The Peace Process: From Breakthrough to Breakdown by Afif Safieh

Author:Afif Safieh [Safieh, Afif]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780863564949
Google: LkUhBQAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 16598769
Publisher: Saqi
Published: 2010-09-01T00:00:00+00:00

1. Interview by M.L. Willcox in Lancing College Magazine, mid-1991.

X

On the Madrid peace process1

I sincerely do believe that Palestine is resurrecting, and as you know, we in the Holy Land have had some previous experience in resurrection.

The Palestinian people are one of the few peoples in the history of mankind that never got their legitimate share of sympathy, solidarity and support. We have always attributed this to the fact that we have been in the Middle East, the victims of the victims of European history. In our crowded calendar, in our tormented Middle East, the date of 9 December 1987 will always be remembered as a regional historical turning point. The intifada, which has been our cry for freedom out of captivity and bondage, was a turning point. It was an eye-opener. For the first time in Western public opinion, the perception of the Palestinians in this bipolar Israeli-Palestinian relationship started to be that of an oppressed and persecuted people who had an interest in the achievement of peace. Western public opinion then began to see us as the victimised party in this bipolar relationship. People started understanding our ceaseless quest for the achievement of peace, because we were the ones whose territory was totally occupied, whose people were living endlessly under either occupation or in forced diasporaisation, whose land was being expropriated, whose water was being plundered, whose houses were being demolished, whose individuals were being deported, whose bones were being broken, and whose schools and universities were being closed. And I believe that this interest in the achievement of peace stems from and explains the fact that we in the PLO have been unreasonably reasonable in dealing with peace opportunities that have arisen lately.

I had the political privilege of accompanying Yasser Arafat in 1988 on several of his political trips. I was with him in September 1988 in Strasbourg when he addressed the European Parliament. I was with him again in Stockholm, then in Geneva in December 1988. Still ringing in my ears is the sentence he repeated on those occasions: ‘I extend my hand in peace, hoping that an Israeli de Gaulle will seize it.’ One had to wait endlessly to see that no de Gaulle emerged. Not even a de Klerk, and a de Klerk would have been good enough to start this snowball process.

In 1988, 1989 and 1990, there was already an American endeavour at peacemaking in the Middle East. The PLO and the Palestinian people were known to have been available for that exercise. We had welcomed the ten points of President Mubarak, we had welcomed and were favourably inclined to the five points of Secretary of State Baker. At that time, the diplomatic equation was the following: we were hoping that the Israelis would accept them as a basis, while the Israelis were hoping that we would torpedo them. Any serious analysis of the endeavour of 1988–90 would demonstrate that it failed then because the American administration allowed the peace process to remain

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.