Falling Apart; The Fate of the Wild
ANNOUNCER: "Falling Apart." It began seven years ago with a handshake and a promise. Now it's all unraveling. The deepening crisis in the Holy Land. Did the peace process ever stand a chance?</s>PROF. EDWARD SAID, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: You can create agreements like Oslo. You can go for another five years. You can give Nobel Peace Prizes. You can have ceremonies and so on and so forth. But the reality is that occupation is occupation.</s>URI SAVIR, ISRAELI NEGOTIATOR: I still think it will succeed. What we see now is not Oslo. It's the alternative to Oslo.</s>ANNOUNCER: "The Fate of the Wild." Natural resources versus natural beauty, the battle lines are drawn over Alaska's bounty.</s>KEN BOYD, DIRECTOR, ALASKAN OIL AND GAS DIVISION: I think it's time to open ANWR to oil and gas exploration and development.</s>MARK POTTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So when you hear someone say, "Let's go there and drill for oil," what's your gut reaction?</s>JAMIE RAPPAPORT CLARK, DIRECTOR, U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE: No way. That can't happen.</s>ANNOUNCER: With sticker shock at the gas pump and politicians scrambling, an oil-hungry nation eyes a pristine wilderness. But is the reward worth the risk? "Off Track." They're off. And then they're gone.</s>RANDY SHRIDER, DOG RACER: If you have one that made it three years, you've done well.</s>ANNOUNCER: A $3 billion industry rides on their legs. But what happens when their racing days are through?</s>KATHY SLOBOGIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You just trusted that he would find homes for these dogs?</s>SHRIDER: Right. I had every reason to believe that he would.</s>SHERRY COTNER, VOLUNTEER IN PLACEMENT OF GREYHOUNDS: They are being dumped into research labs in huge numbers.</s>ANNOUNCER: CNN & TIME with Jeff Greenfield and Bernard Shaw.</s>JEFF GREENFIELD, CO-HOST: Good evening. How often have these words been uttered over the last half- century, "New violence in the Middle East, hopes for peace dimmed by bloodshed"? For every handshake you've seen on the White House lawn, for every promise of peace you've heard, there is a sense these days of just another chapter in a very long, dispiriting story.</s>BERNARD SHAW, CO-HOST: As gun ships and angry mobs take the place of diplomacy and cooler heads, are we seeing the end of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process? The situation in the Middle East certainly is not what the framers of the Oslo Peace Accords had in mind back in 1993. And yet there are those who say that violent confrontation and disappointment are the only things that could have come from the Oslo pact. Here's Charles Glass.</s>CHARLES GLASS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The violence that has pitted Israeli against Palestinian for the last two weeks did not surprise Edward Said.</s>SAID: I think it will go on for some time.</s>GLASS: The Columbia University literature professor and former member of the Palestine National Council has from the beginning criticized the American-backed peace process as doomed to failure.</s>SAID: I think we were misled by the Americans. We were certainly misled by our leaders. And above all, we were misled by the Israelis.</s>GLASS (on camera): In 1993, when Oslo was announced and its details were released, some of its details were released, you condemned it then. Do you feel exonerated now?</s>SAID: It's not that I feel exonerated. I'm filled with a tremendous amount of sadness because I think a lot of people had hope.</s>GLASS (voice-over): Hope for peace was what the Palestinians and Israelis who secretly negotiated in Oslo, Norway, seven years ago promised their two peoples.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Savir, can we stop you just for two seconds?</s>GLASS: Uri Savir led the Israeli diplomatic team.</s>SAVIR: There is no perfect peace. I can tell you that in the Oslo negotiation that I was involved in, we had a very clear understanding that what counts is not the balance of forces, but the balance of interests.</s>GLASS: The accords allotted the Palestinians some autonomy in parts of Gaza and the West Bank. But it left many issues, including the return of Palestinian refugees and East Jerusalem, for future discussion. (on camera): What happened to that optimism that came immediately after the Oslo Peace Accords in 1993?</s>SAID: Well, I think the optimism was manufactured as part of a great public relations stunt whereby these warring parties were brought together as if equals by Clinton on the White House lawn in September of '93. In fact, the Palestinians were at their lowest ebb. Basically what came about was the extension of Israeli occupation rather than the end of it by different means. This way, the Palestinians would be part of rule of the West Bank and Gaza under Israeli tutelage. The armies would remain in different places. The settlements would remain. There was nothing said about the stopping of settlement building. It was quite clear that it was an untenable situation. It would take only time before it would unravel.</s>SAVIR: It's very easy at this point to come and say, "I told you so." Anybody who wants to engage in a non-risky peace process in the Middle East should try and make peace between Canada and the United States. An agreement that says from an Israeli point of view, it was our first open operative declaration that we don't want to run the lives of the Palestinians. We don't want to occupy the West Bank and Gaza, or most of it. We need our security interests taken care of.</s>SAID: When you have to every time go through an Israeli checkpoint and submit to searches and have to have a permit to move from one end to the other of your own town, that's not giving up control. This is why one of the most surprising things today is Israelis say, "Why are the Palestinians so ungrateful?" And Palestinians say, "Ungrateful for what? For continuing to control us in this way?"</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Clinton, how is it going, Mr. Clinton?</s>GLASS: President Clinton sees the United States as the honest broker in the Middle East. If the United States is not used as the broker between these two sides, where else can you go?</s>SAID: Well, there is the United Nations. And let me just say something about the honest broker because the image of the United States that is being sort of broadcast by the candidates and by President Clinton is unacceptably dishonest. The United States has backed Israel. Israel is a sacred cow in American politics. Clinton, whose knowledge of the Middle East is based on his born again Christian basically fundamentalist Zionism -- he doesn't know anything about the Arab world -- has decided the Palestinians should have accepted because he wanted it, Barak wanted it, and that's it.</s>SAVIR: There is no administration in the world that has helped the Palestinian cause so much like the Clinton administration by trying to lead and help the Palestinians into peace with Israel.</s>YASSER ARAFAT, CHAIRMAN, PALESTINIAN AUTHORITY: For this, we have spent all these nights and days.</s>GLASS (voice-over): Uri Savir and Edward Said disagree as well about Yasser Arafat. Savir defends him as a brave negotiator.</s>SAVIR: Arafat in the middle of negotiations had to make certain decisions related to Hebron, for instance. Thank Arafat and Rabin. The decision Arafat had to take in Hebron was a tough one. Because of the issue of the holy places in Hebron, it remained under our jurisdiction. I saw him sitting there for two, three hours not saying a word. And you saw this person was torn between the feelings of his people and the necessity of peace with us. And I rarely saw such a solitude. And he took the right decision.</s>GLASS: Professor Said's criticisms of Arafat for running a brutal and corrupt bureaucracy have resulted in some of his books being banned in areas under Arafat's control. Most of all, Said condemns Arafat for responding more to Israel and the U.S. than to his own Palestinian people.</s>SAID: I think his greatest mistake, for which I don't think there's any excuse, is that he never really took his people into his confidence. But had he appealed to his people and said, "Listen, this is the situation. It's dire. And I need your help," I'm sure that his people would respond. I think that's what he hasn't done.</s>GLASS (on camera): Even now.</s>SAID: Even now. He hasn't -- I mean, he is a symbol of sort of Palestinianism in a way. And it's a paradoxical thing. He's a tragic figure.</s>ARAFAT: Mr. President, thank you, thank you, thank you.</s>GLASS (voice-over): To Said, Arafat's tragedy is that by accepting Israeli settlements and continued occupation of parts of the West Bank and Gaza, he is divorcing himself from the demands of his people.</s>SAID: I don't think there's a Palestinian alive today who would accept anything less than, number one, a full Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories, every inch of them. That includes the settlements. It includes Jerusalem, East Jerusalem. It includes the settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.</s>GLASS (on camera): What's your prediction now?</s>SAID: But I think some kind of security arrangement will come about on the ground. And then I think we're in for a period of long unsettlement. I think Palestinians realize that there has to be a new strategy to deal with Israel, that we can't go along as we did in the last seven years signing papers and hoping for the best. I mean, you can paper it over. You can create agreements like Oslo. You can go for another five years. You can give Nobel Peace Prizes. You can have ceremonies and so on and so forth. But the reality is that occupation is occupation. I think that there can be no peace, in my opinion. It's very simple. Peace has to be made between equals.</s>SAVIR: I still think it will succeed because what we see now is not Oslo. It's the alternative to Oslo. But whenever we'll get back to the table, if it's in one month or one year, I assure you it will be on the basis of the agreement signed in '93.</s>ANNOUNCER: Coming up on CNN & TIME, gunfire rips through a peace process. Anger flares in the Middle East. But who is fueling the flames?</s>JOHANNA MCGEARY, "TIME" CORRESPONDENT: If Arafat thought there was a logic in calling Palestinians to the street, it's gotten way beyond him at this point. Rage is feeding rage.</s>ANNOUNCER: As CNN & TIME continues.