Conversations in Jerusalem, #1

My schedule here in Israel and Palestine is gradually coming together. I decided I needed to get a bit more specific in defining what I want to report while here… Well, that process continues over time, anyway, with serendipity and learning both having their effect on raw intentionality.
This morning I started working my cellphone fairly intensively. I had a good talk with my old friend Ze’ev Schiff, who gave me some good ideas of other people to talk to. He talked a little about how he sees the political situation here but we agreed that I’d try to get down to Tel Aviv next week to catch up with him in person.
I had another good (though short) talk with Naomi Chazan, the former Deputy Speaker of the Knesset from the leftist Meretz Party. She sounded extremely busy. She lives here in Jerusalem but is working very hard on the party’s election campaign– which is based in Tel Aviv. So we’ll try to get together either here or there in the days ahead.
I talked with the PA’s (former? outgoing?) Deputy Foreign Minister, Abdullah Abdullah, and arranged to meet him in Ramullah tomorrow.
I talked with a few other very interesting people, then I struck reportorial “gold” when I called the former Israeli Ambassador to the UN, Dore Gold, whom I’ve known for many years: he suggested I go talk to him this very afternoon, which I did. I’d actually asked if he had 30 mins to talk but the interview ended up being well over an hour.
Dore is now head of something called the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, which has made news in recent days by hosting public events for former Chief of Staff Moshe Ya’alon and for Maj. Gen. Yair Naveh who’s the commander of the “Central” Front (i.e., facing onto Jordan)… Naveh caused a big diplomatic ruckus by telling a supposedly “closed” session at the JCPA that “a dangerous axis starting in Iran, continuing in Iraq and Jordan is in the process of conception” and that, “I am not sure there will be another king [in Jordan] after King Abdullah.” Jordan’s chargé d’affaires in Israel (who had had a colleague at the event) immediately condemned Naveh’s words saying they could have a “negative effect” on Israeli-Jordanian relations.
(Naveh subsequently apologized.)
Well, anyway, the JCPA is located in a lovely old stone house in the “Greek Colony” neighborhood of south-west Jerusalem. I waited for Dore for around 5 minutes in the same conference room/library where Naveh had spoken, then went into D’s office where we talked.
Dore Gold has a very definite point of view about the nature of the current situation. It is quite clear from all the conversations I’ve had with Israelis since coming here that the successive shocks of Sharon proposing the unilateral disengagement from Gaza; him then pushing it through and implementing it; him splitting from Likud and then forming his own party; and him then suffering a serious stroke had already, as of January 24, completely changed the political lineup in the country and left much of its political class reeling… And then came the Hamas victory.
Gold’s view of the political effects of this was as follows:

The Hamas victory has thrown everything off-kilter. Until that happened, the left here all thought that soon we’d all go to Camp David and get a negotiated peace, something similar to what Barak or Clinton had suggested. A second strand, the one that became Kadima, had a model of unilateral moves by Israel leading to something that over time would also include a Palestinian state. And the third position, Likud’s, placed the stress on what Israel must retain. That is, the Jordan Valley and the topographical points that could threaten Israel. The likud doesn’t rule out either unilateralism or peace negotiations. But it doesn’t place its emphasis in either of those places…
But now? With the Hamas victory?
The idea of a negotiated solution becomes just a pretty theory. The idea of further unilateral disengegements as espoused by Kadima, has become complicated. Before, disengagement was conceivable because you would have an ineffectual PA left in charge on the other side. But now, we would have an active enemy there, and one which moreover would be further empowered by any further disengagement. So it’s very complicated! So only the Likud position stays more or less the same: simply to emphaisize that we need to retain and maximize Israel’s strength…

Well, as you can see we had a pretty interesting conversation there. (And that was only a small part of it… You’ll have to wait for one of my longer, more ‘composed’ pieces to get the rest of the nuggets delivered to you.)
After I finished with Dore, I decided to walk a little further out of town and go and see the folks at B’tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. Actually, I hadn’t really calculated very well just how far it would be, and the afternoon was warm and sunny… But still, I had an interesting walk out along Emek Refa’im and through much of the booming Talpiot industrial zone to the office building where they are headquartered.
I had left a message for Jessica Montell, their director, in the morning. But I guess she’d never gotten around to following up on it, and she was just rushing out the door as I arrived. So we said a quick “Hello.” I hadn’t met her before, though I used to know one of her predecessors fairly well. We agreed we’d try to get together another time when I’m in town.
So I came back to my room,caught up with some things here, and went to dinner with a most warm, welcoming, and interesting Jerusalem family whom I might tell you more about later. We sat in an amazing, high-vaulted old room– square, with stone walls a meter thick– and with a window that looked across at Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Dome of the Rock, and the high walls of the Old City… all of them bathed in golden floodlights. It was almost magical to look at…
Another busy day tomorrow.