Violence and the “Right to Exist”

SCHIEFFER: Mr. President, there is certainly no shortage of questions to ask you today, and I guess I had better start with this thunderbolt from the Middle East that happened yesterday. We had a democratic election that the United States and others in the West encouraged, and, of all things, the party that has sworn to destroy Israel wins the majority of the seats in the Palestinian parliament. You said yesterday that unless they renounce violence, we can't deal with them.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Um-hmm.

SCHIEFFER: What if they don't renounce violence?

PRESIDENT BUSH: I--I said two things. One, they've got to get rid of that arm of their party which is armed and violent, and secondly, they have got to get rid of that part of their platform that says they want to destroy Israel. And if they don't, we won't deal with them.

SCHIEFFER: Well, what--

PRESIDENT BUSH: Aid packages won't go forward. Well, that's their decision to make. It's--first of all, the government is beginning to form. They're trying to work through all the—as you said, it was a lightning bowler, and it was--caught everybody's surprise, I suspect, including--I know that the Fatah was caught by surprise, maybe Hamas, and they have yet to work out how they are going to form their government. But we won't be providing help to a government that wants to destroy our ally and friend. I don't see how you can be a partner in peace if you--if you don't renounce violent aims. The--the other thing that's interesting about the elections, though, that I found fascinating is that it reminded me that the elections are window panes into the actual condition of society.

SCHIEFFER: Um-hmm.

PRESIDENT BUSH: In other words, a lot of us were assuming that maybe life was this way or that way, and all of a sudden the people showed up to vote and said we want something different, we want good, honest government; we want people to listen to our needs; we want people to provide services so our families can, you know, be--grow up and be prosperous.

SCHIEFFER: Let me just ask you this question. You say you can't deal with them, but would it be beneficial to try to talk to them, to talk to them about moderating their stance, or is there just simply nothing to talk about?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Well--well, in essence I am talking to them now.

Bob Schierffer. Interview with President Bush, CBS, 1/27/06.

Moderator: What would you consider a viable alternative to the current Palestinian situation. Would the current occupied territories serve as an adequate sovereign state with a government independent of Jewish influence? Mr. Pearle, can we start with you?

Richard Pearle: I’m a lot less enthusiastic about that than I was an hour ago. I don’ have an answer. I think I probably differ from professor Chomsky who has an answer for absolutely everything. And will tell it to you at great length. I really don’t have a solution, except to say that a precondition for any solution must be a recognition on the part of all parties of the legitimacy of all parties. That is, you cannot build a political agreement on the premise that a Jewish state in Palestine is illegitimate. It isn’t going to happen. And if it did happen it would not be stable or secure. So that seems to me the necessary first step. Professor Chomsky has all but acknowledged that he too thinks the PLO ought to recognize the right of Israel to exist as an independent Jewish state in Palestine, and I hope that he has more influence with them than he’s likely to have with the makers of American foreign policy.

Moderator: Professor Chomsky,…what would you consider a viable alternative to the current Palestinian situation?

Noam Chomsky: Well, there’s an obvious viable alternative, and the international consensus that I described has in fact outlined it. Most of Europe, most of the aligned countries, the major Arab states, the mainstream of the PLO for well over a decade, have called for a two-state political settlement, arrived at by negotiations, leading to mutual recognition. The PLO doesn’t have to wait for my advice, which I wouldn’t give ‘em anyway, to call for mutual recognition of Israel and a new Palestine state. They’ve been calling for that for years. Now, if you listen to Mr. Pearle carefully you’ll notice that a word was sneaked in there. That was the word recognition of their “legitimacy.” Now that they will not do. There’s an interesting diplomatic history with regard to the Middle East. The United States has been trying to block a settlement for a long time. After it became obvious that the PLO and the Arab states were quite willing to accept the “existence” of Israel, the “existence” of Israel; that is, to achieve a two-state settlement with recognized borders, with international guarantees - with mutual recognition and so on - after it became obvious that this was possible it was necessary to up the ante a notch. And what happened was, and here, take a look at recent American diplomatic history, again I urge you to look at the documents, very informative, you’ll notice that the position was changed. It was not enough for them to recognize Israel, they had to recognize the “legitimacy” of Israel, or the right to “exist” of Israel. Now, right to “exist” is something that doesn’t exist in international law. No state recognizes the right of any other state to “exist.” Mexico does not recognize the right of the United States

RP: Most states don’t question the right of other states to exist.

NC: Excuse me, that’s not true. We reject outright the right of the Soviet Union to “exist” in its present borders…

RP: No we don’t.

NC: That’s why we have a “Captive Nations” week every year. And we may be perfectly right in doing that. Mexico does not recognize the right of the United State to “exist” within its present borders, which happen to include a third of Mexico. In fact, in the international system, there is a notion of recognition of the “state.” But there is no of the “legitimacy” of a state. To call on the Palestinian to accept this new concept is to ask them to accept, not only that there’s a state in an area which they regard as their home, they’re willing to recognize that, but to recognize the “right” of that state to dispossess them. Of course they’re not going to accept that, nor should they. There’s no such thing in international affairs, and the effort to try to obtain it is pointless and absurd. Let me now make clear that while the PLO has with varying degrees of ambiguity, but often with great precision I should say, called for a political settlement along the lines I mentioned, Israel and the United States have been equally clear. Namely, in rejecting any such political settlement. The United States and Israel reject any, not only do they reject the right of the Palestinian to self-determination, they reject any manifestation of that right. In fact, U.S. and Israel rejectionism is so extreme, that the United States and Israel will not even permit the Palestinians to select their own representatives for eventual negotiations. That’s really extreme. If somebody had come along in 1947 and said the Jews in Palestine can be represented, but not by the Zionists, we would have called that a regression to Nazism, correctly. The same principle holds here. The fact that the PLO has engaged in terror, as have all, to my knowledge, other national movements, including George Washington, is obviously not the point. By those standards we would have rejected the Zionist movement, which engaged in extreme terror. In fact, the current prime minister of Israel, Itzhak Shamir, was the head of one of the leading terrorist groups, the group that assassinated the U.N. ambassador Folke Bernadotte, among many other atrocities, and was the author, in 1947, of a pamphlet in which he not only advocated terror, but said that “there was no moral barrier whatsoever to terror, nor can there be.” Well, yeah, that’s what national movements are like. But that doesn’t stop us from dealing with them. And it doesn’t stop us, we’re like that too. All of these are simply excuses to try to evade the political settlement that has long been possible. Now that’s a political settlement among national groups which “exist,” one of them has its national “existence” realized in the state of Israel, the other is under military occupation. If we agree – there’s a point of principle here of course – if we agree that Palestinians have the same human rights as Jews – maybe we don’t – but if we agree to that, then there is an obvious form of political settlement. Namely, the two-state settlement of the sort that we have rejected, that Israel rejects, just as its governing party continues to claim Jordan. Now, I don’t think we should back that. I think we should allow a move toward a political settlement. It won’t be easy. There’s a lot of problems. But at least we can begin to move in that direction.

Debate between Noam Chomsky and Richard Pearle, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, 1988.