 Welcome to all who joined us today for this lecture and for the discussion that will follow. We're grateful to Citigroup for making this activity possible. With us today on behalf of Citigroup is Mike Scherer from Schitt's Barney. Thank you for being here with us today, Mike. And I'm going to ask you to say a few words. All right. Thank you, Dr. Moller, for joining us. This is gorgeous. You're going to have to speak up because he's got the mic. Why don't I? That one works. Since 1989, we have supported the University of Michigan with close to $2 million in grants. This includes endowment for the Citigroup Lecture Series. Outside of this pledge, the majority of the funding goes to the Graduate School of Business, which is considered a key recruiting school by Citigroup businesses. Of course, this does not include the donation by our chairman and his wife, Dr. Horace. We cannot hear you. We can't hear. The mic must be off. Yeah, it is. It is. Michael? I know. OK. We'll try it again. Maybe they know. I don't know if these mics are on. Are you sure? Yeah. OK. Again, we're strong believers that corporations and its employees have an obligation to give back to the community and the community that they work and they live. That is why in 2005 Citigroup granted almost $100 million. And again, this reached both domestically and reached over 80 countries, better than 80 countries. Our foundation has three priorities. Financial education, an example of that would be found in junior achievement, financial or educating the next generation, such as like UNICEF, and also building communities and entrepreneurs, such as like the YMCA. And again, we're very honored to be teamed with the University of Michigan, which basically addresses all three of these priorities very nicely. We seek to, the foundation seeks to strengthen the quality of teaching, strengthen or improve student achievement, and increase access to higher education. And again, by enhancing educational opportunities, we'll hopefully help to better prepare the next generation for both personal and professional success. About six years ago, seven years ago, the world's preeminent financial institution decided to expand its presence in the Midwest. And I'm happy to say just east of North Campus, we have a Smith Barney office, which is going on its seventh year serving the community. Again, it's our privilege to be associated with the University of Michigan and the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. The dedication of the staff and the volunteers is truly amazing. We look forward to the timely and insightful comments of Dr. Miller. And again, focusing on some of the lessons learned over the last 25 years in the Arab-Israeli peace process. I guess one wonders if possibly some of these strategies can also be used locally. And I can think of the intense negotiations when it comes to the cost of higher education that sometimes involve the students and their parents. And so again, as always, Dean Blank, thank you for the opportunity to participate in this lecture series. Thank you. It is an honor and a pleasure to welcome Dr. Aaron David Miller, currently a public policy scholar with the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC. Dr. Miller has been an advisor on Arab-Israeli relations for six secretaries of state, served as president of Seeds of Peace from 2003 to 2006, and is a respected scholar in his field. His background incorporates both academic training and policy-making experience, complemented by three years with a nonprofit organization dedicated to peace. And I think of his career, even if he wasn't a public policy school graduate, as the type of career that I know many of our students hope that they will follow of moving into the public sector, establishing a reputation there, moving from that into not-for-profit work, and then going back into a more public commentary. Dr. Miller began his career here at the University of Michigan, where he completed his PhD in American Diplomatic and Middle East History in 1977. After joining the State Department, he continued his studies as a Council on Foreign Relations Fellow and a scholar at the Georgetown Center for Strategic and International Studies. He completed a temporary tour at the Embassy at Amman, Jordan, and became an advisor on Arab-Israeli relations and the peace process. He helped negotiate the Madrid Peace Conference and the Oslo Accords. He was one of 12 Americans present during the Camp David negotiations in 2000 and remained a key advisor after that process collapsed later in the year. During his tenure with the State Department, Dr. Miller was named the Senior Advisor for Arab-Israeli Negotiations, served on staff in the Policy Planning and Intelligence and Research Division, and was recognized with the department's distinguished, superior, and meritorious honor awards. After spending 25 years with the State Department, Dr. Miller left in 2003 to serve as three years as the President of Seeds for Peace, a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering young leaders from regions of conflict to advance reconciliation and coexistence through leadership skills. The organization has a 13-year history in Israel and Palestine, as well as working with young people from the Balkans, South Asia, and Cyprus. In January of 2006, he stepped down to begin a year at the Woodrow Wilson Center, where he is currently writing a book which seeks to explain the successes and failures of American efforts to broker peace in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a book I very much look forward to reading, and I hope after it's out we can invite him back and sell copies and have him talk to us about the rest of it. I suspect he's gonna give us a little preview today. Dr. Miller will be speaking to us today about the peace process in the Arab-Israeli region. Following his presentation, we'll open the floor to questions from the audience, and now if you'll join me in welcoming Aaron Miller. Rebecca, thank you very much. It's an honor and privilege for me to be here today. I would and will use any pretext or excuse to come back to Ann Arbor for however brief periods of time. I spent seven years here, off and on between 1969, two years as an undergraduate and did all my graduate work here, and I found these to be seven of the most extraordinary years of my life. College, and this won't come as a surprise to any of you, in some respects, is a suspension of your worldly interests for four years, and I'm gonna offer you two pieces of unsolicited advice today. This is the first. Enjoy those years if you can, and the suspension of those worldly interests because they will never, ever come again. The other thing I would like to add, and I spoke this morning at an undergraduate class and offered them this piece of advice, I offered to my kids, my daughter's gonna turn 26 and my son's 23, they're both done with their undergraduate careers. They usually don't take my advice, that shouldn't come as much of a surprise to you, but it's unsolicited and I will offer it to you as well. The happiest people that I know in life professionally, and the personal dimension is something else entirely, I wouldn't presume to give you any advice in that area. Happiest people that I know in life professionally combine passion for what they do, let us say they love what they do, with expertise, they know what they're doing. And it seems to me this is an unbeatable combination. Passion without expertise can be dangerous, and expertise without passion can be very frustrating and boring. If you are able and fortunate enough to find yourself or even to seek out a career in which you're able to express both and to do both, then I think you should consider yourselves very lucky. Michigan was exceptional training for me both in motivating me to see myself as part of a broader picture in the world and providing me with the education and the expertise at least to start my career. I wanna thank the Ford School, Rebecca, and City Group for its generosity and sponsoring these lectures. I think they're extremely important. I'm at the Woodrow Wilson Center now, Woodrow Wilson was the only president, an American president that had a PhD, and the commitment of the Wilson Center is to breaking down the, I would argue, artificial but very high walls that separate the academy, the university, from the policy community. The costs of that separation can be very severe. When policymakers don't listen to academics and when academics don't test their conclusions and theories in the world of policy, bad things can often happen and I would argue and I am a strong advocate of merging the two in any way that we can. I served as Dean Blank suggested for 25 years for six secretaries of state as an advisor, not as a policy maker. I gave advice, sometimes the advice was taken, sometimes it wasn't, sometimes the advice was good, sometimes it was bad. I've learned a lot from those 25 years and as I reflect back now, it's helped me a great deal. During the period that I was in government, I came to believe very deeply in three basic propositions. First, that the Arab-Israeli conflict was resolvable. At least that was my view at the time. It had a solution that was both equitable and durable. Now I'm choosing my words very carefully, equitable and durable. It could meet in a fair way the needs of both sides and it could last. There is no perfect justice, however. And if you're looking for perfect justice and if Arabs and Israelis are looking for perfect justice, they will not find it. This side of heaven, of that I am very certain. Second, the only way this equitable and durable solution could ever be achieved is through the long, slow and very flawed process of negotiation. Sometimes that negotiation is based or has been preceded by violence and conflict. But negotiations are the only way. They're flawed because they're based on human frailty and weakness. They're flawed because they're based on trying to find a balance between the way the world is on one hand and the way we want it to be on the other. And they're flawed because, again, as I mentioned, domestic politics is a reality in sustaining any nation's foreign policy. But it's the only way. And finally, I came to believe very deeply in the notion that the United States, despite all the imperfections in its policies, and there are many, I'm my own worst critic here. Despite the fact that we are hardly a perfect broker or mediator, that we and we alone had the capacity to help mediate and broker what has come to be regarded as one of the world's, the international system's most intractable conflict. I'm not a student of architecture, but I know that in diplomacy form follows function. There is a reason that the United States has succeeded when it has in helping the Arabs and Israelis sort out their differences. That reason is simply this. We and only we have managed to maintain close and intimate relations and ties with both sides to this conflict. And that is what you need. Now, sometimes we overdo it with one side or the other and I'll have more to say on that later. But it is that capacity that any broker, any negotiator, and any mediator needs. And it is not an easy role to play. I mentioned these three propositions because I still believe in them. I think to abandon them or to give up on them essentially means giving up on the future. And I do not believe that anybody has the right to abandon or mortgage the future because of the current situation. But let's be very clear and honest. The current situation is about as hostile and as precarious and as grim a situation as I've ever seen it today. And all three of these basic propositions, one, that there is a solution. Two, that it can only be brought about by negotiations. And three, that the United States has a critical role to play in that process. All three of these realities, these propositions that I had come to believe in so deeply are all at risk. Never in 25 years have I seen a situation along the lines of the current situation. We have essentially foreign knows. We have no trust between Israelis and Palestinians. We have no third party interested or seriously determined in trying to create a different situation on the ground. We have no authoritative negotiations between empowered representatives of either side. And we have no framework, no governing set of principles which would show these two sides what might be a possible solution and how to get there. If you're interested in serious negotiations and a solution, these foreign knows need to become, in essence, four yeses. And I have not abandoned the proposition that that is possible, but I do not believe it is going to be an easy and simple proposition. I wanna close my introductory remarks before I get to the six observations that I wanna offer based on 25 years of being in this business. Leave you with one essential notion. And that is the first president to cross my political consciousness was John Kennedy. I was 13 when he was assassinated. Kennedy described himself with a formulation that I believe is essential to use in approaching the current situation. Kennedy saw himself as an idealist without illusion, as an idealist without illusion. And to me that sums up what is absolutely imperative and essential right now for anyone interested in seriously analyzing this conflict or suggesting how it might be resolved. You cannot give up on the proposition that there is a solution, but we must go into this process without the illusions or at least in an effort to shed as many of those illusions as we can. In short, with our eyes open. So with that caveat in mind, let me lay out six basic propositions which have guided me these many years. And I think are relevant and worth a fair hearing. All of these I might add can be argued about. And I suspect things haven't changed much since the early 70s when the situation here on campus with respect to the debate on Arab-Israeli issues was, as I would describe it then, very common tranquil with people being extremely respectful and tolerant and acquiescent in hearing and listening to the views of others. I'm sure that that is the situation that exists today. And again, we can argue about all of these propositions and perhaps we should. I'm not here to sell you anything. I'm no longer working for the Department of State. I don't have talking points or guidance. I don't have to depart from anybody's policy. I'm interested frankly these days as I sit down to write this book in two things, honesty and clarity. Because it is too late in the day, the stakes are too high in my judgment for anything other than honesty and clarity. First, and I would argue foremost, the Arab-Israeli conflict is not some kind of morality play that pits the forces of goodness on one hand against the forces of evil on the other. It's not some sort of manikin drama where light and darkness compete with one winner and one loser. And yet too often, too many people, analysts and policy makers alike and certainly political constituents and adherents and followers and leaders of each side want to see it that way. And my simple proposition is this, if you are interested in analyzing this conflict seriously and honestly, let alone doing anything about it, the only way to see it is as a confrontation and as a conflict between two sides, each with competing needs and requirements and in essence, as someone defined a tragedy, is to competing justices. Now that's not the way the Arab-Israeli conflict is interpreted by those who sadly are caught up in it, which is completely understandable. It is not understandable to me how those who live thousands of miles away from the center of this conflict, who risk very little, they may be passionately involved in it, but they have turned it into a kind of morality play in which one side has a monopoly on the forces of truth and justice. Now I assure you, there is plenty of ammunition, both figuratively and literally, to go around to keep this conflict burning for the next century with that sort of mindset. But frankly, that is not real. You do not make peace with your enemies. You make peace with your friends. And I'm not suggesting, and nor do I want to engage in a debate about moral equivalency. What I'm suggesting to you is this conflict continues because each side has needs that need to be reconciled with the needs and requirements of the other. And in the case of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is the core of this matter, Israelis and Palestinians are driven by a proximity problem. If you want to understand why this conflict cannot be a morality play, it is to look at the issue of proximity. Israelis and Palestinians, their pasts, their presence, and their futures are inextricably linked together and always will be. Unless one side can manage to kill, imprison, or deport all of the other side, then this proximity problem will guarantee conflict in perpetuity. That is why, paradoxically, there may well be a source of hope here. Because at some point it may well be that this proximity problem will produce leaders and public constituencies that have a stake in addressing it and resolving it. It will not be addressed and resolved, proximate or not, without each side's understanding of what the other side needs and a heroic effort to reconcile the conflicting requirements of each side. And again, nobody in life gets 100%. I figured that out at 57. Nobody gets 100%. And the line that should be emblazoned over the portal of every negotiating room in this world on any subject is that thou shalt not allow the perfect to become the enemy of the good. Because when the perfect becomes the enemy, the adversary of the good, nothing good can result. And it strikes me as amazing sometimes how I see domestic constituencies in this country, both in the Arab American and Jewish American communities, trying to turn this conflict into a zero-sum game. I can understand why the people in the region do it. I really can. They're caught up in an existential conflict. They suffer every day as a consequence of this conflict. But why do domestic constituencies hear to it? Why is there not more rational, civilized, respectful debate in this country, thousands of miles away? It's a very good question. I do not have an answer. But nothing makes me angrier than when I hear American Arabs and American Jews say, we cannot do this or we cannot do that. And I think to myself, wait a minute, where's the we? There's not a we here. There are Israelis and Palestinians who suffer daily. And then there are American Jews and American Arabs living in the comfort and security of this country, passionately involved with relatives, with stakes, and with interests. It is not about their future. So the use of the word we should be used very carefully. Second, I mentioned that negotiations must be the pathway to resolve conflict. And I say that knowing full well that much of everything we sought to achieve in the last 15 years in negotiations now lies broken, battered, or bloodied somewhere. And then I continue to believe because I don't see the alternative. But I believe in negotiations based on a balance of interest. That is why negotiations succeed and agreements endure because you have negotiations and agreements based on what I would describe to you as a balance of interest, not in a symmetry of interest or in a symmetry of power. I, having been married for 32 years, I absolutely am persuaded. That negotiations and agreements that last are not much different than good marriages, good friendships, or good business propositions. The needs of both sides to these relationships must be accommodated. If they are not, even if the relationship endures, it's not worth very much. And if you look at the three sets of negotiations that actually reached agreements in the past 25 years, you see my point demonstrated with a frightening clarity. The Egyptian-Israeli peace process, which resulted in a Camp David Accord in September of 78 and the treaty in March of 79, was not perfect, but it reflected the basic needs of Israel and the Egyptians. As a consequence, it endures to this day, almost scrupulously observed by the parties. The Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty, signed in October of 1994, was not perfect and far less contentious than the Egyptian-Israeli or Israeli-Palestinian Accords, and yet it endures to this day because it was based on a balance of interest. The Israeli-Palestinian process, which began in Oslo in 1993 with the signing of the Declaration of Principles, was an agreement, heroic, creative, but fundamentally flawed because it was based on a symmetry of interest and a symmetry of power, which skewed any prospect of an agreement that would endure. And that asymmetry is important to understand. Israelis wielded, what I would argue to you, is self-evident. Israelis wielded the power of the strong. The power of the strong was for a militarily, technologically, economically superior state to be able to impose unilaterally when it came to settlement activity, land confiscation, housing demolitions, curfews, closures, bypass roads, and also to act unilaterally in defense very often of legitimate Israeli security needs and interests, but it created the sense of power and it led to actions which prejudged and predetermined the environment for negotiation. That is the power of the strong, but the power of the strong was matched, I would argue, by what I call the power of the weak, and the power of the weak is not to be underestimated. The power of the weak is the capacity of the weakest party to any negotiation, in this case the Palestinians, to say the following, we are under Israeli occupation, we have no rights, we have no Apache helicopters, we have no F-15s, we don't have the support of the United States behind us, and as a consequence of that weakness, we may acquiesce in forms of behavior and activities which we will use to take away from those who have the power of the strong the one thing that they need most, which in this case was a reliable partner with respect to security. So according to the power of the weak, the Palestinian authority, Mr. Arafat in particular, and I have no desire to write a brief for or against him, I spent hundreds of hours with him and I came to know him in a way I suspect that most don't and I'm not here to demonize him, but Mr. Arafat acquiesced in behaviors, particularly acquiescence and terror and violence and allowed the Palestinian monopoly over the forces of violence within Palestinian society to dissipate. In essence, his real transgression was not his refusal to accept what Mr. Barak put on the table at Camp David, no Palestinian leader could have accepted that. His real transgression was to willingly use the power of the weak to acquiesce and let the tiger out of the cage. The single most central challenge that the Palestinian authority now faces with Hamas forming the government or not is the need to regain its monopoly over the forces of violence within its own society. No government, not the city of Ann Arbor, not the district of Columbia where I live, not Sweden and no Arab state, would ever allow there to be more than one gun and one authority. That is the power of the weak. When you marry the power of the strong to the power of the weak, what you get is self-evident, a dysfunctional negotiating situation in which both sides accuse one another rightly of failing to carry out commitments undertaken. And that's precisely what happened. So that by July of 2000 on the eve of this historic summit at Camp David, a summit that was supposed to bring out trust and confidence in Mr. Barak and Mr. Arifat, negotiated by President Clinton, there was no trust and confidence. There was a series of broken promises and pledges and an environment on the ground which was not conducive to dealing, forget with the big issues, with the small ones. Number three, the environment for negotiations, even though preceded by violence often, and many of these breakthroughs have been preceded by conflict or war, must be relatively free of pressure, intimidation and violence. The notion that you can negotiate and shoot at the same time might have worked in Vietnam or with the FLN in Algeria. These were traditional colonial situations where powers, the French, the Americans in Vietnam and the French in Algeria could essentially depart from the occupied area, such as not the case here. And it runs and it cuts both ways. If in fact there is going to be an effort made to preserve the least bad option for solving this conflict, which is a two-state solution, which is a two-state solution, then it must be preceded by an environment free, reasonably free from pressure, intimidation and violence on both sides because the proximity problem here will prevail. There can be no trust, no negotiations of core or existential issues in policies in which negotiations and violence are essentially part of the same process. And that includes, that goes both ways for Israelis and Palestinians. The notion that somehow we are going to create a permanent status solution and tell the Israelis and Palestinians what to do in this environment after five years of non-stop confrontation and violence is an illusion. What the administration ought to be focused on, seems to me, in a time that remains, which is a full two years, more than two years, is to help preserve and create, excuse me, the environment for a serious and credible negotiation. Four, successful negotiations, like tough decisions in life, depend on urgency. If you're not in a hurry, if there are no prospects of pain on one hand or alternatively gain on the other, then there's no way you're gonna wanna confront any of these decisions because it's just too hard. And it can be physically and politically fatal. It was fatal for Sadat, it was fatal for Abin. And I guess the absence of urgency is what defines or separates a successful negotiation from one that is not. If you look at the Camp David Summit in September of 1978 and you compare it, that level of urgency, two leaders, Sadat and Beggin, both who had control over their domestic constituencies, both who understood what they could settle with and what they could sell. And an American president, Jimmy Carter, who had a pretty good sense of what their bottom lines were and how to find the balance between pushing for something he couldn't achieve and settling for something he could, you begin to understand the difference. Sadat was in a hurry, there's no question about that. Sadat was in a hurry and remember, Camp David in 78 was preceded by his historic visit to Jerusalem and seven or eight months of unsuccessful, frustrating, difficult negotiations that had reached an impasse by the summer of 1978. Sadat was in a hurry, Carter understood it and Beggin was prepared to reach an agreement. If you compare urgency with the absence of urgency in July of 2000, you begin to understand what a galactic gamble the second Camp David Summit actually was. Barack may have been in a hurry, he had no government, he was coming to negotiate with Clinton and Arafat without a government. He was prepared to make bold and forthcoming moves which went further than any other Israeli prime minister. Clinton was in a hurry, he was running out of time, he clearly saw this as a legacy issue. Mr. Arafat is the weakest party to the negotiation. He was not in a hurry because he had watched months before as Mr. Barak had offered to Mr. Assad, President of Syria, a man who refused to allow his foreign minister to shake Mr. Barak's hand, a man whose view of peace was a kind of glorified non-belligerency agreement. Mr. Arafat had watched Mr. Barak propose to Mr. Assad that he received 99.9% of the Golan Heights, minus 300 yards, 300 yards off the northeastern portion of the Sea of Galilee, the Canaret, as the Israelis call it. And this to a man whose view of peace was cold, this to a man who was running a proxy war via his Bullah against the Israelis. And Mr. Barak offers Mr. Arafat 91% at Camp David, no. Mr. Arafat was not in a hurry. There was no shared sense of urgency at Camp David. Now, should Mr. Arafat have been in a hurry, maybe. His real transgression was not that he rejected what Barak proposed. His real transgression was he failed to negotiate and to understand the dynamic of what was being created. But it's irrelevant. If one guy is in a hurry and the other guy isn't, and you know that, you have a responsibility as a negotiator, as a mediator, as a broker to either correct that situation if you can, or don't go to the summit if in fact you think it won't succeed because let's not kid ourselves in life. The world's most compelling ideology, if you haven't figured it out yet, is not democracy. It's not capitalism. It's certainly not communism. And it's not nationalism. It's success. That's the world's most compelling ideology because success generates power and success generates constituents. That is core. Shared urgency was critical. We didn't have it. And as a consequence of that, we should have behaved differently. At the time, and this is not true confessions, but I do believe in the capacity of people to learn from their mistakes. At the time when the President of the United States assembled all of his advisors and went around the table and asked everybody, should I go? Everybody said the same thing. Yes, because if you don't go, there will be violence, true enough. If you don't go, you will be blamed for not spending the last six months of your administration freed from political constraint and spending time on an issue that you care about. So I was the last to speak, and I said exactly what everybody else said, which was not the right answer. The right answer was, Mr. President, yes, you should go, but you should understand two things. Number one, you will not reach an agreement there. You will not. And as a consequence of that, either you get Mr. Barak and Mr. Arafat to understand what happens if you don't and to agree on a strategy afterwards, or you tell each of them, I'll go if your bottom lines can be reconciled. I didn't say that. It would have made no difference had I said it. But it bears serious reflection. Shared sense of urgency is critical to a successful negotiation. Five, leadership. There is no way I can overestimate the importance of this issue. Carlisle, Thomas Carlisle was right. Writing in the 18th century, he said that history, and had he been writing now, he would have clearly phrased this differently. But writing in the 18th century, he said that history was the biography, is the biography of great men. That's what he said. I believe that. Great men and women, of course. I believe that. This process is too complicated. The stakes are too high. The odds against success are too great. You need leaders who are willing to risk to defy political convention and constraint and ultimately to put their lives on the line. I would argue to you, we had those leaders. Sidot, Beggin, Rabin, Hussain. We don't have them now. We are out of the heroic age of Arab-Israeli politics. Now, can circumstances create leaders? Absolutely. Can exigencies produce courage and vision and foresight? Absolutely. But until you have an Arab and an Israeli leader who have the willingness and the ability to enter into a serious negotiation, you're not going to see much movement. Arguably, Prime Minister Sharon, who is now in a coma in Jerusalem Hospital, had the power to do a conflict ending agreement with the Palestinians, but he lacked the incentive. Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, clearly had the incentive, but he lacked the power. There will be very little anybody outside of this conflict will be able to do until an Israeli and a Palestinian leader emerge who have the power and the incentive to take on the issues. Because the issue now is not interim anymore. It's for keeps. It's Jerusalem. It's territory. It's refugees. It's security. In an existential conflict. Finally, let me offer a comment about the United States. It's too big of a topic to cover, but I do want to leave as much time for questions. I will say two things about this. Number one, in an existential conflict, a conflict literally that is perceived on the part of the parties who wage it as a matter of existence, physical security and political identity. As Americans, we cannot even begin to understand, even in the wake of 9-11, what those two issues really mean for these peoples in this region. Physical security and political identity. In such a conflict, a great power, in fact, the greatest power ever in history, cannot impose their will. Small powers in an existential conflict are tougher, meaner and more determined than the United States will ever be. Look at the history of this region over the past 1500 years and what do you see? You see a landscape littered with the remains of great powers who believed wrongly they could impose their will on small tribes. With the most imaginable and fantastical schemes, Iraq is another cautionary tale, a bitter tale about the limitations of great power influence in this part of the world. We cannot impose and yet, we have a historic responsibility in my judgment to play a role. On the Arab-Israeli issue, and it may well be unique in the foreign policy challenges we confront, three factors come together. Number one, it is in our national interest to see this conflict resolve. Number two, morally, it is in our interests and don't dismiss and we should never, the moral component both as an explanation for why we do the things we do and as a motivator. It is in our national interest, it is in our moral interest and third, we have a demonstrated capacity from 1973 to 1993 where our effective diplomacy essentially came to an end to play a role in making a horrible situation better. But to do this, an administration needs to make this a national priority. Governing is about choosing, don't let anybody tell you different. It's about setting priorities about what you care about and what you don't. And those priorities become very clear by the fifth year of an administration. This administration has other priorities and frankly they are quite consequential. There is Iraq, how to extricate itself from a hopeless situation. There is Iran, what to do about a potential proliferation problem. There is the war on terror. How to avoid another attack on the continental United States because one will come certainly while this administration is in power, how to avoid such an attack. But even if it's lucky enough that it doesn't happen on its watch, this is a huge priority for this country. Finally, how to promote democratic, political and economic reform and the administration deserves credit because every administration I work for ran away from this problem. These are consequential priorities. This shepherd's war between the Israelis and Palestinians is not a priority. It is not a priority now and it is unlikely to become a priority in the next two and a half years and that's frankly too bad because time is not our ally here. Time is our adversary. Let me close with one additional comment. This is, my views these days are pretty bleak and I don't think, as I mentioned, there's any more room for illusions. Let me leave you with one thought. In the last century, in the modern history of the Arab-Israeli conflict, there was a major Arab-Israeli war in every decade. 48, 56, 67, 73, 82. The 1990s came and went without a major Arab-Israeli war. Under Republican and Democratic administrations, the United States stepped up, managed and did serious diplomacy based on the notion that negotiations rather than conflict offered an end or at least the beginning of how to resolve this conflict. My great fear, and we're now six years into the next century, is this. That if the proposition that negotiating is discredited and that talking is no longer an adequate and effective solution and it's replaced by shooting and violence, if that dies, then it seems to me we run the risk of surrendering the field to the forces of history. And if the forces of history could speak to you here today in Ann Arbor, this is what they would say. They would say, don't listen to a word of what he is saying. This conflict will be resolved. It'll be resolved through confrontation and violence with one winner and one loser. That is an illusion that no one who cares about American national interests, security of the state of Israel, any kind of justice for Palestinians and a better future for all of their children can afford to court. Thank you very much. Okay, questions and comments, yes. Yeah, it's often said that we have leveraged over the Israelis as a consequence of our financial and more importantly our military assistance because financially we have actually tamped down substantially the amount of EMS money that is provided. We do have leverage over the Israelis. And one of the things that, one of the points I'm examining in this book I'm writing is that the three Americans who did effective and consequential diplomacy, and there are only three, two Republican secretaries of state, Henry Kissinger and James Baker and one Democratic president, Jimmy Carter. These three Americans gain the trust of Israeli and Arab leaders, but also were prepared to be incredibly tough, certainly with the Israelis. And yet in the furtherance of what they believed to be American national interests, and ultimately in interest that redounded to the credit and benefit of both the Arabs and the Israelis, they were incredibly tough, Baker in particular. So yes, in a conflict in which a great power is pitted against a small tribe, you need two things. You need to understand the fears, the anxieties of the smaller power, but you have to be willing to stand up and push back when you are pushed. And the one issue that comes to mind is the issue of Israeli unilateral actions, particularly settlement activity, which in no way shape or form is of benefit to the government or people of Israel and certainly undermines American policy. And we have on several occasions, one in particular with respect to loan guarantees, actually deducted the amount of money, these were guarantees, they were credits, not cash transfers, that Israelis spent on settlement activity. On this issue, it seems to me, we're in an extremely strong position and we ought to be tough. So yes, leverage can work, keeping in mind that you will never push Arabs and Israelis to do anything if disincentives and pain are the only instruments and tools at your disposal. These three guys, Kissinger for his work in the disengagement agreements, Carter for his work on the peace treaty and Baker for producing the Madrid Peace Conference, were plenty tough with the Israelis, but they also offered assurances and incentives, which led Israel to agree. One more comment. We have a special relationship with the Israelis. That relationship in my judgment is not going to change because it is based on issues that go beyond what Israel does or doesn't do in the West Bank and Gaza. It's based largely on value affinity. Domestic politics are important here in this regard. The presence of a large, affluent, well-organized Jewish community that can lobby. And by the way, a community that is now joined by millions of evangelicals who constitute a core constituency of the Republican Party. This special relationship is based on value affinity. The perception that Israel as a democracy, forget what Israel does in the territories. Israel as a democracy is under pressure and 9-11, frankly, has only served to reinforce and strengthen that perception. I am an advocate and I worked for Baker. I'm an advocate of being tough when you need to be. I'm also an advocate of understanding that in the end, small powers, caught in an existential conflict will make concessions but not just if they're faced with a two by four. You need the proper mix of incentive and disincentive if you're gonna succeed. Yes? About 20 some odd years ago. There's a microphone here in the center of the room and I'm asking people with questions perhaps can go to the microphone. That way it gets recorded on tape. About 20 some odd years ago, Yoloshir Fahkarbi wrote a book, Israel's Faithful Hour, which he talked about the danger, the terrorization of the Palestinians. That is, reducing to an evil force without any legitimate concerns, et cetera. It seems to me that this terrorization has not only occurred, but we have extended it. We double all these people as terrorists as if they had no legitimate grievances in that with respect to Hisbo Law, with respect to now Hamas and so on and so forth. I wondered if you would speak to that and if that impacted that on US policy. Look, as far as Hamas is concerned, we have a problem. We push for these elections as part of the administration's, I think, genuine and important focus on political and economic reform. And as most American politicians will tell you, once voters go to the polls, in a democratic society, there's no guarantees of who's gonna win. We are prevented by statute, by law, from transferring any aid to a certain list of organizations and countries. Hamas is on that list. The administration has a strong desire to maintain the moral clarity and consistency of its policy with respect to terror, groups who advocate terror and violence. So I see no prospect for a change on the part of the administration with respect to Hamas. The question is going to be, it seems to me, twofold. One, how do you incentivize the possibility of changing Hamas's behavior and ideology while not punishing the vast majority of Palestinians? And that concerns the issue of economic assistance. How are we going to avoid a financial and economic crisis? Budget of the Palestinian authorities $150 million a year. There is no country on this planet, with the exception of the United States and the Europeans that are gonna produce that kind of money to keep the Palestinian Authority afloat. So that's one issue that we need to be concerned about. The second is the way the elections were conducted and the absence of candidacy requirements. I don't know if there's a precedent in modern politics for an organization who seeks the destruction of the, and again, I'm not moralizing, I'm just reporting, who seeks the destruction of a UN member state and advocates the liquidation of that state, seizing power in a fair and free election, which is the antithesis, frankly, of Hamas's ideology. There were no candidacy requirements. Abu Mazen was too weak to impose them. Hamas wouldn't accept them, and the United States had no influence or leverage to demand that they take place. And we don't wanna risk setting a precedent here. The reality is, and it's broader than Hamas and his Bullah, when free and fair elections are held in the Arab and Muslim world today, Islamist parties do exceptionally well. Egypt, Iraq, and Palestine. Those are three examples. And it will happen elsewhere. And there are reasons for that. So this is, it's beyond the issue just of terror. One concluding point. The one dividend that may come from this is Hamas's willingness to lay down the gun. Now, nobody knows for sure, but I don't see how, and I talked about this earlier, I don't see how Hamas will operate legitimately if it does not get out of the violence business. That's not to say that the Al-Aqsa Brigades and Islamic Jihad will. I do not see how Hamas, if success is the world's most compelling ideology and Hamas is charged with governing, I don't see how Hamas succeeds unless it lays down the gun. So you're likely to see not a change in its ideology, but you're likely to see in the near term, I suspect, a change in its behavior. Yes? I'm only like 20 years old and I'm not as familiar with the history of the conflict as you are. But in my lifetime, the thing that seems to be propping up like, at least in my mind is since September 11th, since the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, the problem in Iran seems as though American policy, I mean, even most recently with Congress trying to block the Dubai port, the takeover of our ports, it seems as though almost an anti-Arab feeling is sweeping our country and anti-American sentiments are definitely sweeping Arab nations. How does this conflict solving it or not being able to solve it? How does that play into America's role in the conflict? It's a very good question and I don't think there is an answer. I don't think there's an answer. Let me put it this way. The one issue that resonates most broadly in the Arab and Muslim world today and unites this sentiment is the Israeli-Palestinian issue. It's a highly resonant issue in an increasingly divided Arab world. I would argue to you that if we took it on seriously, it would help advance many of the interests that the administration does care about. But it is no panacea. This is a region, no matter how old it is, that is in its political infancy. There are problems with respect to modernization and tradition, governance, corruption, human rights, which will continue to plague the Arab and Muslim world for years and decades to come. Our job is to find a way to diffuse those issues that are used by governments as well as by groups to poison the atmosphere against American interests. That is our job. There's a wonderful quote by Casey Stengel. He said, the key to good management, he's talking about baseball now, was keeping the nine guys who hate your guts away from the nine guys who haven't made up their minds. Now, I bring that up because Casey Stengel didn't know how relevant this was to this particular problem. Our job is to look at the Middle East and assume that you have a determined minority who will argue no matter what we do, we will be the enemy. I firmly believe this. I would say it's a determined minority. I do not believe it is true of the vast majority of Arabs and Muslims. I believe that this is a clash, not of civilizations, Danish cartoons notwithstanding, and that it's a very worrisome phenomenon. It's not a clash of civilizations, it's a clash of interests, and a clash of civilizations cannot be reconciled. We could spend a thousand years trying to make everybody happy, and in the end we'd still fail. If, in essence, the confrontation has to do with fundamentally different values or religious belief systems, if it's a clash of interests, then a certain moderation and a certain change in the way we approach certain issues would help the situation. So the answer to your question is yes. If we took this on seriously, although right now I'm not even sure if the president were sitting here, I'm not even sure I would know how to advise him in these circumstances, but if we took it on, I think it would help all of the things that we do care about. It would not make the situation in Iraq any better. It would not reduce any more than marginally, in my view, the threat that we face here at home. Nor would it turn the Arab world into a series of falling Jeffersonian, you know, democracy dominoes. That's not going to happen either. But it would help achieve and improve American credibility. And as an American, that's really important now. Potential for Hamas's success. First, I wonder why you consider only American and European contributions to keep the PA afloat and you don't consider looking to financial contributions from the Arab world. And second, you said that you think Hamas is the only chance to succeed is if they renounce violence. And in particular, you said that you don't really see a trend for violence groups with pensions for the destruction of UN members of running elections. And I just wonder why you don't think Hezbollah is a more accurate model for Hamas given their commitment to Israel's destruction. And I think they have like 15 or 20 seats in the Lebanese parliament today. Thank you. Hezbollah has one ministry, one minister, I believe, in the Lebanese government. Hamas is poised now to become the Palestinian authority. I mean, they just, one example, they will control the Ministry of Education. I ran a program for three years which brought young Israelis and young Palestinians sanctioned and endorsed by their governments. December programs in the United States would follow up in the region. Is Hamas, as the Ministry of Education, going to permit those young Palestinians to participate in this program as representative of the Palestinian Authority? I don't know. The Hezbollah precedent also breaks down in the sense that Hezbollah has achieved its territorial ambitions with respect to the Israelis. Like Hamas, Israel got out of Gaza because the cost of staying there got too high. Israel got out of Lebanon because the costs of staying there are too high. Hamas still has a strategy and a philosophy toward the West Bank, although I think it's a fool's game for them to assume that they can apply the same principle to the West Bank as they've done to Gaza. In the Arab world, it's a matter of experience over hope. We sought for 15 years to get Arab states seriously interested in making contributions to the Palestinian Authority when there was a negotiation, when things looked good and they weren't able to do it. In part, that was the consequence of Arafat's personality. Where was the money? Where did it go? In part, it was the Kuwaitis and the Saudis' anger over the PLO support for Saddam during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. In part, it may have been a question of depressed oil revenues. That's certainly not the problem anymore. I don't believe the Arab states have the incentive. They have the means, they do not have the incentive and it's disturbing because all I heard about in government, year after year, was the centrality of the Palestinian issue and the importance of getting it resolved. But when you go around with the tin cup, and I suppose it's human nature, looking for funds, people aren't as interested in being concerned when it's time to give, give it the office, so to speak. So, I don't think we'll get much. 15, 20 million from the Saudis, maybe something from the Arab League. The Iranians, they're not Arabs, they will give maybe an equal sum but I don't think you can reproduce the kinds of sums that the Americans and the Europeans were giving, the EU was giving. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Erin, thank you very much for a really great presentation. I want to present you with our city group lecturer plaque which recognizes you for distinguished contributions to conflict resolution and international understanding. Thank you again. Thank you all for coming. I invite you to join us for a reception out here. If there are any of you who are not on our mailing board school events and would like to be on it, there are also cards out there where you can leave us your name and your address. Thanks for coming.