THE ISRAEL LOBBY & AMERICAN POLICY CONFERENCE 2019
Janet McMahon: When I first interviewed
our next speaker in 1991, Khalil Jahshan was the executive director
of the National Association of Arab Americans, or NAAA, which
lobbied Congress and the executive branch on behalf of immigrants
and their descendants from 21 highly diverse Arab states.
A lobby, he explained, must keep track of every decision,
every piece of legislation and be plugged into the process on day
one. NAAA’s research arm
monitored everything in Washington, Khalil said-hearings, votes,
speeches, think tank activities, etc.
That’s quite an undertaking.
I didn’t ask at the time, but I suspect that
his organization operated on something less than AIPAC’s staff of
451, and annual budget of $89 million.
Is that a fair assumption?
Khalil Jahshan: Very
fair.
Janet McMahon: Okay.
Today Khalil, who was born in Nazareth, Palestine, is
executive director of the Arab Center Washington DC, a position he
has held since its founding in 2014.
He previously was a lecturer in international studies and
languages at Pepperdine University, and executive director of its
Seaver College Washington, DC internship program.
He also has served as executive vice president of the
American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, or ADC; vice president
of the American Committee on Jerusalem; and national director of the
Association of Arab American University Graduates.
Khalil has brought his wealth of experience
and expertise to the Arab Center-a nonprofit independent and
nonpartisan research center focusing on the Arab world.
Those of us who live in the DC area have also benefited from
the center’s many excellent and thought-provoking programs on timely
and important issues.
One of the issues we seem to hear about
incessantly these days is fake news.
At this gathering, Khalil will discuss the Israel lobby and
fake peace processing.
Please join me in welcoming Khalil Jahshan.
Khalil Jahshan: Thank you,
Janet. I’d like to begin
by thanking IRmep and the American Educational Trust and the
Washington Report on Middle
East Affairs for organizing this great event for the fourth
year, and for inviting me this time to participate in this very
specific panel, an important panel, dealing with peacemaking in the
Middle East. I have
great personal respect for this organization, its founders and
current leaders, for their principled positions and unwavering
commitment over the years to real, just, and lasting peace in the
region. Actually for
more than 37 years, since I first came to town and met Dick Curtiss
and Andy Killgore. We
worked together from the very beginning.
So I am indeed personally very honored to be with you today.
On June 5, 2017, in 72 days precisely, the
world marks the 50th anniversary of the 1967 occupation by Israel of
the Palestinian territories of the West Bank and Gaza, including
Jerusalem. The
occupation, initially portrayed by Israeli leaders at the time as a
temporary measure, has become clearly, particularly for all those
who visit the area—for all practical purposes, it has become
permanent.
Of course, notwithstanding the arrogant
statement at the time of Defense Minister Moshe Dayan in an
interview in 1967, on the last day of the war, on the BBC that
became infamous as he displayed his intoxication with his own
Pyrrhic victory at the time.
He was saying, and I’m quoting him, “We are waiting for a
phone call from the Arabs” looking for a peace deal.
Needless to say, the phone never rang, for
good reasons and clear reasons.
Dayan is no longer with us, but Israel’s military occupation
remains as pervasive and as deeply entrenched as ever, to the
detriment of Arab, Israeli and American interests alike.
Realistic expectation of just peacemaking today has become an
expression of utter naiveté and a total disregard of facts on the
ground. The situation in
Palestine as we speak today is quite dismal.
Most experts agree that the economic-and I’m sure you’ve
heard today from different people on the subject—most experts agree
that the economic, humanitarian, political and security situation in
occupied Palestine is quite untenable.
The protracted dehumanization, internal
colonization and dispossession of the Palestinian people cannot be
sustained indefinitely.
This is not stemming purely in a selfish way from Palestinian
analysis or interest, but even some Israeli scholars and officials
have come to the same conclusion.
As a matter of fact, I was surprised to read an article on
Tuesday this week by former Mossad chief Tamir Pardo, no peacenik by
any stretch of the imagination, declaring on the 21st of March that,
and I’m quoting him, “Israel has chosen not to choose, hoping the
conflict will resolve itself.
Perhaps the Arabs will disappear.
Maybe some cosmic miracle will happen.
One day we will become a binational state because it will be
impossible to untie the Gordian knot between the two peoples.
This is not the way to decide.”
Pardo stated in Haaretz, “Israel has one existential threat, it is a ticking
bomb. We have chosen to
stick our head in the sand, creating a variety of external threats.”
Israel, he concluded, “must deal with the demographic reality
and decide which state we want to be.
Life”-and I hate that he borrowed from Trump–but “life with
alternative facts harbors a disaster for the Zionist vision.”
I’m glad he did, actually, because it kind of puts it in
terms we’re familiar with in this town.
A serious predicament indeed—but who’s responsible for this
predicament?
In order to be fair, objectively speaking
that is, there is an abundant amount of blame to assign to all the
parties to the conflict.
One, Israel: Israeli intransigence and insatiable appetite for land,
particularly other people’s land-land that does not belong to
Israelis-I think has been one of the main reasons for the impediment
that we are facing today.
Two, on the Palestinian side, I believe that
weak leadership and lack of vision and political will to end Israeli
occupation, instead of contributing to it in many different ways,
has also contributed to the protracted nature of this predicament.
Three, the Arab world: the Arab world cannot
escape some responsibility for what’s happening today, particularly
with its current preoccupation with internal narrow interests and
collective resignation from the historic Arab commitment to the
Palestine cause.
Four, the world community itself, including
the United Nations: it has given us more evidence in the past few
days, in terms of even refusing to support an internal report by a
U.N. agency with regards to discrimination and apartheid in Israel.
Neglecting its responsibilities under international law by
the United Nations and its agencies, I think, has also contributed
to this predicament.
Last but not least, which is the subject of
our discussion today, is the U.S. and U.S. policy.
The United States, by losing track of its own national
interest, despite the warning that our first president warned us
of—not to fall in love or to hate any other nation where you can
become a slave to that love or hate relationship and you lose track
of your interest—we have done exactly so in that bilateral
relationship between Washington and Tel Aviv.
By losing track of its own national interest, by reducing
itself to a biased active party in the Arab-Israeli conflict, thus,
the United States disqualified itself from playing any constructive
role in any potential political process, with all due respect to
people who are addicted to peacemaking
à la U.S. in the
Middle East.
As we all know, the U.S. of course is not a
newcomer to Middle East peacemaking.
The U.S. has been dabbling with trying to find a solution, a
political solution, to the Palestine question since 1937—11 years
before the creation of the state of Israel.
This is one of those unique weird conflicts where peacemaking
started 11 years before the actual conflict started, in the sense
that the international community began to anticipate trouble brewing
in Palestine as they began to talk about ending the [British]
Mandate. The Peel
Commission was formed and proposed its first partition plan in 1937,
followed 10 years later by the other partition plan that was
considered by the United Nations.
Arab-Israeli peacemaking, as far as the
United States is concerned, has been an American national sport for
every U.S. administration since 1948.
For those of you who are not aware of the history of
peacemaking in the Middle East, the threatened peace plan that is
supposed to be released in about three weeks or so—I’ll talk about
it in a few minutes—is going to be the number 76, the 76th attempt
at resolving the Arab-Israeli conflict since 1937.
Many of these plans were American plans that were proposed by
almost every administration.
You guys might remember.
Old-timers remember the Johnson administration, the Carter
administration, the Reagan administration, the Rogers Plan.
Name it. Every
administration since 1948 has had a plan named after its secretary
of state.
Yet, where do we find all these plans?
At this huge cemetery of peace processes in the Middle East.
It behooves us as students of history, as political
activists, as active citizens, as historians, as political
scientists to ask why.
Why this huge cemetery?
Why this dismal failure over the years?
As I said, Washington has proposed more peace proposals
during this period than any other stakeholder in the conflict.
Yet, in practical terms, the American contribution to
affecting a peace solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict has been
lackluster at best, lacking in vitality, political force, and moral
conviction above all.
Since its inception, AIPAC has been the great
facilitator, the advocate, the enforcer of Israeli policies and
American peacemaking efforts between Israel and Palestine as part
and parcel of its, of course, larger agenda dealing with
U.S.-Israeli bilateral relationship.
AIPAC’s platform on Middle East peace is essentially very
simple. Although the
organization has been gradually-for those of you who have been
noticing-downgrading its commitment to a two-state solution—it has
kind of quietly in the past couple of years, the term has
disappeared, at least from the front page on the website.
It’s still in there, but you have to look for it these
days—in order to reflect basically, or out of deference to, change
in Israeli policy downplaying, if you will, the two-state solution.
So AIPAC’s lobbying efforts remain focused on
essentially, at the risk of oversimplification, I would say a
four-pronged approach.
One, two states for two people.
It’s still there.
It’s not the number one priority, but it’s still in the background.
But their definition of it is slightly different than most of
us in this room, if not all of us.
A Jewish state of Israel-Jewish
state of Israel-living in peace with a demilitarized
Palestinian state. Two,
only direct talks between the parties can lead to a real and lasting
peace. Okay, fine.
It depends on what you mean by real and lasting peace, but
that’s another story.
Three, the U.S. can play an important
facilitating role, but it cannot dictate the terms of peace.
AIPAC wants to have its cake and it wants to eat it too.
It wants the U.S. to dominate the process as the sole
legitimate peacemaker in the Middle East, but it doesn’t want it to
dictate. I don’t know if
Trump will change that.
He keeps saying if you pay the bill, you have the right to dictate.
But we’ll see. I
doubt it.
Four, Arab states must take an active and
constructive role by normalizing relations with Israel.
This is a very important and dangerous item that was added
more recently on AIPAC’s agenda in an attempt to finally kind of
liquidate, if you will, the Palestinian cause and replace Palestine
as the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict with basically Arab-Israeli
peace; peace between Israel and Arab states, where there is no
territorial compromise involved and there is no solution to the
Palestine problem, in other words.
Let’s talk just for a couple of minutes about
the failure of past U.S. efforts.
Why? I think
basically as an observer of these series of processes, fake or
otherwise, most of them are fake, I could summarize probably the
reasons into five main reasons.
One, American lack of even-handedness and
bias toward Israel from the very beginning.
For various domestic, political, cultural and ideological
reasons, Washington is not, has never been, and will never be, a
neutral arbiter or mediator in the Arab-Israeli conflict, ladies and
gentlemen.
Two, vague objectives with regards to ending
Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories, establishing a
Palestinian state, confronting all the permanent status issues such
as boundaries, Jerusalem, refugees, settlements, water.
Without these core issues being at the heart of a process,
that’s not a genuine peace process.
That’s why many of these processes we have seen, they might
have started on the right track, but they quickly ended up being
fake peace processes rather than realistic ones.
Three, the open-ended and protracted nature
of American peace processing lacking clear and enforceable
mechanisms and timelines.
I missed Hanan’s speech earlier, but she has made this point
year after year clearly for many, many years in her book, in her
presentations, in her interviews-this absence of mechanisms,
enforcement mechanisms, and timetables have been the enemy of
peacemaking and negotiations in the Middle East as a negotiator.
Four, consistently allowing Israel to dictate
the terms of reference governing the process, and vetoing any
attempt, whether by the Palestinians or the international community,
to change that pattern.
That has dogged us from day one and will continue, I think, unless
there is a serious change in policy by whatever party is trying to
mediate the conflict in the future.
And fifth, acquiescence to Israeli demands at
every difficult juncture in the process.
How many times have we seen and witnessed throughout these
negotiation processes where the Israelis would say no?
It doesn’t matter who it is-Rabin, or Shamir, or Sharon, or
Netanyahu. Whenever an
Israeli leader comes in and says no, the U.S. tucks its tail between
its legs and takes a step back and lowers the ceiling of the terms
of reference and the expectation.
That has been also detrimental to attempts at peacemaking in
the Middle East.
What’s next?
With the rest of the balance of my time, let me just quickly
speculate about what I anticipate over the next three or four
years—three or four weeks, not years; otherwise, we’ll be here until
next week—with regards to the rumored, I call it the
Trump-Kushner-Greenblatt plan.
So there is a new one for you.
Number 76, okay?
As all of you are aware, President [Donald]
Trump dispatched his envoy to the Middle East peace process, Jason
Greenblatt, to the region for about four days to listen, learn and
explore-according to the White House-with various sides the
potential for resumed American-led process.
As if after all these years we still need to listen, to
learn, and to explore.
We are told that the White House Energizer
Bunny, Mr. Greenblatt—who lacks any diplomatic experience, by the
way-convinced the parties of Trump’s seriousness and solicited
enough support in principle to justify-they just concluded
yesterday-talks secretly held here in Washington between an Israeli
security delegation and the administration with regards to what is
possible down the road, particularly with regards to settlements.
Of course Netanyahu, who is in China, was quick to say no
change in settlement policy.
So make sure that nobody misunderstands what his delegation
did here in town.
In addition, of course, the Arab side has
also responded positively to the Trump administration, and you’re
going to see a rush of Arab leaders coming to town.
King Abdullah of Jordan, after, of course, the Arab Summit in
Amman; before is, of course, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of
Egypt; and then, of course, Mahmoud Abbas of Palestine to follow by
mid-April.
The administration is talking about a draft
paper. What’s in this
draft paper? Of course,
as you know, most plans that Trump has come up with, whether during
the campaign or since his arrival at the White House, are still
secret. We don’t know
any of his plans. He
hasn’t announced anything.
But there is a draft paper and people in town are talking
about it. Let me tell
you what I heard through the rumor mill in town as to what it
involves and compare that with what I said earlier about the
detriments to peacemaking in the Middle East, because it looks like
this administration is about to repeat the same mistakes, but maybe
in a more intensive way than what we have done over the past 58
years. So there is no
change at all.
One, Trump basically in his paper tells his
counterparts in the Arab world, and in Palestine, and in Israel, he
wants to assure them that he is seriously committed to Arab-Israeli
peace and will personally—personally—get
involved in the process.
If that doesn’t convince you to stay home, I don’t know what will.
That’s the scariest part of the plan.
Two, the paper talks about pursuing sustained
security for Israel and a provisional entity.
There we are.
After all these processes, we’re back talking about, like 15, 20
years ago, a provisional entity for Palestinians, without even a
definite article. Not a
two-state solution retreat—because after all he is for one state,
two states, whatever you guys want.
Hence only, hence in the paper, at working within that
framework. I mean, even
Oslo did not get that low in doublespeak.
Three, the Palestinians will be promised
continued financial and technical support in return for full
cooperation with Israel if they end incitement and they resume their
counterterrorism cooperation with the U.S. and with Israel.
Palestinians will be asked, of course, also, or are being
asked in the paper, to cease all-this comes from pressure from
Congress, actually-all legal campaigns against Israel in
international courts and fora at this time.
No complaining about Israeli occupation anymore.
Four, the plan seeks a phased and
transitional approach.
Not an end of conflict arrangement, another major retreat from
previous processes that failed.
Five, the plan expresses general concern
about continued Israeli settlements, but falls short of calling for
a freeze. Indeed, the
Israeli delegation negotiating here in town that I mentioned earlier
with the Trump administration talked about “a construction
slowdown,” but insisted without distinguishing inside the
settlements or outside-sometimes they do that, they go into these
technicalities-but this time even without bothering to distinguish,
just a construction slowdown—but insisted that settlement freeze,
particularly in Jerusalem—I’m quoting Mr. Netanyahu and his team
here—“is off the table.”
So tell me who wags whom?
Six, the Arab Peace Initiative that came a
few years back in the early ’90s from Arab sources-the Arab League,
Saudi Arabia and so on—the Arab Peace Initiative will be given this
time a central role, a central prominence in this plan—in order not
again to balance things, but in order to refocus the process away
from being focused solely on Palestine, which is the problem at
stake. I mean, we’re not
going to go have a peace process about Palestine and discuss Puerto
Rico. It’s not relevant.
So remove Palestine as the core of the process and put the
Arab Peace Initiative instead.
My advice to you is to watch the deliberations of the 28th
Arab Summit that will be held on the 29th of this month, because
that is going to be where the preparation is going to take place
before announcing this plan.
Ladies and gentlemen, lots of mistakes have
been made. The reasons
are very clear to any objective student of peacemaking in the Middle
East. Lessons have not been learned.
So don’t blame me for not being optimistic about this next
plan over the next few weeks.
Thank you.
Questions & Answers
Janet McMahon: If
people have questions and want to write them on the cards and pass
them to the ushers,
they’ll bring them up here.
I’ll start by asking what might be a very naïve question:
What is the origin and the general acceptance of the idea
that the U.S. has to be involved for there to be a viable peace
process? Where did that
come from?
Khalil Jahshan:
Arrogance. If you allow
me to be frank about it, basically the U.S., in order to assert
itself as the protector of Israel, has declared itself many years
ago-when peace plan after peace plan was emerging and as Israel kept
basically turning down these offers—the U.S. decided to arrogate to
itself the role of the sole legitimate peacemaker in the Middle
East, and has refused to even allow our closest
allies-Europe-whenever the French popped their head, shut up.
Carry the dustpan and the broom and clean after us, that’s
what Europeans are being told.
Unfortunately, they have abided by that.
That’s one of my criticisms of European policy.
It has a much more progressive policy on Palestine than the
U.S. policy, but they are not willing to take initiative.
The U.S. prevented also the U.N. from doing
so and we’re facing the same question today-should there be a peace
process over the next few weeks?
Again, rest assured that the U.S. will not allow any other
party to share in basically directing, if you will, or mediating or
participating in the management of that process.
Janet McMahon: Do you
think that this idea originated with the Israel lobby or with just
the U.S. wanting to be a superpower?
Khalil Jahshan:
Frankly, the Israel lobby and its influence-let me tell you
something. My first
lesson as a lobbyist when I arrived in town, a somewhat still
innocent young man, my first meeting with a senator-Sen. [Mark]
Hatfield. I was not with any Arab-American organization yet at the
time, I was basically serving as an academic advisor to a group of
church leaders in this country.
I participated with them in advocating for, basically, peace
and justice in the Middle East, and they asked me to accompany them
as a resource person to a meeting with a series of leaders in
Congress.
The late Senator Hatfield of Oregon listened
to us and then he asked me to stay after the group decided to leave.
I did. He looked
at me. He said, “What
are you going to do?” I
said, “Well, I’m moving to town and I’m going to work on behalf of
Arab causes and particularly my cause, the Palestinian cause.”
He looked at me like, you know, he established eye contact
with me, and he said, “Young man, this is a very difficult task
you’re embarking on.”
And he said, and I will never forget these words as long as I live,
he said, “In this great distinguished institution of the United
States Senate, when the Israel lobby says jump, 90-plus of my
colleagues say how high?
They never ask why.”
So with that type of control, particularly in
Congress, you can’t tell where the idea came from-whether it’s
volunteered by these people who are more than willing to sell out
morally and politically, or from the lobby, or how the two kind of
feed, if you will, on each other.
The second point, quickly, the issue of the
two-state solution. Why
is it that most of the time in recent history I have a higher
percentage of Knesset members in Israel that support the two-state
solution than I do in the U.S. Congress of America?
Ask yourself that question.
We’ve never exceeded 60, 70, 80 members of the U.S. Congress
out of 535 in both Houses.
Right? In Israel,
the number was at 70 or 80 at one point—out of 120.
It shifts, and people mean different things, of course, by
two states. They are not
all in harmony. But it’s
a good question to ask, I think.
As American citizens, it behooves us to ask and to understand
the answer to that question.
Thank you.
Janet McMahon: Let me
ask you this final question then.
How do we move from conflict management to conflict
resolution? BDS, the
Arab Initiative? What
other routes are available to us?
Khalil Jahshan: I
don’t think so. We
haven’t moved yet. It
will probably, unfortunately, take much longer to do so.
But BDS is a very interesting concept that is having its
effectiveness and its impact, at least on the Israeli psyche.
Some Israelis have problems [but] support it in terms of
targeting the settlements.
Some Israelis do not, because they see it as a disguised
attempt to boycott all of Israel together.
But it’s beginning to have an impact.
I mean, today it is not accidental that the prime minister of
Israel and most of its national security leaders view the BDS as the
number one national security threat to the state of Israel, because
it’s exposing it worldwide, in no uncertain terms, to the fact that
occupation has got to end, occupation cannot be tolerated.
The more clarity there is associated with that, I think, the
more effective the campaign would be and the more attractive it
would become, particularly here in the U.S.
Janet McMahon: Well,
thank you very much.
Khalil Jahshan: Thank
you.
Janet McMahon:
Khalil Jahshan.