Middle East Correspondent James Bennet

DATE April 8, 2004 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: James Bennet discusses the current situation in Israel
between the Sharon government and the Palestinians
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

As the American-led occupation of Iraq faces a growing uprising, Israel is
considering a new plan to withdraw from its long occupation of the Gaza Strip.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has proposed a unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and
part of the West Bank. We asked The New York Times Jerusalem bureau chief,
James Bennet, to explain this plan and what it might mean for Israelis and
Palestinians and to consider if any of Israel's experiences as an occupier
might have lessons for the US.

But first we're going to talk about reactions to Israel's assassination last
month of the founder and spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.
Bennet has written, `It was a measure of Sheikh Yassin's status as an icon to
Palestinians and as a perceived threat to Israelis that his death seemed to
hold consequences for every player in the conflict, from the Israelis and
Palestinians to the Egyptians and Americans.' When I spoke with James Bennet
this morning, he told me Israelis are braced for a retaliatory attack. I
asked if there are rumors about what that attack might be.

Mr. JAMES BENNET (The New York Times): There's constant rumors about this.
There have been efforts by Hamas and other groups over the last couple weeks
to carry out some sort of an attack. The Israelis say they have something
like 60, 62 warnings of attacks right now. But there's general agreement that
Hamas has not tried the kind of major retaliation that they've threatened.
There are lots of rumors about what that might amount to--a strike at an
Israeli minister, for example, an effort to assassinate a minister, some sort
of high-ranking politician, some sort of major suicide bombing.

As to why it hasn't happened yet, people have various theories about that, one
that Hamas is simply not able to launch an attack right now because they're
under such pressure from Israel and because the military restrictions are so
stringent. Another is that Hamas, which is a highly disciplined organization,
is simply waiting for the Israeli guard to relax a little bit. There's no
point, according to this theory, in wasting a potentially devastating suicide
bomber when they don't have much shot at getting through.

Another theory is that Hamas is waiting for the meeting that Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon is supposed to hold with President Bush next week, that that
would be a particularly devastating time to carry out an attack. And the last
theory is that maybe they're waiting for the traditional 40 days of mourning
to end before retaliating. We've seen that happen in the past.

GROSS: What has reaction to the assassination of Sheikh Yassin been in
Israel? Was that a controversial move within Israel?

Mr. BENNET: No, it was broadly supported by the Israeli public,
overwhelmingly supported. And it was interesting, we've seen this with the
less dramatic results in past attacks on very prominent Hamas figures. But
there was substantial majority, overwhelming support for it, and at the same
time a majority of Israelis said it would result in more terrorist attacks at
least in the short term. So it's interesting. It's broadly supported because
Sheikh Yassin was seen by the Israeli public as an archterrorist, as the kind
of living embodiment of Hamas, which is officially bent on Israel's
destruction. But there is, I think, still some discomfort within Israel about
whether this policy of the targeted killings is ultimately effective or not.

GROSS: Yeah, another question about Sheikh Yassin. You know, he was 66, he
was a quadriplegic, he was nearly blind. He's considered the spiritual leader
of Hamas. Does that make him a difficult--a problematic target? You know,
spiritual leader, physically incapable himself. Does that conflict at all
with his image of archterrorist?

Mr. BENNET: Well, I think it was a problem for Israel, and some Israeli
military officials acknowledge that the imagery certainly wasn't great. They
hit this guy on his way home from dawn prayers, being wheeled home in his
wheelchair from the mosque. And they struck him with missiles. We still
don't know the source of those missiles, whether it was a helicopter, an
airplane, how exactly the strike was contended, which is a lot of very
expensive military hardware to use against one disabled old man.

But there's no question that Sheikh Yassin was the great motivating, unifying
figure in Hamas. He was a founder of the organization. He played a very
prominent role as a spokesman for the organization. Israel says that he had a
role in actually approving attacks and also inspiring suicide bombers. This
is--you're starting to get into squishy territory here because there's no
question that he incited against Israel in that he was a propagandist for
Hamas, he was an ideological leader for Hamas. He was regarded in Gaza as a
very, very eloquent spokesman for the Hamas cause. So to Israel, he was a
tremendous security threat.

GROSS: Let me ask you a question that the United States is having to face
now. When you assassinate a leader of a group that believes in the importance
of martyrdom, a group of people that regularly blow themselves up as suicide
bombers, does the death have a different meaning in that culture, and does
assassination reverberate differently?

Mr. BENNET: This is a really tough strategic question for Israel. It's
something they're extremely conscious of, and I think it's one reason they
didn't act against men like Sheikh Yassin for a long time. It was only last
year that they began really to target the so-called political leaders of
Hamas, the ideological leaders as opposed to the operational guys who are out
there actually recruiting suicide bombers and strapping the bombs to them.

There's a real question as to whether a man like Sheikh Yassin is more
dangerous dead or alive; that is, whether his death elevates him into a symbol
for a broader kind of movement, makes him more sympathetic. His funeral in
Gaza was extraordinary. The day he was killed, it was the largest turnout at
least since Yasser Arafat returned to Gaza 10 years ago triumphantly. About a
hundred thousand people turned out then; perhaps more than that turned out
this time. Obviously, you couldn't draw a sharper contrast between what these
two events supposedly represented. The return of Yasser Arafat was at the
start of the Oslo peace process that was supposed to usher in a new era of
reconciliation between these two peoples. The killing of Sheikh Yassin really
represents how deep the divide has become and how difficult it's going to be
to bridge it.

The funeral, as I say, was--the mood of this funeral was far less mournful
than you'd expect. There were people crying at the mosque. There were people
weeping over Sheikh Yassin. But there was much more of a kind of celebratory
atmosphere, and people were comparing it to a birthday, to a wedding
celebration, which is the language they tend to use with what they call
martyrdom, that essentially it's equivalent to the person's wedding; it's
something to be celebrated, not mourned. But speakers were calling it a
birthday of a new Arab movement, the birthday for a new Muslim movement.

GROSS: Ariel Sharon recently said, `Anyone who kills a Jew or harms an
Israeli citizen or sends people to kill Jews is a marked man,' period. Does
this represent a new policy, or is this just a continuation?

Mr. BENNET: This has been stated policy for a very long time, and there have
been--these sorts of threats have been made many, many times in the past. He
was referring, in those comments specifically, to the leader of Hezbollah, the
Lebanese guerrilla group, and also to Yasser Arafat, the Palestinian leader
and the president of the governing Palestinian Authority.

Mr. Sharon has threatened Mr. Arafat many times over the last couple of years.
What's different about it this time, though, is that he said for the first
time that he no longer necessarily felt bound by a pledge he made to President
Bush three years ago now not to harm Arafat. He said times have changed;
Arafat's circumstances have changed. He's no longer getting the red carpet
treatment he once was; the world now understands who this guy is. And,
therefore, he's suggested, he has a freer hand than he may have had last year.

GROSS: So is Sharon implying that Arafat might be the target of an
assassination?

Mr. BENNET: Definitely.

GROSS: And what is Arafat doing about that?

Mr. BENNET: He's saying he's not concerned, he's not worried about it; that
he only worries about God's judgment, no judgment by somebody like Sharon.
That's his public posture. Privately, he's expressed some concern about it,
and there is some effort now--on the Palestinian side, there's a lot of
concern around Arafat about what Hamas might do, also.

GROSS: And what's that?

Mr. BENNET: The concern among some Palestinians is that Hamas might strike at
Israel, conduct some sort of really devastating attack in the hope that Israel
would retaliate by killing Arafat. There's a very deep rivalry between these
factions, between Fatah--the more mainstream, more secular and dominant
faction that Yasser Arafat has led for decades--and Hamas. They've
historically had a very uneasy relationship.

One former Hamas official--who once described to me what he saw as Hamas'
strategy; he called it `the circle.' The notion was that Hamas, above all,
doesn't want to be seen as engaging in Palestinian civil conflict, that it
always stands above that. It leaves it to the Palestinian Authority, which is
dominated by Fatah, to actually carry out any kind of inter-Palestinian
violence, which they say it only does as a contractor, as Israel's security
contractor, essentially as an Israeli agent.

Rather than striking directly at the Palestinian Authority, what it
traditionally did was strike at Israel, which would then strike back at the
Palestinian Authority. This was the circle. That's changed in the last year
as Israel has begun striking more and more directly at the Hamas
infrastructure, at the Hamas ideological leadership. But it still exists.

GROSS: James Bennet is my guest. He's the Jerusalem bureau chief for The New
York Times. Let's take a short break here, and then we'll talk some more.

This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is James Bennet, Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York
Times.

You know, we were talking about the Israeli assassination of the spiritual
leader and founder of Hamas, Sheikh Yassin. At the same time that that has
happened and that Israel is waiting for a likely counterattack, Ariel Sharon
is talking about disengaging unilaterally from the Gaza and parts of the West
Bank. What does that mean? What is his plan?

Mr. BENNET: Well, the plan is still evolving, and the details are being
filled in and still debated. But in its broad contours, the plan is to
withdraw soldiers and settlers from the entire Gaza Strip. But now Mr. Sharon
is talking about retaining control of Gaza's border with Egypt, for example,
control of Gaza's port and control of its airport even after Israel otherwise
withdraws.

And he's also talking about withdrawing from four isolated settlements in the
northern West Bank. He says he's looking at that because the Americans are
asking for some kind of withdrawal from the West Bank as well.

GROSS: What is his reasoning as far as you can tell for this unilateral
withdrawal as opposed to doing it through the road map, through a negotiated
peace plan?

Mr. BENNET: His contention is that the Palestinians have demonstrated they
cannot be a partner for peace because of their failure to act decisively
against groups like Hamas, that they haven't cracked down on the people
responsible for suicide bombings; they haven't put them in jail, they haven't
rounded them up, they haven't broken the groups apart. He says they haven't
acted against incitement against Israel, these sorts of things they were
obligated to do under the road map peace plan that President Bush unveiled a
year ago. Since they haven't done that, he says, there's no point in
negotiating with them, that we can't trust them to live up to their side of
the agreement.

Therefore, he says, Israel has to act on its own, he argues, to draw more
secure boundaries than it has now, essentially to hunker down behind them more
safely. He also says that if Israel doesn't act now, it risks having to give
up more territory down the road in what he says could be an internationally
imposed peace plan of some sort that would require a more complete Israeli
withdrawal.

GROSS: I think you've already partly explained this, but could you explain
the rationale for pulling out unilaterally when usually if you make a big step
for that, you expect the other party to give you something in return?

Mr. BENNET: Mr. Sharon himself is having a great deal of difficulty right now
explaining to his own allies exactly why a unilateral move that doesn't carry
the kind of concessions from the other side that a bilateral agreement would
is actually in Israel's interest. He puts it in the terms that I already
described to you, that it's simply the least-worst alternative that Israel
has, that it's the best way to ensure--or to better provide for the security
of Israelis.

Palestinians say that Mr. Sharon is simply trying to avoid giving up more
territory as he would almost certainly have to do in any kind of agreement.
They say Israel also didn't abide by its obligations under the road map peace
plan. It hasn't dismantled dozens of isolated outposts that settlers have set
up in the West Bank in the last couple of years, which was its first
requirement under the peace initiative. So they're accusing Mr. Sharon of
using this unilateral plan as kind of a dodge to avoid getting drawn into a
peace process that would force him to make concessions.

Now the truth is that though it is unilateral, there is a negotiation under
way here. It's just not a negotiation with the Palestinians; it's a
negotiation with the Bush administration. And Mr. Sharon is seeking
concessions, if you will--`recompense' is the word that's being used here in
Israel--from the Americans for this move.

GROSS: Like what?

Mr. BENNET: There's a number of things that he's been seeking from Washington
here, and the list has evolved over time as the negotiation has continued,
with several visits back and forth between Israeli and American officials.
The Israelis have progressively trimmed their requests from the Americans as
they heard `no' or `not likely' from the administration.

But what they've been seeking is essentially at least three major things. One
is some sort of American assurance that as a part of any eventual peace
deal--if there ever is some sort of serious bilaterally negotiated peace
agreement--that Israel would not have to return to its 1967 borders, the
borders that existed before the occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza
Strip. Mr. Sharon regards those boundaries as completely indefensible as a
security proposition. Israel would also like to hold on to three very large
blocks of settlements in the West Bank. They say they're not asking to annex
that territory.

In addition, under pressure from his right, Sharon is looking for some kind of
statement from the Bush White House that as part of a peace agreement, the
Palestinians would not have what's known as a `right of return' to what is now
Israel for the refugees of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and their descendants.
This is a huge issue in the peace process here; it's been a deal-breaker in
the past. It's a demand by the Palestinians that all these refugees, who now
number in the millions, be able to return--have a right to return here if they
choose to, which Israelis overwhelmingly see as a way to beat them through
sheer demography when they can't beat them through force of arms; that is,
turn Israel's democracy against it and overwhelm Israel's Jewish character.

And a third thing that they're looking for is money. The Israelis say they're
not asking Washington itself to put up money, but maybe to help arrange some
sort of loans, guarantees, grants from the World Bank to--Israel would like to
develop southern Israel, the Negev Desert, as a possible place for the
settlers from Gaza to move.

GROSS: Ariel Sharon recently said, `We have to get out of Gaza, not to be
responsible anymore for what happens there.' What is he referring to that he
no longer wants to be responsible for?

Mr. BENNET: This has been a theme in Sharon's public comments about the
Palestinians for some time now, a great deal of concern that Israel is seen as
responsible in the international community's eyes for essentially the care and
feeding for the Palestinians, for what will happen to the more than three
million Palestinians now in Gaza and the West Bank. They're living under
`occupation'; Mr. Sharon has now himself used that term. He used it about a
year ago, in fact, although he hasn't used it again since because the response
from his right was so negative.

But he has said it's bad for Israel to hold them under occupation; it's bad
for the Palestinians to be held under occupation. He thinks--at least he
argues--that by withdrawing, Israel will essentially free itself of this
burden, this public relations burden or this moral burden or this perceived
moral burden, that's presented by the more than one million Palestinians who
live in Gaza, whose livelihoods, in a sense, Israel controls because it
controls all access to the Gaza Strip. Palestinians can't leave the Gaza
Strip, they can't import goods to the Gaza Strip without their passing through
Israeli hands first.

Now exactly how this withdrawal would relieve Israel of that burden is a very
big question right now because, as Mr. Sharon is now saying, Israel plans to
retain control of all those border crossings, control of the airport, control
of the marine port. So whether the world would necessarily see Israel as
having walked away from the Gaza Strip and left things totally in the
Palestinians' hands are not--I think is very much open to question.

GROSS: So if Israel does pull out of Gaza, then who runs it? Is it still the
Palestinian Authority? Do you think that friction will escalate between the
Palestinian Authority and Hamas over leadership?

Mr. BENNET: These are all questions that everybody is trying to work out
right now. The Israelis and the Americans are in intense discussions with
each other about this, and the Palestinians--who aren't really being talked to
in any detail by either the Israelis or the Americans right now--are trying to
figure it out for themselves. There have been discussions under way for some
time. Interestingly, Sheikh Yassin, before he was killed, had actually been
pushing these conversations and he'd been urging Hamas to begin to take some
sort of role in governing the Gaza Strip after a withdrawal. His argument was
that with the departure of the Israelis, because this is a unilateral move and
not a peace agreement, which Hamas would oppose--but since it's unilateral,
therefore, Hamas wouldn't feel compromised or contaminated by then playing a
role in running whatever sort of arrangement is created in Gaza after the
Israelis depart.

Nobody knows what this is going to look like. The Palestinians are also
expected to get some sort of development money, some enhanced international
assistance with the departure of the Israelis. The Egyptians are looking at
playing some kind of higher-profile role; the Europeans, the Americans may get
more involved. Whether the Americans essentially negotiating this agreement,
as it were, with Israel will somehow make them turn the Palestinians into
wards of the Americans--that is, whether the Americans now are playing some
kind of a warden role or caretaker role for the Palestinians that will involve
them more deeply in the Gaza Strip--is another really important question that
needs to be sorted out.

GROSS: James Bennet is the Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times.
He'll be back in the second half of the show.

I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

(Announcements)

GROSS: Coming up, we continue our conversation with James Bennet, Jerusalem
bureau chief for The New York Times. We'll consider a couple of parallels
between the US occupation of Iraq and the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip
and West Bank.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross back with more of the interview I
recorded this morning with James Bennet, Jerusalem bureau chief for The New
York Times.

At the same time the Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon, is proposing a
unilateral withdrawal from Gaza and part of the West Bank, Israel is
continuing construction of the barrier in the West Bank. Israel describes it
as a security fence meant to separate West Bank Palestinians from Israelis.
Palestinians see it as a way to lock them in and further restrict their
freedom and human rights.

You wrote that the barrier has had an unintended affect; it stirred a
sustained, bloodless protest movement among Palestinians for the first time in
more than three years of conflict. Would you describe this new movement?

Mr. BENNET: Well, it's been really interesting. You know, this intifada,
this Palestinian uprising, as it's gone forward, has become much more focused
on bands, really, of gunmen, militants who are largely confined to the big
cities now. As the Israelis have moved in and really retaken control of the
entire West Bank, the militants have been concentrated in pockets in big
cities like Nablus and Hebron and Jenin. And the villages and towns have
largely been on the sidelines for at least two years--or more than two years
now.

There has been other forms of protest: strikes, things like that. But what's
happened as they've started building this barrier is it's begun consuming some
of the village land along the boundary between the West Bank and Israel. It's
brought these villagers out to protect their own interests, to protect their
own land. It's a very, very tangible cost to them of this continuing
conflict. And it's also brought Israelis out in sympathy with these
Palestinians because they see them as innocents in this conflict. These
Israelis see these Palestinians as people who aren't suicide bombers, they
aren't involved in the ongoing bloody struggle. They're farmers with olive
orchards and fields that are losing some of their land to the construction of
this barrier.

GROSS: At this same time that Sharon is moving toward this unilateral
withdrawal, it's possible he will be forced to resign over accusations that he
took bribes from a real estate developer. Can you give us a brief explanation
about what these accusations are about?

Mr. BENNET: The developer, a guy named David Appel, was indicted earlier
this year for giving bribes to Mr. Sharon. He's accused, essentially, of
hiring Ariel Sharon's son, Gilead, for an enormous amount of money, something
like $3 million, and then actually paying about $700,000 to him for consulting
work on development projects, particularly the development of a resort and
casino on a Greek island, which is why this whole scandal is known as the
Greek Island Affair. The accusation is that the money given to Gilead was
actually intended to influence Ariel Sharon, who at that time this began was
foreign minister in a previous government--that David Appelle was seeking
Ariel Sharon's influence in winning the Greeks' sign-off on this plan.

GROSS: So how likely is it that Sharon will have to resign over this?

Mr. BENNET: This is one of the huge wild cards, along with the threatened
retaliation by Hamas, that's sort of hanging over everybody's heads here right
now. And it's all in the hands of one man, Israel's attorney general, a guy
named Menachem Mazuz. The state prosecutor for Israel has given a
recommendation to Mr. Mazuz that he indict the prime minister. That
recommendation was promptly leaked to the press creating a firestorm around
Ariel Sharon just at the moment he's trying to secure Washington's sign-off on
his unilateral withdrawal plan, substantially weakening him politically and
raising a lot of concern in Washington about whether Ariel Sharon will
actually be around to carry this plan out.

So it's tremendously complicated an already intricate political dynamic here,
where Ariel Sharon had already alienated the right wing--the far-right parties
that are his natural base and even some of his traditional supporters within
his dominant faction, Likud, which is a right-leaning faction, which has
traditionally opposed any withdrawal whatsoever from the occupied territories.
It's anathema to them. So having alienated these people and still being
regarded suspiciously on the left, that is somewhat isolated politically. And
in the middle of this very complex negotiation with Washington, Ariel Sharon
suddenly had this new front opened up.

Now cynics in Israel, or experienced politicos in Israel--take their pick--saw
the unilateral withdrawal plan from the beginning as an effort by Sharon to
save his political skin. The argument was that by doing something so bold, so
dramatic and so, really, seen in the Israeli political context as
left-leaning, Sharon was seeking to curry favor with the prosecutors, who are
largely regarded here as part of the kind of dovish establishment, and
convince everybody that it would be a terrible time to indict him and remove
him from office because he was engaged in something so important.

GROSS: So that's like an extra layer of cynicism or skepticism about Sharon's
unilateral withdrawal plan...

Mr. BENNET: Yes.

GROSS: ...that it might just be totally politically motivated as a way to
stay in power.

Mr. BENNET: Yes, although in a sense what difference does it make if it is?
I mean, the fact is that he's now embarked on this effort. And it has already
had profound, I think, effect on Israeli political debate because this leader
of Likud, which is a party that's traditionally been devoted to the notion of
a greater Israel and opposed--it's still officially opposed to the creation of
a Palestinian state. This leader, Ariel Sharon, who, more than anybody, is
responsible for the creation of the settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, who
actually designed the settlement plan in Gaza, has now come out and said that
the Gaza settlements are not in Israel's interest; that it is in Israel's own
interests to withdraw from Gaza. That's a sea change.

GROSS: Do you ever get the impression that Sharon is questioning his own
judgment when he pioneered those settlements, you know, when he helped create
those settlements in the occupied territories?

Mr. BENNET: He says he's not and that times have changed and that, as a
result, he has to do the responsible thing and adjust to them; that he feels
very personally pained by, really, growing condemnation from the settlers, who
feel deeply betrayed by what he's done. Ariel Sharon keeps praising them as
heroes and all the rest of it but basically saying, `It's time for them to
come home.' He won't admit that he made a mistake in the past.

GROSS: So how do those settlers feel knowing that they're going to be asked
to move and that--I'm not sure that there is necessarily a place to move them
to yet.

Mr. BENNET: Well, they say that they may never be asked to move in the end;
nothing has happened so far. All of this is a very, very difficult policy
that has yet to be approved by the Israeli government. It hasn't gotten the
backing yet from Washington. So they're kind of--they've waited out other
such suggested moves in the past, nothing by a politician with Sharon's
right-wing credentials. But they've waited them out in the past, and they say
they'll be able to wait this one out. In the meantime, they say they're going
to continue building, moving more people in, improving their homes, building
new fences and also working politically against the prime minister.

GROSS: James Bennet is my guest. He's the Jerusalem bureau chief for The New
York Times. We'll talk more after we take a short break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is James Bennet. He's the Jerusalem bureau chief for The New
York Times.

Ariel Sharon says that, you know, if there is this unilateral withdraw from
the Gaza and parts of the West Bank, that it would be fully coordinated with
the US. Seems to me the US is in a strange position now watching Israel,
unable to solve the problem of its occupation, as the US sinks deeper into the
problems it's having in its occupation of Iraq. Now this month, next week in
fact, Sharon will discuss his unilateral withdrawal plan with President Bush.
And I think it's the following week that the Palestinian foreign minister,
Nabil Shaath, will meet with Colin Powell and other US officials to discuss
the unilateral withdrawal. Can you talk about the odd position that the Bush
administration is in now, like the kind of difficulties the Bush
administration is facing in figuring out how to respond to Sharon?

Mr. BENNET: Well, they're also, obviously, facing their own political
quandary right now and a tremendous strategic quandary and immediate military
problem in Iraq, which has got to be the focus of the administration's
attentions right now. The conventional wisdom in Israel and among the
leadership here is that the great American interest in Israel has been, up
till now at least, just keeping things calm here, trying to keep this off the
table as an issue, avoiding having it become a distraction from what they're
trying to do in Iraq and, also, an issue that would further inflame the Arab
Muslim world. That's one thing, for example, the Israelis see as arguing
against any move against Yasser Arafat right now because it would make life so
much more difficult for President Bush; at least that's the analysis.

Now the other argument is that George Bush could use some sort of a--something
he can at least describe as progress here, as evidence of a real move forward.
And an Israeli withdrawal, for the first time from some of the occupied
territories, would be a tremendous change here on the ground, historic.
Historic is not too strong a word to apply to that. So both Ariel Sharon and
George Bush need something politically, I think, out of this meeting. The
problem is that their political interests then begin to diverge because
President Bush has invested himself in this road-map peace initiative. When
Ariel Sharon originally put forward his unilateral withdrawal plan, he said he
was only going to pursue it if he judged that the road map had failed. Now
that was a problem for Washington because they don't want anybody judging that
the road map has failed. So you've seen a change in the Israeli language
about this. Now the unilateral withdrawal plan is becoming a way to actually
push forward the road map, as somehow they're melding these two plans and
trying to figure a way to argue that they're actually consistent with each
other.

It seems they're also likely to have some different interests in terms of what
they want to get out of this. The Israelis want as specific an American
commitment as they can get to what Israel's borders might ultimately look
like, essentially, in any kind of peace agreement. They want an American
commitment to hold on to some West Bank territory. Americans have
traditionally resisted prejudging what are known as final-status issues; that
is, final issues for final talks, like the exact disposition of borders or the
status of Palestinian refugees. So the Bush White House is likely to be more
interested in some sort of vaguely worded statement and images of great
friendship. This meeting is likely to be all smiles on both sides because
they're quite in agreement about what the imagery should be. But in terms of
the substance of it, I think they're still trying to bridge this basic gap.

GROSS: Do you have any idea what Nabil Shaath, the Palestinian foreign
minister, will be asking for when he comes to the United States later this
month to meet with American officials?

Mr. BENNET: I think that he will be seeking, above all, I think, some clarity
on exactly what this plan is. Palestinian officials have complained to me
recently that they just don't have an idea of what's going on. They don't
really know what Washington is up to, let alone Jerusalem. And they're trying
to figure out what the implications of this plan are. Nabil Shaath has also
made clear that he's expecting the Palestinians to get a great deal of money
out of this deal for redeveloping Gaza.

GROSS: I'm wondering how the United States' occupation of Iraq is looking to
you from your seat in Israel, having covered the occupation there for so long.

Mr. BENNET: Well, in some ways, it's looking increasingly familiar, but the
similarities can be a little bit deceptive and overly distracting, I think,
from the differences. I mean, the fact is that the Americans are not building
settlements in Iraq. And there is no disagreement among Americans, I think,
over whether they want to stay in Iraq or not, whereas there is a very, very
strong political debate in Israel now over whether they want to hold on to
these territories or not. But in terms of the kind of military tactics that
the Americans are using, in terms of what's happening to the population there,
it does look somewhat familiar.

And the great parallel that's being drawn here by Israelis and Palestinians is
to the Israeli experience in Lebanon, of course. When Ariel Sharon, then
defense minister in 1982, sent Israeli troops across the border into Lebanon
at the time, supposedly, to suppress Palestinian fire over that border from
southern Lebanon, the Israelis were initially greeted with open arms by the
Shiites literally, literally greeted with flowers, and their arrival was
celebrated. But it wasn't long before the guerrilla group Hezbollah was
formed, which is still tormenting Israel to this day.

GROSS: Is there a particular story regarding the United States' experience in
Iraq that seem very familiar to you, having covered Israel?

Mr. BENNET: The incidents that really struck me early a year ago were the
incidents at checkpoints in Iraq, when the Americans were struggling somehow
to set up checkpoints that would screen dangerous from non-dangerous members
of the population. And there were a couple of terrible incidents when
Americans were attacked at checkpoints or when they opened fire on people who
turned out to be non-combatants. That reminded me graphically of what it
is--the difficulty, the tragedy, in a sense, of these efforts that often are
sincerely intended to promote security but are extremely difficult in practice
to carry out without alienating a population, without treating people just
terribly.

GROSS: This might be stretching a point, but, as you mentioned, the United
States doesn't have settlements in Iraq the way Israel has settlements in the
West Bank and Gaza. But, you know, Israel has found it very difficult to
withdraw from the territories it occupied. And do you think that there is a
parallel there that the United States is or will be facing?

Mr. BENNET: Well, I don't think that's stretching a point at all. I mean, I
think that's a tremendous problem for the Americans now. How do you declare
victory and withdraw and have that victory be seen as a victory in the eyes of
the world and in the eyes of the Iraqis? One of the problems Ariel Sharon is
having right now with his unilateral withdrawal plan is that he, above all
Israelis, really, has argued that Israel needs to maintain its deterrent
policy; that is, it can never afford to give anything up under fire because
that will be seen as a sign of weakness.

Israel finally left Lebanon unilaterally in May of 2000 after 20 years in a
great hurry. But it was seen--after 18 years, excuse me, in a great hurry.
But it was seen now in Israel as having partly led to the Palestinian intifada
by persuading Palestinians that, `The only way you convince Israelis to give
something up is by fighting them and bleeding them to death,' literally.
Because so many soldiers were dying every year in Lebanon, the Israelis
finally withdrew. That was the lesson the Palestinians drew.

The Americans are likely to face a similar problem in Iraq, and they don't
want to be seen as withdrawing under fire because of the message that could
send in Iraq and around the world about what it takes to weaken American
resolve. On the other hand, the argument will be made that staying in there
longer simply to make this point is not nearly worth the price that's being
paid. So, in other words, once you get into a situation like this, it can be
very, very difficult to find your way out of it.

GROSS: Muqtada al-Sadr, the radical Shiite cleric whose followers are now
rising against the United States, says that he would like to open an Iraqi
chapter of Hamas and Hezbollah. Do you have any insights into that statement
and if there is a likelihood of any kind of alignment between those groups?

Mr. BENNET: I think a lot of us here were scratching our heads about that
statement, trying to figure out exactly what he meant. I mean, does he mean
that he's going to create some sort of fund-raising arm for them? Is he going
to actually recruit Palestinians to function as Hamas gunmen in Iraq attacking
Americans? It's not really clear what he means. Is it--so the implications
of it are uncertain. Saddam Hussein obviously supported Palestinians. He
sent money to the families of suicide bombers, as much as $25,000. That money
has now been cut off. Maybe he's thinking about opening that pipeline again.
But it's really not clear what it would mean and what the implications would
be for the conflict there or for here. As I said earlier, Hamas has
traditionally resisted getting drawn into anything that looked like a direct
attack on America. And they say they don't plan to change that strategy.

GROSS: My guest is James Bennet, Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York
Times. We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: My guest is James Bennet, Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York
Times.

One of the biggest stories in the United States is an investigation into what
the Bush administration knew about terrorism before September 11th. Did it
plan adequately? And, also, what did it know about weapons of mass
destruction, and why was the intelligence so misleading about Iraq? Now in
late March, in Israel, a parliamentary subcommittee criticized Israel's
intelligence services, saying that those agencies overestimated Iraq's weapons
programs before the war. Is that a big story in Israel? Is it anything like
the bigness of the story here in the United States?

Mr. BENNET: No. No, it doesn't have nearly the dimensions that it has in the
US. It was more of a one- or two-day story here. The thing is that the
Israeli security establishment, then and now, was really arguing that Iraq
wasn't that much of a clear and present danger to Israel; that there was the
risk of WMD, that he did have some missiles. But, you know, I just spoke to a
senior military official the other day, who said--and I was asking him, `Are
Israelis safer now than they were a year ago?' And his argument was that Iraq
wasn't a threat then either, so his answer to the question really was no. And
whether the Israelis would be safer in the long term or not was very much a
question of whether the Americans would continue to be the presence in the
region that they've now become.

GROSS: Israel and the United States has despaired that there isn't a more
moderate Palestinian leadership to negotiate with, to be peace partners with.
Do you see a more, you know, quote, "moderate" leadership being formed?

Mr. BENNET: No. That is I don't see a leadership being formed that has the
capacity to lead. There certainly are moderate Palestinians or pragmatic
Palestinians, if you prefer the term, plenty of people who would like to see
this conflict end, plenty of people who would like to see a negotiated
agreement and a two-state solution to put this conflict behind them. But at
the moment those voices aren't heard with any authority on the Palestinian
side. I want to make clear that, I mean, from the Palestinian perspective,
it's because of the Israeli occupation and because of Israel's attacks on the
Palestinian Authority over the last couple of years that the governing
structures have basically crumbled. And the overwhelming Palestinian view of
that is that that is the Israeli strategy; that under Ariel Sharon...

GROSS: Right.

Mr. BENNET: ...Israel to do away with the mainstream moderate voices.

GROSS: I think a lot of people around the world are so frustrated with the
Middle East. It's always a problem. There's never any resolution, and
there's never any common ground that seems to last for very long between
Israel and the Palestinians. Do you feel that way, too, that things just
don't change?

Mr. BENNET: My wife and I were talking about this just last night. It's very
tempting to feel that way. And even, particularly, I think, as a reporter
covering the conflict, I find myself falling into that line of thinking
because you go and you cover some event that seems cataclysmic, say a suicide
bombing, and you interview the victims and the families or some sort of
incursion into the Palestinian areas that results in a large number of dead,
including civilians, and you talk to the families, and you just feel that
something has to happen; this has to change; that this is so awful, that what
these people are suffering is so terrible that something has to happen. And
then it doesn't, and so you're kind of lulled or--lulled is the wrong word but
disappointed into the sense that, as bad as it gets, nothing really does
happen. But it's just not true.

I mean, I think right now is a time of tremendous change here. The world is
focused on other problems elsewhere, but there is a tremendous amount
happening on the ground here and ideologically on both sides. This unilateral
withdrawal plan has had big political consequences in the debate inside Israel
now. There's broad consensus about the idea of some sort of Palestinian state
down the road, some sort of Israel retreat from the territories, which would
have been unheard of even just a few years ago. At the same time the building
of this barrier is a tremendous change on the ground. It's having, again,
political repercussions, I think, beyond what anybody's really anticipated.
It's likely to become some sort of de facto boundary. Settlers are saying
that settlement prices on one side of the wall are dropping relative to those
on the other, which suggests some sort of market calculation about what
ultimately is going to be part of Israel and what is not.

And on the Palestinian side, the chaos in the territories, the collapse of any
sort of leadership, the disintegration of the pragmatic voices and the growth
of this culture of suicide bombing and martyrdom among the young is also a
tremendous change. So things are changing here. Doesn't necessarily mean
they're moving towards a resolution, but there's a lot going on.

GROSS: Well, James Bennet, I want to thank you so much for talking with us,
and I wish you safe travels.

Mr. BENNET: Thanks, Terry. Thanks very much.

GROSS: James Bennet is the Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times. He
spoke to us from Jerusalem. Our interview was recorded this morning.

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

Analysis: Times Square got its name 100 years ago today
TERRY GROSS, host:

And speaking of the times, Times Square got its name 100 years ago today. It
was named for the headquarters of The New York Times building that was being
constructed between Broadway and Seventh Avenue and 42nd and 43rd streets.
We'll close with the title song from the 1933 movie "42nd Street."

(Soundbite of "42nd Street")

Unidentified Woman: (Singing) In the heart of little ol' New York, you'll
find a thoroughfare. It's the part of little ol' New York that runs into
Times Square, a crazy ...(unintelligible) Wall Street Jack built. If you've
got a little time to spare, I'd like to take you there. Come and meet those
dancing feet on the avenue I'm taking you to, 42nd Street. Hear the beat of
dancing feet. It's the sound I love, the melody of 42nd Street. Little
missies from the '50s in the center suite. Sexy ladies from the '80s who are
indiscreet. Oh, side by side they're glorified where the underworld can be
the elite, 42nd Street.

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.
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