Thank you very much for your warm welcome and thank you for your wonderful words, Mr. [John] Hotchkis.  It’s great to be here with you again, at the World Affairs Council in L.A.  I’m beginning to feel like an old-timer here, and I’m very heartened by the number of people who showed up today.  Probably that’s because you all recognize the gravity of this situation and as was said at the beginning, the window of opportunity is certainly narrowing very quickly to become a peephole and the timeframe is rapidly becoming shorter.  Let me just say, at the risk of repeating a cliché, which remains nonetheless true, these are critical times indeed, and this is the time for genuine intervention in order to once again rescue peace from the jaws of disaster. 

If you look at regional and global realities and place the Palestinian-Israeli question or conflict in the context of these realities, you would understand that there have been complicating factors that have played an adverse role in the course of resolving the conflict, [like] the war in Iraq and the consequences of that war.  Some people say there are strategic implications for the region, for the first time we have the U.S. in the middle of the Arab world, and for the first time we have another occupation in the region.  Of course, the whole concept of imposing democracy from above or by arms, by military means or the whole concept of unilateralism—which has undermined the role of multilateral or international organizations—or the whole concept of negative preemptive sites as opposed to positive preemptive constructive moves—all these things, in terms of the developments in the region, have had an adverse effect on the Palestinian-Israeli question.  It’s as if its vindicated in it’s occupation and in its unilateralism and in its militarism.  These are the three concepts that certainly do not serve the cause of peace.  Also, within the Arab world you see tremendous fragmentation and you see a defensive and a reactive mode.  The Arab world has drawn the wrong conclusion from the American intervention in our part of the world.  The conclusion is that you have to stay on the good side of the U.S., not that you have to carry out a serious democratic transformation—a transition to democracy by peaceful means in order to gain legitimacy and to draw your source of legitimacy from the people, instead of from external sources, whether the U.S. or otherwise. [We find] the U.N. report on human development extremely alarming.  We need peace as a major force in order to challenge the prevailing wisdom and the status quo of claiming security as an excuse to suspend human rights, democracy and the rule of law.  So we need to remove that pretext in order to unleash the forces of development and growth in the Arab world.

We also sense a global need for intervention, a need to solve the Palestinian-Israeli crisis, but within the context of that conflict in Israel we have one of the most militaristic, hard line governments in the history of Israel.  In Palestine we are witnessing the consequences of the failure at building institutions and democratic systems within the nation-building process.  It’s a failure of leadership more than a failure of people.  So you have extremism on both sides on the rise and you have a very threatening and menacing attitude of returning to basics where each side is viewing the conflict as an existential conflict.  This naturally has been the case whenever you have an extremist government in place in Israel that agitates and exploits fear and insecurity in order to stay in place and at the same time presents the conflict as back to the zero-sum game.  This, again, has had very negative repercussions on mutual perceptions of each other.  The Palestinians feel that the incursions, the shelling, the bombing, the destruction of the infrastructure, of the institutions, of the economy, the constant siege, the fragmentation of our land—these are all attempts at eradicating the Palestinian identify as a national identity and, hence, the Palestinian’s right to self-determination and, hence, the right to build a viable state on Palestinian soil.

For a long time there was a peace process that was called the Oslo process—I’m sure you’re all aware of it—we talked about it here repeatedly.  Many of the problems of the Declaration of Principles from the Oslo process have erupted and in many cases backfired because two mentalities prevail.  On the one hand the mentality of the occupation and, therefore, coercion, domination, political blackmail, and on the other hand the mentality of revolution and hence of secrecy and non-transparency, so to speak, and lack of accountability.  Both the peace process and the nation-building process suffered as a result.  With the new administration in the U.S. and with the failure, of course, of the Camp David talks and the Taba talks and not having achieved any end, and with the incursion into the Haram al-Sharif that led to the outbreak of hostilities, for the last three years the Palestinians and Israelis have been involved in a very fatal embrace, a lethal exchange, instead of words, firearms.  A lethal exchange that is based on inflicting as much damage as possible.  And there was no process.  There were no negotiations.  There were serious attempts calling on the international community to intervene and to create an alternative and to prepare political avenues and alternatives rather than maintaining the status quo that is rapidly deteriorating. 

The road map was invented by another strange invention called “the Quartet.”  The Quartet signaled that finally the international community had decided to intervene politically and was made up of the U.N., the E.U., the U.S. and Russia.  The road map was put together primarily by the U.S. as an attempt to break this lethal cycle.  Once again, any text is as strong as the will to implement it or to interpret it positively or to translate it to reality on the ground.  The road map, unfortunately, has serious built-in drawbacks, but at the same time, fortunately, it has clear criteria for the solution of the conflict.  On the one hand, it talks about the global commitment, it talks about the two state solution, it talks about ending the occupation that began in 1967 and, of course, it mentions all the legal references: U.N. Resolutions 242, 338, 1397, as well as the Arab initiative, which means it has a basis in international law and legality.  It has a clear definition of the objective and the outcome, and it has a comprehensive scope in terms of its impact on the region and in the Arab world.  But, unfortunately, it also adopted the phased approach and from experience we have learned that what is temporary quite often becomes permanent if it falls prey to the imbalance of power.  It becomes part of power politics. 

So the three phases of the road map run the risk of not moving smoothly ahead, particularly when you come to the second phase and you start dealing with another strange creature, a state with provisional borders, or an interim transitional state.  Also, the first phase demands up front of the Palestinians delivery of things that [are] impossible to deliver if Israel is not checked in its behavior when it comes to the incursions and their assassinations and the settlement policies and so on.  So we are stuck in the first phase.  The first phase has become conditional and sequential rather than non-conditional and simultaneous in terms of transforming the dynamic on the ground.  Instead of implementing simultaneously on both sides those things that are required, we ended up with Israel pursuing its policies of settlement expansion, of assassinations, of siege and isolation, of incursions and killings, of abductions and imprisonment.

All these, of course, culminated in the building of this horrible wall, which is called the “apartheid wall,” the “separation wall,” that is fragmenting the West Bank into eight different sectors and that is totally destroying the chances of a viable Palestinian state.  Of course, the wall itself has led to extreme deprivation and suffering, has led to serious displacement of people within Palestine, has led to the dismantlement of whole communities, has robbed the West Bank of some of its most fertile agricultural land as well as its water sources.  And yet the wall is still being built.  It has also served to isolate Jerusalem, to fragment the southern part, to separate Bethlehem from Jerusalem.  Also, I don’t know if you know the area, but now there’s a wall being built in Abu Dis and Bethany, which are close suburbs of Jerusalem, Arab suburbs:  Because they’re heavily populated they’re being separated by the wall.  They’ve annexed more Arab territory, Palestinian territory, to Jerusalem but have expelled more Palestinian people. 

So once again, you see the idea of taking the land and not the people and making life impossible for those who live near or within or around the wall. The irony is that this was supposedly built for self-defense by Israel—but it is built on Palestinian territory, not on Israeli territory and not on the ’67 lines.  It is built in such a way as to annex the water sources and the fertile lands.  There are settlers on both sides of the wall and there’s the Israeli army on both sides of the wall.  So, it’s very clear that this is neither for self-defense nor a security wall.  It is a political wall and it is creating future boundaries that will destroy once and for all the chances of a viable state and hence the chances of a genuine and just solution to the conflict.  So we end up with the road map lacking any kind of accountability in terms of third party involvement to make both sides comply. We were supposed to have mechanisms for monitoring and verification and instead we ended up only with one person, Jon Wolf and a dozen CIA agents.  One person with a dozen helpers doesn’t help us cope, particularly when it comes to outposts and settlement expansion or when it comes to monitoring 164 check points. 

And then there is certainly a very miserly and minimal approach to implementation when it comes to the prisoners.  You release those prisoners whose time has come up or who have almost ended their prison sentence, or you release those who were never tried and never charged, or you release those who were detained because they were caught without a permit in Jerusalem or in Israel.  So that again was a manipulative approach to human pain.  Again, the same thing with the outposts.  We end up now with more outposts, settlers’ outposts, than we had when the process began.  The same thing with the settlements that are expanding.  So, it’s no wonder that there has been an erosion of confidence, not just in the road map, but also in intentions and the way in which it’s being handled and in the role of the U.S. as an evenhanded peace broker.  There has to be serious intervention.  Now the Palestinians would ask to implement their side of the bargain.  We started implementing issues pertaining to reform.  We had to reform the financial system, and the administrative system.  This began with the appointment of a new finance minister and a serious reform within a civil society.  Of course we have a coalition and there is a national reform committee. 

Also, we were asked to appoint an independent elections commission.  It’s in place, but there is no sign of elections coming up.  We were asked to amend the elections law; we are amending the elections law.  We were asked to change the basic law in order to have provisions for a prime minister who’s empowered. We amended the basic law and we did empower a prime minister.  We did delineate powers and responsibilities both for the president and the prime minister and we were asked to set up a committee for drafting a constitution.  We have a committee and we have drafts for the constitution.

The problem is that we’re unable to meet with our constituencies to discuss that draft constitution so that the people can own it.  We are incapable of starting any kind of election campaign because people cannot move from one town to the other, or from one village to the other unless the state of siege is lifted and unless people can move freely, can breathe freely, can work, can go to schools and hospitals, who are living in a very abnormal situation.  If we can have elections, the results of the elections will certainly be tainted and nonindicative.  So we do need to work on conditions objectively so we can have elections and, of course, in terms of the attitude and the atmosphere that will be conducive to genuine free and fair elections.

We would also ask to stop the violence in terms of curtailing the actions of the military organizations, particularly the military wings of Hamas and Jihad.  I was asked to talk about this and I will.  If you follow public opinion polls in Palestine you will find out that the majority of Palestinians do not condone a military solution to the conflict or these actions.  Between 74 and 80 percent, depending on when you read the polls, of Palestinians are committed to a negotiated settlement.  However, that is again the cycle, this lethal dynamic of provocation and response, of revenge, of anger, of despair, that has led to an escalation and the adoption of military means.  I describe this as a lethal dialogue taking place above the heads of people between the Israeli government on one hand and Hamas and Jihad on the other, and it’s the people who pay the price—the people on both sides. 

The best way to deal with this, it seems to me, is to delegitimize such actions on both sides, not just on one side.  We need not just a public debate on this issue in Palestine, and we have launched that, but we also need to ensure that you cannot hold one side accountable while Israel has license to kill and to carry out its acts of violence because it does it using an army and as a result of a common decision, while on our side, you have opposition and you have dissident groups doing it.  We also need to deal with it in a way that would enhance a political system that is based on a pluralistic democracy, an active and vibrant democracy, as well as a system where you have a rule of law with clear legal regulations that would enable us to hold accountable all those who violate the law.  So you need on the one hand an inclusive pluralistic democracy and on the other hand a system that functions, that works, a legal system, an independent judiciary and the ability to hold people accountable. But to do all these things we also need to work to change conditions on the ground, to stop with sieges and assassinations and to provide people with hope, to put an end to the anger, to the frustration, to the desperation of these negative motivations that lead to desperate acts.  That’s why I say now today I don’t know if you heard President Arafat has called for another ceasefire.  [The] ceasefire has begun to fall apart because of the assassinations and the escalation – the assassination of leadership from all factions, whether it’s Hamas or Jihad or even the popular front.  All activists and political leaders have been subject to assassinations that provoked serious responses from everybody, but now to make the ceasefire hold, which is indeed a tremendous achievement, to have an internal ceasefire you need an external ceasefire, you need a ceasefire with Israel as well so that both sides will not resort to weapons and violence and further infliction of pain.  But most of all, and I will conclude here to open the room for discussion, most of all we do need outside intervention. 

Once again, I will reiterate that you cannot leave both sides to their own devices.  That is a dynamic that is self-destructive, that is extremely ominous and threatening to both sides.  We need monitoring, verification, arbitration.  We need peacekeepers, and we don’t need to reinvent the solution.  It’s very clear.  We know what the solution is.  There is a universal consensus for a two-state solution on 22 percent of historical Palestine, with boundaries of 1967 and a just and legal settlement of the refugee question.  This would lead to a genuine settlement and a genuine peace, not just between Palestine and Israel but also in the region as a whole and would begin a whole new and qualitatively [different view], a paradigm shift if you will, that is so badly needed in the region but it would also mean that the global rule of law will win its test of legitimacy.

Thank you very much.