He looks a bit like Tony Blair and speaks with a similar fluency and, at times, passion. But he is more clever. He was born in London in 1954. His father is a classical music impresario. As a child he spent half the time in London and half in Israel. The family were orthodox Jews and he has remained faithful to the rigorous disciplines of his faith.
He did his primary degree in economics and international relations at the London School of Economics and did an MA in international relations at the Hebrew university in Jerusalem. He did his three-year mandatory military service in Israel and joined their Department of Foreign Affairs, serving in Peru, Norway and New York before becoming personal adviser to Shimon Peres from 1993 to 1996 when the latter was minister for foreign affairs in the Rabin Labour government.
He became close to Peres and moved for a brief period with him when Peres became prime minister on Rabin's assassination in 1996. He admires Peres greatly. One gets the impression (reading very much between the dense diplomatic lines) that he shares his "doveish" instincts.
Mark Sofer is married with three daughters, two here and one in Israel. They live in a fine residence in south Dublin, although for security reasons it is not as grand as most other embassy residences. The interview took place at his home on Thursday. He immediately agreed to do the interview but in the end regretted it because he felt he had been too defensive, and it had concentrated too much on recent events.
VB: There is a perception that Israel acted in bad faith in relation to the initial outline of a peace agreement of 1992, the Oslo accords, in proceeding with Jewish settlements in the occupied territories in the West Bank and Gaza. If Israel was really committed to reaching an agreement why would it have allowed this to happen?
MS: There were about 45 or so points which were central to the Oslo accords, including the security of the state of Israel, the ending of terrorism, water issues, but the issue of settlements is the one that always crops up in the West, as though it was the only one. What happened over the period of the eight years, since the Oslo accords, was that there were ups and downs in the peace process. We had the series of bombs in Israel in 1996 perpetrated by the Hamas and perpetrated by the Islamic Jihad which threw the peace process off track. What is important to note is that the end, in the 1999/2000 period, prime minister Barak had got with Arafat and with President Clinton to the point of a final agreement, we were about to settle this, and then it all fell apart.
VB: But deal with the point about the settlements. Why, if Israel was serious about reach- ing a settlement, did it continue to build new settlements in the Palestinian territories and expand existing ones, knowing this would be perceived as evidence of bad faith?
MS: The Oslo accords speak very openly and clearly of the issue of settlements and what they say is that the issue of settlements will be tackled in the final phase of negotiations, there's no two ways about it. It wasn't on the table until 1999. It wasn't even an issue of negotiation. Of course, everybody there agreed that there would be a Palestinian state in which the withdrawal would obviously incorporate withdrawal or Israeli military withdrawal from areas in which settlements were existing. Settlements could be removed. They could dismantle themselves or whatever. You should know incidentally that settlements, or settlers, are about 2 per cent of the Israeli population. Now there's 98 per cent that don't live there. Of course this is an issue that is much discussed in Israel and people take differing sides on it - it isn't as though we are insensitive to the issue. But it is incomprehensible to us that there is so much focus on this in the West and so little focus on the other issues. But let me get back to where we were in the peace negotiations. We were reaching the situation whereby approximately 85 per cent to 90 per cent of the settlements would have to have been either within Palestinian territory or dismantled, or disappeared, or whatever. This is where we were last year. Since then the situation has fallen apart in the Middle East, as you know. I can also mention, I must mention, that it was in the Oslo accords themselves that Chairman Arafat obligated himself to arrest and stop terrorism against Israel. As far as we are concerned, that's the most serious issue. The most serious issue is the fear in which we live daily in Israel, fear of terrorism. In 1996, when the peace process was going well, we had a series of car bombs in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, perpetrated by the Hamas. They weren't perpetrated by Chairman Arafat, but he didn't do enough (to) apprehend it. It took a long time for him to decry them. These are serious issues which also, and crucial issues which also come up in the peace process and have done since Oslo.
VB: The turning point seems to have occurred a year ago when Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount, where the Al Aqsa mosque is situated in east Jerusalem. He went there in defiance of Israeli security advice that the visit would be viewed as hugely provocative. Does Sharon not bear a huge responsibility for what has happened since?
MS: The Mitchell Commission is very clear on the question and it states quite clearly that Sharon's visit did not cause what is known as the "Al-Aqsa Intifada".
VB: Let's quote the Mitchell Commission Report: "The Sharon visit did not cause the 'Al-Aqsa Intifada'. But it was poorly timed and the provocative effect could have been foreseen; indeed was foreseen by those who urged that the visit be prohibited. More significant were the events that followed: the decision of the Israeli police on September 29 to use lethal means against Palestinian demonstrators and the subsequent failure of either party to exercise restraint."
MS: So it wasn't the cause of the Intifada.
VB: All right.
MS: I also want to make the following points. Point number one: the holiness of Temple Mount is its holiness to all Jewish people. Many people in Israel, truth to say, thought - even those who didn't agree with Sharon - thought it very strange and very incomprehensible that any Jewish person would not be allowed to go up onto the holiest place for the Jewish people.
VB: Accompanied by 1,000 police?
MS: He wasn't accompanied by 1,000 police.
VB: This is what the Mitchell Report says: "Mr Sharon made the visit on September 28 accompanied by over 1,000 Israeli police officers."
MS: But they didn't go into to the actual Temple Mount. I should also say many of the demonstrations were orchestrated, maybe not by Chairman Arafat himself, and were accompanied by shooting at police officers, putting children on the front line, shooting from behind them. It wasn't solely unarmed.
VB: The US State Department says that the police used rubber-coated metal bullets and live ammunition to disperse demonstrators, killing four persons and injuring 200.
MS: You know it's very difficult indeed, and you've seen this in Sweden recently, we've even seen this in Italy recently, we've seen this in the Palestinian territories recently. We've seen this often. It's very, very difficult to contain a maddening crowd where people are shooting from within that crowd. This is a very difficult thing to do. I don't think anybody has the perfect way of doing it and nobody in Israel, nobody at all has any wish for any death or disruption whatsoever. We have nothing to gain from it, we've tried to be humane, we don't want it, we don't understand for a moment why the Palestinian authority and Chairman Arafat didn't call for an immediate ceasefire from stage one. 'Let's stop this,' we were begging him, we were asking him to stop, he didn't do so. In fact, sadly he didn't call for a ceasefire until eight months into the violence when we had that terrible atrocity in Tel Aviv where 21 young girls and boys were killed waiting to go into a discotheque. To many of us it is incomprehensible how the house of cards fell down so quickly.
VB: You talk about violence on the Palestinian side but in the first year of the Al-Aqsa Intifada 570 Palestinians were killed by the Israeli security services, according to Amnesty International, the vast majority unlawfully killed when the lives of others were not in danger. And 150 Israelis were killed during that time, including 115 civilians. So that in terms of the level of violence perpetrated by one community on another, it has been overwhelmingly that of Israel against the Palestinians.
MS: I have a great deal of difficulty in understanding the numbers game to be quite honest with you. If more Serbians were killed in the war against NATO, does that make Serbia correct and Milosevic a good person? If Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait and more Iraqis were killed than Kuwaitis, does that make Saddam Hussein correct in invading Kuwait? What we are facing here is demonstrations against heavily armed soldiers in such a case. It's sad that it's more likely that (those) shooting against trained soldiers who had to defend themselves and shoot back are going to be superior in numbers.
VB: There is, then, the use of aircraft to bomb sites in Gaza. That was an act of war, the use of tanks to bombard civilian areas, the use of helicopter gunships.
MS: Sadly for us, we are in a situation of low-intensity conflict for the past year. It is not war and nothing we have done could be construed as war. But can I ask where were the attempts on the part of Arafat and the Palestinian Authority to stop the suicide bombers going out into Israel? Where were the attempts to stop the people shooting at us and sending mortar bombs? Where was it? We found ourselves faced with a situation of conflict and we had to react. What are we supposed to do? We were being killed all over the place.
VB: It is the Palestinians who were being killed all over the place: 550 to 150 Israelis.
MS: I don't want to go into the numbers. We are faced with a situation of violence after we tried to bring about peace and we still wanted to bring about peace. The issue is tough in situations of conflict, low-intensity or high-intensity conflict, terrible mistakes are made which needn't have been made were the conflict not to exist. We could have put a stop, militarily speaking, we could have put a stop to the violence from stage one if we really wanted to. The reason we haven't used it is because a strategic decision was made in Israel that there is no military solution to the Palestinian/Israeli conflict. There can only be a negotiated solution.
VB: Why has Israel opposed the proposal to place international monitors in Israel and the occupied territories to supervise the supposed ceasefire?
MS: There are difficulties with international monitoring . . . (Our) experience with them in the past hasn't always been a positive one. They would be sitting in places like Hebron or Nablus or other places inside the Palestinian territories and they will not be in the areas where the bombs are going off in Tel Aviv or in Haifa. They won't see them, they won't know about them but what they will see is the response to them, which is a response which any country which is attacked by its neighbouring society or its neighbouring countries would take in order to defend its own civilians. Having said that, we may have moved forward even on that one as well. We are ready to talk about every single issue: Jerusalem, the settlements, everything, we have no problem with any issue on the order of the day except for the extinction of the state of Israel.
VB: There is a demand for the handover by the Palestinian Authority of the assassins of Rehavam Ze'evi, and a threat that if this is not done Israel will regard the Palestinian Authority as the Americans are regarding the Taliban in refusing to hand over bin Laden. Couldn't the Palestinians make a similar demand on Israel: to hand over the assassins of those Palestinians targeted and assassinated by the Israeli security forces over the last several months?
MS: I take umbrage at the comparisons between the two. The first case, you're talking of terrorists who are responsible for planning, executing and carrying out horrible atrocities, causing murders of innocent people whose only crime is that they are Israeli, not even soldiers. They're not killing soldiers, they're killing people at discotheques, at shopping malls, restaurants, and continue to do so. There is no co-relationship between the two.
VB: So where does it go from here?
MS: Many in Israel believe that an injustice was done to the Palestinians. We believe that the Palestinian issue is at the heart of the Middle East peace (process) and we believe that even if we didn't accept 100 per cent of the blame, we were part of the equation and that we had to do something about it and many in Israel believe that we had made mistakes as well. The Palestinians needed and still need equality, dignity, economic prosperity. We were and are deeply committed to reaching an agreement with the Palestinians. What has happened in the last year, for all Israelis, be they from the right persuasion or the left persuasion, we are shattered. We tried for peace, the moves for peace last year went further than many, many, many people were able to absorb. Clinton put on the table at Camp David proposals, believe me, that even the liberals in Israel didn't like. But when the crunch came, Yasser Arafat didn't make the decisions, sadly. When the crunch came at Camp David last year, he said No and walked away and didn't come back with the counter-proposal. When the violence started, he didn't stop it, which he could have done. The first time he called for a ceasefire in Arabic for the Palestinian people was eight months after the violence started. Why didn't he do it after three days? Angry with us, I accept.
Now everybody is talking about a ceasefire, everybody is angry with Israel. We accept compromise is necessary on both sides, negotiations are essential.
But if you look at it from our side, we are in a situation where we don't know how we got there. The peace camp is gone, the trust is gone and few are sure whether we have a partner for peace any more.
