As the wrangling over the
roadmap continues and the Palestinian people are subjected to
unprecedented new forms of horror, we may find it helpful to put the
details of that horror to one side for a moment, and sketch a
general overview of our situation.
The Oslo
process produced a truce that lasted for seven years. But it was,
with a few exceptions, a one- sided truce -- one which the
Palestinians mostly observed, while the Israelis continued their
attacks on our interests and lands, thus wrecking the prospects of
peace.
This
assault was carried out on three levels.
Firstly,
since the assassination of Rabin, Israel has been governed by the
right. True, there was Barak in the interval between Netanyahu and
Sharon; but once in power, Barak pursued policies which were totally
in line with right-wing interests. In particular, he undermined the
legitimacy of the Palestinian Authority (PA) by spreading the myth
that it was the PA that had rejected the "generous" political offer
he had made them, because it was determined to destroy Israel. This
myth fed the momentum of the Zionist right-wing as it sought to
block the creation of an independent Palestinian state.
Secondly,
under Oslo, the building of settlements continued unabated. Since
the signing of the accords, over 100 new settlements have been
created, and the number of Israeli settlers in the occupied
territories has doubled. This was not spontaneous, 'organic'
expansion. It was the result of a deliberate and programmed attempt
to change the status quo to an extent unprecedented during the
previous 27 years of occupation. Indeed, the only period during
which the pace of settlement building significantly slowed was that
which immediately preceded the signing of the Oslo Accords in
1993, following the outbreak of the 1987 Intifada.
The
post-93 expansion of settlements was an elaborate process. Not only
were the settlements themselves often on a large scale, but they
needed an intricate network of roads to link them to each other and
to Israel. The aim was not to create houses for an expanding Israeli
population, but to change the economic and political geography of
the occupied territories. Through its settlement activities, Israel
has sought to transform the West Bank into ethnically Israeli
territory, in which Palestinian villages and towns are nothing more
than isolated outposts.
Between
1967 and 1993, Israel had tried to alter particular facts on the
ground, mostly in Jerusalem. During the Oslo truce, they sought to
transform the geographical character of the occupied territories as
a whole, in order to claim these lands for themselves. Yet even this
is nothing new, for this is exactly what Israel had already done in
the Galilee, the Negev, and Jaffa, where it succeeded in changing
the demographics. The territories, however, presented Israel with a
more complex problem, because the Palestinians there had stayed on
their land.
Since
1967, Palestinian demands have progressively diminished, while those
made by the Israelis have continuously risen. The Palestinians were
prepared to accept a mere 22 per cent of historic Palestine, instead
of the 45 per cent granted them under the UN partition resolution.
Following the Oslo accords, the illusion that there might be a
two-state solution based on the 1967 borders quickly evaporated. The
subsequent negotiations essentially centred on how the West Bank
itself should be divided between the two sides. In this sense,
Barak's proposals under Oslo were not substantially different from
those now being made by Sharon.
There is
a third factor too. The systematic destruction of the PA has fatally
undermined its ability to build up its structures and move towards
the creation of an independent state. Israel in turn has exploited
the fragmentation of the Arab world and the complicated
international situation to reformulate its conflict, not only with
the Palestinians, but throughout the region.
To this
end, Israel has remained firmly committed to three basic rules
(masterfully described and documented by Raja Shehadah):
1. No
Palestinian entity should be allowed to control its borders with any
other state. Any future Palestinian entity must be, in effect,
"borderless" -- forever surrounded, whether through temporary or
permanent measures, by Israeli populations and the Israeli army.
2. Any
powers the Palestinian entity or self-rule government may have
should remain functional, not sovereign.
3. No
arrangements or agreements concluded with the Palestinians or Arabs
(and here, Oslo is a case in point) should be allowed to hinder
Israel's ability to change the status quo and create new facts on
the ground in the occupied territories.
To
achieve these aims, Israel has taken advantage of the lack of a
cohesive strategic approach on the part of the Palestinians and the
Arab negotiators. Israel has always favoured partial and
transitional solutions, while developing a web of laws and military
decrees which have enabled it to build roads, create settlements,
and enforce collective punishment on the Palestinians.
After the
outbreak of the second Intifada, Israel also began to use the world
media more effectively to change international perceptions of the
historic and present-day realities of its conflict with the
Palestinians. Its main aim was not only to deny the rights of the
refugees, but also to distort the interpretation of these rights --
so much so, that anyone demanding such rights would be accused of
wanting to destroy Israel. In the course of this campaign, the
occupied territories have been portrayed as "disputed territories",
the Intifada was reinvented as a military conflict between two equal
forces, and the word "occupation" itself was excised from the
vocabulary. Sharon seems to see himself as the man who is meant to
finish the job Ben Gurion began in 1948.
This
being the case, why is anyone bothering with the roadmap at all? Why
has Sharon himself apparently accepted the idea of a Palestinian
state? And why doesn't Israel annex all the occupied territories,
just as it has annexed Jerusalem and the Golan?
THE
DEMOGRAPHIC PROBLEM: The first reason for Israel's hesitation to
annex the territories is quantitative. Despite all its efforts,
Israel has still not found a solution to demographic problem posed
by the Palestinians. Having learned the hard lesson of 1948, those
Palestinians who are still living on their land have refused to
leave. The mere fact of their presence in these areas is the
foremost achievement of the Palestinian struggle. And this presence
is not just a numerical achievement, as it was prior to 1967. Today,
the Palestinian presence is dynamic, conscious, and committed to
resistance. Its continued existence is costly for Israel; indeed, in
many ways, Israel is simply unable to cope with the cost of
occupation.
Israeli
public opinion is excessively sensitive to the cost of occupation in
terms of human life. Moreover, Israeli society and its economy
simply cannot sustain an open-ended confrontation for a long time.
This is why Israel sought so hard to stop both the first and the
second Intifadas.
The
collapse of the Israeli economy under the pressures generated by the
Intifada is clear for all to see. Today, Israel is suffering the
worst recession in its history, accompanied by the highest levels of
unemployment and capital flight the country has ever known. Israel's
losses since the beginning of the Intifada have been estimated at
$23 billion. Per capita income has dropped by 12 per cent.
Israel is
also highly sensitive to world public opinion. The Israelis are
aware that, even if they have managed to hang on to US backing, they
are suffering a dramatic loss of credibility throughout the rest of
the world. Public support in Europe has collapsed. Arab
normalisation with Israel has ground to a halt. International
solidarity movements are springing up, some of which are providing
the Palestinians with direct grass-roots protection. Despite
Israel's protests, the Palestinian solidarity movement has joined
forces with the worldwide anti-globalisation campaign, and the two
are mutually strengthening one another. Israel is losing the support
of the European Parliament, and even the British Parliament is
drifting away from them.
Today,
Palestinian liberation has become the foremost national liberation
cause in the world. Even the deplorable attitude towards the
Palestinian issue that still prevails in the United States, thanks
to the hegemony of the pro-Israel lobby, is reversible. If the
Palestinians living in the United States could succeed, even for a
short while, in transcending their divisions, surmounting their
fears, and uniting in a lobby funded by their more prosperous
compatriots, things could change. It is remarkable that, despite the
current imbalance of power, even President George W Bush has been
unable to brush aside the two basic conditions for any viable
settlement: the establishment of an independent and democratic
Palestinian state, and the termination of the 1967 occupation. Nor
will he be able to ignore either of these conditions in the future,
unless some Palestinian or Arab party provides him with an excuse to
do so.
Israel
also faces more immediate and concrete obstacles to annexation pure
and simple. To put it bluntly, there is no military way of ending
the Intifada and the Palestinian struggle. Israel has tried the
military solution, more than once, and those attempts have always
failed.
Not only
that, but it is impossible to get the inhabitants of the occupied
territories to leave their homes -- the infamous "transfer" about
which Sharon has long fantasised. The last chance for Israel to
carry out such a "transfer" came during the recent war on Iraq, but
even then, no attempt could be made. There are limits to what force
can achieve, even when that force is overwhelming.
So, if it
cannot solve its problems by annexing the territories, what does the
government of Israel want?
To put it
simply, it wants a new truce -- a second Oslo, that will give it the
time to carve off what remains of the occupied territories and break
what remains of the resolve of the Palestinian national movement.
The Israeli government wants a new cease-fire period -- so long as
it is enforced only on the Palestinians. They want a semblance of
peace, not the real thing. They want the Palestinians to accept the
status quo, in the hope that, weakened by divisions and worn out by
economic and daily difficulties, we will eventually just give in.
This is
how the idea of an interim state, or a state with provisional
borders, came about. And this is why Israel objects to the roadmap
-- even though it calls for an interim state -- because the roadmap
puts a freeze on settlements during its first phase.
As
Palestinians, we need to learn from our mistakes. The Oslo accords,
backed by US and international guarantees, called for the
redeployment of the Israeli army and its evacuation by 1999 from all
areas in the West Bank and Gaza, with the exception of the border
areas, the settlements, and Jerusalem. This meant that Israel should
by then have withdrawn from 90 per cent of the area of the West Bank
and Gaza, in return for the postponement of the issues of the
refugees, Jerusalem, and the borders. These latter issues would then
be resolved through negotiations due to be completed the same year.
Yet none of this came to pass. As of September 2000, Israel had only
pulled out of 18 per cent of the land, and had not even discussed,
let alone resolved, the questions of Jerusalem, the refugees, and
the settlements. The only thing which was making progress during
this period was the settlements and their road network, whose
presence grew, along with those of the army and its roadblocks. So,
why does Israel continue to propose an interim state, if there is no
intention of ever setting up a definitive one?
It is
possible to discern a number of reasons behind this apparently
inconsistent behaviour. For a start, an interim state will allow the
Israelis to once again postpone indefinitely all discussion of such
essential matters as borders, the refugees, the settlements, and
Jerusalem. Their hope, of course, is that in time these matters will
become impossible to resolve, and so the search for a solution can
simply be abandoned.
An
interim state is also useful to them in their attempts to
reformulate the Palestinian-Israeli conflict so as to ignore the
basic rights of the Palestinians. The aim here is to find a solution
that will relieve Israel of the demographic burden of annexation,
while allowing them to go ahead and annex most of the land. That is
why they are proposing a state on 42 per cent of the territories:
for this would effectively reduce an "independent" Palestinian state
to a collection of geographically- disconnected enclaves, a "state"
which has neither sovereignty nor borders. The Palestinians may be
allowed to carry on living in ghettos. There may be a system which
empowers the inhabitants to rule -- and even persecute --
themselves. They may be allowed to take responsibility for their
food, health, and economy. But they will have no sovereignty over
their land, and no prospect of transforming their ghettos into a
feasible state.
The
Palestinians are being eased into this terrible fate gradually, the
way someone is made to sip a bitter medicine, on the pretext that
this situation is only "temporary". But as we have seen with Oslo,
the temporary will soon become permanent; there will always be
pretexts for lack of progress, and the issues of Jerusalem and the
refugees will always be presented not as matters for negotiation,
but as insuperable obstacles.
Right
now, Sharon is asking the Palestinians to give up the right of
return for the refugees, and to declare the end of the conflict. In
exchange, he is offering the Palestinians nothing but a few cramped
ghettos to live in. Sharon's solution is the Judaisation and
annexation of most of the West Bank and Gaza, and he is asking the
Palestinians to make historic concessions so as to allow this to
happen. He wants the Palestinians to give up their rights so that
they may live in permanent slavery under the worst system of racist
apartheid in history. As for the roadmap, Sharon wants to select the
elements that suit him and cross out what he doesn't like. That is
why he is making 100 alterations to the text, under 15 rubrics. He
wants to stop the Palestinian struggle, while refusing to freeze the
settlements. He wants to abrogate the right to return, while
refusing to discuss Jerusalem.
The maps
printed here show how Sharon is just another link in the Zionist
chain. The maps show how the borders of the putative Palestinian
state keep shrinking, until finally a wall consecrating racial
segregation is built and the occupied territories are broken into
tiny plots. The 1947 partition scheme gave the Palestinians 45 per
cent of the land, whereas the two- state solution based on 1967
borders had given them 22 per cent of the land. Sharon's proposal
would give them a mere nine per cent. The figures themselves are
telling; but what really matters is the underlying trend.
Whereas
the Palestinians have lost more land with each confrontation, their
resistance has grown. They have refused to leave, their numbers have
continued to increase, and they have committed themselves to a life
of struggle, to strengthening their institutional structures, to
enhancing their nation's awareness of its rights, and to rallying
international support. Through all this, like a thread, runs the
fact that the human factor is the most valuable asset we have
working for us.
In the
past, we employed, and sometimes exhausted, our domestic human
resources. Yet we had failed, particularly since Oslo, to organise
and employ the human potential of the Palestinians living abroad. To
achieve this is one of the core aims of the Palestinian National
Democratic Initiative, launched in June 2002.
The
roadmap is doomed because Sharon wants it to fail and because the
United States is not yet in a mood to pressure him into accepting
it. The most likely scenario is that the roadmap will be altered to
accommodate Sharon's reservations. This will place the Palestinian
people in a situation of unprecedented danger. For the conflict will
no longer be a conflict over the percentage of land we are allowed
to keep, but over our right to survive as a nation with a cause to
live for and an identity to maintain.
It is
essential not to allow the current struggle to be distorted or
reduced to Israel's point of view. The conflict between the
Palestinians and the Israeli occupation is not a dispute between two
equal parties; it is not a disagreement over a real estate
transaction. One cannot equate the oppressed with the oppressor, or
the occupiers with those living under occupation. The Palestinian
struggle is that of a nation deprived of freedom, independence and
homeland for 55 years, and subjected to occupation for 36 years. It
is the struggle of a nation seeking to exercise its right to
self-determination -- a right that is commonly exercised by all
nations, including the Israelis.
The
Palestinians are struggling for a homeland that is free, sovereign
and independent, where people can live in freedom and dignity,
without persecution or racism. We want a home where the law is
upheld and citizens can lead fulfilling lives. The party that is
threatened in the current conflict is not Israel, which has the
fourth-largest nuclear arsenal in the world, the largest stockpile
of weapons of mass destruction in the region, and one of the most
powerful armies in the world. The party under threat is the
Palestinian people. We will not rest until we have a free and
independent state, one in which we enjoy genuine and undiminished
sovereignty, as well as genuine and lasting peace.
All
Palestinians need to identify the true nature of the conflict, if we
are to reshape the collective awareness of our nation. It is equally
important that we strengthen our commitment to domestic democracy,
as this is a pre-requisite for transforming our common vision into
common action and for building the Palestinian people both at home
and abroad into a force to be reckoned with.
THE ROAD
AHEAD: In the face of Sharon's designs, and in particular his plan
to resolve the Palestinian demographic problem by a system of
ghettoisation and apartheid, we need to deploy all five of the
fundamental methods which we have at our disposal.
1- A
united national command
The first
step is to form a united national command to act as a framework for
organising collective participation, defining our national
resistance strategy, and guiding the various forms of struggle and
political action, including negotiations. The gap that currently
exists between the PA and the national liberation movement has two
possible outcomes: it may cause a catastrophic rift, or it may be
resolved through the merger of the two sides into a unified national
leadership. Of course, the current situation may also simply
continue as it is. But while this may avoid a rift, at the same time
it will prevent the nation from converting its sacrifices and
steadfastness into concrete achievements. The Palestinians are not
the only people who have differences within their ranks. The only
way to resolve these differences is through democratic elections. We
have to accept the view of the majority, while affirming the right
of the minority to continue to work and voice its views.
If we
simply allow the current situation to continue, the right
circumstances for holding elections will never emerge, and there
will never be spontaneous momentum in that direction. What we need
is prompt action to form an interim unified command -- a leadership
that can provide a modicum of coordination and reconciliation, and
offer our people the vision, leadership, and guidance which we have
lacked for so long. A unified command is more than a simple
gathering of the representatives of various factions. These factions
are already represented in many existing structures -- the Executive
Committee, the Factions Coordinating Committee, and the various
Intifada bodies. The unified command should be an executive body,
comprised of the representatives of all political forces, along with
representatives of civil society and public figures. For this
command to be effective, it should have the power to decide future
political action, including negotiating positions. The command
should also be empowered to decide on the forms and tactics of the
struggle at every stage.
This
proposal may seem far-fetched. Some will wonder how the Islamist
movements, the PA, and the democrats could ever agree on common
negotiating positions. The answer, however, is simply that this is
what they have to do, if they care for the common good of their
people more than for their own factional interests. At any rate,
what is being proposed is simply a provisional leadership, that
would not prevent any party from advocating their own final
programme to the people in the next elections. The success of this
formula, however, will require a consensus on two matters: that
elections should be completely free from all the forms of fraud we
witnessed in the previous elections; and that all factions should be
committed to the rules of the democratic game, should accept the
decision of the majority, and understand the merits of pluralistic
politics and the rotation of power in a peaceful manner.
Hamas and
the PA have had reservations in the past. Right now, the problem is
that Hamas and the PA, or part of the PA, still harbour doubts. Some
PA leaders want unity, but are not prepared to involve others in
political decisions. They want support without accountability,
legitimacy without periodic elections, and the right to negotiate on
behalf of the nation without the people giving them a clear mandate
through democratic means. All these attitudes must be brought to an
end, and be replaced by the principles of participation and
involvement. At the end of the day, a democratic electoral mandate
is needed to provide solid credibility for any Palestinian
negotiator. Such a mandate would restore balance to the
negotiations, which have so far been lop-sided. Sharon is able to
negotiate with overwhelming support from an elected Knesset, whereas
Abu Mazen, like Yasser Arafat before him, can only rely on a
minority government representing no more than one-fifth of the
Palestinian population, and supported by a Legislative Council whose
electoral mandate, based only on a section of the Palestinian
people, expired in 1999.
President
Arafat, for all his political weight and despite the fact that he
was democratically elected, had to go back to the National and
Central Councils to secure political backing for his decisions. Abu
Mazen is in an even weaker position. He was not elected to his
current post and he lacks Arafat's stature within Fatah or the PLO.
More than any previous PA government, Abu Mazen's needs a unified
national command to back it, until elections can be held. And no one
should be allowed to procrastinate about the holding of elections.
Otherwise, the government will never achieve the legitimacy it needs
to conduct the negotiations. Instead, it will have to renegotiate
every single decision it makes separately with the various factions,
a process that is as unjustifiable in principle as it would be
untenable in practice.
There are
four things the Palestinian people need to do at this juncture: (a)
preserve our national unity and not allow anyone to challenge the
integrity of our vision; (b) transcend attempts to sow division in
our ranks; (c) nurture our national legitimacy and capacity for
independent decision-making at a time when even powerful nations
seem unable to do so; and (d) introduce genuine domestic reforms
that will clear the leadership of all charges of inefficiency and
unaccountability. On the political level, we need to free our
political system from outdated restrictions, open the system to full
participation, particularly by women and the young, redistribute
resources in a manner that supports the steadfastness of the poor
and underprivileged and their ability to stay in their homeland, and
energise our human resources -- the main source of our vigour -- to
the greatest possible extent.
We
therefore need a unified national command, as a temporary structure
that will be dissolved once elections have taken place. Struggle,
both through diplomatic channels and through other political means,
cannot be conducted by a divided people with conflicting interests,
or through decisions taken by a minority which are strongly
contested by the majority. We also cannot afford to confuse the
world, and especially our friends, with conflicting messages and
rhetoric.
2-
Free elections
Palestinians are entitled to free and democratic elections,
facilitated by an international presence that would replace the
Israeli forces. We should be allowed to elect people whom we trust
to negotiate all aspects of the final settlement. This is the only
course of action that can end the marginalisation of the Palestinian
people and allow us to take an active part in shaping our own
future.
Elections
would strengthen civil resistance and fortify the apparatus of an
independent state. They would not be difficult to organise. Indeed,
elections figure in the roadmap, an independent committee has
already been formed to supervise them, and European funding has been
earmarked. Elections are the only way we can end the current
imbalance between Israeli and Palestinian demands. How many times
has the international community succumbed to manipulation by Israel
using the pretext that Israel is a democratic state while Palestine
is not? Palestinian demands have to be backed by public
participation in the democratic process. Elections would establish
accountability for every Palestinian public official, parliamentary
representative, and negotiator.
It is
hard to imagine that the apparatus of the Palestinian state can be
created without first holding elections for municipal councils, the
Legislative Council, and the presidency. All of these are urgent
matters. Elections for the municipal councils have not been held
since 1976. The Legislative Council's mandate expired in 1999, and
as a result the Council lacks both the political and the moral
authority to ratify any agreements concerning the final peace
settlement.
The
Palestinian National Council, which is supposedly the main source of
legitimacy for the PLO, has been in office for over a decade, and is
not expected to hold elections soon. In practical terms, most of its
powers have already been taken away from it. This is true for most
other PLO bodies too, whose powers have been subsumed within the PA.
As a result, democratic life within the PLO has simply come to a
standstill.
Once
democracy has been revived, the Palestinians will have a powerful
argument with which to debunk Israel's claim that it is the only
democratic country in a region peopled by barbarians, and that
military oppression and terror are therefore necessary to protect
its democracy. The involvement of the broad democratic movement in
the elections would also refute the Israeli claim that the
Palestinians are either despotic rulers or fanatic fundamentalists.
3-
Rejection of partial solutions
As
Palestinians, we should resist all attempts to sabotage the essence
of our national independence. In particular, we should refuse to be
dragged into the long dark tunnel of partial and transitional
"solutions". Instead, we must insist on the establishment of an
independent state with full sovereignty, one that has real control
over its borders, its natural resources and its water reserves. We
should therefore regard with caution any stage defined as an
"interim state" or a state with interim borders. We should insist
that all issues relating to the final peace settlement be addressed
and resolved: settlements, borders, Jerusalem, and the refugees. In
Israel's lexicon, "temporary" means "permanent". Truly temporary
measures should only be used to alleviate pressure and return the
crisis to square one, as happened under Oslo. What is needed is a
collective stand which rejects partial and transitional solutions
and insists that any solution should include all four core issues:
refugees, borders, Jerusalem, and settlements. The only real
solution is the creation of an independent, democratic state with
genuine sovereignty and control over its borders, land, airspace,
and natural resources.
The
Palestinians have the right and ability to resist the idea of an
interim state. I have not met one single emissary, either European
or American, who was excited or even slightly hopeful about the
interim state arrangement. That is because the idea is simply, and
self-evidently, untenable. If it figures in the roadmap at all, that
can only be because it was adopted under Israeli pressure. In
response to this kind of blackmail, we must insist on a fully
sovereign Palestinian state. In other words, we must insist on real,
last peace to end the suffering of both peoples.
4-
Support for the disenfranchised
The
Palestinian National Initiative has called for the energising of the
potentials of the Palestinian people and for the deployment of this
potential in the struggle for liberation and independence. To do
that, we must provide sufficient support for the working and
disenfranchised sections of the population in the occupied
territories. And we must find a way of rallying expatriate
Palestinians to the cause, and restoring the bonds between them and
the rest of the nation. This can be done through the revival of the
national project and various forms of public and civic struggle
against occupation.
A
cease-fire and cessation of military operations, if it is,
hopefully, to last, would free the Intifada from its military
associations, reassert the moral integrity of the Palestinian
national cause, and fling the door wide open to the masses to engage
in broader forms of civil struggle. Cease-fire does not in any way
mean ending the struggle, and the negotiations to come should mirror
the course which that struggle will take, particularly since the
latter is likely not only to continue, but to escalate. One can
already sense how the struggle will develop, by observing Israel's
plans for new settlements and for the further Judaisation of
Jerusalem. Sharon's refusal to negotiate over Jerusalem and the
refugees is a case in point.
5-
Rallying international solidarity
We need
to rally the support of the growing international solidarity
movement. One day, history will perhaps record that the foremost
achievement of the Al-Aqsa Intifada was to revive the support of the
international solidarity movement for the Palestinian people, which
had dwindled due to our failure to defend our own rights
effectively, and the false impression produced by Oslo that peace
had been achieved, when actually the claws of occupation and
settlement had never ceased tearing Palestinian land apart.
The
creation of the grass-roots international campaign to protect the
Palestinians (GIPP) was a brilliant step towards reshaping the
international solidarity movement. And that solidarity movement can
expand yet further. Along with our own public defiance, it is an
important bastion for the Palestinian struggle. If we can combine
the international solidarity movement and our own national
resistance, we will generate a force comparable to that which fought
apartheid in South Africa, a force capable of exposing the ills of
occupation and settlements and bringing to an end the occupation and
racism from which our people have long suffered.
If this
were to be achieved, it would provide at last a partial vindication
for our people after a century, if not centuries, of suffering. For
generations, we have known nothing but foreign rule, and have had to
put up with persecution and injustice. For centuries, we never had a
chance to rule ourselves, determine our own future, plan our lives,
and live in freedom and pride. Yet despite this, we have been able
to transcend our suffering, banish our sense of victimisation, and
focus on self-improvement and education. Scientific, professional,
and national struggle has become, for each one of us, a way of
paying homage to our beloved Palestine.
Palestinians have helped build dozens of countries and supported
scores of national liberation movements. Now is the time for us to
have our own state and finally achieve the freedom we deserve. This
would represent a major achievement, not just for the Palestinians,
but for the rest of humanity and for the cause of peace with justice
throughout the world. It would be an achievement for the Israelis,
too, for they would finally be able to see the world from a whole
new perspective, not just down gun barrels and through the panels of
Apache helicopters. The Israelis must be aware that a nation that
has to persecute and occupy others to survive cannot itself be free.
Palestinians everywhere need to have faith in themselves and in
their ability to attain freedom and independence. This faith will
help us preserve the moral integrity of the Palestinian struggle and
steer clear of practices which may tarnish this integrity.
That we
must rely on ourselves and develop our own potential was the lesson
we learned from the painful experience of the first Camp David
conference in 1978. The more we organise our people, civil society,
and official apparatus, the more effective we will be in our
struggle.
We must
surmount divisions and embrace democracy as the means of resolving
all our differences. Diversity should become a source of vitality,
not division.
The
Palestinian National Initiative can open up new horizons for the
Palestinian people and enable us to revive our potential,
consolidate our resolve, energise our struggle, and attain our goal
of a free, peaceful, independent, and democratic state.
As
difficult as it looks, I'm fully confident that there is a place for
our dream; there is a place for peace and for Palestine.
