Transcript of remarks, October 1, 2002

Professor Sari Nusseibeh, president of Al-Quds University and senior Palestinian Liberation Organization representative in Jerusalem:

As I grew up, like any Palestinian, I heard stories about the other side... who Israelis are, what Israel is, and what happened in ‘48.

My father had been in involved in the battles of ‘48, and had one of his legs amputated. I had my father and his stories about ‘48, and also had my mother. She grew up in a place that became Nes Tziona, and in ‘48 had to leave for Ramle, where my grandfather, her father, had been mayor. Her father had suffered at the hands of the British, had been deported at one stage, and spent more than three or four years in exile. Their properties were confiscated by the British. And my mother and father then came to Jerusalem.

So you can imagine how I grew up in that house. my father was a lawyer, a kind of politician, and you can imagine what sorts of stories I heard...

As I heard the stories, I would walk out the garden of the house and look across to the other side. All I saw of Israel was Meah Shearim. often I would see orthodox Israelis, standing on the street, 500 meters across, looking at us.

My mind was full of images, of fears, of worries, of fantasies, about who I was and who the people on the other side were.

1967, just after the war, one of the first thing I decided to do was to take a journey through which I wanted to somehow organize all the thoughts I grew up with. What I did was to start walking, from the edge of the garden, and started to take step after step toward Meah Shearim. and as I got closer and closer, I would stop, and look at my garden, at our house, and I continued to do this until I reached the street where the orthodox Jews would be staring at us, and I stood there, and turned my face to the east, and started thinking about what might have been going through the heads of the people looking from the other side. And every day I've been trying to make that journey, to walk the distance between me and my enemy...

I walked in several directions and several levels. At one point in the early ‘70s, in spite of what I heard from the Palestinian side about the kibbutz movement being a military establishment, I went to visit a kibbutz. And in the early ‘70s, and through the intercession of my father, I went to kibbutz Hazorea belonging to Hashomer Hatzair.

I was 18-19, and spent 2-3 weeks, living with a family that had been there since before ‘48, who had gone through the wars, and heard from them stories about the wars, to balance between their perceptions of what went on and what my parents and society said about those wars. And I was able to formulate an image about what I was sure was the right image of what went on.

I say this because I believe that in order to have a true image of reality of Israel and Palestinians, one has to have the ability to cross to the other side, to put one and one together, to see how each side sees the matter.

Eventually, I decided that the only way for the two peoples to come to a stable and secure existence that is lasting, was through recognition by each side of the others' right to exist, to develop, to grow in positive ways.

In my view, the only way forward to insure a secure and stable existence is to have mutual recognition between the two peoples. Mutual recognition is not simply a statement that one makes, or one signs. Recognition of the other is a far more significant and deeper exercise. To be able to recognize the other is first to see oneself as a human being or to recognize the human being in oneself. Many people assume it is easy to do this. This is one of the most difficult things to do. And insofar as one recognizes the human being in oneself, to come to recognize the other also as a human being.

You come to the point where it becomes logical and easy to accept that whatever rights you assume for yourself you assume for the other. The foundation must be humanity, that we are all equals as human being.

I tried on several occasions, an attempt with people in the Likud party... including Ehud Olmert, Dan Meridor, and others, and that was back in ‘86. A lot of work was done with that group to try to work out a settlement based on the concept of mutual recognition. The reason I became involved in the Madrid negotiating team was that I had spent time already with Mark Heller [the Tel Aviv University policy analyst with whom Nusseibeh co-authored No Trumpets, No Drums in 1991] trying to draft a solution based on two states.

More recently, with the outbreak of violence following the failure at Camp David, I came out clearly with an article that I wrote both in Arabic and translated into Hebrew, that was published on the same day addressing both peoples and leaderships, saying the violence we are now experiencing... does not lead anywhere. It is not possible to reach peace through the use of violence. Therefore the rational thing for both peoples was to come back to the negotiating table. I said it was necessary for both sides to take the bull by the horns.

For many years, the issues to be solved were shelved or swept under the carpet, and the leaders were unable for a variety of reasons to confront them -- and those issues were borders, settlements, Jerusalem and right of return. And I said both leaders had to take clear positions on those, and that if they didn't, and didn't negotiate on the basis of what was possible, then neither side could achieve stability and peace to which they both aspired.

I said the state of Palestine must exist along the (pre-‘67) borders. with adjustment. Two states on the basis of ‘67 borders, with Jerusalem to be shared by the two peoples. This formula needs to be worked on, the Clinton proposal... settlers have to be evacuated from the Palestinian state.

Refugees… I want to make myself very clear. I think that the right to return is sacrosanct; however, I think there are other rights beside the right to return. Another right from the Palestinian perspective that is just as sacrosanct, is the right to live in freedom and to have self determination, the right to a Palestinian state. Here we have a dilemma. Here we have two rights. If one wishes to pursue the right of return as Palestinians, we will never reach a conclusion to the Arab-Israeli conflict. And therefore a price must be paid in exchange for the right to live in freedom. In my opinion, at least the right to freedom is a realizable right. And if we are able to create a Palestinian state, and if therefore the refugees can be made to come to the Palestinian state, then at least we can provide a future for the refugees that are now in camps.

Dilemmas like this, where you have to chose between one right and another, exist. This is not a unique situation. It seems to me the right choice is to build a future. Although there is a lot of opposition, I believe it is the only path to peace. The only way is sharing the land on the basis of two states.

I want to say a bit more about violence. I do not personally claim to be a pacifist in any strong sense of the word. I do not know actually whether I am one or not. But I know this to be true. As far as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is concerned, force simply does not work. The reason is that we live at each others’ doorsteps, and in order to create space for ourselves, to create a peaceful neighborhood, we have to create peace between each other. We can not build a future on the basis of killing and hatred. It is not possible.

I really feel very grateful for having been invited to this house of God. Right from the minute that I sat listening to the introductory words of our friend Aaron Petuchowski, I wanted to tell you that above all, I have come to speak not so much as a Palestinian but as a human being, as one human being to another. In this house of God, we share the fact that we are human beings before God.

In response to a question on suicide bombing:

My personal view regarding suicide bombing is that it is morally repugnant and counterproductive. When I instituted a campaign against it, I had to get people to sign a statement and managed to get 600 signatures, at least condemning the attacks on the basis of their being counterproductive. This was the common denominator for those who signed. This helped show the Palestinian community that there is a different voice, not only the voice that adulates suicide bombing. In my opinion, turning into a killer, deprives oneself of one's humanity. A killer by any means deprives one of one's humanity. In my opinion, one gains strength from one's humanity. I refuse to condemn only the killing of a Palestinian, if I condemn it as the violation of a basic human principle... [then I must] condemn equally the killing of an Israeli on the basis of their humanity.


Professor Menahem Brinker, a key founder of the Israeli peace movement and a professor of philosophy and literature at the Hebrew University and the University of Chicago:

Since I agree to the general outline to the peaceful solution drafted by Ami Ayalon and Sari Nusseibeh, I want to add some remarks… Since [the outline for peace] is so simple, why is it so complex? We can see -- all the world can see -- that the only outline for a peaceful solution, is return of land on the basis of the June 4 ’67 borders, evacuating settlements, renouncing the right of return, sharing Jerusalem... since it is so rational, why is it so difficult to achieve?

The answer is proven by the dominant mood of the two peoples. First, it was not internalized by the leadership of the two peoples, though I believe it was internalized by the majority of the two peoples, that knows, and shows in poll after poll, that there is no military solution.

Leaders have certain fears that rational people of some courage don't have, of losing their power, or they identify themselves with some figure of the past, which serves no useful purpose. There are reasons for mistrust, and hence the behavior and convictions of people who are hostile to a peaceful solution that involves a compromise... therefore we must understand the reasons for mistrust. Some commitments that were understood, taken for granted, by the parties that signed Oslo were not respected.

The Arab militias were never united and made to obey one command. The increasing of the settlements. The creating of more and more fait accomplis was going on even to some extent under Rabin and Peres, and Netanyahu and Barak.

There is an instinctive tendency of Arabs to identify Zionism and Israel with colonialism, and Jews to identify the Palestinian struggle with the long line of historical antisemitism.

One can understand the bitter questions, what guarantees a future of peace?

On this we have to see the term of stages passed away. It is time to have the overall outline of what the outcome is. To change the mood, and to bring more credibility to the process, we can arrive only by stages. {This passage was unclear.)

First is that there is no military solution. Of course Israel has a military and technological superiority. But this is balanced by the almost infinite readiness to sacrifice of the Palestinians. You cannot destroy Dimona with suicide bombers, but you can't throw a nuclear bomb on a suicide bomber. A mutual balance f terror caused by different capabilities.

An oppressed people (back to the Turks), and a state where the majority are survivors of Holocaust or their children, five and a quarter million Jews who have nowhere to go. Stubbornness on both sides, and relative strengths and weakness of both sides promises an endless conflict.

I grew old with the conflict, and I'm afraid my son and grandson will. I participated in six wars, two as a fighter. How much can these people be “tried" in the Biblical sense?

Second, a political solution is possible. For this we need to hear more voices from the Palestinian side, and more voices from Israeli side.

The Israeli Jews want security, and are read to trade the settlements for security, as one poll after another shows. but they don't believe it's achievable.

The Palestinians want economic improvement, a Palestinian state, independence, and their lands back, and the stopping of the settlement policy, but are not sure they can get it by a political agreement. And they have reasons for this mistrust.

There is a vicious circle. You don't start a peace process without minimal trust, and you don't gain trust without courageous leadership and a vision of what it would look like at the end.

The outline of the ultimate result should be clarified for us. Help people internalize the fact that there can not be a military solution where one party wins and another loses everything. After that, getting international support for the peaceful positions in the two peoples. This is your role as American citizens. Your role is to influence your government to take a position with Europe and world powers, not to impose peace from the outside -- the parties should be negotiating -- but they will encourage the parties, and they will guarantee the commitment the parties undertake, and punish when one party doesn't honor the commitment it undertakes.

We need all this because of the relative weakness of the peace cause pertaining to trust of both sides.

Psychologically, we are not closer to peace after Oslo, because the process that was supposed to build trust destroyed it.

We need to see what peace would look like... and leave the ultimate questions of the past, why Oslo failed, etc., to leave it to historians, to thinkers... it should not be part of the peace. It would be nice to first have love, and only then political compromise. It doesn't work here. An idealistic solution would leave us to lose sight of a realistic solution. Perhaps it was wrong to separate the principles of Oslo from the political solution, from having a more detailed outline; perhaps the two things should come together.

This is the point where what Sari said about right of return is so important. The value of the right of return, and the value of a free state...and he prefers one over the other, and I welcome his preference. For Israelis there are different implications. For Israel the right of return means not only annihilating Israel, it also means a kind of judgment, a moral judgment, of which party is more responsible for the war of ‘47, ‘48. The more we read of propaganda from both sides, we know the situation was very complex, and that no party can put on the other party the full responsibility for the Palestinian tragedy and the shape it took.

The job of politicians is to get a pragmatic solution, to show us the two people can live. To show that the two can usurp one another, to kill one another, we have too much proof. So perhaps it is time for a change.