Edited Transcript of Remarks by Greg Myre
"For the Record" No. 298 (15 July 2008)
Israel's movement restrictions on Palestinians not only further the division between Palestinians and Israelis but severely limit the interaction of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. As a result the challenge to reconcile a national political unity becomes increasingly difficult. Greg Myre, adjunct scholar to the Middle East Institute and former New York Times correspondent in Jerusalem, shares personal stories and insights from his seven years of reporting in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. Myre highlights the societal shift as a result of the political divide between Fateh and Hamas.

The Palestine Center
Washington, DC
10 July 2008

Greg Myre:

Thank you very much for inviting me. I appreciate the opportunity to speak to all of you. I'd like to discuss the issue at hand of Palestinian reconciliation and toss out a few ideas, tell a few stories about what I see happening in the region [and] what I saw happen there. But I very much want to open it up for questions and a dialogue. I really enjoy the give and take of questions and answers. I actually like asking the questions more than answering them, but I want to open it up fairly quickly. So, please think of anything you'd like to ask me, and we can talk about that.

I arrived in Jerusalem in 1999. At that time, the Palestinians were talking about a state, and nobody was really talking about Palestinian unity. So, how can it be here nine years later-the summer of 2008-we're talking about issues like how can the Palestinians get together politically, how can they move forward, instead of the kinds of issues we were looking at almost a decade ago of statehood, of resolving this conflict that has been going on for a half century?-really the longest running major conflict in the world. For me, the answer to that question began I think back in 1991 when I first encountered the Palestinians in large numbers. At that time, I was working with the Associated Press, and I was covering the First Gulf War. I was in Saudi Arabia during the War, and as soon as that war ended, I and the other journalists poured into Kuwait.

One of the things that struck me when you went into Kuwait was that every place you went, you kept running into Palestinians who were running the place. If you went into a bank, you probably had a Palestinian bank manager. If you were at the port, there were Palestinians running the port. If you were [at] any number of businesses, even some of the government offices, Palestinians played a very prominent role. And this was a new experience for me. Many of you who are familiar with the history of the Palestinians and the diaspora and where the Palestinians are scattered about, this may not be particularly news to you, but it was to me at that time.

As I went and traveled throughout the region, whether you showed up in Amman, Jordan or Baghdad or Damascus, you would always run into large numbers of Palestinians in key positions running various enterprises, whether it was an educational system, a financial system. At some point, I figured this out myself or somebody told me, but it struck me as something very fundamental. There were so many skilled and talented and capable Palestinians around, but there were no Palestinian institutions. And this was for me a very "ah-ha" moment. What I came to understand was it is very difficult to build these institutions if you don't have a state, if you don't have some place where you can put these things together. And the Palestinians who had been scattered throughout, not only the Middle East but obviously the wider world, they place tremendous value in having an education and having a set of skills.

If you're a Palestinian in Kuwait and you don't have citizenship and you don't have a country you can call your own, what do you have to build a life around? It's your education, it's the skills you have, it's your profession. So, I think this, for that reason, put even more emphasis on these kinds of things for Palestinians who are scattered about in the region. But what it also meant is that there were no Palestinian institutions. When I got to Jerusalem in 1999, you could see this again repeated in even a more concentrated form. When you would go to Gaza, you would go to a poor part of Gaza, and you would still meet some very interesting, capable people where you wouldn't necessarily expect to find them. But again, you didn't see the Palestinian Authority [PA] really develop and these institutions develop, and therefore you always had to wonder how will the Palestinians do when they achieve statehood? How will they come together, work together?

I think this, for me, was one of the key points about why the Palestinians have had great difficulty making-there were many, many reasons that were beyond the control of the Palestinians-but trying to make the Palestinian Authority work, of trying to work together politically without this history and this experience of doing it. I think it has proved very, very difficult, and it's one of the reasons we're in the situation that we're in today. Another one of the things that has changed dramatically over the past decade and which, to me, was hugely important is the lack of interaction and contact not only between Palestinians and Israelis but Palestinians themselves among those in the West Bank and Gaza. And things seemed to change or things did change with the beginning of the Palestinian intifada in 2000.

Up until that point, you had about 150,000 Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank coming into Israel every day. It's such a small place. The West Bank and Gaza were really essentially the suburbs of Israeli cities in terms of economics. And this Palestinian workforce would come in, work in construction, work in restaurants, work agriculture and almost every industry and be essential not only to the Israeli economy but obviously this is a big part of the Palestinian economy. And it wasn't just working. Also, people [would be] coming in to study, people coming in to shop, people coming in to visit friends [and] family, [to] receive medical care. But this was so important in so many ways because it provided some level of interaction between the two sides. This didn't mean that Palestinians were happy with the situation they were in, it didn't mean they like Israel-liked being in Israel-but it provided some level of interaction that made it very difficult for the two sides to demonize one another.

One thing you would often hear from Israelis, for example, would be, "Oh, I hate the Palestinian leadership. I can't stand [late Palestinian President] Yasser Arafat and the way the Palestinian Authority is run, but you know at work there [are] a couple of Palestinian guys from Ramallah and I have to say I have tremendous respect for them. They're great workers. They've been there 20 years." So at some level, almost every Israeli and every Palestinian had some contact, and it was difficult to demonize the entire side-the other side-because you did have some sort of relationship that was, I thought, very, very important to preventing a total breakdown.

As the violence began, Israel put up more and more security measures and more and more restrictions to keep out Palestinians. This has almost completely disappeared. Now, it's virtually impossible for Palestinians to get into Israel except in very, very small numbers. And this, I think, has had had a terrible, terrible long-term effect.

But in addition to that, the Palestinians in the West Bank and the Palestinians in Gaza have had less and less contact. A lot of that had to do with the Israeli restrictions, and it was no longer possible to go back and forth between the West Bank and Gaza. I think this has contributed to the Palestinian breakdown and the division we've seen there. Think for a moment what it is like to be a young Palestinian now in either Gaza or the West Bank. Say you're college age-we have a lot of people about that age here today. Looking back eight years now since the intifada began, so the time you were maybe twelve, thirteen-years-old, you have been largely confined to either the West Bank or Gaza and quite possibly to that particular town, whether it's Nablus or Gaza city. I would go and talk to Palestinians in Bethlehem; they had never been to Jerusalem. They had never gone to the Al-Aqsa mosque compound. You would see maybe teenage Palestinians who had never ever been five miles up the road to go and pray. You would talk to Palestinians in Gaza who had never left the Gaza strip; teenage Palestinians who had never been out of the 6 mile by 25 mile wide, long territory. So, their worldview has been so constricted and so narrow. This has had a very, very damaging effect.

There was always a little bit of friction between West Bankers and Gazans. The West Bank-a little more secular, a little more middle class-people there, if they tended to travel, they went to Jordan, they went to Syria, they went to Lebanon. In Gaza, [it is] a different orientation. It's poor, more religious; people are more oriented toward Egypt. So, there was always a little bit of just historical differences there, geographical differences that occasionally led to some friction. There were even moments when the travel between the two territories was relatively free and open. And West Bankers would complain, "Why are these people from Gaza coming here and taking jobs or working for less money than we're willing to work for?" So, there was some tension there, but again, there was interaction there and that was very, very valuable. That has been lost as it has been for several years now. I think it's going to be that much harder for the Palestinians to ever reconcile.

Also, there, I think, are two very tangible changes in Palestinian society. During the period from 1999 to a year ago, I would go travel to Gaza regularly on average probably once a month for seven years. So, we're talking roughly 80 trips to Gaza. Usually, I would stay three or four days at a time. Gaza was a wonderful place to work as a journalist. People were open, they wanted to talk, they were friendly [and] they really wanted to tell you their story about the problems they faced. Sadly, there was often a lot of news coming out of Gaza and usually very unpleasant news. Nonetheless, as a journalist, it was a great place to go and a great place to meet and talk to people and really get to understand the Palestinian story.

But you saw, things change quite dramatically. I never had a bad incident down there, never felt threatened or endangered other than the fact that bullets and missiles were flying around, but nobody was aiming them at me in particular. But about 2003/2004, you started to see this change with the kidnapping of Westerners. This was journalists and aid workers and a couple of U.N. people. Initially, it was really comical and even farcical. A journalist would get grabbed, he would get held for 24 hours-it would usually be less-and then he'd be released. It was purely a bargaining chip. The people, the Palestinians, who were grabbing them were militants who wanted to use them to either get a job in the security forces or to get a relative released from a Palestinian prison.

One story, in particular I recall, was a journalist, an Italian journalist who had been there for many, many years-Lorenzo Cremonesi. He went down there and was doing an interview in Deir el-Balah in the center of Gaza, and he was leaving in his car. A car pulls in front of him, armed Palestinians go out, they grab him and put him in the car. They don't quite know what to do with him. Clearly, it is a kidnapping of opportunity. They didn't quite know where to take him. They finally got him to a house where they thought they could keep him, and Lorenzo started striking up a conversation. The first thing they realized was the best language for them to communicate in was Hebrew since they didn't speak English and Lorenzo didn't speak enough Arabic. So, they were communicating in Hebrew. And Lorenzo said, "Well, what is it that you guys want? What are you trying to get?" And they said, "Well, we want publicity for ourselves so we can get jobs in the security forces." So Lorenzo said, "Well, can I write this down?" They let him take out his notebook. He started taking some notes, and he said, "Look, can I help you out here?" And they said, "Yeah, sure." Lorenzo said, "Can I use my cell phone?" So, they said, "Okay." And Lorenzo pulled out his cell phone.

He makes a call to his paper Corriere della Sera in Italy and says, "Guys, the story I promised this evening might be a little late because I'm a bit tied up at the moment." And he proceeds to tell them, "Because I've been kidnapped here." Well, he talks to them [for] ten, fifteen minutes. Ten minutes after that, it's on their website. Then, some of the pan-Arabic satellite channels pick up on this-Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya-[and] are starting to report this, "He's been kidnapped." Well then, calls start coming in from the Palestinian Authority. They start making contacts. And the kidnappers are thrilled by this. This is exactly what they wanted. Now, they know they're going to get a job in security forces. This is going to work out great. They're very happy. They're telling Lorenzo, "Look, you know you're not a hostage. Have some more tea. Be our guest." Similar instances have played out like this in the past. Lorenzo is feeling pretty comfortable at this point. After a couple of more hours they said, "Ok, this has been resolved. We've sorted it out. We get what we want. We're going to let you go. We meant you no harm."

So, they take Lorenzo to a point where they're going to hand him over, and they're walking through a citrus grove in Gaza and they get to a fence about six feet high or so. [There are] three guys with AK-47s. The first guy climbs over the fence. He gets to the top, and he sort of gets stuck. So, he hands his rifle to another one of the kidnappers and climbs on over. Second guy goes over, same thing. He hands his rifle. The third guy climbs up there, looks around [and] he hands all three of the AK-47s to Lorenzo. So, there's Lorenzo, the "kidnapee," holding the three AK-47s of the kidnappers. He has to toss them over the fence to these guys and then climb over himself. They release Lorenzo. Everything goes as planned and no harm, no problem. The Palestinian Authority is very proud of this that they resolved this, and they rushed Lorenzo over to go see [Palestinian President] Mahmoud Abbas. Lorenzo sits down with Mahmoud Abbas and says, "You know, I've been trying to get an interview with you for over a year now, and I didn't know I was going to have to get kidnapped to do it. But very nice to see you." And they have a very nice conversation. This almost makes perfect sense if you know the people of Gaza. They absolutely had respect and tolerance. Lorenzo was clearly a bargaining chip, and he tells this story in a wonderful and delightful manner. I knew several other people who don't have quite such comical stories to tell but nonetheless felt quite safe.

This has changed now. Very few Western journalists are going to Gaza. When they go, they often go in for the day and come out. They don't stay overnight; very rarely that happens. There's a few that still do, but they have to be very careful about it. Alan Johnston, a good friend of mine and the BBC correspondent, was kidnapped in March of last year and was held for three months. That was a very, very serious moment. There were several times when Alan thought his life was in danger. And this, to me, is very, very sad because these are not the people of Gaza. This is not the Gaza I know. And this horrible set of circumstances that has come about and has made life quite unbearable in Gaza has damaged the society, has changed the society.

I absolutely believe it can be changed back and the kinds of problems we're seeing there can be resolved. But it reflects how badly things have gone wrong, and it explains why, I think, many of the Palestinians supported and voted for Hamas and were putting their hopes with a group expressing radical doctrine. I don't know how long this will last in terms of the political situation down there, but Gaza has become-even much more so than the West Bank-a place where we're just going to see recurring crises. The West Bank, I think the situation is very, very bad there, but there is some minimal level at which people are living, which is, I want to say, sustainable. I don't want to say it is acceptable-it certainly is not-but it has just not completely run off the rails the way things have gone in Gaza. Gaza will be quiet for a period, but, I think, you're just going to see a recurring crisis after crisis after crisis there until it is addressed. And it will have to be addressed by Palestinians, by the Israelis, by the Egyptians and by the international community to try to sort this out. The longer this goes on, the more and more difficult it will be to resolve.

What I think is also something that needs to be addressed with the sense of urgency that is not there is this Palestinian split which took place a year ago because the longer it goes on the harder it will be to get those two sides back together. From the Palestinians I'm talking to, both in the West Bank and in Gaza, they're saying that both sides are becoming more and more entrenched. Both sides feel that the other is undermining the Palestinian project as they view it. Fateh, people in the West Bank, feel that the only solution ultimately would be through negotiations with Israel, and that with Hamas and its positions, those negotiations will never succeed because Hamas will always be there. Israel will say, "We're not going to negotiate or make concessions because Hamas is in control of Gaza. Hamas feels that, "Okay, we've had negotiations, we had them in the 90s. It didn't work then. Mahmoud Abbas, you're welcome to talk to the Israelis, but it's not working now. Why should we follow you down this path again of failed negotiations that have not worked in the past?" And both sides are just moving farther and farther apart. There's a bitterness that has crept in. Again, without an interaction or without contact between those two sides, it seems to be from this distance and from the people I'm speaking to there that it would be very, very hard to bring them back together.

I also think there is this notion among many Palestinians, both individuals and the groups, of trying to decide, "What do we want? Do we want statehood, and is it something we're going to make compromises on? Or do we want to fight this sort of permanent revolution?" I think it's sort of a duel urges within many of the Palestinians that they've never been able to reconcile fully. And we would see this when the intifada began. You would see Fateh carry out operations in the West Bank, but they resisted carrying out attacks inside Israel. But then, you would see Hamas gaining power with suicide bombings and events like that. Fateh's Al-Aqsa Brigade felt that they needed to do that to keep up. Even with individuals in Fateh, many times you'll see this, "Should we be carrying out resistant operations now in the West Bank or should we be negotiating now?"

To this day, many Palestinians have a very, very difficult time coming to terms with this, "The negotiations aren't working so do we need to put pressure on the Israelis in other fashions? The Israelis keep building settlements. We have to do something to act against this. We can't just go to negotiations that are not bringing us any results." And as long as you have this, these two sides that are unable to reconcile and often taking actions that seem to be at odds with one another, I think, Israel will use this to its advantage, and it allows them to not negotiate in a serious way. So, how do the Palestinians get back together? I'll end on that note and then open it to you.

This is going to be very, very difficult because they're very much in a Catch 22. If the West Bank leadership, Mahmoud Abbas and Fateh, finds a way to make amends with Hamas, I think, the Palestinians would find that Israel would not be receptive to that as a negotiating partner. They would say, "Well, you're in a unity government with Hamas. We're not going to negotiate with you. We're not going to make concessions because of that." But if you're in a situation like you are now where there's a division and Fateh is very much at odds with Hamas, the Israelis could say, "We're not going to deal with you in a serious way now. We're not going to make concessions with you because you don't control Gaza. Hamas controls Gaza. Therefore, we're not going to make any sort of comprehensive agreement with you." So, it's going to be either way Israel can look at that and say, "We don't have a partner on the other side." They've been able to use this reason; the United States has generally accepted this reason. So, this puts the Palestinians in such a difficult position.

And Hamas is not going to go away. It's not like in the 90s where there was at least the notion that if Yasser Arafat made a deal and the Palestinian Authority accepted that deal that he could keep Hamas in line and that they could be controlled. Hamas is too large and too powerful, and their public support-it may go up, it may go down. If there's another election, they may win it, they may not. But as a factor, they're going to be a large powerful force to deal with for years to come, and there will have to be some way to deal with them. We saw, perhaps, the way that might happen with Egypt acting as a mediator in this recent ceasefire-Israel and the Hamas leadership in Gaza. It's not clear that that's going to work very well, and I'm not sure that will be the answer. But at least it shows that there can be some contact, if indirectly, that may lead to more direct contacts or at least some mechanism that will allow the two sides to deal with one another in the future.

When the Palestinians did reconcile last year-I believe it was February when they went to Saudi Arabia and got together-they showed that, at least at that stage, things were not so far gone and that the hostilities were not so great that they couldn't work together. But it's going to be very hard for them to work together if they don't have, I think, a little more in common in terms of the policy they want to pursue. I don't think it will be enough just to have Fateh and Hamas and any other factions in a unity government. The Palestinians will have to find a way to have a policy that is enough of an agreement on core issues before they can hope to fully engage Israel. And Israel, I think, has avoided and sidestepped serious negotiations literally since 2000. I think they will find a way to do that again if the Palestinians cannot find a way to be reunited.

I will leave it right there and open it up to your questions and simply finish by saying, it's not impossible. The Palestinians can reconcile. I think there are generational changes going on among the Israelis and among the Palestinians that will present some opportunities. Just because many of these issues have been beyond solution for the past six decades or more doesn't mean they can't be resolved. But nothing is going to happen quickly, and it's going to be a very long and difficult process.
Greg Myre is adjunct scholar at the Middle East Institute and a former New York Times Correspondent in Jerusalem and Associated Press journalist.

This "For the Record" transcript may be used without permission but with proper attribution to The Palestine Center. The speaker's views do not necessarily reflect the views of The Jerusalem Fund.

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