.
Terje Rød-Larsen, President, International Peace Institute: My pleasure, Christiane.
AMANPOUR: I just want to go straight to some of the key findings in this poll [slides power-point]. We’ve got some full screens of this to show, and it’s about the popularity. President Mahmoud Abbas’ popularity seems to be rising — 55 percent of the Palestinians say they are satisfied — whereas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas, his popularity seems to be decreasing — 32 percent, apparently, say they’re satisfied with him, while 64 percent say they’re dissatisfied.
Now, on the issue of a Palestinian state, according to your poll, 55 percent of Palestinians say that they want the two-state solution in the West Bank and Gaza separate from Israel, whereas only 11 percent are saying that there is a one-state solution to all of this.
So, Mr. Larsen, what is the good news here?
RØD-LARSEN: I think this brand-new IPI poll brings very good news to the Palestinians and to all those who are working for peace in the Middle East, because there is here now major shifts. The Palestinians, now a vast majority, wants their leaders to go back to the table. A vast majority wants to have a two-state solution. And even more, the Palestinians now, compared with 2000 during the Camp David negotiations, they’re much more open-minded about making painful compromises in order to establish a Palestinian state.
So this is all good news for everybody, except Hamas, who’s now — where the pendulum has swung since they formed a government in 2006. Now Mahmoud Abbas, Abu Mazen, has a vast majority — vast majority support compared with Haniyeh, and Fatah would win a landslide victory in parliamentary elections.
AMANPOUR: Mr. Larsen, thank you so much, indeed, for joining us from the U.N. And we will back with you for more on this in the days and weeks to come.
SAEB ERAKAT AND DAN MERIDOR JOIN THE INTERVIEW
MERIDOR: The most important thing is to start negotiations. And let me tell Mr. Erakat, my friend, that we are ready to negotiate everything. We need to have a strategy of what to do first and second, but everything is on the table. All the issues can be laid on the table. We need to negotiate, because we need to move ahead.
I want to commend Mr. Erakat and Mr. Abu Mazen for negotiating with the previous government of Israel and (inaudible) alongside settlement activity, of course, they’ve never asked it to be stopped. And I think they did right.
I think the problem is not the settlement. It’s the other around. If we have a settlement of this conflict, if we have the resolution, then the issue of settlements, like issue of security in Jerusalem on refugees, will all be resolved.
AMANPOUR: Can I…
MERIDOR: And it is very important that we start it, because I think both of us have an interest in changing what we have now.
AMANPOUR: Can I ask you something? The former Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, about a year ago this time told a key Israeli newspaper that the Israelis really must make what he called the awful and difficult decisions and to really have the courage to make those decisions that you have avoided for the last 40 years, which is that there will be no peace without a withdrawal from nearly all of the occupied territories and give the Palestinians a same percentage swap in — in the other cases, and that Jerusalem must be shared with special arrangements for the holy sites. Do you believe that? Because certainly your prime minister did not talk about withdrawing to ’67 in his interview yesterday.
MERIDOR: No, I don’t think anybody talks like this. Even America understands that the previous lines will not be the final lines. They may be a starting point. They will not be the final lines.
But this is not the issue. Unfortunately, what our previous prime minister, Ehud Olmert, did was going a very long way, giving the Palestinians everything they said they wanted — as you just mentioned — and, unfortunately, we have to read the writing on the wall. Mr. Abu Mazen didn’t say yes, even to all of this. So does he really think that Mr. Netanyahu will give more than Olmert? It’s a big question.
<snip>
AMANPOUR: Right. Mr. Olmert, of course, said this on his way out, when he was not in a position to be able to implement it. And he said this had to happen in the future. But what I want to know, Mr. Erakat, is, are you going to start negotiations, as President Obama has called for, and as the Israelis say they’re willing to?
ERAKAT: We want to start negotiations yesterday, but you heard Mr. Meridor now. He’s saying that he will not begin negotiations where the previous prime minister left off and we did not say no. It’s true. We came a long way with Mr. Olmert. We exchanged maps with Mr. Olmert. And I think Mr. Olmert was the prime minister of Israel as much as Mr. Netanyahu is the prime minister of Israel.
Now comes a prime minister in Israel, and he tells everything is off the table, I’m going to begin negotiating with you from scratch. And now, when I asked Dan, my friend, do you accept to negotiate on Jerusalem? He said, yes, we will negotiate everything, but he’s not said Jerusalem. He cannot say, “I will negotiate Jerusalem,” because he will not…
AMANPOUR: OK. So where does that leave us, then?
ERAKAT: That’s the — that’s the — that’s the problem. We are not against negotiations. We are not against our commitment to our obligations. They are refusing to carry out their obligations in terms of settlement freeze, and they refuse to resume negotiations on Jerusalem, borders, settlements, where we left off, because I cannot every time an Israeli government comes, then comes a prime minister that say, “I’m not responsible for the previous government.”
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
