[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 147 (2001), Part 9]
[Senate]
[Pages 12644-12647]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]



                            THE MIDDLE EAST

  Mr. KYL. Madam President, I would like to change gears a little bit 
and talk about another subject that is very distressing. Throughout 
this break I would turn the television on to the evening news, and 
invariably there would be a story about yet more violence in the Middle 
East. It really got me thinking about the fundamental issue that I 
think a lot of Americans have ignored.
  We wring our hands. We wish that the parties could get together, that 
there could be peace in the Middle East, and that they could put their 
problems behind them and live in harmony.
  So we ask--and I see newspeople basically asking different versions 
of this question--why can't they just go back to the peace process? Of 
course, Secretary Powell urged both parties to agree to a cease-fire, 
which temporarily they did, yet every single day there has been a 
bombing or other terrorist attack or attempt in the State of Israel.
  The Israeli people have said: Peace is a two-way street. If Yasser 
Arafat and the PLO are not willing to enforce the multiple cease-fire 
agreements and the peace process that we thought we had agreed to 
before, then we will have to enforce the law, and that includes going 
after those terrorists who threaten our people. No nation can do 
otherwise.
  I rise to comment briefly on this notion of ``returning to the peace 
process.'' The problem is that the 1993 Oslo accords, which were the 
genesis of this thing we call ``the peace process,'' we now learn were 
fundamentally flawed. That is now apparent to the Israeli people, 
despite significant differences. Talk about a robust democracy. It 
exists in Israel. You have very strongly held views by different 
citizens in Israel, and they fight it out. During their election 
process, they had a very robust election contest. Then they come 
together with a leader, and they hope to be unified as a people.
  They had desperately wanted, to borrow someone else's famous phrase, 
to give peace a chance. As a result, they tried to make the Oslo 
accords of 1993 work. What they found after Camp David, just about a 
year ago this month, was that the PLO was unwilling at the end of the 
day to make the kinds of commitments that would be necessary for a 
lasting peace in the region. The reason for that is a fundamental 
difference of approach.
  For the Israelis, it has been a question of buying peace with 
concessions, primarily of land, of territory. But the PLO and other 
Arab or Muslim groups in the Middle East apparently never had any 
intention of providing the quid pro quo of peace. Instead, too much of 
their effort has been focused on the illegitimacy, in their view, of 
the Israeli State, of the fundamental disagreement with the action that 
the United Nations took after World War II to literally create a 
homeland for the Jewish people. Because that homeland was taken from 
territory which the Palestinians saw as their lands, they have never 
been willing to concede the legitimacy of the Israeli State.
  At Camp David, after historic concessions were made by Prime Minister 
Barak, concessions which had to do with the most basic rights of the 
Israeli citizens--to name their own capital and to have that capital an 
undivided city, Jerusalem; concessions with respect to over 90 percent 
of the West Bank land returned to the Palestinians; concessions made in 
removing its troops from Lebanon and a whole variety of other things--
after all of those concessions had been made and there was an 
opportunity to seize the moment, Yasser Arafat, on behalf of the PLO, 
said no, he wanted one more thing. He wanted the right of return of all 
of the Palestinians, maybe 2 to 4 million people, maybe more, who he 
claims were dispossessed in order to create the Jewish state. All of 
those people had to have the right to go back to their homes.
  That, of course, was the ultimate deal breaker. No Israeli leader 
could ever agree to that concession. That would literally have meant 
the end of the Jewish state as it is. As a result, those accords of a 
year ago, that discussion at Camp David of a year ago, concluded with 
no agreement. It exposed the fundamental fallacy of the Oslo accords in 
the first instance.
  Very briefly, there were three essential premises of the Oslo 
accords. The first was that if the PLO was given this 30,000-manned 
armed force, that could be used to suppress violence rather than to 
promote more agitation in the Middle East. The idea was that whereas a 
democratic society such as Israel had a hard time dealing with these 
terrorists, a firm dictatorial Yasser Arafat, with an armed 30,000-
manned force, could put down these terrorists and bring peace to the 
area. Of course, the force expanded significantly beyond that which had 
been agreed to and eventually it was used to promote violence, not to 
suppress it.
  The second premise was that Israel could withdraw from the territory 
before a final peace accord was reached without losing its bargaining 
power or military deterrent. It had worked the other way around with 
regard to Egypt. Egypt, in good faith with President Sadat, dealt with 
the Israeli leaders up front. Israel ceded the land after the peace 
agreement was obtained. But peace was restored between Israel and Egypt 
as a result. That withdrawal of Israeli forces from Egyptian land prior 
to the peace ensuing was a true trade of land for peace. But under the 
Oslo accords, the situation was reversed. Israel was required to 
withdraw first and then negotiate. The result, of course, has been no 
credible peace.
  The third premise is that peace could be made with the PLO. In Israel 
there had been a consensus all along among all of the parties, 
including Labor and Likud, that it was not possible to deal with the 
PLO because, A, the Palestinian organization was philosophically 
committed to Israel's destruction. It is hard to deal with people in a 
peace process who are absolutely committed to your destruction.
  Secondly, the PLO's previous negotiations had been based on terrorism 
as the means of achieving their objectives. No Israeli government had 
been willing to negotiate with an entity committed to its destruction 
through violence.
  This peace process changed that. The Israeli leaders, in a leap of 
faith, said: All right, we will deal with the PLO, despite this 
historic background.
  The process itself became the basis for this understanding. A new 
assumption was basically created. If you are in the process of 
negotiating, then the quality of the people on the other side really 
didn't matter. That is why the Israelis were willing to make this leap 
of faith. It almost became a secular religion. In this country people 
talked about the peace process almost as the end in itself rather than 
the means to an end.
  It turns out that the nature of the leadership of the negotiating 
parties does matter. So do the actions on the

[[Page 12645]]

ground. The quality of the other people is fundamental to the success 
of the negotiations. The parties were never close, as some thought. 
Rather, the question really is whether peace was ever achievable given 
the Palestinian objectives.
  That is why I say the fundamental assumptions of the peace process, 
of the Oslo accords, were flawed. In the end, none of the three 
premises turned out to be correct. They all turned out to be false. The 
Israeli people now understand that.
  The question now is how to repair the damage that resulted from an 
adherence to this peace process where Israel gave up more and more and 
more and, in the end, got no peace. Ever since the Secretary of State 
and other officials before him went to the Middle East, there has been 
a bombing or an attempt every single day, an attempt of terrorism. 
There is no peace.
  Hopefully, this helps to explain in brief form why it is not possible 
to simply return to the peace process as if there were some magic in 
that Oslo process. The Oslo process is dead. The reason it is dead is 
because it was premised on fundamental fallacies. That is why the 
Israeli people cannot go back to that flawed process.
  We in the United States should not be critical of that decision on 
the part of the Israeli people. The Israeli people are not to blame for 
dealing now with a situation of violence and lawlessness and terror in 
as firm a way as they possibly can to protect their own citizens. No 
country could do otherwise. And for Americans to be so presumptuous as 
to lecture the Israelis about overreacting and urging them to return to 
a peace process which they now recognize was fundamentally flawed is 
the height of arrogance. We in the U.S. have to be much more 
understanding about the difficulties of achieving peace.
  Fundamentally, Madam President, I think what we have to recognize is 
that as long as the leadership of the other side in this controversy--
primarily the PLO--is not democratically based but is totalitarian, as 
long as there is not an involvement of all of the Palestinian people in 
the decisions on the other side, there will continue to be conflict.
  The nature of the leadership on the other side matters, and it 
matters greatly. Until there is a democratically elected Palestinian 
Government, until the leaders are accountable to the people, whom I 
suspect want peace as much as anybody else in the region or in the 
world, then we are not likely to get the kind of peaceful resolution 
for which we all hope.
  So what I hope right now is that the American people will be 
understanding of the position of the Israeli Government; that they will 
be supportive of this long-time ally, the nation of Israel; that they 
will recognize that there is no moral equivalence between acts of 
terror on the one hand and attempting to enforce the law on the other 
hand; that they will be supportive both in terms of military and 
economic support but also psychologically and not buy into this notion 
that there is repression on the part of the Israeli Government against 
the Palestinians which is the cause of the problem.
  This whole idea of moral equivalence is wrong. If we go back to the 
founding of the Jewish state by the United Nations and recognize what 
was attempted there and the moral legitimacy of the Israeli State, then 
I think Americans will more carefully calibrate their criticism of the 
Israeli Government and understand that it is going to take a long time; 
that hearts have to change before there can be peace; and probably the 
best opportunity is for democracy to take hold in the Arab States so 
that the leaders are accountable to the people because in the long run, 
most people really want peace. They want to live together; they want to 
engage in commerce together; and they do not want to continue to send 
their sons and daughters to die for causes that are whipped up by their 
leadership--to die unnecessarily.
  That is why I urge my colleagues in the Senate today, the 
administration in Washington, and the American people generally, to 
learn to listen carefully and to recognize that the peace process was 
based upon flawed assumptions, and not to urge the Israelis to act in 
ways that would be inimical both to their own immediate self-interests 
in terms of safety and the long-term interests of peace. It is a 
difficult subject, one that we have to confront; and we have to stand 
by an ally and also recognize the legitimacy of other Arab aspirations 
and Muslim aspirations in the Middle East, in which we have a great 
stake as well. As long as we fail to recognize the complexity of this 
situation and understand the process that was urged for so long cannot 
be the basis for future peace negotiations, we are not going to be able 
to proceed in a constructive way.
  I hope the American people, as a result of these comments and others, 
will support the administration in its very delicate and difficult 
negotiations in that region and will be supportive of the Members of 
this body who seek to promote the kind of peace that will be not just 
temporary but lasting.
  Mr. President, yet again Israel's restraint and unilateral acceptance 
of a ``cease fire'' has been met with terrorist acts perpetrated 
against an innocent civilian population. The recent tragic deaths of 20 
Israeli teenagers and serious wounding of another 48 by a Palestinian 
suicide bomber were stark and deeply sad reminders that the key to 
peace in the Middle East does not depend on the State of Israel.
  I am extremely concerned that the doctrine of moral equivalence has 
taken root among many in the United States and around the world with 
respect to perceptions of Arab-Israeli violence. While over the years 
Israel may have taken steps with which we do not always agree, the 
notion that it operates on the same moral plane as its adversaries is 
patently false. The suicide bombing, deliberately targeted against 
Israeli youth, was not the result of individuals driven to extremes by 
perceived Israeli intransigence in peace talks. It was, in fact, the 
action of organized groups committed to Israel's total destruction.
  At the urging of Secretary of State Colin Powell, the Israeli 
Government has entered into cease fires. The attacks continue. When the 
Israelis identify and eliminate the specific perpetrators of these mass 
terrorist killings, they are called murderers. Meanwhile, the world 
wrings its hands and asks why the parties can't just return to the 
``peace process.'' This is a good time to answer that question, 
beginning with an assessment of what went wrong with the Oslo peace 
process.
  The effect of the violence in Israel today cannot be overstated. 
After the failure of the Camp David summit just a year ago, and the 
subsequent reignition of violence, Israel has suffered from an 
unrelenting assault on its people. The result has been a total 
reassessment in Israel of the premises of the Oslo peace process--
premises which have turned out to be invalid.
  Let's go back to 1993. The first of three basic premises of Oslo was 
that, if the PLO were given a 30,000-man armed force, it would be used 
to suppress, not to perpetuate, armed violence. Yitzhak Rabin was 
Defense Minister back in 1987 when the intifada started. The failure to 
stop it was a turning point for Rabin; it caused him to decide then to 
begin a peace process. He thought that if Israel couldn't handle the 
intifada, maybe Arafat could. But soon the 30,000-man force became a 
40,000-man force, and anti-tank weapons, shoulder-fired weapons and 
other prohibited arms found their way into the Palestinian force's 
arsenal--weapons that are now pointed and fired at Israeli communities. 
All of this has occurred in violation of the Oslo Accords.
  So the first premise--that the PLO would actually control the 
intifada with a 30,000-man force--turned out to be false.
  The second premise was that Israel could withdraw from territory 
before a final peace accord was reached without losing its bargaining 
power or sacrificing physical security. In the case of its dealings 
with Egypt, Israel had ceded land after the peace agreement was 
obtained. That withdrawal had worked as a true trade of land for peace. 
But, under the Oslo Accords,

[[Page 12646]]

Israel was required to withdraw first and then negotiate. The result 
has been no credible peace.
  This premise of Oslo had been based on the assumption that Israel was 
finally strong enough to be able to relinquish land while preserving 
its ability to deter violence. So Israel withdrew from the West Bank, 
except for a few military posts authorized in the Oslo agreement, and 
in May of 2000 also withdrew from southern Lebanon. Both actions 
appeared to the Arab terrorist organizations and the Palestinian 
Authority as a retreat from a successful campaign of violence. After 
the intifada, Israel withdrew from the West Bank. After the terrorism 
of Hezbollah, Israel withdrew from Lebanon. The PA understandably saw 
violence as a way to achieve its goals.
  So the second premise of Oslo--that Israel could withdraw first and 
achieve its peace objectives later--has also proven false. Arafat and 
the PA interpreted the withdrawals simply as a sign of weakness thus 
emboldening them to incite the violence that has continued unabated 
since Rosh Hashana.
  The third, and central, premise of Oslo was that peace could be made 
with the PLO. In Israel, there was a consensus until 1993 among all 
parties, including Labor and Likud, that it was not possible to deal 
with the PLO. There were two reasons for this view: first, the PLO was 
philosophically committed to Israel's destruction; and, second, the 
PLO's negotiations had been historically based on terrorism. No 
previous Israeli government had been willing to negotiate with an 
entity committed to its destruction through violence.
  But in 1993, Oslo created a new assumption: If you had a process--a 
process of negotiating--then the quality of people on the other side 
did not really matter. The process became almost like a secular 
religion. The process was the important thing, and so actions on the 
ground didn't matter. This notion had roots in Western dealings with 
leaders in countries like North Korea, Iraq, and the Soviet Union.
  It turns out, though, that the nature of leadership does matter, and 
so do actions on the ground. The quality of people on the other side is 
fundamental to the success of negotiations. It is the people, not the 
process, that matters.
  The fact is, the parties were never as close as many believed. The 
issue was never the desirability of peace, or what either the United 
States or Israel could do to bring it about. Rather, the question was 
whether peace was ever achievable given Palestinian objectives. Yet 
when Barak and Arafat were near the end of negotiations, Arafat raised 
one more demand: that Israel must agree to the right of return, and 
admit more than a million Palestinians into Israel.
  This notion is anathema to all Israelis. Even those on the left 
oppose the right of return because of its consequences; literally, the 
end of Israel as a Jewish state. Israel could not survive the return of 
over a million Palestinians and continue to exist as a Jewish state. 
Barak made unprecedented concessions at Camp David. Even Leah Rabin 
complained that Barak's concessions would cause her late husband to 
turn over in his grave. This move by Arafat was so shocking that 
virtually all Israelis lost confidence in the process. Barak lost all 
support. And a radical reassessment of realities set in.
  Despite the disappointment at the failure of negotiations, the 
awakening of the Israeli people to the faulty premises and the reality 
of the failure of the Oslo Accords is a healthy development. The Bush 
Administration seems to have assimilated much of the Israeli attitude, 
and has been careful to avoid involving itself in the effort to restart 
the ``peace process'' at this time. For the future, it is helpful to 
acknowledge the falseness of the three key Oslo premises. The Oslo 
process had ended up doing severe damage to Israel's deterrent--its 
ability to match concessions with tangible peace.
  The principal goal now should be to repair that damage. Amid all the 
Israeli concessions and gestures, it was assumed that there would be 
reciprocity on the part of the Palestinians. But the Arabs believed 
showing reciprocity would be a sign of weakness on their part. The 
evidence abounds. More Israelis were killed by terrorist acts after 
Oslo then in the decade before. The PLO did not fulfill the promises it 
made; for example, disarming the terrorists--in fact, releasing from 
prison some of the most dangerous Hamas terrorists--limiting its arms, 
and guaranteeing peace.
  Moreover, and perhaps even more disturbing for the long run, the 
Palestinian authority created schools with a curriculum of brainwashing 
their children in hatred and violence. A shocked New York Times 
reporter last summer wrote of the creation of summer camps that even 
taught assassination. Former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paints 
the picture of posters throughout Palestinian communities showing a 
menacing Israeli soldier, armed to the teeth, towering over a pitiful 
looking Arab youngster who holds only one thing. Do you know what it 
is? A key. And every Arab child knows what it is. The Key to an Arab 
home in Jaffa, or Haifa, or any other Arab community of pre-1967 
Palestine. So much for the view that the parties were ``just this 
close.'' All of this has caused a reassessment of the realities, and, 
as I said, that is a healthy development at this point.
  One must view the situation today clear eyed and in strategic terms. 
It is a situation of more than just military or economic power. For 
Israel it is quite simply a question of morale. Israel's problem right 
now is not that it lacks either economic or military power, but rather 
that its people have been following a conceptual and intellectual 
approach to achieving peace which has turned out to be false. The 
result has been confusion, frustration, and a problem of morale that 
can only be dealt with by reevaluation of the conceptual and 
intellectual approach to achieving peace. The people were sold on a 
``process,'' and now find that the presumptions underlying that process 
were illusions. Their disillusionment has set them adrift because they 
see they have lost territory and credibility that would never have been 
lost by military force.
  The Camp David concessions are especially galling now that there is a 
recognition that they were based upon false premises, a quid pro quo 
that was never to be reciprocated by the Palestinians. It makes the 
last several years seem very lost indeed. So the Israelis are revising 
their thinking.
  Those of us who have cared about the security of Israel and have 
watched the process over the years, viewed it with great anxiety 
because we worried it might have resulted in irreversible losses. And 
yet, with the last election, we see the Israeli people rethinking the 
premises of Oslo and charting a course to recover the initiative. The 
fact that Ariel Sharon, with all his political baggage, won so 
overwhelmingly suggests that the Israeli people are prepared to do what 
it takes to defend their state and to survive. Like England fighting 
back from its unpreparedness in the 30's and the United States after 
its military decline of the 1970's, Israel seems to have said, ``This 
far and no more,'' and begun to rethink its approach to achieving peace 
and security. Countries seem to have a way of being better than their 
failed leaders, and we can hope that the Israelis are on their way back 
with a more realistic and sober view of what will be required for their 
long-term security--what kind of approach will provide real, lasting 
peace.
  It is recognized that peace is not available now, but that it can 
become available in the future. The key to peace is a more democratic 
and much less corrupt leadership. There are moderate Palestinians, but 
they are not politically relevant right now. The Palestinians have been 
cursed with leaders who have always seemed to be wrong for the times. 
In World War I, Palestinian leaders sided with the Turks against the 
British; in World War II, with the Nazis against the allies; in the 
Cold War, with the Soviets against the West; and in the Persian Gulf 
War, with Saddam against the coalition of allies.
  Given his long record as an ideologue, a terrorist, a breaker of 
promises and fount of untruth, it should not

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really surprise anyone that Arafat remains what he has always been. As 
Charles Krauthammer recently noted in the Weekly Standard, ``[Arafat] 
proved, even to much of the Israeli left, that the entire theory of 
preemptive concessions, magnanimous gestures, rolling appeasement was 
an exercise in futility.''
  The key to peace is a Palestinian leadership that would appeal to the 
better nature of the Palestinian people, one that would reflect their 
aspirations for a prosperous and peaceful future--not one that exploits 
their misery through a policy of physically and vitriolically attacking 
Israel. In short, a democratic government. As my friend Douglas Feith 
expressed the point in an article in Commentary: ``A stable peace [is] 
possible . . . only if the Palestinians first evolved responsible 
administrative institutions and leadership that enjoyed legitimacy in 
the eyes of its own people, refrained from murdering its political 
opponents, operated within and not above the law, and practiced 
moderation and compromise at home and abroad.'' This would, of course, 
be a boon not only for the Israelis, but for the Palestinians--indeed 
especially for the Palestinians.
  For over fifty years, the United States and Israel have been bound 
together in a relationship that has weathered many efforts to drive a 
wedge between us. With the coincident election of a new leader in each 
country, our two great nations have an opportunity to reassess the 
lessons recent history has to teach us. For my part, I am optimistic 
that the new American administration will place a great value on our 
relationship with the Israeli people; and I am optimistic that the 
Israelis will maintain the strength and morale that they will need to 
await a change in Palestinian leadership. At that point there will be 
much more the Israelis can do to secure their future.
  The United States should not push Israel into a process or into an 
agreement with which the government and people of Israel are not 
completely comfortable, with their security ensured. It is their 
existence that is at stake, and we must take no actions that jeopardize 
their security.
  My colleague from Wyoming would like to use the remainder of our 
time.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming is recognized.

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