Military

DATE=10/21/2000

TYPE=ON THE LINE

NUMBER=1-00894 SHORT # 1

TITLE=ON THE LINE: CRISIS IN THE MIDDLE EAST EDITOR=OFFICE OF POLICY 619-0037

CONTENT=INSERTS AVAILABLE IN AUDIO SERVICES

THEME: UP, HOLD UNDER AND FADE

Anncr:On the Line a discussion of United States policy and contemporary issues. This week, "Crisis in the Middle East." Here is your host, ----------.

Host:Hello and Welcome to On the Line. An emergency summit was held in Egypt in an attempt to halt the escalating violence between Palestinians and Israelis. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat accepted an unsigned agreement to halt the violence. President Bill Clinton told those attending the summit that "the future of the peace process and the stability of the region are at stake."

David Wurmser is director of the Middle East Studies Program at the American Enterprise Institute. He says that there has been a failure by Palestinian leaders to prepare their people for peace.

Wurmser: In Israel, we have seen a constant process over the last eight years of preparing the Israeli public for concessions, preparing Israel for certain recognition of Palestinian sensitivities. Unfortunately, we've never really seen that on the Palestinian side or, even more broadly, in the Arab world. There is still an active process of a delegitimization of Israel and a sense of, well, we may let Israel exist because it's powerful and it can't be dealt with otherwise. But the Jewish people still don't really have a legitimate right to be here. That's been the constant theme in Palestinian textbooks and Palestinian rhetoric and general rhetoric in the Middle East.

Roscoe Suddarth is president of the Middle East Institute and a former U.S. ambassador to Jordan. He says that the Palestinians have made concessions and that peace is still possible.

Suddarth: They were willing to talk. These negotiations are ongoing. We haven't seen bottom lines yet. Even in Jerusalem, they were talking about Israeli control over the area around the Wailing Wall, around the Jewish quarter. There are a number of concessions that were made my Arafat.

Patrick Clawson is director of research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He agrees that peace is still possible but that it will be a different kind of peace that was possible before.

Clawson: I think that the character of the peace that we're likely to see over the next three to five years is going to be very different from what it would have been in July. The character of the peace we would've seen at Camp David would have been a peace based on cooperation between Palestinians and Israelis. And now the character of the peace is going to be much more separation. I think that there is going to be a heavy price paid for this, particularly by Palestinians, who are going to suffer tremendously economically from this greater separation from Israel that Israelis will insist on in order to improve their personal security.

Host:Roscoe Suddarth from the Middle East Institute says that it will take much longer for Israel and the Palestinian Authority to reach an agreement than many anticipated. For On the Line, this is ---------.

Anncr:You've been listening to "On the Line" a discussion of United States policies and contemporary issues. This is -------.