NB. This transcript was typed from a transcription
unit recording and not copied from an original script. Because of
the possibility of mis-hearing, INCORE cannot vouch for it's complete
accuracy.
Good Morning.
It is a pleasure to be here. It is not my first trip to Northern
Ireland. Every time I come here I feel like I'm coming home. The
reason is we have so much in common, it's really quite incredibly.
The last time I was here was about nine or ten months ago. When
there was a tremendous amount of hope in the air, conservative hope
and I was, frankly, green with envy. The reason I was green with
envy is that you seemed able to put together what we had successfully
succeeded in destroying in the previous five or six years. And I
made a rousing lecture on where we went wrong. Since then we have
proved to the world that we are stuck again and unfortunately the
situation here is not as uplifting as when I was here last time.
I would want
to tell you I am essentially here to share our experiences with
you, our insights in Israel, and what we have undergone in the past
six or seven years. I have no answers; but I have some connections
to make, which you might find helpful, or you might decide that
you want to ignore entirely, and say that it doesn't fit. But I
want to share them with you and you may give me the pleasure of
knowing when I think about where we are coming from and where we
are going, that it helped us put ourselves in order. So that is
a lengthy introduction and believe you me I do not engage in lengthy
introductions.
Before I begin
I want to set out a basic premise, because anything I say from here
on in will make absolutely no sense, unless you are with me on the
premise. And the basic premise is that in a society like ours, I
am talking about Israel and Palestine, ongoing conflict is absolutely
abnormal and everything should done to achieve reconciliation because
it is inhuman to live the way I have lived my entire life, and that
is, literally since the day I was born in a series of wars or what
the academics (and I used to be one) called low grade conflict.
It is not right and therefore the purpose of leaders is, against
all odds, to find away of living a normal life in the future. That
is my starting point, my essential premise, and the objective of
my work as a politician.
Now if you
don't join me in that premise I may lose you on the first premise.
And after that premise, something else and that is, this conflict
will not go away unless it is resolved and unless there is reconciliation.
When one does not treat it, it just gets more complicated and new
factors are introduced and it changes shape and form. But it will
not go away unless we make it go away which means we will have more
difficulty than we ever imagined. And each time one thinks one has
gone as far as one can go and usually it is not enough because of
the emotional and psyological and historically baggage that we carry
,but again it won't go away if it is untreated, it just gets worse
and those are my starting premises, and challenge them if you don't
agree with me but I am telling you now as a working politician;
that the only reason I am in this business instead of sitting at
the university writing books and going to conferences is because
at the end of frustrating days, weeks and months if someone isn't
trying then it may fall apart. That is my real introduction.
I want to
talk about three things. I will try to pace myself about 7 minutes
for each topic to convey to you what we have been doing in some
of our lessons; without any clear answers on my part besides the
ones that I just mentioned. I want to look at some of the characteristics
of our leadership during the course of the peace process. This is
what's known as self-analysis; very dangerous especially in the
morning! Next I want to look at the dynamics of the relationship
between leaders and followers, party members and community members
during the course of the peace process. I am talking really about
back at the beginning of the 1990's but specifically about the Oslo
process in 1993. So I will discuss the dynamics and then I want
to deal with some of the factors that I think have influenced both
the leaders and relationship between leaders and followers in Israel
and see where we are going from here.
Let me start
with 'Leaders in the Peace Process'. Israel has had some very well
known leaders - Ben Gurion, Golda Meir, Begin, Rabin, Netanyahu,
and now Barak. And the first question one has to ask is what characteristic
of leadership allows a leader like Rabin, who was elected because
he was a Commander in Chief of the Army, a little bit better left
of centre but not too much, an Israeli version of a mild
Tony Blair, to take a move that none his predecessors were willing
to take? What allowed him to look the Palestinians in the face and
say 'I as leader of Israel understand that unless there is a just
solution, based on Israeli recognition of the legitimate right of
the Palestinian people, through direct negotiation with PLO and
Yasser Arafat. What is inside a leader to (not the situation) allows
for that to happen? When you are in politics you have no time to
think about these questions, but since Rabin's assasination and
I will get back to that, I have asked myself the question all along.
I have often
been asked questions about the late prime minister, Rabin, whom
I always posed problems for and I know he would not be happy with
my answer. You know what? I don't think it is was it was just Yitzak
Rabin. Israel was lucky that in the earlier 1990's we had two leaders
that together had four traits that were indispensable. They had
the courage to pull from existing policy and chartered influence.
In fact, Yitzak Rabin was the pen-ultimate pragmatist.
That's one characteristic. And he had something which every political
leader dreams of and that is trust. People trusted
him on the most important thing for them and that was security.
And so having brought to the political process trust and pragmatism,
this makes for good leadership. He had good sense or he had not
choose depending on how you want to see it, but he realised he needed
Shimon Peres by his side. Now what did Shimon Peres bring, that
Rabin was lacking?
Shimon Peres
brings, and still to this very day, brings to the process vision.
And you know what? One does not move towards peace and one does
not move towards reconciliation without vision. And vision comes
with dedication and commitment to a picture of the future, which
is very different and much more positive then the present. So he
aligned with a man of vision who had the second trait and please
don't tell him I said that out loud, especially not in Stormont!
Shimon Peres
has a second characteristic he is the pen-ultimate politician
in the sense that he will walk into a room and say 'How is your
granddaughter? Is she feeling better today? Did your son find a
job? What is it, do you have problems with the water here? I see
there is potholes in the road!' He is a politician!
So look what
we have together, something almost unbelievable under the circumstances.
We have two leaders with all the characteristics needed to make
change. Pragmatism, trust, vision and a nose for petty politics.
Put it together and you're on a roll. After Rabin's assassination
the Israeli's in their great wisdom decided they wanted something
different and they choose Netanyahu, who was a pragmatist and still
is, and he is a petty politician and he lacks vision and he did
not draw trust. And now we have Barak. And even though many of us
see him every day we still do not understand him. And I think he
has three of the traits. He is a pragmatist but he is not a great
politician. He still does still manage trust and what is lacking
is that 'spark', the 'vision', although he is learning.
So what characteristics
do leaders need? I name four that are essential and not everyone
has them, and if not everybody has them, then mix them. Secondly
leaders at the beginning of the peace process need objectives.
They have to understand what they are there for. And can I really
talk as a politician for a minute? There are few politicians elected
to office including Prime Ministers, with all due respect to any
past or future ones in this room, who do. They have to make their
own priorities and I can think of four priorities in a conflict
moving to peace situation that are important.
I'll keep
making lists if you don't mind, and just keep demonstrating from
Israel. In a peace process the top priority has to be to make
peace, to resolve things, that's an objective. It not just
a single objective because too many things interfere in that objective
but the one priority is to make it work. And I have to say what
is obvious because I think it is so important.
The second
priority is to protect the interests of those who elected
you and immediately there is the potential for conflict.
Because if the result is to make peace and one does that, one loses
the protection of the interests of those that elected you. There
may be a conflict of interests right at the very beginning.
The third
is one has to think of ones community, and ones community
is not always ones voters. But it is a section of the community
that sent you. Sometimes it is in order to let the other party representing
your community get the best of you, right!
So that's
the third priority and the fourth priority, which you are not allow
to say out loud, but we have to recognise it, so I will whisper
it. Politicians have to respect their careers. And
their own egos, and I don't know any politicians without egos do
you? They don't exist!
Therefore
look at what the objectives are, a total commitment to the process
and to the resolution and it has to be done in such away that it
protects the interests of ones community and ones voters, and of
one's self. What a balancing act is needed in order to pursue those
objectives!
So there is
two ways of doing this. I say this with a great deal of embarrassment
saying this out loud but I figure it is better to be honest than
to sound good. The way we lived in Israel was a result of all this
complication of the objectives of leadership. We changed leaders
all the time. We know exactly what we don't like. Exactly. Well,
usually when we get something new we usually tire of him very quickly.
I am beginning to think that in Northern Ireland there is a different
kind of pattern. I may be wrong, but that is you keep the leaders
and want them to change the policies, to change themselves. Essentially
the two options are; you either get rid of the leaders that aren't
what one expected, or it is like a marriage, only in marriage, when
for thirty or forty years you really believe you are going change
your partner and he is going to change in the direction you want.
So look at
what I did with leadership, I essentially said that we have certain
characteristics that enable certain leaders to come forward and
indeed others and each one has had different sense of priorities
and that effects the outcome and we don't know what to do with it.
We either change our leaders or try to change them. And you know
what? To be quick critical about ourselves one doesn't have to live
with what one has. One has to find ways to compensate for what is
lacking at the crucial point in the process. One has to find ways
to compensate and after one get over the fact that it is in an negotiation
the other side is always, if possible, moving forward. Nevertheless,
I give a tremendous amount of importance to the characteristics
and style of leadership and the understanding of what is needed,
what is lacking, and what one has to find via partners.
Leaders never
act in a vacumn and those that do make terrible mistakes sometimes
fatal ones. I explained to what allowed Prime Minister Rabin to
shake Arafat's hand, something that many of us thought would never
happen. But what it happened to him afterwards, if you listen, there
has to be debate because out of these prolonged peace processes
there is a consistent dynamic between leaders and followers. The
decision to shake Arafat's hand split Israel and forced every citizen
and especially party members to take sides. Is it good, is it bad?
There weren't any choices in the middle. They were forced to take
sides. And so a courageous decision like Rabin's enforced the extremes,
in a sense it divided the patriots, because one couldn't waffle.
One had to make a decision and unfortunately Rabin did not have
Peres by his side and because both extremes took over the situation
blew up, and then came his assassination. And the greatest failure
of Israeli society is that we did not learn. Rabin didn't nurture
those in the middle enough. Israel became divided and violent and
he was assassinated. Since then, and you know who was the key benefitiaries,
those that opposed him in the form of being of Netanyahu.
We don't often
get to have a second chances but Barak was elected almost year ago
on the peace platform and found that the divided society in the
wake of the Rabin assassination had changed shape again, and now
society and the party political scheme was fragmented. Do not compensate
for splits or you will get fragmentation. Fragmentation is chaotic.
I am the deputy speaker for a parliament of 120 members with 17
parties. Prolonged division leads to fragmentation, which makes
ruling more difficult and therefore there has to be constant give
and take, which we have not succeeded in doing this in Israel. I
know what we need and I know we haven't succeeded. Between courageous
policy and nurturing the followers, and when the followers take
over, the leaders have to step back and re-assert courageous policies,
but it is a constant dynamic between leadership policy and follower
influence. Don't lose your followers and don't let them control
you. There is never going to be the possibly of moving seriously
without maintaining this balance. And by the way, on leadership
as well as on dynamics, I am continuously talking about balances,
do you follow me?
I know when
I have gone to far, when 70% of the phonecalls said I was wrong.
When it is 50% wrong and 50% right then I am fine. And when it is
70% that I was right, I am in trouble because that means I didn't
do anything important!
Let me just
move on to that factors that therefore influence the dynamics. And
I will give you the four Fs. The four Fs are going to spell success,
if handled properly, not failure. The first factor both in the dynamic
between leader and follower, in leadership courage, and in capability
is fear. Why? I think fear governs all our successes
in Israel/Palestine, what I know and experienced in South Africa,
Cyprus and Northern Ireland. But how do I divide it up? What pushes
us to reconcile the fear of prolonging an impossible situation?
What pushes us to stop negotiating? The fear of something we don't
know and the fear of the future. So factor number 1 is fear and
it works both ways and against the grain. When there is an improvement
we let fear of the future begin. When there is no improvement we
let fear of the future permit change. So factor number 1 is fear
and we have to recognise this and have to make it work for us.
Factor number
two is fatigue. But fatigue is not just physical,
it's mental fatigue, it's historical fatigue, it's emotional fatigue,
it's fatigue in every sense of the term. Fatigue is a tremendous
capital for making things happen. Why? When things are really bad,
we forget, we are tired, and one of the things that frightens me
the most, I must admit, is that when things here keep moving forward
we allow fatigue to overtake us. Because the nuts and bolts of implementing
agreements are a task of drudgery in the extreme and drudgery allows
us to get tried and when we are tried we are no good. So the second
factor is fatigue.
A third factor
is friction, personnel friction and I don't have to
tell you that because you know it as well as I do, but friction
also between external influences which tend to bring out the best
in us not the worse. Most Americans and South Koreans don't love
the US but when President Clifton intervenes it actually moves the
process forward. So the friction between the external and this creates
domestic pressures which tend to be prosaic. Why? Because leaders
like to do what we think and our people and our orders have to live
everyday. And we will have the friction between external influence
which moves us forward and the domestic internal prosaic pressure
which helps to hold us back. We need the balance.
The fourth
factor is failure, and in order to answer what failure
is one has to know what power measures success. I can say to you
today with the greatest belief of certainly that success for us
is the completion and implementation of a full peace treaty with
the Palestinian's and Syrian's and the Lebanese. What do I mean
by that? Success by us is the creation of a Palestinian state along
side Israel. A full peace treaty along with Syria which involve
a full withdrawal from the Golan Heights and a comprehensive peace.
If that is success then why does failure happen? Failure means that
we not achieved our goal, our specific detailed concrete goal that
I just described. So I have suggested four factors here, fear
and how to deal with it, fatigue and how to deal with
it, friction and how to deal with it, and the definition
of failure and how to be able define success with
it.
Now what did
I say, essentially said three things this morning;
Number 1:
that the relationship between leaders and followers and the possibly
of forward movement depends on constant balancing on every part,
that's number one.
Number 2:
prolonged processes of negotiations, and we have been involved in
them for too long, develop their own patterns and norms and problems
and dynamics. And if one drags them out for too long, they become
the new realities, and they aren't always positive realities. Therefore,
I've become convinced that time is of the essence because of the
setting down of the norms and patterns during the process. I am
not going to talk about dead-lines because we live with deadlines
all the time. We have Middle Eastern 'time', we have Irish 'time',
and also Mauritanian 'time'. And the bottom lime of all these 'times'
is you never meet the deadline. But time is an essential factor,
because of the fact that these new norms are laid down.
And the third
thing that I am saying, is the thing that is most important to me,
I even repeat to myself very frequently. I think leaders have a
responsibly to make it work. And it's a responsibility that is very
difficult for us to understand fully because this is a responsibly
for future generations rather than facing problems and because present
problems are so vexing. Its very easy to justify to ourselves periodically
being racked about our own responsibilities to future generations
but we can't shrug responsibilities because prolonged conflict in
our society is unthinkable and it is unfair to our children and
our grandchildren that if we don't do it we are going to lead them
to a situation which is worse than the one we have received, because
it is more complicated. In other words I believe very strongly that
reconciliation is inevitable and we have to help it along. And because
it's inevitable, it's not impossible.
Thank You
very Much.
Professor Naomi Chazan was first elected to the
Knesset on the Meretz (Democratic Israel) list in June 19992. She
was re-elected to a second term in May 1996, and has just returned
for a third term.
Naomi Chazan is Deputy Speaker of the Knesset
and serves on the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee (concentrating
on issues relating to the peace process and Israeli's foreign relations),
on the Economics Committee and the Committee on the Status of Women.
In the past two terms she was one of the top legislators in Israel's
parliament, specializing in women's rights and consumer issues.
Born in Jerusalem, Naomi holds B.A. and M.A. degrees
from Columbia University and a Ph.D. from the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem. Until her election to the Knesset, she was Professor
of Political Science and African Studies at the Hebrew University
of Jerusalem where she served as Chair of the Harry S. Truman Research
Institute for the Advancement of Peace. She has been a Visiting
Professor of Government at Harvard University, and a Visiting Scholar
at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. She
has authored and edited eight books on comparative politics and
written numerous articles on African politics, Arab-Israeli relations,
Israeli politics, and women and politics.
Naomi Chazan has been Vice President of the International
Political Science Association and President of Israel Chapter of
the Society for International Development. Among the founders of
the Israel Women's Network, the Israel Women's Peace net, the Jerusalem
Link, and Engendering the Peace Process, she is active in a variety
of professional, human rights and peace organizations.
From
Protagonist to Pragmatist? :Political Leadership in Societies
in Transition 
