By Arzu Turgut (JTW)

At the end of the Conference held at USAK on the recent developments between Turkey and Israel, JTW conducted an exclusive interview with Dr. Yair Hirschfeld, General Director of Economic Cooperation Foundation centered in Tel Aviv-ECF and the initiator of the Oslo Peace Process. We directed our questions to Dr. Hirschfeld about the Oslo Peace Process, Jewish Settlement in Palestinian territories, Turkey-Israeli relations and Turkey's role in the Middle East.

Q: How do you evaluate the Oslo Peace Process from 1990s? What should be learned from Oslo process?

Dr. Yair Hirschfeld: I was in touch with the Palestinian leadership from 1980 onwards. It took 13 years so it is a long story. Palestinians needed us and we needed Palestinians. In 1978, the Camp David Accords was signed with Israeli government and Egyptian government. The Camp David Accords have three components. The first component is a "two state approach" in solving the Palestinian problem so we had to deal with that. Our government recognized legitimate rights of the Palestinian people and recognized the other side. The other side has not recognized us at that time, it was the Palestinian part. And there was also Israeli-Egyptian side.

Then, it became a blueprint for Israeli peace with Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and the other states. So from 1979 onwards, this became the main issue and we were a negotiating side on the Palestinian issue. From 1979 to January 1982, we discussed with the Egyptians how to create Palestinian self-government. From September 1982 to July 1988, we discussed with the Jordanians how to do it. We discussed it with the internal political leadership. Until December 1992, I went to London and we started to speak with Hezbollah.

Then Prime Minister Rabin and Minister of Foreign Affairs Peres approved to have a dialogue with PLO from the outside. This brought about the Oslo negotiation process. But it is a long process for dealing with PLO concerning its successes, failures, understandings.

For the academic part of it, we established Economic Cooperation Foundation (ECF) in 1990. We wrote a European Union project on Israeli Palestinian relations and developed three models for negotiations. One was rejected by the Palestinians, the other was rejected by us and the third one became Oslo concept. So there was an academic work on the concept of negotiations.

Q: What do you think about Jewish settlement policy of Israel in the Palestinian territories?

Dr. Yair Hirschfeld: I think we have to come to negotiations with the Palestinians on the territorial issue. On the territorial issue there would be an agreement including territorial swap, change of territories. So some of the settlement areas, about 5 percent of the West Bank territory would have settlement blocs and would become part of the Israel. The rest comprises of 80.000 settlers. They will have to decide whether they will stay in Palestine under the Palestinian sovereignty or they will move out. They have to move out in an agreement with our government, of course. They will have to give compensation, we have to prepare this. I understand that now the ongoing settlement activities create disturbance for the Palestinians, but if you do not come to an agreement, this is very bad. If you come to an agreement, the settlements become a secondary issue.

Q: How do you evaluate the recent Turkish-Israeli relations? Do you expect any positive developments in the future?

Dr. Yair Hirschfeld: At the moment, it is at a very bad point. We are saying that Turkey is very important for us. We believe that Israel should be important for Turkey, as well. We cannot deny it. And we are making proposals how to improve the relations between Israel and Turkey. I do not see any positive development between these two countries at the moment. This situation now is not a sustainable one. We have to move forward. We have to solve this flotilla issue and somehow we have to find a way out of it. We have to find a way how to do this. We need to have a wider dialogue with Turkey. We have common interests in the area. We want a peaceful, secure and prosperous Middle East. We need each other to make it happen. We have to speak together how to get there. We also have to take care of the needs of Egypt, Jordan, Palestinians and Saudi Arabians.

Q: What do you think about Turkey's role in the Middle East?

Dr. Yair Hirschfeld: I believe Turkey has a very important role to play. We need a strong strategic alliance between Turkey and Israel to see how we can create a stable, prosperous, secure and peaceful Middle East. And we have the same interests. We do not necessarily have to have the same understanding how to get there. If we listen to each other carefully and see where we can work together, I believe that there quite lot of issues to be solved together. As we have to work on the strategy for peace with Syria, there are 4-5 more issues that we have to discuss such as water security, normalization and security. We also have to discuss support for Palestinian state building.

The idea we state is that Hamas can threaten our population, put thousands of rockets, and take our millions of civilians out of the region. We do not allow having the right of self defense in an outrageous way. So we have to speak about what is to be done to understand each other.
My home was under the rocket attack from Hezbollah, only three meters away from my home, so it is a really unpleasant feeling that the rockets came down. The idea not to respond is theoretically nice if you sit here, but it is not easy to do when you are over there. We have to see how to prevent getting so far. We have a lot of understanding of the realities of the Middle East, one million people from outside, and we have to see how we move in that direction. Strategic dialogue is that we develop the region together dealing with the issues and then we establish direct bilateral relations between Turkey and Israel. Yet, I know that it is a quite challenging issue.