Statement by Mr Saeb EREKAT, Minister of Local Government of the Palestinian Authority

Strasbourg, 23 January 2002

Thank you very much, Mr Schieder. I congratulate you on becoming the President of this great Assembly. I also thank you, Mr Schwimmer.

Allow me first to extend to all of you the greetings and best wishes of President Yasser Arafat, who like 3.2 million Palestinians, is under siege in the town of Ramallah.

To be honest with you, I did not come here to score points, to finger-point or to assign blame. I came here because the gravity of the situation on the West Bank and in Gaza is deteriorating on the hour, every hour. I came here realising that Palestinians, and Israelis for that matter, need help. They need the help of a third party � the United States, Europe, Russia, the United Nations and others.

It is no secret that the trust level between us and the Israelis is below zero. I know that many people are saying now that General Anthony Zinni, the United States envoy, who twice visited the region, came and failed twice. He did not fail. He began a process, he gained the trust of both parties and we began serious deliberations. I do not understand why, at the peak of the crisis, the United States Administration has decided to pull General Zinni. It is time for him and the European envoys, Solana and Moratinos, the Russian envoy, Vdovin and the United Nations special representative, Terje Roed-Larsen, to be there with us in order to provide the mechanisms and timeline for the implementation of the Mitchell recommendations and the Tenet plan.

I should like on behalf of President Arafat to state before your Assembly the Palestinian Authority’s full commitment to the content of the speech delivered by President Arafat on 16 December � to the cease-fire declared, to all Palestinian obligations emanating from the Mitchell report and the Tenet plan, and to the agreements signed. We do not need to re-invent the wheel. We do not need new initiatives. We do not need much talk and many words about peace and commitment to peace. Our job should concentrate on saving lives � those of Palestinians and Israelis. At the end of the day, that is what peace is all about.

Therefore, I have entrusted Mr Schieder with a plan of a timeline and mechanisms of implementation of the Mitchell recommendations and the Tenet understandings, which we presented to the Americans on General Zinni’s last mission. I hope that you look at it;  I hope that you check it word by word. By the way, the Mitchell report was not drafted by Palestinians or Israelis, but by you in Europe. It was drafted by the Americans. We need to see it implemented. We need to revive hope, and I do not know of any other way to revive hope than through the peace process.

Irrespective of how fragile and frustrating the negotiations with my friend Shimon Peres, who addressed you yesterday, he used to tell me when we used to negotiate in pain and frustration, �Saeb, negotiating in pain and frustration for five years is cheaper than exchanging bullets for five minutes.� Mr Peres, you are right. I want you back at the negotiating table immediately, and with no preconditions � because those who put preconditions on negotiations do not intend to negotiate. We have nothing to lose by resuming the negotiations. We have much to gain. I no longer understand the logic of those who support preconditions for negotiations. They have been doing that since last March. Since Sharon took office he has suspended the negotiations. What is the result ten months later, ladies and gentlemen? The result is a longer list of Palestinian deaths and Israeli deaths. Or, as they say in Hebrew: Mr Sharon, suspending the negotiations brought us �Ain shalom, ain bitachon� � no peace, no security.

Many people may doubt and question the negotiations, or the resumption of the negotiations. They may call people who call for negotiations without preconditions wishful thinkers or na�ve. That may be so, but can anyone tell me of another way to stop the killing fields out there? I do not think that we shall find any way other than the peace process and the resumption of the negotiations.

I do not come here to seek support for Palestinians. Long ago, I learned a lesson which made my world divided not into a world of pro-Israelis or pro-Palestinians; my world is divided between those who are pro-peace and those who are against peace. On both sides, the majority of Israelis and Palestinians long for peace; they want nothing but peace. As long as the sun keeps shining, no one needs peace more than the Israelis and the Palestinians.

There are people on both sides who are against peace. By suspending the negotiations and by putting conditions on the negotiations, we are giving into extremists on both sides; that is their end game.

Today, everything is being destroyed. When the late Prime Minister Rabin was a partner with Mr Shimon Peres and Arafat we had an agreement to build Gaza airport and we built it. We had an agreement to construct a harbour in Gaza and construction began � to build the infrastructure, the sewerage, the water, the roads. the schools, the hospitals and economic development.

 All I can tell my friend Shimon Peres is that in your partnership with Sharon the airport is destroyed, the harbour is destroyed, the sewerage system is destroyed, the water is destroyed. What more do you need to be convinced that Sharon’s end-game is to destroy the peace process and the Palestinian Authority? There is a systematic destruction of everything that materialised from the peace process. Everything that we built and worked for, for the past twenty-five or thirty years of our lives is being destroyed. What will be the end-game? We all know that Mr Sharon, when the treaty between Egypt and Israel was put to a vote in the Knesset, voted against it. He did the same when the Egyptian and Jordanian and Israeli peace treaty was put to a vote. Do you know what? He voted against all the agreements signed between Israel and the Palestinian authority, including Wye River in which he took part. Perhaps ideologically or politically it does not serve his interests. We can no longer stand and watch � you can no longer stand and watch � the destruction.

Yes, we are the last people on earth under occupation. Yes, Israel is the last country on earth that still possesses such occupying power. Yes, we have recognised the existence of the state of Israel to live within securely recognised boundaries on 78% of historic Palestinian land. As President Arafat told me, this recognition stands. At the end of the day, the whole peace process and the terms of reference provided for at the Madrid peace conference spoke about the implementation of 242 and 338 � the possibility of the acquisition of other people’s territory by war, meaning the establishment of a Palestinian state on the 4 June 1967 border, on the 22% of remaining land next to the state of Israel.

President Arafat became the first leader among the Palestinians to do that. We were a people with no navy, no air force, no tanks and no army. We want to achieve and solve the problems with Israel through a meaningful peace process, through resuming the negotiations.

We need your help if you care about the lives of Palestinians and Israelis.

On 16 December, President Arafat delivered a speech in which he committed to sustain the cease-fire against great odds. For three weeks the cease-fire was sustained from the Palestinian side. There was a major drop in shooting and other forms of violence, yet in that period of three weeks thirty-seven Palestinians were killed, 429 were wounded, eighty-one homes were destroyed and three people were assassinated by the Israeli army. There was tightening around the siege. We were not given a chance to sustain the cease-fire. At the end of the day the irony is: tie Arafat’s hands, tie his legs, blindfold him, throw him into the ocean and, look, he cannot swim, he has no partner, he is drowning.

Why should he be a partner? In peacemaking the first lesson you learn is how to strengthen your partner, not how to weaken him. You do not say that he is irrelevant and then hold him accountable. How can a balance be created? How can it be that in 2002 an elected president is called irrelevant?  Perhaps the last person on earth that I want to speak to is Sharon, but I do not choose for the Israelis. They elected Sharon and we respect the democratic choice of the Israeli people. We do not choose who we negotiate with, unless you want to seek pretexts in order not to negotiate, because there will always be a big difference between tough negotiators and non-negotiators. Please, please look at the facts about non-negotiators and tough negotiators.

The Palestinian Authority is being eroded. Most of the Palestinian security headquarters that are supposed to carry out the obligations emanating from the Tenet plan and the Mitchell report have been destroyed by F-16s, tanks and the bombardment. Palestinian police cannot move from one village to another. Israeli tanks are fifty metres away from Arafat’s headquarters. Every effort is being exerted to erode the Palestinian Authority’s ability to function and to provide services to its people. We are not an independent state. Self-government is a process of limitation. When it comes to our obligations, the world wants us to act as if we were a super-power. As I have said, we are committed to our obligations, but we need the support system and the environment in which to carry them out.

For the past sixteen months, most of the goods that come to the West Bank and Gaza have come through Israeli ports. In 1994, we had an agreement with the Israelis that they should collect the taxes and customs duties for us. It was agreed that they should cut 3% for their services and then transfer 97%, which constitutes almost 80% of our budget. They have not transferred one penny since September 2000.

I was at Camp David with President Clinton. I was the man who negotiated with my colleague Shlomo Ben Ami after Camp David. I was also at the Taba negotiations. I keep hearing that the Palestinians or Arafat rejected an offer that was extremely generous because he did not want peace. Let me put the record straight. The issues that were negotiated, and will be negotiated in future � Jerusalem, the settlements, borders, refugees and security � are vital issues for us and the Israelis. I believe that Palestinians and Israelis, with the help of President Clinton, came a long way at Camp David. So much courage was exercised by both parties. Many stones were unturned, and 80% of the way was taken.

There was no time to conclude. Perhaps that was because somebody told President Clinton that if an agreement were not reached at Camp David there would not be a peace camp in Israel. If we are to finger-point at the Palestinians and Arafat, that happened. It is said that the Palestinians did not offer a counter-proposal. However, most of the bridging proposals came from us.

I will begin with security. The Israeli side wanted to maintain 12% of the West Bank and the eastern border and the Jordan River for thirty years under their control. They wanted to continue to have the Palestinian skies under their control, and they wanted three early-warning stations in the West Bank for ever. They also wanted five emergency locations with roads accessible to them in case a threat came from the east, when they would move to re-occupy the West Bank.

We asked them, �Why do you need all of this?� We Palestinians accept that we must have American, European and Japanese forces on our borders to provide for our security and to provide deterrence. We will make the land of Palestine void to any foreign army. The skies of Palestine will be void to any air force other than that provided for in the agreement. That is the truth.

When it came to territory, they wanted, as I have said, to keep 12% of the Jordan valley under their control. At Camp David, they said that they wanted 11% to be annexed to accommodate 80% of the settlers. I shall provide you, Mr Schieder, with a list of the twenty-five settlements that have been built since March until now under the joint government of Shimon Peres and Sharon. We said that the settlements constituted 1.7% of the built-in areas on the West Bank. We were not on record as accepting the concept of modifications on our borders, with a swathe of land equal in size and value.

We said to them, �All right, two states. Let us see what can be done, provided that you will not prejudice our water aquifers and the contiguity of the West Bank. We do not want to find thousands of Palestinians becoming Israelis.�

On Jerusalem, we came a long way. It is ironic that all these issues are do-able. There are the Arab neighbourhoods in East Jerusalem, the Old City. There is West Jerusalem and the Israeli settlements in East Jerusalem. A serious process began.

I am a Muslim. I do not expect my Israeli colleagues to fast during Ramadan to show that they respect my religion. They cannot expect me to believe what they believe to show that I respect their religion. Christian Palestinians do not need Israelis to show respect by practising what they practise. The Haram-esh-Sharif is also called the Temple Mount. I asked the Israelis whether it was intended to rebuild the Temple Mount. They said no. As President Arafat said, they come to the Wailing Wall to pray. We have said that we are willing to make the Wailing Wall and the Jewish quarter in the Old City of East Jerusalem come under full Israeli sovereignty. And they said, �But we need to maintain the overall remaining residual sovereignty.�  We said that there was no such thing as sovereignty over a memory, a belief or a value.

Let us work so that Jerusalem is capital of the Palestinian state and the state of Israel. We could have an open city. We do not need to make peace and then build walls. We need openness between us. We undertook to establish an international body to monitor that we do not dig or excavate under Haram-esh-Sharif. They wanted to end the conflict and an end to the claims. The refugee problem is a major one. We want to establish the right of return, but a balance must be struck between the establishment of the right of return and Israel’s concerns and interests.

We came a long way in the negotiations, but I do not recall Mr Barak giving me or Arafat written proposals and asking us to agree or disagree. It was the Clinton proposals that were given to me personally and to my colleague Shlomo Ben Ami on 23 December 2000.

On 2 January 2001, President Arafat went to Washington to meet President Clinton; I was with him. Arafat said that he accepted President Clinton’s parameters and proposals and that he had the following clarifications and qualifications. The same answer was given by Mr Barak. When we went to Taba, we had already drafted three chapters of the permanent status agreement. Many people do not know that. It had been agreed between us and our Israeli colleagues that we needed until 30 April 2001 to conclude everything.

The Israeli delegation made no secret from day one in Taba that, because of the elections, it was not ethical for them to reach an agreement before the 6 February elections. Neither could we; I am talking about 27 January. The Israelis decided, �Blame it on them. Prepare the ground to destroy them.�

Then came 11 September and suddenly the most potent weapon in bin Laden’s arsenal was the Palestinian question. Arafat stood up and told him, �Do not use our just cause as a reason for your unjust acts.�  Now, suddenly, the Israelis refer to us as Taliban and al-Qaeda. I do not know whether German and American kids are in Afghanistan now building settlements. What is the comparison? Why is there silence on this?

We want peace. We acknowledge that the Israeli peace camp has been shattered, and we are a mirror image of them. We need to stop the deterioration. It does not take a genius to see a way out. First, there will never be a military solution to the problem. The use of F-15s, F-16s, tanks, the siege, the closure, the assassinations and the settlements will breed violence. Bullets will breed bullets, violence will breed violence and killings will breed killings.

We need to begin immediately, and we need General Zinni, the Americans, the Europeans, the Russians and the United Nations and those involved in the quadripartite committee to provide mechanisms. We have submitted a road map and the proposals with a timeline for the implementation of Mitchell and Tenet � their own plans, not ours.

We must resume negotiations and resuming them is much better for the Israelis than resuming the occupation. If I were an Israeli � I see my friend Ha�m Ramon from the Israeli Knesset sitting here � I would not do two things. I would not win the war if winning it meant bringing back Israeli kids to the Jabaliah and Chatila refugee camps, Jericho or Bethlehem. I say to the Israelis, �You do not want that victory.�  Secondly, I will not allow my Palestinian labourers to get used to the current living conditions. Once the Palestinians do not have fuel to cook with, or cannot go and get wood to cook with, that will not be the only thing that will change in the Palestinian way of life. Maybe something in our heads or in the way we dress or think will change. I say again, �You do not need this.� Tel Aviv will always be fifty kilometres from Ramallah and Ramallah will always be fifty kilometres from Tel Aviv. You do not need this.

The occupation must end. On behalf of President Arafat, I want to use this podium to extend Arafat’s hand to the Israelis. I call upon the Israeli leadership to come back to the negotiating table without any conditions. We stand with a great responsibility on our shoulders. To those Israelis who think that destroying the Palestinian Authority or killing President Arafat will change things, I say this. If Arafat or the Palestinian Authority goes down after we have recognised Israel and given 78% of the land in the negotiations, you will not find a Palestinian to mention the word peace for the next five decades.

I say, �Help us.� Once again we extend our hand to the Israeli Government to try to resolve the problem. They must be far-sighted and show courage and wisdom and they must come immediately back to the negotiating table. Shimon Peres was right when he told me that negotiating in pain and frustration for five years is much better than exchanging bullets for five minutes.

Thank you very much.