Chaim Katzman on Israel and the Middle East

Thank you, Richard, for having me. Good Lord, it's been a few years since the last one. I think the first time was about 20-something years ago. We were slightly younger, the two of us, and luckily the statute of limitations ran on this one.

First of all, let me comment on your Chamberlain parallel here. I think you're looking at two distinct situations. I mean, it is one thing to hand over the Sudeten to the Germans to try to avoid war. It's a different story when the people rise in countries and ask for what is rightfully theirs. Unfortunately, democracies need more than just the desire to be a democracy. It also needs institutions and parties and the judiciary and so on and so forth. Because otherwise, and what happened in those parts of the world, is that the ones that are most prepared are the ones who rise into power. Now, the Muslim Brotherhood have been preparing for that for decades. Therefore, they are the ones who rise into power, and once they consolidate the power, they will not let go of it. So it's not that the people in the Middle East do not deserve democracy and so on, but they need to be prepared for that, and they need to have the right institutions to allow for democracy to flourish and not just become a mockery like it is becoming in this part of the world. So, and while I would be the first one to support free people's right for self-determination and democracy, I think that when democracy is being a means towards an end which is not democratic, like an Islamist country, then I think other means should be brought into it. But it is not appeasement in the true sense that Chamberlain used with Germany. And as to the question about Israel and about its living together with its neighbors, the Middle East is like a kaleidoscope. It's ever-changing and ever-moving, and situations change. If you take a country like Jordan, who is at peace, Jordan is controlled by Bedouins, actually, while the majority of the population is Palestinian. So who do you want to make peace with? The people or the regime? The best example we had was Egypt during the Mubarak era. The popular notion was that we had peace with Mubarak, not with the Egyptian people. So the question is, who are you making peace with? With the dictator or with the people? Because the real lasting peace is the one that you're going to strike with the people. But in order to do that, there's a lot of groundwork that needs to be done on both sides, and mainly on the, and not less on the Israeli side. And clearly, resolving the issue with the Palestinians is a prerequisite for that, because right or wrong, this is the issue that is at the core of the conflict with the Arab world right now.

Look, I don't think that the Germans are deeply in love with the French, and I don't think that the Walloons love the Flemish in Belgium, and so on. So people don't need to be mentally in love in order to coexist. And we think that there's only that binary: it's either we're at war or we're in love with the Arabs. There's also a happy medium here. You know, with Egypt, we were neither at war nor in love, but for the last 33 years, not one shot was fired on the border. Israel saved, they would tell you, somewhere about a billion shekels a year just on not having to put troops on the border with Egypt, and I'm sure that the Egyptians saved a similar amount of money or similar, and so on. And everybody was equally unhappy or happy, depends on your point of view, but that's fine. When I'm asked this question, my counter-reaction is: one thing that makes me think and really get puzzled is, we have the strongest army in the Middle East. Why do we care? I mean, we need to do what is right for us, and what's right for us is to have our own country, majority Jewish, majority Jewish population. And how comes that the strongest army in the Middle East is very much worried about a couple of guys with Kalashnikovs? What don't I understand? We have the strongest army in that part of the world, probably one of the strongest in the world. So why are we worried about it? So nothing needs to change over there. Realities need to sink in. Poverty needs to be eradicated. I think that a full stomach is a huge advancement to peace. They need to prosper like we need to prosper. And once everybody has something to lose, then war becomes a less favorable solution. When you have nothing to lose, then all you have left is to fight. So you need to make sure that other parties don't have too many reasons to fight and have many reasons to want to keep the peace.

I haven't said that. I mean, first of all, I don't think that the current Israeli administration is very rational, and I don't truly believe that they are seeking peace at all costs. If they were, I think more advancement could have been achieved, more progress could have been achieved in the process. But I don't think that it is not solvable. I think it is solvable. It's actually not that complicated to solve it. I think everybody knows. Look, put it differently: if we all agree that the only solution is a two-state solution, if we do not want to have a South Africa in Israel or a democratic country with a minority Jewish population, then the only solution that can work is a two-state solution. We all know where the border is going to go and going to be delineated on the map, with very minor nuances that between every two intelligent people are easily solvable if you really want to solve it. And there will be issues that some people would like to resolve, like we all want the Arabs to fall madly in love with us the day after. All the Palestinians, and why exactly would they be in love with you if you suppress them for 45 years? If you're a Palestinian living in a refugee camp and your door is being knocked by Israeli soldiers in the middle of the night, why would you like them? Those wounds heal very slowly and scar over a very long period of time. But that's fine. That's fine. I mean, they say that the difference between us and the Arabs is that we want them to marry us and they want to divorce us. Through a peace process, we want the peace process to be achieved and everybody be mentally in love with everybody else, and the Arabs want to have a peace process and just say good riddance. And I think this, and by the way, I support the Arabs on that one. I don't want to be mentally in love with them. I just want to coexist with them. I want to maintain my own prowess in that region so nobody would get the wrong ideas, and just go on living my life and let them create enough wealth and own enough things so they would be really worried about losing it. And we do exactly what the Americans have been doing for the last century: speak very softly and carry a huge bat.

Thank you, Richard. Thanks for having me.