In one week, President Obama met with both Jordan’s King Abdullah and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss developments in the Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Additionally, Obama delivered a significant speech on the Middle East. To address the changes in the region and preview the visits, Carnegie hosted a media conference call with Michele Dunne.
TRANSCRIPT NOT CHECKED AGAINST DELIVERY
THOMAS CARVER: Hello, I am Tom Carver, the Vice President of Communication and Strategy here at the Carnegie Endowment. And we’ve got Michele Dunne here on the phone with us. She is a former White House advisor and member of the National Security team and knows a great deal about U.S. policy in the Middle East. Michele, if you could talk about the importance of these visits- King Abdullah of Jordan, Benjamin Netanyahu coming later this week. What will be on the agenda?
[brief part of transcript missing here]
MICHELE DUNNE: (In progress) – making statehood at the UN in September. And, you know, so that will be on his agenda. I also think there have been a number of developments in Jordan itself that will be on the agenda for the visit.
As I’m sure you’re aware, the Gulf Cooperation Council has now accepted Jordan’s longstanding request to join the GCC. There’s a process that has to go forward. Jordan has not actually joined. I mean, there’s a process to complete it, but I’m sure it will go forward.
Jordan is going to be desperately looking for economic assistance from the GCC states to help it weather the period ahead. I’m sure the U.S. will want to kind of clarify with King Abdullah what the nature of the relationship with the GCC and so forth will be – not that the U.S., I think, will object to this, but because it’s both an economic and a defense relationship. The benefit to Jordan is mainly economic. The benefit to the GCC is having a country like Jordan. There’s a stronger military joining it.
And the other thing that will be on the agenda for the visit, I think, is the reform issue inside of Jordan. I think that the U.S. administration will be seeking from King Abdullah some reassurances that he’s pursuing this seriously. He has founded two committees, one for constitutional reform and one more for sort of reform of the electoral law and so forth.
And I think Abdullah will be telling him that the electoral law reform is going to be coming out very soon, perhaps later this week or next week, to show that he’s really pursuing this.
THOMAS CARVER: And moving on to Prime Minister Netanyahu, what’s his agenda, particularly, as you said, in the light of last weekend?
MS. DUNNE: OK, so the Netanyahu visit is really a big visit. And it has a lot of events. He’s going to be meeting with President Obama on Friday, and then addressing the AIPAC conference and addressing Congress. So he’s going to be here for a relatively long time, and speaking a lot.
Netanyahu is going to make a speech today. It’s – I believe it’s evening Israeli time. He’s speaking to the Israeli Knesset. And it will be important to look at what he says there for some hints of what he’s going to say here. Because there’s been a lot of mystery shrouding what Netanyahu is going to say when he comes.
Is he going to unveil any kind of an initiative that he would use to try to somehow short-circuit the Palestinian diplomatic initiative of seeking – the Palestinians are seeking unilateral – are unilaterally seeking international recognition of statehood. And Netanyahu wants to stop that and say Palestinian statehood can only be established through negotiations.
Now, is he going to, you know, put out some sort of concessions or initiative of his own to try to get the Palestinians off that path? Or is he going to use the recent events – both the Palestinian Fatah-Hamas reconciliation agreement, and this escalation of violence over the weekend – use those events to say Israel has no partner for peace, Israel faces a threat to its existence and cannot make any concessions? I mean, his statement about the events over the weekend was that these were not about the 1967 borders but, quote, about undermining the very existence of Israel. So he’s going there for the existence question, you know.
MR. CARVER: Existential.
MS. DUNNE: The existential threat – the threat to Israel’s existence. So, that – he might take that tack. So, you know, that’s what we’re going to see.
It seems that, at least according to the hints that have surfaced in the Israeli press, the Israelis believe that President Obama is not going to unveil any kind of a peace initiative in the speech that he’ll make on Thursday, and that he has promised to kind of give the Israelis more time, at least until August, before he would unveil any ideas of his own. So he’s giving Netanyahu a chance to perhaps come forward with some concessions before the Palestinian initiative at the UN, which will be in September.
Netanyahu did make one small concession that he will bring with him to Washington, which is that he agreed to release $100 million worth of tax money that Israel – Israel collects taxes and then – in the West Bank – and then turns the money over to the Palestinian Authority. But they had frozen that money after the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation agreement on May 4th. They agreed now to release the money, which will allow the Palestinian Authority to pay salaries in the West Bank and Gaza for the month of April.
Q: (Off mic.)
MR. CARVER: Hello? OK, we – why don’t – thank you, Michele. Does anyone want to jump in with questions at this stage?
Q: Hello, Can I ask a question?
MR. CARVER: Sure, Hi there.
Q: I wanted to ask Ms. Dunne how she would evaluate Obama’s handling of this issue – of the Israeli-Palestinian question since January of 2009. Everyone was very hopeful initially, you know – the settlement freeze demand, the Cairo speech. Does he actually have a policy now, and if so, what is it? Is it really just a kind of wait-and-see policy?
MS. DUNNE: OK, well, I think it’s clear that the Obama administration’s first effort in Arab-Israeli peacemaking failed. The initial – you know, they appointed Senator Mitchell as the special envoy. And the initial approach was actually built on the – on George Mitchell’s report to the Bush administration, which identified Israeli settlements and Palestinian violence against Israelis as the two major obstacles to making peace.
I think there was a feeling when the Obama administration came in that the Palestinian Authority had met the demands to stop violence against Israel, at least emanating from the West Bank, and – but that the Israelis had not met what was demanded from them under the Bush administration road map of stopping settlements.
So the Obama administration pursued a freeze on settlements. And clearly that did not succeed. We saw a couple of confrontations, periods of tension between Obama and Netanyahu over settlements. And ultimately, I would say Netanyahu made some small concessions in terms of slowing down settlements a little bit. But in general, you know, this did not succeed, and basically Obama backed away from the confrontation with Netanyahu.
Now, so then we’ve seen this period where the question has been, what would Obama’s next move be? How – would he try to put forward some more specific ideas and initiative, or the – a framework, develop somehow how the U.S. sees the solution to this conflict in order to put a bit of pressure on both parties, but especially on the Israeli side, to come forward?
That hasn’t happened yet, and now we’ve seen a major distraction of the Arab Spring, of these revolutions and uprisings in Arab countries. So there’s still, you know, a question out there as to whether Obama will come forward with any initiative. But as the months go by, and as we get closer to the point where Obama has to begin his reelection campaign, the chances of his coming forward with a very – with a risky peace initiative, and one that would put him in direct confrontation with Israel – the chances of that are falling.
Q: Uh-huh. So what grade would you give him, like a C minus? I mean, is it – it’s pretty much a failure, isn’t it, so far?
MS. DUNNE: Well, it’s, you know, it’s certainly not a success. And we are seeing tension rising. We saw, over the weekend now, you know, the creation of – the anniversary of the creation of Israel is, for Palestinians, the Nakba, the disaster, and it usually brings forth protests. But this year, they were unusually strong. And we saw this very unusual incident on the Syrian border, and also the Lebanese border, of people trying to breach the border. And in – on the Syrian border of the Golan Heights, they actually succeeded.
And then we saw, you know, demonstrations in Egypt and in Jordan that had to be put down by force, and people had to be stopped by force from trying to get to the border with Israel.
So, you know, there’s a lot of discussion of this in Israel right now. What does this mean? Does this mean that there could be another Palestinian uprising coming? Or these borders that Israel has long counted on as quiet, particularly the Syrian border, could they be heating up? And I think there is definitely a sense that the Palestinians are feeling this climate of the Arab Spring, this climate of protest, of people now rebelling against realities that they, however unhappily, long accommodated themselves to.
There’s also a sense, and the Israelis are accusing the Syrians in particular of this, that the Syrian government might have allowed this breach of the border to happen as a kind of signal to Israel that Israel should support the Assad government staying in power because if control breaks down, that will create a lot of problems for Israel.
Q: Uh-huh.
MR. CARVER: And in the light of the Arab Spring, where do you think Obama officials stand on the idea of self-determination for the Palestinians?
MS. DUNNE: Well, I mean, look, it’s been U.S. policy since 2002 that the U.S. supports the creation of an independent Palestinian state. And so that’s – you know, that has been established for some time now.
The question of the United States putting forward some sort of a more detailed position has to do with some specific issues that remain unresolved: What would the borders of this state look like? And more importantly, I think, what would be the fate of Jerusalem and what would be the fate of Palestinian refugees? These are some of the hottest questions on which there, you know, really is no acknowledged or shared solution at this point.
And the Palestinians, in particular, have wanted the United States to do what Europe has already done and put out its own ideas about how these issues might be resolved.
Now, in the speech that President Obama is going to make on Thursday, I definitely think we’re going to hear a lot from him about the Arab Spring, about change in the region, about U.S. support for the growth of democracy and human rights and so forth in the region. I do – I think most people are not expecting detailed ideas on the Israeli-Palestinian issue – it seems difficult that he would ignore it altogether. He’s probably going to have to say some general things about it – but these more detailed ideas that some have been seeking might come at a later point, if at all.
They – it might be that the Obama administration will decide not to do that at all. Of course, it’s risky for the U.S. president to put forward detailed ideas like this and, perhaps immediately, have them rejected. I mean, some people are arguing, there’s no point in putting forward the ideas if you don’t intend to back it up with a kind of muscular diplomatic initiative.
MR. CARVER: OK. Anyone else have questions for Michele?
Q: Yes, I've got a question.
MR. CARVER: Hi.
MS. DUNNE: Hi .
Q: Hi Michele. Thanks for doing this. I have a question, a bit more on the speech if you – could you give some ideas about, beyond saying that they support certain principles, what can Obama say to try to show that the U.S. is ahead of the curve and not simply reacting to events as they unfold, as we’ve seen over the last few months?
MS. DUNNE: Well, look. I think that what the president can and should say – and he probably feels that he’s said this before – (chuckles) – but that it bears – I think it bears repeating – is clearly that that the United States supports the growth of democracy and supports improved human rights for the citizens of all Arab countries. And that – I think he will talk about sort of a general feeling that there’s a new era here.
It was very striking, for example, that the killing of Osama bin Laden elicited so little reaction in the Arab world, a sense that that whole era in which there was support for terrorism as the way of solving problems has passed away, and that there’s a new, much more positive and largely nonviolent path toward change in the Arab world, and that the United States wants to support this and wants to support democratic transitions in the countries that have already undergone change in which there has been regime change from within, and in the countries where there has not been, you know, and perhaps there won’t be, that the United States will support processes – serious processes of reform.
I think that he should, and I think he will, portray the change in the region as something positive, something the United State is taking a positive attitude toward, and that the United States will certainly seek positive, constructive relationships with Arab states as they move forward.
Q: I’m sorry, could I just follow up briefly, I just – do you expect him to make any particular statements, for example, on Syria, on Libya, or will it just be semantic or about where the U.S. stands in terms of principle, which is what they’ve basically been trying to do over the last few months?
MS. DUNNE: My guess is he will have to say something. I think, probably – I don’t know for sure, Mina, but my guess is that I don’t see how he could make this speech without saying some things about some specific countries, acknowledging where Tunisia and Egypt stand in their transitions and, you know, noting the problems, condemning the use of violence by Arab governments like Libya and Syria.
Now, there’s – (chuckles) – going to be a sort of scale of degree of difficulty, I think, in how he’s going to handle these things. To be honest with you, I don’t think Libya’s going to be that difficult for him to handle; he’ll know what he needs to say about that. Syria will be a little bit more difficult; Yemen will be a little bit more difficult. I think the really difficult one is Bahrain, you know, in which there’s been a very strong crackdown in which there are serious human rights abuses going on, and in which the United States has done nothing about this.
In these other countries, obviously, you know, we’re – the United States is very engaged in the NATO intervention in Libya. They’ve taken some steps regarding Syria, you know, have condemned the abuses by Syrian officials and put in place some sanctions. They’re at least actively involved in trying to broker something Yemen. But in Bahrain, the United States is largely silent and doing nothing, and yet there is a very serious human rights situation going on now.
I think that’s going to be a difficult one for him to say the right thing about, but it would be a serious omission, I think, if he didn’t – if he failed to mention it.
Q: Thank you.
MR. CARVER: OK. Any others?
Q: Yes, I've got a question.
MS. DUNNE: Hi.
Q: Question. If it doesn’t look like that Netanyahu or Obama are going to lay out important new principles for the negotiation, then what will the visit be all about? What are – if you’re setting that aside, what are the other goals for these two leaders in the visit?
MS. DUNNE: I think that the main goals for both of these visits are to get these relationships, U.S.-Jordan and also U.S.-Israel, on the right footing in this era of rapid change that we’re seeing. Both of these leaders want to keep close and constructive relationships with the United States, but they’re both really worried about security in their own countries as well.
And I think, you know – and they both have, you know, some perhaps slightly different ideas from the United States about how best to handle this new era. So probably the thing that they’d be looking for is to come out of this with those bilateral relationships and aid relationships, right?
These are both major aid recipients, Israel getting over $3 billion in military aid and Jordan getting over 600 million (dollars) in combined military and economic aid. You know, and the relationships with Congress are very important. And they’re not threatened at this point, but they’ll want to reinforce that, and perhaps get a good understanding with Obama on how they’re moving forward in dealing with these issues.
I think that’s going to be easier with Jordan than it is with Israel. There’s probably, at this point, a closer – the U.S. and Jordanian positions on how to handle what’s going forward is probably a little closer than the U.S. and Israeli positions.
Q: Michele, do you know by any chance – you mentioned that Netanyahu was going – I got the impression from what you said he’s going to the White House first –
MS. DUNNE: Yes.
Q: Then to AIPAC and Congress. Do you have any idea of what – of the actual schedule is – is he going to the White House in the morning, in the afternoon – is AIPAC –
MS. DUNNE: No, these are on different days. He’s going to – he’s speaking – he’s meeting with the president on Friday. He’s meeting with Congress on Monday, I believe, yeah, and I believe AIPAC is Sunday. So I believe it’s, yeah, Friday he meets with Obama, Sunday he addresses AIPAC and then Monday with the Congress. The only thing I have to check on that is the AIPAC thing, I’m not sure whether he’s – I think I heard he’s speaking to AIPAC Sunday, but it’s also possible that it’s Monday because AIPAC has their events over the weekend and Monday.
Q: And I also heard that it was actually – that Netanyahu was invited by Congress, and that the president’s speech and his meeting with Netanyahu were a sort of catch-up attempt by the White House to sort of define or work on this issue before Netanyahu went to Congress and presented something as being a peace initiative; that the White House wanted to get in there first. Is there any truth to that?
MS. DUNNE: I don’t know, I’ve heard the same things but from the media, so I don’t – I can’t confirm that for you.
Q: Thank you.
MR. CARVER: Anyone else?
Q: Is it possible that, sorry if nobody else wants to jump in – talking about your assessment of Obama’s handling of the Middle East, is it basically the failure of his policies so far – the failure of more traditional missions? Is it really because of domestic political concerns within the U.S. that Obama cannot afford to have AIPAC against him, and he can’t afford to have a confrontational relationship with Israel? Is that the basic reason for it?
MS. DUNNE: Well, the domestic political context is certainly important. Look, I think that there were some problems with the Obama administration’s strategy, or what I would say was a failure to have a real diplomatic strategy behind George Mitchell’s initial efforts in the – and the efforts toward a settlement freeze.
I think, for example, the fact that Obama has not yet visited Israel during his presidency was a problem that – in my own opinion, it would have been wise for him when he went to Cairo in June of 2009, to also go to Israel and to make his case, you know, make his case for a settlements freeze, and so forth, directly to the Israelis. There has been, I think, a failure to build up a constructive working relationship with Israel. And I don’t mean by that just Netanyahu, I mean, you know, the Israeli people and so forth.
So, you know, that is a – I think that the Obama initiative – while I agree that settlements are a serious problem; they correctly identified settlements as a serious problem – the strategy that they had to pursue this was not well-developed and quickly fell apart when Netanyahu said no. There sort of was no plan B to deal with, you know, how to either persuade the Israelis or put pressure on them, or whatever, after Netanyahu failed to accept what Obama proposed.
Q: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And if I could ask just a last question: It’s been said that Obama could put his stamp on the Arab Spring, on the democratization of the Arab world, in a similar way to what, say, Ronald Regan did with the fall of the Soviet Bloc. Do you think that’s possible? Is there any way for him at this late stage to actually own the democratization of the Arab world?
MS. DUNNE: No. (Chuckles.) I don’t. What I think he can do is he can orient the United States in a positive way toward this. But it’s well known that he – promoting democracy in the Arab world was not a major feature of the Obama administration’s regional policy for the first couple of years of the administration. There’s no changing that. And there, you know, there are some hard feelings in the Arab world about that.
There’s also a resurgence of national pride in the Arab world, particularly in the countries – in Tunisia and Egypt, but elsewhere as well, and a sense that they want to own it themselves, and they are not going to – nobody else can take credit for what they feel that they did, and they did without anybody’s help.
So I don’t think – and I don’t think Obama would try to do that. I think he would be sensitive to that; to not trying to take any credit for what happened. At the same time though, I think he’s going to want to show that his foreign policy does have principles and that the United States stands up for the principle of the spread of democracy.
And that he’s not going to – you know, there are some people who have said, oh the fall of some strategic allies of the United States like Mubarak is going to be to the benefit of Iran, and sort of Iran’s narrative. I think he’ll be saying that that isn’t the case, and that the United States views the spread of democracy in the region as something positive and something that will be to the benefit of the United States.
Q: Yeah, mm-hmm.
MR. CARVER: OK, well, thank you Michele. We’re up on 30 minutes –
Q: I had a – I had a final question.
MR. CARVER: Sure, yeah.
Q: JOURNALIST. What do you think can be the Obama strategy towards the U.N. Palestinians – (inaudible) – because the Europeand are almost ready to recognize the state. But what can they do?
MS. DUNNE: Yeah. So on the Palestinian front I would say the Obama administration faces two serious challenges, one near-term and one a few months down the road. The near-term one is that Fatah and Hamas are having talks in Cairo this week to announce a unity government, a technocratic government. The Obama administration, I think, has been admirably cautious so far in what they’ve said about Palestinian reconciliation, waiting to see what will emerge.
They have not cut off assistance or, you know, carved out a position that would be difficult for them to back down from later on. But this is going to be coming up soon and there will definitely be challenges in the American Congress to the assistance that the U.S. gives to the Palestinian Authority when the Palestinian Authority has a government in which Hamas participates in some way. That’s the near-term challenge; that’s going to be the challenge that’s going to hit within the next couple of weeks.
Then, as you noted, there’s something else a few months down the road that’s going to be developing over the summer and heading toward a crisis in September; which is the recognition of a Palestinian state.
Now, let’s recall this is something that happened before. In 1988, a majority of the members of the U.N. General Assembly recognized the creation of the state of Palestine. So in a sense this is a bit of a rerun, and a bit anticlimactic. But I think, you know, there’s a lot more going on, on the ground, with the Palestinians these days. And there is growing concern, I think, both in the United States and in Israel, that if the Palestinians feel that they are totally stymied on the diplomatic front that there could be another Palestinian uprising or some sort of confrontation shaping up.
So the Obama administration officials are very aware of this. And that is the, you know, that is the main source of pressure on them, I think, to try to come up with something, some kind of an initiative that would show that the United States takes a – you know, is in favor of Palestinian statehood, but doesn’t want the Palestinians to try to accomplish this by unilateral measures. It’s really going to be very, very challenging to handle in the next few months.
Q: Thank you.
MR. CARVER: Great. Well, I think, let’s – why don’t we draw this to a close, unless you have any final thoughts you want to say, Michele?
MS. DUNNE: Just to note that, you know, as these visits take place, the Abdullah visit and the Netanyahu visit, there are going to be a number of things that could be – could affect the visits. I mentioned already the possibility that a Palestinian government could be announced, even before Netanyahu makes his speeches or meets with Obama here.
It’d be really interesting to see who’s in that government; we still don’t know whether Prime Minister Fayyad, who’s very well-viewed by the United States and Israel, would be able to head that government or not. We know that it will be a technocratic government but, you know, we’ll have to see what – the government will make some kind of a statement of its policy. And all of that will affect both how the United States and Israel react to that. So that’s important.
On a sort of lower level, with Jordan, they are saying that their committee, their reform committee on electoral law and so forth, might announce some results this week. That would give a signal as to how serious King Abdullah is about pursuing political reform in Jordan, and that could have some effect on how his visit goes.
MR. CARVER: OK, great. Well, it’s going to be a very interesting week. OK, thank you, Michele Dunne. Thank you, everyone else for joining. And if there was any bit you missed, there will be a transcript up on the website in due course. So thanks once again.
Q: Tom, do you have any idea when the transcript will be available?
KARLY SCHLEDWITZ: You can email the email address on the invitation you received, but it should be within – by tomorrow afternoon at the latest.
Q: Fantastic. So I email kschledwitz?
MS. SCHLEDWITZ: Yes.
MR. CARVER: That’s right, yeah.
Q: OK, thanks very much.
MS. SCHLEDWITZ: Thank you.
MR. CARVER: Bye.
