Rose Garden Revisited: A Lecture by Dr. Mustafa Barghouti

 

10 September 2013
The Palestine Center
Washington, DC

 

Dr. Mustafa Barghouti:
Thank you so much Yousef and thank you all for coming today, I thank the Center for hosting me.

It’s not the first time I am here. Although it’s been a while since I have been here and it’s an interesting time. I think everybody is talking about Syria now not about the Oslo process but, nevertheless it’s the time, the twentieth anniversary of Oslo Accords. And let me recall that there were few occasions I was here and we spoke that time when Hisham Sharabi was alive and he would host me here and we both had the same opinion which is opposing what was signed then Oslo Agreements, jointly with Haidar Abdel-Shafi who used to be the head of the Palestinian negotiating team, and for who the Oslo Accords and negotiations took place from behind his back.

And also Edward Said was a very prominent person who opposed these agreements, and we had our reasons then twenty years ago. And, I guess after twenty years, everything we suspected could happen has happened. I wish I could say the opposite. I wish we were wrong because what happened is not good for the Palestinian people and it’s not good for the cause of peace. But unfortunately, this is what happened and this is what we expected. And now when we look back, I think we can count a very big number of mistakes that were made, some mistakes were not noticed then some mistakes were noticed later. But first of all and I think the biggest problem from the Palestinian perspective was that this Oslo Agreement created a very deep internal division in the Palestinian camp, a division we could not get over yet.

The problem was that this division took place while we were still struggling for our freedom. It wasn’t like we got what we wanted and now we have different opinions as happens frequently. In our case the division took place while we were still struggling to get our freedom and that affected our ability to build a power or to build a balance of power that could lead us to freedom and independence. The second problem was that this agreement was a partial agreement. And it was an interim agreement, without identifying the end result. So it was about an agreement of stages that would take place without agreeing what will be the end result of this agreement of this progress. Third, it included an unequal recognition. From one side Palestinians recognized Israel as a state, Israel did not recognize Palestine as a state; it recognized only the PLO as representative of Palestinians. Fourth, the agreement did not allow the release of all prisoners; many stayed in jail, and today they are talking about releasing those who are kept in jail twenty years later. Nobody is recognizing that these people have lost twenty years of their lives. Twenty years:  it’s a lot of time. And to speak about their release as a big success, I think includes a certain level of lack of respect of the pain that these people had to endure.

But the biggest problem with Oslo agreement in my opinion is what Haidar Abdel-Shafi noted then, and spoke about, which is that, the agreement was signed and started to be implemented without guaranteeing that there will be a complete and total freeze of all settlement activities. Building settlements that something that everybody recognizes, including even the U.S. and Europe and everybody in the international community, settlement building is like the process that kills the opportunity of and outcome of peace. The whole idea and concept of the Oslo agreement was based on a two-state solution, a compromise. It’s not exactly what all Palestinians wanted and it’s not what exactly Israel wanted but it’s the two sides agreed upon and that’s the notion of two-state solution, generally speaking on the basis of 1967 borders. But the settlement building was the process that killed the possibility of two-state solution.

So in a way, the agreement was signed but the bleeding was allowed to continue. It’s like treating a patient; you have a patient who has having a serious wound and it’s bleeding and you keep yourself busy with restoring his respiration and his heart but you are not stopping the bleeding, and with the bleeding  continues, eventually the patient would die. That’s exactly in my opinion what happened with this process that took up until now in twenty years. More important that the process itself became a substitute to the goal; because there were no clear goals that were identified, the peace process and all its stages became the substitute to the outcome.

So the peace process became substitute to the peace itself. And we had during the process while having the agreement, we had many other talks, we had the Camp David talks. But all these processes did not lead to the end result. And unfortunately, the schemes that were introduced in the Oslo Agreement by separating, for instance, the West Bank into Areas A, B and C, became the foundation of the establishment and consolidation of what I call a system of apartheid, a system of a racial discrimination, that is definitely much worse than what prevailed in the South African apartheid system at one point in time. Eventually what we had is a situation, because of factors, the Palestinian side got weaker, and with the weakness of the Palestinian side, Israel had an overwhelming control of balance of power. So, it started to implement what it likes from this agreement and it disregarded what it didn’t like.

So we had a very strange imbalanced situation where Palestinians were obliged to respect the clues of the Oslo agreement and Israel could do whatever they want to the level that in 2000, 2001 and 2002, the Israeli Army retook the control of the areas that were passed to the Palestinian side. So, according to that Agreement, the area that is called “Area A” is an area where the Israeli Army cannot enter. By the year of 2000, 2001 with the intifada, the Israeli Army started to enter everywhere and it continues to do so, up until now. So in a way, what Israel gave, it took back in many places. More than that, what they didn’t give according to the agreement is now being resold to the Palestinians. So it’s like, reselling the same product again and again and return for increased concessions from the Palestinian side.

One example of that is the release of these prisoners that should have been released twenty years ago. Another example is the fact that some Palestinians are calling now, for bringing back to situation on the ground what it was in September 2000, so removing all the changes that Israel has made. In a way, in my opinion, unfortunately because of the weaknesses and flows of this agreement, Israel had the chance to use the time to impose its own plan, to impose its own program and from that perspective one can say you could have asked the question, was Oslo failure or was a success? And my answer to that would be it was both.

Oslo Agreement was a great success strategically from Israeli point of view, it was a genius idea actually for what they done for Oslo agreement from their perspective, but it was a huge failure from the Palestinian perspective. More than that, it was a huge failure for the cause of peace. Because, if you compare the situation today to what it was twenty years ago, we are further away from the possibility of two-state solution. In a way what we witness are three things, three processes: First of all, concept of the state itself is being compromised and what we see is shrinking of the idea of the statehood. I will show you that in a minute through the some of the slides. The second process is the shrinking of the space for Palestinians in general in the Palestinian territories, and finally, a consolidation of a system of racial discrimination that I believe is equal, if not worse, to the apartheid system.

And I think if we look at the map [refers to slide], we can see all of that in a very clear way. As you remember, the whole concept of and the idea of a two-state solution was based on the 1947 resolution of the UN partition plan. According to that, Palestinians should have had a state in the green area, representing 44 percent of the territory and the Israel would be on about 54 percent. When Palestinians agreed on the two-state solution, they practically agreed to compromise that would give them only 22 percent of the land. That is the West Bank and Gaza including East Jerusalem. When President Arafat came to Camp David, this was the map that offered to him by Barak. It was a map without borders, a map without Jerusalem and a map where certain settlement areas would be annexed to Israel. Later now, this is the map that Netanyahu is talking about or some of the Netanyahu people are taking about.

So, it’s the whole Jordan valley, it’s out of the question, the whole area surrounding Jerusalem. And, when we see it [refers to slide] this is what I mean by the process of shrinking of Palestinian statehood and Palestinian state. Gradual decline from what used to be 44 percent, to less than eleven percent and most important, less than eleven percent of fragmented territory. This does not constitute a continuous entity. This was not done by mistake or it was not done without a plan. The whole process which continued regardless of Oslo was the application of the Elon Plan which was developed in 1967 as a solution to the demographic problem. And that plan was to build settlements in the Jordan Valley, around Jerusalem and then later in the North and the South, and then fragment a Palestinian demographic presence so that it does not constitute a threat by being one state. That what exactly Israel proceeded to do regardless of all the agreements and regardless of the Oslo Agreement itself.

Jerusalem represents a very interesting example of how this thing happened. And it also represents the problem of the failure of the Oslo Agreement that should not include the freezing of settlement agreements. This is East Jerusalem [refers to slide], which was annexed to Israel in 1967. This is the Old City, you can see it here. And, this is how many settlements Israel built by 1987, all these settlements in the Occupied Territories within Jerusalem, outside Jerusalem, surrounding Jerusalem. That’s 1987. The Oslo Agreement was signed, and this is what happened after the agreement, you can see now what happened, how many more settlements were built and how much the existing settlements have expanded. Practically, so if you compare, this what it was in 1987, and this is what happened by 2007. And now, it is even increasing more. They added to that wall, I mean you can see here [refers to slide] this is the annexed area but the wall goes beyond that, to include more territory and to try to link Jerusalem to the Jordan Valley with settlements in Jordan Valley. And this is where the struggle is going on in the area we call Area A-1.

So, because of the insistence on having and allowing settlements to continue to grow, we have all these structures with by-pass roads that are exclusive for Israelis and we have a practical isolation of Jerusalem from the rest of the Palestinian territories, as much as we had also after the Oslo Agreement total isolation of the Gaza Strip from the West Bank. And to give you an idea about what is planned for all these settlements that surrounding Jerusalem, let me show you how many new settlement units are going to be built according to declared plans. You can see in each of the settlements, there are plans to build more and more units. That’s what I mean when I describe the settlement process as the cancer that is killing the potential and the possibility for peace based on a two-state solution. Then of course Jerusalem was completely blocked and here you can see check points are surrounding Jerusalem today, and blocking any Palestinian from entering the city or linking to it. And we are talking about not only check points that prevent people from reaching Jerusalem but we are also talking about 650 military check points all over the West Bank that prevent the freedom of the movement.

Of course in Jerusalem in particular, there is a serious process of land and destruction of people’s houses. People are not allowed to get permits to build, so they either have to leave the city or build without permits. They build without permits, there are 100,000 houses today that are threatened to be demolished. And the most painful thing as in this case is that people will be told, “We will come and demolish your house and this will cost you like $100,000 or $50,000, so it’s better for you to demolish it by your own self, it will be cheaper.” And that’s what happens frequently today, like in this case that people build a house and then have to demolish the house by their own hands. And more importantly than that, 90,000 Palestinians today who are living in Jerusalem are threatened to lose their ID’s and threatened to practically be deported from the city.

There are more plans to destroy more houses, like here in Silwan. This is Silwan neighborhood [refers to slide], I’m sure you’ve heard about it. This whole section of Silwan, with more than 154 houses is also threatened to be completely destroyed. Because the houses, according to the Israelis, are built without permits, and should be demolished. Same thing in Sheikh Jarrah.

Then let’s look at the so called Areas A, B, and C, which was part of the Oslo and Cairo Agreements that followed [refers to slide]. This is the Green Line of ‘67 and here is what they call Area A, where the Palestinian Authority is in charge. Don’t look at the green part, this green part is put here by mistake; it’s what they call a “natural reserve area.” But the Palestinian Authority in reality exists in only these islands; that is what they call Area A. And then you have Area B where Palestinians can have some control over education, health care, and garbage disposal systems. This is Area A and B together. You can see the level of fragmentation, and the level of destruction of the contiguity of the territory.

And then you have Area C, which Israel is controlling completely. And Area C, as you can see here, is more than 60 percent of the West Bank, but it also includes 90 percent of the water resources. And this is an area that is under the complete control of the Israeli side. We cannot build a water pipeline, we cannot build a school, we cannot build a clinic, and we cannot build a house, without of course, the Israeli permits that are never given.

In a way, the Oslo process led to Israel considering the whole of Area C as part of what they want to annex to Israel. And that’s why there is limitation, and that’s why there are threats to so many people living in these areas. That’s why we are organizing, as the Palestinian Medical Relief Society, big work with eleven mobile clinics, for instance, that go around to all of these areas that are threatened, because there are so many communities around here and here and there, who have nothing, nothing! No education, no schools, no clinics, no health care, no water, and we are now trying to conduct a huge operation to serve about 160,000 people in these areas, to help them steadfast and survive, not just giving them health care, but also trying to provide them with what could sustain them in terms of water projects and so on. We consider it as part of popular grassroots resistance against this process of ethnic cleansing that is conducted against them.

And when you look at this map [refers to slide], the only map, I think, that you can compare is this. This is the only map that is similar, the map of the South African bantustan system at one point in time. I’m sure if you go to policy makers here and tried to show them all of this, I don’t know if they would want to look, because it contradicts the whole scheme of what they are talking about. But because of that, what we have seen after these 20 years, because we didn’t have an apartheid system after 20 years. But after Oslo, after 20 years of this process, we are now in this situation, where for instance a Palestinian, in any place is allowed to use no more than 50 cubic meters of water per year, while an illegal Israeli settler can use up to 2400, 48 times more than a Palestinian. GDP per capita in Palestine is only 1400 dollar, and its 32000 dollars in Israel. And we are obliged, because of the Oslo agreement to have market union with Israel. We are obliged to pay the same prices that the Israelis play and we are obliged to have the same tax level. Value added tax in Palestine is the same in Israel, and we don’t understand why. Because of the economy, we should have such a high value-added tax, but Israel imposes that.

More than that, Palestinians have to pay for their water, their water that is confiscated by Israel and then sold to them. We have to pay double the price that Israelis pay, the same applies to electricity. The only electricity company in the West Bank that used to produce electricity, which was Jerusalem Company was prevented from importing new generators when their generators got old. First of all they were forced to provide electricity to settlements. The Israelis told them, “If you don’t provide electricity to settlements, you will lose your license”. So they started providing electricity to settlements. Then their generators got old, and it was all planned. And then Israel came and said, “We won’t allow you to bring new generators” so eventually, the Arab electricity company became a dealer, a sub-dealer for Israel, buying electricity from Israel to distribute to Palestinians at a double price. These things were not in the minds of those who concluded the Oslo Agreement.

And then of course you have the wall, who some people still insist on calling a barrier, it is a very big barrier if you insist on calling it that. It is two times as long and twice as high as a building wall used to be. This is the image of a woman in Bethlehem [refers to slide]. She is standing on the roof of her two floor building, and her house is surrounded, like many houses in the area from three directions by the wall. And then she was told that she could not go on the roof of her own house, because according to the military, she would represent a threat to the wall.
This is the main route to Jerusalem, it’s gone! It’s now cut into two pieces by the wall, it is separating Palestinians from Palestinians.

In some places it’s very dramatic, like many communities today that live behind the wall are stuck. They can’t go to get education, they can’t go to hospitals, to health care, and if they want to go in or out, they need a permit from the Israeli army. But if they have permits from the Israeli army, they can’t move except according to the schedule. And this schedule says that they can leave from 7:40 to 8:00 in the morning, from 2:00 to 2:15 p.m., and from 6:45- 7:00 p.m. Fifty minutes a day. And this is how it looks when children go to school. And they tell you this is not apartheid. I don’t know what you call it. But that system of discrimination did not exist before. Peace, and peace agreements, should make people’s lives better! It should make people’s lives improved. What happened to these people is exactly the opposite.

And this is another example [refers to slide], this is Qalqilya. It’s a city with about 45,000 – 46,000 people surrounded by the wall, in all directions. Leaving only one little tiny road, that is 8 meters width, with a gate. And the Israeli army can shut the gate any time they want. This is how it looks when you look at it from air. And so on and so forth.

This used to be a farm [refers to slide], and this is what happened to it after the wall was built. This used to be a market. That’s what happened after the wall was built. This was a house that was cut into two pieces to build the wall. This is how close the wall is to people’s houses. And this is how a settlement looks; this is how a Palestinian village looks in the same neighborhood. And the settlement activities continue. This is a settlement in the southern part of the West Bank. You can see here an empty space in 2011, and you can see what happened in 2012. The places that were empty are now full, with settlements, with settlement units. The same applies to another example, this settlement is in the north, in Sulfiyeh area. This was an empty place in 2011, and this is what happened in 2012. Again, the empty space is full of units today.

That’s why we say, initiating new peace negotiations without freezing the settlement activities is nothing but repetition of the same thing, it’s the same thing. The patient is bleeding, and you care about so many other functions but you don’t are about stopping the bleeding that will eventually kill the possibility of peace and kill the compromise. The level of confiscation and land appropriation is tremendous.
This is an example from the Bethlehem area. This is the border of annexed Jerusalem; it took away the northern part of Bethlehem, Beit Sahour and Beit Jala. So all of this territory was confiscated. Seventeen percent of the land of Beit Sahour, either percent of the land of Bethlehem, and 22 percent of Beit Jala. Then they built further the wall, for security reasons of course, but again the wall did not stick to the borders, it went further. Here, here, and here. In Beit Jala, it was a disaster, because it took away most of their land. And you can see here the amount of land that was confiscated. The total cost of the land that was confiscated in the Bethlehem area alone, and that was used for construction projects later, is about 30 billion dollars. That gives you an idea, about how they have made this whole system a profitable system.

And, again, the issue of state-owned land, this is the amount of land that used to be considered state land and when Israel occupied us, it was 700,000 dunums. Then they added to that about 900,000 dunums, and now they have a plan to add even more, additional 600,000 dunums. This whole area becomes eligible for Israeli projects although it is a violation of international law and a violation international agreements.

The whole process was designed. My point is that the Oslo Agreement is not isolated from the original Israeli project. In a way, Oslo Agreement was an adjustment of the project, and was used, the same agreement was used, to conduct the project of land appropriation, land annexation and Judaization of the Palestinian territory. And if you look at this map, that gives you an idea about if you put all of the process together, this is the separation of the territory into Areas A, B, and C. Then came of course the settlements, and then the settlement area was expanded for municipality space as they call it. Then of course the settlement outposts were built. Then Israel closed military areas that Palestinians cannot enter. Then they added the Israeli military bases. Then they added the wall. The wall was a tremendous structure to confiscate more land that the other structures could not take. And then they declared additional state land, and then they built bypass roads that are exclusive for Israelis and create a system of segregation. And then of course settlement expansion, and then outpost expansion, and then uprooting of trees, and demolishing of houses.

How could this be peace making?

I know when people argue about Oslo, they don’t like to look at facts. But they should make them look at the facts. This is the reality of what is happening on the ground. And of course we can add to that several examples of human rights violations.

But this is an example of when people go to work, when they are stuck at checkpoints, this is another example of how the Israeli army conducts its operations. This was taken in Bethlehem area, I don’t know if you have seen this before [refers to video clip]. But basically, what you see here is the Israeli army trying to arrest somebody. They search the place, and they search the place by bombarding the place and then scanning it with shots, with gunshots, and then they use dogs.

[see video for clip]

We conduct a lot of nonviolent resistance, and it is a growing movement, it’s not easy, but we are trying our best. And you have heard of course, a lot about some of the activities we do, like Bil’in, Nil’in, and I don’t know if you have heard about Bab al-Shams, and when we manage to organize nonviolent actions on the area that Israel is trying to confiscate. But they encounter us with severe violence. I will not show you many of these things, I will just show you that they are using dogs, attacking demonstrators in Kufr Qaddum. This happened recently.
This is another very bad example of their bad behavior in a place in Nil’in. This young man was arrested while he was peacefully demonstrating and then he was handcuffed and blindfolded, and forced to sit on the ground for more than two and half hours. After that, an officer forced him while he was blindfolded and handcuffed to stand in front of a soldier and the soldier shot him from a distance of one and a half meters. It’s difficult to believe, yeah? You can see it. Did you ever see any of that on American TV? I guess not.

But this is the last thing I want to show you. It’s how they deal with even internationals who come to demonstrate with us peacefully. These guys were just riding bicycles in a segregated road. Look at what he will do to this Danish guy [see video for clip].

So in a nutshell, I don’t want you to leave with just feeling pessimistic about the situation. I know I gave you lots of tough things today. But let’s be honest with each other. There was something that did not work. As I think it was Einstein who said that, but some reports said he never said that, I don’t know, but it’s a good saying. It says that “insanity is to keep repeating and keep doing the same thing, over and over again and expecting different results.” So if we keep negotiating while settlements continue to be built and these activities and human rights violations are allowed to continue and the information and knowledge is hidden from people, like the people of the United States, then of course the result will be the same, and maybe even worse.

So that’s why there should be an alternative, and the alternative in my opinion is through what I believe in, which is the growth of popular nonviolent resistance, which I am very proud to be part of. It’s through strong reactions to Israeli policies including boycott actions that are becoming very serious now with recent European decisions. And through bringing knowledge, information to the people, here, especially, of the United States. It’s very important for people to know the reality and the truth about what is happening here. Because public opinion matters. It does matter, look at what is happening with the Syrian issue today. […] In my opinion, knowledge makes a difference, information makes a difference, lobbying makes a difference and working with people makes a difference. Thank you so much.

This transcript may be used without permission but with proper attribution to The Palestine Center. The speaker’s views do not necessarily reflect the views of The Jerusalem Fund.