Yes, the focus for most of the world WILL be elsewhere while the US concentrates on Pres Obama's SoU address tomorrow night but that is to be expected...unless and until we get things working right here at home we cannot effectively work on other countries problems.
[fy: "The first is that the documents kill, with great gusto, the myth created by President Bill Clinton that the Palestinians were not a partner at Camp David and that Palestinians were to blame for the lack of a two-state deal. I knew this of course from being there, but apparently 10 years of documents showing Palestinian concessions that would be shocking to the Palestinian public mean that you would have to be ideologically committed to ignoring reality to still think the Palestinians were the problem."]
By Robert WrightPosted Thursday, April 18, 2002, at 7:14 PM ET
Illustration by Robert Neubecker
One thing nearly all pundits seem to agree on is that Yasser Arafat's rejection of the land-for-peace offer made by Ehud Barak at Camp David in the summer of 2000 was indefensible. This conventional wisdom has been a great asset to Ariel Sharon. Its implication—that Arafat was never really interested in a two-state solution to begin with—has helped turn many former peaceniks in both Israel and America into hard-liners.
An example is Rabbi Martin Weiner of San Francisco, president of the Rabbinical Association of Reform Judaism. "For most of us Prime Minister Barak's proposals seemed so generous," he explained on NPR's All Things Considered. He can't understand how Arafat could have "rejected the Palestinian state that was offered to him in the summer of 2000." Given this rejection, and Arafat's subsequent sponsoring of terrorism, Weiner is "sadly coming to believe" that Yasser Arafat's goal "is now and may have always been the destruction of Israel."
In this week's Nation, political scientist Richard Falk contests .. http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020429&s=falk .. the standard view that Israel's offer at Camp David was eminently fair. But Falk's argument, embedded in a larger critique of American foreign policy, doesn't get deeply into the nuts and bolts of the issue. If you want to see Camp David from Arafat's point of view, a better place to look is a New York Review of Books piece .. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/14380 .. that appeared back in August and was co-authored by Robert Malley, special assistant for Arab-Israeli affairs in the Clinton administration. Malley was at Camp David and found Arafat's behavior there intensely frustrating, but he doesn't buy the interpretation that is favored on the right—that Arafat's rejection of the deal amounts to rejection of a two-state solution.
So, are Falk and Malley right? Is Arafat's Camp David behavior even remotely defensible?
There were actually two Barak offers to Arafat—one at Camp David, and a more generous one that took shape over ensuing months, culminating in failed negotiations in Taba, Egypt, in January of 2001. Most Arafat critics, like Rabbi Weiner, focus on Camp David. So, let's look at Camp David first and Taba second.
David Horowitz, editor of the Jerusalem Report, recently said on the NPR show To the Point that Barak offered "basically all the territory the Palestinians were purporting to seek." This is a widely repeated claim—that Israel offered something like the "pre-1967 borders" that had long been the mantra of Palestinians who favored a two-state solution. But for Palestinians to get all the territory that had been under Arab control before the war of 1967 would mean getting a) all of what we now think of as the West Bank; b) all of East Jerusalem (which some consider part of the West Bank); and c) all of the walled "Old City" that lies between East and West Jerusalem. Barak never offered any of those things—not at Camp David, not at Taba.
As a practical matter, he couldn't. The problem wasn't just the famously provocative settlements that Israel's government had long been sponsoring in the West Bank. Barak was willing to dismantle some of those and consolidate others. But there had also been more organic, more "innocent" settlement, in the greater Jerusalem area and elsewhere. Further, for political reasons, Barak couldn't possibly surrender control of the part of the Old City that contains the Western Wall of the Second Temple—the wall you see Jews praying at in file footage.
So, Barak hung on to key parts of the Old City and proposed that, before surrendering the West Bank, Israel would annex 9 percent of it, leaving 91 percent for the Palestinians. That was his last, best offer, at Camp David.
But wait. Didn't Barak, as his defenders say, offer Arafat land from Israel proper in return for the annexed 9 percent?
Yes. But the terms of the trade bordered on insulting. In exchange for the 9 percent of the West Bank annexed by Israel, Arafat would have gotten land as large as 1 percent of the West Bank. And, whereas some of the 9 percent was choice land, symbolically important to Palestinians, the 1 percent was land whose location wasn't even specified.
I'm trying to imagine Yasser Arafat selling this 9-to-1 land swap to Palestinians—who, remember, are divided into two camps: the "return to 1967 borders" crowd and the "destroy the state of Israel" crowd. I'm not succeeding. And Arafat would have had to explain other unpalatable details, such as Israeli sovereignty over Haram al-Sharif (site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque), which had been under Arab control before 1967 and is the third-holiest site in Islam.
The Camp David offer also had features that kept it from amounting to statehood in the full sense of the term. The new Palestine couldn't have had a military and wouldn't have had sovereignty over its air space—Israeli jets would roam at will. Nor would the Palestinians' freedom of movement on the ground have been guaranteed. At least one east-west Israeli-controlled road would slice all the way across the West Bank, and Israel would be entitled to declare emergencies during which Palestinians couldn't cross the road. Imagine if a mortal enemy of America's—say the Soviet Union during the Cold War—was legally entitled to stop the north-south flow of Americans and American commerce. Don't you think the average American might ask: Wait a minute—who negotiated this deal?
I'm not saying any of these things aren't defensible from an Israeli point of view. I'm just saying it takes very little imagination to see why Palestinians might balk, after three decades of nursing a grievance centered on—at the very minimum—the right to have their very own state defined by pre-1967 borders.
Another big issue was the "right of return" for Palestinian refugees. The Israeli fear is certainly understandable: If all Palestinians who once lived in Israel—and all of their descendants—were allowed to return, Israel might wind up with an Arab majority. Accounts differ on how hard a line the Palestinians have taken on this issue at various negotiations. Malley and his co-author, Hussein Agha of Oxford University, say Arafat showed unprecedented flexibility at Camp David. In any event, by early 2001 Arafat was showing flexibility, advocating in a New York Times op-ed "creative solutions to the plight of the refugees while respecting Israel's demographic concerns."
Malley and Agha do a good job of illuminating Arafat's psychological state at Camp David, notably his lack of trust of the Israelis and his sense that the Israelis and Americans were ganging up on him. The portrait at times borders on the patronizing—Arafat comes off as almost childish in his insecurity and pride compared with the cool, linear-thinking Barak. But this is the kind of portrait Arafat's harshest critics have been known to paint when they're not busy depicting his Camp David demurral as the coolly rational act of an evil mastermind.
Arafat's complex psychology may help explain the most valid criticism of his conduct in the summer of 2000, routinely cited even by his defenders: the failure to offer a distinct counterproposal, or, after Camp David, to tell the larger world exactly what was wrong with the Israeli offer. Certainly the latter failure was a public-relations disaster, and it is one reason Arafat has been depicted as the problem ever since. (An aide to Arafat has said that he kept quiet after Camp David out of respect for Clinton's interests. .. http://www.slate.com/id/2064500/sidebar/2064503/ .. )
As for the failure to be clearer at the negotiations themselves: In the Malley and Agha account, this reticence—which Malley found maddening—emerges as a product not just of Arafat's peculiar psychology, but of a specific Palestinian concern. .. http://www.slate.com/id/2064500/sidebar/2064504/ .. In any event, depicting the Palestinian silence at Camp David as signifying opposition to a two-state solution doesn't mesh well with subsequent events. In the ensuing months, Palestinian negotiators got quite explicit about their position. By the time of the Taba negotiations, they were drawing maps and talking numbers: Israel could annex 3 percent of the West Bank and compensate Palestine with the same amount of land from Israel proper.
The Israelis, for their part, had sweetened the pot considerably by the time they got to Taba—most notably in accepting Palestinian sovereignty over Haram al-Sharif. They also made the land offers more generous. But they didn't really offer "97 percent of the West Bank," as has been asserted not just in such right-wing outlets as National Review and the Fox News channel, but in Newsweek, the Chicago Tribune, and elsewhere. The Israelis offered 94 percent of the West Bank—a 6-percent annexing—and then offered to compensate the Palestinians with land from Israel proper equaling 3 percent of the West Bank. That is, they offered a total land mass as large as 97 percent of the West Bank.
Taba was a big step forward. A 2-to-1 land swap sure beats a 9-to-1 swap. But it still left Arafat having to answer the obvious question: Um, why not 1-to-1? If Israel really accepts the principle that pre-1967 borders are a valid goal except where rendered impractical by demographic "facts on the ground," then shouldn't it offer fair recompense for the land being withheld—especially since it created those facts on the ground, in some cases cynically? Israel's Taba position also left in place some details—no Palestinian military, for example—that made the term "statehood" a bit misleading.
More important, by the time of Taba, the whole political environment had changed.
[AS IT HAS SINCE.]
In September, Barak had allowed Ariel Sharon to make his famous visit to Haram al-Sharif, which many observers consider the spark that ignited the current intifada. Given the only deepening mistrust between Arafat and Israel, America was, more than ever, a vital guarantor of any deal. Yet President Clinton was by then a lame duck, and comments from President-elect Bush had made clear his limited enthusiasm for Middle East peace brokering.
Arafat may also have been troubled by the fact that Barak seemed doomed to lose upcoming elections to Ariel Sharon, who probably wouldn't honor a Barak-negotiated deal. Maybe Arafat can be blamed here. Assuming he realized that a deal at Taba was the only thing that could save Barak's government, thus keeping Sharon out of office, maybe he should have decided that, for the sake of his people, he would seize the moment, notwithstanding the shaky foundation of an America-less deal. But the question before us isn't whether Arafat is a humane, creative, visionary leader—he's roughly the opposite along all three dimensions. The question is whether Arafat's behavior at Camp David and afterward are incomprehensible unless we assume he never really wanted a two-state solution. This is the interpretation favored by Ariel Sharon and many others on the right—as well as such former peaceniks as Rabbi Weiner. And, in my view, this interpretation just doesn't survive close scrutiny of the facts.
So, how did it arise?
In late 1988, during the first (and essentially nonviolent) intifada, I was in Israel. One afternoon I had a drink with the legendary Teddy Kollek, mayor of Jerusalem. I asked Kollek what he thought the Palestinians would accept in the way of territory. He looked at me with a conspicuous lack of concern and said knowingly, "Whatever they can get."
Ideologically, Kollek was no Ariel Sharon. So, I'm guessing that he was reflecting a mainstream Israeli view: that Israel was in the catbird seat and could eventually cut a nearly painless deal with the Palestinians. That would explain why, when Camp David hit the airwaves, the papers were full of stories about how a taboo had been broken in Israel: There was now serious discussion of ceding parts of Jerusalem! Never mind that the parts of East Jerusalem Barak was willing to cede didn't constitute nearly what had been under Arab control before 1967. The idea of actually returning to anything like the much-discussed "pre-1967 borders" simply hadn't been taken seriously in Israel before.
So, it's natural that many Israelis would share Rabbi Weiner's view of Barak's offer as "so generous." They had never looked at things from the Palestinian point of view.
[WHICH, OF COURSE, IS ONE HUGE FAILURE OF THE REACTIONARY RIGHT OF THE USA AND OF ISRAEL. YUP, OF AUSTRALIA AND OF OTHER PARTS OF OF THE WORLD, TOO.]
Barak's proposals were, in the context of Israeli politics, path-breaking and courageous. But, as Malley wrote in a New York Times op-ed that is a CliffsNotes version of his NYRB piece, "[T]he measure of Israel's concessions ought not be how far it has moved from its own starting point; it must be how far it has moved toward a fair solution."
Of course, the bias was symmetrical. Palestinians, by and large, had never looked at things from Israel's point of view. One of many valid criticisms of Arafat is that he had never tried to change that—never paved the way for the various compromises that would ultimately be necessary; he had never really been a leader. Still, if many Israelis were shocked in the summer of 2000 to hear that parts of Jerusalem were on the bargaining table, it would seem that Israel's succession of leaders hadn't done much road-paving, either.
You can call Yasser Arafat many bad things and can use the Camp David negotiations to justify a number of them. But so far as I can tell, these negotiations don't justify what they're now being used to justify: the claim that the Palestinians will never accept a two-state solution, so Ariel Sharon's search-and-destroy policy is the only option Israel has left. If it's true that negotiations are now hopeless—and I genuinely don't know if it is—that is largely due to things that have happened since the beginning of the second intifada. And here, as with Camp David, it would be naive to place the blame on either side alone.
Dagan, Ofer and Israel’s Growing Iran Credibility Gap
Posted on 06/09/2011 by Juan
Far rightwing Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin (“Bibi”) Netanyahu of the Likud Party has attempted to sidestep making peace with the Palestinians by using the magician’s favorite tactic of misdirection– of trying to get the audience to look somewhere else while the trick is being performed. Netanyahu’s ploy is to endeavor to shift attention to Iran while his government brazenly steals ever more land from the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories (theft which is illegal in international law, not to mention contrary to Commandment no. 8 in the series of Ten).
Netanyahu’s prestidigitation has not gone well. The Arab Spring has taken the world’s mind off Iran. The power struggle between Leader Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad .. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jun/07/iran-president-rift-islamic-figures .. has been decisively lost by an increasingly diminished Ahmadinejad, putting paid to earlier charges that the president had made a military coup against the Leader with the help of feckless Revolutionary Guards.
But the Iran meme has crashed and burned inside Israel on two other scores, as well. First, Netanyahu appears to have forced out Meir Dagan, the head of the Israeli spying agency Mossad, whose departure coincided with that of the chief of staff, the head of domestic intelligence, and other key security officials. Dagan, having become a civilian, promptly went public, .. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10730477 .. lambasting Netanyahu for refusing to make peace with the Palestinians while it was still possible.
Dagan went on to accuse Netanyahu and his Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, of grossly exaggerating the threat from Iran, calling a strike on that country “stupid idea that offers no advantage.” He warned that it would provoke another rocket attack on Israel by Lebanon’s Hizbullah, and perhaps by Syria as well– i.e. it could lead to a regional conflagration.
The back story that has emerged in the Israeli press is that Barak, who is a notorious war-monger and adventurist, had gotten Netanyahu’s ear and pressed for a military strike on Iran. Dagan and all the other major security officials stood against this foolhardy plan, and managed to derail it. But Dagan is said to be concerned that virtually all the level heads have gone out of office together, and that Netanyahu and Barak may now be in a position to revive their crazy plan of attacking Iran. Moreover, they may want to attack in September, as a way of creating a crisis that will overshadow Palestinian plans to seek membership in the United Nations.
Dagan and other high Israeli security officials appear to believe that Iran has no present nuclear weapons program. That is what Military Intelligence Director, Brigadier General Aviv Kochavi, .. http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArchiveDetails.aspx?ID=234088 .. has told the Israeli parliament. Kochavi thinks it unlikely that Iran would start up a military nuclear program. In other words, Israeli military intelligence holds the same position as Seymour Hersh. .. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/06/06/110606fa_fact_hersh .. (Of course, one piece of hypocrisy here is that Israel has hundreds of nuclear warheads itself). In the Obama administration’s pillorying of Hersh, it never came up that Dagan and Kochavi concur with him! (Iran has a civilian nuclear enrichment program, which is being inspected by the IAEA, but a civilian program is different from a military one; there is no evidence for the latter, though sometimes Iranian officials occasionally talk big. Iran probably wants what is called ‘nuclear latency,’ the ability to build a bomb in short order, as deterrence against attack, but probably does not want an actual bomb, which it considers contrary to Islamic law).
Netanyahu’s Iran gambit has been further damaged by the revelation that the Israeli Ofer Brothers .. http://www.forward.com/articles/138469/ .. company has been sanctioned by the US Department of the Treasury for trading with Iran! They seem to have sold Iran an oil tanker through the United Arab Emirates. No one has jumped up and down more loudly about the need to slap economic sanctions on Iran than the Israeli government, but now it emerges that Israeli economic concerns put profits first.
So to sum up: The former head of Mossad thinks that Netanyahu and Barak are terminally flaky; he and other high officials think Iran has no nuclear weapons program; he thinks an Israeli attack on Iran was and would be “the stupidest thing I have ever heard;” and he and other now-retired security officials think that the 2002 peace agreement offered Israel by the Arab League is the country’s last best chance for integration into the Middle East and security for Israeli citizens. The Likud Party has consistently pissed all over the 2002 Saudi-led Arab League initiative and has preferred unilaterally to annex Palestinian territory instead. (That unilateral Israeli policy is why it is so ridiculous for President Obama to condemn the Palestinians for ‘unilaterally’ seeking UN membership– that and the oddness of characterizing a UN General Assembly vote by 193 nations as ‘unilateral.’)
In other words, ex-Mossad chief Meir Dagan’s positions on Israel and Iran and the flakiness of Netanyahu in these regards are the same as those of Juan Cole, who has been pilloried by the American Likud for taking them.
The USG Open Source Center translated the following radio reports from Hebrew on the Ofer affair:
‘ Israel: Aides Warn of Ofer Affair ‘Strategic Damage’; Dagan: Coverage ‘Exaggerated’ Israel — OSC Summary Tuesday, May 31, 2011…
The Israeli media on 30-31 May report on the latest developments in the wake of the US State Department’s announcement that sanctions had been imposed on the Ofer Brothers Group and Tanker Pacific because of their commercial dealings with Iran…
Affair Checked With Americans; PM Aides Warn of ‘Big Strategic Damage’ to Israel
State-funded but independent Jerusalem Voice of Israel Network B in Hebrew reports at 0500 GMT on 31 May: “The Defense Ministry has in recent days checked the entire Ofer Brothers affair with the Americans. The American department dealing with the affair stated that there is no security connection to the Israeli Defense Ministry, our army affairs correspondent Karmela Menashe reports.
“Aides in the prime minister’s bureau claim that anybody insinuating that the Ofer Brothers were issued permits to operate in Iran should reveal them to the public. According to these aides, this affair might evolve into a big strategic damage to Israel. A senior diplomatic source said that Israel has no mechanism to check non-military deals and that it serious lags behind other countries in this respect, our political correspondent Shmu’el Tal reports.” Ofer Brothers: Netanyahu ‘Has Thrown Us to the Dogs’; Central Bank Checking
Tel Aviv IDF Radio in Hebrew at 0500 GMT says: “Sources in Ofer Brothers are furious with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who yesterday claimed yesterday that Israel was in no way connected to the anchoring of ships in Iran. One source said: The state used us more than once for national purposes, but now Netanyahu has thrown us to the dogs.
“Our economic affairs correspondent Yona Levzov reported this morning that in parallel with the Defense Ministry’s check, the Bank of Israel is also looking into the suspicions against the Ofer Brothers that one of their companies traded with Iran. If the check by the central bank yields suspicions of a violation of Israeli law, the Ofer Brothers may have to sell their shares in Bank Mizrahi-Tefahot.”
Israel's neighborhood is changing, says EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, in an interview with Haaretz, which is why it is more crucial than ever to restart talks with the Palestinians - and not wait it out as some suggest.
By Akiva Eldar .. Latest update 12:35 24.06.11
BRUSSELS - With Greece in turmoil, the Spanish economy collapsing and the French political system in a state of upheaval, the leaders of the European Union are nonetheless putting time and energy into getting the ball rolling again on the Israeli-Palestinian front. EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, followed by European Parliament President Jerzy Buzek, last week visited the offices of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Both returned to Brussels as confused as ever.
What does Netanyahu mean when he hints that he would be interested in hearing new ideas? And how are we to interpret all the talk about Abbas looking for a way out of the latest corner he's backed himself into - in this case the UN vote on recognizing an independent Palestine in September? And is there any truth to the messages making their way here from Washington to the effect that President Barack Obama is tired of serving as Netanyahu's life preserver and that the biggest superpower in the world really does not feel like joining Micronesia and the Marshall Islands in voting against recognition of Palestine?
Upon her return from the Middle East, Ashton found a newspaper clip on her desk from The Telegraph of Britain, which cited a classified diplomatic document, which was released under freedom of information request, that described how unsuitable she was for her current position. Her critics maintain that Ashton's shortcomings - meager diplomatic experience and excessive caution - were the reason she was chosen for the job. Ashton's fans say that precisely because of these traits, she does a wonderful job of maneuvering herself among the 27 European raindrops.
On the eve of her trip to the Middle East, Ashton sent a letter to the members of the Quartet - the United States, Russia, the European Union and the United Nations - urging them to adopt Obama's blueprint for a solution based on the June 4, 1967, lines, with territorial swaps, as a starting point for negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. She wrote that if the conflict is to be resolved, swift progress is required. Since then, she has been on their case constantly.
Back to the negotiating table
"My letter was a manifestation of an awful lot of work to try and get the Quartet principles together, in order that we can and try and put that work that's been going on to good effect, with something from the Quartet that might be able to persuade the parties that there is enough support to get back into negotiations," Ashton told me on Tuesday, in an interview held in her office at EU headquarters in Brussels. She said that the EU has invested considerable efforts in trying to get negotiations restarted before the anticipated UN vote in September. "I believe the Quartet is key, because potentially it can bring comfort to both parties," she said. "It always seems to me that one of the most critical parts is not only understanding why the key issues matter so much to each [side], but their feeling that if they take the risk of being in negotiations that the international community will stand with them both and see that through."
Do you really believe that negotiations between Netanyahu and Abbas can lead to a final-status solution?
"What I think is missing perhaps is trying to find that framework that enables them to start talking to each other. Where they end up is up to them. And those negotiations will undoubtedly be quite tough because each has got to think about the core issues and find a way through that delivers for their people, while recognizing that it's going to be a deal, and deals require people to consider the position of the other."
And will the Netanyahu government be able at the same time to continue to expand the settlements?
"Well, you know our position is that settlements are illegal under international law, full stop. The best way of solving the settlements in the end is going to be the negotiation on the territory. But I can understand why the Palestinians feel that it's very difficult for them. However, again, if we can find the right framework, the best possibility to resolve this for all time is to get the talks moving and get an agreement."
The position of Europe is very clear: that Hamas is on the terrorist list and it has not accepted the requirements of the Quartet. Do you accept the veto imposed by Netanyahu on the diplomatic process if the Palestinians establish a national unity government?
"That's right, and that position has not changed. President Abbas has always made it clear that he is the president and it's with him that the negotiations will take place. And what he's trying to set up - I think he calls it a technocratic government. And the purpose of that is to bring in, as he always says to me, independent people who've been nominated and who will come in for the elections. In talking to President Abbas, I understand his strong desire to bring his people together. And that's why we were cautious in our welcome.
"I think that what will be important in whatever happens is the elections, and the sense in which the work that [PA Prime Minister] Salam Fayyad is doing, under his great leadership in my view, continues. Because it's the building of those institutions of the state that are going to be so important in the end, to make sure that the Palestinian people really do have their own state and their own future. I really hope that we will be able to make progress long before the elections and that he will be able to show his people that the option of having their own state, side by side with a secure Israel, will be on the cards."
Do you expect to have a coherent EU position regarding the UN vote, if there is a vote in September?
"Well, first of all, we have to see if there's a vote. Secondly, I don't know what the resolution's going to say. And it will depend very much on what the resolution says as to how the international community in general and the EU states in particular, vote. It's quite possible that there could be a vote at the UN where the European Union states have no difficulty in voting for that."
You spoke about your positive impression of Abbas' commitment to an agreement. On Sunday you met with Prime Minister Netanyahu. Did you have the impression that he is also committed?
"I think that Prime Minister Netanyahu is as aware as anyone can be that for the future of Israel, he wants to see a settled and secure State of Israel. The discussion is how we get there, and I have impressed upon him, as far as I can, that with the changing neighborhood, with the economic climates of all of the countries around, this is an even more important moment to move.
"I also understand that he and the government seem quite stable. In Israel, governments, I think, tend to change, or coalitions tend to change reasonably often, and this seems to have quite a long life span. And history teaches us that it's when you are secure in your government that you actually make moves that require bravery and statesmanship. And I say that not because I think a solution is about bravery, it's about doing what needs to be done, but because you have to carry people with you, many of whom disagree with your actions. "And therefore for me, from the perspective of a secure Israel, this is the moment to do something. This is the moment to remove this issue from the elections that will take place in countries surrounding Israel. It's to remove this issue when you are trying to develop the economy of your country and advance your economic status with the European Union and elsewhere. It's to remove this issue so it's not any longer an issue which drains resources, and to remove this issue because you're giving your children and your grandchildren a guarantee about their future with their nearest neighbor. And all of those elements seem to me to be in play now, so I'm trying to impress on him to do that. Prime Minister Netanyahu does me the courtesy of always listening to what I say, and we will see whether in the course of the next weeks, through both the envoys' work and the Quartet, we can give him the - well, give him, in a sense, the courage to do that as well, to make that choice."
But Netanyahu's approach is that the unrest taking place after the Arab Spring is not a suitable climate for negotiations. He claims that first there has to be order in Syria and Libya, and mainly that we have to wait for the elections in Egypt.
"The conflict in the Middle East has been there for a long, long time. People need a solution to it on both sides, a resolution to it. And it's, I think, right and proper for all of us to keep at it. It doesn't mean I don't focus, and we don't focus, on trying to deal with Iran. As you know I'm a negotiator for the Iranian nuclear talks, and that is something I care deeply about. It doesn't mean that we're not engaged with Syria, where I have reports daily from our delegation that are there, and we're trying to work with Turkey and others and look for ways in which we can put the pressure on."
You also met with Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. You probably heard that afterward he threatened that in the event that the UN recognizes a Palestinian state, he will declare that Oslo is void.
"At a moment in a long discussion he said something like that, but I'm not sure that it's up to him to declare that Oslo is void really. I don't accept that Oslo is void - it would be a different world."
Why should Israelis rely on the international community when they are witness to its helplessness in the face of the massacre in Syria? How much time will you give Syrian President Bashar Assad to continue killing his people?
"Well, it's terrible what's happening there. I've spoken to the Syrian foreign minister and made it clear that they need to reach a nonviolent response to people's demonstrations, but, you know, this really is an awful situation."
A changing neighborhood
Ashton says that the events in Syria illustrate the need for change on the part of Israelis and Palestinians. "Your neighborhood has changed, so when you have in the middle of all this an old conflict that has to be resolved - and I believe people have the capacity to do this - I genuinely believe that if they would decide to do it, it's doable. Then they [political leaders] have more responsibility than ever for the people of Israel and the Palestinian people to actually do it. I can't stress that enough."
Your handling of the Iranian nuclear program is not exactly a success story either.
"I've had two rounds of negotiations with the Iranians, with Dr. Saeed Jalili [head of the Iranian delegation for talks on the nuclear issue], who's my counterpart, and I've said to him the same throughout - that if Iran is serious about this being a civil nuclear program, show us. This is not difficult, let the inspectors do their job, show us what you have, get international support to build your civil program because you can't build one these days without it, and work with the international community. It's still on the table and remains on the table. And we've been in correspondence since, and I've met the new foreign minister.
"They say that that's not what they're doing [developing nuclear weapons], but anyone looking at the circumstantial evidence of that, I think, would find it hard to believe, and it is in their hands to change their course and show that it's not what they want to do. In that we engage with a lot of different countries to try and use our economic pressure. We've had sanctions, they've been effective, that we do know. But just to say as well that we're also really concerned about the human rights situation, and we've taken sanctions on that as well."
Defense Minister Ehud Barak repeatedly declares that the continuation of the Iranian nuclear program leaves all the options open for Israel. He probably is referring to the military option as well. What is your opinion?
"I don't want to get into what Defense Minister Barak may have said. If we want to have a more secure region, the critical thing is to try and persuade the Iranians to move away from this. I also put it this way - that if you sign up to a treaty, the non-proliferation treaty, then not only do you have an obligation to abide by it, but you have an obligation to make sure other people do as well. That's why it's so important that the G5 plus 1 are negotiating as a team. That's why it's so important that you've got the different sanctions in play."
In other words, you rule out the military option?
"I just think that if we could find a negotiated agreement to it, that would be much, much better."
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