Beyond Cairo: Translating ‘Important’ Obama Message into Policies

Interview with former U.S. Ambassador to Syria and Israel, Edward
P. Djerejian

CFR.org / Council on Foreign Relations (New York, NY)
June 4, 2009

Interviewee:Edward P. Djerejian, Director, James A. Baker III
Institute for Public Policy, Rice University
Interviewer:Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor, CFR.org

Former U.S. ambassador to Syria and to Israel Edward P. Djerejian sees
the speech in Cairo by President Obama to the Muslim world as "a very
powerful public diplomacy statement." But taking into account the
years of frustration by previous administrations, he says Obama made
some fundamental framework points that "will have to be translated
into actual and effective policies." Djerejian says two chief arenas
for U.S. action are the Arab-Israeli conflict, where Washington can
play a stepped-up brokering role, and the troubled relationship with
Iran, which requires a broad, strategic dialogue encompassing all
major bilateral issues.

Gwertzman: President Obama has given a much-anticipated speech about
U.S. relations with the Muslim world but it also included
U.S. relations with Israel and a great deal about life in the United
States. How would you sum up the speech?

Djerejian:The speech was a very important statement by an American
president to the Muslim world. By just being the first
African-American president ,whose family had Muslim background —
although he is a Christian as he stated in his speech — speaks
volumes in itself. His just standing there in Cairo University
demonstrated what America is at its best: truly a country of
opportunity for everyone who strives to achieve and to reach the
heights, and that equality of opportunity message, came across just by
his being there. That in itself was a very powerful public diplomacy
statement. A second point, as he underscored in his speech, is that
America is a country that enjoys religious freedom. In other words,
America welcomes people of all faiths to practice their re s freely,
although we are a secular state and we obviously have the very
important constitutional division of state from religion. He affirmed
that the United States is a very practicing religious country and it
was very important for him to talk about the need for the people of
the Book -Christians, Muslims, and Jews – to be living in peace and
harmony.

Gwertzman: How does that relate to the big issues out there?

Djerejian: He segued that very well into the need for resolution of
the long-standing Arab-Israeli conflict. He made it clear he would
take a major role in conflict resolution to bring, in the first
instance, the Israelis and Palestinians together. But he is very
intent on a wider peace – to bring in Syria and Lebanon if things go
well enough. But the audience reacted by applause certainly when he
mentioned the Palestinian issue and that’s a very important part of
the message since the Arab-Israeli conflict remains the single most
important political issue in the region as a whole. It has resonance
not only amongst Arabs but Muslims also. It’s the issue that brings
people into the streets, and this was one of the major flaws in the
thinking of the neo-cons [of the Bush administration] was that they
felt that the Arab-Israeli conflict was not really the primary issue,
the real issue was in overthrowing authoritarian regimes and promoting
democracy so that Israel would be able to negotiate peace with
democratic neighbors.

I remember when I was ambassador to Israel during the Clinton
administration Yitzhak Rabin, the then prime minister, told me, "if
Israel had to wait for its Arab neighbors to become democratic to make
peace, we would be waiting a thousand years." Obama blended, very
skillfully, a larger outreach to the Muslim world by stressing that
there is no innate hostility between the United States and the Arab
and the Muslim world, that we have actually much in common –and it is
in our mutual interest, both as Americans and as Arabs and Muslims, to
marginalize the extremists and the terrorists in our midst who preach
a doctrine of violence and terrorism, and who have to be marginalized
for our societies to move forward and to reduce the threat that we
face.

Gwertzman: In the first chapter of your new book, Danger and
Opportunity, you have a letter to the new president in which you say
on the Arab-Israeli front everything goes through Jerusalem, meaning
the Palestinian-Israeli relations are foremost. And he stressed again
the need for a two-state solution and he picked up on the Road Map
which the Bush administration had drafted. How do you think the
president will proceed? Is he heading for a global conference like the
Madrid Conference of 1991 after the Persian Gulf War. Or is Obama
going to work bilaterally?

Djerejian: In the first instance, he’s going to work bilaterally
because he’s chosen a very good presidential emissary in George
J. Mitchell to do the groundwork in brokering the Israelis and the
Palestinians on all the key issues. I think the Obama administration
is adopting some of the obligations, as you stated, in the Road Map on
both sides. The Palestinians have to be able to politically represent
their people effectively. They have to build security infrastructure
so that they control the guns in the street, [so] that there’s only
one weapon that’s used and that’s the weapon of the Palestinian
Authority, the government, [so] that you don’t have Hamas and
Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and other groups taking security into their
own hands and initiating acts of violence against the Israelis. Those
are very important obligations on the part of the Palestinians. Now
where the Palestinians have done well is that they have produced very
good economic reforms, especially under Prime Minister Salam
Fayyad. And so they cleaned up their act to a great extent in terms of
being able to account for and use the funds that are flowing into the
Palestinian Authority, especially from abroad.

The Israelis on their side have very important obligations to stop the
settlements, and the Obama administration has taken a very clear stand
on stopping settlements — not only eliminating the illegal outposts,
but stopping all settlement activity including "natural growth," which
has obviously been criticized by the Israelis, especially within Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition. The Israelis also have an
obligation to facilitate the access routes for Palestinians within the
West Bank, and to lift checkpoints. So each side has its obligations
and this is what the Obama administration is focusing on in the first
instance. Now, where this leads to hopefully will be negotiations on
the final status issues, and that again may take a leaf from the
Annapolis initiative [of November 2007] of the last administration,
which means while you’re taking actions on the ground in terms of
security and settlements, etc., you’re also engaging the Israelis
and the Palestinians to discuss borders, territorial components of
peace, Jerusalem, and Palestinian refugees, to arrive at a final
settlement. So I think that’s how they are approaching it. Now whether
they decide to bring in the international community in a formal way as
you stated, perhaps another Madrid Conference type of thing, or just
using the quartet has to be seen.

Gwertzman: How do you get around the problem of there being a split
Palestinian leadership?

Djerejian: It’s interesting, the president mentioned Hamas in his
speech and reiterated the conditions that Hamas should accept in order
to become, if it can, a responsible player in any Palestinian approach
towards peace with Israel — accepting past agreements, ending
violence, and recognizing Israel’s right to exist. But it was
interesting that he mentioned Hamas specifically because that was a
signal that this administration is willing to promote or see a
political reconciliation between Fatah and Hamas, if Hamas agrees to
be a responsible player. That was an important signal.

Gwertzman: And on Iran, on the nuclear standoff, that’s pretty much
what he said before, right?

Djerejian: The important thing there is he wants to open up a
strategic dialogue, which I certainly support completely, between the
United States and Iran. I do not think that we are going to be able in
any way effectively to deal with Iran’s nuclear ambitions–and I’m
thinking now if indeed they are intent on building nuclear weapons
capability–if the United States and Iran do not engage in a
comprehensive dialogue where we put everything on the table.
Everything should be on the table, all the issues from our bilateral
relationship, to the nuclear issue, to Arab-Israeli peace, Hamas,
Hezbollah, terrorism, Iraq, Afghanistan. It is also important that we
state, and here the president made a very important reference in his
speech, that regime change in Iran is not part of our agenda. There
was always a suspicion among Iranians during the Bush administration
that regime cha Bush administration.

Gwertzman: In the Clinton administration there was an effort by
Madeleine Albright when she was secretary of state, and even by the
president himself, to try and get a dialogue going with Iran but it
never got anywhere.

Djerejian: That’s right, Madeleine Albright did make that effort with
President Clinton but it didn’t get anywhere and I think again I would
strongly recommend that in order to have that dialogue you really have
to put everything on the table. Now, they may not be ready for that
dialogue and that water will have to be tested.

Gwertzman: Summing up, where do we go from here?

Djerejian: President Obama has laid a very good public diplomacy
framework for America’s engagement with the Arab and the Muslim
world. The basic message is we are not your enemy, that we have a lot
of common tasks and challenges that we can work together to
achieve. We the United States are willing to move forward with our
Arab and Muslim partners. We’re willing to work for this dialogue of
civilizations, we’re willing to work for economic social development
and more exchanges, more communication between the two sides, we’re
willing to work for Arab-Israeli peace, and we’re willing to try to
put a cap on nuclear weapons development, which would destabilize the
region and the world. And so he made some very fundamental framework
points that will now have to be –and here’s the trick — will have to
be translated into actual and effective policies. It’s one thing to
state the policy, it’s another thing to carry it out effectively, and
that’s been a
challenge of every administration in the Middle East.

Weigh in on this issue by emailing letters@cfr.org.

9572/policy_hurdles_beyond_cairo.html?breadcrumb=% 2F