious series of topics to cover today. If I am going to follow his instructions, we should be out of here by next Friday, but I am not going to do that. I have another commitment and I am sure you do. So I will make a few remarks for about 20 minutes or so to either excite you a little bit about the subject matter or insult your intelligence and then engage in the art of conversation immediately afterwards. And I hope the Q & A session will give us enough time to cover a lot of these issues that were assigned to us. But I am going to basically dwell on the issue of the dynamics of the Middle East since 2006 with a focus on the Palestinian issue.

Yesterday, I noticed something interesting on the newswire service. Reuters reported that the foreign ministers of France, Italy, Spain and several other European states sent a letter, to be more precise, an open letter to the new big power Middle East envoy, Tony Blair, urging him to organize, without delay, an international Middle East peace conference [to] include all the parties to the conflict in order 'to redefine our objectives,' in light of the fact, according to the ministerial letter, that 'the Road Map has failed and the status quo that has prevailed since 2000 is leading to nothing.'

The European ministers included in their listed objectives the need to obtain from Israel concrete and immediate measures in favor of the Palestinian Authority (PA) led by [Palestinian President] Mahmoud Abbas [also known as Abu Mazen]. These measures, according to the open letter, specifically include the following:

 The transfer of all taxes due.
 The release of thousands of prisoners who do not have blood on their hands.
 The release as well of the main Palestinian leaders to ensure succession within Fateh. 
 A freeze in new settlements and evacuation of unauthorized settlements.

The E.U. foreign ministers also recommended the consideration of something that has been controversial for many years, an issue familiar to those of you who have been studying this conflict over the years, which is the issue of a 'robust, international force.' The ministers suggested this time to link such force either to NATO or to base it on UN Chapter 7 to take into account, according to them, Israel's need for security. It is ironic because over the years most of the demands for an international force of protection came from the Palestinian side, and it was always ignored. I guess because security on the Palestinian side does not count for anything. In this case, on a voluntary basis, all these nations that claim to be even-handed but are considered on the Israeli side to be more biased to the Arab side because they do not agree with the Israeli perspective one-hundred percent are voluntarily suggesting that type of force for purely Israeli reasons'to protect Israel's security, not necessarily to protect the security of both sides which would make more sense in a genuinely neutral letter.

Meanwhile of course, another news item which I am sure you noticed yesterday was the fact that Israeli Foreign Ministry officials confirmed that an Arab League delegation including the foreign ministers of Egypt and Jordan will be visiting Israel. Initially, it was announced that they would be visiting Israel this Thursday, but then the visit was postponed to a later date this month because it clashed with the upcoming memorial of the recent war in Lebanon. But at any rate, you have a surprising development'for the first time in history, a delegation from the Arab League is coming to Israel to meet with Israeli leaders to discuss what is known as the Arab Peace Initiative. This offers Israel normal diplomatic ties with the Arab States in return for a full withdrawal by Israel from the 1967 occupied territories, i.e. the West Bank and Gaza, the creation of a Palestinian state and 'a just solution' to the Palestinian refugee problem.

Well, my reaction was very simple. Welcome to Kafka-land.

After I read these news items, I was reminded of my friend, Fayez Abu Rahmeh, the former head of the Palestinian Bar Association in Gaza. He used to visit Washington regularly to meet with U.S. officials. He would always preface his remarks about Gaza by saying, 'Welcome to the planet of Gaza.' Indeed, Gaza has always been a planet on its own in the sense that it has been ignored and ghettoized for so long. The miserable conditions that we witness today in Gaza are not new. They are not the product of the last few weeks, or the last few months, or the last few years. It has been a long-term situation.

Frankly, the strange and quite visible disconnect between international intentions'even if they were good intentions and I am not willing to challenge the intentions of the foreign ministers of these countries'but the disconnect between international intentions pertaining to peacemaking in the Middle East, including by the way the American and not just European initiatives to make peace between Israel and Palestine and the reality on the ground in both countries, has indeed become Kafkaesque over the past few years. When you read the news on a daily basis regarding the situation in Palestine and Israel and you hear diplomatic pronouncements and remarks by our secretary of state or these foreign ministers, it seems as if they live in a totally different universe'the absence of a sense of urgency, the inability to relate to the real circumstances on the ground and the reality of the pain that is taking place on a daily basis on the ground. So they make these nice, flowery statements and express concern for the inhumane conditions on the ground, but somehow you do not feel confident that they are really aware or reflecting the desperate reality on the ground.

So in order to understand the topic we are discussing today in terms of its internal, regional and external implications, the topic being the dynamics of the region since 2006 with the election of Hamas, I would like to make three points by way of introduction and then try to get a little bit deeper into the topic.

First, I believe that what is happening in Palestine today cannot be adequately analyzed or understood in isolation of wider developments throughout the region. The Palestine issue has been and remains today the central issue in the Middle East. Certainly, it has not created every political or social problem that exists in the region, but when you look at the larger conflicts in the Middle East, the Palestine issue has always been at the very least a contributing factor to regional turmoil and instability through the central value widely attributed to it by the population of the Arab and Muslim worlds.

The fact that it is a protracted conflict that has escaped a lasting solution for so long despite numerous attempts at resolving it'and if I am not mistaken as a student of Middle East politics, I think the Oslo process of the 1990s was the 76 attempt at solving the Arab-Israeli conflict since the first partition proposal of 1937. So peacemaking in the region has been an industry and a national sport in terms of our country. Every U.S. administration since 1948 has dabbled with it, mostly for domestic political reasons rather than for moral or lofty reasons. A commitment to peace, at any rate a solution, has escaped all these attempts.

If you look at the region today, not everything can be attributed to the Palestine question, but the Palestine question being a protracted conflict has been a constant challenge. It is like trying to push a big balloon or a big ball under water while swimming in a pool, and every time there is another conflict and you are trying to reach for the other ball, the old one pops up again. You try to reach down and take care of this one and two more pop up on the other side. That, frankly, summarizes the history of U.S. policy in the region over the past 59 years since the beginning of the Arab-Israeli conflict.

So when you look, for example, at the ongoing war in Iraq; when you look at the second Israeli-Hizballah war that took place this past summer; when you look at the political tug of war between the United States and Syria over different issues (the war on terror, the border with Iraq); when you look at the conflict between Washington and Iran (be it about terrorism in the region, be it about Iranian interests in Iraq, be it about nuclear weapons or the aspirations to develop nuclear weapons by Tehran); when you look at the growing destabilization of the region as a result of all these clashes and conflicts leading to worrisome levels of radicalization in general throughout the region and of course from my perspective, as an American, leading also to a very strong and worrisome anti-Americanism. That is according to all public opinion surveys conducted by friendly and unfriendly sources. All these conflicts have managed to have a spillover effect onto the domestic political scene in Palestine and vice versa. What took place in Gaza recently with the takeover of Hamas cannot be analyzed and understood in isolation or without dealing with these issues and trying to put it in the context of all these tensions that are taking place in the region.

The second point concerns the failure of the Arab-Israeli peace process, regardless of how you define that process. Frankly, peace processes are in the eye of the beholder. Sometimes we like them; sometimes we do not. They tend to be politicized. Sometimes the U.S. suggests a peace process or a peace proposal that is shot down by the Arabs or Israelis. Sometimes the Israelis propose one that is shot down by the Arabs. So when you look at the 76 peace proposals suggested over the years, these are proposals made by different parties at different times. But here I am basically referring to the attempts made in the 1990s, a decade of diplomatic activity, mostly led by the United States, particularly during the Clinton administration. The failure of that process to really bring Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza to an end and deliver even the most minimal amount or measure of Palestinian political aspiration has had a significant impact, I believe, on current economic, political and social conditions in Palestine. So the ensuing 'Bantustanization' of the West Bank and the total isolation and 'ghettoization' of Gaza produced a frustration of rising expectations, to use the social science terminology of the 1960s. This served as an impetus, I believe, and a fertile ground for some of the recent political developments and trends which we have witnessed in Palestinian society.

The third point is the fact that the PLO [Palestinian Liberation Organization] and its offshoot, the Palestinian Authority, under the leadership of Fateh starting with [Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat and later with Abbas, failed miserably to end Israeli occupation and to deliver, if you will, the promise and the rationale for Arafat returning to Palestine and going into Gaza and the West Bank'namely that a peace deal with Israel was around the corner. Arafat was promising to deliver to the Palestinian people the most elusive solution to their predicament, to their daily agony, to their daily problems, and it just didn't happen.

So, the failure of the PA under Fateh to end Israeli occupation, to govern effectively, to establish and maintain law and order, to stabilize the Palestinian economy, in spite of huge amounts of foreign aid that came in at least in the initial phase of the PA, and to try to mobilize the support and the creative energies of the Palestinian public, all left a huge vacuum in Palestinian society. That vacuum was unfortunately filled in a surprising manner. In politics, you never leave a vacuum. If you leave a vacuum, someone, not necessarily of your own choosing, is going to try to fill it. So if you do not like vacuums in politics, and most people do not, particularly governments, then you have to fill that vacuum. If you leave a vacuum, then somebody else will come and fill it with something that is not to your liking or in a manner that is not to your liking, and that is what happened in this case. A vacuum was left that was filled mostly by chaotic and uncontrolled political and social developments and events in Palestine that I personally believe are detrimental to the national interests of the Palestinian people and their political aspirations.

What happened in 2006 and how has it changed things?

On 25 January 2006, elections were held for the Palestinian Legislative Council (PLC), which is the legislative branch or the parliament of the Palestinian political system set up in the 1990s. As you know, the Palestinian National Authority was established under the legal framework of the different agreements that were reached between Israel and the PLO in the context of the Oslo negotiations conducted under the leadership of the United States.

As far as the elections are concerned, there were all kinds of apprehensions by the different parties involved. The Israelis were not sure whether to proceed with them or not because they have to approve them. The Palestinians were very apprehensive about them. Palestinian President Abbas expressed those concerns to [U.S.] President [George W.] Bush; he was very apprehensive. He was not sure whether they should proceed and whether things were ready for the elections or not. The United States was initially somewhat ambivalent, but then the Bush administration decided that the time was ripe to hold the elections and pressured the concerned parties to go ahead and proceed with them.

The Palestinian elections fit our own agenda for the region, particularly at that early phase of our campaign to bring about democracy to the Middle East. We wanted some kind of a winning card somewhere to show that we are democratizing the region, that we are having free and democratic elections and electing the right people. But, to the surprise of many inside and outside the region, Hamas defeated Fateh and won the elections, which, needless to say, was not to our liking. Washington considered, and continues to consider, Hamas a terrorist organization politically and legally. Yet, Hamas won 44 percent of the popular vote and got 56 percent of the seats in the PLC.

The Palestinian electoral system is a very convoluted system. It is however an acceptable system, a legitimate system. It follows a European-type electoral-system. But the way it was designed, it resulted in Hamas getting 44 percent of the public vote to Fateh's 42 percent. So you have only a 2 percent difference between the two. Yet Hamas ended up with 56 percent of the seats, in other words, 77 of 132 seats, while Fateh ended up with only 45 seats. So all of a sudden, you have this unexpected turbulence in Palestine, which although not necessarily an independent state, it did have essentially a one-party system. Fateh has dominated Palestinian politics since its inception in the late 1950s. And even though there were many other little parties and offshoots that have emerged over the years, Fateh has managed, mostly through the power of the purse and Machiavellian skills on the part of Yasser Arafat, to dominate the political scene during that period. Arafat managed to co-opt everybody, basically by funding their political, military and social activities, subsidizing their economic needs, supporting their families and sending their kids to school. Whatever it took, he managed to control both his supporters and his opposition. That is why people joke in Palestinian circles that Arafat never had the quality support that he needed to propel himself forward, and he never had the quality opposition to keep himself under check.

So, Fateh was surprised, indeed totally shocked by the election results. I also think Hamas itself was equally surprised by the results. I do not think they were ready to govern or assume responsibility for controlling the cabinet. Of course other parties to the conflict, including Israel and the U.S., were equally surprised. You might object to my characterization of the U.S. as a party to the conflict. The fact of the matter, however, we have long time ago taken sides with Israel in this conflict, long before most of you guys on the younger side were born. So, it's very difficult to rationally describe the U.S. as a neutral party or evenhanded arbiter. It is very interesting because there you have a conflict, one of the best known conflicts in the world, where the U.S. has been asked by both sides to mediate a conflict, even though it is not necessarily a neutral party. It is actually a party to the conflict. That does not happen very often in world politics. It is one of those rare and awkward situations in history where a party to the conflict has been asked to mediate that conflict and to even monopolize peacemaking attempts to resolve the conflict for so long.

So, we have had a vested interest in those elections, and that is why the U.S. was interested in the results, which visibly upset the administration. Almost immediately, President Bush got on TV and grudgingly admitted that democratic elections do not always produce the desired results. His reaction was reminiscent to that of his former Secretary of Defense [Donald] Rumsfeld when he described freedom as 'untidy' in reference to looting on the streets of Baghdad. Democracy, we were told, is a messy enterprise, and in this case, it backfired. So, we became frustrated and could not hide it well.

There we were preaching the benefits of democracy to the Palestinians and trying to use them as a winning card to show that liberty is spreading according to our vision for the region, but they proceed to elect the wrong party. So, President Bush was clearly dismayed, but he had to swallow his pride and attempt to downplay the significance of the Hamas victory. It did not take very long for the administration to publicly start undermining the results of the Palestinian elections, even though we have been preaching to the people in the Middle East that the first lesson they needed to learn about democracy is the need to respect the results of free elections. And wouldn't you know it, the first free election that gets broad public attention in the region we practically reject the results because we don't like the winner. So, we actively and openly try to undermine the party that won. Our campaign, however, was not restricted to economic, legal and diplomatic attempts to weaken the newly-established Hamas-led government but included, in addition, more subversive methods, including military training and equipment sent to Fateh-controlled security forces to confront Hamas.

Our heavy-handed policy was not well received in Palestine, and it backfired on the administration. Flexing our muscles ended up weakening Fateh and eventually led to Hamas taking over Gaza. I designed a course in 2005 called, 'Why Do They Hate Us: U.S. Image Abroad.' I recommend to all of you to explore this important question in order to understand what went on in Gaza. The abundance these days of public opinion surveys by very credible pollsters in this country and abroad offer great research material on this subject. I think your generation, particularly I'm talking now to the younger members of the audience, should be worried about the erosion of our image and credibility worldwide. After all, you are going to be the leaders of this country in a few years, and you are inheriting a big mess in terms of how we are impacting other cultures and other nations and creating all kinds of negative and problematic reactions. So, I strongly recommend that you look into this question and try to answer it for yourself. Many politicians are raising the question in a most demagogic way these days. That is what politicians do for a living; they always try to raise questions to change, control or scare public opinion. Why do they hate us? It's high time for those public officials who raise the question to offer their constituency an honest answer. Unfortunately, this question has been asked innumerable times since 9/11, yet it remains generally unanswered. I hope to live long enough to hear a politician have enough dignity and intellect to answer that question in an honest and credible way.

At any rate, U.S. policy to isolate and subvert Hamas has not yet produced the intended objective. Hamas might be relatively isolated due to its boycott by Western powers. However, it remains a political power to be reckoned with in Palestine. Despite U.S. coordination with E.U., Israel, Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority, we have not been able to negate the results of the 2006 elections. Instead of weakening Hamas, it ended up strengthening Hamas and it ended up putting Hamas in charge of Gaza, rather than kicking them out of power. So, it made the problem a lot worse than what it was. The same applies to U.S. policy toward the PA and Fateh. Frankly, we are not disciplined enough at showing our support. When you are a superpower, you have to be careful with how you express support for people. Sometimes your hug, which is meant to be a sign of affection, gets overwhelming and becomes a hug of death. That's basically what has happened to the Palestinian Authority and its president Abu Mazen. Every time Mr. Bush goes on TV and gives Abbas that verbal endorsement, his popularity goes below zero. Sometimes when you want to help somebody, it's good to keep at a distance. The U.S. has burnt Abbas before, and it seems determined to do that again by extending to him the wrong help at the wrong time.

Hamas' victory in 2006 has had a very significant impact on domestic, regional and international politics. First, on the Palestinian level, I think that the victory itself changed or signaled a new phase in Palestinian politics. The history of Palestinian politics is usually divided into six or seven stages. The election in 2006 started a new one, an eighth phase in Palestinian politics. Let me go through these stages really quickly:

1) 1948-1967: This period has been dubbed by historians as the stage of rectifying injustice and return home. The Palestinians were not politically organized in any effective way during that period. They did not have widely recognized national leaders. They were mostly exiled. Some have referred to this stage as the ET stage of Palestinian politics, 'I want to go home.' Remember the extra-terrestrial ET? Palestinians did not have a coherent strategy or an organized political vehicle to represent them. They simply argued that what happened to them is not fair and demanded to return to their original homes. So, they were trying to rectify what happened to them, but nobody was really listening. The international community treated the Palestinians as refugees and catered to their humanitarian needs while ignoring their national or political aspirations.

2) 1968-1972 was the second phase. That's the phase when Palestinian political and militant groups emerged and began to assert themselves. Although the PLO was formally established by the Arab League in 1964, it took several years for the Palestinians to actually establish their own control over the organization because initially the PLO was the Arab countries, particularly Egypt. The Arab governments initiated the PLO in order to channel Palestinian energies into an organization that they could control so that they could influence Palestinian organizations and prevent them from politicizing and radicalizing the Arab population at large, wherever Palestinians lived as refugees. So, '68-'72 was the period when Palestinian organizations like Fateh got hold of the PLO and expanded their armed struggle to regain their rights.

Let me say few words about armed struggle. Some argue that most of the Palestinian militant factions never really practiced armed struggle in a systematic and disciplined way. Instead, the Palestinians simply toyed with armed struggle as a political tool to achieve essentially political objectives, and that is why they frequently drifted into terrorism. Armed struggle requires strict discipline. And the Palestinians rarely showed enough discipline in their practice of military resistance. And when violence becomes a political tool, the line becomes too thin between resistance and terrorism. That's why many Palestinian groups got themselves in trouble over the years and ended up crossing that line too often between resistance and terrorism because they couldn't distinguish clearly between the two.

3) 1973-1987 was the period of the two-state solution, which was basically an internal Palestinian debate, initially within Fateh saying basically, 'Let us be practical.' Israel is a military superpower; it is there to stay. We can't destroy it militarily. Why can't we have some kind of a compromise, a two-state solution? If Israel is willing to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza, let's accept that and form a state on every inch of land we liberate from Israeli occupation and settle the conflict with Israel. Although several versions of this proposal emerged throughout the 1970s and 1980s, it never produced the intended result due to Israeli opposition. The net result was many more years of Israeli occupation and frustrations, which resulted in the popular uprising that we know now, even in English, as the intifada of December 1987. This signaled the end of this period as the intifada refocused world attention on the Palestine issue and set the stage for the peace process of the 1990s. That process would have been virtually impossible without the intifada. That's what produced it, and that's what offered the fertile ground for it.

4) 1988-1993 was basically the period of the peace process, the initial phase of what became known later as the Oslo process. Although the process began on the right footing in Madrid, it quickly drifted away from the original objective and got caught in a vicious cycle of endless negotiations over trivial, procedural matters.

5) 1994-2000 witnessed the peace process kind of drifting, in my humble judgment, in the wrong way. I'm very committed to a political solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Palestine q