Lord Powell of Bayswater, Former Private Secretary and Adviser on Foreign Affairs and Defence to Prime Ministers Thatcher and Major; IISS Council Member
Your Majesty, thank you very much for a characteristically thoughtful and trenchant speech, and also for your vast personal contribution to make progress with peace negotiations in the Middle East. You very wisely brought us face to face with what has to be the main issue in the region, which is the peace negotiations. Would you like to say a few more words about how you see the consequences if we fail to take this opportunity, and what it does to our hopes for resolving other problems in the area? Goodness knows we're not short of problems, but do you think there's any hope of making any progress on those while the basic issue of peace for the Palestinians and Israelis remains unresolved?
HM King Abdullah
Well, I think in two words: absolute disaster. However, I believe that there is still a window of opportunity; where the Israelis and Palestinians will go will depend on the United States and where their thinking is over the next several weeks. Mrs Clinton and the administration are working to bring the Israelis and Palestinians in directly to Washington in the near future and hopefully there will be enough to build on to move forward. Again, there is a backdrop of pessimism. There is no alternative but to keep hope alive and to keep trying. Having said that, there comes a time [to ask], if we have not already passed it, whether the two-state solution is viable anymore or not. I.e., [whether] the geographic and demographic changes on the ground have changed so much that you actually cannot create a viable Palestinian state. I fear that if we have not already crossed that, we may cross it in the near future.
Therefore, the failure of the two-state solution, as you alluded to and I did also, creates a problem for all of us, and it is no longer just the problem for the Middle East. We have many countries represented here that are in the region, in Afghanistan and in Iraq. Some countries are supporting Pakistan. Others are helping our friends in Yemen. The whole of Africa seems to be where we need to concentrate next, and I would imagine - I do not know what the discussions will be over the next several days. What is going to happen in Africa, I think, is of tremendous concern and will be our major challenge in the future. A lot of this is linked back to the Israeli-Palestinian issue. If we do not fix that then we will continue to slide into the darkness, and it is not just the people of this region that will suffer anymore.
Many of you from NATO armies have your soldiers in these areas in conflict, and what became very apparent to me in discussing with some of our Western partners … the challenges of terrorism and regional conflicts, every time we sit together we are discussing the one or two issues that everybody understands, identifying problem three and potentially problem four. And then the next time we meet, we are actually discussing those four problems and then figuring out problem number five and six. If we are not smart about this over the next several months, then I see us being here four or five years from now, not dealing with two major armed conflicts in the region but maybe five, six or seven. Therefore, all of our futures are at stake. It is no longer that we in the Middle East are paying the price. Everybody in the world is paying a price for this instability, [of] which I think the core problem is that of the Israeli-Palestinian issue. Some non-state actors and state actors in the region, this is what they use.
We talk about extremist terrorist organisations. Their calling card, or their ability to recruit, is the injustice of the Palestinians in the future of Jerusalem. If we take that off the table, then those religious organisations become internal problems for us, not international problems that you are all facing. Britain, the United States, others are facing difficulties and challenges with some elements of their Muslim communities in their countries. Again, where do they get their power base? The injustice of the Palestinians and the future of Jerusalem. Therefore, we are all in this together and if we do not fix this we are in a lot of trouble. When it comes to the Israelis, I think part of the challenge is the overwhelming majority of Israelis want peace. The same majority do not believe it can happen, so our challenge is to get beyond the politicians to reach out to the Israeli public to tell them what their future looks like.
At the moment, I believe it is Fortress Israel. They cannot get out of that mindset. When I talk to Israelis, I always ask them, where do you see your country in 10 years’ time? Work me back so we know how to move [in the] future. It is very difficult for them to be able to do that. So we have a major challenge in psyche of trying to get them away from the Fortress Israel mentality. Two days ago there was a massive fire in Israel, a tremendous humanitarian crisis. They asked for help from many countries. The only two countries that could afford help were Egypt and Jordan. Because there is no regional peace, they are truly Fortress Israel. And so the challenge is to be able to get them to understand that their future is with the 57 states, it is part of the region. If they do not and the two-state solution dies, they have a major decision to make. Will they be democratic Israel or apartheid Israel? I think this will be their major challenge in the future, but I think whatever decision they make it will actually have all our lives and our futures in the balance, because if they make the wrong decision, all of us, including our friends in the West, are going to pay a massive price for that.
Lord Astor of Hever, Under Secretary of State for Defence, UK; IISS Corporate Member
Your Majesty, could you say something of your future plans for military cooperation with the GCC countries, particularly in the areas of training, enhanced capability and interoperability?
HM King Abdullah
We have, obviously, outstanding relations with our friends from the GCC, but our military cooperation is on a bilateral level. This [is] not a concept just for GCC; I have always had this issue with NATO and other countries. As soldiers, we always have training exercises with friendly troops for the sake of training, which makes no sense to me whatsoever. The whole point of training is to get to know your partners so that when you are in combat, you have full confidence of who is on your left and who is on your right. And so I think with some of our NATO countries, we are doing a different approach where we are targeting certain elements of our armed forces to have very strong relationships with certain NATO countries, where it is the same troops that train with each other time and again. Officers and NCOs go to those particular countries so that they understand the systems, because what happens when it comes to operational capabilities, and Afghanistan for us is a prime example, if we are going to send forces to Afghanistan, it usually takes six or seven months to figure out what type of force mix we need to send. What you need to do as countries is to be so integrated with each other, as I have described to some of my colleagues sitting round here, it is a Rolodex, you go down and say you want infantry battalion or you want an artillery group or a squadron. You know the squadron, you know the pilots and you can do this seamlessly in a matter of days or a week, as opposed to three or four months to try to get the forces together.
I am very excited with some of the negotiations we have with NATO countries, where we are now taking that philosophy so that when we train, we do not train just for the fun of having people visiting us in our country. With the British, for example, we have trained in Britain. We will have some units training in Canada with them. So there is that knowledge that is integrated between our units so that when we do go into combat, there is that confidence of knowingly fully well and having the confidence of who is on your flanks. I think that is not yet a philosophy here in our part of the world. I cannot speak for GCC but I am hoping with some of our friends, again Bahrain is a prime example, where we have a very close working relationship. I think we are developing the relationship in the same way, as I mentioned, with the British recently, and we have some other contacts in the Gulf. But it is still bilateral and not homogenous. The only thing I would say about military integration and cooperation is: true cooperation, regionally, is not going to happen to the extent that we want unless it is regional peace. Therefore, it is still fractured. Again, if I talk about military cooperation, we are deluding ourselves if we do not have a stable Middle East because it is not just the military cooperation that is important; it is the economic cooperation and the social cooperation, because we have challenges that are not just combat. We have the largest youth cohort in history - that is a challenge for all of us. And if we do not have stability in our part of the world to then be able to deal with issues further afield, we have a very tough future ahead of us. Thank you.
Dr John Chipman
Your Majesty, thank you so very much for your wisdom, for your intellectual leadership, for your commitment to dialogue, your endorsement of this Manama Dialogue and your passionate appeal for an early resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. We are inspired by your words, honoured by your presence and we want to thank you for having come here to deliver a very important message and answer these vital questions. We wish you Godspeed on your return to the Kingdom of Jordan and all the best for your people. Thank you very much indeed, sir.
