Edited Transcript of Remarks by Dr. Saeb Erekat “For the Record” No. 293 (28 April 2008)

If Israel is interested in peace and has a real need for it, the requirements are well-known—a Palestinian state on the 1967 border.  That was the message delivered by Chief Palestinian Negotiator Dr. Saeb Erekat at a 25 April 2008 Palestine Center briefing. However, he explained that Israeli facts on the ground, mainly the continued settlement activity within the 1967 Occupied Palestinian Territory, is undermining efforts of trying to make 2008 a year of peace.

The Palestine Center
Washington, DC
25 April 2008

Dr. Saeb Erekat:

Thank you, Samar. It’s my honor to be amongst you. I will speak for fifteen minutes and then open [it up for] questions and answers for 30 minutes.

I’ll begin with the meetings that [Palestinian] President Mahmoud Abbas conducted with President Bush yesterday. Five months after Annapolis, we have been engaged, almost on a daily basis, with our Israeli counterparts at three levels: one is the level between President Abbas and [Israeli] Prime Minister [Ehud] Olmert; the second level is the level of Mr. Abu Ala [Ahmed Qurei], myself and [Israeli Foreign Minister] Ms. [Tzipi] Livni; and the third is the level of experts trying to handle the situation on what we call the day after the Palestinian state exists—what kind of state to state relation will exist between the State of Palestine and the State of Israel. These talks are ongoing.

I cannot hide the fact that the gaps on the major issues still exist. The second track of contacts with Israelis is what we call a trilateral mechanism. That’s headed by General [William] Frasier of the United States—the judge on the implementation of the first phase of the Road Map implementation. We have, as Palestinians, security obligations. We have to work on maintaining the rule of law, the one authority, the one gun, ending chaos and restlessness. We’re moving in this direction. I’m not saying we’ve completed it, but we are moving in this direction while the Israelis have an obligation to stop settlement activity, including natural growth and dismantling settlement outposts created since March 2001, to reopen offices and institutes closed in East Jerusalem and to restore the situation to that which was prior to September 2000—none of which were implemented by Israel.

So, the President delivered a message to President Bush yesterday telling him, “I’m not here to complain. I know that decisions are not sought from you, sir. The decisions to make peace are up to us and the Israelis to make. But having said that, you’re the judge on behalf of the Quartet as far as Israeli ongoing settlement activities, and the place for the Palestinian state to be [established] is being turned into Swiss cheese”— the same term that President Bush used yesterday—“and we really think something should be done about this because continuation of the settlement activity is really undermining our efforts in trying to make the year 2008 the year of peace.”

On the major issues, I don’t think we need to reinvent the wheel. Throughout the history of man, negotiations, communications are reflections of needs. That’s it. The development in our region is really rather interesting, and it’s not the nature or subject of my conversation today with you. If the Israelis have an interest and a need to have peace, they know what it takes. They don’t need to reinvent the wheel. It’s a Palestinian state on the 1967 borders. A State of Palestine exists next to a State of Israel. And leaders may sign agreements, but in order for agreements to survive, they must be fair agreements, especially if we have to introduce any agreement to a national public referendum. If we have an agreement by the end of this year and we put the agreement to a national public referendum, I really believe that we will prevail. But to be candid with you and honest with you, if we don’t—and I mean President Abbas and his team—have an agreement by 2008, we stand the chance to disappear.

The issues are very clear cut. I did not wake up one morning and feel my conscience aching for the Israeli people suffering to seek negotiations with them, and I don’t think they woke up one morning and felt their conscience aching for my suffering. We need it. They need it. They know that if they want to continue with the pattern and negotiating behavior of creating facts on the ground and dictating and negotiating among themselves and then expect me to come here [and they say], “Boy, we know what’s best for you,” it’s not going to work. It’s not going to happen. Palestinians’ expectations will not be lowered. Palestinians are seeking a genuine peace with Israel, to have a Palestinian state and to live in peace and security next to a State of Israel. There is something that we call states with limited arms. We may be a state that has limited arms, but there is no such a thing as a state or a people with limited dignity or limited aspirations to develop as simple as components of my sovereignty, as far as the water aquifers in Palestine are concerned, as far as my borders are concerned. This may be a state of limitations as far as my arms are concerned but not the other attributes of sovereignty. If the Israelis think that they’re not secure after being a nuclear power possessing 5,000 tanks and 2,500 planes, maybe it’s a good thing to understand the difference between security and defense. There’s a big difference. And as far as security of Palestinians and Israelis, it’s one. I seek to achieve an accommodation to have a mutual security system created between us. They have their own state, I have my own state.

But if they possess all these arms and yet they feel insecure, then maybe their insecurity is coming from the fact that we are a fact on the ground. We don’t intend to disappear, we don’t intend to vanish and we don’t intend to go anywhere. Christian and Muslim Palestinians will not convert to Judaism and become Israelis, and Jews will not convert to Islam and Christianity and become Palestinians. Whether they’re going to do it with me, whether they’re going to walk with me, it’s up to them. I cannot force peace on them. But I can acknowledge that ever since Eve negotiated [with] Adam, I could be the most disadvantaged negotiator in the history of man. I have no army, no navy, no air force and no economy. My people are fragmented. If it’s my word against theirs in the [U.S.] Congress and Senate, I don’t stand a chance. Who said life is about fairness and justice or poetry?

Israel has three options. Number one: two-state solution on the 1967 border minus/plus agreed on minor modifications, swaps in size and value. I really believe that what we witnessed in the eighteenth and nineteenth century renaissance of nationalism is declining. Today, there are planes in Europe flying with twenty-seven stars. And I really believe that nationalism will be on the decline in the twenty-first/twenty-second centuries. If they want one state from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean, the distance between my constituents in Jericho and the Mediterranean will never change—63 kilometers. They want to have one state, call it Israel, that’s fine with me. I want to be equal to them. Once I say this, they look at me and say even Palestinians want to undermine the Jewish nature of Israel. It’s true. Fact—since June 2003, those who are born in the households of the Christians and Muslims in this Holy Land between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean are the majority in that land. If they don’t like this, the third option is what they have [been] creating on the ground in the West Bank. Today, there are roads I cannot use as a Palestinian and the Wall. None of you should have the stomach to accept such systems, such apartheid; never in the worst hours of South Africa’s darkest apartheid were blacks prevented to use roads that whites used. Today, there are roads in the West Bank I cannot use. And such diseases, ladies and gentlemen, as bigotry, as racism, no one is immune to. Once these diseases are inflicted underneath our skins, Muslims can be racists, Jews can be racists, Palestinians can be racists, Israelis can be racist. And we tend to justify it—sometimes sociologically, sometimes economically. We tend to have the brilliance of justifying and sometimes blaming security. I never really had the stomach for that. I’m there to exist. I don’t intend to vanish. I know my limitations. And I know that my generation recognizes the State of Israel’s right to exist, to live in peace and security on 78 percent of historic Palestine. So, I hope that they will not come again and tell me at the end of 2008 if we don’t have an agreement, “Oh, Palestinians, you never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.”

Two additions before I open [it to] questions and answers. The Middle East region today is standing at a critical juncture. The Middle East cannot be maintained at the status quo, cannot be dealt with damage control and crisis management. The Middle East in 2008 stands to go either in the direction of peace, democracy and prosperity or in the path of [Osama] bin Laden, extremism and so on. There are two things to salvage this region and to make it go through the path of democracy and peace. Number one: a Palestinian-Israeli peace, a Palestinian state. And today when we come to Washington, we are not coming to ask President Bush to make the decisions for us or to ask you as Americans to be kind to us. It’s your national interest. You’re a nation where your political borders today are no longer Canada and Mexico and the two oceans. When a nation has 160,000 kids stretched from the borders of Turkey, Iran, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, parts of China—a small part—Afghanistan, the Gulf, Saudi [Arabia], Syria and Jordan, the political geography has changed. It’s in your national interest to seek to end the Israeli occupation. We’re not going to win with guns and Marines in that region. You can never win. Look at the history of this region very well with guns. You win by having peace between Palestinians and Israelis. You win by having democracy in the Arab world. And anybody who says Arabs are not ready for democracy is a racist, period.

The third dimension is the internal Palestinian problem, a major problem. We are living our worst nightmare since 1967. In 2006, President Abbas carried out general elections. Hamas won the elections fair and square and nobody disputed that. Nobody disputes that at all. Hamas is a Palestinian party. I was elected the same year, the same elections to represent Jericho. I said to [Hamas leader] Mr. [Ismail] Haniyeh when he brought his government for a vote of confidence, I told him, “Sir, today you are no longer the Prime Minister of Hamas. You are my Prime Minister. You are the Prime Minister of all Palestinians. Sir, when [Iranian Supreme Leader Ruhollah] Khomeini took over power from the Shah in a bloody coup d’état, he issued a first statement.” I read him the statement of Imam Khomeini in which he undertook to honor all obligations on Iran—contractual, financial, security, even the friendship treaty with the United States. So, did Nelson Mandela when he took over from the apartheid system. “You cannot come, Mr. Haniyeh, and tell me because I won the election I’m not going to accept the obligations and agreements signed and so on. That’s not democracy. That’s now how international politics function today.”

I’m not asking Hamas to do anything. I’m not asking Hamas to recognize Israel or a two-state solution. I’m asking the government because they ran an election. They know its limitations. We have no problem with democracy. Democracy works. Those who want to use democracy for their own purposes are the problem, not democracy. On the contrary, we’ll do it again. Palestine cannot be without being a democracy, without being a country with a transparent, accountable system of government. Yes, we have an overloaded wagon of complicities. We have an overloaded wagon of mistakes. There are those who tried to attempt to use their offices to benefit here and there. We’re going through very difficult labor pains as Palestinians. We’re going through a transition I cannot define it within the social sciences and the variable of interactions. It’s very difficult. But having said that, Palestine cannot survive without being a democratic, transparent, accountable country. Hamas needs to rescind its coup. Hamas needs to adhere to Palestinian basic law. That’s our message. And if we don’t help ourselves with this, nobody else will. People have attempted for centuries to use Palestine as a card to handle their own image of their negotiations—what they want to use and not to use and so on. Palestine and Jerusalem have always been much bigger than being a card because they are much more important than any Arab or Muslim capital.

Thank you very much and I will take your questions.

Dr. Saeb Erekat is the chief Palestinian negotiator and head of the PLO Negotiations Affairs Department.

This “For the Record” transcript may be used without permission but with proper attribution to The Palestine Center. The speakers' views do not necessarily reflect the views of The Jerusalem Fund.

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