Back to Ambassadorial Speeches - Ambassador Zalman Shoval

Ambassador Shoval on CNN's "Crossfire" with Prof. Rashid Khalidi of the Palestinian Delegation
Interviewers: Mike Kinsley, John Sununu December 21, 1992

MIKE KINSLEY: Good evening. Welcome to Crossfire. Four hundred-fifteen Palestinians remain trapped tonight in no man's land, trapped between Israel, which expelled them last week, and Lebanon, which refuses to let them in. The expulsions were in response to the kidnapping and murder of an Israeli policeman, which followed the killing of five Israeli soldiers in recent days. The Palestinians are members of the Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas, which has claimed responsibility for those killings. Israeli troops have killed eight Palestinians in response to rioting since this new crisis began. For over a year, Arabs and Israelis have been meeting in Washington to talk peace. Now, the Palestinian delegates have gone home and say they won't return until the deportees are readmitted. Israeli Prime Minister Rabin says he will be not bend. Mideast peace was supposed to be George Bush's last legacy to the world, instead it's yet another foreign policy hot potato awaiting Bill Clinton. John?

JOHN SUNUNU: Ambassador Shoval, does this roundup and deportation of the Palestinians represent a suspension of due process in Israel, or is it, as the Palestinians say, there is not due process, as far as they're concerned?

ZALMAN SHOVAL, Israeli Ambassador to U.S.: These are 415 terrorists, members of one of the most brutal terrorist organizations in the world, the Hamas, Moslem fundamentalists. The whole civilized world should be concerned. Israel deported them, sent them across the border temporarily. They have a right to appeal, and this is certainly within the realm of due process. By the way, we're proud of the due process in Israel.

SUNUNU: What are they specifically guilty of, as individuals?

AMB. SHOVAL: They are part of the infrastructure of the political and tactical infrastructure of Hamas, and if you read this morning's front page article in The New York Times, it's Iranian financed, Iranian trained, Iranian armed. It's creating a lot of havoc in the whole Middle East.

SUNUNU: Every one of those, then, you say has had a hearing and their families that have gone with then have had hearings?

AMB. SHOVAL: Their families have not gone with them.

SUNUNU: They had --

AMB. SHOVAL: No --

SUNUNU: They've followed.

AMB. SHOVAL: No, no, their families have not gone with them. These are people who were selected according to a list. Their histories are known, and you know --

SUNUNU: But no hearings?

AMB. SHOVAL: Well, they had hearings because there were about 35 people who were on the list and were then returned to their homes because they were thought of not being dangerous enough to be sent across the border.

KINSLEY: Professor Khalidi, Prime Minister Rabin complained today that the world is being hypocritical about these Palestinians. He pointed out that the Kuwaitis, after the Gulf war, expelled 300,000 Palestinians, and the world didn't seem to care whatsoever. Doesn't he have a point?

RASHID KHALIDI, Adviser, Palestinian Delegation, Professor, University of Chicago: I wish the world had complained more about the expulsion of Palestinians from Kuwait, but the media in this country and many others didn't seem to be interested.

KINSLEY: But there was no talk about due process then. There was no -- it would be a laugh to even suggest that Kuwait should give these Palestinians due process, wasn't there?

PROF. KHALIDI: No, one difference is that --

AMB. SHOVAL: No Security Council condemnation.

KINSLEY: And that's -- all right, fair enough. The Security Council didn't do anything about it, and --

PROF. KHALIDI: One difference, Michael, if I may leap in and answer the question you asked me --

KINSLEY: Sure.

PROF. KHALIDI: -is that this was an occupied -- this is an occupied territory. The Geneva Convention applies, and Article 49 of the Geneva Convention is explicit. These are protected persons, and it is a grave breach of the 49th Article of that convention to expel them. In the case of Kuwait, an action that I think was barbarous, was taken by a sovereign government in its own territory against foreigners residing in that country's territory.

KINSLEY: Hasn't Hamas though, haven't these members of Hamas gotten exactly, not necessarily what they deserved, but absolutely what they wanted? The whole idea of murdering this policeman was to provoke Israel into something exactly like this, and they're, in fact, quite glad to be exactly where they are, in this no man's land, with the world's attention on them, aren't they?

PROF. KHALIDI: I think that in a certain way, yes. They managed to push all the right buttons of the Israeli government, and in a sense, they have -- they're now calling the tune. They have undermined the PLO and the people who support negotiations on the Palestinians side, and I think they've gotten the Israeli government doing something that shows it in the worst possible light. So, in that sense, yes, they have, in a sense, seized the initiative away from those parties that want to negotiate by, if you might say, provoking Israel into a gross violation of international law.

KINSLEY: And isn't --

PROF. KHALIDI: It was up to Israel to respond, and it chose to respond in this way.

KINSLEY: Isn't fairly cynical, though, the way the Lebanese are responding? Not only are they not letting these people in, but they are refusing, as I understand it, to let the Red Cross deliver supplies to alleviate their conditions. Isn't that quite cynical as well?

PROF. KHALIDI: These people didn't want to be let in. These people probably would be very happy to be stuck in the situation they're in, closer to Palestine. In the last analysis, Lebanon has already a problem --

SUNUNU: Let's talk about the Lebanese question a little bit.

AMB. SHOVAL: Well --

SUNUNU: Israel decides to just transport people into another country.

AMB. SHOVAL: You know --

SUNUNU: The other country refuses to accept them. You're saying, keep them anyway.

AMB. SHOVAL: This other country -- I don't want to speak ill of Lebanon, but Lebanon has been the staging area and the training ground now for years for terrorist organizations against Israel, the PLO and of course the Hizbullah, which is another Islamic fundamentalist organization, and all of a sudden to talk about Lebanese sovereignty, sadly, sadly, I think this is very ironical. By the way, these people are not in no man's land. They are in Lebanon itself. The first tent they put up was a media tent. They -- Professor Khalidi is right, they want the media attention of all the world, but what was Israel supposed to do? Israel is a democratic society. It has to defend itself against people who want to subvert their very, Israel's very democracy, Israel's very existence. What is Israel supposed to do?

PROF. KHALIDI: I think that's a good question.

AMB. SHOVAL: Some of our neighboring countries --

KINSLEY: Well, how about answering it, then, Professor Khalidi? How should a civilized country like Israel, which claims, unlike any other country in the Middle East, to have a civil libertarian situation, respond to a group, which is overtly dedicated to destroying it and is going around killing its policemen?

PROF. KHALIDI: The first thing it should do is obey international law.

AMB. SHOVAL: Well, we do.

PROF. KHALIDI: This is against international law. These are a people in an occupied territory. They are protected persons. This is a grave breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention.

KINSLEY: All right, so that's what they shouldn't do. What should they do?

PROF. KHALIDI: The second thing that Israel should do is it should bring people before courts of law and try them. None of these people were brought before a court. None of these people were tried. None of these people were even formally accused. They were simply picked up by the military and booted out. So, obviously, the second thing is that people who commit acts of violence, acts that are crimes should be brought before courts of law. This was not the case. Most of the people probably are not involved in the commission of any act of violence. They are academics. They are men of religion. They are members of Hamas in many cases. They are, in effect, therefore being persecuted for their beliefs rather than their actions. They certainly have --

AMB. SHOVAL: Well --

SUNUNU: Yeah, but that's not consistent with your description of this.

AMB. SHOVAL: The lioness -- you know, the people who sometimes inspire people to throw bombs and to kill people are more dangerous perhaps than the people who actually stab the knife, but Professor Khalidi, he's an adviser to the Palestinian delegation. Why doesn't he advise them -- please, Professor Khalidi, advise your people that the only way to achieve a better solution is to negotiate with Israel, to negotiate peace and not to give credence to these terrorists who are really against most Palestinians. I am sure you understand that.

SUNUNU: Let me pursue something you just said. You said those academics who claim they do --

PROF. KHALIDI: I'd like to answer that at some stage.

SUNUNU: -no more than preach freedom and --

AMB. SHOVAL: Not freedom, terrorism.

SUNUNU: -and independence --

AMB. SHOVAL: No --

SUNUNU: -you say were sent out for inspiring those acts?

AMB. SHOVAL: It has nothing to do with independence or freedom. It has nothing to do even with the territories because these people want to destroy the state of Israel. By the way, they want to destroy most secular Arab regimes as well. They -- one of these people, who are now in Lebanon, said the other day, they applaud those who want to slaughter Jews. These are the people who are dealing with them. These are not freedom fighters. They are brutal murderers and terrorists. They have to be dealt with. I think we are dealing with them in a relatively humane way. We are not putting them under the threat of death. There is no death in Israel in practice. We send them abroad for up to two years, not longer than that. They have the right to appeal. Their families are appealing right now in Israel to the supreme court. I want to see in which other Middle Eastern countries terrorists of that sort are being treated in that way.

KINSLEY: All right.

SUNUNU: We'll be back in a minute, Mr. Ambassador, and when we do, we'll ask whether it isn't time for the Israeli government to begin talks directly with the PLO.

[Commercial break]

SUNUNU: Welcome back to Crossfire. The Mideast peace talks may be in real trouble. Israel has expelled 415 Arab fundamentalists in retaliation for the murder of several Israeli soldiers. The action has produced a U.N. resolution condemning Israel and the U.S. has criticized the Rabin government for overreaction. With us to examine this very complex issue are Professor Rashid Khalidi, the Director of Middle East Studies at the University of Chicago and adviser to the Palestinian delegation, and the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Zalman Shoval.

Before I go to the Ambassador, Professor Khalidi, you wanted to respond to a point that the Ambassador made.

PROF. KHALIDI: Well, the Ambassador rather patronizingly told me, 'Why don't you advise the Palestinian delegation to sit at the peace table?' The Palestinian delegation has been sitting at the peace table, deprived of its advisers, deprived of its legal experts, by Israeli insistence, incidentally, and has been doing its very best --

AMB. SHOVAL: Not true, not true.

PROF. KHALIDI: -to negotiate with Israel. One of the reasons that Hamas has been so successful in gaining popular support in the streets, in the occupied territories for these kinds of actions, which go against the course that the delegation has been trying to take, has been the fact that we have found that at the table the Israelis have been stonewalling us, under the previous government --

AMB. SHOVAL: Here I agree --

PROF. KHALIDI: -and again under the Rabin government.

AMB. SHOVAL: I agree with Professor Khalidi, and I would like my Palestinian friends, with whom I sit in the room, I am a member of the team, to go back and tell the Palestinians in the territories, 'Look, progress has not been as swift as you hope, but there has been progress, even in the last round.' Let the Palestinians know that there is only one way to achieve a solution, negotiating with Israel. It may be slow, it may be arduous, but Professor Khalidi knows that there has been some progress and we should go on.

PROF. KHALIDI: And Professor Khalidi knows that it's very difficult for those delegates to go back and tell people what has been happening at the table when people are up in arms over this massive expulsion of people.

AMB. SHOVAL: No, but people are up in arms --

PROF. KHALIDI: Even if they're their political opponents --

AMB. SHOVAL: -and people --

PROF. KHALIDI: -people feel strongly about this.

AMB. SHOVAL: People are pushed into the arms of the terrorists because they think --

PROF. KHALIDI: By Israel.

AMB. SHOVAL: -that nothing comes out of these negotiations, which is not true. You know it isn't true. Look, it's not as much as somebody wants, but it's more than some people think.

SUNUNU: Mr. Ambassador, though, fundamentally most of the Palestinians, particularly the more moderate Palestinians, look, to the PLO for leadership. The Israeli government has felt that they should not be talking to the PLO and created a vacuum that allowed the fundamentalists to gain control. Isn't it time for the Israeli government to move to the group that the Palestinians wanted really have deal with the Israeli government, the PLO?

AMB. SHOVAL: Well, we want to talk to the Palestinians in the territories. We want them to elect their own leaders. We want them to have free elections. I don't want to sound patronizing, as Professor Khalidi said, but why shouldn't they elect their own leaders?

PROF. KHALIDI: We agree, we want that, too.

AMB. SHOVAL: OK. So, let's go ahead with that. We don't want to exchange one terrorist organization for another terrorist organization, and I believe that the Palestinians in the territories are beginning to realize that. I hope so.

SUNUNU: Within the government now, there are members pressing Mr. Rabin to begin speaking to the PLO as a significant step toward peace. What's wrong with taking that?

AMB. SHOVAL: Well, I think it would be a mistake, but it's up to Mr. Rabin to make the decision. I'm just the ambassador.

SUNUNU: What would you do if the United States reestablished the dialogue that Reagan-Shultz put together four years ago?

AMB. SHOVAL: I think it would be a grave mistake because one of the reasons why we have this peace process, why there is an emerging leadership in the territories, it's because people are beginning to realize that this guy Arafat is becoming more and more irrelevant, and I think that was a good step to stop the dialogue there.

KINSLEY: Professor Khalidi, I'd like to give you an opportunity to criticize and condemn Hamas as an organization. Besides killing policemen, they are openly against the peace talks. They have no interest in peace talks with Israel. They have no interest in seeing the survival of Israel. Isn't that correct?

PROF. KHALIDI: I agree. They are the most virulent opposition, domestic opposition, that the PLO and all the forces that support the negotiating process face. They are our domestic opposition.

KINSLEY: So, why --

PROF. KHALIDI: And they are a problem for the Palestinians who are in favor of this process. The problem is, when Israel boots them out, it not only turns them into heroes, it puts them in a position where we have to defend other Palestinians, who are expelled, as 1200 others have been over the past 29 years by Israel.

KINSLEY: But what does it --

AMB. SHOVAL: We don't --

KINSLEY: Go ahead.

AMB. SHOVAL: We don't defend, for instance, the Kahane.

KINSLEY: Meir Kahane.

AMB. SHOVAL: Meir Kahane. Why should we defend people like that?

PROF. KHALIDI: I don't defend their policies. I do not defend their actions. I defend their right to live in their homeland and to be subject to international law --

AMB. SHOVAL: But to kill an Israeli policeman --

PROF. KHALIDI: -so would you if the Kahane people were the victims --

AMB. SHOVAL: -in Israel itself --

PROF. KHALIDI: -of violations of international law.

AMB. SHOVAL: -not in the territories, a man who left his family to go to work. Is that a legitimate way to struggle politically?

PROF. KHALIDI: Of course not.

AMB. SHOVAL: I'm sure you don't agree with that. OK, fine.

KINSLEY: Explain this to me, Professor. Why is it not merely Iran, but Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, are financing Hamas? That doesn't give many Israelis much confidence that the Arab world in general is ready to make peace.

PROF. KHALIDI: It's something that -- well, Iran is not a part of the Arab world, Michael.

KINSLEY: No, but Saudi Arabia and Kuwait are.

PROF. KHALIDI: It's certainly not something that gives us confidence or pleasure, and believe me, it is one of the elements that, as far as the delegation and the PLO are concerned, are of great concern. It's something that the delegation has raised, I will tell you, with the administration, because Saudi Arabia, as you know, is very close to the United States. Iran, of course, is not. I think this is irrelevant, though. These are people, who are probably being financed not only by Saudi Arabia, not only by Kuwait, but probably by other countries -- not only by Saudi --

KINSLEY: Why is it irrelevant? Israel has to make a peace that its convinced will hold with all its neighbors, the Palestinians, and certainly the Saudis are going to be a strong force in the region. If they're --

PROF. KHALIDI: Michael, you don't deport people and violate international law because of their beliefs. This is what has happened.

AMB. SHOVAL: Beliefs?

PROF. KHALIDI: Even for their actions. You bring them to trial, and you submit them to law.

AMB. SHOVAL: Killing a man, tying him up and strangling him to death is beliefs?

PROF. KHALIDI: That's an action. You treat somebody under law in court for an action.

KINSLEY: What other country in the Middle East could even pretend to have the civil libertarian -- I agree with you that Israel shouldn't have done this, actually, but what other country in the Middle East could even make a pretense to any system of justice in a similar situation?

PROF. KHALIDI: The systems of justice of most Arab governments are sorely lacking. I hope you wouldn't want to hold Israel to that standard.

KINSLEY: No.

PROF. KHALIDI: If you would, that would be sad. Obviously, in most countries in the Middle East, the system of justice is very wanting. Most of the peoples of those countries feel that and are struggling against very poor systems.

KINSLEY: All right. Let's take a break.

PROF. KHALIDI: I don't see that that's an argument frankly.

KINSLEY: Well, others may disagree. Let's take a break. When we come back, I have a historical question for the Professor.

[Commercial break]

KINSLEY: Professor Khalidi, take off your partisan's hat for a moment and put on your scholar's hat and explain something for us. Until recently, Islamic fundamentalism wasn't a very big force among Palestinians, and the PLO is a more or less secular group. Is the growth of this group Hamas in the past few years something particular to Israel or is it part of some explosion of Islamic fundamentalism and extremist throughout the Arab world that is something we all need to worry about?

PROF. KHALIDI: No, this is -- I don't know how much we need to worry about it all over the world, but it is --

KINSLEY: The Arab world.

PROF. KHALIDI: It has been a force that has been growing all over the Middle East, all over the Islamic world over many years, and it not unique to the Palestinians. You have similar processes in Egypt, similar processes in North Africa. One of the things that fueled it obviously was the Iranian revolution. IN the Palestinian case, another thing that fuels it is the continuation of the occupation, and in Lebanon, it's the Israeli occupation, but in other countries, it's corrupt government, in yet other countries it's other factors.

SUNUNU: Ambassador Shoval, this action taken by the Rabin government seems a little -- on a different path than they have been taking in the last few months. Is it because they now feel that there's a new administration coming in that they can influence more than they could influence the Bush administration?

AMB. SHOVAL: Look, Mr. Rabin, Prime Minister Rabin has always said that he will pursue the peace process as if there's nothing else, and he will pursue terrorism as if there's no peace process, and I think he's right. I mean, the peace process, the success of the peace process depends on putting a stop to terrorism, to those who want to kill the peace process. Hamas wants to kill the peace process.

SUNUNU: What do say to those who perceive this action as an effort by the Israelis to kill the peace process?

AMB. SHOVAL: Why? Why should four million Israelis encircled by 200 million Arabs not want peace?

SUNUNU: Why was it so hard to get them to the peace process in the first place?

AMB. SHOVAL: It wasn't so hard at all.

KINSLEY: Professor Khalidi --

AMB. SHOVAL: It was very difficult to work out the conditions, but it wasn't hard at all. Israel wants peace.

KINSLEY: Professor Khalidi, last question: Isn't it very foolish for the Palestinians to be putting Rabin in this kind of a situation? For 15 years, there was an Israeli government that basically had no interest in land for -- making a land for peace deal. Now they've got a government that is committed to that principle. Why -- aren't you just undermining them with this kind of behavior?

PROF. KHALIDI: The Palestinians haven't put Rabin in any position. Hamas put Rabin in a certain position, and then Rabin chose to put himself, or the Israeli government chose to put itself in a certain position. They did not have to violate international law. They did not have to deport 400 odd people. So far, there has been no formal reaction, either from the PLO or from the delegation. They will have to decide whether they can afford, in view of the natural, normal popular outrage at this ludicrous action, to go back to the table, but that hasn't been decided. The only person who's put himself in a difficult position, if anybody, is Rabin himself.

KINSLEY: OK. I've got to --

PROF. KHALIDI: Just let me --

KINSLEY: No, I've got to cut you off. You got the last word. Thank you very much, Professor Khalidi. Thank you, Ambassador Shoval.

AMB. SHOVAL: Thank you.

KINSLEY: John and I actually get the last word in just a moment.

[Commercial break]

SUNUNU: Michael, there's an opportunity now for peace in the Middle East. I think that the Israelis are letting a minority faction dictate what goes on there, the faction of Hamas. It is not representative of the Palestinian people. I think the Israelis are missing a chance to begin talking to the PLO, which really is the heart and soul of the Palestinians.

KINSLEY: Well, wait a minute. It's not the Israelis who are allowing Hamas to dictate policy. It's the Palestinians. You heard Professor Khalidi saying, 'We have no sympathy with them, but we have to cater to them.' That's a political problem he has. It's legitimate. Rabin has a political problem that is also legitimate. If he doesn't respond to terrorist killing, he's going to lose support for the peace process and his Labor government.

SUNUNU: And the easiest way to go back to the moderates is to have the Israelis begin talking to the PLO directly.

KINSLEY: We'll discuss that at another show, I'm sure. From the left, I'm Mike Kinsley. Good night for Crossfire.

SUNUNU: And from the right, I'm John Sununu. Join us again tomorrow night for another edition of Crossfire.