Something from 2008. Who was shooting the peace negotiations in #MiddleEast?
ignatius: In the category of problems or opportunities in the ME, a leading item would be #Syria, which keeps advertising its interest in peace negotiations yet isn’t at the table. Zbig, you were just there, and talked to President Bashar al-Assad. What did you hear?
brzezinski: Basically two major messages, which he stated...
...The second point was in response to a question I raised. I said to him, “Looking at your conflict with Israel, would you be prepared to sign a peace treaty with the Israelis in which your territorial aspirations were satisfied but which would not be in any other way conditioned on what happens between the Israelis and the #Palestinians?” In other words, something resembling the Sadat-Israeli accommodation. And his answer was an unequivocal, “Yes, absolutely, provided we obtain a full territorial restitution to the lines that existed prior to June 1967.”
Now I repeated that when I was subsequently in #Israel, and the Israeli answer was a little more complex. They said, “Yes, that’s fine.That’s good news, but he’s got to cut ties with #Hezbollah. He’s go to cut ties with #Hamas. He’s got to end all support of terrorism. He’s got to divorce himself from the Iranians.”
ignatius: In the category of problems or opportunities in the ME, a leading item would be #Syria, which keeps advertising its interest in peace negotiations yet isn’t at the table. Zbig, you were just there, and talked to President Bashar al-Assad. What did you hear?
brzezinski: Basically two major messages, which he stated...
...The second point was in response to a question I raised. I said to him, “Looking at your conflict with Israel, would you be prepared to sign a peace treaty with the Israelis in which your territorial aspirations were satisfied but which would not be in any other way conditioned on what happens between the Israelis and the #Palestinians?” In other words, something resembling the Sadat-Israeli accommodation. And his answer was an unequivocal, “Yes, absolutely, provided we obtain a full territorial restitution to the lines that existed prior to June 1967.”
Now I repeated that when I was subsequently in #Israel, and the Israeli answer was a little more complex. They said, “Yes, that’s fine.That’s good news, but he’s got to cut ties with #Hezbollah. He’s go to cut ties with #Hamas. He’s got to end all support of terrorism. He’s got to divorce himself from the Iranians.”
