A Hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee - After Annapolis: Next Steps in the Middle East Peace Process

Statement

A Hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee - After Annapolis: Next Steps in the Middle East Peace Process

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REP. CHRISTOPHER SMITH (R-NJ): Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. And I want to thank our very distinguished witnesses for their incisive commentary.

Mr. Chairman, first of all I want to congratulate and commend President Bush and Secretary Rice for their focused, serious and desperately needed Middle East Diplomatic Initiative which was underscored by the recent Annapolis summit. All of us hope and pray that peace and sustainable reconciliation will ultimately prevail in the region of the world that has known and experienced far too much bloodshed and terror.

Annapolis is yet another start, and let's hope it's not another false start. Good faith and rigorous follow up by all parties is required now more than ever. It seems to me that fatigue and disappointment borne out of yet another failure would likely exacerbate the situation. I think, Dr. Wurmser, you had pointed out that, forced to chose between despair of the past and delusion of Islamism, the Palestinians chose delusion. And I think more fatigue could set in about the future, and we could get some very, very serious negative outcomes as a result.

Last sprint I joined a delegation that was led by Congressman Frank Wolf -- which included Joe Pitts, Robert Aderholt, and Ambassador Tony Hall, our former colleague from Ohio -- in Israel to encourage the faith community to undertake sustained and robust supportive actions in the cause of peace. We met then, and we have continued to meet with top Jewish, Islamic and Christian leaders to urge them to systematically appeal to their respective congregations and communities to embrace nonviolence and reconciliation. And it is our hope that that will create a sufficient space for the politicians on all sides to negotiate a more durable peace.

As recently as November 4th through the 8th, right here in Washington -- and I know you are familiar with this, Ambassador Ross, there was a number of participants from the Islamic side, the Christian side, as well as the Jewish side of the faith community -- Cardinal McCarrick chaired many of the meetings. Frank Wolf actually was -- led a conference called "Creating an Active Role for Religious Leaders in Bringing Peace to the Holy Land."

My question -- and, again, I take your point, Ambassador Ross, when you talked about the need for the Saudis and others to provide economic growth and opportunities, a Marshall Plan, if you will, for the Palestinians; I think that would create space on the ground, but I also think these clerics, who every week, and perhaps much more than every week, meet with their congregations and have a bully pulpit where they can admonish peace and reconciliation, at least tolerance -- and my question is, your view on the role, going forward, for these clerics of all of the three major faiths.

Yes, Ambassador Ross, if you would begin.

MR. ROSS: I think it would be great. I mean, we've not had religious figures, or leaders in the area, to take the lead in terms of saying violence is unacceptable, coexistence is essential. On the contrary, we've often seen just the opposite. So I think it would be highly desirable were that to be the case. I think, you know, there are people like Rabbi Melchior in Israel -- who is, I think, a deputy minister still, who has taken a lead from the Israeli side in trying to pursue this.

I think it is extremely important, but it's been very hard to produce. So I'm certainly all in favor of it if it -- if, in fact, it can be done. I would just note one thing. One of the important things Salam Fayyad did is he brought together all 800 imams in the West Bank to Ramallah, and he said to them: no more violence in the sermons, no more preaching violence in the sermons. I mean this is -- when you're looking for some signs of change, this is a pretty important one.

That was, in a sense, getting them not to be negative. You're trying to take it to the next step, which is getting them to actually to be moral leaders in the pursuit of peace. And if we had that, it actually would make things clearly better.

MR. WURMSER: Yeah, now I think it's an important effort, but I also think that it needs to -- these clerics need a context to gain traction. I mean, we have to do our homework and do our part to give them the environment where they have the credibility in the communities in the region, to actually be heard, listened to.

In that respect, you know, I'm very worried about the regional perception that Iran is winning, because as long as Iran is perceived to be winning, it is a frightening thing for a cleric in the region, to stand up to Iran. And that's not only regarding Arab-Israeli issues, it is regarding the entire relationship between the West and the region. And so I think that the image that Iran is winning needs to be addressed very profoundly in order to create the sort of context with -- in which these clerics can finally gain traction.

I noticed that these sorts of voices had the best time, really, in '90, '91, '92 -- not only the clerics, but genuine liberal voices in the region had a lot of traction in '90, '91, '92, '93 precisely because the United States was unquestionably the victor in the Cold War. There was nobody else that seemed to be out there on the horizon. Saddam Hussein had just been crushed in a war -- still survived, but had been crushed. All the alternatives to America were gone.

And you saw people beginning to stand up and say, you know, wait a second, there might be something to the West. There might be something to the ideas of tolerance, to the ideas of communication, to the ideas of freedom and democracy, that really have something -- that it may be the source of why the United States won. And that if we, the Muslim world, want to exit this -- which is a perpetual question of the region -- exit the malaise of the last thousand years, we have to start looking at these questions.

I even saw Palestinian leaders saying things like, "Why is Israel so strong? Why do they keep beating us? Why can't we get at them?" "Well, because they're free. Maybe we Palestinians should also start looking at the basic questions of freedom." This was a moment in which the context was proper. So that's why I return to the question of a context. I think these efforts are important but we need to do our homework, to give them the sort of platform and traction that they need as well.

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