SNOW:And now it’s panel time for Brit Hume and Fox News contributors Mara Liasson, national political correspondent for National Public Radio, Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, and Juan Williams, national correspondent for National Public Radio. Mara, we now have Secretary of State Colin Powell. He’s talked about the administration’s position. Is it clear to you what sorts of demands the United States will or will not be making of the parties, or will he be making any demands of the parties involved? MARA LIASSON, FOX NEWS: Well, clearly, they’re going to be demanding a cease- fire, but what’s not clear is what the consequences are going to be if they don’t get it. Already Ariel Sharon has rejected the president’s call to withdraw immediately. He’s not doing that. Clearly, Chairman Arafat has not issued the kinds of statements in Arabic that the president has asked for. Even the other Arab nations haven’t rallied to the U.S.’s side. So, as you heard the secretary of state say this morning, he said, “I don’t know what the consequences might be if this doesn’t happen.” I think, you know, one of President Bush’s most firm beliefs is that political capital has to be used or you lose it, and I think the same can be said about political capital that’s used halfway. I mean, clearly, he’s gotten involved now, after standing on the sidelines for many, many months, but he hasn’t gone so far as to say, “Here is the settlement that we are going to impose. We’re going to enforce it. And here are the consequences if either side doesn’t abide by it.” SNOW: Bill? BILL KRISTOL, FOX NEWS: Well, I think what we’ve seen, unfortunately, is for the first time since September 11, the Bush administration has retreated in the war on terror. Now, tactical retreats are sometimes necessary. And what the administration thought is that the moderate Arab states were in such trouble, that Jordan and Egypt faced such domestic unrest, that you couldn’t sustain the U.S. relationship with those states and the Israeli relationship with those states. If you talked to administration officials, that was their great fear over the last week that prompted the president’s speech. But we shouldn’t kid ourselves: It was a retreat. And you see that in the refusal to tell the truth about Arafat’s sponsorship of terror. He’s not being treated like any other head of state under whose aegis terror is being conducted, and we now know he’s personally signing off for the munitions. We see it in a much more precise way. Vice President Cheney went to the Middle East a month ago. He had conditions for meeting with Arafat. Arafat had to denounce terrorist acts. Secretary of State Powell, one month later, is going with no conditions apparently. He’s going–he refuses to lay out these conditions ahead of time. So we have retreated in the war on terror. JUAN WILLIAMS, FOX NEWS: I don’t think it’s a retreat, though. I think what you’ve seen is that the hardliners in the administration have failed–I’m talking here about Vice President Cheney, I’m talking about Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld–who wanted the president to take a hard, unforgiving stance against Arafat. What it has led to is a deterioration of security for Israel. The people who are concerned about Israel–I think that’s all Americans–feel right now Israel is under a greater threat. Even people in Israel now fear for Israel’s security as a result of the actions taken by Ariel Sharon. So what you’ve seen is that even the sympathy that came for the Passover attacks, it’s devolved now where the entire world, the Pope, the Pope is saying that Israel’s actions have been brutal and unforgiving, and people now have sympathy for people who, as you say, have engaged in terrorism against Israel. HUME: Juan . . . WILLIAMS: So those actions have backfired. HUME: Juan, I’d have to observe here that the immediate consequence of what Ariel Sharon has done, in the last several days in particular, with the acceleration of his military operation, is the suppression of further terrorist attacks. There haven’t been any successfully. Secretary of State Powell was reduced to arguing this morning that the fact that they’d intercepted a car bomb is a sign that this hasn’t been entirely successful. It seems to me the interception of a car bomb is a success story. So what the Israelis are doing militarily so far is working. Israelis have got to feel a bit more secure today than they did three or four days ago. And the question . . . WILLIAMS: Let me speak to that point. Let me speak to that point by saying, if you have an intense military action in place, which is what Israel does right now, and they’re having to intercept car bombs, as Mr. Powell said this morning, then what you’ve got is that you’re going to be on permanently–on a defensive posture, Brit. WILLIAMS: And you are, I think Mr. Powell also indicated, then creating future generations of people who have such frustration, such high levels of anger at Israel, that Israel will never be able to live in peace its neighbor. And we are here talking about a peace plan, I hope. We’re hopefully talking with some future vision about these two states living–co- existing peacefully. HUME: One thing I think is clear, Tony, from what we heard from Secretary Powell this morning, is–and Bill touched on this–is that he’s going to the region with nothing in hand as he leaves. There is no assurance that the Arab leaders will do any of the things that the president and he have called upon them to do. Indeed, the only response from Arab capitals is not encouraging at all. Prince Bandar’s remarkable editorial-page article being a cardinal example of that. Prime Minister Sharon appears to be working on an accelerated but nonetheless his own timetable. There is no–he doesn’t know whether he’s–the secretary doesn’t know if he is going to meet with Yasser Arafat or not, and he’s not sure what conditions–under which conditions this would happen. It is unusual, to say the least, for a president to send his secretary of state on such a mission. And it is a sign of the deterioration of the situation that he felt it was necessary to do with no guarantee or perhaps not even any real prospect of success. KRISTOL: But here’s the theory of the trip, if I can say, if you talk to people in the White House, here is their idea. Powell goes off tonight. He meets first with Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and then with Mubarak of Egypt. He tells them, “You’ve got to lean on Arafat to give us the cease- fire, and maybe even speak to his own people and tell them to–urge them to stop the terror.” Though I was struck that the secretary of state today on the show–the way in which he seems to expect Arafat to do that is to say it’s self- defeating. God forbid he should actually say it’s wrong to kill women and children that are sitting down for a seder on the eve of Passover. In any case, the theory is he goes to Mubarak and Abdullah. You get Arab pressure on Arafat. Then he goes to the Europeans. He’s meeting with the Europeans Wednesday. The European Union has been very close to Arafat. They fund him. They lean on Arafat. Then the Secretary of State shows up in Jerusalem Thursday. There has been pressure that has been applied to Arafat. We’ve applied pressure to Sharon. And he gets to announce a cease-fire. That at least–I mean, to be fair to them, this isn’t–the fear is that . . . LIASSON: That’s still a very short-term plan. I mean, that is still a very short-term plan. I mean, after that, what happens? He said that he’s not going over there just to talk about a cease- fire. He has the political component, as well. KRISTOL: I know, but after that what . . . HUME: Mara, I think it is manifestly true, though, that he clearly regards, and the administration clearly would regard, a cease- fire as a signal achievement. Something that would seem like the most preliminary step a few weeks ago now seems like a major breakthrough if it could be gotten. That would mark the trip a success, I think. And perhaps the mere commitment of his secretary of state, a man of such international reknown and prestige, will be enough leverage on the Arab states who have been howling for the U.S. to lead, and on the Europeans as well, who had their own aborted and failed peace mission there, to get them to do something that . . . LIASSON: Well, Vice President Cheney’s trip wasn’t enough. I mean, he was . . . WILLIAMS: It didn’t work. HUME: But he was off on a different mission. LIASSON: Yes. WILLIAMS: Well, here’s the death spiral, and I think the reason why a cease-fire now holds such importance is that the only way that the Palestinians feel they have any leverage over Israel is to threaten Israel’s security. And that’s why you see these young people engaged in this madness, this idea of taking on martyrdom. They . . . LIASSON: And it’s working. WILLIAMS: Well, that . . . HUME: Problem, Juan, is this. At the end of the day, you have to ask the question what the Palestinians want. I think it’s clearly true that those who are engaged in suicide bombings do not want a Palestinian state in peaceful co-existence with Israel. They want Israel eliminated. WILLIAMS: No, I think there was a time when the militants, the Palestinian militants, when Hamas and those people who don’t want Israel to exist, were the ones who were engaged in suicide bombings. LIASSON: That’s right. WILLIAMS: You now have reached the point where people have been so humiliated, people feel so frustrated, that somehow the young people think there is no future. Here I’m echoing what President Bush said earlier this week. And therefore, they’re wiling to go in and spend their lives. SNOW: But, Juan, let me ask you a different question. The assumption is, because of the brutality and the terror, that the Palestinians are filled with rage. Why shouldn’t Israelis be filled with rage? I mean, why is it that the Palestinians seem to be portrayed as a group of people who respond just instinctively with an unquenchable rage, and Israelis somehow would not have the same reaction to suicide bombings in their midst and that sort of thing? WILLIAMS: Nobody is saying that . . . KRISTOL: I think the secretary of state, in his conversation today, does in fact say that, that he has a view of moral equivalence basically. “Palestinians are enraged, the Israelis are enraged. We have to go in and dampen it down.” Look, the Bush administration–the secretary of state has the Clinton administration view of the Israel-Palestinian issue. You heard the voice of Colin Powell today, but the words were the words of Warren Christopher and Madeleine Albright. Now, that’s fine if he agrees with that analysis of the Middle East. That’s fine. That really hasn’t been the Bush administration. You and I think it’s in fundamental tension with the Bush administration’s war on terror. (CROSSTALK) KRISTOL: You have the Clinton Middle East peace process and the Bush war on terror. (LAUGHTER) SNOW: OK, everybody hold your thoughts. We’re going to take a quick break. We’ll continue this conversation though. You won’t want to miss it. Stay right here. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) SNOW: And we’re back with our panel, Brit Hume, Mara Liasson, Bill Kristol and Juan Williams. Brit wants the first crack at Bill’s observation before the break that Colin Powell’s view of the crisis in the Middle East is essentially indistinguishable from that of the Clinton administration. HUME: I think Bill has got a key point, and that is it appears that, as the administration tries to broker a cease-fire and more here, that it has one policy for terrorists all over the world and another for the terrorists that are attacking Israel, the refusal to label Yasser Arafat a terrorist and all of that isn’t with (ph) peace with that. On the other hand, if you are going to be an intermediary and a broker, I don’t know how you avoid having to give something to each side. And what you’re saying–I don’t think, Bill, that we’re quite at the point where there is utter even-handedness and moral equivalence. Obviously, the administration is quite prepared to give its tacit assent to a further Israeli military operation in the West Bank. And Colin Powell has not specified, nor has the president, any deadline for its end. And he even spoke, in the context of this interview, of it perhaps lasting several months longer. He talked about the beginning of a pull-out. Now, that may not satisfy anybody, and it certainly isn’t going to satisfy the Europeans. But it certainly is a different attitude, I think, than one would have . . . WILLIAMS: Let me speak to your point, though. I mean, your point is that somehow, therefore, the administration is to be pilloried for now echoing–allowing Colin Powell to echo Mr. Clinton’s positions, as if, “Well, that means that it’s a terrible idea, Bill Clinton, oh my gosh, we’ve brought Bill Clinton in the conversation.” Look, the fact is that if you look at what Mr. Cheney tried to do during his trip, if you look at what Mr. Rumsfeld has been recommending, these policies have not worked. They, in fact, have jeopardized America’s standing as a world leader, damaged our relationships with the Arab world, put in danger our plan to take out Saddam Hussein, which I think is a good idea but now becomes all the more difficult because of the situation between Palestine and Israel. So Tony asked me earlier, Tony said, “Well, what about the suffering of Israel?” Everyone is sensitive to the suffering in Israel. I think in this country especially, we’re sensitive to that suffering. But it is without a doubt, you cannot then take a country that has a superior military force, Israel, against a country that has no military force and see this brutality, see this running over of people, see people unable to bury their dead, and say, “Oh, this, therefore, is to be allowed.” LIASSON: Well, you have to do one or the other, though. I mean, either Bush goes back to the black-and-white, simple view of things where a terrorist is a terrorist, Arafat is a terrorist. Then you step aside and you stay disengaged. But if you are going to get involved, as they clearly have decided to do, I think it’s going to take more than merely going over there and calling again for a cease-fire with the hope–or the promise of getting to a Palestinian state. And . . . HUME: Right, and then that raises an intriguing question. What would it–if it is going to take more than that . . . LIASSON: I think . . . HUME: . . . more of what? LIASSON: I think it will take a specific plan laid out by the United States with consequences for the failure of each party to abide by that plan, and the United States agreeing that it will enforce that plan. And . . . WILLIAMS: It has to involve Mr. Arafat. Arafat has to be a key players. Therefore, you can’t . . . HUME: All right, all . . . WILLIAMS: . . . reduce him and trap him in that building. HUME: But what you are calling for, Mara, it seems to me, is the imposition . . . LIASSON: Yes. HUME: . . . of an American-written, -drafted, -created settlement on a conflict that has been going on now for as long as any of us has been alive. I mean, and what are we doing to do? Are we going to police it? We’re going to put our forces in there? WILLIAMS: What you’re calling for is . . . LIASSON: That is, I think, the logical consequence of what . . . KRISTOL: . . . or at least as–or at least Camp David. LIASSON: Yes. KRISTOL: But, look, one insight into secretary of state–I’m not pillaring the secretary of state. We’re in agreement that he is now following Madeleine Albright’s model, except he’s a little more pro- Palestinian than Albright, in the sense that his analysis of Camp David on this show this morning was that neither side, he said, went far enough to allow President Clinton to pull off a peace agreement. That was not President Clinton’s view. President Clinton’s view was that Ehud Barak went . . . LIASSON: Barak went farther than they . . . KRISTOL: . . . farther than any Israeli prime minister has gone, and that Arafat wouldn’t do it. We have now moved beyond that. Secretary of State Powell now seems to think that the next–that the Sharon government has to go further than Barak went in trying to get peace agreement. WILLIAMS: I don’t know that he thinks that. KRISTOL: That is not going to happen. WILLIAMS: No, I don’t know that he thinks that. I think he what he thinks is, we’re past the point of recriminations. And he if starts engaging and saying, “Well, you know, the Palestinians needed to do more. The Israelis”–look, he said, “Both sides didn’t to the deal that time. Let’s get a deal now and here is the way to do it.” I don’t know if your idea, Mara, is going to work because I worry that American or even international peacekeepers would become targets. LIASSON: Well, if it was important enough for us to go into Afghanistan, and if this thing is roiling the region, as Colin Powell seems to be very worried that it is, maybe it’s worth that kind of involvement. SNOW: Final little bit of news out of the European Union. The Spanish foreign minister said Sunday that if Israel doesn’t get out of the West Bank soon, there may be a cut off of trade ties. The sentiments were echoed by the Belgium foreign minister and . . . HUME: No chocolates for Jerusalem. (LAUGHTER) SNOW: Colin Powell will have to be meeting with those fellows. Thanks, panel.
