Transcript: CNN interview with Hussein Ibish and Jamie Rubin immediately following Netanyahu UN address

September 23, 2011 Friday

CNN NEWSROOM 2:08 PM EST

 

T.J. HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR: All right. There you have the other side. In the past couple of hours we have seen almost back-to-back speeches from Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, as well as the head of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. Two differing messages up there, but you just heard from Benjamin Netanyahu, and I quote, "Let's get on with it." He says he wants to start negotiations immediately.

 

He says, "We have to stop negotiating about the negotiations." And he stepped up and issued a challenge to Mahmoud Abbas: "We have flown thousands of miles to be in New York City. We are in the same building. It makes no sense for us not to be meeting right now. Let's start these negotiations today." Benjamin Netanyahu had some strong words for the U.N. body, called it the theater of the absurd at one point at the beginning. A lot to get at here.

 

Let me bring in Jamie Rubin. He's a former assistant U.S. secretary of state, also executive editor now of "The Bloomberg View." And also, Hussein Ibish, author, scholar, and research fellow at the American Task Force on Palestine.

 

Gentlemen, thank you both for being here.

 

Jamie, let me start with you here. What did you hear in that -- almost issuing a challenge? And for a lot of people, that makes a lot of sense. They flew all the way here, they're in the same building, and they're not talking?

 

JAMES RUBIN, FMR. ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE: Yes. I think that was a public relations gesture by the Israeli prime minister. The issue is not whether they'll meet or whether they'll negotiate. He knows perfectly well for many, many months the Palestinians have been focused on the question of settlements. And I think what was remarkable was, in all those minutes of some very eloquent words, some very eloquent statements about the need for peace, Prime Minister Netanyahu  never really answered the basic question which was on everybody's minds, which is why the Israelis must continue to extend the settlement building to enlarge their share of the West Bank day after day, and won't suspend that as a way of getting negotiations going.

 

That's something the United States has called for. And frankly, because Prime Minister Netanyahu regards this U.N. forum as kind of a grand world debating society, I'm not sure his style was so effective.

President Obama made a very effective case earlier this week for the Israeli security dilemma, and when I think Prime Minister Netanyahu starts criticizing the press from the podium of the U.N., I think he loses his audience. And so I think it was more of like an Israeli debating society than a global debating society.

 

HOLMES: Hussein, let me bring you in here. And people listening to Benjamin Netanyahu, it sounds like Israel -- and certainly everybody doesn't see it this way, but he says he has done all he can. He said the settlements that Jamie just mentioned there, he said that's not the cause of the conflict, the conflict caused the settlements. So what did you hear from him in your estimation?

 

HUSSEIN IBISH, RESEARCH FELLOW, AMERICAN TASK FORCE ON PALESTINE: Well, I thought it was a rather bad speech. I think he's capable of giving good speeches, as he did in Congress earlier this year. But he didn't give one today.

 

It was defensive, and he defended the occupation. Actually, I mean, I think Jamie is wrong. He did actually provide a rationalization for not only expanding settlements, but maintaining the occupation. He said that Israel needs strategic depth. He said that whenever Israel has withdrawn from territory unilaterally, I might add -- unilaterally -- that it has been met with attacks.

 

Of course he didn't mention that when it's had agreements, like the treaties with Egypt and Jordan, that those agreements have been held because there was another party on the other side that agreed with this. But I also think he was probably rattled by how effective President Abbas was.

 

President Abbas gave a truly excellent speech, really superb. I don't think the late President Arafat ever gave a speech that effective.

 

He made the moral case for Palestine in a very powerful way. Now, of course that leaves open the question of what do you do the day after, how do you use that to get back to negotiations, or to create conditions for negotiations that can succeed sometime in the future? I really think that Prime Minister Netanyahu  was very defensive about the occupation, and he really sort of made the case for it and why it exists, why it should expand, and why it should continue.

 

HOLMES: And Jamie, let me bring you back in here. Bad speech made in Hussein's estimation. He just heard an excellent speech by Mahmoud Abbas. But either one of these speeches, so much focus on them both. Do they move us any closer to anything?

 

RUBIN: No, they don't. That's what is so troubling. You heard President Abbas give the moral case. I think that's correct. And I think he had the room in his hands. And I think he really did win over the audience. Prime Minister Netanyahu made the kind of speech that you make in sort of the Israeli public opinion, but I don't think he won a lot of points from the viewers in the world or in the hallway. And that's really the problem.

 

These are speechmaking. These are winning debating points. These are ways to perhaps even win a General Assembly vote.

But what was really absent was either leader telling their people or telling the other what steps they're going to take to prevent this U.N. exercise from not turning into a disaster, from not causing great protests in the Palestinian Authority's areas when the U.N. exercise doesn't change anything on the ground, when he -- neither side explained what you need to do the day after to prevent this from being a bad moment.

 

HOLMES: Right. Well, Hussein, you wrap it up for me here.

 

IBISH: No, that's right.

 

HOLMES: And you just heard James say these that these speeches don't move the process forward, but does it hurt the process in anything you heard today?

 

IBISH: Not particularly. I mean, it was effective by Abbas and I think ineffective by Netanyahu. But it doesn't change any of the realities on the ground, or even really the diplomatic realities, because the problems facing Palestinian recognition in the U.N. are exactly the same as they were before Abbas' speech. People that agreed with him before, now agree with him more.

 

I think we really need to focus now on the day after, and that's two different things.

 

One is, making sure that aid to the P.A. isn't cut as people in Congress and people in Israel are threatening to do, which could create both a political and a security nightmare for the Israelis and the Palestinians alike, and also protect the achievements of the state and institution-building program, and the security cooperation that has brought law and order to parts of the West Bank that were formerly chaotic. 

 

And to also use the space that's now emerging since the Palestinians are going to make this formal request to Secretary-General Ban, but not push for a vote to try to look for a Quartet statement or an EU initiative or something that can help get us past a difficult period where, because the parties are so far apart, and because we're in an election season in the United States, meaningful negotiations will be difficult to resume in the immediate future.

 

So focus on the ground, build there, make sure the quality of life is maintained and the security cooperation is maintained, and we can have a soft landing rather than a hard landing. And that's what everybody needs.

 

HOLMES: James, if it gets to a point of a veto, a U.S. veto -- first, do you think it will get that far? And just how damaging is that going to be for the U.S. in the region, if they have to veto it, if the U.S. vetoes, goes through, and has to veto Palestinian statehood?

 

RUBIN: Well, I think there's a chance that the U.S. will have to veto. There's a chance that the Palestinians, with the speech that Abbas gave today, can muster nine votes in the Security Council, and that that would cause a need for the United States to veto. It would be damaging. It would be extremely damaging.

 

The United States has not made an effective case for why the support in the Arab Spring is one thing, Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Syria, and that we, the United States, don't somehow support the self- determination and rights of the Palestinians. I think the difference, of course, is the Palestinians haven't put forward hundreds of thousands of people engaged in peaceful protests. And if they were to do that, that's the game-changer.

 

That's when the Arab Spring comes to the Palestinian territories, and the world, including Israelis, will be affected. So that's not going to happen. It doesn't seem like it's going to happen.

What's most likely to happen is that it goes to the General Assembly, where the Palestinians can get a victory. That's not that meaningful.

 

They get a big vote in their favor, they get their status upgraded, but then the day after, they're no better off. And that's really the challenge that diplomats in Washington, in Europe, at the United Nations, and in these two areas have to solve, is how to prevent the frustration and anger that's likely to come when there's no change on the ground after this exercise, and preventing it from turning into a violent result, which would be a disaster.

 

IBISH: Well --

 

HOLMES: Go ahead and wrap it for me there.

 

IBISH: Well, you do that through funding. You must do that through funding. You do that through not cutting funds to the P.A. You do that by continuing to fund the security services, the institution-building, the upgrading of the quality of life that Prime Minister Fayyad, under the leadership of Abbas, has done such a good job of promoting over the past couple of years.

 

I mean, that is the great achievement that can be built on here. And it can help buy us time until we can arrange the politics to be more in line with everybody's policies, and we can actually resume meaningful negotiations which can end this conflict, you know, with a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

 

That's going to take some time. But there are things you can work with on the ground. They have just got to be funded.

 

Defunding them creates the nightmare scenario that Jamie was talking about. And I do think even if a Palestinian movement began nonviolently, both because of Israeli forces and because of the way some Palestinian groups will try to take advantage of it, it probably wouldn't stay nonviolent that long.

 

HOLMES: All right. Well, Hussein Ibish, James Rubin, gentlemen, thank you both.

 

IBISH: Thanks.