Errinundera
27-02-2009, 12:11
Sorry for the long post, but I thought the interview was so good, it deserved to be posted in full. (I hope people bother to read it because I transcribed it myself.)
There have been numerous partial, indeed inflammatory, opinions on NSG over several years on the thorny problems of the Middle East, particularly the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. My view, for a long time, is that it has suited all sides not to have a peace settlement. (I'm talking about the Middle East here, not NSG.)
On Tuesday night I listened to Phillip Adams conduct a marvellous interview with Peter Rogers, the former Australian ambassador to Israel, on the issues. Rogers was blunt in his criticisms of all players in the conflict: Israel, Hamas, the US, Iran, Syria and Egypt. The program was broadcast on Late Night Live on Radio National which is part of the Australian Broadcasting Commission.
Essentially, he is arguing for five things:
1. A Palestinian state.
2. Israeli settlements to be closed down;
3. Iran to be neutralised as a player;
4. The supply of weapons to Hamas to be stopped; and
5. Hamas to renounce that part of their charter that calls for the destruction of Israel.
Music (55 secs)
PHILLIP ADAMS: A fairly long sting, dear listener, as we’re settling a guest into our studio in Canberra. As I was saying, mixed signals from the Obama administration is the appointment of our old mate Chas Freeman, agitating Israel because he’s been a very strenuous critic of Israeli politics, but at the same time I’ve got Peter Rogers sitting in the studio who fears that the future may be more of the same. He’s the former Australian ambassador to Israel and his latest book, Arabian Plights, looks at some of the significant strategic shifts we might see in the Middle East in the not too distant future, but he argues that the Middle East will have an even greater impact on the world in the next fifty years than it had in the past fifty and that a solution to the Israeli – Palestinian conflict is still the key to stability in the region. Peter, welcome to the program.
PETER ROGERS: Thank you, Phillip. Good evening.
PHILLIP ADAMS: I know that you’re, that you’re, you have a degree of pessimism, don’t you, about the US.
PETER ROGERS: Just a hint of pessimism. I’d love to be proven wrong but I think if you look at the statements by Obama in the lead up to the election and also, particularly those of Joe Biden, the American Vice President, they don’t lead to a conclusion that’s going to be a dramatic change in how the US deals with the Israeli – Palestinian conflict.
PHILLIP ADAMS: What about the appointment of Hilary?
PETER ROGERS: I think, if anything, that is very much more of the same. I think there are a couple of signs of hope. Chas Freeman’s appointment, I think, is one. The other one’s, of course, George Mitchell who is the US envoy to the Middle East. Mitchell has, I think, to his great credit, the track record of offending both Israelis and Palestinians and I think we ought to see more of that.
PHILLIP ADAMS: Peter, I want to read this from your book. “Originators of the third monotheistic religion; beneficiaries – religiously and culturally – of the other two; co-sharers with the west of the Greco-Roman tradition; holders aloft of the torch of enlightenment throughout medieval times; generous contributors to the European renaissance; the Arab-speaking peoples have thus taken their place among the forward marching, democratic nations of the world and promised to make further contributions.” Really?
PETER ROGERS: Well, that’s a quote from Phillip Hitti some time ago and the answer is, yes. I mean, if you look at the contribution of the Arab world to western civilisation it is profound indeed.
PHILLIP ADAMS: Cannot be challenged. That’s spot on but the idea of a sort of a renaissance in the Arab world leading to better political outcomes…?
PETER ROGERS: Well I think there’s no prospect of that and I think that the reality is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict suits the purpose of authoritarian Arab regimes. They can hide behind the noble cause of Palestine to avoid too much scrutiny of the seamier side of their own domestic rule so in that sense…
PHILLIP ADAMS: That’s a very tough analysis but…
PETER ROGERS: It’s a very real realistic analysis.
PHILLIP ADAMS: Okay, let’s look at the other side. Here’s Netanyahu still trying to form a coalition government, which thus far he’s finding difficult. What’s left of the left won’t have a bar of it and so he might sign up with some pretty odd people. Of course, he’s pledged to work with America to promote peace in the region but he doesn’t support the idea of talks that might lead to any advancement of the Palestinian state.
PETER ROGERS: No. And without that and without serious American pressure on Israel there is no such thing as a peace process. Dan Brown would do better with a peace process than those actually, supposedly negotiating it. It does not exist and I think we delude ourselves – I mean we hear constant references to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. There isn’t one. Now, will a Netanyahu Prime Ministership make any difference? The short answer is, no.
PHILLIP ADAMS: Well, he’s a great supporter, of course, of further subdivisions of suburbia on the West Bank, isn’t he?
PETER ROGERS: Well, I have been a particular and long-standing critic of Israeli settlement activity. I mean the reality is, how can Palestinians take any Israeli commitment to a peace process seriously when every year the settler population in the West Bank grows by about five per cent? It’s currently about 300,000. So it’s a farce of the highest order to think that we have a peace process while every day Palestinians look up and they see the land, that is supposedly is to become their state as part of a two state settlement, consumed for Israeli settlements.
PHILLIP ADAMS: So, at best, you make it a one and a half state settlement?
PETER ROGERS: Well, a statelet settlement.
PHILLIP ADAMS: A statelet settlement! Okay. You get a phone call. It’s Barack Obama on the phone and you are anointed in a pretty significant role – diplomatic role – what would you like to see the US doing to bringing about some sort of resolution to the endless agonisings and conflicts and terrible, terrible destruction that represents the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
PETER ROGERS: I think there are at least three critical elements to it. One is, that the US has to lay the law down to Israel over settlements. In the past the US approach has been, it will reduce the amount of funding it provides to Israel by the amount that Israel spends on settlement activity in the West Bank. It’s an absolute joke. It’s actually not the amount of funding, it’s loan guarantees. It’s an absolute joke. The Israelis, quite rightly, take no notice of it. So, the US has to get serious on that. The second point is that, working with Egypt, and indeed (and this leads into the third point) working with Iran, the US, with Israel and the Europeans and anyone who wants to play a useful role, has to cut off the supply of weaponry to Hamas. I mean, there’s an underlying…
PHILLIP ADAMS: Is that possible, incidentally? Is that feasible?
PETER ROGERS: I think it’s quite feasible. I mean, I think there’s been some discussion of an international force in the Sinai. I mean, in an era where we can perform extraordinary feats of technology, the idea that somehow there can be an unrestrained flow of weapon from across the Sinai into Gaza and nobody can do anything serious about it, is really fanciful. I mean, it can be cut off if there is the requisite political will and, if you like, intelligence and strategic will to do so. I suppose the biggest wild card in this, of course, is Iran. The great irony, of course, is that Iran is the Shia heartland; Hamas is 110 per cent Sunni. There is no theological attraction between the two but Iran is acting in an entirely opportunistic way. It’s seen to be taking the fight to Israel. It’s trying to embarrass authoritarian Arab rulers. Now, somehow there’s got to be a de-linking of that. One element of this, a side element if you like, is, of course, the role of Syria. Syria is a bit of an odd country out but, it seems to me that the Americans could work hard to break the connection between Syria and Iran, which is also opportunistic and partly strategic. The Syrians do not have an existential problem with Israel. The problem for the Syrians is Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights. That problem can be fixed. To do that would make life more difficult for Iran in the Middle East, make life more difficult for Iran in the Arab world and I think that’s what America should be trying to do. Not by bombing Iran, not by encouraging or, indeed, allowing Israel to bomb Iran, but partly by talking to Iran, partly by trying to resolve the issues on the ground that give Iran a leg up.
PHILLIP ADAMS: Of course, as long as the Arab world uses the Palestinians as a sort of facade, as an excuse, in a sense as a distraction that a conjurer uses when it’s pulling a trick, the Israelis are remarkably free to do what they like.
PETER ROGERS: They are. They are. And they will continue to do as they like. They will continue to encourage the growth of settlements in the West Bank and, at the same time, complain that there is no partner for peace on the Palestinian side. It’s an absolute farce. The other element in this, Phillip, and I think it’s worth just mentioning, is that the Americans have to swallow hard and deal with Hamas. I’d make a couple of points about Hamas. First of all, in the late 1980s the Israeli intelligence services assisted the rise of Hamas because it was seen as a useful counterweight against the Palestinian Liberation Organisation under Yasser Arafat.
PHILLIP ADAMS: Yep.
PETER ROGERS: The other point is that Hamas is not monolithic. There is a problem, and a serious problem, with the Hamas charter. The Hamas charter calls for the destruction of Israel. But, the government, the Hamas government in Gaza, the Hamas government in the Palestinian areas was democratically elected in 2006. Those elections…
PHILLIP ADAMS: What a significant embarrassment that proved to be.
PETER ROGERS: Ah, well, yes, I mean that just shows you need to know who’s going to win before you push for elections. But the reality is that, if you look at reasons why Hamas won that election, it actually had very little to do with the Hamas charter. What it was about, was very deep seated disillusionment on the part of the Palestinian electoral community with the mismanagement, the corruption and the misgovernance of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority.
PHILLIP ADAMS: It’s the same sort of analysis that you could shift to Afghanistan to explain the success for so many years of the Taliban.
PETER ROGERS: Indeed, yes. But the Taliban make Hamas look a pretty attractive alternative.
PHILLIP ADAMS: It was interesting. I was in Egypt while the Gaza thing was happening and looking, listening to Egyptian television, looking at Egyptian media and, of course, in Egypt the anger wasn’t focussed on Israel to any extent at all. They just accept that’s what Israel does. It was focussed on their own government and throughout the Arab world there are people who know you’re right.
PETER ROGERS: Well, it’s interesting, with the Egyptian reaction to the Israeli incursion into Gaza, it gave an opportunity to the Muslim Brotherhood, which formally doesn’t exist but is still there. They led the charge in criticising the Mubarak regime for being too laid back in criticising Israel. Hamas is seen to be a problem for the Egyptian government and there’s some justification for the that. The worse things get in Gaza, the more anxious Palestinians are to get out and they’re certainly not going to be able to get out to Israel or the West Bank so they’ll want to go to Egypt.
PHILLIP ADAMS: Yes, exactly. And there’s those nice accommodating tunnels. Now, of course, when Obama was campaigning for the presidency he kept saying interesting, attractive things like yes, we should talk to our enemies, or the people the Bush administration regarded as people we couldn’t talk to. You would recommend that America, as well as Israel, needs to engage Hamas in talks.
PETER ROGERS: There cannot be a peace process unless Hamas is a player in it. Now, some would say, “Well, Hamas is not prepared to be a player,” but, if you look at statements by some leading Hamas figures they have said that Hamas will swallow hard, as the Americans seem to do, Hamas will swallow hard and accept the two state solution. They won’t be happy with it. There is still the problem of the Hamas charter but, what my greatest concern is, that the Israeli incursion into Gaza, criticisms of Hamas, strengthen the position of hardliners within Hamas, the extremists within Hamas, and really undercut – I won’t call them moderates – I’d call them pragmatists and there are certainly pragmatists within the organisation.
PHILLIP ADAMS: Yes, so we need to emphasise the point you made earlier: it is not monolithic.
PETER ROGERS: Absolutely.
PHILLIP ADAMS: In your book you make it quite clear, looking at the next fifty years, that, unless this is sorted out, it just gets worse and worse and worse and the world pays a very heavy price. What sort of time frame do you put on it for making gains?
PETER ROGERS: Well, I’d like to think that we are, in spite of the fact that in the book as you’ve suggested I’m not overly optimistic, I would like to think that we are in a watershed where, with a new administration in the White House – an administration that talks about serious change – we could begin a process whereby there is significant pressure on the key players; there are lines of communication opened up with organisations, unpalatable as they may be at times, such as Hamas, and countries like Iran, that begin to shift the situation on the ground.
PHILLIP ADAMS: Are they, perhaps, taking place, even as we speak, through back channels?
PETER ROGERS: Well, there’s certainly been discussions previously between the Americans and the Iranians and some discussions between the Americans and the Syrians and certainly between the Israelis and the Syrians so the answer is, yes, but, at the same time, while these discussions are taking place, the Israeli settler population in the West Bank is growing by five per cent a year, so how can we expect Palestinians to take the idea of a two state solution seriously when every day they see the bulldozers at work?
PHILLIP ADAMS: And the political realities of being in government in Israel are that getting those people out of those areas is virtually an impossibility.
PETER ROGERS: Well, is it? I’m not sure.
PHILLIP ADAMS: Sharon made a few moves, didn’t he?
PETER ROGERS: Well, that was, yes, it was really tweaking at the margins. Is it undoable? It’s tough. It would be very tough. 300,000 people. It’s not Gaza where there was 7,000 Israeli settlers and it wasn’t a very pleasant political experience getting them out. 300,000 settlers in the West Bank is obviously going to be very complicated situation and, realistically, I don’t think we can expect that they would all go, that the majority of them would have to go and then there would have to be some serious land swaps. That’s doable. It’s doable if there’s the imagination and the political will to make it happen. If there isn’t, then, whether it’s in ten years time or twenty years time, the situation on the ground will be even more dire than it is today.
PHILLIP ADAMS: You write very powerfully that peace has been a stranger in the Middle East because of a deadly mix of historical grievance, human failing and human stupidity but…
PETER ROGERS: I wasn’t talking about America in that last, by the way. Not just America…
PHILLIP ADAMS: Look, Peter, thank you very much. Peter Rogers, former Australian ambassador to Israel - and there’s nothing like a former ambassador to give you undiplomatic and energetic and candid commentary - former ambassador to Israel and author of Arabian Plights, published yet again, another book from the valiant small publisher, Scribe.
You can listen to the broadcast here (http://www.abc.net.au/rn/latenightlive/stories/2009/2500309.htm).
According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip_Adams):
Phillip Adams is an Australian broadcaster, film producer, writer, humanist, social commentator, satirist, left-wing pundit and atheist. He currently hosts a radio program, Late Night Live, four nights a week on the ABC, and he also writes a weekly column for the News Limited-owned newspaper, The Australian. Late Night Live is broadcast across Australia on ABC Radio National as well as on Radio Australia and the World Wide Web. A serious discussion of world issues, the program is tempered with Adams' gentle and ironic humour. Adams refers tongue-in-cheek to his listeners as "the listener" or "Gladys", as though he had only one listener. Recently, Adams has begun introducing the show saying "Good evening Gladys and Poddies", in reference to the show's growing podcast listener base.
I have been listening to Phillip Adams for many years and, in my opinion, his radio interviews are far superior to his newspaper column, which tends to be formulaic and full of jargon, albeit witty. On radio, he doesn’t argue or debate but, rather, discusses the topic with his interviewees. He is extremely well informed and, unusually for radio broadcasters, always pays his interviewees the courtesy of reading their books before interviewing them. His style is so smooth as to be positively unctuous, which usually induces his interviewees to be quite forthcoming, even when their political views are very different from his own. Several times I’ve heard him ever so gently and sweetly lure people into figuratively hanging themselves with their own words.
Anyway, what do people think of Peter Rogers’s analysis?
There have been numerous partial, indeed inflammatory, opinions on NSG over several years on the thorny problems of the Middle East, particularly the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. My view, for a long time, is that it has suited all sides not to have a peace settlement. (I'm talking about the Middle East here, not NSG.)
On Tuesday night I listened to Phillip Adams conduct a marvellous interview with Peter Rogers, the former Australian ambassador to Israel, on the issues. Rogers was blunt in his criticisms of all players in the conflict: Israel, Hamas, the US, Iran, Syria and Egypt. The program was broadcast on Late Night Live on Radio National which is part of the Australian Broadcasting Commission.
Essentially, he is arguing for five things:
1. A Palestinian state.
2. Israeli settlements to be closed down;
3. Iran to be neutralised as a player;
4. The supply of weapons to Hamas to be stopped; and
5. Hamas to renounce that part of their charter that calls for the destruction of Israel.
Music (55 secs)
PHILLIP ADAMS: A fairly long sting, dear listener, as we’re settling a guest into our studio in Canberra. As I was saying, mixed signals from the Obama administration is the appointment of our old mate Chas Freeman, agitating Israel because he’s been a very strenuous critic of Israeli politics, but at the same time I’ve got Peter Rogers sitting in the studio who fears that the future may be more of the same. He’s the former Australian ambassador to Israel and his latest book, Arabian Plights, looks at some of the significant strategic shifts we might see in the Middle East in the not too distant future, but he argues that the Middle East will have an even greater impact on the world in the next fifty years than it had in the past fifty and that a solution to the Israeli – Palestinian conflict is still the key to stability in the region. Peter, welcome to the program.
PETER ROGERS: Thank you, Phillip. Good evening.
PHILLIP ADAMS: I know that you’re, that you’re, you have a degree of pessimism, don’t you, about the US.
PETER ROGERS: Just a hint of pessimism. I’d love to be proven wrong but I think if you look at the statements by Obama in the lead up to the election and also, particularly those of Joe Biden, the American Vice President, they don’t lead to a conclusion that’s going to be a dramatic change in how the US deals with the Israeli – Palestinian conflict.
PHILLIP ADAMS: What about the appointment of Hilary?
PETER ROGERS: I think, if anything, that is very much more of the same. I think there are a couple of signs of hope. Chas Freeman’s appointment, I think, is one. The other one’s, of course, George Mitchell who is the US envoy to the Middle East. Mitchell has, I think, to his great credit, the track record of offending both Israelis and Palestinians and I think we ought to see more of that.
PHILLIP ADAMS: Peter, I want to read this from your book. “Originators of the third monotheistic religion; beneficiaries – religiously and culturally – of the other two; co-sharers with the west of the Greco-Roman tradition; holders aloft of the torch of enlightenment throughout medieval times; generous contributors to the European renaissance; the Arab-speaking peoples have thus taken their place among the forward marching, democratic nations of the world and promised to make further contributions.” Really?
PETER ROGERS: Well, that’s a quote from Phillip Hitti some time ago and the answer is, yes. I mean, if you look at the contribution of the Arab world to western civilisation it is profound indeed.
PHILLIP ADAMS: Cannot be challenged. That’s spot on but the idea of a sort of a renaissance in the Arab world leading to better political outcomes…?
PETER ROGERS: Well I think there’s no prospect of that and I think that the reality is that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict suits the purpose of authoritarian Arab regimes. They can hide behind the noble cause of Palestine to avoid too much scrutiny of the seamier side of their own domestic rule so in that sense…
PHILLIP ADAMS: That’s a very tough analysis but…
PETER ROGERS: It’s a very real realistic analysis.
PHILLIP ADAMS: Okay, let’s look at the other side. Here’s Netanyahu still trying to form a coalition government, which thus far he’s finding difficult. What’s left of the left won’t have a bar of it and so he might sign up with some pretty odd people. Of course, he’s pledged to work with America to promote peace in the region but he doesn’t support the idea of talks that might lead to any advancement of the Palestinian state.
PETER ROGERS: No. And without that and without serious American pressure on Israel there is no such thing as a peace process. Dan Brown would do better with a peace process than those actually, supposedly negotiating it. It does not exist and I think we delude ourselves – I mean we hear constant references to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. There isn’t one. Now, will a Netanyahu Prime Ministership make any difference? The short answer is, no.
PHILLIP ADAMS: Well, he’s a great supporter, of course, of further subdivisions of suburbia on the West Bank, isn’t he?
PETER ROGERS: Well, I have been a particular and long-standing critic of Israeli settlement activity. I mean the reality is, how can Palestinians take any Israeli commitment to a peace process seriously when every year the settler population in the West Bank grows by about five per cent? It’s currently about 300,000. So it’s a farce of the highest order to think that we have a peace process while every day Palestinians look up and they see the land, that is supposedly is to become their state as part of a two state settlement, consumed for Israeli settlements.
PHILLIP ADAMS: So, at best, you make it a one and a half state settlement?
PETER ROGERS: Well, a statelet settlement.
PHILLIP ADAMS: A statelet settlement! Okay. You get a phone call. It’s Barack Obama on the phone and you are anointed in a pretty significant role – diplomatic role – what would you like to see the US doing to bringing about some sort of resolution to the endless agonisings and conflicts and terrible, terrible destruction that represents the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
PETER ROGERS: I think there are at least three critical elements to it. One is, that the US has to lay the law down to Israel over settlements. In the past the US approach has been, it will reduce the amount of funding it provides to Israel by the amount that Israel spends on settlement activity in the West Bank. It’s an absolute joke. It’s actually not the amount of funding, it’s loan guarantees. It’s an absolute joke. The Israelis, quite rightly, take no notice of it. So, the US has to get serious on that. The second point is that, working with Egypt, and indeed (and this leads into the third point) working with Iran, the US, with Israel and the Europeans and anyone who wants to play a useful role, has to cut off the supply of weaponry to Hamas. I mean, there’s an underlying…
PHILLIP ADAMS: Is that possible, incidentally? Is that feasible?
PETER ROGERS: I think it’s quite feasible. I mean, I think there’s been some discussion of an international force in the Sinai. I mean, in an era where we can perform extraordinary feats of technology, the idea that somehow there can be an unrestrained flow of weapon from across the Sinai into Gaza and nobody can do anything serious about it, is really fanciful. I mean, it can be cut off if there is the requisite political will and, if you like, intelligence and strategic will to do so. I suppose the biggest wild card in this, of course, is Iran. The great irony, of course, is that Iran is the Shia heartland; Hamas is 110 per cent Sunni. There is no theological attraction between the two but Iran is acting in an entirely opportunistic way. It’s seen to be taking the fight to Israel. It’s trying to embarrass authoritarian Arab rulers. Now, somehow there’s got to be a de-linking of that. One element of this, a side element if you like, is, of course, the role of Syria. Syria is a bit of an odd country out but, it seems to me that the Americans could work hard to break the connection between Syria and Iran, which is also opportunistic and partly strategic. The Syrians do not have an existential problem with Israel. The problem for the Syrians is Israeli occupation of the Golan Heights. That problem can be fixed. To do that would make life more difficult for Iran in the Middle East, make life more difficult for Iran in the Arab world and I think that’s what America should be trying to do. Not by bombing Iran, not by encouraging or, indeed, allowing Israel to bomb Iran, but partly by talking to Iran, partly by trying to resolve the issues on the ground that give Iran a leg up.
PHILLIP ADAMS: Of course, as long as the Arab world uses the Palestinians as a sort of facade, as an excuse, in a sense as a distraction that a conjurer uses when it’s pulling a trick, the Israelis are remarkably free to do what they like.
PETER ROGERS: They are. They are. And they will continue to do as they like. They will continue to encourage the growth of settlements in the West Bank and, at the same time, complain that there is no partner for peace on the Palestinian side. It’s an absolute farce. The other element in this, Phillip, and I think it’s worth just mentioning, is that the Americans have to swallow hard and deal with Hamas. I’d make a couple of points about Hamas. First of all, in the late 1980s the Israeli intelligence services assisted the rise of Hamas because it was seen as a useful counterweight against the Palestinian Liberation Organisation under Yasser Arafat.
PHILLIP ADAMS: Yep.
PETER ROGERS: The other point is that Hamas is not monolithic. There is a problem, and a serious problem, with the Hamas charter. The Hamas charter calls for the destruction of Israel. But, the government, the Hamas government in Gaza, the Hamas government in the Palestinian areas was democratically elected in 2006. Those elections…
PHILLIP ADAMS: What a significant embarrassment that proved to be.
PETER ROGERS: Ah, well, yes, I mean that just shows you need to know who’s going to win before you push for elections. But the reality is that, if you look at reasons why Hamas won that election, it actually had very little to do with the Hamas charter. What it was about, was very deep seated disillusionment on the part of the Palestinian electoral community with the mismanagement, the corruption and the misgovernance of Fatah and the Palestinian Authority.
PHILLIP ADAMS: It’s the same sort of analysis that you could shift to Afghanistan to explain the success for so many years of the Taliban.
PETER ROGERS: Indeed, yes. But the Taliban make Hamas look a pretty attractive alternative.
PHILLIP ADAMS: It was interesting. I was in Egypt while the Gaza thing was happening and looking, listening to Egyptian television, looking at Egyptian media and, of course, in Egypt the anger wasn’t focussed on Israel to any extent at all. They just accept that’s what Israel does. It was focussed on their own government and throughout the Arab world there are people who know you’re right.
PETER ROGERS: Well, it’s interesting, with the Egyptian reaction to the Israeli incursion into Gaza, it gave an opportunity to the Muslim Brotherhood, which formally doesn’t exist but is still there. They led the charge in criticising the Mubarak regime for being too laid back in criticising Israel. Hamas is seen to be a problem for the Egyptian government and there’s some justification for the that. The worse things get in Gaza, the more anxious Palestinians are to get out and they’re certainly not going to be able to get out to Israel or the West Bank so they’ll want to go to Egypt.
PHILLIP ADAMS: Yes, exactly. And there’s those nice accommodating tunnels. Now, of course, when Obama was campaigning for the presidency he kept saying interesting, attractive things like yes, we should talk to our enemies, or the people the Bush administration regarded as people we couldn’t talk to. You would recommend that America, as well as Israel, needs to engage Hamas in talks.
PETER ROGERS: There cannot be a peace process unless Hamas is a player in it. Now, some would say, “Well, Hamas is not prepared to be a player,” but, if you look at statements by some leading Hamas figures they have said that Hamas will swallow hard, as the Americans seem to do, Hamas will swallow hard and accept the two state solution. They won’t be happy with it. There is still the problem of the Hamas charter but, what my greatest concern is, that the Israeli incursion into Gaza, criticisms of Hamas, strengthen the position of hardliners within Hamas, the extremists within Hamas, and really undercut – I won’t call them moderates – I’d call them pragmatists and there are certainly pragmatists within the organisation.
PHILLIP ADAMS: Yes, so we need to emphasise the point you made earlier: it is not monolithic.
PETER ROGERS: Absolutely.
PHILLIP ADAMS: In your book you make it quite clear, looking at the next fifty years, that, unless this is sorted out, it just gets worse and worse and worse and the world pays a very heavy price. What sort of time frame do you put on it for making gains?
PETER ROGERS: Well, I’d like to think that we are, in spite of the fact that in the book as you’ve suggested I’m not overly optimistic, I would like to think that we are in a watershed where, with a new administration in the White House – an administration that talks about serious change – we could begin a process whereby there is significant pressure on the key players; there are lines of communication opened up with organisations, unpalatable as they may be at times, such as Hamas, and countries like Iran, that begin to shift the situation on the ground.
PHILLIP ADAMS: Are they, perhaps, taking place, even as we speak, through back channels?
PETER ROGERS: Well, there’s certainly been discussions previously between the Americans and the Iranians and some discussions between the Americans and the Syrians and certainly between the Israelis and the Syrians so the answer is, yes, but, at the same time, while these discussions are taking place, the Israeli settler population in the West Bank is growing by five per cent a year, so how can we expect Palestinians to take the idea of a two state solution seriously when every day they see the bulldozers at work?
PHILLIP ADAMS: And the political realities of being in government in Israel are that getting those people out of those areas is virtually an impossibility.
PETER ROGERS: Well, is it? I’m not sure.
PHILLIP ADAMS: Sharon made a few moves, didn’t he?
PETER ROGERS: Well, that was, yes, it was really tweaking at the margins. Is it undoable? It’s tough. It would be very tough. 300,000 people. It’s not Gaza where there was 7,000 Israeli settlers and it wasn’t a very pleasant political experience getting them out. 300,000 settlers in the West Bank is obviously going to be very complicated situation and, realistically, I don’t think we can expect that they would all go, that the majority of them would have to go and then there would have to be some serious land swaps. That’s doable. It’s doable if there’s the imagination and the political will to make it happen. If there isn’t, then, whether it’s in ten years time or twenty years time, the situation on the ground will be even more dire than it is today.
PHILLIP ADAMS: You write very powerfully that peace has been a stranger in the Middle East because of a deadly mix of historical grievance, human failing and human stupidity but…
PETER ROGERS: I wasn’t talking about America in that last, by the way. Not just America…
PHILLIP ADAMS: Look, Peter, thank you very much. Peter Rogers, former Australian ambassador to Israel - and there’s nothing like a former ambassador to give you undiplomatic and energetic and candid commentary - former ambassador to Israel and author of Arabian Plights, published yet again, another book from the valiant small publisher, Scribe.
You can listen to the broadcast here (http://www.abc.net.au/rn/latenightlive/stories/2009/2500309.htm).
According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillip_Adams):
Phillip Adams is an Australian broadcaster, film producer, writer, humanist, social commentator, satirist, left-wing pundit and atheist. He currently hosts a radio program, Late Night Live, four nights a week on the ABC, and he also writes a weekly column for the News Limited-owned newspaper, The Australian. Late Night Live is broadcast across Australia on ABC Radio National as well as on Radio Australia and the World Wide Web. A serious discussion of world issues, the program is tempered with Adams' gentle and ironic humour. Adams refers tongue-in-cheek to his listeners as "the listener" or "Gladys", as though he had only one listener. Recently, Adams has begun introducing the show saying "Good evening Gladys and Poddies", in reference to the show's growing podcast listener base.
I have been listening to Phillip Adams for many years and, in my opinion, his radio interviews are far superior to his newspaper column, which tends to be formulaic and full of jargon, albeit witty. On radio, he doesn’t argue or debate but, rather, discusses the topic with his interviewees. He is extremely well informed and, unusually for radio broadcasters, always pays his interviewees the courtesy of reading their books before interviewing them. His style is so smooth as to be positively unctuous, which usually induces his interviewees to be quite forthcoming, even when their political views are very different from his own. Several times I’ve heard him ever so gently and sweetly lure people into figuratively hanging themselves with their own words.
Anyway, what do people think of Peter Rogers’s analysis?