3 Takeaways - Former Ambassador to Israel and Egypt, Dan Kurtzer: An Inside Perspective on Israel and the Middle East (#9)

Episode Date: September 29, 2020

Find out from former ambassador to both Israel and Egypt, Dan Kurtzer, why Bahrain and the UAE really signed agreements with Israel, the surprising reasons they’re great for Israel, and if we’ll see a peace agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia soon.

Welcome to the Three Takeaways podcast, which features short, memorable conversations with the world's best thinkers, business leaders, writers, politicians, scientists, and other newsmakers. Each episode ends with the three key takeaways that person has learned over their lives and their careers. And now your host and board member of schools at Harvard, Princeton, and Columbia, Lynn Thoman. Hi, everybody. It's Lynn Thoman. Welcome to another episode. Today, I'm here with Ambassador Dan Kurtzer, who is unique in having served as both U.S. Ambassador to Israel as well as U.S. Ambassador to Egypt. Not only is he unique in having served as ambassador to both of these countries, He was also selected by both Democratic and Republican presidents. His views on the Middle East are unusual. Dan, thank you so much for being here today.

It's a pleasure to be with you, Lynn. You went from being U.S. ambassador to Egypt to being U.S. ambassador to Israel. What made you acceptable to both countries? I think in both cases, it was the long experience that I had had in the State Department and the Foreign Service, including previous tours of duty in both countries. I served in Egypt very early in my career as a relatively junior officer, and I served in Israel relatively early in my career. Got to know both societies, got to know a lot of people who then grew up as I grew up and came back to meet them in more senior positions. And so it wasn't a total surprise

for both governments to accept my nomination as ambassador. Have the last 10 or so years been good to Israel? Well, in many respects, yes. Israel has thrived economically. It has expanded its international and even its regional relationships. The society has grown in a mature fashion. Israel always ranks very high on these international indices asking about happiness level. Israelis are happy, even if they're also major complainers all the time about various issues. And so the decade has been good. But as with all good things, there are also challenges. And I think the unresolved

Palestinian issue, questions that run deep within Israeli society about the nature of its democracy and the role of different groups within societies. Ashkenazim, or the Jews who originated from Europe, as opposed to Mizrahim, the Jews who originated from the Middle East, the Jews of color, for example, from Ethiopia and Sudan. These are issues that have beset that society, and there are some very significant challenges before it. But by and large, Israel is a prosperous and thriving country that has done quite well over the last decade. Let's talk about the new agreements that Israel just signed with the UAE and Bahrain. What do they mean for Israel? Well, Israel has cause to celebrate. An Arab country, the United Arab Emirates, has signed a peace treaty. Another Arab country, Bahrain, has signed

a normalization agreement, which probably will lead to a peace treaty. And it's the first of such an agreement that Israel was able to reach since the 1994 Treaty with Jordan and the 1979 Treaty with Egypt. What makes these two agreements different, however, is that neither the Emirates nor Bahrain was really in a state of war with Israel. Neither country had been involved in any previous conflict, no blood had been shed on either side, and there was no issue of so-called territory for peace. This was a set of relationships that were developed over the past few months. In fact, the past 20 years in secret, but came out over the last few months, that signify a very deep commitment on the part of the UAE and Bahrain to their narrow national interests, as opposed to the larger question of the Palestinian issue. What did the UAE and Bahrain get out of them? Why did they sign them? I think in the case of both countries, there were two overriding interests that led them to enter into these agreements with Israel. I think the most

important for both countries in large strategic terms was the threat that they perceive from Iran and question marks about the U.S. long-term commitment to the region. Both of these countries had for many years sought a security umbrella from the United States and believed that the United States would protect them from Iranian ambitions or aggression. But in recent years, several administrations, and it's grown now quite loud in Washington, have talked about pivoting away from the Middle East and maybe changing some of the nature of our commitments. And I think this made the Emirates and Bahrain a bit nervous. They looked around and they saw a strong Israel, strong militarily, willing to fight when necessary, including what's called the Begin Doctrine,

which is Israel's view that it will not allow a country in the region to acquire a nuclear weapons capability. And Bahrain and the UAE made a calculation that Israel could serve as a kind of smaller umbrella to help their security. I think the second factor was more mundane, but equally important. And that was both countries can gain a lot from cooperation with Israel on economics and investment, technology transfer and the like. The UAE has the second largest Arab economy after Saudi Arabia. And it's a country that's very open to change, looking to modernize and in some ways, even quote unquote, westernize. And they looked around and they saw Israel as

kind of the same economy, the same country, and figured that they could do business literally, in a manner that would grow the economic success of both countries. Do you think that Saudi Arabia or another country will sign agreements with Israel in the near term? Well, I have no doubt that there's a lot of discussion now, and we'll continue to expand this circle of broader Arab peace, especially on what you might call the periphery. In other words, the countries in the region that have not had a direct confrontation with Israel, but are kind of one country removed from direct confrontation. And so the natural targets would be kind of the western side of North Africa, Morocco and Tunisia,

or the other countries in the Gulf, Oman, Qatar, and Kuwait, and a couple of countries in Africa. There's discussion about Sudan and maybe Chad. All of these countries have had no direct involvement militarily in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and therefore may be right to move forward on a normalization path such as was forged by the UAE and Bahrain. I didn't mention Saudi Arabia because I think it's of a different character. The King of Saudi Arabia has made very clear since the time of the UAE and Bahrain agreements that while Saudi Arabia would not oppose those for the Saudis, the resolution of the Palestinian issue remains central to its relationship or future relationship with Israel. And I think that'll remain the case. The question is going to be what happens in a period of succession when the Saudi leadership changes. We know that the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, is very interested in normalizing relations with Israel. He's the one that's

been driving the relationship with the United States and some reform activities within the kingdom. And so there may be that kind of a dynamic in play after the succession of a new monarchy. But I think that's some time off, and therefore I don't think the Saudis right now are ripe for normalization. Dan, you have said that a major issue for Israel is how much it integrates into the larger Middle East. What do you mean? I think for any country, one of the most important foreign policy issues is the degree to which it can do business and interact with its immediate neighbors. From the trade and business perspective,

it makes far more sense to engage in trade with your immediate neighbors than From the trade and business perspective, it makes far more sense to engage in trade with your immediate neighbors than to have to travel distances. Most of U.S. trade, frankly, is with Canada, Mexico, and then secondarily within our own hemisphere. And then you start to branch out into Europe and other places. In the Middle East, most trade over the past 50 years has been with countries outside the Middle East. In fact, if you look at the Arab world, only 7% or 8% of its trade is with its neighbors. And this is just not profitable, and it's not successful. The same applies for Israel. They do very well in their trade relations with Europe and elsewhere. But how much better would Israel do if it was able to trade successfully with Lebanon and Syria and Jordan and Egypt and the surrounding countries? also the human factor. You know, the Middle East is an interesting place historically, archaeologically, and Israelis are very curious travelers. At some points, probably a quarter of the country is traveling somewhere as tourists, kind of just to get out and see the rest of the

world. And most Israelis have not seen the incredible sites in Egypt and in Jordan and in Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere. So the idea of integrating into the region is not simply a political goal, but it has real kind of people consequences in which Israelis can feel that they are a part of a neighborhood with all of the attendant issues. Not all neighbors relate well to each other, but you get along because you have to get along and you find a way to resolve problems. And I think that's the ultimate interest of Israelis is to be accepted as a neighbor, to be able to resolve the differences that neighbors resolve and to act accordingly. The presence of a slim majority of Jews and a significant minority of Palestinians in a single state raises the most fundamental choice for Israeli society, whether to grant

Palestinians full citizenship and full rights or not. The choice is stark. If the Palestinians are given full rights, it could result in a non-Jewish majority state. But if they are not given full rights, this would be tantamount, in the words of former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, to creating an apartheid state with Palestinians as second-class residents without full political rights. What do you think Israel should do? Well, there's no question in my mind that the Israeli people do not want what Barak called an apartheid state. I remember when I was serving as ambassador at that time, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon used to talk to me often about Israel being a democracy among democracies. And what he really meant was there's a kind of town hall character to Israeli democracy.

Everybody talks at once. There's this plethora of arguments. There's shouting and back and forth, but it's real democratic interaction and decision-making. So the people of Israel don't want to give up that democracy. There's a body of people among Israeli citizens who wrestle very hard with the alternative, which is, how do you take over the land that they would like to take over in the West Bank and Gaza, but not have to deal with the people? There's no real solution to that other than either granting everybody citizenship, which dilutes the Jewish majority of the state of Israel, or deciding that there would be partition and that the land can hold two states, one a majority Jewish state called Israel and

the other the state of Palestine. Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel over 40 years ago. How has that worked out for Egypt? The essential nature of the Egyptian-Israeli treaty rested almost entirely on security. The late Anwar Sadat had a larger strategic purpose in mind, which was to build a relationship with the United States. But he knew that to get to Washington, in a sense, he had to go through Jerusalem. He had to make peace with Israel in order to develop a bilateral relationship with the United States that was sustainable. And heading down that path, Sadat came to realize, as did Hosni Mubarak, who followed him, that for Israel, the most critical

issue was going to be security. And interestingly, in the 40 plus years of the Egyptian-Israeli Treaty, the security provisions have been implemented almost flawlessly. The issues that have come up over these years have been so minor that people forget about them. There was at one point a few decades ago, a question of a few Egyptian soldiers above the limit of what they were supposed to have in Sinai, and they fixed it right away once it was brought to their attention. And that's really the basis of the treaty. What hasn't happened, which was hoped for, was the kind of normalization that would see tourism and business and cultural interaction and sports interaction. Egyptian people were not interested in having that kind of relationship.

And so peace treaty exists, but the bilateral relationship has always resulted in what's been called a cold peace, but a cold and stable peace for 40 years. What impact do you think the Iraq war has had on the Middle East? Well, the Middle East was largely dysfunctional before 2003, and it has gotten more dysfunctional. So in a way, it's only exacerbated the problems. I don't think it changed things from, you know, 180 degrees. But what it did was to reintroduce into the Middle East equation, this sense that outside powers, in this case, the United States, would try to determine the politics and the policies of the region. You know, just the fact that the Bush administration articulated as its goals, not just the removal of any weapons of mass

destruction, but also turning Egypt into a democracy. You remember Donald Rumsfeld crowing about the idea that our forces would be met with flowers and people would love their democracy. Well, it didn't quite work out that way. Iraq is only now gaining a certain sense of stability, certainly not a democracy. And the rest of the region was really thrown into a kind of tumult, both for its own internal factors, but also stimulated or catalyzed by outside intervention, in this case, the U.S. invasion. Let's talk about Iran. Despite crippling sanctions, Iran's strategic presence has advanced rapidly across the Middle East since the removal of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, where once Iran was

largely confined to its national borders. Today, it has proxy militias in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen. What impact has Iran's expanding presence and also its secretive nuclear program had on other Arab states and Israel? Has it brought them together? Well, there's no question that what is perceived by Arab states and Israel jointly as the Iranian threat, the threat of hegemony or influence or pressure, has certainly drawn them together until recently that coming together was done behind the curtains. It's now coming out more openly. We've just seen, for example, the opening of relations between the United Arab Emirates and Israel, and that's likely to continue and expand as this mutually perceived threat of Iran continues.

You know, part of this is Shia Sunni. Iran is a Shia-dominated country. Most Arab states, not all, but most Arab states are majority Sunni population. I think it's been mislabeled as only a Sunni-Shia fight. I think part of that mislabel occurred some years ago when the King of Jordan talked about a Shia crescent that was the objective of Iranian policy. So that's a factor. But I think we're talking much more here about very hardcore, what might be called realism in international politics. The Iranians would like to have a foothold across the Middle East. They have a strong minority support within Iraq. They have invested a great deal in Syria. And they've invested a great deal also in Hezbollah in Lebanon, which does give them a bit of a kind of an arc of influence and creates a destabilizing securitylished, either between the United States and Iran or a larger dialogue within the region, these proxy fights and the development of the Iranian nuclear

program will continue to represent a very significant strategic threat in that region. Do you think that there's a split between the hardline anti-Western government of Iran and its people? Iran is an extremely complicated country. And we in the United States have a tendency to pick and choose those we want to win and those we would like to lose. And so our assumption has been Ayatollah bad, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's bad, the people good. It's much more complicated.

Iranians have a very significant sense of history and a very strong view of themselves of pride, of the need for respect. They remember as though it was yesterday the United States coup that overthrew a democratically elected government in Iran back in 1953. Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh was someone that we didn't particularly like, the British didn't like. We and the British thought that he was heading towards communism. This was right around the outset of the Cold War. And so we overthrew him and reinstalled the Shah and helped the Shah build a very brutal authoritarian regime on the backs of the people. I'm not suggesting that we created the seeds or planted the seeds of the Iranian revolution, but the Iranians believe that that's the case, that in fact, there is a direct line between what the United States did, the resumption of power by the Shah, his very

authoritarian tactics, and the rise of the Mullahs, who ultimately took over after the 1979 revolution. So it's overly simplistic to say there's a split between the leadership and the people or the bazaaris, those who the merchants and the mercantile class are somehow an independent force. It's much more complicated. And I would say pretty much like us in the sense that we have so many different identities that I think the Iranians also have a large number of identities. And it's very hard, therefore, to kind of pinpoint one factor to focus on. The clear loser in the Middle East has been the Palestinians, as countries such as Egypt, Jordan, and more recently, the UAE have signed

peace treaties with Israel and others have normalized relations with Israel. What are the Palestinians' options at this point? They have an option that they've had since 1937, when the first partition plan was developed by the British Mandatory Authority, and then 1947, when the UN developed a partition plan, and then Camp David in the year 2000, when Barack offered some ideas in 2008, Palestinians have not seriously developed a policy approach that's designed to advance towards partition. I'm not persuaded that the old canard that the Palestinians really want to destroy Israel, I don't think that's the case anymore. I think the mainstream Palestinian view is, you know, live and let live. We want our freedom and independence. But their leadership has not figured out how to deal with at least two of the most critical

issues on the agenda. One is, what do you do with Jerusalem? Can you share Jerusalem in some way? And the other is, what do you do with Palestinian refugees, now millions of whom think that they have the right to go back to the homes that they actually or their families actually left behind, which is not going to happen. It wouldn't happen in any other conflict. It's not going to happen here. Those two issues caused the breakdown of the Camp David Summit in 2000. And if we had negotiations today,

those would still be the two most significant barriers to a resolution. You know, everybody feels bad for the Palestinians because they are on the losing end of most of the events in this region. But they have to take some responsibility and not just say that they have agency, but actually exercise it and develop ideas that might actually touch Israeli ideas, and then you can develop some solutions. What do you think about U.S. funding for Israel? About 50% of our global aid spending goes to Israel. So recently, a former Israeli Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Justice Minister Yossi Beilin and I co-authored an op-ed,

which suggested that we begin to think about weaning Israel off of security assistance and replacing it with a series of bilateral agreements that would provide Israel with access to technology and know-how, but make Israel pay for what it needs and therefore have to choose its priorities. Right now, we give Israel close to $4 billion a year. It's not a lot of money in Israel's larger budget picture, but it's $4 billion of cushion that the Israelis don't have to think about. It will make for a healthy relationship between the United States and Israel when we deal with each other as countries that are not donor and recipient. Before I ask you for your three key takeaways from our conversation,

is there anything else you'd like to discuss that you haven't already touched upon? We pretty much covered the waterfront. You know, we focused a lot on kind of Israel and points east. There's also Israel and points west, which is North Africa. In my classes at Princeton, we've taken a-Qaeda or ISIS are still very active. So I just hope that if we do have a more mature approach to the Middle East as a whole, we remember that the Middle East includes North Africa and focus a little more attention there. What are the three key takeaways or insights you'd like to leave our audience with today? Well, I think first, as was evidenced in your lead off question, you know, the good news is that there's a kind of stability in the Israeli-Palestinian arena, and now maybe some

openings between Israel and the Arab states. But one takeaway is not to get too comfortable and not to pocket this as guaranteeing long-term stability. Status quos are never static. They will usually get worse unless you work on them to get better. And the way to work on this status quo to get better is to revive the efforts at peacemaking. Let's keep finding more friends for Israel in the region, but let's not ignore the Palestinian issue, which is still at the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict. I think a second takeaway, in some ways much more important strategically for the United States, is to find a way back into a dialogue with the Iranians and back into a joint comprehensive plan of action.

I am as aware as anyone of the deficiencies in the JCPOA, but it is so much better than not having a JCPOA that we ought to be trying, A, to get back in and then B, to fix it and make it better and hopefully find a way to improve a relationship with the Iranians without making the Arabs and the Israelis more nervous. And I think we can do that with some smart diplomacy. And the third takeaway, which we didn't discuss at all, maybe I should have included this in my answer about what we didn't discuss, is this idea of smart diplomacy. You know, we've had over the past few years a gutting of the State Department. So many of our senior diplomats have been forced out, have been replaced either by know-nothing

political appointees or haven't been replaced at all. Budget cuts have left the State Department really denuded. And without the strong diplomatic capability, you're left with one less tool to deal with your foreign policy and national security challenges. Unfortunately, there are too many people who think that the only tool that matters is our military. But when you talk to our military leaders, they're the ones who want strong diplomacy, because they understand that it's like the dog that doesn't bark. If the diplomats can fix a problem, you don't have to send the military in to try to clean up the mess.

And our diplomacy has really been hollowed out to a point where it's a very serious crisis. I think another administration, next administration, has got to invest both money and time and effort to build up the diplomatic capacity and then use it in conjunction with the other assets of national power being our economy and our military. Thank you so much, Dan, for our conversation today. This has been terrific. Okay, Lynn, good to talk to you. If you enjoyed today's episode, you can listen or subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. If you would like to receive information on upcoming episodes, be sure to sign up for our newsletter at 3takeaways.com or follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Note that 3takeaways.com is with the number three,

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