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Sunday, 5 May. 2024
 
Your Key to Palestine
The Palestinian Initiatives for The Promotoion of Global Dialogue and Democracy
 
 
 

Above is a transcription of untitled remarks given by Dr. Rafiq al-Husseini, Chief of Staff to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) at the Palestine Center on Wednesday, 5 October 2005. The briefing, which was closed to the general public but on the record, was delayed due to Dr. al-Husseini’s meetings at the U.S. Department of State and an unexpected meeting at the White House.

Thank you for inviting me, and again we're very sorry to be late. If the president of the strongest country in the world wants to meet you, you have to run and that's what we did. It's a privilege, but sorry again to be late.

We had a very pleasant meeting. We talked about what the Palestinians under President Mahmoud Abbas are trying to do and trying to achieve, what President Bush's vision is all about, and what [President Bush's] commitment to the Palestinian cause is in terms of establishing a viable and contiguous Palestinian state. He said he does not want a state that looks like "Swiss cheese"—these were his words. Yet "Swiss cheese" it is at the moment. We have to try and come to a different kind of 'cheese,' I hope [laughter] but at least a cheese that is contiguous and viable, and democratic.

I want to say a few things in general, and then you can ask me some questions. President Abbas has been in office for nine months now. Basically, his vision is freedom, democracy, and independence through negotiations rather than military means. This is his vision, what he was elected on, and his program. He was elected by 63 percent of the population, which I think sent ripples in the Arab world because no president has been elected without 99 percent of the population electing them. Maybe other presidents will have to accept maybe 88 percent now, then 77 percent, 66 percent, and so on. I think President Abbas has started a new trend: that you cannot really have everybody supporting you, but if you have the majority, that's democracy and you take the people with you.

Through his nine months, he has tried to achieve a lot. And he has achieved a lot. He achieved a truce that probably was 80 to 85 percent solid, but he achieved it. He dealt with issues of the security; retired thousands of old Palestinian officers; decided that the eleven apparatuses we have now have to be three; pushed in financial reforms; pushed in anti-corruption measures; pushed files in front of the public prosecutor to deal with corruption cases; pushed for the establishment of the rule of law through different legislation; and pushed for honest and transparent elections which are happening all the time. I mean, this year we have had one election for the president, we're going to have four municipality elections, and we're going to have Palestinian Legislative Council elections on the 25th of January.

All of this is establishing democracy at its best and establishing the rule of law, strengthening the judiciary, making changes in the judiciary system, creating new administrative reforms, and so on and so forth. The list is very long of what he has achieved in his nine months. There is a long list to be achieved as well. We found ourselves, after five years of intifada with Israel demolishing the institutions and especially the security apparatus, in a very difficult position. To do the right thing, to re-establish and to establish new institutions, accountability, and transparency in the system—this takes time. But, he has achieved a lot in his first nine months.

This is what is happening on the internal side of matters. On the external side, he has been a firm believer for a long time that we will not get anywhere with Israel through military means. They are much stronger. You shoot one bullet at them, they will shoot twenty thousand bullets back. You throw a stone, they will throw a million at you. They will get in with tanks, with their destruction machines, which will damage you irreversibly sometimes.

The only way to go forward is to negotiate with the Israelis through getting international public opinion on our side. That is the only thing that will shift Israel—international public opinion led by the United States of America, since now it is the only power that is available in the world. This may push Israel into making the difficult decisions they have to make, and may in the end give us what President Bush has been talking about: a viable, contiguous Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel.

Hence, this was the vision and this is how he wanted to deal with Israel. He wanted to make sure that the Palestinians are not provoked, that the Palestinians take the higher moral ground. If the Israelis kill a Palestinian child, we should not respond by killing an Israeli child. We should always take a higher moral ground, and therefore force them to deal with us as equals and eventually, to get out of the 22 percent of the land that is viable as a Palestinian state, including East Jerusalem.

This was his approach with the Israelis. The Israelis, before President Abbas was elected, have taken a little step in disengagement from Gaza. Of course, the disengagement from Gaza has been always almost unilateral although, when President Abbas took over, the U.S. and other governments decided that there should be some sort of coordination between the Palestinians—and asked the Palestinians to coordinate it—with Israel, which we happily did. We created lots of teams to deal with the different issues that the Israelis are going to be leaving or dealing with us on.

Whether the disengagement is a difficult decision taken by Sharon for the sake of the Palestinians or for the sake of Israel itself is a matter to be debated. Israel wanted to pull out five to six thousand settlers who have settled 30 percent of the Gaza Strip as this was not viable anymore and in order to consolidate and take over the West Bank. It's an easy equation: the six thousand settlers in Gaza was an untenable position for Israel because 1.3 million Palestinians were surrounding them, growing by 50,000 to 60,000 people a year, and already controlling 70 percent of the land more densely than Hong Kong.

But of course, we decided to work and see if they can leave in peace rather than leave under fire. That has been a worry all the time. The U.S. government sent General Ward, who we think was one of the most successful American people to play the roll of negotiator and support, or an "honest broker." I have told General Ward that he was the first person who comes to Palestine and then gets promoted to become a four-star general. The rest have been demoted or came out of history altogether. [Laughter] So General Ward must have done something important because he was successful at that.

To give him the credit, the security coordination with Israel was successful. The settlers left without any firing of arms at them. Also, the soldiers then left in the same vein. So, on the security issue there was success. Of course, it was a bit unfortunate that the Israelis would not tell us when they were going to leave, which almost coincided with the President's visit to the U.N., so he couldn't be there. But at the same time they didn't leave in phases, so that we can control better the land that they were vacating—it is big chunk of land, 30 percent of the Gaza Strip altogether.

Very quickly we had to change our plans. We decided that our troops had to be deployed in areas where they can be most effective: First, not to allow the Israeli army to be attacked because that was a concern. Second, to protect the area of the Erez checkpoint, which is the industrial zone, because that industrial zone is mainly Palestinian-owned and the equipment in there is Palestinian-owned but the Israelis were vacating it with the equipment. And thirdly, to try and protect as much as possible the greenhouses which span more than 3,000 dunums [approx. 750 acres] of land all over the place. These needed to be also protected, in part because some Jewish philanthropists paid money to the settlers to leave the greenhouses in tact.

Of course we had a big debate about this, and we are so happy this has come out like that. To start with, many wanted us to compensate the settlers through funds that are donated to the Palestinian government. We said we will not accept that, that is not acceptable. Our position is that they should compensate us for 38 years of the use of the land and water, rather than us compensate them and create a precedent. Because, if tomorrow they want to leave the West Bank, I hope they will not ask us for compensation—on the contrary. That meant that the best solution to be found was that some Jewish philanthropists come together, buy this as a gift to the Palestinians. We wanted to make sure that we protect that land because that land also employed about 3,000 Palestinian workers, so that was very important.

So, this has worked. Of course, I was in Gaza all the time and the President was in Gaza all the time to ensure this was happening. Of course we heard and have seen that the media has decided that this happened very well, but it's not true. I therefore want to talk about this a little bit about this.

The security coordination worked very well, but the civil coordination worked very badly. In the last few days of the negotiations, the Israelis said that Rafah crossing was going to be closed, they were not going to open it, and they were going to force us to go to another crossing called Kerem Shalom, which is south of the Gaza Strip. They were going to build it up very quickly so that the Palestinians use it.

On the second issue, safe passage, Wolfensohn suggested that there could be a safe passage between the West Bank and Gaza in the convoy manner, until a safe passage—whether it's a train or road—is established. The Israelis came back to us in the last few days and said "We'll think about this," but nothing happened. On the airport, they even denied us the right to start reconstructing the airport they demolished. On the issue of a passage for goods through Israel to the West Bank, they refused to take action to implement what we called the 'door to door' facility. They wanted to do the 'back to back' style, which means that a container of goods coming from the States to the port of Ashdod will cost you $1,000. A container transferred from Ashdod to Gaza will cost you $2,000 because of this 'back to back' security arrangement that the Israelis have.

We felt that this has failed completely, and decided that we will not join in any ceremony with the Israelis over the handing-over of Gaza. Our security forces said to them, "Just call us by mobile phone and tell us when you're leaving, so that we take over. There will be no ceremony and we are not happy with the way things have moved."

In any case, they have moved out. This is definitely an essential and important step, because Gaza now on the inside is free. It is free—you can go from the north of Gaza to the south of Gaza in 45 minutes. You used to go from the north to the south in anything between five hours to 24 hours, because there was a checkpoint called Abu Holeen in Gaza, near Khan Yunis, where you could stop for hours, for days sometimes, and not move. The Israelis created this road for the settlers, and when the settlers are crossing nobody else crosses. So the 1.3 million Palestinians had to make way and stay wherever they were on both sides of the crossing, just for the six thousand settlers to move to and from Israel.

That was a blessing for us. There is nothing internal now, in Gaza, which stops us from being free. We forget safe passage at the moment and forget the Rafah crossing point, for in Gaza we are almost free. That means we can build, we can improve our economy, we can start employment for a generation of people, and we can start building our institutions. That was a very important thing to do, regardless of what has happened with the crossing points to the outside.

So basically, the first thing that we wanted to do was to guarantee some sort of safety and security for the citizens because Abu Mazen's program, or slogan, has always been safety and security. Therefore, one has to create safety and security inside of Gaza, inside of the areas you control. Safety and security means that you cannot allow for militias brandishing arms to walk on the streets. And why should they walk the streets? There are no Israelis anymore, no settlers, so there is no need for anybody to carry a weapon apart from the legal weapon of the police and security force. There is no need for anybody else to carry a weapon around.

This has been what President Abbas has been trying to do. Of course, this has been faced with resistance from Gaza. First, there are of course the groups that were allied to Fatah, which is the President's party, such as the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, and other little groups who had to be controlled. The President said in effect, "I want to start with my own house—there is no convincing anybody if I don't start in my own house." So he started taking steps in the dismantling of these groups, bringing them back to the Fatah fold, taking some of them into the security services and some of them into the Authority.

But these were not, in my opinion, the danger. The danger came from groups like Hamas and Islamic Jihad, who said "Our war of liberation hasn't ended—the Israelis are still around, therefore we should keep our weapons." The issue was, "Why do you want to keep your weapons in the streets of Gaza? There is nobody to fight there. If you want to keep your weapons, keep them. But don't demonstrate them or parade in the streets of Gaza because that will only create problems and lead to clashes with the only Authority that has the right to brandish the only legal weapon in Gaza."

You have heard of the clashes that have taken place—this time twice—over issues that deal with the brandishing of weapons because all the different factions have now agreed that there should be no weapons. In fact, before that incident that took place in Jabalia where 20 people were killed and hundreds of people were injured, the decision was that the next day, Saturday, there would be no more demonstrations or parades that were armed. Of course, this incident took place where a rocket that was in a car in the Hamas parade fell. Somebody tried to deal with and it exploded. Three others exploded, killing 20 people and injuring about 100.

Of course, Hamas decided that the best way to go around this is to claim that an Israeli rocket landed on the parade, and hit Israel with 42 Qassam rockets which did very little damage but brought an Israeli response that created big problems for us for a while. Having said so, this is being dealt with. There has been quite a big change in the Palestinian perception regarding the Gaza Streets. Most Palestinians accept that there should not be weapons, that these parades are actually damaging rather than helping, and if you want to fight the Israelis then you don't brandish arms in the middle of Gaza—because they aren't there anymore.

This has been happening, but at the same time there is a perception among the people of Gaza that this cannot be acceptable and, in my opinion, that those groups now have decided to agree and accept that weapons should not be displayed. Public opinion has shown that they are losing ground because of that. The latest municipal elections have shown that Hamas lost a lot of support because of that, and I think that everyone now agrees that the best course is to keep the arms away so we can have an election campaign. You cannot have an election campaign with weapons being displayed on the streets. That is against democracy and not acceptable.

Therefore, from now until elections, in the areas that the Palestinians control, there will be no show of weapons or demonstrations in the streets. By election time, all the groups that are allied to Fatah, and al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades in Gaza in particular, will be dismantled. After elections, if the Parliament, or new Legislative Council, takes a decision as I'm sure it will that you cannot be a militia and a political party at the same time, then that means that all these weapons that are not being used for self defense or by the legal authority have to be taken away.

When I or the President say that, some people don't like it. But you cannot build a country with three or four armies walking the streets. You have to clean your streets, or rid ourselves of all of this. I think even Hamas, who is running or wants to be running in the elections on the 25th of January, realizes that. They have now actually shifted their campaign towards talking about the social issues, rather than the issue that they should keep their arms, which is very good. They are tackling now the PA on the issue of not employing Hamas people and employing only Fatah people. But that is a debate that we can handle in peace and in democracy.

What are the next steps? There are many steps, I think, that we have to do and that the President has to lead this. There has to be more democracy and more reform. There has to be some corrupt people put in front of the public prosecutor. There are 147 files now that have been pushed from the President to the public prosecutor, who he decided to change not so long ago—I think one week or ten days ago. A new public prosecutor has taken office, and he is now lumbered with dealing with these 147 files so that we can at least bring some of these to trial quickly.

The security apparatuses have to be strengthened. Our security apparatuses are not as yet at their best. It's a long process but at least we have begun the process of unifying those security apparatuses and putting them under one command so they create better security for the citizens.

President Abbas has to also work to win the heart and minds of his people, especially on the issues on the culture of peace and negotiations versus the culture of violence. His campaign is about peace and prosperity, and the economic revival of Palestine, rather than a fight to the end or to death and without any successes. I always say that Palestine is the one country where we're asked to achieve democracy before we achieve freedom. Everybody else achieves freedom first and then democracy. Unfortunately, for us democracy has to come first. We're working on this, so that nobody has any excuse to say that we are not going to become democratic when we are free. If we are democratic even before we are free, that means we are definitely going to be democratic when we are free.

We have to work harder on economic development in Gaza. Gaza is a place where you have 50 or 60 percent unemployment. People are poor. When people are poor, that is why they go toward fundamentalism and radicalism, and become without hope. Therefore, we have to bring hope and push despair out of their hearts by creating jobs. From now until election time, the PA has to create 30-40,000 jobs minimum to provide people with money in their pockets so they feel that there is a peace dividend, and it is not all about nothing or that they are surrendering and getting nothing out of Israel.

We have to work hard on solving the issues of the crossings. The Rafah issue is very important, as well as goods and safe passage, so that Gaza is not conceived as a big prison. Most importantly, we have to also ensure that the West Bank is not being used by Israel to consolidate its settlement activities and colonization program. We have to make sure that the Sharm el-Sheik program is implemented. There has to be some freezing of the settlements, there has to be freezing of the Wall, there has to be easing of restrictions on movement. There are 600 to 700 checkpoints and road blocks, of which two-thirds have no security purpose whatsoever. Therefore we have to ease the life of people as well.

We have to go back to the Road Map. Of course, everyone interprets the Road Map as a wish, but it's obvious that we interpret the Road Map as leading to a viable, contiguous Palestinian state that achieves a two-state solution whereby the two states are living side-by-side in peace and security.

In the meantime, we need to start discussion of final status issues. These will take a long time to discuss and find innovative solutions for border, refugees, water, Jerusalem, and settlements. These are all issues that if we do not tackle today and find innovative solutions to deal with them, peace will not be established.

The above text is a transcription of remarks delivered in English on 5 October 2005 by Dr. Rafiq al-Husseini, Chief of Staff in the Palestinian Authority's Office of the President. The speakers' views do not necessarily reflect those of the Jerusalem Fund for Education and Community Development or its educational program, The Palestine Center. This transcription may be used without permission but with proper attribution to The Palestine Center.

 
 
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