In Voice of Russia By Kudashkina Ekaterina (source: http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/12/29/63108293.html)

Interview with Gershon Baskin, co-CEO of the Israel-Palestine Center for Research and Information.

The anticipations for this year, for those who are following peace process between Israel and Palestine have been extremely high.

There was only one event of this year that’s noteworthy in the history of this conflict on a positive note and that’s the conclusion of the deal between Israel and Hamas for the release of Gilad Shalit after five years and four months in Hamas captivity and a subsequent release of 1027 Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails.

This is the only event that I can think of the entire year that had support on the both sides of the conflict, and one which is viewed in retrospect positively by both sides of the conflict with all the difficulties involved and all the very, very important and difficult consequences of what this means in terms of future relations.

The expectations in 2011, that there would be a negotiated peace process between Israelis and Palestinians, is not met with any success. The US administration, Obama administration has failed to use its power to bring the parties to the table, both parties have pre-conditions, which are rejected by the other side. The Palestinian hopes of achieving recognition and state with membership in the United Nations has been a fail process, they did not only get the support of the United States, but they were not even able to get 9 votes within the Security Council to force the US to use its veto.

So, these have been a huge disappointment for the Palestinian side. On a more positive note, both the Palestinian and the Israeli economies are doing better retrospectively to the rest of the world economies, which are in great doom and despair, we see what’s happening in Europe and in other parts of the world. The Israeli economy is continuing to grow. It stunted growth – the Palestinian economy is able to stay above water, even though they have a very difficult situation of not having enough income and relying to a great extent on donor-funded support and money from the government of Israel which is collected on the half of the Palestinian’s aid. The overall economic stability has maintained and the low level, the almost zero, level of violence that existed over 2011 between Israel and the Palestinians which is also noteworthy.

Which of course gives hope for some optimism at least. But how would you explain the interesting economic phenomenon which runs absolutely counter to the major trends around the rest of the world?

Well, Israel has maintained a great deal of economic and fiscal discipline in terms of not raising its internal debt in a way the most of the countries of Europe did. So, the economic discipline has kept inflation down and has enabled the economic growth to continue. We don’t have a banking crisis in Israel, we don’t have a debt crisis, unemployment is actually very low, and indeed the foreign investments have been high in Israel with the past years.

So, Israel has been able to stay above water and continue to grow. The Palestinian economy is completely linked to Israeli economy, so if Israel is sturdy and stable that will have a reflection on the Palestinian economy. And increase of the weal of Palestinian economy is the improvement of governance in Palestine, removal of corruption, and good work of the Palestinian security forces in keeping terrorism to an almost non-existent level. That, together with the donor-money, which is continuing to come into the Palestinian economy, over $2 billion a year, which is providing the Palestinian government with cash to fund its activities, to pay salaries and to keep people with money in their pockets and buy goods which keeps the economy moving.

It is interesting that you’ve mentioned positive results in combating corruption in Palestine, but whose merit is that?

Well, this is largely a success of the Salam Fayyad government, Prime Minister Fayyad. It’s not a perfect track record, but from someone who is now experiencing, working more on the private sector in the West Bank, I mean vising a company which is working on a major infrastructure project, and it’s a project that would involve tens maybe hundreds of millions of dollars, I have not yet faced the experience of anyone in the government level asking for a bribe of any kind. And I think this is quite significant because in past years you could not do business in the West Bank without having to pay graft to some government officials, somewhere along the line leading all the way up to the top.

My personal experience now is not only at a story level, but I really seen it happening that not only we have not been asked to pay bribes, we’ve been told by government officials that the sector that we are working on has to be done by the private sector, and there will be no government involvement in it. So, I think this is quite remarkable looking back at the situation with the Palestinian authorities in the past when the government was involved in every economic venture.

I also find it remarkable that you’ve mentioned something like zero violence in relations?

There is no terrorism today, there are almost no attacks against Israelis even with a large amount of settlers in the West Bank. There is very, very little, even cases of stone throwing of Palestinians against settler’s vehicles or army vehicles, there is no suicide bombings anymore and no rockets being launched in the West Bank. We still have those problems in Gaza, but in the West Bank it is virtually non-existent, and the Palestinian security forces are cooperating on a deal with the Israeli security forces.

How would you explain that?

First of all it comes from a political decision, the political decision of both President Abbas and Prime Minister Fayyad and other key members of the Palestinian leadership is that they are not going back to the armed struggle. They are not going back to the situation that existed in the Second Intifada with a result of terrorism and violence the whole entire society and economy were destroyed by Israeli attacks and retaliation.

They don’t want to turn the wheels back, and Palestinians more and more overwhelmingly are adopting a non-violent struggle against Israeli occupation. It’s not consolidated, it’s not a mass struggle, it’s not really directed from the top down, but there is, I would say, a Palestinian cross-society agreement that their struggle for freedom and independence in the occupation has to be a non-violent struggle, not going back to an armed struggle.

Is it something also shared by Hamas?

Well, Hamas is moving in that direction as well. Officially Khalid Masha'al, one of the Hamas leaders, made a statement in Cairo that Hamas would be adopting the non-violent popular struggle techniques as well.

So, is it supported by its allies?

Well, there are people who are for the right of Hamas - in Gaza, the Islamic Jihad, and other groups who are accusing Hamas of becoming like Fatah, moving to be collaborating with the occupation and not fighting against the occupation. And there seems to be some increase, small increase of public support for Islamic Jihad is now playing the more radical position amongst Palestinians who want to have a more radical position. Hamas is becoming more pragmatic, it is trying to become more constructivist, trying to be, I would say, become more responsible as the political leader, and that means looking toward the future, where eventually they are going to engage Israel either upfront in the public or even secretly in order to have some form of agreement that will enable Hamas to govern the way they would like successfully with the economic growth and development in Gaza as well.

There are 1.7 million Palestinians living in Gaza, it’s a tiny territory and I think Hamas is becoming more responsible kind of leader that looks to the welfare of its people, I would say, unfortunately that Hamas has not demonstrated it until now – a great deal of responsibility as a leader for

the welfare of their people. They’ve done things I view against the welfare of their people, but it seems that there are changes happening within Hamas today. And that’s also an impact of the Arab Spring and a call for more accountability by the people in Gaza who are demanding more democracy and more openness from the leadership, and it’s having its impact.

Does that imply that more radical elements are going to be squeezed out from Gaza to some other Palestinian diasporas around the region like Jordan for instance?

It could be that they might squeezed out, it could be also that there are going to be Palestinian spoilers who are going to try and derail any process of stabilization and economic growth and development, perhaps a peace process in the future. With the problems that we’ve seen before the radicals have had, whether they be Jewish radicals like someone who killed our Prime Minister in 1995, or Palestinian radicals who in the years of 2000 – 2001 derailed the peace process by using terrorism against Israeli civilians. So, we have radicals and extremists in this area who take the responsibility into their own hands against the welfare of their own people and have derailed positive things that have happened and we have those kinds of people in Gaza, there is no lack of them.

Authorities in Gaza and in the West Bank, what are their relations with the new Islamist forces coming to power in the countries of the region

like Egypt for instance?

Well, it seems to be that with the rise of the Islamic political movements in the region it gives cause for concern to everyone, and perhaps the Fatah leadership of President Abbas is trying to find way that they can corrupt the Hamas movement to be a part of the Palestinian national movement through agreement and not through radicalism, to find a kind of Turkish solution for a political movement which is both democratic and Islamic. It certainly has a great appeal in the Arab world and in Palestine as well. Most Palestinians are fearful of an extremist Hamas. But if Hamas could express modern democracy with the liberal attitude toward human rights and reflect also the values of Islam, this would be something that would have a great deal of attraction to many Palestinians, and the question of whether this is possible will be determined in the coming period.

And as far as I understand Turkey has been playing a role in the year of 2011 and before. Has its role changed?

The role has changed to the negative because of the difficult relations between Israel and Turkey after the Mavi Marmara incident with the flotilla to Gaza, and the Turkish demand to the government of Israel to issue a formal apology for the killing of 9 Turkish citizens aboard that ship, that was heading toward Gaza and stopped by Israel. And Israeli government refused to apologize, and there has been a total derailment of relation on the government to government level, between Israel and Turkey.

If Turkey in the past was going to play appositive role in mediating conflicts in the region as they did, it was proxy in many talks that took place between Israel and Syria in the past. Turkey is not in a position today to play that role because of the negative attitude that Israel and Turkey have toward each other.

But I hope this is something that can be resolved. At the business level, the two business communities in Israel and Turkey are very interested in continuing to do business. Turkey is a huge economic empire with the gross national product of more than $720 billion, and $3.5 billion of trade takes place between Israel and Turkey, pretty much on a 50\50 level, the trade is going in both directions between these two countries. And the business community of both Israel and Turkey are interested very much in seeing that continue and grow.

There has been a total loss of business in the tourism sector, Israel is one of the biggest groups of tourists to go to Turkey and now it’s gone virtually to zero. There are Palestinian citizens of Israel who continue to travel to Turkey, but during this past summer season as an example, 2 years ago there would be 30 charter flights going every day between Israel and Turkey, with these ready tourists in this past summer there was one charter flight going per day between Israel and Turkey. So, it’s a huge loss of business because of the bad relations and should that repair itself, there would be return of tourism and an increase of the economic ties and hopefully the political ties. Turkey is an important country and has a potentially important role to play in peace making in the region. They certainly have problems on their own boarder with Syria and with the Kurdish population, so there are all kinds of problems that need to be addressed. And Turkey is an important country.

As you’ve mentioned business, could it be that business and business interests could play some kind of consolidating role in the whole of the region?

In principally could but everything is politics at the end of the day, and if there are no often political diplomatic relations between countries, then trade and cross boundary trade and cross boundary investments in joint ventures are very problematic. There is a general boycott against Israel in the world, and the more so in the Arab world, and there is a lot of suspicion about Israeli intentions when they go into business in other countries. There are all kinds of conspiracy theories about Israeli intentions to take over the world, and more kinds of nonsense that gets on the way and that’s all because of the politics.

So, we need to resolve conflicts in the region, first and foremost the Israeli – Palestinian conflict and the conflict between Israel and Syria, and Lebanon. We need to see what is going to play out in terms of the new regimes developing in the region in Libya, in Egypt, in Tunisia, in places like Iraq, where the Americans have now left and see what happens in Iraq. And of course the joker in the depths of wild coheres is Iran. What is Iran doing? What are Iranian intentions? Are they going to try and build a nuclear bomb? Are we going to have an Israeli – American – European attack against Iran? What is Russia going to do if there is aggression from the West against Iran, or Iranian aggression against Israel? What will happen with the role of Russia and China as superpowers as well in terms of their relations with Iran, they are very important players.

And by the way Syria.

Syria as well. What will happen in Syria? I don’t think that Bashar al-Assad regime will survive 2012.

Which means more turmoil in the region just on the borders of Israel.

There is some kind of attempt to create a united Syrian opposition. There are more and more senior officers from the Syrian army who are leaving the army, who are joining the other side. Maybe some stability will be at the workout in Syria and some consensus in period but it’s going to be a very volatile region over the next twelve months.

So, what needs to be done basically? What are the major conditions of resolution, of untying this knot?

I think that 2012 is probably going to be a year when Israel will go to elections, although it is not scheduled until 2013. 2012 will be a critical year for the Palestinians in their political developments. Will they have new elections? Will there be unification between Fatah and Hamas? I don’t know. It seems that without an effective American president player on the ground, it will be very difficult to get the Israelis and Palestinians to a negotiating table, unless somehow they can figure out a way to do a secret backchannel. Public diplomacy won’t work without an American role, and the American President is now busy with his own election campaign which won’t be determined till November 2012.

So, it looks like to a great extent 2012 will be lost year on the Israeli – Palestinian front. God knows what’s going to happen in Egypt. We see the results of the elections and they are frightening. Will Egypt be able to feed itself by the end of 2012? Egypt without tourism, Egypt without foreign investment - is Egypt which cannot survive economically. And with a government which is perceived to be a radical Islamic government of the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Salafi al-Nour movement will not attract tourism anyway or foreign investment and by the end of 2012, people in Egypt will be in the streets again, protesting not against the lack of democracy but lack of food, and this is critical. Egypt is the largest and the most important Arab country not to be able to feed itself, to be financially bankrupt – it is a very dangerous situation.

And again Iran is a big question in terms of global and regional security. The US Secretary Defense Panetta said that the United States will not allow Iran to achieve a nuclear bomb. This is the clearest statement on that issue that Americans have made until now. America will not take action by itself, it will have allies, Israel will be amongst them. So, we have to hope and pray that the year of 2012 won’t be a year of regional war, if Israel attacks Iran, if the United States attacks Iran, we have thousands of missiles from Syria, from Lebanon, from Gaza that are pointed to Israel. These are all very, very important and difficult open questions that no one has the answers to and they will shape 2012 and beyond.

What should we do? Should we develop contacts, personal contacts, I don’t know?

Yes, of course. Personal contacts, government contacts, business contacts, economic contacts and spiritual contacts, academic contacts, people talking to each other across enemy alliance is always better than people shooting at each other. And that what I believe in very strongly and that’s what I do every day at the week – is open doors, and open telephone lines, and open to have news and conversation, and places for people to meet and to talk to each other, that’s what we need to do. People have never made peace without talking to each other.