Last Monday night, I got to hear the Palestinian Ambassador to the US, Afif Safieh, speak in Santa Cruz [CA]. Safieh listed three initiatives "that would change the political environment": 1) Immediate mutual cessation of violence. 2) Liberation of all prisoners. 3) Israel must allow freedom of movement of people and products.
"The Arab world is no longer challenging Israel's right to exist," Safieh said. "It is challenging Israeli expansion."
I also heard Ambassador Safieh say things like,
Last Monday night, I got to hear the Palestinian Ambassador to the US, Afif Safieh, speak in Santa Cruz [CA]. (Life in the midst of the country's prime source of strawberries and lettuce isn't completely cut off from the "real world," thanks to satellite TV and Santa Cruz's
Resource Center for Nonviolence.)
I heard Ambassador Safieh say things like,
"I come asking you not to sacrifice a friend, but to add a new friend."
"As the sole superpower, the US needs to be unaligned."
"We [Palestinians] are the victims of the victims of history ... I have never compared the Palestinian tragedy with the Holocaust ... I know of no way to measure pain ... it is all morally repugnant and politically unacceptable."
"We are not children of a lesser God."
Admitting he is "ashamed of my profession" as a diplomat, since wars are a failure of diplomacy, Safieh then quoted an old saying from the region: "An enlightened enemy is better than a silly friend."
"How can anyone get away with avoiding an immediate ceasefire and diplomacy?" he then asked, presumably referring to the implied "silly friend."
He quoted one of his most esteemed enlightened enemies, Nahum Goldmann, an Israeli Zionist leader who was an outspoken critic of Israeli policies. Goldmann, he said, once defined diplomacy in the Middle East as "the art of delaying the inevitable as long as possible."
Ever the diplomat, Safieh refused to comment on specific US politics. However, he is plainspoken. Referring to the US non-response to recent events, Safieh called the US "a superpower everywhere else, who is suffering self-inflicted impotence in the Middle East."
Remaining stubbornly committed to a two-state solution, he said the parties need to come to a consensus on the shape of the borders. "Whatever was occupied in six days can be evacuated in six days, so they can rest on the seventh."
Safieh said there will be no peace in the region unless the Quartet (UN, Russia, US, and EU) pushes for it. He then listed three initiatives "that would change the political environment":
1. Immediate mutual cessation of violence.
2. Liberation of all prisoners. Palestinians hold only a handful of Israelis, he said, counting them on his fingers, while Israel holds 10,000 Palestinians. History in the region "did not begin with the capture of two Israeli soldiers."
3. Israel must allow freedom of movement of people and products. They must "drastically reduce [the] 450 checkpoints ... Eight million working hours are lost every day at checkpoints."
"The Arab world is no longer challenging Israel's right to exist," Safieh concluded. "It is challenging Israeli expansion."
See also: "The Anatomy of the PLO Mission: Recapturing the Historical Initiative" - Transcript of remarks by Ambassador Afif Safieh on 2 December 2005.