Excerpt from United States Department of Defense News Transcript
Comments by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, August 6, 2002 - 11 a.m. EDT  

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Q: Sir, Navy Lieutenant Matthew Duffy (sp), also from New Trier. Sir, my question --

Rumsfeld: That's New Trier High School. (Laughter.) That's a -- that's a --

Q: Sir, my question is what you think the administration's policy should ultimately be with regard to the West Bank settlements, for the Middle East peace process. (Pause.)

(Laughter.)

Rumsfeld: You obviously never finished school, did you? (Laughter.)

Q: No, sir, I just got by.

Rumsfeld: What do I think the U.S. policy ought to be with respect to the settlements in the occupied areas?

Q: Yes, sir.

Rumsfeld: Is that roughly the way you phrased it?

Q: Yes, sir.

Rumsfeld: Well -- (laughter) -- let me say this about that. (Laughter.) First of all, that's a matter for the Department of State -- (scattered laughter) -- and the president. Second, the U.S. policy, I think, ought not to be on a particular, isolated piece of that puzzle. I think to pull out one thing and say our policy on this ought to be X and our policy on some other issue ought to be Y -- I think that's unhelpful.

The -- those problems have been going on since the country was established in the late '40s. It is a complicated set of issues. And it has been -- it has tended over time to have been dominated by a couple of facts. Several. One is periodic warfare. Second is the fact that the surrounding areas from Israel have preferred that Israel not be there.

And third is that the people that Israel has been trying to interact with and find as an interlocutor have, for whatever reason, not been an effective interlocutor. That is to say, they have not had a structure and an accountability that would enable them to make a deal or keep a deal. And Barak made a proposal that was as forthcoming as anyone in the world could ever imagine, and Arafat turned it down.

If you have a country that's a sliver and you can see three sides of it from a high hotel building, you've got to be careful what you give away and to whom you give it. If you're giving it to an entity that has some track record, that has a degree of accountability, that has the ability to enforce security that's promised in whatever arrangements are made, it seems to me that's one thing. If you're making a deal and yielding territory to an entity that cannot or will not do that -- and there is no question but that the Palestinian Authority have been involved with terrorist activities, so that makes it a difficult interlocutor.

My feeling about the so-called occupied territories are that there was a war, Israel urged neighboring countries not to get involved in it once it started, they all jumped in, and they lost a lost of real estate to Israel because Israel prevailed in that conflict. In the intervening period, they've made some settlements in various parts of the so-called occupied area, which was the result of a war, which they won.

They have offered up -- successive prime ministers have offered up various portions of that so-called occupied territory, the West Bank, and at no point has it been agreed upon by the other side. I suspect it will be, even in my lifetime, that there will be some sort of an entity that will be established. Maybe it will take some Palestinian expatriates coming back into the region and providing the kind of responsible government that would give confidence that you could make an arrangement with them that would stick. It may be that the neighboring countries, Egypt and Jordan and Saudi Arabia and others, will have to assist in providing a degree of accountability.

But certainly everyone has to hope and pray that there will be something that could be an effective interlocutor so that they could make a deal.

The settlement issues -- it's hard to know whether they're settlements in portions of the real estate that will end up with the entity that you make an arrangement with or Israel. So it seems to me focusing on settlements at the present time misses the point. The real point is to get an effective interlocutor. The real point is to get a condition so that you can have a peace agreement. And those are exactly the things that President Bush and Secretary Powell have been working on, and indeed, working particularly with Egypt and Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

Yes, sir?

I thought it was gracious that he didn't mention that I'm a former Middle East envoy who failed to solve the problem. (Laughter.)