Israel Has Neutralized
The PA: Hanan Ashrawi
David Hearst Interviews Hanan Ashrawi
February 04, 2015 "ICH"
- "MEE"
-
Israel has systematically
targeted Jerusalemites, putting them
under a triple siege, and matters in the
city have now come to a head, Hanan
Ashrawi, the veteran Palestinian
negotiator told MEE in an exclusive
interview.
Among a wide range of
issues concerning Palestine, Dr Ashrawi
talked of the fundamental flaws of the
Oslo Accords, the Jewish state, the UN
role in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict
and Palestine's unity government.
MEE: What is
your reaction to events in Jerusalem?
Ashrawi :
One of
the fatal flaws of the Declaration of
Principles ( DOP or Oslo Accord) is that
they left the Jerusalemites at the mercy
of Israel and then the international
community allowed Israel to treat the
Jerusalemites as residents of the city
and totally control their lives, their
lands, and their resources. From day
one, Israel treated Jerusalem as if it
were annexed de facto, even before they
annexed it illegally, and started a
systematic policy of ethnic cleansing,
totally transforming the character,
history and culture of the city. Siege
and division is a microcosm of what
Israel did to the West Bank, where you
besiege it, control entrances and exits,
and then fragment it internally. They
planted settlements and settlers inside
Jerusalem, then surrounded it with three
rings, a triple siege: the settlements
which it started early, the military
checkpoints and the apartheid wall. This
made Jerusalem inaccessible to any
Palestinian who does not have a
Jerusalem ID. It means Israel totally
extracted Jerusalem from the heart of
Palestine, territorially,
demographically, in terms of access, in
terms of culture, in terms of
institutions. Jerusalem’s hospitals and
schools were there to serve all
Palestine.
Israel practised some
of the most cruel measures against
Jerusalemites. Exorbitant taxes, no
services, forming the Palestinian areas
into ghettos, stealing their land,
leaving them only with from 12 to 13% of
their own land, and thousands upon
thousands of ID confiscations, the
separation of families. There is a whole
set of illegal and inhuman legislation.
Jerusalemites are under occupation with
no rights and Israel has draconian laws
to deal with them like the centre of
your life law. So Israel has managed to
treat palestinian populations in
different ways of oppression, exclusion,
whatever you want. Violence begets
violence. Now matters have come to a
head.
I would never have
signed the DOP [Declaration of
Principles] relinquishing power over
Jerusalem. I have a Jerusalem ID. My
daughters had Jerusalem IDs before they
confiscated them. We call ourselves the
Madrid/ Washington group. We are not the
Oslo group, we had a totally different
approach. We didn’t postpone the real
issues. We discussed human rights,
Jerusalem, statehood, borders. We
demanded control over the population
register and the land register. Israel
is in control of both, so how can you
ever be free? They control who are their
citizens and who owns the land.
So no wonder
Jerusalemites feel abandoned, vulnerable
and targeted. Because Israel has
systematically targeted them. It has
neutralized the PA. The PA cannot do
anything officially in Jerusalem, as per
the agreement . And somehow Israeli
picks and chooses parts of the
agreements. It chooses which ones to
implement and which ones to disregard.
And, of course, maintains the position
that the PA cannot function in Jerusalem
so it totally prevents them. Even though
the PLO should be able to function in
Jerusalem. That’s why Faisal Husseini
was in Jerusalem. That is why he refused
to enter PA and accepted the PLO
position from the beginning. We divided
because he said he would not enter the
PA because his job was in Jerusalem. So
he accepted the position as PLO
executive, but I didn’t.
But now even the PLO
cannot function in Jerusalem. Even the
letter we demanded from (Shimon)Perez
(then Israeli Foreign Minister) to
Jochan Holst, the Norwegian Foreign
Minister) about the institutions of
Jerusalem, that not only will they not
be protected, they will not intervene
and deliver all these important services
to the Palestinians of Jerusalem. When
we entered negotiations, we had American
commitments and assurances that Orient
House will not be touched, that they
would not enter, that they would not
look at our papers. Not only did they
enter it and confiscate our papers, they
closed it down.
This is typical. The
Israelis will not honour any commitment
or sound agreement, not just to us.
Perez wrote this letter to Holst on the
Jerusalem issue. But also they will
manipulate any agreement so that they
will pick and choose what serves their
interest and what weakens us and
whatever is in our favour, they will not
implement. So that is where we are now.
Jerusalem institutions closed, Jerusalem
under a triple siege, ethnic cleansing,
the total transformation of the
character of the city demographically,
culturally, historically. To add not
just insult to injury and to make it
totally abhorrent to our ideology and
religion, now we have this whole
assault on the Haram al Sharif and the
al Aqsa mosque. It is really provoking a
religious war. It is provoking religious
sentiment. And add to that the issue of
the Jewish state, so that you have on
the one hand ISIS, the Islamic State,
Da’esh and on the other hand the Jewish
state.
MEE: What do
you think about the Jewish State?
Ashrawi:
Netanyahu
made it a precondition that all the
Palestinians have to become Zionists -
we have to accept their narrative, their
history, their ideology. We have to
condone discrimination against the
Palestinians of 48 who are the
indigenous population. We have to accept
a false narrative, as though there was a
Jewish state throughout history, which
was never the case. Palestine has never
had a Jewish majority even 2 to 3000
years ago. They were part of the tribes
that came and went. Palestine was always
pluralist, tolerant and inclusive. So
why we should accept an exclusive
ideology? Why should we accept an
exclusionary state? Why should we accept
in principle what we do not accept for
Palestine? We do not want an Islamic
state. We don’t want a state that
excludes others. We want a democratic,
inclusive, tolerant, pluralistic,
diverse state. So why should we be
forced to accept this for Israel? How
can they expect us to accept
discrimination against non-Jews?
And ultimately the
agenda is political. They do not want
the Palestinian refugees to have the
right to return. They will legislate a
law of return for any Jew anywhere,
whether they are from Ethiopia or
Brooklyn or Poland wherever, but we have
no right to return, the Palestinians who
have land deeds , keys to their homes,
who have been living there for
centuries, who were expelled by force
have no right of return. And this
acceptance of this Jewishness of the
state means automatically we condone not
just Zionism, but the exclusion of the
Palestinian. This completes the '48
Nakba. This completes what Illan Pappe
calls the displacement replacement
paradigm.
MEE: Do you
believe that going to the UN will change
things?
Ashrawi:
I believe
that the UN should be held responsible
and Israel should be held accountable.
The international community should be
spurred to action and there should be a
global rule of law. So the issue has
always been external interference,
pressure and blackmail. What Israel does
or does not want dictates what the US
does and does not do, and then the US
not only puts pressure on us and
unleashes Congress on us, it goes to
Europe and gets some of its European
allies to do its dirty work for it. Then
he (Abu Mazen) starts assessing what it
will cost. Can we afford this cost? Can
we afford a breakdown? Can people stay
and survive if we lose assistance, if we
lose relations? We said (to him) people
want to see that there are systems of
accountability that are working, that we
are treated equally by the law, that
Israel abides by the law and is held
accountable.
This is a situation of
total unaccountable victimisation, where
the occupier has full impunity and the
occupied has no protection and then you
put pressure on the weaker side not on
the stronger side. So we need to be able
to work out how to empower Palestine on
how to understand the consequences of
doing the right thing, while Israel has
never paid the price of doing the wrong
thing all these years. I believe we
should have gone earlier. We should have
moved, but the president was reluctant
because he doesn’t want to have to face
the price of the breakdown here without
having sufficient preparations and
alternatives. So it's a real dilemma.The
whole political system will pay the
price. There will be a breakdown here,
it is expected if there is total
boycott, lack of cooperation and
assistance, if they carry out the
threats but a breakout here means a
break out of violence. And a break out
of violence will have a spillover
effect. It's not controllable. It will
have a ripple effect.
But the status quo
itself is also untenable. It has to
change and that’s why we have to think
outside the box. That is why we were
thinking of the UN and the other things.
Because since 1991 we were doing the
same thing over and over again, hoping
for a different result. But we should
know by now that the US is not an
even-handed peace broker. We should know
by now that they will not curb Israeli
violations or engage in any way that is
positive to us. We should know by now
that their strategic alliance with
Israel is much more important to them
than any sense of justice or equality
before the law - even American standings
and interest. We should know by now that
the motive of self interest and domestic
issues and election is a very powerful
motive in the US. They need to get
re-elected - these members of the
Congress and administration. So they
need to pander to special interest
groups, foremost among them is AIPAC.
There are all sorts of studies about how
AIPAC puts all elected officials on a
test of good behaviour, how good they
are for Israel before they can get
elected. And then they have campaigns to
discredit (ones who don't measure up).
MEE: But there
is a change, certainly in Britain and it
was seen in the parliamentary vote on
Palestinian statehood.
Ashrawi:
There is a change for several reasons.
Israel has overstepped its limits. The
outcome of hubris. It's backfiring.
Israel has taken its impunity to an
extreme, has taken the collusion of the
world to an extreme. It thought that it
can do anything it wanted and get away
with it, including massacres and war
crimes and obliteration of whole
families, and neighbours and still get
away with it. And it couldn’t count. I
mean it may have (US) politicians where
they hurt, but it doesn’t control their
minds. Public opinion is awakening and
it is feeling a sense of responsibility
because this injustice has been going on
for a long time. So this type of
awakening is important and challenging
the decision makers and executive
authorities. To me what is very strange,
is somebody like Cameron saying: ”OK,
let the parliament vote but we will not
change our policy.” Parliament reflects
the will of the people, and why should
the executive authority decide they do
not want to listen to the people and
their representatives, a priori?
MEE: Do you
think international policy will change?
Ashrawi:
You cannot base your policy decisions
(as a western politician) on what is
good for me and my elections. You also
have to understand that what is good for
the UK is also important for its
economy, its standing and the world. If
you allow Israel to raise the specter of
religious wars, extremism and violence
cannot be contained. The integrity and
credibility of the US will be determined
on how they will deal with this. In the
states, it was the military who told the
political nationals that what Israel is
doing, it is in our names and it is
costing us - it is putting our boys and
girls in jeopardy in the Middle East.
The US intervenes only when there is
violence, but it does not know how to
intervene positively to make peace. It
is blinded by this passion -
single-minded passion for Israel. So,
no, I agree that there is a shift in
public opinion, and it is major, and it
is making itself felt and heard and it
behooves the powers that be in every
country to listen.
In the States it is
slower because of the stranglehold of
the mainstream media and special special
interests on the public discourse. But
it is happening in universities, it is
happening in churches, it is happening
in ethnic and minority groups. People
are challenging taboos, so if you
withdraw the anti-Semitic charge, people
will say no. There are many Jewish
groups who are saying no. This is an
abuse of anti-Semitism and the fact that
the Jewish organizations are standing up
to Israel and extremist policy and this
unholy alliance with the US and so on,
is again a factor. You cannot just label
everybody a prostitute and an
anti-Semite if you dare to criticize
Israel. No. There are many now who are
challenging Israel on the Jewish state
issue because they do not want to be
part of this, and they know this is
racist and discriminatory. So that
Israel is placing even the Jewish
community in a position that has to
decide - principles versus allegiance to
Israel.
MEE:
How is the
unity government functioning ?
Ashrawi:
Many negative things, and very few
positive things are going on. We agreed
that there should be a government of
national accord, not unity, because we
are a government of nationalities and
you have all the factions and parties in
it. But you have independents who are
professionals, supposedly, who will
carry out the tasks of preparing for
elections, reconstruction of Gaza and
delivering services, and they will have
the approval of everybody. Because there
was a time limit and very specific
functional responsibilities, they set up
a weak government. I felt it has to be a
stronger government. Instead of reducing
the number and combining ministries, you
have to increase the number, because it
faces a serious challenge. This became
very clear with the attack on Gaza. The
challenges of the aftermath, the post
assault period are so enormous that you
need a powerful government with its
institutions to be able to do several
things quickly - alleviation of
suffering , welfare relief. Immediately
people need housing, food, clear water,
health services, electricity and so on.
These are emergency things that you
should do instantly. You have a big
strong government: go there, take over.
Don't sit back and say, “Well, the
deputy ministers have created a shadow
government." Why did they? Because you
were not there. Go there, take over.
Take with you a whole bunch of
technocrats and professionals. They sent
one minister of health. He was
threatened, beaten, turned back. So they
use this as an excuse to say nobody
else. So, I said no. Now is the time to
be strong - to have a big showing. Go
there, take over the ministries. Hold
them accountable. Check what they have
done and give them tasks to do. Put
together their plan and then with the
reconstruction, which is the second
task, and it has to be done
simultaneously. We cannot just provide a
relief.
We have to
simultaneously provide a relief and
restart the reconstruction program. And,
of course, institutional reconstruction
of the government, its services and so
on, and you have to place it all within
a context of sustainable development,
and to do that you have to place it in
the context of political realities to
deal with the causes - to put an end to
Israel’s, not just immunity, but its
pattern of recurrent attacks on Gaza.
What is the point? Why should we keep
rebuilding? Why should the international
community come to our aid if every two
or three years Israel is going to
destroy. It has done that so far and
literally gotten away with murder. So
that’s what we need, and we did not rise
to the challenges. And Hamas did not
understand the need to relinquish its
stranglehold on Gaza, frankly, and the
same way as Israel wants to maintain its
control over the crossing points and so
on, and wants the international
community to reconstruct Gaza and wants
the authority to go there and take over
the crossing points. How can you do
that? This configuration does not work.
Hamas wants to keep its militias and
wants to keep its security apparatus
intact. Why should the PA send, or the
president send his guards to the
crossing points if, behind them, there
are Hamas militias? You cannot do that.
You have to come to an agreement on all
these issues and you have to take over
the institutions and you have to have
third-party participation. Egypt has to
play a positive role. It cannot play a
negative role, regardless of its
problems with Hamas, because it is the
people of Gaza who are suffering. They
are paying the price, and all of
Palestine is paying the price because
the rift continues. It weakens us and it
undermines our standing, our
credibility.
MEE: What is
the future of the government of national
accord?
Ashrawi:
As it stands I don’t think it has much
chance of continuing as it is, because I
think that everybody is realizing the
need for a strong government that can
deliver. So there are two voices: there
is one group that talks about expanding
this government - carrying out certain
reforms, and others who talk about of
having a government of national unity,
of people who have standing, who are
known, who are powerful, who will not be
taken lightly. Now each proposal has its
own drawbacks. If you have a government
of national unity, which everybody
wants, it is fine, but then they will be
boycotted. Do we go back to 2006 or not,
because the Palestinians were sanctioned
when they elected Hamas. So now, if
Hamas is part of the government, what
will happen? Will they use the Lebanese
precedent, for example, the world
talking to all ministers, but the
Hezbollah ministers, or will they use
the Palestinian precedent of 2006 when
they boycotted everything and then they
destroyed our institutions which then
gave rise to relief and welfare
assistance and to an economy by
smuggling? All the institutions that
were held accountable that we were
building were totally negated, and we
were sent a clear message of hypocrisy -
that democracy is good provided you
elected the people we want. Otherwise,
you pay the price. And that Israel can
violate international law at will and
not be held accountable, but you are
sanctioned for doing the right thing,
again.
So, it is a real
dilemma. I believe you need, whether
they are independents or if they
represent factions and parties, you need
strong, national figures capable of
taking over these institutions. Hamas
needs to know it cannot continue like
this, and it cannot want a thing and its
opposite simultaneously. You cannot blow
up people's homes or cars or whatever
and the platform for the commemoration
of Arafat’s death, and then say we don’t
know, and it is not our fault. You
control every thing. You know where an
ant walks in Gaza. You have to be able
to provide this and you have to be able
to relinquish. You cannot place your
party's or movement ‘s interest above
the interest of the people, which has
been done historically. And Fatah has to
know that Hamas is not going to
disappear. It is part of the political
fabric. It has its own institutions, its
own people, its own constituency, and
you have to learn how to live with it.
You cannot have the monopoly over the
political system the way they did before
and not be challenged. So you have to
come to a modus operandi based
on democratic practices and principles
to be able to have an inclusive
democracy and power-sharing with
everybody. And, unfortunately,
factionalism has been a major detriment.
MEE: Does this
include the recent bust-up between Abu
Mazen and Dahlan?
Hanan:
That’s an internal Fatah problem. It is
not even Fatah, PLO and Hamas. Even
within Fatah, you have these personal
rivalries. You have these rifts that
come out into the open. They really
affect the credibility and the respect
for the leadership. People stop me and
ask me in the street. You look at
Facebook. You listen to people who say,
'What is this?' This is making a mockery
of the political system. Fatah is the
major address for the PLO and national
camp. So if Fatah is not well, if Fatah
is collapsing, then the whole national
system is not well, and Fatah has to do
its own reform.
MEE: What are
the chances of rebuilding the leadership
of PLO?
Hanan:
That has to happen. The Palestinian
National Council is the parliament. It
should be convened. Some people said
that we convene to have elections, or do
we have elections in order to convene a
new one and how do you have election?
How can you have PNC elections in
Lebanon, in Syria, in Jordan? You
cannot, so how do we go about the
forming before we reform the PNC,
because you cannot have an executive
committee unless the PNC elects it, and
you need to elect the PNC.
We can start with what
exists. We can start with the
departments that have been weakened. We
can start with the PLO, the
institutional political decision making
which has been weakened and undermined.
We can start with the PLO
responsibilities and mandate to serve
the Palestinians everywhere, which has
been undermined by the fact that the PLO
came here and is living under the
occupation.
This is, I am not
going to say obsolete, but it is really
an old and tired system, and when I was
elected to it, I thought I could inject
some new spirit, some energy, and it is
an uphill struggle. It is set in its
ways. It needs to be challenged. It t
needs to be reformed. Now Hamas wants to
be part of the PLO. How? By keeping it
as it is, and putting together as per
the agreement, a new committee without
prejudice to the role of the PLO
executive. That this committee, which is
supposed to be for the reform and the
activation, the rejuvenation of the PLO.
Then they called it the new leadership
committee. So the Hamas wants to be the
leadership committee. In that sense, we
do not need election. You can have the
PLO executive as it is, then you can
bring Hamas and Islamic Jihad and some
independent factions, and keep it as it
is - but expanded. This way Hamas will
be part of the PLO expanded committee.
It will keep the PLC in place where it
has a majority, but it is already
expired, and it will stay in control of
Gaza, so to speak, through the control
of the national accord government
because it cannot control it through the
PLC.
It doesn’t work that
way. It is not that we want to keep the
PLO always with problems and weaknesses
and just add more problems to it. I
would like to, sort of, open it up. Wide
open energize it, invigorate, transform
the partners, the membership, have
elections convene the PNC where we can.
Change. I will keep talking about young
people, the generations who have been
excluded from decision making. We need
elections they need to run.
MEE:
Is the
leadership not concerned that things
will get out of control in the
Palestinian street? You can have a
situation where the agenda is set for
you.
Ashrawi:
Yes, people are unhappy with leadership.
It is a system set in place, set in its
ways, and it is not renewing itself, and
it is not responding to the needs of the
young. It needs to be able to formulate
strategies and policies professionally,
and it needs to respond to the needs of
the people. If you don’t have elections,
you don’t feel the urgency, the
imperative for change. Because they will
not hold you accountable. They will not
vote you out of office. That’s why we
need elections. Secondly, even if we
don’t have elections, you cannot come to
agreements on divvying up the spoils.
You need to come up with agreements on
how to open up the system and make room
for young people. The problem is, even
if tomorrow you have a revolution and
the young take over, which I dont mind -
I think they should, they will inherit
an impossible situation. They will
inherit an occupation that is ruthless,
cruel. We are in the siege. We cannot
control our resources, our freedoms, our
lives, our everything. They cannot
change that. They will inherit an
economic system that is dependent and
that has been distorted. They will
inherit agreements that they are not
free to change, and if they change them,
they will pay the price. They will have
a situation where you have people who
have needs and demands that are
impossible to meet because you will
inherit a biased US and an acquiescent
EU. And, of course the Arabs, the Arab
transition and the problems and the
promises that never materialize, and so
on. So I can understand the frustration
of the young. They are not getting what
they want from their only leadership,
but they have not formulated their own
policies, and they do not have the
tools. What do they have to change the
situation? I know young people who are
working on environmental issues. This is
lovely. We all want to do that, but I
want to get rid out of this goddam
occupation. That’s the only way we can
control our resources, our land, our
freedom and prevent people from leaving.
That’s what we need. I think by any way
we have to get rid out of this
occupation. I call it an enslavement, a
captivity. It has to end. So, anybody
who takes over - you cannot have
nation-building when you don't control
your land, your resources, your people,
anything. And you don't give people even
the alternatives of knowing that if they
take over, they will have a whole new
way of dealing with things.