On the Issues Episode 15: David Schenker

My guest this week is David Schenker, Aufzien fellow and director of the Program on Arab Politics at The Washington Institute.

Previously, he served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense as Levant country director, the Pentagon’s top policy aide on the Arab countries of the Levant. In that capacity, he was responsible for advising the secretary and other senior Pentagon leadership on the military and political affairs of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and the Palestinian territories. He was awarded the Office of the Secretary of Defense Medal for Exceptional Civilian Service in 2005.

Prior to joining the government, Mr. Schenker was a research fellow at The Washington Institute, focusing on Arab governance issues and a project coordinator a Bethesda-based contractor of large, centrally-funded USAID projects in Egypt and Jordan. In addition, he authored two Institute books: Dancing with Saddam: The Strategic Tango of Jordanian-Iraqi Relations (copublished with Lexington Books, 2003) and Palestinian Democracy and Governance: An Appraisal of the Legislative Council (2001). More recently, he published a chapter on U.S.-Lebanese relations in Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict, and Crisis (Palgrave, 2009), and Egypt’s Enduring Challenges (2011), a monograph focusing on post-Mubarak Egypt. His writings on Arab affairs have also appeared in a number of prominent scholarly journals and newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and Jerusalem Post.

Transcript:

I am Alon Ben-Meir, and welcome to another episode of ‘On the Issues’. My guest today is David Schenker, Director of the Program on Arab Politics at The Washington Institute. Previously, he served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense as Levant country director, the Pentagon’s top policy aide on the Arab countries of the Levant—where he was responsible for advising the secretary and other senior Pentagon leadership on the military and political affairs of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and the Palestinian territories.

Alon Ben-Meir: I met with Fred [Hof] of course, just now we talked a lot about Syria, and perhaps we can talk about more regionally—Israeli-Palestinian—

David Schenker: Sure.

ABM: I want to start with the question of Jerusalem. Of course as I see it, to make such a move could be disastrous. On the one hand, in terms of what would be the reaction of the Palestinians, but even more so the Arab World. Saudi Arabia and Jordan in particular, they’ll be outraged to say the least. I had the idea, and I sort of bounced it, that if he still wants to make the move, how can we use that as a means by which to achieve even almost a breakthrough in Israeli-Palestinian conflict? If he were to say, we have land there—the United States purchased land in West Jerusalem on which the plan was to build an American embassy there, but of course from one administration to another, everything has been delayed and delayed—we are going to start building the embassy. And if there is progress in the peace process between the two sides, we will reserve space to allow the Palestinians to have their capital in East Jerusalem.
Suppose this would have been the approach. My feeling was that if he were to take this approach—and I passed it on to very top people, and they were really excited about the prospect in terms of, he’s basically conditioning the move on the fact, that is, we are building the embassy so the Palestinians can see movement in that direction. It is no longer just talk, but is also providing the opening. If there is progress and you move toward a peace agreement, well we will look into it, that the Palestinian capital will be still there while maintaining the unity of Jerusalem. Nothing will change. Basically what is Israeli is Israeli, including East Jerusalem. What is the Palestinians’ is the Palestinians’. The city will remain united, a single city, but it’ll have one municipality here, one municipality there, and they will find a way of course to work it out administratively and in terms of security and all of that.
From my perspective, when I used to go in the 80s and the 90s before this mess of increased terrorism, I wrote many pieces that Jerusalem represents in my view the microcosm of Israeli-Palestinian coexistence. You couldn’t tell then who was an Israeli and who was a Palestinian. The people were moving from Israel to the West Bank, and back and forth. And Jerusalem was the center of peace. People actually coexisted very peacefully and to me, this is how the Israeli-Palestinian coexistence should be, is going to look like. There’s a political border, but there’s no physical border per-se. A Palestinian citizen is going to vote and be elected in Palestine, and Israelis are— But there will be intermingling work here. That’s how I saw it, that is the piece I wrote. But I didn’t publish it yet because I wanted to channel it to the right people. What’s your take on it?

DS: Well, there’s a couple of issues. I think Trump is convinced that this is something that should be done. People in Washington ask well, what can they get from Israel for this. Because traditionally if you get a big gift from the United States, something like this, there would be a request on the backside from Israel, but there hasn’t been anything. Now I don’t necessarily think that you have to. I mean, what you’re proposing in a way is changing the status quo, right. There’s no change in the status quo by moving the U.S. embassy to West Jerusalem. Right? Even Arafat recognized that West Jerusalem was going to be part of Israel, right. This was never—

ABM: This is true, but more symbolically, moving the embassy anywhere in Jerusalem for them represents recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

DS: Well, there’s an issue of perception. Of course the U.S. consul general, which is the highest representation, is in East Jerusalem, right? So let’s put that aside for a second. I think that if you wanted to ask the Israelis for something, you could potentially. I don’t think you’re going to get from this government in Israel a commitment that East Jerusalem will be the capital, that we’re going to deal with issues of sovereignty or division of Jerusalem. Now, most Israelis as you know would be willing to divide Israel. More Israelis anyway would be willing to divide Jerusalem and have two capitals there, than be willing to cede the Golan back to the Syrians.

ABM: I mean in every negotiation in the past, when the discussion on Jerusalem was on the table, there was an agreement in principle that Jerusalem was going to be basically a capital of two states.

DS: I think what you’d need for the Israelis to make some sort of enormous move in that regard would be some sign of good faith from the Palestinian side. Remember, we’ve been frozen now essentially since day one of the Obama administration, when the administration basically forced Netanyahu to have what was the deepest settlement freeze in the history of Israel, of a modern Likud politics. He did it, and Mahmoud Abbas said ‘hey, why the hell am I going to give Israel anything right now, I got this great settlement freeze,’ and they wasted a year. And you couldn’t twist the Israelis’ arms anymore after that point. This was a failure obviously of the Obama administration.
Now, maybe the Palestinians will be so discouraged from the Trump administration that they’ll be more willing to make their own concessions, which, maybe you can get from the Israelis another settlement freeze, maybe within the current boundaries of the settlements. No new—you can get something if the White House engages, but they’re not going to ask for anything unless you get something very serious from the Palestinians. And I think this embassy move is something that the Israelis are I think happy about – the government is happy about. But for most people, it’s probably not that big a deal.

ABM: Yeah, but it also seems at this point, I think, that the Trump administration is sort of moving back from moving the embassy.

DS: There’s going to be a process.

ABM: There’s going to be a long process, so they’re talking about the process. My feeling was that if they were to incorporate this into that kind of thinking, into that kind of process, they’re going to send a clear message to the Palestinians, hey we’re thinking about you, we believe still in a two-state solution. We can move in that direction, but you need to make yourself stop incitement, stop this, stop that. Do the kind of thing, begin infrastructure, build your real infrastructure, in order for us to make that kind of— I mean that’s where I’m coming from.

DS: The big deal for me is that you really have to work with the Jordanians on this, right. You have this Jordanian special relationship with Jerusalem that goes back to Mecca and Medina. Then you had the annexation in 1950 of the West Bank and the declared sovereignty over Jerusalem by the Jordanians. They stepped back from that in 1994, the peace agreement includes that. They still derive some of their legitimacy from their guardianship role in Jerusalem. I think you have to have the U.S. government, regardless of what happens, continue to reiterate that the Jordanian role in Jerusalem is a priority, that there’s no change in status quo of the holy spots.

ABM: There’s no doubt.

DS: But the Palestinians can be a real spoiler here, and I’m not talking about the 60 percent or more of Jordan that is of Palestinian origin. I’m talking about the Palestinian Authority deliberately trying to shake the neighbors through incitement because of this embassy move. That’s very dangerous and something that I think should be punished, frankly. The Palestinians could play a real spoiler role here, and the United States can talk to the Palestinians and make their own commitments to what they’re willing to do and what they’re willing to advocate for on behalf of the Palestinians. But if the P.A. chooses to go along with Iran, to say that this is the destruction of al-Aqsa Mosque, I mean you can imagine what they’re going to say when this happens. Then I think there has to be a pretty big penalty that’s imposed from the United States for shaking the stability of the neighbors.

ABM: Yes, this is true, but let’s leave Jerusalem for a moment. You know the whole discussion we’re trying to establish, I’ve been trying and thinking about it, talking and writing so much about it. My feeling was—and I’ve actually been very much involved with the French organizing this conference and suggested a proposal in terms—my feeling is that, I want to just hear your take on this. That is, we first need to establish whether the Palestinians in fact want a two-state solution. So there’s that in the Israeli mind, whether this is in fact what Mahmoud Abbas would like to see as the endgame. It will be a Palestinian state more or less in the West Bank with some major, certainly land swaps, etc. My position is that even if both sides agree to the principle, I don’t believe Netanyahu would like to see a Palestinian state under his watch either. But even if there is that kind of decision, that kind of commitment to a two-state solution on the part of both sides, they cannot possibly sit today and negotiate that because of the very deep distrust between the two sides, because of a very deep sense of insecurity both sides have. Both sides, not just the Israelis. The Israelis will have that because of historic experiences. But the Palestinians feel just as insecure, if not more so, than the Israelis. And then of course you have these two constituencies, both the extremists in Israel, settlers and their supporters. And then you have Hamas on the part of the Palestinians, who still envision that they are going to have all of Palestine, Israel and Palestine together.
So you have these three elements at play, and no one can actually deny that this is justified. So to be able to begin any kind of serious process, to negotiate seriously and reach some kind of an agreement, you’re going to need first a process of reconciliation. That’s up and coming. What I’ve been saying all along is that if you don’t have that kind of process of reconciliation, whereby you can mitigate questions of distrust, or at least a process of mitigating distrust, and begin to mitigate concerns over national security, stopping incitement on the part of the Palestinians, and taking measures to convince Israelis that there’s not going to be another Hamasistan in the West Bank, so to speak. And then disabuse—

DS: I mean, can you convince the Israelis there’s not going to be a Hamasistan in the West Bank?

ABM: No, what I’m saying is not the argument.

DS: That there is no Israeli occupation of the West Bank; you probably already have a Hamasistan there.

ABM: This, but I’m saying it’s only through a process. That is, you cannot discuss trust and say ‘from now on I’m going to trust you,’ that’s not going to happen. You cannot distrust security and say, ‘from now on, our security is guaranteed, your security is—‘ That’s not going to happen. That’s what I’m saying, you need a process of reconciliation for a period of time before they actually can sit down and negotiate. Now if they’re not prepared to go through that kind of process, to me it’s a clear indication that neither side is in fact willing to see the end game, which is a two-state solution. That is, if you’re not prepared to prepare the ground for what eventually needs to happen, should happen, which is two states—that’s the goal, that’s the objective. That’s what Netanyahu says. That’s what Mahmoud Abbas says. But they are taking zero action. In fact, they’re doing everything the opposite, to widen the gap rather than narrow the gap. What I’ve been saying to the French in preparation for that, I said if you do if you want to be helpful, introduce the concept of reconciliation first for two years, three years, and make sure that two sides will actually be prepared to go through that kind of process.

DS: Yeah, it’s pretty hard to get a process of reconciliation going when you have stuff like what happened in the U.N. Security Council. People come and declare the settlements, whatever they’re going to declare them, and laid the ground for more lawfare I think that while it may not be people knifing one another, I think the Israelis view this as a full-on attack by Palestinians.

ABM: Yes, but Israel invited that kind of resolution; Israel is inviting the European resistance to this whole thing. You cannot say that Israel is an innocent party here. Netanyahu is working very, very hard. I mean, his ambitions are probably just realizing what Shamir at the time was advocating. Let’s put one million Israelis – they’re coming very close to this number in the West Bank – create irreversible facts on the ground. And that’s the end, there will be de facto no Palestinian state anymore. My feeling is that if the Trump administration begins to think in those terms, rather than thinking ‘let’s get the parties to sit down and negotiate,’ whether Kushner’s involved or [unclear] involved, I don’t think it’s going to go anywhere.

DS: You know, I think actually Bush had this right, which was essentially saying OK, you have settlement blocks. The Palestinians have centrally agreed to territorial swaps and you can build as many buildings and high as you want to build them, and just why does he want to build them with it as long as they remain within these current existing boundaries, right? If you want to build another room on your house, this is not building a settlement. If you want to build another floor on your apartment building going up, this is not building settlements. I think President Bush worked out this deal with Elliott Abrams, with Ariel Sharon, and they all accepted it. And that actually makes a great deal of sense. I don’t know why parties persist in saying that this is somehow a bad solution to the problem. If you’ve already agreed on territorial swaps, then what would be the problem with that and declaring these more settlements? And now these are cities in any event. We’re talking about these big blocks, tens of thousands of people.

ABM: Of course, these are cities.

DS: We can talk if you want about the hilltops and about the Israeli government in the Knesset now changing the laws in Israel about settlements and things like that. Then I think they present more problems in the international community—

ABM: Well of course.

DS: But of course the international community was never interested, no matter what Israel does it’s not going to really be quite enough, right? I mean, the fact that the UN Human Rights Commission has triple the condemnations [of Israel] last year than it had of Syria or Russia or the Assad regime, I mean it’s ludicrous.

ABM: Yeah, but what would you do? You are watching from the outside. OK. There was an agreement on land swaps in every negotiation that took place since 2000 at Camp David, there’s no doubt about it. And Israel today is claiming we are building in existing settlements, we’re not building new ones. We have merely, to accommodate natural growth in the settlement. And so the Palestinians should not be complaining, they’re not changing the geography.

DS: Right.

ABM: The problem with the Palestinians, as Israelis all along also insisted, it’s got to be one agreement. That is, you cannot unilaterally continue to expand or build in these settlements unless it is part and parcel of a general agreement. What is it going to be the precise land swap? What’s going to take place? How contiguous is it going to be? The quality of the land—there was no real agreement on these issues. And when I talked to the Palestinians, they said we agreed to the land swaps. We understand that Israelis need to expand this for natural growth. But that’s got to be part and parcel of any agreement that we are going to have.
The problem is, and I think they raise it, and tell me what you think please. They are saying during the negotiation under the U.S. auspices with Kerry twice, Israel insisted on starting the negotiations on national security. And the Palestinians are saying, ‘well, we’re going to negotiate, let’s start with the contours of what the Palestinian state is going to look like.’ So once we establish the land swap, then even if the agreement is not totally completed, once there are the contours of the state, you can continue to build in these, once they have that kind of understanding. But Netanyahu refused to start with establishing what a Palestinian state is going to look like. There were many other issues, how the negotiation went bad. The rules of engagement were a mess as far as I’m concerned. I don’t think anything has changed. But I’d like you to tell me what you think, we cannot think in terms of the Netanyahu government or the right-of-center, and Israel is going to remain forever. I mean it’s going to change, something is going to change.

DS: What, to right-of-center? Lapid or someone like that?

ABM: Possibly center, if not right. Well, right now they are right-of-center, but let’s say center, perhaps slightly left-of-center.

DS: How?

ABM: Well this is the problem. I mean—

DS: I mean, that’s like saying that Congress is going to change to Democrat in two years. Right? I mean—

ABM: Well it’s possible.

DS: Well it’s possible. But if you look at the seats that are up, it looks like it’s going the other way in the Senate, et cetera. You know—

ABM: I mean, we can’t rule the possibility that the Israeli opposition comes to their senses, that one morning, Herzog and Lapid and others say look, enough is enough. We better organize ourselves. In five years, it’s going to be way too late. And let us have a united one single agenda. This is going to be our agenda, let’s campaign on this agenda, tell the Israelis the truth about the eventuality. If no peace is established with the Palestinians, where will Israel will be five, ten, fifteen years down the line?
So I’m not saying that Israel is wrong or right. What I’m saying is in terms of looking at it. If you believe in a two-state solution, you’ve got to think in those terms today, what are the steps you need to take in order to get you in that direction. When you ask Israeli officials, Bennett and others, where do you think Israel will be in five or ten years, they don’t have an answer. They really don’t know. They have an illusion, we’re going to take over the entire West Bank, but what are you going to do with the Palestinians? Are they going to disappear? What would you tell Netanyahu today about his plan? What his plan does—I’m serious, if he were to ask you.

DS: Everybody comes up, everyone’s got their, what they call here their alternative facts, but the numbers are in dispute. But if you listen to what President Obama says, or Secretary of State Kerry, that it’s not going to be able to be a democratic and Jewish state, I think there are many in Israel who would disagree with that. Based on the numbers that I’ve seen, I don’t think I’d want to be absorbing the West Bank into Israel. I think it poses a grave demographic threat. But if you want to maintain the Jewish character of the state, right? You’re already got 20 percent non-Jewish in Israel proper, within the Green Line. But maybe they’re planning on getting another million Russians. I don’t know.

ABM: No, but I’m serious, what’s your real— If you were to sit in with Netanyahu, sure you were to advise him. I’m not being facetious about it, seriously.

DS: Israelis vote based on whether they believe that they have a peace partner, right. This is why they voted for Rabin. They voted for people on the left, they voted for people on the right, but that generally has changed over time based on whether they think that Arafat was a peace partner, whether he was not a peace partner. And I don’t think any Israelis really think that Mahmoud Abbas is going to be the guy that makes that concession on the right of return. For example the quote-unquote—

ABM: No, I agree with you. I don’t think either Abbas or Netanyahu will be the leaders who will achieve an agreement.

DS: So if you’re going to take the old line, the old saw from the Clinton administration, you have to take risks for peace. And I think that many Israelis probably say, and I don’t do a great deal of work on Israel. I mean, I follow it, but I spent a lot more time in Lebanon than I do in Israel. But my sense is that many Israelis say, well they took a great risk for peace and it didn’t work out, and most of them say it was not our fault that we wanted— We signed Oslo, we gave them territory A, we wanted to give them territory B, and we just didn’t have a partner. Right? We gave them territory. They tried to [unclear], they tried to bring in weapons. They launched an intifada. And that’s sad.

ABM: Well that is an argument that is—

DS: Well, but I think a lot of, perhaps the majority of Israelis buy that.

ABM: They buy that, albeit it is not the truth in terms of how Israelis left Gaza, under what condition, with no agreement, overnight, without any security arrangement, without any economic arrangement. I mean, what do you expect? Hamas won the election. They feel they are entitled. It’s been stolen away from them. I mean, that’s how it is, that’s how the Israelis— But the Israelis swallow the narrative of a government, successive. Look what’s happening in Gaza, should we create another one in the West Bank? And we’re saying, well if you want to make a deal with the West Bank, you’re not going to withdraw overnight. It’ll take 10 years. You have to establish such a solid, strong relationship between the two sides to develop such a very strong, vested interest by both parties that peace is the only practical alternative.

DS: Kind of a three-state solution, right? Israel and the West Bank. And then you know Gaza, the land of Gaza. Yeah, poor Gazans really. I mean—

ABM: The Israelis resigned themselves to the fact that Gaza will be a state, and they will not object to that. They have no interest in Gaza, other than to keep it peaceful. And if Hamas want to have a state, let him have a state as long as they stop building tunnels and stop provoking Israel. That’s what I hear.

DS: Well, yeah, as long as a leopard changes its stripes. It’s not a leopard anymore. This is not Hamas at that point. Right?

ABM: I want to take advantage of your time a little bit because your field in Lebanon. And, what is your take, I mean Lebanon is basically two states to a great extent.

DS: They used to call it a house of many mansions.

ABM: Yeah, house of many mansions is more so. I don’t anticipate Hezbollah any time soon to regroup. We don’t know what’s going to be in Syria. And they have not gotten so deep into Syria. But at one point, where do you see this going in Lebanon? From the future of Lebanon as an entity and the future of Hezbollah, let us say they are—I want to start with the proposition, let us say they are going to come back at one point. Where that’s going to go?

DS: Listen, Hezbollah has experienced great losses in Syria. Fifteen hundred or more soldiers, militiamen being killed, but they’ve also developed new capabilities, right. The ability to move and fire, logistics, mobility, things that they didn’t have before. I mean, they were basically an ambush force in Lebanon. Now they are an expeditionary force, and they have absorbed the casualties. Many people at home in Lebanon are not happy about that. They’re going to be deployed in Syria for some time.

ABM: Exactly, yeah.

DS: But when these guys come home, the question is, what are they going to do. Well, some of them will be dispatched, deployed elsewhere by Iran. Right. These guys have been through Yemen, they’ve been through Iraq. We’ll see where they put them next right. They are now part of Iran’s Expeditionary Force that includes the Iranian-backed Shiite militias of Iraq, what they call the Afghani Fatimids, these Afghanistan Shiites who are fighting all over the region. But if they go back to Lebanon, I think these guys are unemployed, right? And not employable necessarily. They create a bit of a problem potentially for Hezbollah at home. These guys are warriors, battle hardened Hezbollahhis that were getting battle pay and status on the battlefield, and can’t read or write back at home, don’t necessarily have any prospects, employment opportunities, integration into society, and Hezbollah may not be in a position to pay for these folks, depending on what type of largesse Iran continues to provide after the operations start to wind down in Syria. Nonetheless, they are somewhat constrained.
If you remember back in 2006 when Hezbollah and Israel went to war for 34 days, Hezbollah essentially was free to operate from Lebanon, from the south. And their constituents who live in the south fled by and large to the north. They went to Beirut, they went to Dahieh, they went elsewhere in Lebanon and were taken in by the Sunnis and the Christians. And they went to Syria, where they were taken in by the Syrians. But the problem is, after helping to kill the better part of 500,000 mostly Sunni Muslims in Syria, Hezbollah is not going to be welcome in many places in Lebanon, and they can’t go to Syria. And I’m talking about the Shia. So Hezbollah can’t necessarily turn their attentions immediately to Israel. They can try and have this sort of base of operations from the Syrian Golan, but I don’t think Israel is going to buy that. I think Israel will retaliate against Hezbollah, not only in the Golan but also—

ABM: Anywhere.

DS: —in Lebanon, for their operations, yeah, both. Syria certainly. But I think it’s something that is more serious. Israel will have no compunction to go after Hezbollah in Lebanon. So Nasrallah is not an idiot, and he has constituents, and he cares about what the Shia in Lebanon think about Hezbollah. So this is a problem. On the other hand, you have the politics of Lebanon. You now have a new president who is nominally aligned with Hezbollah, but is not as we know entirely reliable, right? [Michel] Aoun is a proven megalomaniac. We don’t know what he’ll do. I mean even Michel Suleiman, the former Lebanese president who was the head of the General Staff, head of the Lebanese Armed Forces, Hezbollah approved him and he was great for five years, or Hezbollah thought he was doing just a fine job for four or five years, and then he started to say bad things about the resistance and all of a sudden Suleiman was no good. And I think with Aoun, this guy’s a wild card, uncontrollable. We’ll see where he goes. Hezbollah’s position in the government is assured, but this is basically a hamstrung government. They can’t even decide on the new electoral law to go back to elections.

ABM: That’s right, yes.

DS: They want to do all this offshore drilling, like Israel has all of this natural gas. There’s supposedly a couple billions of dollars worth of gas and oil offshore and Lebanon, 5000 feet under the Mediterranean. But who’s going to bid on that, right? The oil prices are low. The gas prices are low right now, and it’s volatile. Hezbollah keeps on threatening, it has a history of threatening Israeli gas facilities. They can’t put up the bid on these sites on the border because Lebanon refuses to delineate its border. This may be more trouble than anybody wants. Then you add on top of that the Americans and everybody else is telling the Lebanese, ‘hey, if you want to export this, Israel’s building a pipeline to Turkey, share the pipeline with them.’ The Lebanese say ‘no, we’re at war with Israel.’ And so therefore they’re going to send the stuff back to shore. They’re going to have to build an LNG facility. They’re going to put this stuff on a boat and they’re going to price themselves out of the market and nobody’s going to bid on these gas fields. So as they say, it’s a shame for Lebanon, and poor Lebanon, right? They are so remarkable in so many ways, so entrepreneurial, such a vibrant society, and yet they have these sort of intractable problems are their own worst enemies.

ABM: Yeah. I mean also demographically, the Muslims are much larger, at least 60 percent now of Lebanon, 55 percent?

DS: More. I mean, listen, Lebanon’s last census was in 1943. So we don’t really know. But some people know, they have voter rolls, some people have to go back to their villages and vote in Lebanon and they vote based on their sect. And it’s widely believed that the Shia are something like 38 percent, the Sunni are like 35 percent now. Christians and tiny population of Druze, and different kinds of Christians. But the Christians are still a sizable percentage of the population, but they’re not believed to be any longer the majority. And Taif gives them 50 percent of the parliament and the Office of the President. The Premier is a Sunni, the speaker of the parliament. The same arrangement, except now the president’s office is weak.

ABM: Yeah, much weaker.

DS: Very weak. And he’s a symbol of the nation but he has no power, just for appointments and things like that, and appointments for ambassadors. So the Christians, they can vote from abroad, but they still play an enormous role in the state. And they’re trying to have a new electoral law which some of the Shiites want, Hezbollah wants to change it so that it’s proportionality, right? They’re going to sort of reopen the can of worms on this Taif accord. But—

ABM: But it will be dominantly Muslim.

DS: Well, it’s dominantly Muslim in a way right now, because even though 60 of those seats in parliament out of the 120 are Christian, the vast majority of them are elected by Sunnis. 30 of them, 30 of those seats are elected by Sunnis, or Shiites.

ABM: But the question is, will they accept it? I mean, whether Hezbollah and the Sunnis would accept that kind of political arrangement, for how much longer will they go along with it? How do you see it?

DS: Well, listen I think that some people are pushing to reopen Taif, change the electoral law. I mean, the electoral law I think is genuinely bad, it’s the remnants of the Syrians, that intentionally sought to weaken the Christians in Lebanon. They can make some minor changes. I’m not sure they’re going to get consensus on this. Not the least reason why is because people like Walid Jumblatt, the Druze leader of Lebanon, if they went to strict proportionality he would lose seats in parliament, etc., and lose his own sort of political key, swing vote in the parliament. So I’m not sure he’d be willing to accept that either. But I think there’s a general trepidation about reopening this, right? You’ve not had surprisingly, right, even though Hezbollah has helped kill all these Sunni Muslims next door, Lebanon’s been pretty quiet too.

ABM: Very surprising.

DS: Two years ago, you had nineteen attacks, suicide bombs, car bombs, things like that. But you haven’t really had anything over the past year and a half.

ABM: To what do you attribute that?

DS: Well, a couple of things. One is that you’ve had the Sunni Minister of Interior, Nouhad Machnouk, has been in close cooperation with Hezbollah. You have the United States that is providing not only intelligence but $100 to $150 million a year to the Lebanese armed forces and intelligence sharing with the Lebanese armed forces, and they’re sharing it with Hezbollah in turn. Right. They have an effective security apparatus at home, and everybody’s cooperating to fight Sunni extremism. Now in the long run, I think the Sunnis in Lebanon are going to get bent out of shape about this arrangement. You have the poorest people in Lebanon is also one of these sort of old things that oh, that the Shia are the downtrodden. This is back in the days of Musa Sadr. Not anymore. The Shia are doing quite fine thank you. Go up north in Lebanon, to Sunni areas north of Tripoli. Fifty percent of the homes don’t have indoor plumbing.
I was up there on the border in Wadi Khaled on the Syrian border, saw all these Syrian refugees, and these refugees are destitute, right. They get $125 a month if they’re lucky for a family of 10, from the United Nations, almost nothing. And then you go visit a Lebanese family up there and they’re saying, ‘hey, how come these refugees are getting so much and I’m getting nothing.’ These guys don’t have running water. Nobody in the family is employed. It’s awful. So it’s really the Sunnis that are in the worse shape. Sooner or later I think they’re going to get annoyed about getting pushed around by the Shia, by Hezbollah. But we’ve only seen small pockets of that. And everybody has agreed that the big enemy are the Takfiris, right? They bought the Hezbollah line. Personally, Sunni extremists are a problem, but so are Shiite extremists. And I think Lebanon’s a state that can’t do anything about that. Part of the problem there is that for the past eight years, the Obama administration didn’t have a Lebanon policy. Right, they had no goals, no focus, no attention, the sole element of U.S. policy in Lebanon was, well let’s say two. One is we’re going to give the LAF, the Lebanese Armed Forces, $100, $150 million a year, buy them some weapons, give them some money for the Internal Security Forces’ domestic counterterrorism mission. And the other thing is that we’re going to do some financial sanctions against Hezbollah. Other than that there was no Lebanon policy, and I think it was a real wasted period of time, because in 2009 the Lebanese went to the ballot boxes and they voted in the pro-West parliament. The good guys beat Hezbollah, and we didn’t do anything.

ABM: I don’t think the Trump administration’s going to do any different. Do you think they’re going to change any policy towards Lebanon? Do they have the time at this juncture to even think about Lebanon for that matter?

DS: Well, let’s see. You know, if you listen to what people like [Secretary of Defense] Mattis has been saying, that we’re going to have to push back against Iran in the region about its regional destabilization, about its sort of predatory foreign policy, part of that will be to not only militarily take some actions in places like the Gulf, when the Iranian fast boats harass U.S. destroyers and things like that, but there’s other steps political steps, other types of ways we can push back against Iran. One of those places that traditionally the Bush administration certainly competed with the Iranians was in Lebanon. And I think it was productive to do so. We didn’t win, but we participated in the battle of ideas, and I think that there will be some in the Trump administration that want to do this. I mean, you just got Joel Rayburn appointed director of the NSC. He’s interested in Lebanon—I don’t know what he’s going to do, but he’s a smart guy, a former Colonel who’s done a lot of work on Lebanon, among other issues. So maybe they’ll engage on this. I hope so.

ABM: Yeah well we’ll see. We’ll see what is going to happen. Thank you so much.

DS: Oh my pleasure.

ABM: Thank you so much.