Israeli journalist David Horovitz

DATE November 8, 2001 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: David Horovitz discusses how Israelis are responding
to the September 11th attacks, the war on terrorism and the
continued violence in the Middle East
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

September 11th and the war against terrorism has increased the urgency of
restarting the peace process in the Middle East. Osama bin Laden has adopted
the Palestinian cause as part of his agenda, although many Palestinians,
including Hanan Ashrawi, have objected to that association. Both Palestinians
and Israelis have been suffering during this second intifada. Israelis feel
constantly unsafe because of a wave of suicide bombings. By September 10th,
there had already been 30 of them this year. Palestinians are living under
military occupation, and hundreds of Palestinians have been killed. A little
later, we'll hear from Palestinian journalists Ghassan Khatib.

Our first guest is David Horovitz, editor of the Israeli newsmagazine The
Jerusalem Report. He's also author of the book "A Little Too Close to God."
He's lived in Israel since emigrating from England in 1983. I asked him to
describe the range of reaction in Israel after the attacks of September 11th.

Mr. DAVID HOROVITZ (Author, "A Little Too Close to God"): The main reaction
in Israel was utter horror and a kind of weird sense of identifying with the
nature of the attack at the same time as people realized that this was
something beyond anything they had encountered here. And I think people were
sort of--you know, once the initial shock had passed, they were trying to sort
of draw parallels and proportions and realizing, really, that the scale of
those attacks amounted almost to sort of the equivalent to all the Israeli
losses in the year of conflict with the Palestinians, and it was so much worse
because it was as though somebody had attacked the Israeli parliament building
or some other kind of symbol of the state here as well. So the sense of
identification was diminished by the realization that we had encountered
nothing like this here.

GROSS: Has the American war against terrorism changed daily life in any way
in Israel?

Mr. HOROVITZ: I'm not sure that it has, and I wonder, actually, if Israelis
would say that they're unhappy that it hasn't. Because I think that
initially, at least, the sense in Israel was, `Wow, finally now the Americans,
in their terrible pain, would understand what we've been talking about and
going through.' The sort of natural trust you have when you go about your
daily life, that the people you're encountering don't want to kill you, that
trust has been shattered as Israelis feel it has been shattered for them. And
there was a sense, I think, that America and Israel would now be leading the
charge against the people who don't cherish the right to life. And what I
think Israelis worry about is that not only is there no such partnership, but
there's a fear that the Americans are concentrating on a very limited
objective and are, in fact, for now at least, whitewashing some of the other
sources of terrorism which Israelis would regard as regimes like Iran and
Syria and, indeed, Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority, which at the very
least, I would say almost all Israelis believe fosters terrorism, if it
doesn't actually participate in it.

GROSS: I want to get back to that in a couple of minutes. Do you think that
terrorism has escalated at all since the 11th, or do you think that the
escalation has just been since the new intifada that started over a year ago?

Mr. HOROVITZ: The attacks that Israel has been facing I would say have not
escalated in a significant way, except psychologically. That after September
the 11th, in October, Palestinian gunmen killed an Israeli minister, and that
was unprecedented, that they assassinated the minister of tourism in a
Jerusalem hotel. But in terms of the day-to-day conflict that had been
causing its relentless death toll for almost a year before September the 11th,
on and on it still goes.

GROSS: What are some of the things that you feel you can't do now, or places
that you feel it's unsafe to go now since the second intifada?

Mr. HOROVITZ: Well, I'll give you a very personal example. Shortly before
this what we'll call a new intifada erupted a year ago, along with tens of
thousands of other Israelis, I would take my family out into the West Bank
sometimes. Just a few weekends before the intifada erupted, we went out to
Bethlehem, which is all of 10 minutes from my house. And I've got three young
kids, and I'm not a foolhardy father, I don't think. It was safe. We drove
into Bethlehem, we had lunch in a restaurant, we toured the city. We went to
some places we hadn't seen for years because the places had been in territory
that was too dangerous for years. A Palestinian kid jumped into the car at
one point to show us the way. We asked a couple of Palestinian policemen for
directions at a certain point, and there was nothing bizarre about this at
all. This was normal interaction. And at that time, of course, tens of
thousands of Palestinians were coming into Israel every day to work. Well,
now, if anyone is foolish enough to try and enter Bethlehem or any other
Palestinian city in a car with yellow Israeli registration plates, it becomes
remarkable if they emerge unscathed.

A few weeks ago, an Israeli--I think he was a parachutist or a hang glider
pilot--drifted into the center of Ramallah, and it was front-page news in
Israel that he wasn't killed. Because, of course, if there's an image that
has probably scarred Israelis as much or more than others in this intifada,
it's the image of the two Israeli reservists who strayed last year into
Ramallah by mistake and were battered to death in a police station in the
city.

And people just don't--you can't go now. There is no interaction. The level
of hostility is just too deep.

GROSS: Americans are trying to adjust to the threat of terrorism. It's
something that Israelis have lived with for a long time. Are there ways in
which you feel you've adjusted and other ways in which you feel you have not?

Mr. HOROVITZ: Well, you never really adjust, but you tell yourself that you
are and you tell yourself that you're carrying on. And you do become a
little desensitized, because that's the only way to carry on. And I'm not
sure how much of the daily assault really reaches American ears. Because, you
know, I'm sure most people will have been aware that there was a suicide
bombing outside a nightclub in Tel Aviv in June and that there was a pizzeria
blown up in central Jerusalem two months later. But really, every day there
are attacks. There was a suicide bombing foiled this week in Jerusalem. The
guy was intercepted in the car that was bringing him and his explosives into
Jerusalem. A Palestinian gunman opened fire on a bus, a civilian bus in
northern Jerusalem also this week, killed two Israeli teen-agers; almost
killed the Arab bus driver, whose life was saved, actually, by a Jewish medic.

But it goes on every day. And we have gotten to the stage in Israel where you
simply cannot stay in your home and not go out and just panic, because you'd
never go out. The threat is there all the time. There are threats every day;
there are attacks every day, and you cannot give in to them. You have to go
about your business. I think very telling in terms of the sort of image for
that is the fact that the pizzeria Sbarro, at the junction of King George and
Jaffa Road in Jerusalem, which is probably the most popular crossroads in the
country, the best-known junction in the country, that pizza restaurant
reopened a month after is was blown up. Fifteen people were killed, and the
owner said the way to beat terrorism is simply carry on as usual. they
rebuilt the restaurant. The Arabs and Jews who worked there before work there
again now. Nobody quit, as far as I know. A few of the Israelis have been
called into the army since the--just happened to have been called up. They're
of that age, in their late teens. But the same people work there, and the
actual business has actually improved in the restaurant. More people go
there, because they want to show that they will not be deterred.

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is David Horovitz. He's the
editor of the Israeli newsmagazine The Jerusalem Report. He's lived in Israel
since emigrating there from England there in 1983. He's also author of the
book "A Little Too Close to God."

Now Hezbollah and Hamas, the two major groups that have targeted Israel, were
not included on the Bush administration's list of terrorist organizations that
the coalition will fight. Although just a few day ago the Bush administration
authorized the US Treasury Department to freeze the assets of Hezbollah and
Hamas. What's the range of reaction to Israel--to whether Hezbollah and Hamas
should be included on the list of terrorist groups?

Mr. HOROVITZ: Israelis, I would say, would definitely consider Hezbollah and
Hamas to be dangerous terrorists organizations that are prepared to target
civilians and that are openly avowedly committed to the destruction of Israel
and that need to be choked of resources, of ability to operate, support and so
on. Hezbollah fought Israel for years in the south of Lebanon when Israel
occupied was called the security zone in southern Lebanon. More than a year
ago, Israel withdrew all its troops from Lebanon to the international border
in partnership with the United Nations. And Hezbollah continues to target and
attempt to target Israel across the border. It's not a case of seeking to
liberate occupied territory.

The same applies to Hamas. Hamas, from Gaza and from the West Bank, is
consistently attempting to carry out attacks on Israeli--not just Israeli
soldiers, not even on Israeli settlers who are living in territory that most
of the international community would not consider to be Israeli territory, but
to also target civilians inside sovereign Israel. Hamas is openly committed
to the elimination of Israel, opposed to Yasser Arafat and the Oslo process,
because that provided for coexistence between Palestine and Israel. So Israel
would want these groups to be prevented from operating.

GROSS: Last month, the Israeli prime minister, Sharon, accused President Bush
of basically selling out Israel in order to keep the coalition together. Is
that a popular sentiment in Israel?

Mr. HOROVITZ: Sharon warned Bush and the rest of the supposedly enlightened
international community not to sell out Israel and feared that there was an
effort that would be appeasing the Arab world at Israel's expense. I would
say that many Israelis would have considered it somewhat unfortunate that
Sharon went public with parts of that speech. However, I think a lot of
Israelis would identify with with underlying plea and sense of frustration in
those remarks, the sense that Israel is once again, as it was during the Gulf
War, being asked unreasonably to constrain and restrain itself when its
civilians are being attacked.

GROSS: I don't know if you saw this, but New York Times columnist Tom
Friedman wrote a piece a few weeks ago that basically said, `America has been
such a supporter of Israel, that now what the Israelis should do is just ask,
"What can we do to help?" and leave it at that.'

Mr. HOROVITZ: Yeah. I think that's fine and I think if, behind the scenes,
Israel was being assured that sooner, rather than later, the American-led
coalition will focus its attention on the groups in our neighborhood that are
targeting our civilians, then I think Israel would probably be more prepared
to do that. But there isn't a sense like that. There's a sense that America
has engaged in an operation that is having, at the very least--at the very
best, mixed results in Afghanistan; that is has not demanded any reasonable
price from the Arafat regime for it being left alone for the time being and
that it's unreasonable to ask Israel to sit on its hands while its civilians
are being killed. I mean, people are being killed every day here.

And it's all very well for Tom Friedman to sit wherever he sits and tell
Israel that as a friend of America, it needs to put up and shut up. I would
not be prepared to do that, and I don't think he would be prepared to do that
if he had to take his heart in his mouth every time his kid went off on a
school trip or every time he got into his own car or every time he went to
work or walked down the street. You know, again, just to make it
personal--and everybody has these stories--there have been car bombs at the
crossroads around the corner from my house; the French hill attacked somewhere
right where I used to live. A restaurant was blown up in Jerusalem on a
street that all of us have walked down. These are not some kind of vague,
marginal threats. These are very real threats. We start the day here in
Israel absolutely uncertain whether we are going to end it.

GROSS: Some Israelis have said that they think the United States has a double
standard; that the United States is bombing Afghanistan to try to stop
terrorism, but that the United States has criticized Israel for going into the
West Bank or Gaza to get people they think are terrorists. Is that a
generally held feeling in Israel?

Mr. HOROVITZ: Yes. It's a very widely held feeling in Israel. There's a
sense in Israel that the parallel that Sharon has tried to draw really between
the Taliban and Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority is a valid parallel;
that just like the Taliban, Arafat's regime is fostering terrorism, is
refusing to arrest people who are right now planning attacks on Israeli
civilians; and that Israel is doing exactly what America is doing. It's asked
Arafat to arrest the bad guys, much as America asked the Taliban to hand over
Osama bin Laden. It has been met with mockery and derision and
non-cooperation. It has, therefore, sent crack troops and helicopters and so
on to do the job itself, to prevent further attacks on its civilians with some
success and, in return, has been castigated by the American administration,
told not to send its troops into Palestinian areas, as though the Arafat
regime were as pure as the driven snow, when all it is doing is exactly what
the Americans are doing in Afghanistan.

GROSS: My guest is Israeli journalist David Horovitz, editor of the
newsweekly, The Jerusalem Report. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is David Horovitz. He's the
editor of the Israeli newsmagazine The Jerusalem Report. He's lived in Israel
since emigrating from England in 1983. He's also the author of the book "A
Little Too Close To God."

What would you say is the state of the peace movement now in Israel? Is there
still an active peace movement?

Mr. HOROVITZ: There is. But it's been very marginalized, and you're
speaking to somebody here who, for example, in the book I wrote last year, was
very optimistic and I remain a supporter of compromise. The problem that
Israelis in the center and center left of the spectrum face is--if they're
honest with themselves, they sense that Yasser Arafat really betrayed this
process, and that takes us back, as every assessment of what has happened in
Israel the last year must take us back, to Camp David. Because at the Camp
David Summit in the summer of the year 2000, as far as Israelis from the
center left, quite a long way over to the left and all the way over to the
right, their sense is that Arafat at Camp David proved that he didn't really
want to make peace with Israel, because as far as we understand what happened
at Camp David and at the subsequent talks at Taba and other locations,
Israel offered to end the occupation, sought to end the occupation, to partner
the Palestinians towards statehood on almost all of the territory that Yasser
Arafat was seeking, all of the Gaza Strip, almost all of the West Bank and a
partnership in Jerusalem. And that wasn't enough.

What we understand is that Arafat insisted first of all on attempting to sever
Jews and Israel from any links to the Temple Mount, which is the holiest site
in Jerusalem, as well as being the third holiest site in Islam. And also that
Yasser Arafat--and this is really where people abroad, I often think, don't
get this and don't understand this because it's so unbelievable. Yasser
Arafat insisted on a right of return, as he calls it, for potentially 3.7
million Palestinians, refugees, not to come and live in the Palestinian state
that he wanted to establish but inside Israel. And that, of course, given
that the population of Israel is five million Jews and 1-point-something
million Arabs, would mean the end of Israel as a Jewish state.

So as far as Israelis are concerned, at Camp David, Arafat really proved that
when he purportedly accepted coexistence with Israel, he was cheating us, and
he didn't want Israel and Palestine side-by-side but, in fact, wanted a new
Palestine and gradually to overrun Israel and turn it into a Palestine as
well. And the vast majority of Israelis are utterly and possibly irrevocably
disillusioned with Yasser Arafat. They feel he failed his people. They don't
think he told his people that Israel wanted to partner with Palestinians
toward statehood, and they think that he bears direct personal responsibility
for the awful unfolding of day-to-day bloodshed and violence that we have
suffered for more than a year now.

GROSS: At the same time that there's a growing disillusionment in Israel
about the peace process, I think there's a growing despair among Palestinians
about the peace process. I think many, perhaps even most Palestinians, feel
that their lives have just gotten worse in the past year, that they're living
under occupation, they can't get out, they can't get to work, they have no
basic freedoms anymore. And so Palestinians are, I think--I don't want to
generalize too much, but I think many Palestinians find themselves just
getting angrier at Israel.

Mr. HOROVITZ: Yes. And I have a lot of sympathy for Palestinian anger, but
they're directing it in the wrong place. They need to be directing it at the
leader, who, in my opinion--and I've had conversations on this radio station
with Palestinian journalists in Gaza who have told me and listeners that I was
lying, that Barak didn't offer to partner the Palestinians towards statehood
and that Barak didn't offer to relinquish almost all the territory. Well,
that's because their leadership never told them the truth, because their
leadership has incited against Israel, because their leadership has not dealt
with them honestly, because their leadership missed the opportunity of a
moderate Israeli prime minister ready for not only the best offer that Israel
had ever made, the maximum offer that Israel can ever make without destroying
itself, without committing suicide as a Jewish entity. Their leadership
failed to end the occupation.

And, yes, of course, their life is terrible now, and there have been 800
Palestinian casualties and 200 Israeli casualties. And the solution isn't,
`Oh, there should have been more Israelis.' The solution is nobody should
have been dying here and nobody needed to have been dying here. And we all
know where the middle-ground solution runs. We know that, basically, in the
end, when there is commonsense and readiness to compromise on the Palestinian
side, as there was on the Israeli side, there will be territorial compromise,
there will be no `right of return,' as the Palestinians call it, for refugees
to the state of Israel, and there needs to be a partnership over Jerusalem.

We can all draw the lines where the compromise has to run. And it is the
tragedy of the Palestinian people as much as, maybe even more than the Israeli
people this past 14, 15 months, that their leadership was too cowardly or too
pigheaded or too--I don't know--thought that it could push the Israelis a
little further. I would guess that cowardice figured fairly high and a desire
not to go down in history as somebody who compromised on some of the
Palestinian goals and, instead of which, I'm sorry to say, Arafat will go down
in history as the man who failed his people and got a lot of people killed
that didn't have to die.

GROSS: Sari Nusseibeh, who's been a Palestinian negotiator and Palestinian
spokesperson, has said that he thinks Palestinians have gotten too extreme.
And he said a few weeks ago, `We're telling the Israelis we want to kick you
out. It's not that we want liberation, freedom and independence in the West
Bank and Gaza. We want to kick you out of your home. And in order to make
sure that Israelis get the message, people go out to a disco or a restaurant
and blow themselves up. The whole thing is just crazy, ugly, totally
counterproductive. The secret is to get Israel to side with you. We lost our
allies.' I believe you spoke with Sari Nusseibeh before coming to this studio
for our interview today, yes?

Mr. HOROVITZ: Actually, I didn't because he rescheduled and I'm meeting with
him tomorrow. But I did speak to him last week, actually.

GROSS: And?

Mr. HOROVITZ: Well, Sari Nusseibeh is the kind of Palestinian leader with
whom Israel could have made peace a year ago, and with whom Israel will
presumably make peace, I hope, sooner rather than later, because Sari
Nusseibeh also says that the Palestinians blew it at Camp David, that the
Palestinians should not have been holding out for a right of return. He asks
the question that all Israelis asks, what--or Israelis ask: `What is the
two-state solution if the Palestinians are demanding that millions of their
people come to live in Israel?'

Now I personally believe that Sari Nusseibeh is one of the few voices of
moderation. I think the Palestinians, I hope, will get behind people like
him. Rather than that, though, I fear that he is taking tremendous personal
risks in setting out such moderate positions.

GROSS: David Horovitz is the editor of The Jerusalem Report, and author of
the book "A Little Too Close To God." He'll be back in the second half of the
show. I'm Terry Gross and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

(Credits)

GROSS: Coming up, we talk with Ghassan Khatib, a Palestinian journalist and
teacher living in the occupied West Bank. And we continue our conversation
with Israeli journalist David Horovitz.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with Israeli journalist
David Horovitz, editor of the newsweekly The Jerusalem Report. He's also
the author of the book "A Little Too Close to God," which he describes as
an account of the thrills and panic of a life in Israel.

It seems that particularly since the second intifada started over a year ago,
that just about the only interactions between Israelis and Palestinians has to
do with the occupation; you know, that Israelis in the military see
Palestinians when Israelis have guns or tanks trained on them, and
Palestinians see Israelis when they have Israeli guns pointed at them. This
is not a great way for people to learn to respect each other. And I'm
wondering if you have any thoughts about that, about how the predicament, the
occupation is kind of a recipe for escalating distrust and hatred.

Mr. HOROVITZ: Well, first of all, you're right, the situation is dire. This
is not a little blip. This is a slipping back of a generation. It was a very
prolonged process that took the sides to Camp David last year, but by Camp
David last year, the vast majority of Israelis were ready for extraordinary
compromises, and that summit failed. And in the wake of that summit, first of
all, the Israelis will be very hard-pressed now. It would take a lot of
convincing them to be prepared to compromise, and the hostility that month
after month of direct confrontation has wrought means that average Israelis
and Palestinians deeply revile each other now. Israelis feel very much that
the whole explanation for this is that the Palestinian leadership failed to
take the chance to make peace, but, of course, as every death occurs and every
day goes by, that context becomes progressively less relevant, and you are
left only with the endless violence and the endless hatreds.

Now there is a way out of this. The way out of this really is for the
international community and primarily the United States to turn up the
pressure. Now obviously I'm speaking from an Israeli perspective, but it
seems to me fairly evident that the pressure, first and foremost, has to be
directed at the Palestinian leadership. And let me just give you one little
example of why this is not really a conflict where you've got to look at both
sides and say, `They've both got to stop.'

The Palestinians have to stop, then the Israelis will stop automatically, and
here's the proof. You know, for months, there were reports of daily clashes
and shooting between Gilo and Beit Jala on the southern edge of Jerusalem.
Gilo is a Jewish neighborhood built on land captured in 1967. Beit Jala is
Palestinian territory just across the valley. And this was reported in most
of the international media as though both sides kind of fired at each other
now and again. But the fact is on every occasion, the shooting started from
Beit Jala and Israeli tanks and soldiers protecting the Jewish neighborhood of
Gilo fired back. And for months, Israel begged the Palestinian Authority to
stop the gunmen from operating in Beit Jala and nothing was done. Eventually,
the Israeli army moved into Beit Jala, international protests, horrified
appeals from the Palestinians. Behind the scenes, a deal was brokered where
Arafat said, `Yes, I will put a stop to the shooting,' the army pulled out and
hey, presto, there was no more shooting. The same thing has occurred in
Hebron, the same thing is starting to occur now in the individual cities that
Israel is leaving after re-entering them after the assassination of the
tourism minister.

There needs to be pressure on Arafat to reign in the dangerous militant
people, the people who are leading gangs of gunmen and who are sitting around
in garages right now making bombs. If that pressure is placed on Arafat, if
Israel feels it can be more secure without huge concentrations of troops in
the West Bank, those troops will pull out.

GROSS: Since the second intifada, many more Palestinians have died than
Israelis, something like 800 to 200. I mean, it looks like the Palestinians
have suffered a lot more than the Israelis, looking at those numbers.

Mr. HOROVITZ: Well, I just think that nobody should have been dying and I
don't think things would be better if four times as many Israelis, God forbid,
had died. All the deaths were avoidable and have helped no one and changed
nothing. Yes, the Israeli army is stronger than the Palestinian police force,
but the solution is not for a greater balance of death. The solution is for
an end to the violence and a return to an attempt at dialogue.

GROSS: Now although Israel is often the target of terrorist attacks, many
Palestinians see Israelis as terrorists because of the occupation, because
there are so often Israeli military men, Israeli soldiers, who shoot
Palestinians. I wonder if you feel any empathy for that.

Mr. HOROVITZ: I feel that every person who's died here over the last 14
months has been an absurd and unnecessary and futile and terrible and tragic
death. But I would remind Palestinians who criticize the Israeli presence at
roadblocks in the West Bank, around the West Bank cities, that the Israelis
were not there a year and a bit ago. They had pulled out. As of the end of
1995, the major West Bank cities were controlled, had been controlled by
Yasser Arafat. The Israeli effort, the Israeli direction has been to
disengage from the Palestinians. On the first day at Camp David, all sides
agreed the map that Barak presented on the first day as the working map showed
the entire Gaza Strip in Palestinian hands and 88 percent of the West Bank in
Palestinian hands. That was the opening-day map. Israel has been trying to
end the occupation. It is the Palestinian leadership of Yasser Arafat that
has prevented Israel from doing so.

Sounds absurd, doesn't it? Sounds like double talk. I'm telling you, I'm
speaking here as a moderate, as somebody who supported and supports the peace
process, who voted for Yitzhak Rabin, who voted for Ehud Barak and would be
prepared for all the compromises that I was prepared for in the past. We have
not been able to find a partner on the other side who wanted to end this
conflict with us in a way that would enable us to continue to exist as a
Jewish state. That's our only criteria. We want to be allowed to go on
existing as we partner the Palestinians towards their statehood. There hasn't
been a leadership here that wanted to do it with us.

GROSS: You were drafted into the Israeli military in 1990, and one of the
jobs, I believe, that you had in the military was as a guard in a Palestinian
prison camp, yes?

Mr. HOROVITZ: A guard in an Israeli prison in Gaza, where the inmates were
Palestinians, yeah.

GROSS: What impact did it have on you to guard an Israeli prison camp for
Palestinians? And I guess what I'm trying to get at here is when people are
mostly separated, mostly kept apart and see each other only in circumstances
like prisons or occupations, it's not a recipe for understanding and goodwill.
Do you feel like you were changed by being put in that position of being a
prison guard?

Mr. HOROVITZ: First of all, I loathed it, of course, and if I hadn't had to
do as part of my military service, I certainly would have done everything I
could to avoid doing it. It was a dreadful place. What was starkly
noticeable was the way--it was a holding jail. In other words, it was kind of
first port of call for any Palestinian arrested for anything. And remember,
these were the years of the first intifada, what we must now call the genuine
Palestinian public protest against the Israeli presence inside the cities,
which, of course, is not the situation today, which is why the current
intifada is so much less justifiable.

But anyway, this was a first port of call, and you saw Palestinian kids of
sort of 14, I would say, being brought in and being placed together with much
more hardened and more dangerous people. And you saw the way these kids
started to walk differently and talk differently, because of the,
quote-unquote, "exalted" company that they were keeping. And, of course, the
prison was an incubator for hatred. And on the Israeli side, it was demeaning
and brutalizing and unpleasant for all of us that had to serve there. And it
certainly didn't change my opinions, but it certainly underlined my sense that
there isn't a whole--nothing to be gained by a continuing Israeli presence on
Palestinian territory and that we have to find a way to separate and allow the
two nations to flourish independently of each other. I have to take...

GROSS: Wait. Let me stop you. What about that experience made you feel more
strongly that there needed to be two states and that Israel needed to end the
occupation?

Mr. HOROVITZ: Well, because for goodness sakes, what was the Israeli army
doing in Gaza anyway, where there are a million Palestinians and maybe 6,000
Jews? Common sense and pragmatism requires that you allocate and divide the
territory in a way where most of the Palestinian people live in the areas
where mostly they live right now, and most of the Jews live in the areas where
mostly they live right now. And that's the tragedy of everything we're going
through now, because there is a solution. You have to find a territorial
compromise and allow two states to flourish side by side.

GROSS: David Horovitz, I want to thank you very much for talking with us.

Mr. HOROVITZ: Thank you, Terry.

GROSS: David Horovitz is the editor of the newsweekly, The Jerusalem Report,
and author of the book, "A Little Too Close to God."

Coming up, Palestinian journalist Ghassan Khatib. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Interview: Ghassan Khatib talks about the Israeli-Palestinian
peace process and post-September 11th events
TERRY GROSS, host:

Israeli journalist David Horovitz just spoke with us about the terrors of
living through a wave of suicide bombings in Israel. My guest, Ghassan
Khatib is a Palestinian journalist living under Israeli occupation in the West
Bank. He's publisher of the Palestine Report Online and is the director of
the Jerusalem Media & Communications Centre.

David Horovitz said that the reason for the Israeli military occupation is
that although Arafat has promised to deal with suicide bombers and snipers, he
hasn't, forcing the Israeli military to respond. I asked Ghassan Khatib for
his response to that.

Mr. GHASSAN KHATIB (Publisher, Palestine Report Online; Director, Jerusalem
Media & Communications Centre): I think this is a partial treatment of the
much-wider problem. I think the whole essence was a little--the Israeli
violence or the Palestinian violence are happening within the general context
of the ongoing Israeli occupation to the Palestinian territories, which is now
a 34-years-old occupation. And the Palestinians have been trying all possible
means to end that occupation. The Palestinians went along with the peace
process for 10 years, hoping that this will be enough to end this occupation
in peaceful means. Unfortunately, what we got this 10 years were only
increasing the Israeli illegal Jewish settlements that are erected and built
on land that are confiscated by the virtual force from the Palestinian
farmers, which is about consolidating the occupation.

So the Palestinians, who might be making lots of mistakes, but they are doing
the right and the wrong acts in the context of trying to fight, by whatever
possible means, this Israeli occupation. It's about time, actually, to have
an international peace initiative that will be consistent with international
law and with a relative security resolution, particularly two-for-two, which
calls for ending the occupation under terms for full peace and recognition of
the state of Israel in the Middle East. with some international efforts, some
international political weight behind some such initiative, because when the
parties are left on their own, unfortunately, all what we get is more and more
of this ongoing vicious circle of violence.

GROSS: Now what David Horovitz and many other Israelis say is that they feel
like they've been lied to or taken advantage of in the sense that they feel
that Israel made a lot of concessions and came up with a very good deal at
Camp David, and that in return, they were slapped in the face by Palestinians
who didn't follow through and started up with suicide bombings. In fact, what
Horovitz was saying was that he thinks that a lot of Palestinians in the West
Bank and Gaza don't really understand exactly what the Israelis were offering
at Camp David because Arafat hasn't given a very clear accounting of that, nor
has the Palestinian media.

Mr. KHATIB: This is completely uncorrect because the Palestinians, and the
Palestinian territories, are more exposed to the Israeli media and to the
statements of the Israeli politicians than being exposed to the Palestinian
media. And I think our friend Horovitz do know that some of the surveys that
our center did showed that there is more Palestinians who watch Israeli TV
than those who watch Palestinian TV. The Palestinians do understand exactly
all what the Israelis has to say about the story of Camp David negotiations.
And because they know that offer, they supported their leader's rejection of
this offer because the negotiations here is not about negotiations between
lawyers over real estate in order to bargain over percentages of hectares or
dunums; the problem is a problem of the homeland that is under occupation.

GROSS: One of the things that Palestinians want is the right of return, the
right of millions of Palestinian refugees to return to what is now Israel.
And that would mean that Palestinians would outnumber Israelis, and Israel
would no longer be a Jewish state. In other words, Israel would no longer be
Israel as we know it. Do you think that's going to forever be a sticking
point, or do you think there's a compromise way around that?

Mr. KHATIB: First of all, this is not what the Palestinians are asking for.
This is only what the Israelis are trying to put in our mouth. And I
challenge anybody, if any Palestinian leader has said that he wants those four
or six million Palestinians to return. All what we are saying is that we have
to find a just solution to the refugees' problem, and that just solution
should be in accordance with the international law, whatever the international
law is, whatever the relevant Security Council resolutions of this issue are.
And in this regard, we think that those Palestinian refugees have to be
treated in a fair way. Some of them probably needs to be compensated. Some
of them probably needs to be resettled wherever they are. Some of them maybe
needs to be offered an attractive passport to some country. Some of them
should be absorbed in the forthcoming Palestinian state, and some of them
should be guaranteed the right to return to their homeland, which is now
Israel.

Now the quantity of those who should return back to Israel should be
negotiated in a way that should take into consideration the vital interests of
the two sides, including the state of Israel. This is what we are saying.
But Israel is refusing to recognize the principle of the right of return and
refusing to deal, in principle, with any return, even for one single
Palestinian refugee, which is not going to lead us anywhere, because leaving
the problem of the refugees unsolved will keep the whole conflict unsolved
because the majority of the Palestinian people are refugees. Those refugees,
who have been kicked out of their houses for 50 years, needs to be treated in
accordance with international law.

GROSS: I recently interviewed Charles Sennott, who spent a few years as
the Boston Globe's Middle East correspondent. He left that position just a
few months ago. And he was saying that in his observation, this second
intifada is much more Islamic fundamentalist in nature. It has much more of
an Islamist agenda than the first intifada did; and I wonder if you could
comment on that.

Mr. KHATIB: First of all, this intifada has come as a result of the failure
of the peace process. So the fact that the peace process failed and the fact
that the relations between the two sides became confrontational, rather than
peaceful negotiation, played to the hand of the opposition of the peace
process, including the Islamic fundamentalists. The secular tendencies within
the Palestinian society and the current leadership were telling the
Palestinian people that we can achieve the end of the occupation by peaceful
means. Now they've failed, which gave the upper hand to those who kept saying
in the last 10 years that Israel only understand the language of power, and
when you negotiate with Israel, they will only increase their settlements on
our territories and so on. So, yes, unfortunately, the failure of the peace
process is literally playing to the hand of the opposition groups, including
the Islamists in our society.

GROSS: I think there's a lot of Israeli disillusionment now with Yasser
Arafat, and I'm wondering how he's regarded among Palestinians in Gaza and the
West Bank now, both as a peace negotiator, but also as the head of the
Palestinian Authority, you know, that's ruling Gaza and the West Bank now.

Mr. KHATIB: Well, now anybody who is in Arafat's position would be in
trouble. Arafat is having internal difficulties recently because he is under
pressure from inside and outside. From outside, Israel, the Americans, the
Europeans have been putting him in pressure in order to stop and to prevent
any act of resistance against Israel, while at the same time, the Palestinian
public, who has been under tremendous pressure from the occupation and its
practices and atrocities, are refusing these restraints that are imposed by
Arafat against the resistance and reaction to the Israeli ongoing siege and
assassinations and so on. So Arafat, when he is pressurized to stop the
resistance, is not given anything to empower him internally and enable him
to be convincing to his people.

GROSS: My guest is Palestinian journalist Ghassan Khatib. We'll talk more
after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is Ghassan Khatib, publisher of the Palestine Report Online.
He lives in the West Bank.

Hanan Ashrawi, who is a Palestinian activist and had been a spokesperson
for the peace delegation several years ago and had worked with the Palestinian
Authority, she recently commentated on Osama bin Laden's adoption of the
Palestinian cause, because he's now including the Palestinian cause as one of
his causes. She said about that, `Our cause is not up for grabs. You do not
have the right to use it for your ends. We have been victims all our lives,
and we do not condone the victimization of others.' Is this a popular opinion
among Palestinians now?

Mr. KHATIB: I think most of the Palestinians will agree on that. The
Palestinian society, by and large, is a secular society. That's why bin
Laden's appeal to the Palestinian people and to the Palestinian cause does not
attract the attention of the majority of the Palestinians here who don't feel
that we have much in common with the Afghanis. I have to remind you that this
Palestinian cause is very popular and very credible in our vision, and anybody
who wants to extract public sympathy and credibility would try to link his
cause with the Palestinian cause. That's why I believe it would be useful not
only for the Palestinians and the Israelis, but also for different superpowers
and for the cause of peace worldwide in general to bring to an end this
injustice that the Palestinians have been living in by helping ending this
Israeli occupation. And I'm sure this will be enough to bring about serious
and real peace and, hopefully, consequently economic prosperity in the Middle
East.

GROSS: I want to ask you about something that Sari Nusseibeh said. He's been
a Palestinian spokesperson and participated in earlier rounds of peace
talks. And he was commentating on what he thinks is the more extremist end of
the Palestinian movement. He said, `We're telling the Israelis, "We want to
kick you out. It's not that we want liberation, freedom and independence in
the West Bank and Gaza. We want to kick you out of your home." And in order
to make sure that the Israelis get the message, people go out to a disco or a
restaurant and blow themselves up. The whole thing is just crazy, ugly,
totally counterproductive. The secret is to get Israelis to side with you.
We've lost our allies.'

Is that a popular opinion in Palestine now, that--in the Gaza and West Bank
now, that things have gone too far and that it's counterproductive and that,
you know, Palestinians need Israel as an ally in peace talks?

Mr. KHATIB: Well, the problem is that this is a little bit late because we
have been all saying this during the peace process, and bringing back the
relations into confrontational ones strengthens the argument of the extremist
and weakens the arguments of the peace camp.

GROSS: You live in the West Bank. Tell us where you live and how your
day-to-day life has been changed by the Israeli military presence there.

Mr. KHATIB: I live in Ramallah, which is one of the most prominent towns,
which is only 10 miles from Jerusalem. And I teach in a nearby university,
which is seven miles from the town where I live, Bir Zeit University. But
unfortunately, since the beginning of this intifada, Israel has put all of us,
the three million Palestinians, under siege. And we feel like animals being
kept in big cages, so nobody's allowed to leave his town or village. So, for
example, we haven't been able to go to our university and whoever has his
school or his children in the same village or town, then he's lucky.
Otherwise, the students are deprived from going to their schools if it's
outside the village.

There has been a tremendous effect of this closure on all our aspects of life.
Half of the Palestinian people became under the poverty line because of the
economic suffering that has resulted from the economic sanctions and the
closure. In addition, there has been a harsh Israeli policy in terms of
shelling and killing. So far, the Israelis have killed 800 Palestinians in
this year of intifada and injured 22,000 Palestinians.

GROSS: As you've pointed out, what's making Palestinians angriest right now
is the Israeli occupation. And on the Palestinian side, this is the greatest
impasse in the peace process. On the Israeli side, the problem is the suicide
bombings in Israel. Is there anything that you think could be or should be
done on the Palestinian side to try to stop the suicide bombings?

Mr. KHATIB: Yes. There is one thing that can be done which can stop all
Palestinian violence, which is ending the Israeli occupation or a political
prospect about the possibility or the hope of an end for that occupation,
because once the Palestinians were invited to the peace process, they got the
impression that this is going to bring them, sooner or later, an end of this
occupation, so they dropped all kind of violence, absolutely, to the extent
that a prominent Israeli journalist called Danny Rubenstein coincidentally,
a few weeks before the beginning of the intifada, reminded the Israeli
people that the last violent Palestinian activity against the Israelis were
four years ago. But when this peace process collapsed and the Palestinians
lost the hope of ending this occupation peacefully and when Barak allowed
Sharon to enter the Palestinian holy mosque of Jerusalem by force, violence
erupted again from the two sides. So if either--if there is no end of
occupation, the Palestinian public should be part of the peace process that
will give the impression, the hope about a possible peaceful solution to this
conflict.

GROSS: Well, Ghassan Khatib, I want to thank you very much for talking with
us.

Mr. KHATIB: Thank you.

GROSS: Ghassan Khatib is the publisher of the Palestine Report Online and
director of the Jerusalem Media & Communications Centre.

Earlier in the show, we heard from Israeli journalist David Horovitz.

(Soundbite of music)

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.

(Soundbite of music)

(Credits)

GROSS: On the next FRESH AIR, we talk with one of the greatest living
slight-of-hand artists, Ricky Jay. He's a scholar of magic, con games,
sideshows and eccentric entertainers. He's also an actor. He co-stars in
David Mamet's new film, "Heist."

I'm Terry Gross. Join us for the next FRESH AIR.
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