Aaron David Miller | The Much Too Promised Land

September 9, 2009

Dr. Kent: Welcome to Sound Authors. Today is a great day here in New York. The skies are clearing and the sun is coming out. It’s Friday again, and on Sound Authors I’ve got three guests. Our musical guest at the end of the show couldn’t make it today. We’re going to get Chris Thile again on the show one of these times. But I do have three great authors on show and among them are, at the beginning will be Aaron David Miller. He’s the author of The Much Too Promised Land, America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace. The second guest on the show will be Larry Buttram, the author of The Curtain Torn. That’s based on a fascinating story about a plantation owner. And the third guest on the show will be Dillon Drake. He’s a young man and the winner of an essay contest, and we’re going to talk to him. That’ll be a fun interview as well. But now it’s my great honor to speak with Aaron David Miller. Welcome to the show.

Aaron David Miller: Pleasure to be here.

Dr. Kent: Well, and of course I know your daughter, Jennifer Miller, and she wrote a wonderful book also, Inheriting the Holy Land, and I knew her from Seeds of Peace, which you served as the President of for quite some time.

Aaron David Miller: Yeah, Jenny’s a remarkable author, I’ve learned a lot from her. She’s actually now writing a novel.

Dr. Kent: Oh, wonderful.

Aaron David Miller: She’s in Columbia doing graduate work at an MFA program.

Dr. Kent: Wonderful. Yeah, she’s an amazing lady. Well, let me ask you about this book, your latest. The Much Too Promised Land. What a wonderful title. How did that title come about?

Aaron David Miller: Well, it really is a kind of symbol, or emblematic of the history of this conflict. Palestine in its historical context was really promised multiple times. Of course, there was the divine promise made by God to adherence of three major religions, Slam, Christianity and Judaism. And conflicting promises of course were made for those who believed and those who would follow. The second promise was of course conflicting British promises outlined in the Dalfour Declaration, 1917, that there be a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Those contradicted to some degree the promises that British diplomats had made to various Arab rulers. Finally there was the commitment or promise that the UN General Assembly made in November of 1947 when they promised or outlined their call for a Jewish and an Arab state, the partition of Palestine. My book really deals with the fourth promise. The fourth promise was the American promise, and that promise essentially went like this, that if you Arabs and Israelis are reasonable, you ascribe to a kind of split the difference mentality between what you need and what you can actually have, then the United States will be prepared to assist you. We’ll stand with you in an effort to help you negotiate your differences. And sadly, for many reasons, most of which have to do with the attractability of the conflict and the politics of the locals, who are caught up in the conflict, that American promise has not been comprehensively delivered.

Dr. Kent: Well that’s such a fascinating time right now, even the last couple weeks of, in this country, with this awful shooting that happened in the Holocaust Museum this week, and then in the news, President Obama is again trying to bring the two parties to the table. What, do things ever change in the Middle East?

Aaron David Miller: Well, they do change over time. Amidst all the bad news and there, you know, no one ever wants money betting against Arab-Israeli peace, but there have been hopeful signs in the course of the last 40 or 50 years. We have an Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, which signed in 1979, and it’s not perfect for sure, but it’s extremely important. We have an Israeli-Jordanian peace treaty, signed in October 1994. And again, it’s not perfect, but both parties wanted to continue. So yes, there have been positive developments on the two main fronts right now. That is to say, can Israelis and Palestinians negotiate a conflict detonating agreement, and can the Israelies, Syrians and the Israelis and the Lebanese negotiate treaties of peace. There of course, it’s a much less happy story.

Dr. Kent: Well now, and I remember back in July of 2000 I was actually at the summer camp with Jenny Miller, your daughter, and she told us that, she told me that you were at Camp David with these leaders. And I seem to remember the reason that the peace talks failed was something very small, if I’m not mistaken, it was just the issue of East Jerusalem?

Aaron David Miller: Well, the portrayal of what happened at Camp David is very complicated. In fact, it’s kind of a poster child for post-modernism. There were a dozen Americans at Camp David, members of the delegation, and maybe half a dozen interpretations of what actually transpired there. And I think the, the problem with Camp David is that neither Ahud Barak, the Prime Minister of Israel, nor certainly Yassar Arafat, the leader of the PLO and the president of the Palestinian authority were ready to pay the price for what it would have taken in order to do a conflict ending agreement. And the Americans, however well intentioned under the leadership of former President Clinton really were not, in my judgment, I was one of the 12 smart enough, fair enough, nor tough enough to even get close to reaching an agreement. There is this notion that we were extremely close on all of the issues, including Jerusalem, but in reality there’s much confusion about this. In reality that wasn’t so. And I think that’s part of the problem, is that everybody has a vested interested in choosing their own particular favorite in this confrontation, and they don’t approach the subject with a kind of empathy and objectivity that is required to have any chance of trying to understand it. There’s enough ammunition, figuratively speaking, to keep this conflict going between Israel supporters and the Arab supporters for the next thousand years. But I think the goal should be to try to develop as detached and as objective of an assessment of what each side needs, and then try to figure out how to get there. That’s not so easy because it’s very emotional, but it’s necessary.

Dr. Kent: And now, as someone who’s been in, behind the scenes at a place like that, and you were at the helm of Seeds of Peace, and then for this book, interviewing all of these interesting people for the book, what, you know, how do you make sense of all this information and you know, is there, do you see a pathway towards peace, towards some kind of reconciliation over there? Is it going to take a long time?

Aaron David Miller: Well, on the first question, I’m all for, I’m a great believer of independent, critical thinking. I don’t think, there is no truth with a capital T that is somehow served up on a silver platter, whether it comes from a President’s speech or a minister’s sermon or on a mom’s prayer. Life’s much more complicated than that, and it requires an enormous amount of effort, particularly in a conflict like this, to get at an approximation of what is really the case. That requires hard work on the part of people, not to just take their information from one source, but to get out there and talk to as many people as possible, examine these things in their own right, see if it makes sense to you, and then try to fit all the pieces together. And I think, its not just true on the Arab-Israeli issues, it’s true of life in general. I mean, if you want to really understand something, it requires an enormous amount of diligence and energy in order to do the hard work to get there. In the case of Arab-Israeli peace, I don’t think it’s been absent for some sort of magical, metaphysical reason. I think it’s a question, frankly, of trying to find a balance of interests between parties in conflict. You know, whether it’s true of business relationships, personal friendships, or negotiations between nations. In the end the things that work reflect the reality that people’s needs and requirements are getting met in a way that not just satisfies their interests, but satisfies the others. And that’s really what is required on this one as well. It’s just that when you have a conflict like this where religious belief plays a large role, where people have a historic memory, where people have suffered. In the case of the Israelis, a long history of the Jewish people of persecution and genocide. In the case of the Arabs a long history of colonization, colonialism. And for West Bank and Gazans, particularly for West Bankers in Israeli occupation there are all of these terribly emotional and deep fears and insecurities that get in the way of trying to reach a solution. And that’s why, as with most things politics, leadership is really, really, really important. If I were to point to one concern I have about the prospects of getting Arab-Israeli peace, it’s the absence of leaders who are willing to rise above their own politics and their narrow political constituencies and turn themselves into statesman. That’s what’s missing here. And no matter how badly Barack Obama may want to do this, he can’t do it with one hand clapping. He’s going to need courageous leadership from the Arabs and the Israelis to pull this off

Dr. Kent: And what, you know, I love that one hand clapping image. I mean, it’s a great visual image for me. In these interviews you’ve conducted and these people you’ve talked to for this book, The Much Too Promised Land, was there anything surprising that someone told you that you didn’t expect?

Aaron David Miller: You know, I interviewed three of our last four ex-Presidents. I interviewed all nine secretaries of state. Most of the key Arab and Israeli negotiators, a lot of senators, representatives of the Jewish community, the Arab community. You know, what comes through in these interviews by and large is not emotion or extremism, for sure. It’s balance, it’s sometimes strongly held views, but also the interviews among the power elites that I interviewed seem to have a moderate, almost centrist view on what is required to do this. Everybody it seems, at least those representing the Arab and Palestinian and Israeli points of view, including, I might add, American Jews, Arab Americans that I interviewed, many evangelical Christians. Most of the key evangelical Christians, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Ralph Reed, John Hagy, even there there was a sense of balance. Either everybody wanted to appear reasonable, which I think was partly the case, or in theory this seems to be something that could actually work if you had leaders who would be able to draw some of these communities together. I’m writing a book right now called Can America Have Another Great President? It’s a book on presidential leadership. It’s going to come out the year Barack Oama runs again for election, in 2012. And it takes a look at leadership and the more I think about it, the more I’m absolutely persuaded that what stands between us and the abyss is our people. People at all levels of society who are prepared to act, and act with moral purpose in pursuit of I guess what we could describe as the common good. And I found in many of my interviews a real commitment to the common good. Everybody had a strong point of view but no one seemed to be so dug in that they couldn’t come off of their positions. And what occurred to me is what is required to pull all of this together, Kissinger told me once that you need in the interview that you needed a hand to pull the threads together. And the reality is that’s what you need here. You need three hands, an American hand, an Israeli hand and a Palestinian hand.

Dr. Kent: And you know, for me I guess the new complicating factor in my understanding of Palestine is this real divide between Gaza and the West Bank. Is that a real hindrance to finding peace?

Aaron David Miller: It’s a huge problem. You have, and I don’t want to make light of this, you have what I would describe to you as a Palestinian Humpty Dumpty, which is broken into several parts and which, frankly, is dysfunctional. The real problem for the Palestinians is that yes, it’s the Israeli occupation, and yes it’s settlements. But it’s also the fact that no single Palestinian leader controls all the guns, all the people and all the legitimacy of Palestine. And states can’t operate that way if they expect to be respected by their constituents or by their neighbors. This is a huge problem, fixing the Palestinian Humpty Dumpty. I think it’s beyond the capacity of outsiders to do. Every time we get involved in these politics we ed up doing more harm than good. There are certain things that we can do, but in the end it really will require a decision from the Palestinian national movement. How are they going to unify and can they agree on one strategy for realizing Palestinian national aspirations. So far they’ve proven that they couldn’t.

Dr. Kent: And you know, it’s such a, just as you’re saying all of this, it really does come to mind that people know what it needs to look like, what needs to be done, what they would like to happen over there. But at the same time all of the extremists of the world seem to point to Jerusalem. It’s because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that we’re angry with the west, or is Jerusalem still the center of the world?

Aaron David Miller: You know, I think it, Jerusalem is probably the most sensitive thing and most contentious and will be the most difficult issue to resolve because it’s the issue o which I would argue there is the least margin and room for creative thinking and for compromise. I tell the story in the book that on the eighth day of the Summit when the Palestinians and the Israelis were asserting sovereignty over Jerusalem at Camp David, Americans tried to come in with what were very creative but very rational fixes. None of them worked, and the reason they didn’t work is because history has taught the Israelis and the Palestinians and the Arabs that Jerusalem isn’t to be shared. It’s not to be divided up like some piece of salami. It’s to be possessed in the name of God, in the name of the tribe, in the name of the nation. That’s what history tells us. Now, can those historical memories and can that history be overcome? Yes, but it’s going to require unbelievably heroic and bold decisions. Again, by leaders who have the confidence and trust of their constituents.

Dr. Kent: So then some of your belief in an organization like Seeds of Peace, is probably similar to my hope in it that as young people in an organization like that that will grow up to be leaders.

Aaron David Miller: Yeah, and I ran Seeds of Peace for three years. It’s a wonderful organization, basically trying to save the world one person at a time. There’s certainly a place for that. It’s just very difficult to go down that path when the realities on the ground undercut and undermine every day what it is you’re trying to do. And the occupation and the role that the occupier and the occupied play, this sort of deadly dance, fundamentally makes saving the world one person at a time extremely difficult. So governments in addition to programs like Seeds of Peace are going to have to act to change environments so that not just 200 young people can get to know one another every summer, but thousands ultimately will be able to live normal lives within their societies and then be able to reach out with hope and good intentions toward one another. And in the end that’s what’s missing now. There’s too much despair and cynicism and not nearly enough hope

Dr. Kent: Well, so I have a question for you about both Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter. Conservative Christians but Democrats, and both of them put forward a very significant effort in Mid East peace. Is there a difference between them and Barack Obama. Is there improvement in the technique? Is it more of the same?

Aaron David Miller: Well, first of all, of the three there is only one clear success, and that was Jimmy Carter at Camp David. Jimmy Carter with a huge amount of help from (inaudible) succeeded at the first Camp David, September ’78 in hammering out a framework that would ultimately lead to an Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. Bill Clinton, very well intentioned. Extremely skilled, very committed, could not succeed in almost seven years in producing agreements, either between Israelis and Palestinians or Israelis and Syrians. And Barack Obama is still untested. The fact is negotiations succeed or fail when three elements are present. Number one, there again, as I mentioned repeatedly, leaders who are prepared to take risks. Number two, there is urgency. There is real, real, a real need to make decisions, either out of fear of too much pain, or alternatively out of the prospects of real gain .And finally, you need a third party, a mediator. But you need a third party who is, and I use three words here that are very important. Tough, smart, and fair. Tough, smart and fair. Jimmy Carter, even though I would disagree with much of what he proclaims leaving the White House on the Israeli issue, deserves enormous credit between 1977 and 1980. His policies were tough, smart and fair. At least as it pertained to the Egyptian-Israeli process. Bill Clinton was not nearly tough enough. And I would argue not nearly fair enough. Extremely smart. Very smart. Barack Obama is still a work very much in progress, and I have hope that he does have the right skills. But then again, he’s going to need enormous help from an Israeli Prime Minister and a Palestinian President in order to pull this off.

Dr. Kent: And that seems to be a difficult way forward. How does Palestine first of all become somehow sovereign, and how does it find its President?

Aaron David Miller: Well, sovereignty is a function in this case of finding a way to end the Israeli occupation through negotiations and creating a unified leadership, which exercises authority control over the forces of violence within Palestinian society. This is an extremely important point, I don’t care if it’s New York City or Chevy Chase Maryland, or Washington D.C. where I live. Unless you can control all the guns you’re not much of anything, because you’re never going to have the support of your constituents, and you’ll never have the respect of your neighbors. So sovereignty in this sense must come through negotiation. But it also has to be an internally generated process in which Palestinians can find a way to unify. And there’s no magic quick fix here, there’s no cavalry that’s going to ride to the rescue. This is going ot be done through institution-building on one hand, and very tough and excruciatingly painful negotiations on the other hand. And it’s a long movie. Not going to happen quickly, and it’s not going to happen easily. The important thing is that it gets started and headed in the right direction.

Dr. Kent: Well, and let me ask you this. You served also under our most recent President, George W. Bush, and did you find that it was a different kind of administration than Bill Clinton’s administration? Was it a struggle to …

Aaron David Miller: No. George W. Bush had different priorities, and he gave in different value to the Israeli issue. He didn’t really treat it with much of an importance or concern during his first four years. And then under Secretary of State Condoliza Rice the administration tried during the second four years to accord it greater priority, but it had gone untended for too long. And the conflicts within the administration were just, and not only the administration, but conflict, the tensions and the problems within the Arabo-Israeli conflict itself, particularly between Israelis and Palestinians, were just impossible by 2004. By the beginning of 2005 with the second Bush administration, impossible to reconcile. So I’m not sure the Bush administration, having not taken it seriously during the first four years, had much of a chance for doing much about it during the second four years.

Dr. Kent: Well, and something else from the Clinton years, I read that you were appointed by the President to serve on the US, on the Holocaust Memorial Museum governing counsel. What are your, I mean, it was obviously shocking this week to read about the shooting. What’s your take on that?

Aaron David Miller: You know, I think that, I’m a great believer in America. I believe that we have done something here that no other society on earth has done. We’ve created a big tent, and under this big tent, courtesy of the framers and the founders, we have created a society which allows extraordinary interaction between groups and individuals in various religious denominations that often have very fundamentally different views. And they co-exist here sometimes uneasily. But by and large, in a relatively civil matter, we just did something by electing Barack Obama that no other nation on earth would ever do. We elected a member of a formally enslaved minority group. Even though Obama’s not a direct descendent of slaves, and still despised by millions of Americans and made him President of the United States, the most powerful man on earth. No other democracy in the world today would ever, could ever, elevate a minority group to a level of such significance. Only the American system could do this. So I believe in the American system, and yet the system allows and tolerates a degree of freedom and freedom of expression, including the freedom to hate others. And far too often we’ve seen it on the attack at the Lucrene Center, we saw it in the murder of Dr. Tiller, who was performing abortions, we saw it the other day, this poor man, his poor security guard, who gave up his life in the face of extremists from a variety of different points of view who decide to translate their right to hate, however abominable it may be into actions that can kill. And whether or not this is the price we need to pay in a society like ours which gives wide latitude to groups to protest and speak out on their own, for their own causes, even though those causes may be racist, anti-semitic, hostile to this group or that, I don’t know. But it’s a painful reminder that prejudice, tolerance and hatred are still alive and well in America. We’re also reminded that a security guard, a normal working guy, demonstrated real courage just in the act of doing his job. So it’s a terrible tragedy and to have it happen on the mall magnifies its significance.

Dr. Kent: Yep. Well, and you know, kind of in closing here, when you’re speaking about the amazing nature of this country and the sometimes extremism, it really is remarkable that in those interviews, as you said, the responses of all the world leaders and these people was this sort of beautiful, moderate, almost agreement. Did you find agreement between people?

Aaron David Miller: You mean in the sense…

Dr. Kent: In your book?

Aaron David Miller: …Arab-Israeli? I’m sorry, what?

Dr. Kent: In The Much Too Promised Land book, did you sort of find, did you discover that you found agreement between all of these people, despite their backgrounds?

Aaron David Miller: Well, there’s a sort of a sad position that everybody wants to aspire to, and I encouraged a good deal of that centrism. With respect to the Arab-Israeli conflict itself, Arabs, Israelis, these are really by and large good people, caught up, who manage to maintain their dignity, their sense of humor, and their sense of hope, who are caught up in a very nasty, historic, and some people would argue intractible conflict. I don’t think it need be intractable, it’s just, it’s going to take a long time to sort out

Dr. Kent: Well, it’s been such an honor chatting with you, and please do give my greetings to your daughter Jen. And she’s got a wonderful…

Aaron David Miller: I will.

Dr. Kent: …book of the Middle East as well, called Inheriting the Holy Land. And Aaron David Miller’s book is called the Much Too Promised Land, America’s Elusive Search for Arab-Israeli Peace, and I’m definitely going to read it cover to cover.

Aaron David Miller: Terrific.

Dr. Kent: Thank you so much for chatting with me.

Aaron David Miller: Thanks Kent, I really appreciate it.

Dr. Kent: And my next guest on the show is a fellow named Larry Buttram. He’s the author of The Curtain Torn, and it’s based on the life of Robert Carter, who’s a plantation owner that freed over 500 slaves. Come on back for that.

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