Examination of Witnesses (Questions 257
- 259)
TUESDAY 8 JUNE 2004
DR EMANUELE
OTTOLENGHI AND
DR JEROEN
GUNNING
Q257 Chairman: On behalf of the Foreign
Affairs Committee, may I welcome you to the Committee? The subject
is Israel and Palestine. To introduce you briefly, Dr Emanuele
Ottolenghi is an expert on Israeli politics at St Anthony's College
in Oxford?
Dr Ottolenghi: Yes.
Chairman: Dr Gunning, you are an expert
on Hamas and Palestinian politics and we welcome your assistance
to the Committee in terms of the Middle East.
Q258 Mr Hamilton: Welcome, gentlemen.
I want to start off by asking you about the unilateral withdrawal
by Israel from Gaza and I want to ask you both for your opinion
as to whether, after all the controversy within the Likud Party,
it will actually go ahead.
Dr Ottolenghi: First of all, thank
you for the invitation to come here. The dateline, the framework,
for the withdrawal is about 16 to 18 months from now. The Middle
East has accustomed us to know that in 16 to 18 months the world
can change and change again, so my feeling is that the answer
should be a qualified yes. The decision by the Prime Minister
of Israel to go ahead with this plan and to face this kind of
opposition within his own party and to renege on his political
past and his ideological legacy is an indication which people
across the political spectrum in Israel are starting to recognise.
He takes this plan very seriously. There is the political will.
The political battle ahead is very difficult because of political
opposition within the coalition of Prime Minister Sharon. Having
said that, the polls at least in the last two years show repeatedly
and consistently the very widespread support of the Israeli public
for this kind of policy. The support extends not just to the political
areas that you would expect to support such a move—i.e.,
the Israeli left—but the withdrawal plan put forward by
Prime Minister Sharon enjoys today the support of over 55 per
cent of Likud voters. The strength of this plan is that, despite
political opposition, it enjoys a very broad support among the
public. The Prime Minister is strong with that support and will
use that support in order to push forward. Of course, having said
that, nobody knows how the plan once it starts rolling down the
hill will play on the other side of the fence.
Dr Gunning: Talking about the
other side of the fence, I completely agree with what Dr Ottolenghi
says, but it may not be as unilateral as it now looks. The fact
that Egypt has been showing interest in having some kind of security
arrangement with whatever authority will be there, in conjunction
with US and Israeli observers, means it looks likely that there
is going to be a slightly more formal handing over of power than
"unilateral" indicates as a term. On the Palestinian
side, there certainly seems to be a readiness for this kind of
action, among the Palestinian Authority and also the opposition
groups who sense that this might be an opportunity to strengthen
their base. One thing I would caution against is the number of
pundits who say that the Palestinian Authority is too weak to
withstand Hamas and that if Israel withdraws there will be a Hamas-led
Gaza. I think that is a wrong reading of events. The Palestinian
Authority is weakened partly because of the campaign of bombing
directed by the Israeli Government and partly by its own in-fighting,
particularly between Arafat loyalists and locally reared commanders
like Mohamed Dahlan, who is an independent operator. There is
enough strength there and certainly much more military strength
than Hamas has, so it seems that even with a weakened Palestinian
authority it is more likely to be some kind of a system of power
sharing than a complete takeover.
Q259 Mr Hamilton: Gentlemen, from
what you have said it would appear that this is more than just
political expediency; that it is perhaps a genuine contribution
to the beginning of some sort of peace process. Would you agree?
Dr Ottolenghi: I am always very
careful about using the words "peace process" because
there has not been peace and there is not much process around.
We like to believe that there is a peace process or that something
can be done to jump start it. The bottom line of the unilateral
withdrawal is that the political terms and the kinds of concessions
or consequences of this step are determined by and large by the
Israeli decision to move forward regardless of what the Palestinian
side will do. It would be a welcome step if cooperation and coordination,
either at a bilateral level or multilaterally—we have seen
Egypt giving an important contribution in the last few days—could
take place in order to ensure that the withdrawal is smooth and
achieved with as little violence and tension between the two sides
as possible. Once that has happened, it is anyone's guess if the
two parties can then seize the opportunity and go back to the
negotiating table. The assumption that both the Israeli Government
and the Israeli public that supports the withdrawal are making
is that this is the best possible course of action to take in
the present circumstances because the Israeli perception is that
there is no place for meaningful negotiations. Regardless of the
willingness of the other side to engage, the perception in Israel
today is that the gap between the two sides is too broad and,
in these circumstances, a unilateral withdrawal where Israel determines
its own boundaries, even in a temporary way, is the only possible
course of action. Having said that, Israel relinquishing territory,
dismantling and evacuating settlements, removing troops from Gaza,
are all steps that can help de-escalate the tension, reduce the
pressure on the civilian populations and might create conditions
for something to open up once the process is over, but we are
talking about 18 months.
Dr Gunning: There is a chance
of some kind of settlement. Whether it is called "peace"
is a different issue. There should be concern for the economic
consequences of the unilateral withdrawal. At the moment, it seems
that the main issue is security on the Israeli side and building
a fence, withdrawing behind the fence and leaving the Palestinians
in some ways to their own lot. Because the fence is situated in
such a way that much of the most arable land of the West Bank
is on the Israeli side, it means that you will effectively create
a huge social ghetto on the other side which, in the long term,
will be destabilising for any peace effort. Despite what Dr Ottolenghi
says about the perception in Israel that there is no partner for
any negotiations on the other side, my reading of especially what
has been happening inside Hamas—and we have to recognise
that Hamas at the moment is the king maker on the Palestinian
side, because the Palestinian Authority does not have the popular
legitimacy to carry any compromise through—is that there
is a willingness within Hamas, despite the assassinations that
have happened over the last year, to come to some kind of compromise
on the basis of the 1967 borders. Sharon at the moment does not
seem to be ready to concede that much territory but there is a
window of opportunity there which could be used if Israel and
the international community shift away from thinking that to solve
the problem you have to eradicate opposition groups. There is
too much support for the opposition groups to eradicate them.
The Palestinian Authority does not have the wherewithal to do
that, so, just as in Northern Ireland, there needs to be some
kind of process where you bind the radicals within the process
so that they get a stake in it. I am happy to expand on that if
the Committee wants.[1]
1 Note by witness: For a more in-depth discussion
of this argument, see J Gunning, `Peace with Hamas? The Transforming
Potential pf Political Participation', International Affairs,
Vol 80, No 2, March 2004 Back
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