Focus 580; Israel After 40 Months Of Intifada: Winners And Losers

In this hour we'll be talking about politics in the Middle East specifically in Israel. Our guest for the show is Dr. Miron meds Xeni. He is a senior lecturer at Tel Aviv University and East Asian studies and at Hebrew University in Israel Studies. He was born and educated in Jerusalem and also went to school here in the United States he has a degree in Political Science from City College in New York. His master's in international relations from Georgetown Ph.D. an East Asian studies from Harvard. His main academic interests are in modern Japan modern Japanese history and Israel Japan relations. He also has worked in government in Israel he's spent a number of years as director of Israel's government press office has been visiting lecturer various universities in this country in Canada and elsewhere he's also a former editorial writer for The Jerusalem Post and other daily newspapers in Israel use or visiting the campus his visit sponsored by the program in Jewish culture and society. Within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and in fact he will be giving a talk on the topic Israel after 40 months of intifada winners and losers and he'll be speaking

this evening at 7:30 in the reading room at the Levis faculty center on the campus. And I assume that anyone interested in hearing him should feel welcome to it to turn out. And of course here this morning if you have questions as we talk they are welcome to The only thing we ask. People are busy brief as possible and we ask that's the we can keep our program moving. Accommodate as many callers as possible but anyone is welcome to call 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. That's for champagne Urbana toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 so if you're listening in and around Illinois Indiana it would be a long distance call for you. Use the toll free line in fact anyone listening if you're listening on the Internet. As long as you're in the United States you may also use the toll free line. Well thanks very much for being here. Good morning to you. I thought I would ask it to begin about what seems to be roiling Israeli politics right at the moment and that is the recent announcement by the prime minister Mr. Sharon to evacuate all Jewish settlers from

Gaza from the Gaza Strip and he said apparently he's quoted as saying I'm working on the assumption that in the future there will be no Jews in Gaza. And it made a lot of people in Israel very angry. What what is behind this this move by this unilateral move by Mr. Sharon. He's been talking about this now for the last two months. And this is a major change in departure for him because in many respects he has been the father the patron of settlements for the last 35 years including some of the settlements in Gaza. He apparently has come to the conclusion that Israel can no longer wait for the Palestinian Authority or other Palestinian organizations to make up their mind what sort of settlement they envision. And therefore Israel will have to do certain things unilaterally the fence is one such element. And the idea was to start with

Gaza. This is not something new. When Rabin and Arafat negotiated the first Also agreement almost 11 years ago the first two would draw all of Israeli troops was from Gaza. In other words the notion then was Gaza in Jericho first being a number of occasions spoke about the need to get out of Gaza. It was becoming too costly. You had more troops there guarding the. By now I think 7000 settlers and does the majority of Israelis would be quite pleased to get rid of Gaza. Therefore in this respect Sharon is following some of the ideas of Rabin. What is new is that apparently he is determined to go ahead and do it. And if I read correctly the polls 60 percent of Israelis are with him.

Go ahead and do it. 37 or 35 percent of Israelis are opposed to the idea. Not so much because they love the Gaza Strip but because they fear this many. This may mean the beginning of some pullback from the West Bank which certainly has a difference to TGP motional religious historical connotations. This it seems that this announcement put further downward pressure on Mr Frons approval ratings we had already weren't terribly good. Is does does this how does this affect one way or another do you think the way that people in Israel think about how he has how well he has done. You know as prime minister his ratings has been have been very low because he was elected twice on the platform. I should bring peace and security more security and peace. And regrettably it's not that he has been unable to deliver I don't think anyone could deliver

such a promise. But in the last three years and four months of uprising and the total number of Israeli DID have been around nine hundred fifty which is an acceptable figure for us. If you translate that into American terms this would mean anywhere between 35 and 40000. And it's a huge number. Add to this the number of wounded. Increasingly it became obvious that it's not Sharon who can handle this. Israel finds it very difficult to deal with essentially urban guerrilla warfare in which civilians are involved not fighting and ordinary army. There is no recognised front line and above all there's a great deal of media involvement. You cannot wield all the power that you've got. There are severe limitations restrictions on what you can do.

Americans are now realizing what this is all about in Iraq. There are certain things you can't do. You have the power you have the weapons you have the weapon systems and the strength. But there are restraints there are limitations on certain things that you can do. And therefore Sharon found himself losing ground at home also partly in his own party especially those who felt that he was not tough enough. He was not strong enough on dealing with terror. Hence he had to come up with a with a far clearer policy than he indicated in the past. And I think for the last two months we see a more coherent. Policy on the part of Sharon. We still have to see if it's going to be implemented. I think he will try in implemented. He also has an idea of putting it to a referendum

in Israel which I have almost convinced that he will win this referendum maybe to bypass political objections on the POS on the part of at least two parties in his coalition and probably about 25 30 percent of the members of parliament who belong to his party. We're not very happy with us Mr Sharon himself has been embroiled in some political scandal. He has not been directly implicated. He certainly hasn't been charged with anything but his his that this he's involved sort of indirectly because his sons are directly involved with allegations of bribery and breaking campaign finance law. And certainly if he were indicted he would have to step down and it's my understanding that within law could within his party people are already starting to

jockey for position who is going to be the next leader. And you know they've been dropping for positions for the last year year and a half partly because the man is 75. And age alone creates the month for a successor. The frontrunner at the moment is at the new home. A different Netanyahu than the one that we had. I knew I was prime minister for almost three years and he was put out by the electorate in 1909 a more mature more chastened more seasoned Benjamin Netanyahu. Who in the last year has attempted to basically rebuild restructure Israel's economy with some success integrate your low position. But I think we're back more or less to a new 10 Yahoo. I do not see in the Labor party anyone who can really challenge new

€10 or Sharon. Mr Netanyahu's is the finance minister right. And I know that as you say there have been some people I think have been very critical of some of his economic policies and in fact have gone as far as to say that as damaging to Israel's economy as the Intifada has been that his economic policy has been more damaging. Not so much economic policies or other social policies. What he has been trying to do in some respects is a combination of Thatcherism and Reaganism. But in the case of Israel it was compounded by the fact that the intifada has severely hurt Israel's economy. I believe we have lost every year about five billion dollars goods and services production which represents 5 percent in the gross

domestic product which is a lot. Unemployment has gone up tourism down investments down. All this compounded with the crash partly of the high tech sector and we were increasingly dependent on high tech. Therefore new to Njal claims I think with justifiable he hates he's right on that. That the first order of priority was to rescue the Israeli economy from a total crash and total collapse. He claims that this almost took place in June of 2000 into some strange reason. He then argued that this could have happened in the summer of 2000 and 3 were it not for his economic policies. Plus the American loan guarantee of one billion dollars is or was

able to borrow and tide itself over. There is certainly criticism because Israel was used to probably a third of the budget went into what is called transfer of funds. Old Age Pension children allowances unemployment benefits medical. You could do for this at the time. It's in the mid 90s when we had a budget surplus and when you did not have an uprising your defense costs were down and therefore there was enormous pressure on the government of the time you know as prime minister. Then on Barak if you have surplus why don't you be generous with it and raise pensions and benefits and that sort of thing. We can't afford it simply count afforded and therefore he is calling for rationalization. The main complaint against him is that increasing segments of the

population who think are feeling the pressure to such an extent that are let's say of 7 million Israelis about a million and a half are just on the poverty line. They include quite a few children. By the way mainly Arab Bedouin ultra-Orthodox Jewish families. And this is something that we have never experienced before and that has led to enormous outcry. One thing that I read was that and you can correct me if this is this is not correct that in his real defense spending is 10 percent of GDP around something like that around and that if you take a look at other you know the what it what is the average in other European industrial democracy out of the house about two half of that is much less what it how much to if indeed Israel could get to the point where where it was it was at

peace. How much different was would that make what how much could you back off on defense spending and put that money into something else that's country would be paradise. The question about that. I teach Japanese history one of the reasons for Japanese economic miracle is the fact that for years and years they had no defense but because A they ruled out use of war be they had an American umbrella. Now their defense budget cannot go above 1 percent of GDP which in itself is a huge defense budget and they have a very small army. Regrettably we have a huge defense budget. The only time that the defense budget was cut in favor of education welfare health and so on was in one thousand seventy three. Under Golda Meir Then came the war of 1973 and we went back to the bad bad ways.

There is going to be if the defense budget is cut. This is going to make an enormous difference in infrastructure in education hire a school a high school mentoring school. This is going to make an enormous difference in the investment in science and technology. One point we were investing great deal we had. The country will certainly look totally different. Let me introduce Again our guest and we do have a call I will get to or speaking with Dr. member on meds ne. He's senior lecturer in East Asian Studies at Tel Aviv University and also senior lecturer in Israel Studies at Hebrew University. He's here visiting that the campus and we'll be talking this evening and was good enough to come here spend some time with us. Your questions are welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 2 2 2 9 4 5 5 of color in Bloomington Indiana. On our

line number 4 0 0 0 0. I want to talk about bias against Israel. Well I think the press bias has hurt the peace process. For example when you give someone a present this read the people through the press. People think the power that come through to the nation is real conquer. And dispossess Now the truth is which the president made clear. The truth is the Palestinians never were a nation the land of Palestine which they are now demanding that that portion depend on it that the Palestinians are now demanding the Gaza Strip and the West Bank those lands never belong to the Palestinians the Gaza Strip was part of Egypt it belongs to Egypt. The Palestinians know that the can never own depressive not make that clear. And they also don't during the time that Egypt own the Gaza Strip that there was never any pressure that Egypt should

give the Gaza Strip to the Palestinians and not whatever and I assume that the major part of the Gaza Strip the Palestinian So the West Bank was part of Jordan and the press never advocated that Jordan should give the West Bank to the Palestinians. In fact when the Palestinians threatened Jordan Jordan massacred them September the rocket have been turning the tanks loose on them and nobody complained. Not not Israel of course captured both the Gaza Strip and the West Bank in the 67 war. And when when when all. These Arab countries attacked them and one of them. I'm not only the Israel captors I'm going to review the process. Hey you got to get the Palestinian problem through the mission. And you've got to give the Gaza Strip and the West Bank to the Palestinians and we will recognize some of them might have been member of our own nation and automation won't. All right point made. I follow your drift. And let me

preface let me answer this. I spent 15 years of my life dealing with the press and media especially foreign press in Israel. I can assure you of one think many of the things that you say are right but that doesn't get us anywhere. The media does not hurt the peace process on the country the media played an important role in the events leading let's say to 91 the Madrid conference. The media was very fair in dealing with us on the eve of the Six Day War. The media was very fair in dealing with us in the Gulf War when we were asked not to become involved. The media was by then large fared during the Second Gulf War. I would not ascribe to them all the evils that you think they are displaying. It is true we are not always very happy sometimes very angry with what the media is doing.

That's part of the game. The media cannot go into ancient history. Never forget CNN. I think it was CNN or Fox News they told me. Just simply we have one minute 40 seconds for an id.. We cannot go into ancient history. No time for that. We have to show action. We have to show color. We have to show things exploding. We have to show blood. And that's the name of the game. You have to take it with a lot of grain of salt. Therefore my argument is very simple. The media has a role to play. The present uprising to a large extent is a uprising of perceptions of struggle for perception. The media plays a very important role. Not all of it is biased against Israel. You are lucky you live here and I do not assume that you read the European press compared to the American president

rippin is far more problematic. But even then there are differences. The main point I want to make to you is this. As long as Israel remains a working democracy which means freedom of the press free access to correspondents local and foreign to where the action is virtually no censorship. Israel will pay a price for these freedoms democracy by its nature does not always help public relations would be much easier for public relations if you were operating in a dictatorship. We are not and we know we are paying a price. I think it's worthwhile and I'm also upset on occasion but we've come a very long way and it's a point we were very angry. I think by now we have a more balanced view

of what the media is doing. Well let me ask you specifically about the coverage of the current intifada. I think that some people have complained about coverage and have very specifically they said that the media in the way that they cover. Israeli you know actions of the Israeli military against Palestinians and the way that they cover suicide bombings and that somehow there is and the coverage seems to be saying that that somehow one is more egregious than the other. What do you think about that. We are not there. We a number of Israelis are not very happy with the way the present uprising has been covered partly because the foreign press which covers the West Bank and Gaza in order to retain their sources you know order to retain

the possibility of working within these territories in order to retain their contacts with the Palestinian Authority Hamas Islamic Jihad prepared to lean backwards and are prepared to in fact accept certain demands by Palestinians don't show this don't film this. We will confiscate that park and so on. We saw this when there was a lynch to Israeli reserve soldiers strayed into Ramallah. They were lynched literally. And Italian cameraman captured this and he aired it. The local correspondent of the talent state radio and television or I wrote a letter to Palestinians already saying sorry it wasn't me. Somebody else that is not affiliated with us and so on. Which of course got our back up why you Paula Johnson. It was a lynch. They were also able to

operate freely in Israel and therefore there are double standards. This very annoyed with and I'll give you an example I'm pinchin this to you before a Daily Illini this morning in a top headline 15 killed in Gaza skirmish huge letters third headline below much smaller dozens die in suicide bombing. This is poor reporting this is poor editing this is poor judgment. Hundred people were killed in Iraq in the last two days by Iraqis and therefore this leads you to the conclusion when Arabs kill Arabs. The no news or news of less significance when the Israeli army goes into Gaza in 15 are killed at cold months the top ad like this we feel is bias. This is bad this is not right.

Let's stop with the color line number one. Urbana Well yeah I'd like to comment briefly on the previous caller. None of the countries presently out of the Middle East have historical justification for their boundaries. Iraq is a creation of the British in France. You know for most of the other nations there today and to make the generalizations he made that there is no Palestinian people really is pointless. His statement that it was part of Egypt is true it was they were both part of the Ottoman Empire which the French. British carved up answers to placing the Palestinians back in the union

with the Jordanians that really it's a pointless idea. I think we have two choices either two states Israel and Palestinian state or one state can binding both which I think would really be preferable but impossible. I cannot comment on what you have said you know in some respects you are equating what Saddam Hussein argued on the eve of 1991 when the occupied Kuwait. Well you had justification for it. He said Although I'm totally opposed to what he did he said that to all the boarders were the creation of colonial French and British colonialism. But he did something else. He challenge the legitimacy of every single Arab ruler but himself. And this is why Egypt and Syria and Saudi Arabia and Kuwait and others joined the American coalition on the Palestinians.

Israel has recognized the Palestinian people. Israel has recognized in fact the Palestinian nation. Not only in the whole slow agreement but subsequent understandings and agreements. Secondly Israel has accepted the creation of a Palestinian state and that includes the present prime minister of Israel Mr. Sharon. He said yes going to be a two state solution as envisaged initially by what is called the Bush vision of June 2002 and more recently by the roadmap which happens to be the only viable plan on the table at the moment I would disagree and there is also the. Need a plan. No the Geneva Initiative is a private exercise and the Geneva Initiative incidentally has been rejected by most Israelis. I don't know about how many Palestinians Arafat's certainly has not endorsed. I have

read every word of the Geneva plan I can assure it's bad it's bad for many reasons we don't have time to go into it. Geneva plan is it's called the initiative. It's a nonstarter. Look there are many other plans. Tenet Mitchell Sharon Clinton the Barak plan I can give you a whole list of plans at the moment. What is on the table acceptable to Israel Palestinians Americans Europeans U.N. Russian Federation is what is called The Road Map. Unfortunately nothing came out of it at this stage of the game maybe something eventually Well I have my doubts. So Christian is history is very important but it's where do we go from here or what's going to happen anymore oh I think that's essentially what I said. That yes the is no historical basis. Your previous caller would have said that Israel has

a right to the whole of the Palestinian area because in his view your people must all return to his land before the Second Coming can come and I don't know I don't remember him saying well he had a previous instance previously and I and I think you recognize his rhetoric well enough to know that this is where it's coming from. But anyway that's not the neither here nor there. But that is his basis for what he is saying. We heard him we heard you. All right well I think we both made our point and I appreciate your point and we should go on. Thank you. Well we will indeed will go to another caller in Belgium near Danville the country but not too far away from here. The line well I don't like. MK your collar not your car you're going to her are pretty

cryptic. I'm going to go about everywhere. Presented in front of the media. We were speaking of various trends that have gone on here recently I got to remember back there not really credibly there would be on not really soldiers that would get ready on Sunday would put that on page. It kind of took a number of young boys growing rocks that were killed going to be put on the last page. It's been a problem in the Syria prolong time. Thank you very much. All right again you have a comment on that. Yeah you're welcome. The reporting is always a very tricky thing. Partly it depends on what happens on that day. What other news is there also who's reporting what is the knowledge experience background of whoever is reporting on Middle Eastern

affairs. What is the judgment of the editor of the Knight did you get your copy editor or whoever happens to decide where the story goes into. Sure there have been a number of cases when Israeli side was presented one way and the Palestinian side present another way. I am fairly fairly relaxed and calm I don't get over excited because where this goes into a newspaper give you one example there was a massive earthquake in Israel yesterday 4.9 on the Richter scale. We haven't had such an earthquake since 1927 and I didn't see it. It wasn't CNN gave it about five seconds. I didn't see it in the media this morning has nothing to do with Palestinians and I think do with Israelis it involve the West Bank. It involves Lebanon. It involved Israel not much reporting on it.

We have to take it in our stride and not get over excited about this. We have about 20 minutes left in this part of focus 580 our guest I would like to interest again. Dr. Moran magazine. He's a senior lecturer at both Tel Aviv University and that Hebrew University at Tel Aviv. He is a lecturer in East Asian studies and that is his academic his main academic field and also is a lecturer in Israel Studies at Hebrew University has a Ph.D. in East Asian studies from Harvard University. And as he said little bit earlier he spent a number of years as director of Israel's government press office. He has been visiting lecturer various universities and the this country. Also Canada Australia Singapore and has been former editorial writer for The Jerusalem Post and other daily papers in Israel he's here visiting the campus visit sponsored by the program in Jewish culture and society within the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences he'll be giving a talk on the topic Israel after 40 months of intifada winners and losers tonight 7:30 in the reading room at the Levis faculty center on the UVA campus.

And Anyone's welcome to attend. People I have read some articles recently suggesting that maybe there are fewer people in Israel who actually do believe in a two state solution anymore. You think that that's that still is something people actually believe can have yes. I suspect that among Israelis probably 30 to 40 percent are not sure whether this is the right solution. The majority will go along but there is still a very strong minority and say it's no way. God's given country historic rights religious rights. Anyone who needs territory is committing a major sin. Putting country at risk. As long as the other side has not come to terms not recognised much deeper than that. Come to terms has gone through a major psychological change in its attitude towards the very concept of a separate entity called

Israel that is basically a major problem. It's not recognition it's acceptance and that takes much longer. And that has to do a great deal with psychological change educational change that's going to last for generations. Something else that we talked a bit earlier about Mr. Sharon's announcement that he had his intention was to to remove the settlers from Gaza has also talked about taking. I'm not sure if you study about all Aris talking about some of Israel's Arab population and making them part of this Palestinian state. Not sure I'm not sure I'm not aware that you're on has at any time suggested exchange of population. There are other Israelis who have come up with the idea of an exchange of population and territory something incidentally that has a historic precedent. There was an exchange of population

between Turkey and Greece one thousand twenty two thousand nine hundred twenty three. So this theoretically can be done. For example there is a certain area in Israel not far from where the wall is now. It's called the little triangle where there is a Israeli Palestinian population probably quarter of a million people and some Israelis have been saying why shouldn't they be part of the Palestinian state. The territory will be part of the Palestinian state in return for an exchange of territory where there will be three main settlement block that will go to Israel. The settlement block an idea has been endorsed by the US. Both Clinton and Bush and as part of the road map I have by enormous doubts whether the Palestinians the Israeli Arabs have any intention of living in a list and you

know sorting fact most of them reject the idea. Right. Think thank you very much we are really Arabs were just in humans would rather live in Israel or live under Arafat's or whoever succeeds. The issue that some people point to is the demographic trends that suggest that if things keep going as they are one day Jews could be a minority in Israel and apparently there are some Israelis that are worried about that. There are many Israelis who are worried about that and this is one of the major reasons for the construction of the barrier of the fence or the wall or whatever you want to call it. And this is why increasing number is really saying let us separate unilaterally or disengage. Otherwise Israel would cease to be a Jewish state. And it is something that is worrying more of us increasingly certain. True Well we have some other callers let's go to Danville and lie number four.

Hello yes I have a question what are the requirements to a citizen if there is real and I don't have to believe they're Jewish but if you are a Jew you come in under the law of the return and more or less automatically you become an Israeli citizen. If you are a non jew depending on who you're married to depending Theoretically you can come under Family reunification plan or you can apply for Israeli citizenship it takes time but I remind you that all of the seven million people living in Israel proper excluding territories one point to about 20 percent are not Jews Christians mainly Muslims Druze chica Sian's and 20 percent is a huge non-Jewish population and there there there are others who come and apply and can become Israeli citizens.

I don't remember the exact details of two ply ministry of interior and so on but this is happening virtually every day. Champagne County next line to hello. Hi you know you talked about the loan guarantee the nine billion dollar refinancing but it wasn't widely common. Then maybe it's because it's so in consequential but there was a tranche of two hundred sixty three million it was held back by the Bush administration kind of like the previous Bush administration to evinced some disapproval I think it wasn't about the wall it's more about certain settlements major settlements. But I don't know if the figures are exact but yes they would held because of settlements. Yeah but but it's it's worse than a you know it's less than a percent actually of the 1 billion refinancing but it I guess it was sort of new new money but it was widely commented on here that I still wonder whether it's just because it's sort of in consequential It doesn't even mean 273 million was held back which just means that the refinancing had to go at a higher Ira.

I dawdled the technicalities here. It may not have received play in Israel it certainly did because it's an expression of displeasure. Israel has a number of disagreements with the United States on settlements on the war on the meaning and nature of Israeli security on American arms sales the Middle East Israeli arms sales abroad. There's a series of disagreements and occasionally they flare up. And this is one of the manifestations. It seems to me that. The argument about the press is I don't know what government you were whether you were civil service but the press here is this wretched that's always quite favorable. One thing that hasn't been noticed by the press is that the current Bush administration doesn't condemn the so-called targeted assassinations the killings anymore but they they sort of had a perfunctory way of doing that in the past.

But they don't anymore it seems and there's not very little comment that you know when you know when this displeasure ended on 9 12 you had 9/11. No no there were there were condemned condemnations After that I think it maybe was more related the fact that the U.S. is now running a occupation in Iraq and Iraq so they're doing more or less the same thing you know or less the same thing. Look no longer geography when you're faced with a situation you act in certain ways to ensure the safety of your civilians of your forces in the case of Israel its mainly civilians not troops in case of Iraq U.S. troops because there are hardly any civilians but. We feel very strongly that prior to 9/11 there were questions being asked about the scope and magnitude dimension of the Israeli response Israeli reaction you're overreacting to that proportion and so on. All this

ended on 9/11 in the morning. Well that's the plan for going after Iraq predate 9/11 and 9/11 was just a pretext. But that's that's our own policy and why we're in that situation is the sort of needs to be examined and not for me to come and time against in this country. Well well I'm but I'm trying to make it as long as you brought up the analogy. We need to know why. Well the territorial You know the territories or so. Important I mean the story. Oh I don't know what the story Paula. It's only just you know if the territory is important also from a strategic point of view. Imagine for a moment that you will have hostile territory six miles from O'Hare airport or a hostile territory. It was 14 my 13 14 miles from your major urban center which is Tel

Aviv. This is why we are terrified about the proximity of Palestinian territory to certain Israeli areas. Not all of them. Some of them because we've had regrettably an attempt on one of our planes not in Israel or in Kenya. And therefore we are very very concerned over this sort of thing. You just have to remember the previous line the armistice demarcation line 49 67 to see how narrow the waist of Israel is and therefore what is our concern. Well then what. Well maybe it's productive. They ask you directly about what how you feel about the so-called sense barrier. I am very much in favor but on the not being on the green line I have in mind the Green Line Never mind the Green Line Never mind the green line Green Line was an obvious does demarkation line. Not a fun political border. Specifically stated if you

want the chapter and verse paragraph 5 of Israel to Egypt since this agreement this line is not to be construed as final political border and therefore when ever people say this was the border this is the legal border. No it wasn't it was recognized as such by only two countries Pakistan and Britain. But now I can understand Pakistan it was not a single Arab country recognized this as the final border. Other words to be negotiate. Yeah but if you put a fence up that's sort of the fact and skin can change events can change. Easiest thing is to move to fences about well. The U.S. role this is what I've been preoccupied with and that's why the attention that it gets here should get more attention. That's why it's important because we are you know writing the occupation etc..

I'm not sure if you are under a patient but it certainly should get attention here. And I think it does. I'm jumping in here we have only about seven eight minutes left. And certainly if there is somebody else out there wants to call real quick I can and we try to get him. We have talked to the conflict you were talking about has been going on for a long time and as you pointed out time after time proposals have been made to settle it. Why. Well what's lacking. Why is it then that so far today none of these attempts have worked because increasingly people have come to the conclusion that the core issue is not your patient. The core issue is the refusal of a the Muslim world. It's 57 countries. B the Arab world. Twenty one countries maybe with the exception of Egypt Jordan to come to terms with the idea of a separate entity in the Middle East called Israel a Jewish state. I misstate and the argument has never been over

a square mile or over territory. It's the principle. In recent years the trend has been and this is reflected increasingly by Hamas Islamic Jihad Iran Libya some of the other more radical Islamic countries to argue that the existence of Israel is anathema in Israel should go the way of the Crusaders did. And we do not accept this argument. We have no intention of going the way the Crusaders did or anyone else did. And therefore what you have here a conflict which is historic religious emotional. It involves economics it involves territory it involves refugees it involves rights it involves. The rate of development It involved in fact more recently we have become a little

Satan and the big Satan is the Western World America. The struggle against Israel increasingly is part of a global the slowest struggle against the West. Israel is seen as an outpost of the West in the Middle East and therefore it has to go. We disagree. This is not an ordinary struggle. This is not an ordinary struggle in the terms of the borders will be here. Some refugees will be there. Thank you very much. It involves Jerusalem for example which is a city holy to a billion a quarter Muslims 13 million Jews to a billion Roman Catholics to untold hundreds of millions of Protestants all of them would have to be involved at some point in the resolution. It's not strictly Israeli Ira. Hence the complexity and then I can assure you of something else in order to make your day nice.

Let's say there will be a resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Will this end the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. Not necessarily will this end just came to take over Saudi Arabia. No not good nick. Well this is an attempt by Libya to remain and the slimy state with this in the enmity over Iran. Other words and many developments in the Middle East. Totally unrelated unconnected to Israel. I remind you there was a war which lasted eight years between Iraq and Iran had nothing to do with Israel. So you have to think of a broader situation where there are entire rip rivalries rivalry between America and European Union. Increasingly we are no part of. Call it the war of civilizations it's limeys them versus the West. Israel is seen as an outpost

of the woods. We're trying to squeeze one more caller in here quickly. One two. Hello Yes hello. Yeah I was wondering what I bought. The state often via the borders of the state over is or are as follows the Mediterranean Sea. No contest. The borders between Israel and Egypt are marked in the Israel Egypt peace treaty the borders between Israel and Jordan from the Red Sea to the ditsy marked by the virtue of peace treaty the borders between Israel and Lebanon recognized because at some point Israel signed a treaty with Lebanon when actually trying to find 911 on its world signed a end of war treaty with Lebanon which Lebanon never ratified the date is 17th of May 1983. The new orders were during that time I want to know the first time I wasn't under occupation Lebanon was under military presence of Israel in about 20

percent of Lebanon certainly not in Beirut. Thank you to the capitano route. Israel has left Beirut. Look I I was there I remember very well. I don't remember when we left Beirut. What is not determined are the borders West Bank Gaza and the Golan Heights. Therefore I would say that north west south and much of eastern borders of Israel are determined and recognized or it remains open. West Bank Gaza and the Golan Heights. Now does that answer your question. Why do yes thank you. We're at the point here we're going to have to stop. We've used our time for people who are here in and around Champaign-Urbana you'd like to hear more from our guest Dr. Baer on med Xeni from senior lecturer both Tel Aviv University and he bridge University. He'll be giving a talk this evening at 7:30 at the levels faculty center on the U of I campus Israel after 40 months of intifada winners and losers

his visit here sponsored by the program in Jewish culture and society in the College of Liberal Arts here at the University of Allentown. Thank you very much. Delighted to be here.