The Center for
Jewish-Arab Economic Development in cooperation with Konrad Adenauer Stiftung
Wednesday, January
30, 2002
MR. DARWISH: Good
afternoon. I welcome you all to this gathering today, and I wish to thank Saeb
Erekat for being with us as well. In
our meeting in December, Palestinian and Israeli businessmen discussed the role
of the private sector in encouraging the peace process, improving the current
atmosphere, and doing something to stop the deterioration that began more than
a year ago.
In that meeting,
both Israeli and Palestinian businessmen decided to continue in this process,
and will continue in further meetings, to look for ways in which businessmen
can assist the achievement of peace between Palestinians and Israelis.
Today, a small core
committee will hold a second meeting to work on an action plan for the future.
All of you who are with us here today who are interested in supporting this
endeavor are welcome to join.
There was a request
from the Israeli businessmen to hear about the negotiations from a Palestinian
viewpoint. We informed Dr. Erekat of this, and he is with us today to present
and explain the Palestinian viewpoint on what has happened in the negotiations.
I thank all of you
for coming, and I thank Konrad Adenauer for sponsoring this activity, and PMI,
and Saed, for being here with us. And I now leave the floor for Dr. Saeb.
Saeb Bamya, who has
been of great assistance to us in arranging these meetings, will introduce Dr.
Saeb Erekat, and our friend Mr. Eytan will be coordinator. Thank you.
MR. BAMYA: I would
like to express my personal appreciation, as a senior official in the
Palestinian Authority and as a Palestinian citizen, to the Jewish-Arab Center
and to the Palestinian Media Institute for their continuous efforts in bringing
Palestinian and Israeli businessmen together, and also to express my
appreciation for the efforts of Konrad Adenauer in supporting such important
activities.
I believe it's now
time not only for dialogue, but for coalition and alliance. We are all in the
same boat. And as Dr. Erekat told us in a meeting of all the technical teams
involved in the Palestinian side of the negotiations, that peace is not only a
strategy and an option, it's the only option.
From his experience
as chief negotiator on the Palestinian side, he believes it is possible to
conclude a fair deal. It is possible to be in the same boat together and to
live in peace as real partners. I hope that our vision will prevail and that we
will struggle together in order not to let the extremists' vision prevail. We
are an alliance, and we have to struggle together for peace for ourselves and
for our children.
I give the floor to
Dr. Erekat.
DR. EREKAT: Thank
you very much. I begin by applauding all of you for still believing in meeting
together. I know that times are difficult and it's a time to doubt, to
question, to ask many questions that need to be asked all the time.
Saeb mentioned
extremists, and this is relevant because, if they happen to belong to a certain
set of mind which people like us would call extremist, they're the majority. I
don't know who can define them or what definition they give themselves.
I think the concept
of peace, the idea of peace, is not a job. It's not something somebody does as
a negotiator. It's a belief. I have never in my life felt, in any of these
negotiations, that I am doing the Israelis any favors in pursuing peace. I
always knew that this is in the interest of the Palestinians. We are doing ourselves
the greatest favor. I have tried many times to share this with my Israeli
colleagues. This is something they must also do for themselves. There is
nothing wrong with peace or the peace process or the idea of peace or Oslo or
the signed agreements. These things don't have legs or eyes or stomachs or
brains of their own. It's we who make things the way we want them to be.
In any
relationships between humans -- whether individuals, groups, political units,
states, business, social, economics, whatever -- things can go wrong. One of
the main issues that we Palestinians and Israelis missed was that we provided
many support systems for the peace process, but we did not provide it with a
system of protection, and not because we didn't want to.
The two constituents
have so much on their plate, so many expectations, that although we can work
day and night and can achieve whatever you want, Israeli eyes and Palestinian
eyes only see with clarity the things that have not been achieved. Things that
are achieved are taken for granted.
We did not agree on
a code of conduct. I was in South Africa recently with some of my Israeli
colleagues -- Avraham Burg and Yossi Beilin and others -- and we met with the
negotiators from the ANC and the National Party when their communications began
as early as 1986.
I was struck by the
fact that the first thing they did was to establish two principles. One was
that communications and negotiations will never cease under any circumstances.
And it was as bloody as bloody can get during those years in South Africa
between whites and blacks, between the ANC and the National Party. But there
was an agreement in principle that they would not shoot themselves in the head,
they would not punish themselves if things went wrong by suspending
negotiations.
Secondly, they
agreed on how to strengthen the other side. I could not believe that the ANC,
in 1986, 1987, 1988, 1999, 1990, was seeking ways to strengthen the National
Party, their interlocutors in the negotiations. I could never have imagined
this.
Why didn't I think
of that? What was wrong with me, not thinking about how to strengthen this
party with all its concerns, fears, worries and so on? And my Israeli
colleagues asked themselves the same question.
One can sit here
and start defending positions and so on. We will get nowhere that way. I don't
really want to try to explain what went wrong or list the mistakes recommended
by either side, or by the Americans or others. The question is, where do we go
from here? How do we go from here?
I don't think
Palestinians and Israelis are enjoying what they're seeing on the ground. I
don't think they can live with this. They can be angry, frustrated, demonize
each other, but what we're seeing out there is only the tip of the iceberg of
what will come if we stop thinking about where to go from here.
I'm one of those
who believes in life after peace. Many times I was asked, you were there during
all those months of permanent status negotiations. Why didn't you respond to
what Barak or this one or that one was saying? And I laughed. Would that
contribute to my basic dream of enhancing peace?
I know that peace
is doable. Many of you don't know that my counterparts and I have already
drafted three chapters of the permanent status agreement. I don't know that
many Israelis or Palestinians know that we had a time schedule by which we were
supposed to finalize the draft treaty by April 30, 2001.
If it's going to be
objectivity you deal with, fine. If it's going to make us look like people in a
Greek tragedy, just blaming the other side to show how good we are, fine. I
could care less if anybody is pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli. My world has
changed. My world is now divided between those who are for peace and those who
are against peace.
I've seen Palestinians
who have supported the idea of peace -- and I'm sure this is a mirror image of
what's happening in Israel -- and it's good to complain about what's happening,
and it's good to say that neither parties' peace camp is in existence anymore.
But is this the
truth? I don't think so. We are experts in supporting fear. We are brilliant at
that, at reaching Palestinians' and Israelis' basest emotions and fears. But I
assure you that peace is our most basic need. And it will happen. It will come.
When, I don't know. How long will the list of deaths on both sides be?
Unfortunately, I don't know that either.
Let me just explain
what I mean by believing in life after peace. You don't need to reinvent the
wheel to produce an agreement once you know the basic ingredients. The theme
was very clear-cut. We were working towards a two-state solution. We came into
this peace process with a front-loading mechanism designed by the Americans
that we should recognize the State of Israel on 78 percent of the land of Palestine,
and we did.
President Arafat
was the first Palestinian leader to do that, and for that I am proud. This was
a real reversal. Never mind all the political nonsense we hear. There is a
Palestinian recognition of the State of Israel on 78 percent of historic
Palestine. Put it aside. Arafat did that, and he's now on record. There is a
historical record that he made these concessions when all the previous
generations of Palestinians failed to do so.
Why would he want
to abandon this peace process? He signed it. Why would he want to abort the
peace process and miss out on achieving a Palestinian state in return for this
recognition which he already made, which was a historic reversal?
In Camp David, in
the 57 sessions I held with my colleagues Gilead Sher and Shlomo Ben-Ami and
others, in the King David, and then with the Clinton parameters, and then in
Taba, the Israelis came to us and said, as far as territory is concerned, we
want to accommodate 80 percent of the settlers -- not settlements, but settlers
-- in three blocs. And we want to annex theese three blocs to Israel.
We thought about
that. We said, That means modifying the 1967 borders. But you know what? Let's
try. We said to them, Okay. Let's take your concept, and let me give you the
following categories that I don't want you to do to me because I want a viable
peace agreement.
One, if you take
this 80 percent of settlers in three blocs, I don't want this to prejudice the
water aquifers, I don't want this to prejudice the contiguity of the West Bank,
and I don't want this to prejudice the Palestinian population. I don't want to
wake up one morning and find that 50,000 Palestinians have become Israelis
overnight. And we want to entertain the idea of a swap of land in size and
value. We worked on maps, and we came a long way in this process.
Sometimes I cannot
negotiate on the basis of the realities on the ground, the facts on the ground.
I can't negotiate sometimes on the basis of the psychological or historical or
religious or security needs of the Israelis. I also have interests to protect.
If I entertain this
idea of territorial solution and you tell me you are accommodating 80 percent
of the settlers, I expect that their natural growth, once you annex them to
Israel, will be in Israel proper. No. We brought maps to show them that the
built-up areas in the settlements is 1.8 percent. So if you accommodate 80
percent in three blocs, how much time do you need? There was a souk mentality,
unfortunately.
At the end of the
day, the Israelis' figure was eight percent of Palestine to be annexed, plus
other things. We offered three percent, provided the categories I mentioned,
and that's where we left off.
On security, the
Israeli side came to us and said, We want to control the skies over the Palestinian
state. We want 12 percent of the lands of the Jordan, the eastern border, to be
under our control for a period of 30 years. We want three early warning
stations in the south, west and middle of the West Bank, and we want five
emergency locations connected with roads so that if a threat comes from the
east, Israel will be allowed to go into these five emergency locations with the
roads and take over this "Palestinian state."
One day they came
to me here at the King David to answer a question. I asked, How do we define an
emergency situation coming from the east? They brought a piece of paper like
this (indicating) -- honestly -- and I told them, I don't want to harm Israel's
relations with its Arab neighbors. I have seen this paper. Don't show it to anybody
else. It will plunge you into a deep crisis with countries with whom you do not
want to be in crisis.
Nations have pride
and sensitivities. I hope to God that, one day, the Israelis will be able to
hear "Palestinians" and not have it insinuate bad things, threats,
emergencies. Maybe that will come one day. I don't know.
We came back with the following proposal:
1. Palestinian skies will be barred to any foreign air force, Israeli or
others.
2. The territory of the Palestinian state will be a forbidden zone to any
foreign troops.
3. Because, as Palestinians, we know about the uniqueness of a state with
limited arms, we want to establish a new security system for ourselves. We will
invite American, European and Japanese forces to station themselves on our
borders -- not in Israel. If anybody wants to mess with us, they'll be messing
with the United States, Europe and Japan.
Other than those
forces provided for in the agreement, the skies and territory of the
Palestinian state will be forbidden to any army or any air force or any
military. Therefore, if a threat comes from the east, it will be countered by
this international system which will guarantee the Palestinian state, and at
the same time will guarantee the State of Israel.
Up to the last hour
in Taba, my Israeli colleagues insisted on having full control over our skies,
12 percent of the Jordan Valley for 30 years, five linked emergency locations
forever, and three early warning stations. That was the concept.
They forgot that we
are Arabs and that we would be thrown out of the Arab League the next morning
for this.
On Jerusalem. I sat
with Shlomo and with President Clinton for three hours on the last night of
Camp David, and Shlomo spoke of the external neighborhoods -- the B areas now
-- that would be under Palestinian sovereiggnty, what he defined as internal
neighborhoods that would be under Israeli sovereignty with functional autonomy
to the Palestinians, and that the Old City would be under Israeli sovereignty
but with a special compound for the Palestinian Authority.
The real progress
on Jerusalem happened here in the King David, and we came a long way. I am a
Moslem who sends his children to a Catholic school in Jericho. That's my
business, all right? If I fast for Ramadan, I don't want Jews to fast with me
in order to respect me. I want them to respect the fact that I fast on Ramadan
and that this is my belief. But I don't want them to believe in what I believe
so I can say they respect my belief. Jews can believe in whatever they want to
believe in, and I will respect that.
Nobody has ever
attempted to dissociate Jews from their beliefs, their history, whatever. Why
do they stand next to the wall and shake? I don't know. Just like they don't
know why we kneel on our heads five times a day.
But there is no
such thing as sovereignty over a memory, sovereignty over a faith. Sovereignty
is a concept that relates a certain seat of authority with its people, the
people among themselves, and this seat of authority with other authorities.
Tangible things that you feel.
In the Old City,
the Palestinians offered the Wailing Wall and the Jewish Quarter under Israeli
sovereignty. Those 20 to 22 buildings in the Armenian Quarter, Jewish
residences, we will accommodate also.
In the Old City
there's an intersection that joins the four quarters. There we will construct a
joint police station because we Palestinians want an open city. We want peace
with openness. We don't want peace with you and then build walls between us.
Shlomo came to me
one day and said, You want to entertain the biggest Yerushalayim in the history
of the Jews. I said, Shlomo, what's this? He said, You want to recognize West
Jerusalem. Fine. The Jewish Quarter. Fine. And he said, We have the stretch of
settlements from Givat Ze'ev through Pisgat Ze'ev, Neve Yaacov, French Hill
down to Gilo and so on. I said, What about it? He said, This should all be part
of Yerushalayim. I said, This is part of the occupied territories and it's
applicable to the concept of swapped land. You can talk about whatever you want
in a swap of land.
When my Israeli
colleagues said to me that they want sovereignty on the Haram el -Sharif, the
sanctuary, I said, Do you ever intend to build the Temple Mount underneath it?
They said, No. We are never going to do that.
I said, Fine. How
do we undertake the creation of an international body of supervisors -- say
five to twenty nations -- that the Palestinians will undertake not to dig or
excavate underneath our premises of the Old City and it will be part of the
municipality, and this will be one of the supervisors. We can say to the
Israelis that we will preserve their heritage. I don't need to believe in what
you believe in.
We were working on
an engineering solution to maintain contiguity in certain areas of Jerusalem.
With regard to the question of refugees, you got from me and put in your pocket
a recognition of the 78 percent of land, right? You got from me what you got in
terms of the concept of swaps and borders and security arrangements and so on.
What do you want as Israelis?
They said, We want
an end to the conflict and an end to all claims, once and for all. I said, Any
peace treaty must provide for that -- an end to conflict and an end to claims.
And we began working on the barriers. If you want to end claims, those are
individuals. The barriers are between establishing Palestinian and Israeli
concerns and interests and the demographic nature of the Israeli state.
We worked on many options, and many of these things were actually drafted. And
the first evening we came to Taba, I sat with Gilead Sher who said, Listen, I
don't think it's ethical to reach an agreement with you just two weeks before
our elections. I said fine. He said, Let's work out a draft showing our
negotiations. I said, We don't need to falsify what happened. We really made a
lot of progress.
We came a long way,
and I believe President Arafat and Mr. Barak should be congratulated for their
courage. For the first time in our history, we succeeded in turning over so
many stones in terms of Palestinian and Israeli issues -- Jerusalem, refugees,
borders, all these tough issues.
At Camp David that
evening, we set out the options very clearly. Either we go out and say it's a
failure. Or we issue a communique that we made a lot of progress, and then we
continue the negotiations. And President Clinton added his map. He has done
more than anybody else, and I personally appreciate him. I will always cherish
his contribution to Palestinians and Israelis. His heart is really there.
And he said, We
have another option. Maybe we can reach an agreement on 1, 2, 3, 4, but leave
these issues for further negotiations. The Israeli side refused to do anything
without the refugee problem being solved. The Palestinians refused to do
anything without Jerusalem being solved.
So we went with the
second option of issuing a statement saying we made progress. And we did. And
we also agreed not to point fingers, not to assign blame, not to score points
with each other. And half an hour later, we saw Mr. Barak attacking us.
President Clinton
later told me he was told that he should say this. Otherwise there wouldn't be
a peace camp in Israel. Therefore, blame it all on Arafat. Fine. Cost-free to
anybody who wants to flog the Palestinian leader or the Palestinian people.
Whether this month,
next year, ten years from now, I don't think the future Palestinian and Israeli
negotiators will need more genius than their predecessors. They will not have
to reinvent the wheel. It's there. It must start with what we accomplished and
build on it.
There are still
concessions to be made by both sides in any negotiations, trade-offs between
issues, trade-offs within issues. Negotiation techniques are vast. It's a huge
business.
One of the points
you sent me was about the Al Aqsa Intifada being pre-planned by Arafat. I have
heard that so many times. On the 26th of September, I went with Arafat to
Barak's home where we had a very nice dinner, and President Arafat said to Mr.
Barak, Please sir, your Excellency, I heard that Sharon is planning a visit to
Haram el-Sharif. Please stop him. Please don't permit him to do that. We have a
situation on the ground that will explode. In three months, he will be the only
one laughing.
I went to the
States the next morning, to the State Department to see Madam Albright and
Dennis Ross. I called all my friends in the Presidents of Jewish Organizations.
I appealed to them to stop Sharon because some of us saw what would happen. In
many cases, we know how things will begin, but we never know how they will end.
I wanted to touch
on this aspect of the negotiations so you'd know that we did not fail. Our
negotiations never failed. On the contrary. We made much progress. We turned
over so many stones on these issues, more than any Israelis and Palestinians
have ever done before. We have come a long way, and we can finish. It's doable.