Saeb Erekat on Thinking Outside the Box

October 19, 2007 – 2:00 PM: Dr. Saeb Erekat tells Palestinian and Israeli young people at NSWAS: Before you focus on a resolution to the conflict, focus on the thinking process you’re using to try to get there.

The Seeds of Peace youth organization is holding a Negotiation Summit here at Neve Shalom / Wahat al Salam this weekend. One hundred smart, highly motivated Palestinian and Israeli young people (the "Seeds") are meeting here in our hotel conference rooms, to talk about what a resolution of the conflict might look like. We can count on them to make good use of their time and we look forward to hearing about the outcomes. Meanwhile, Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, who gave the keynote speech for Seeds of Peace here this afternoon, told the Seeds that negotiating is about the process before it’s about the results.

"We don’t need to reinvent the wheel," he said. "We know the end before we get there: a two-state solution." (He did not allude to the fact that the consensus on this is by no means total.) "We know the borders; we know Jerusalem will be the capital of two states. We know we will live side by side... and that we need to reach a solution." Dr. Erekat said he thinks it could take only three to six months at this point to reach a treaty if we have a shared understanding of the basics – which we certainly should, by now, he implied. "Otherwise," he said somberly, "it could take 40 years." Like the forty years with Moses in the desert, perhaps.

"I studied abroad and learned all about negotiating," he said. "That was fine as far as it went. I thought I could come back here [to the Middle East] and we could brainstorm and do all those other things I learned about in the West… but what we forgot is that people here have been worshipping for 5,000 years and not one word of what is said in a synagogue can be changed. People have been worshipping here for 2,000 years [in churches], sprinkling holy water around, and not one word of these prayers can be changed…"; and Muslims, too, of course, have their religiously-based red lines.

"But both sides understand now," he said, "that this is a zero-sum game, which means that there will be either two winners… or two losers."

Doing ourselves a favor

He spoke to the widespread perception that the drive to find common ground is something we do for the other side’s benefit: "Reaching an agreement is not doing the other side a favor," he said forcefully; "we are doing ourselves a favor." He asserted (although I did not hear him quote a source) that 70% of Palestinians and Israelis want to see the "end game" now: a two-state solution. He believes that an agreement now can lead us to stability and democracy here, whereas failure to reach an agreement now will take us toward "Bin Ladenism" for the entire region.

Dr. Erekat had much more to say in answer to audience questions about the forthcoming peace conference. "We met with Condoleezza Rice twice," he said, "and her message was that ’You have to do the work yourselves, we cannot do it for you.’" He explained that, although the conference has been announced, the Palestinians have not yet received an official invitation, which he attributes to President Bush’s disinclination to convene another gathering that will fail to produce an agreement. The USA has adopted a smart approach, in his view, by announcing that there will be a conference without announcing the list of invitees or the agenda. Now everyone is asking to be invited, he said, and the USA is saying, Okay, if you do the work. "This is what a superpower does," said Erekat, terming the approach entirely legitimate.

Haniya and Mandela

In answer to a question about Hamas as a player, Dr. Erekat said that the problem with Hamas was not the elections that brought them to power ("they were excellent elections") and not the positions Hamas espoused going into the elections, but rather their refusal after taking office to publicly commit to honoring previous agreements entered into by the Palestinian Authority. "When [Ismail] Haniya took office," he said, "he also became my prime minister – not just the prime minister for Hamas voters." But Hamas refused to wear the mantle of government, said Dr. Erekat, and tried to be selective about their obligations. Nelson Mandela, he pointed out by way of comparison, after his election as Prime Minister of South Africa, announced that his government would honor all international obligations undertaken by South Africa’s former regimes.

In response to a question about last week’s massive confiscation of land east of Ma’aleh Adumim by Israel - which, to any rational observer, has the appearance of a move calculated to torpedo a two-state solution - Dr. Erekat said simply: "They can have peace or settlements; they can’t have both."

A listener asked what tips he could give the 100 Seeds who would be spending the weekend negotiating together. In response, Dr. Erekat conducted a little simulation. He called two young people up to the microphone: a Palestinian young man named Laith and a Jewish Israeli young man named Nadav. "Imagine you are brothers," he told them. "Your father has passed away, and he has left you an inheritance with three assets," represented symbolically by three coins, which were placed on the podium. (At this point, everyone close enough to see this bit of stage business laughed, evidently at the idea that three one-shekel coins were supposed to be "assets.")

"Your instructions are that you must share the inheritance fairly but you cannot split any of the assets," the boys were told. "Now you must try to find a creative solution that will get you the maximum possible benefit." When Laith said he would take two coins and give Nadav one, everyone laughed again and Dr. Erekat said, "Well, okay, you have the power to do that, but you are sowing the seeds of conflict." Nadav then said he was actually thinking of taking one coin and giving Laith two. "Evidently, based on your relationships with your own siblings," Dr. Erekat guessed, "you feel it’s worth investing in your brother in this way, and hope to benefit in the future from this." The boys sat down.

Investing in our shared future

Next, two young women came to the front of the room to repeat the exercise. It was fairly clear where Dr. Erekat was going with this, but would the girls get it? "I would keep one coin and give her two," said Shervit, the Jewish Israeli young woman, "on condition that she donate her second one to a charity, maybe a children’s hospital." (Aha! Getting warmer.) "I would keep one for myself, and give one to her," said Nahida, the Palestinian young woman, "and say that we should invest the third one together." The entire audience began applauding and Dr. Erekat seemed gratified that the demonstration had proven so effective.

"Negotiating is not a game, and it’s not a war," he said. "It’s what civilized people do to iron out their differences.” He advised the young people to do their homework, to be well prepared ahead of time, and to find ways to persuade the other side that their concerns have been taken into account. Toward the end of his talk, he made one very crucial observation: There is no point, he said, in figuring out how to get the other side to sign something they cannot live with. A negotiated settlement today is not the end of the story, because "there is always the day after," and a good negotiator should be thinking about the day after, and the day after that.

Dr. Erekat left the hall after a standing ovation, shaking hands with everyone along the way, including some of our own Communications & Development staff who had gathered at the back of the hall to hear him. We thanked him for coming and wished him well. Later on, before he left the village, he asked our photographer to take his picture with two of the hotel’s employees who happened to be standing nearby and who were delighted to comply. He is clearly a brilliant man with charisma to spare, but his team cannot negotiate the future all by themselves. Let us hope they have a partner worthy of the name.

Meanwhile, who knows? The Seeds of Peace Negotiation Summit here at the Oasis of Peace may produce an agreement so creative that the official government teams will have a workable script all ready, if and when a conference is actually convened at Annapolis later on. That would certainly be an outside-the-box development.