Thematic Quotes from Daniel Seidemann
In October of 1991 I got a phone call from a friend of mine who was a member of Knesset. The settlers had just taken over 10 or 11 houses in Silwan. He said, "I want you to take it to the Supreme Court." I asked him on what basis, and he said, "Well, why don't we find out." Initially, the office turned it down because it was just too cumbersome and time consuming to do pro-bono work like this, but we couldn't live with ourselves with a clear conscience, so we decided to take it on. In the weeks and months that followed, we were able to crack the genetic code of a covert government policy that targeted Palestinian properties in order to turn them over as ideological trinkets to settler organizations. We were able to expose this, and take it to the Supreme Court. Not by legal means, but by political means, we were able to shut down the policy for a period of about 10 years. That was the beginning of my involvement, and as a result of that I was sucked into the very compelling subject of the relations between Israelis and Palestinians in Jerusalem, which is my sandbox.
Part of my reason for coming to Israel was to live history as a participant sport and not as a spectator sport. This [work] gave me an opportunity to put some soul into a rather soulless profession, namely the legal profession. There's a great deal of satisfaction in taking the hugest issues and disaggregating them and taking them apart into their component parts and fixing some of them, preventing some of the bad things from happening, and seeing actual results.
During the last 4 years of the intifada, where Israelis and Palestinians have regressed and cancelled the mutual humanization that took place before, and dehumanized one another again, we never missed a beat. It's not touchy-feely people-to-people stuff, it's very object oriented: history has condemned us to share the city; we've got work to do, let's get the work done. I'm involved in very eye-level, joint efforts without for a minute forgetting that I'm an Israeli trying to advocate an Israeli interest as I see it, and my partners, rivals, sometimes enemies are trying to advance their causes from the Palestinian perspective.
I think everybody knows what final status in Jerusalem looks like 10 or 15 years from now, and nobody knows how to get there. The ability to work incrementally is one element that I think is clearly peace work. Also, politicians are good at arriving at agreements but they rarely ask what I call the "will you respect me in the morning question," namely, if you agree on something, is it going to work? So that too is an element: putting political ideas to scrutiny in order to see how viable they are, how sustainable they are.
The wall in Jerusalem is hugely problematic, and I think ultimately could well be counter-productive. There are going to be 200,000 to a quarter of a million Palestinians on the Israeli side of the wall…They're being cut off from their hinterland in the surroundings, Bethlehem to the south and Ramallah to the north. This has stark humanitarian implications. Almost invariably--not always, but almost invariably--the wall cuts off Palestinians from other Palestinians in a rather arbitrary route, and there's no non-arbitrary route in Jerusalem except by political agreement. So I think the possibility of the wall having grave detrimental effects is very real. I think it's already happening.
We are trying to convince the authorities that number one, the wall must be temporary, it can't be a border, and that a convincing cease-fire will always be more effective than any kind of physical measure. That's an uphill battle.
I would say that there are three important international audiences: Washington, Washington, Washington. At the moment. Of course, I’m exaggerating. I think that much of what happens is decided in Washington, and decided in a very narrow way in Washington. [...I think the US can be most constructive] number one, by re-engaging, because there has been disengagement, which I think has had a very adverse effect: “Let 'em bleed.” And by prioritizing, asking what is of utmost importance, and focusing on that. Stopping terror is clearly one of them, generating a genuinely democratic process is clearly one of them, and here I agree with Bush Administration. But also, preventing Israeli actions that will predispose the outcome of final status, that will perhaps destroy the two state solution. Those things are happening, and there’s no American engagement.
As problematic as our peace agreements are with Egypt and Jordan, their voices as the voices of moderation in providing legitimacy to peace as a process and to Israel as such has an enormous amount of impact, so I wouldn’t be too Washington-centric.
The negotiators got too far ahead of their constituencies, and they weren't the real decision makers. At the time, during Camp David, I thought that the parties were not ripe for a final status. I think that the attempt to go whole hog and try and reach one without a fallback solution was a mistake.
The Palestinians will never go back to a process that is incremental, because they will always see this--legitimately--as an Israeli ploy just to gain advantages and buy time. Israelis will never go straight to endgame. And what we have to do is develop methodologies that will be sufficiently endgame in order to generate Palestinian willingness to engage, and sufficiently incremental at least in implementation in order to allay genuine Israeli suspicions.
Let me put it this way, there's one solution, and another consequence. The only solution is the two-state solution, and that two-state solution has to be inside the city of Jerusalem, and not outside it. There will be no equilibrium without Jerusalem being politically divided. There is no alternative to that as a solution. The other alternative is a consequence. The consequence is the one state solution, which neither side wants, which will Balkanize the region, and Balkanize the conflict, and Balkanize the city of Jerusalem, which will be a disaster for both peoples.
Jerusalem attracts solution mongers like flies are attracted to a garbage can. Normal, decent, intelligent people start to salivate and become glassy eyed when they talk about Jerusalem, and all of their messianic hormones come out.
