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Henry Siegman, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the director of its U.S./Middle East Project, says it appears the current Israeli government led by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has little interest in pursuing the so-called road map peace plan. A senior Sharon adviser, Dov Weisglass, said in a recent interview in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz that Sharon’s plan to withdraw Israeli settlements from Gaza would remove any need to negotiate peace with the Palestinians. The Weisglass interview, Seigman says, was meant to signal that “the purpose of the disengagement is to make certain that a peace process, a political negotiation, never takes place, and that Israel, consequently, will prevent the emergence of a Palestinian state.”

Siegman was interviewed by Bernard Gwertzman, consulting editor for cfr.org, on October 7, 2004.

Why would Sharon’s adviser give such a provocative interview?

The statements were made by Dov Weisglass, who has been Sharon’s personal lawyer for years and, until just weeks ago, his chief of staff; he remains a senior adviser. He was the man mainly responsible for the public endorsement of Sharon’s positions by President Bush and for the exchange of letters that occurred on April 14 confirming America’s support for the proposed unilateral withdrawal from Gaza that Sharon had announced. The beginning of the dismantling of settlements was ostensibly in order to create a bridge down the road for a peace process, which some people who support Sharon maintained would eventually lead to the withdrawal of settlements in the West Bank as well.

Of course, there were some skeptics even then who said that the president’s letter put the United States in a position of supporting a policy by Israel’s government that actually is intended to prevent a peace process from ever taking place. In their view, the withdrawal from Gaza was actually intended by Sharon to buy the time he needed to continue the expansion of settlements in the West Bank to a point where a Palestinian state would become an impossibility.

But that point of view was not taken seriously by anyone until Weisglass, the drafter of the letters, the man who negotiated them face-to-face with [National Security Adviser] Condoleezza Rice, said in this interview that this in fact was the purpose of the agreement and of the disengagement. The purpose of the disengagement is to make certain that a peace process, a political negotiation, never takes place, and that Israel, consequently, will prevent the emergence of a Palestinian state.

Didn’t supporters of the Gaza withdrawal argue that Sharon needed a so-called two-state solution for demographic reasons and that, without one, Palestinians would eventually outnumber Jews in the state of Israel?

That was a false argument. Sharon did not need a two-state solution- in the sense of granting Palestinians a viable state of their own- in order to deal with this demographic problem. What he needed were enclaves resembling Bantustans [the nominally independent black areas established by South African governments in the apartheid era] into which Palestinians would be consigned, so he could then say there is no demographic problem because, “They have a state of their own.” He would attach the label “state” to these disconnected enclaves. Sharon himself has always said, “We must have a Palestinian state.” He said it precisely for this reason. What he meant by a “state” were these territorially disconnected entities that would place Palestinians under permanent Israeli military and economic control and would enable Israelis to say, “The Palestinians have a state of their own, so who cares if there are twice as many Palestinian Arabs as there are Israeli Jews?”

Why did Weisglass give the interview now? He had to know it would cause negative reverberations in Washington. And he contended that the United States government endorsed the views he expressed.

He said in effect that the United States gave its “kosher” stamp to this deception. It raises the question of whether it was reckless of him to say all this publicly. But I think there are two reasons why he did this. One of them is that Sharon is in deep trouble in Israel because of the attacks on him from the right. His own party, the Likud, has not supported him. It doesn’t want to give up anything. The Likud doesn’t want to withdraw any settlements even from Gaza, much less anything in the West Bank.

And secondly, Sharon is concerned about his ability to maintain a majority government. He counted on the right wing- and the settlers as well- understanding the real significance of what he was able to get the United States to approve: basically an end to the peace process because of the conditions attached to it, which Weisglass described humorously as a requirement that Palestinians turn into Finns. One has to admire his candor.

Sharon was frustrated that this wasn’t self-evident to these people. Obviously, Sharon and Weisglass are the closest of friends, and you can be sure that Weisglass would not spring a surprise on Sharon. So they collaborated and Sharon said to him, in effect, “OK, I think this is a risk worth taking. Spell it out for these idiots so they should understand what I really have done. And I will of course issue a disclaimer, and that should be enough for the Americans.” He actually did issue a perfunctory disclaimer in which he said “I remain committed to the road map.” He didn’t say that Weisglass is a liar and had fabricated the whole thing. He said “I remain committed to the road map.”

Another reason that Sharon and Weisglass could do this was that they knew they had the administration and both houses of Congress so completely in their pocket. And if necessary, they could even get the Americans to say something supportive. And that is the way the administration responded. Secretary of State Colin Powell immediately said that he was convinced that Sharon is committed to the road map. He said, “Prime Minister Sharon reaffirmed Israel’s commitment to the road map.”

President Bush and his administration clearly want to maintain the backing of Israel’s supporters. Would John Kerry criticize Sharon’s position?

Absolutely not.

Do you see any space between Kerry and Bush on Israel?

If there is such a space, the Democrats won’t admit to it during the election campaign. The conventional wisdom among political parties here is that you leave no daylight between yourself and your adversary on the issue of supporting Israel’s government of the day. So, if the Republican Party and President Bush say, “We trust Sharon,” the Democratic Party candidate, Senator Kerry, will say, “We trust him even more.” And, in fact, these are the kinds of statements being made. (Comparison of candidates’ positions)

Kerry has said that the administration was not doing enough to push peace negotiations forward.

[He’s said] that the administration was not “deeply engaged,” that it was too “distant” from the peace process. But there is a world of difference between being “engaged” and having a policy. Kerry has never hinted that his policy would be any different. To the contrary, he has said he fully supports the separation wall [Israel is constructing], that Israel has every right to react precisely as it has to Palestinian terrorism, that the issue of the wall should never have gone to the International Court of Justice. On every issue, he has tried to show that he is even more supportive of what Sharon and his government are doing than the Bush administration has been.

Since the collapse of peace negotiations in 2000, many people, including [U.S. negotiator] Dennis Ross have blamed Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat for the failure. Some say that has given Israel carte blanche to do what it wants so long as Arafat is still around. Is that your reading?

That’s correct. One has to acknowledge the fact that Arafat’s leadership has been a disaster for the Palestinian cause, not because there is any truth to the notion that dominates Israeli thinking, that Arafat’s real goal is the destruction of Israel and not the creation of two states. I think that is nonsense. But his leadership has been disastrous because time and again he has played right into the hands of the most reactionary Israeli policies. He has provided them with the face of plausibility with his terrible leadership. He has done as much damage to the Palestinian national cause as Israeli right-wingers have.

But this does not mean that negotiations are impossible. The question then is whether Arafat can deliver. This can only be tested if the Israelis test Palestinians with a real, serious offer that comes to grips with the Palestinian desire to have a viable state of their own. It will never be tested if Sharon and his government have their way.

Do you think the withdrawal from Gaza will actually take place?

I think that Sharon may have intended for the withdrawal to take place, but he has probably come around to the position that he must kill the idea and do so in a way that persuades the international community that he intended to do it, but that Palestinians made it impossible. There is probably a certain amount of truth to that. The Palestinian inability to deal rationally with the proposal does, in fact, provide Sharon with an excuse not to do it.

But that’s only on the surface. The fact of the matter is, even if he were able to withdraw, he would do so only in circumstances that would leave Gaza virtually ungovernable and economically unsurvivable. It would have very little contact with the outside world. There would be no airports, no openings to Arab countries. We know from Weisglass that this would not be a bridge to a peace process or to some further peace openings.

Why won’t the withdrawal take place? Is Sharon afraid of civil strife?

Sharon does not have a majority government. He has a right-wing government, but he has not been able to obtain a majority for his plan. He is now in charge of a minority government. He has 58 Knesset votes in support of his government. He needs 61, the majority, and he cannot count on some of those 58 in a showdown. Sharon realized some time ago he cannot bring the [opposition] Labor Party into his government. His own party would revolt. It is [Labor Party senior statesman and former Prime Minister] Shimon Peres who has not given up on the hope that he might return as foreign minister in a Sharon government. So Peres now says when he reads what Weisglass had to say, “I’m shocked, shocked.”