Goals. Rose we conclude this evening with jr. , an artist who has used photography and the public space with extraordinary resonance. So what is your core competence . Your talent. Um, you know, i guess trying things thats impossible and really believing in it. Believing in bridges that seems completely i love to think of crazy ideas and even if they fail, even if i fail doing it the process of it is interesting. And you know what . As an artist i have the right to fail. Why dont more artists take that risk . We are earned the right to fail. When youre a company you cant, its a failure. When youre an artist you can learn from your failure. Rose Jeffrey Goldberg and jr. When we continue. Captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. Rose u. S. Secretary of state john kerrys push for nasa the middle east is taking shape. This week saw the beginning of of the latest round of Israeli Palestinian negotiations in washington. Chief negotiators, zippy livni and her counterpart, john kerry announced martin indyk as u. S. Special invoy. Kerry is hopeful to come to an agreement within nine months. Jeffrey goalberg joins from Bloomberg View joins me from washington. Welcome. Thank you. The reason im so anxiously await talking to you is because of your own what you have written and what you have said about the middle east and how well you know the participants. This is what you said. Just to be clear, this is what needs to happen by next april in time for the white house signing ceremony. Jerusalem, the holy city in judaism and the third holiest in islam will have to be divided in a way that doesnt cause a global religious war. Thats the case you make as to why this is delusional. Has anything happened to change your mind or to become a bit more optimistic . The short answer is no and the long answer i also no. Id like to be optimistic, i really would, and i do think that john kerry is doing a heck of a job at sort of energizer bunny of peace negotiations. Hes indefatigable. And he does something which weve all realized over the last couple decades which is we know what the framework of an agreement should be. So hes simply saying, you know, forget the past, for get all of the difficulties, we know what the agreement will look like. Lets just get there. Its pollyannaish, lets call it that. And the problem for me, charlie, is that you theres a down side to pushing so hard, especially a very unstable middle east. And the down side is that if you dash hopes, if, at the end of this nine month process that hes talking about, if youre back at square one, if nothing has happened then you have to potential for despair and when you have despair you have violence. So you dont want a Peace Process to lead to greater violence which is what happened, of course, in the year 2000 after the collapse of the camp david negotiations which are also in retrospect premature or a little bit grandiose in their goals. Rose so here is my question. You know john kerry well in addition to what you just said. He knows all the facts that you have just outlined. Why is he doing this . Well, you know, a, its the big enchilada. Weve talked about this before. This is the overarching historical even sort of mythological dispute in the world. Its the biggest challenge there is. Hes an ambitious guy and by the way hes an ambitious guy whos been involved in this issue for decades now. I mean, he obviously feels this deeply in a way, by the way, that the president and his boss doesnt really feel at the same depth. Hes been engaged for n this for years as a senator in the Foreign Relations committee. The problem this is a very interesting question you ask because its not as if theres nothing else going on in the world that the secretary of state should be paying attention to. I would argue that there are three or four actually four issues in the middle east alone that are of greater consequence and greater urgency which, you know, of course, the seeming collapse of egypt which is the largest arab state, the linchpin of the middle east. Theres obviy borders. I say four because i count iraqs disillusion coming disillusion or collapse as a separate issue but its related to syria. Then theres the continuing challenge of iran. And so im not the only one saying this, obviously but a lot of people are scratching their heads saying youre working on this because you think it could work but that doesnt mean the other problems which you think are unfixable dont need american attention. And thats one of the things im worried about. Rose a couple questions about that. One is martin indyk. He wants him to be some kind of envoy. Is he going to set this thing and get it rolling and then return to paying attention to syria and egypt especially. Martin indyk is you know, i mean hes his own figure. Hes a large figure in this. He seems to have been granted a lot of authority and autonomy from what little we know and obviously all the players understand that hes a powerful figure in this. So, yeah, theres a good chance that hell be able to step back but it doesnt seem like that Obama Administration administration writ large is very interested in grappling with the challenges of syria, egypt, iraq iran, and so on. Rose ive asked you this before, speaking of minds. Does anyone know exactly what john kerrys plan is . Does he have some new take on this conflict that might leave you know the. Some new formula, some level of creativity, enlarging the conflict, making it smaller. I dont i dont know. I havent read anyone whos said theyve known the answer to this. One of the things hes doing and this is going to be an acute challenge in this media age is hes asked all of the parties not to talk at all about the negotiations our government, the u. S. Government, has been very good about not providing specifics. I dont think martin indyk is going to be out there briefing everyone on every sort of incremental step. But this is the question ive been asking, a lot of journalists have been asking is whats different . Whats different in the formula . We understand there are things surrounding the issue that are different. The overthrow of morsi and return of the Egyptian Military which puts pressure on hamas and gaza. Ox, thats an area we understand has changed and that ebl possibly a useful thing in these negotiations. But in terms of taking out a map of jerusalem and saying okay, instead of drawing the lines this way, were going to draw them that way i havent heard anything and i dont want to idly speculate. Ive heard idle speculation, ive heard rumors but i havent heard any specific formulas on refugees or borders or jerusalem that suggest a brand new approach and, of course, this one last point, in mind is that the problems remain the problems. You know, jerusalem has to be shared in some way. The palestinians are not going to settle for anything less than a capital in the eastern part of jerusalem, right . The refugee crisis, there has to be a formula for solving that. There has to be a formula for keeping many of the settlements in place while giving up others. The problems remain the same. The problems that bill clinton was dealing with at camp david. Rose but have the israelis in various Prime Ministers come close to meeting some proximity to solving these issues that we all know are at the core of the problem . For example, jerusalem, for example, borders, for example return to homeland not to be like you know, scrooge mcgrinch over here but heres the thing. Ehud barack when he was p. M. And ehud olmert offered the palestinians more than netanyahu is capable of offering. And it wasnt enough. I dont see abu mazen giving up issues that yasser arafat, his predecessor, refused to give up. Jerusalem is a perfect example. And 100 of the west bank and gaza with land swaps, 67 borders as the start of the negotiations. I dont see him moving in a much more moderate direction so, again, the question the question that always comes to mind is can the maximum the israelis can offer to the palestinians match the minimum the palestinians can accept . And thats where i see a gap still. Thats the big gap, yeah. And, again, its not as if this Prime Minister of israel, this current p. M. , is going to be offering more than ehud olmert or ehud barak offered. Rose i can assume john kerry saying this is your chance to make a difference, to be a historic figure and im sure the first thing that Prime Minister netanyahu will say not on my watch will i be seen on the Prime Minister of israel who threatened or in National Security or whatever dimension. Well, here wheres kerry has a play. This is interesting because netanyahu knows that israel is losing international legitimacy. He knows that the world is tired of this issue, its tired of the occupation, its tired of settlements. He know it is demographic problem. He wants to be the Prime Minister of a jewish majority country. Thats the idea of israel, is to be a haven for the jewish people, the one country that jews have. And hes going to lose that, eventually, if he doesnt figure out a way to free the palestinians or to disentangle his country from the lives of the palestinians. So kerry is working hard on him. I mean, this ive heard. This is fairly obvious stuff where kerry is working very hard on him saying okay, look, i dont know. Its two years, youve got five years, ten years, but eventually this isnt going to work and you have to make a decision in a matter of days or weeks, a few years from now that im giving you years to try to figure out how to get out of this pick that will youre in and eventually its going to hit a crisis. And netanyahu unlike people to his right because they have moved to the right as he moved toward the center, people in his country dont understand. They feel god is going to provide a solution or a miracle is going to happen but netanyahu is a realist. He understands the numbers. Hes good at math. Rose are there people to the right of netanyahu who say look, this will end up as an apartheid like state, they will not accept that. They will say okay, so we do what we want to do is preserve something we believe much more important. This is ultimately about the veneration of land versus veneration of an idea. The zionist idea was, you know, have a jewish state in part of the Historic Jewish homeland. The land is a means to an end, the end is jewish sovereignty. There are people to netanyahus right for religious reasons and hypernationalistic regions saying theres no way we can give up the jewish biblical heart lant. If we do that we might as well not have a state as well. Thats the messianic processes that were set into place or set in motion by the sixday war. So thats thats the fight thats happening. And netanyahu when he was Prime Minister last time, the americans had a difficult time with him then just as they do now. But he did agree under american pressure and supervision and negotiation to crede much of the holy city of hebron to the Palestinian Authority. So theres precedent for him giving up territory in exchange for advanced advances on the peace front. So hes a different guy than a lot of people to the right. That said, hes not going to go as far as his predecessors went, i think, in making these kind of offers. Rose but if ariel sharon was still Prime Minister in good health and you thought Yitzhak Rabin was still having all of the considerations he made and his own definition of israeli National Security that we would have a different result . I mean, look, no way to prove anything that im about to say, right . Counterfactuals. But i think the death of Yitzhak Rabin proves that assassin cans change history. I do believe that. I really i kneel very deeply. And, two, ariel sharon, i think sharon was moving toward an evacuation of much of the west bank. Sharon these guys were hard heads, they didnt think the palestinians were going to thank them. They didnt think that they were going to have benevolent relations like we have with canada. But sharon saw the writing on the wall and he had the strength and the credibility to do that. Only sharon had the that strength and credibility to do that. He spent his whole life fighting the palestinians in sometimes brutal ways. So he had a sound argument. So, yes, an assassination and a stroke may very well have changed middle east history. I agree with that. Rose its clear that the palestinians have their own problem with the conflict between the Palestinian Authority and hamas and hamas doesnt seem to have changed. Although theres some indications that they might doesnt seem apparent anymore. On the other hand, you wonder whether there might be some possibility for an evolving definition of a changing world of israels National Security which in the end is at the essence of this. Look, ariel sharon pulled the settlers out of gaza. He put those settlers there 30 years ago and then a few years back he realized, wait, thats not a security bonus, thats a security threat. To he lifted them up and pulled them out. And, you know, thats what i think he would have done in the west bank. On the gaza question, its interesting. The hamas is under a lot of pressure. They ally themselves with the sunnis in syria which alienated their sponsors, the see ya government in iran, egypt they lost a great friend in morsi, egypt has clamped down. Egypt is now basically has a blockade against the gaza strip. You didnt hear about it because its not israel doing it, its egypt doing it so nobody seems to care very much but thats the reality of the middle east. But hamas is under terrific pressure right now and one of the things you get at least i get frustrated about is this is a great moment for the u. S. To make some strong moves against hamas. To cut them off even further and the marginalize them and to use the moderate arab states who were alienated from hamas, to marginalize them further. Because the weaker hamas gets the stronger the Palestinian Authority on the west bank, the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas becomes. Its not exactly in balance like that, but a strong hamas is not good for the Peace Process. So there are some opportunities there and, you know, one of the interesting things is the middle east is changing so rapidly. The borders could shift, countries seem to the borders of syria could dissolve so it raise this is question why try to why would israelis pull out of territory when you dont know whos going to be in that territory in the coming years. So thats whe what netanyahu has in part of his mind and the other part he has john kerry whispering in his ear saying look, you have to disentangle yourself from the lives of the palestinians or youre not going to have a Jewish Democratic state anymore. So hes in a mind. And i think kerry in his thinking understands netanyahus bind and is trying to work with it to get him to move. Rose where are we on settlements today . Netanyahu, you know its easier for a right wing Prime Minister to slow the growth of settlements than a centerleft. And they have slowed down. But they continue to add apartments including and especially settlements that everyone knows, the settlements that are well beyond the security fence, the ones that are sitting right in the middle of what would be the state of palestine. Those continue to add or at least some of them continue to add so youre talking about and this is why i have a i take issue with the idea of announcing that in nine months we are going to reach a final status agreement. Youve got to move 50,000 to 80,000 settlers in order to make that happen. Unless you can convince the Palestinian Authority to accept them, accept these jewish israelis as citizens of palestine and convince those israelis to become citizens of the state of palestine. Good luck with that. So we remember from when ariel sharon lived with the settlers out of gaza we remember what a trauma that was for israel. So were talking about something exponentially more difficult. This is why i would like to hear a little bit more underpromising and overdelivering rather than these overpromises. Rose im s vest and not many journalists that i know know exactly what his plan is. And when i talk to government officials in the middle east who have seen the plane, have talked to kerry, they do find some promise, whatever it is they find some reason to get engaged, which is interesting. Look, a lot of it i mean, heres something that i think i know. I cant its not 100 . But i one of the things that kerry has done and this is to his credit and the Obama Administrations credit is, you know, theyre focusing a great deal of energy on discussing bilaterally with israel all of the security requirements that israel would need if it withdraws from territory, from territory that will become the state of palestine and i think that emphasize i think i know what youre referring to here and i think that emphasis, the americans have high level generals talking to the about the security problems, that is causing that is giving the israelis some kind of solace or some kind of its making them calmer than they otherwise would be because, you know, what kerry understands and i think a lot of people understand is that the israelis when they pulled out of lebanon they got hezbollah. When they pulled out of gaza they got hamas. Youre going to have a very hard time convincing israelis in the current middle east to pull out of territory after theyve done it twice and gotten rockets in return. So kerrys insight is, you know what . Ive got to work assiduously and creatively on figuring out what the post withdrawal security arrangements will be for israel that makes the israelis confident and secure. Rose theres always the argument, too, you become secretary of state, a job that you have long wanted and if you become secretary of state and youve had a longstanding interest in Foreign Policy its one of the unsolveable problems and you say i mean, i have no shot here, but im going to give it my best while i am t