Video and Edited Transcript
Ambassador Maen Areikat
Transcript No. 451 (16 November 2015)
Ambassador Maen Areikat
Transcript No. 451 (16 November 2015)
Zeina Azzam:
Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon and welcome to the Jerusalem Fund and our educational program The Palestine Center. My name is Zeina Azzam. I am the executive director here. Welcome as well to our online audience.
Today we are so pleased to host our special guest, Ambassador Rashid Maen Areikat, who is a Chief PLO representative to the United States. It is indeed our honor to have you here with us today, Ambassador Areikat. He will speak about the urgent need for a paradigm shift in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He posits that, after the peace process over the last 22 years since the famous handshake between Arafat and Rabin in front of the White House, the world needs to rethink this bilateral process, sponsored mainly by the United States, and implement a multilateral, international approach to resolving the conflict.
Ambassador Areikat would like to speak for about 15-20 minutes and leave the rest of the time for your questions. Our Livestream audience can submit questions to our twitter handle, which is @PalestineCenter. May I ask you all to silence your phones, please.
So, let me introduce our special guest today. Ambassador Maen Rashid Areikat is the chief PLO representative to the United States. Previously, he served as ambassador for 11 years at the Negotiations Affairs Department of the PLO in Ramallah and was the deputy head and coordinator general from 2008-2009. Ambassador Areikat first joined the Negotiations Affairs Department in 1998, when it was headed by the current Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas and served as Director General until March 2008.
Between ’93 and ’98, Ambassador Areikat worked at the Orient House, which is the headquarters of the PLO in Jerusalem and of the Palestinian negotiating team for the Madrid Peace Talks. While there, he served as spokesperson for the late Mr. Faisal Husseini, the former PLO executive committee member in charge of Jerusalem affairs, and later as desk officer for the U.S., Canada, Australia and South Africa in the Orient House’s International Relations department.
As chief representative, he took part in the Israeli negotiations in Beit Hanoun, Erez in Gaza and Taba in Egypt in 1996, in Jerusalem in ’97, and was an official member of the Palestinian delegation at the Wye River Negotiations in 1998. Ambassador Areikat has traveled extensively on official visits to Washington, D.C. and several European capitals. The title of his talk today is “Shifting the Paradigm.” Please help me in warmly welcoming Ambassador Areikat.
Ambassador Maen Rashid Areikat:
Thank you, Zeina, very much. Good afternoon. I would like to first start by making a statement about the events that took place in Beirut and Paris over the weekend to once again stating the official Palestinian stance of opposing these attacks and targeting civilians. We express our solidarity with the Lebanese people, with the French people.
I would like to say one thing. Victims of such attacks must be treated equally. While we express our sympathy with the French people for their losses, we also have to express the same sympathy with others who are losing their lives as a part of this heinous campaign by extremists in the Middle East. We should express that publicly and openly in the same way that we express our sympathy with other people. I am glad to see a reaction in this country to remind people that just a day before Paris, more than 50 people lost their lives and 200 were wounded also in Beirut and other parts of the Middle East.
This is a campaign that is directed first and foremost against Arab and Muslims, by the way. The number of Muslim and Arab victims of the terror and the campaign of terror that ISIS is leading is 90 percent, if not more. Most of the victims are Arabs and Muslims, therefore, it provides us with a very strong reason to be at the forefront fighting these extremists and trying to put an end to their campaign. We will continue to do that.
At the same time, I deplore strongly statements made by Israeli Prime Minister to try to equate what happened in Paris with what the Palestinians are trying to do to earn their independence and freedom. You can never equate the struggles of an occupied people who are seeking freedom and compare that to the terror and indiscriminate killing in Paris. Palestinians are fighting for their independence. Trying to label the Palestinians as part of this overall campaign to target France and other Western countries is rejected and is deplorable. It is a very cheap ploy on the part of the Prime Minister who, once again, exonerates himself and his government’s occupation from all the injustice, mistreatment of Palestinians, and the Israeli occupation. Therefore, we all stand against these forces. We all stand to defeat these forces, but we should not get confused here and blur the lines between those who are fighting for their freedom and justice and those who are killing for the sake of killing to terrorize people around the world.
This brings me to a very disturbing phenomenon that we have seen during the recent violence that has broken out in Palestine, Jerusalem, and Israel since the beginning of September – the trends that are becoming popular in this country to dehumanize Palestinians. You hear it from members of congress such as Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio for example. You hear it from official media and sometimes the [Obama] Administration, I would say, inadvertently gets into this by dehumanizing the Palestinians and trying to lessen the suffering of our people, when they talk about the violence that broke out.
We have, unfortunately, become mere numbers. When they want to report the number of casualties—we all took math at some point at school—you don’t start a poll with 10 percent support Hilary Clinton and 70 percent support Donald Trump—let’s say he will be the contender—that people start with the bigger number and go to the smaller number. They report, 12 Israelis were killed and scores were wounded; also 80 Palestinians were killed, half of them attacking Israeli soldiers or police. The fact that they present it in a way like that is attempting to give the impression that Palestinian lives don’t matter and that Israeli lives matter more than Palestinian lives, more precious than Palestinian lives. This is a trend that should be rejected strongly. We should reject it if it comes from a member of congress, from the [Obama] Administration, from the media, any circle in this country that tries to dehumanize the Palestinians and turn them into mere numbers in this conflict.
The level of suffering under Israeli occupation is unprecedented. People who need to know and find the truth should visit the occupied Palestinian territories and see the daily humiliation that Palestinians have to endure and are subjected to by the Israeli army, to understand the level of resentment on the part of Palestinians and why the Palestinians get so desperate and do the things that they are doing. It’s not like we go and we teach our children and we plant that culture of violence and incitement. No Palestinian wants their children, 12, 13 or 14, to go attack Israeli police and civilians knowing in advance that they will be killed in the process. Which Palestinian parent wants to do that, to see their kids being shot and killed? No Palestinian parents teach or bring up their children to hate or incite. The occupation is the main source of incitement. Once the occupation is ended and once the occupation is over, there is no reason for any kind of violence to take place between Palestinians and Israelis.
This brings us to the issue of security and peace. Israel will not enjoy security, unless there is a just peace and unless the occupation is over. It’s a simple equation. They have been trying to convince the world that security must come before peace. You cannot have security unless you have peace. To ask the Palestinians, who are under occupation, to secure and guarantee Israeli security is just absurd. How can you ask an occupied people to guarantee the security of the occupier? This is something that has never happened in the history of conflicts between nations and countries. So, ending the occupation remains the number one priority to bring about peace between Palestinians and Israelis.
Unfortunately, ever since this current Israeli government took office in 2009, six years ago, all what we have seen is a deliberate escalation on their part to increase tension between Palestinians and Israelis. This current government did not take one single step to reach out to the Palestinians to genuinely and sincerely discuss the core issues that need to be addressed in order to reach a solution to the conflict. On the contrary, they embarked on a campaign to increase settlements. Since he took office, there has been a 20 percent increase in settlements. The other day when the Prime Minister spoke at the Center for American Progress, he tried to compare the number of new settlement units that supposedly he built to Prime Minister Rabin, Prime Minister Ehud Barak, and other former Prime Ministers that ruled Israel. He said, my numbers are the smallest among the three or four former Prime Ministers, as if this justifies building the settlements. He doesn’t know that one single settlement is illegal. It doesn’t matter what the number is, but that’s his excuse to compare [himself to] other Israeli Prime Ministers.
This government does not have on its agenda—not the Prime Minister, his government is a government of settlers, not for settlers but of settlers, right wing, partisan Israel—to engage with the Palestinians in a meaningful discussion to end the conflict. The Prime Minister of Israel is ideologically opposed to the creation of a Palestinian state. He said very clearly, on the eve of the Israeli elections, a Palestinian state will not be made under my watch. When the international community and the United States reacted to his statements, he started to backtrack. He was here last week trying to convince the Obama Administration that he was in favor of the two-state solution. It is one thing to talk about it, and it is another to take steps to do it. The steps he is taking on the ground are only meant to preempt and prevent the Palestinians from establishing their state and to kill, if he has not already, the two-state solution. Netanyahu said it clearly and really worked hard to change the terms of reference for whatever political process existed between the Palestinians and the Israelis. He wanted to create his own terms of reference: once by asking us to recognize Israel as a Jewish state; another by calling for us to be demilitarized, setting all these preconditions, then he comes out and says he’s willing to sit with the Palestinians without any conditions, of course after he laid down six or seven conditions for what a Palestinian state should look like as a result of these negotiations. We are not encouraged at all by the actions and the policies of the Israeli government.
What I think we are witnessing is a very alarming trend in Israeli society that, if I were an Israeli, if I were an American Jew or a Jew living anywhere else in the world, I should be concerned with where Israel is going. I would be very concerned about the direction Israel is taking. The level of racism that we have seen over the last month and a half, the level of intolerance, the level of incitement. They talk about Palestinian incitement, and we respond that the occupation is the source of incitement, the reason Palestinians act the way they act—the checkpoints, the humiliation, the killing, the indiscriminate measures that they take, the collective punishment, the demolition of homes—all these measures create resentment on the part of Palestinians. The level of incitement within Israeli society, within the Israeli cabinet, within the Israeli parliament, calls by elected members of Israel to take unprecedented measures against Palestinians and try to impose more severe collective punishment. All the chants of death that you have heard or seen on Youtube, when Palestinians were wounded lying down on the roadsides without being offered any medical assistance, should be a cause for concern for Israelis because Israel is drifting more to the right, and they are promoting racism within their ranks in a way we have not seen before. I should be worried if I were an Israeli of the direction of their country.
They are leading an official campaign of incitement. Yes, you hear every once in a while a Palestinian saying something that could amount to incitement. The press write about it. Today—just on my way here—I received an email from a good friend of mine who is the head of a Jewish-American organization clarifying something that a local Palestinian newspaper might have published about what happened in Paris. Sometimes, some people come up with crazy ideas accusing the Israeli Mossad to be behind what happened in Paris and things like that. He wanted clarification, and I told him that I would do that with pleasure. I will send him clarification later. But this is something that was reported in the press, maybe they took it from somebody else, while in Israel, you hear it from the mouths of the members of the cabinet, from chief rabbis, from members of the Knesset, and they keep us on the defensive by accusing us of creating that culture of violence and hate among our people.
On the U.S., I think a major reason why we don’t have a solution is because the United Sates has failed to hold Israel accountable. There is no question about it. No question about it. Israel has been shielded by the United States at international organizations and other United Nations forums. Without holding Israel accountable, without making it clear to the Israelis that their actions will have consequences, Israel will not stop. Somebody told me the other day that they are like a spoiled brat or kid. If they keep doing things and instead of spanking them or keep them in their room, no Xbox, no PlayStation, they will not stop. If you keep turning your eyes the other way and not try to tell them that what they are doing is wrong, they will continue doing it. If you keep giving them chocolate and carrots, they will take it and say thank you. This is exactly what we are seeing today.
Israel is cashing in on the New Iran Nuclear Deal. Israel’s prime minister, who came to this country, challenged the elected president of the United States, and tried to turn the American people against their elected leadership, is received with welcome. His request will be considered: 40-50 billion dollars from 2018-2028, as if this country doesn’t need the money to improve different conditions here. And for what, to keep Israel’s military’s qualitative edge? What does that mean? What does that mean when U.S. officials keep talking about maintaining Israel’s qualitative edge militarily against all its neighbors combined? Creating a bully in the Middle East. That is what it means. Someone who can bully everybody, not just Palestinians but everyone in the Middle East.
Why do we want to continue to arm Israel, when they are already armed to the teeth? You are talking about a country that does not use U.S. weapons responsibly. We saw what happened in Gaza last year. We saw previously what they did: cluster bombs, you name it. They never adhered to U.S. laws using prohibited or banned weapons against Palestinians, Lebanese or anyone else in the region. Why does the U.S. need to arm Israel in this way in order to protect Israel? It can do that not through arming them with billions of dollars of military assistance. They can do that by holding Israel accountable to their actions, and explaining to the Israelis that the continuation of this behavior will keep the region on fire, will continue to inflame the region, and will make the possibility of peace and ending the conflict in the Middle East more impossible.
I was told by a friend that the current administration is the only administration in the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that did not vote once against Israel at the United Nations or at any UN forum or organization. Bush administration did. Every other administration did vote for resolutions at the UN Security Council condemning Israeli actions, or abstained. This is the only administration that has not done that. If we continue to treat Israel [with] impunity, if we continue to treat Israel like a state above the law, if we continue to turn our eyes when Israel violates international law and undermines U.S. national security interests, we are only creating a Frankenstein of the region that will wreak havoc and will not be stopped.
Israel continues to rely on the logic of power; they don’t want to rely on the power of logic. They believe that might is right. They have taken advantage of the situation, seeing Arab countries disintegrating: Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt. They are in a very comfortable position. Who are they afraid of? Who are they afraid of? Iraq is no more, Saddam. Iran—the deal will contain Iran. The Palestinians, we are the existential threat to them with our nuclear weapons? Why can’t the Israelis take advantage of the situation and say, maybe we can end the conflict instead of prolonging it? Instead of doing that, they have to create an enemy. They always have to keep in the mind of the Israelis that there is someone out there to get them, exporting fear to their own people. This is the only way that they can survive by exporting fear. Now, after Iran is gone, after Iraq is gone, after Hezbollah is busy in Syria, who is left? Ah, the Palestinians.
The connection between Palestinians and Nazis. We have connections with the Nazis. Accusing Palestinians with coming up with the idea of one of the most horrible crimes in human history and continue trying to portray us as an existential threat to the Israelis. He back tracked, the prime minister, but he knew what he was doing. He wanted to create in the minds of the Israelis that this existing Palestinian leadership is an extension of that leadership that met with Hitler at the time. Nobody knows what happened during that meeting. Nobody knows what the purpose was, but definitely the Palestinians at large, with their actions that followed the Second World War and Holocaust, and we opened up our doors, mostly, for Jewish immigrants. My grandfather was a partner with a Jew in Palestine before 1948. My mother tells me stories of how they lived in harmony. I think we Palestinians are the only people in the world at the time of this horrible crime [who] really opened our doors and welcomed Jews to come to live in safety there.
All these efforts to, again, portray the Palestinians as evil, and to portray this conflict as between the forces of darkness is very dangerous. We don’t want to turn this into a religious conflict. Israel doesn’t benefit from that, nor do we. Why are they always insisting that we recognize them as a Jewish state? Why are they always insisting on these provocations at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, Haram al-Sharif? Why? Until yesterday, I read a report that they secretly smuggled a few Israelis into Al-Aqsa Haram al-Sharif compound and prayed secretly. Why? How does this benefit Israel, especially in light of what is going on in the region?
The United States needs to understand that this format of bilateral negotiations, supervised by the United States for 22 years did not yield any results. They have to accept that fact to be able to change and shift the paradigm. Unless this effort is turned to a multilateral international effort, there will be no peace in the region because the United States has to allow other international players—United Nations, Europe, and other regional Arab countries—to be involved in these negotiations. Insisting in having monopoly over these negotiations, the U.S. is not serving its long-term interests in the region by finding a resolution to this conflict. So, we are, Palestinians, taking steps to internationalize the conflict. That’s why we joined the United Nations as a non-member state in 2012. We failed in 2011, of course, because of U.S. opposition. That is why we are taking cases to the International Criminal Court, and we will continue to do that because we are defenseless. Nobody is defending us. We are a people under occupation, and nobody is defending us. Why can’t we resort to the United Nations? Why can’t we resort to the International Criminal Court? Why can’t we go to the UN human rights council and say, we want you to invoke the 4th Geneva Convention in the occupied Palestinian territories? Why can’t we do that? These are all peaceful, diplomatic, nonviolent efforts. Why should they be opposed by the United States and any other country?
We will continue on that path. This is one. Secondly, President Abbas’ speech at the United Nations was misunderstood by many in this country. He didn’t say, “I am declaring the Oslo Accords obsolete, null, and void.” He said, “Unless Israel adheres to the signed agreements, the Palestinians cannot.” This is a bilateral agreement between two sides. Israel has not been implementing this agreement for many years now. On the contrary, they have been consolidating their occupation, consolidating their settlement enterprise, and gradually but surely killing any possibility of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state. They are only receiving what the Palestinians are doing without paying the price or reciprocating by meeting their obligations. Why should we continue to be committed, if the Israelis are not committed?
The Oslo Accords are not only security cooperation. When you talk to people here in this country, and the only interest of many members of congress when I meet with them is security, security, we care very much about what Israel’s security is. There are other aspects of the Oslo Accords. There is an economic agreement, which in my opinion was very unfair when we signed the Paris Protocol of 1995. There are other aspects. There are civilian aspects, security aspects, political aspects of our relationship with Israel that we are currently reviewing, and we are currently assessing to see if Israelis will heed our call to meet their obligations before we decide on taking any steps.
Finally, we will continue to urge our people to express their resistance of the Israeli occupation through peaceful means. The last thing that we want to do is to be dragged [into] yet another violent confrontation with Israel, or turn to arms to show our resistance to the Israelis. This is what Israel is seeking for many reasons but mostly to be able to use their heavy-handed approach against us. We are no match to them. We saw what happened in the Second Intifada. And to portray the Palestinians as a people who do not have the culture of peace, coexistence, and nonviolence, that our only objective is to use violence against Israel and to argue that we do not deserve to be a nation among the nations or a state in the Middle East. So, this is something that the Palestinian leadership will continue to urge our people to do. We want them to express their views peacefully without any violence. We will continue our efforts both legally, politically, internationally, in order to continue to create pressure on Israel to end its occupation and to understand that the continuation of this conflict and occupation will have serious repercussions and serious consequences for the Israelis. Thank you very much.
