Secretary-General,

Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy

Mr. President, Under-Secretary-General, Mr. Secretary-General in absentia, dear friends, dear sisters and brothers, it is indeed a great source of gratification and empowerment for me to be among you today. This is a significant event with many significant participants and players. I may not see many government representatives, but I certainly see many leaders in this room today. And it has always been, I feel, my task to be a bit of a troublemaker. Every graduation speech I give, I always tell the students not to lose their spirit, to question, to re-examine and to be troublemakers? So this morning, I will begin with a few examples from my personal life from the Palestinian experience as a means of an illustration or perhaps a validation for you of a collective vision both as a witness and a participant. I believe that the human will, the human spirit, and ultimately, the decision to take risks to stand up and be counted are what make a difference in terms of altering reality. During the days of the Intifada we all had to decide personally, at the individual level that we must take risks, to stand up to injustice as an unarmed civilian population. We have to stand up to an occupation army. And from this individual decision, we moved to a collective drive with the momentum that certainly challenged the status quo, changed it, and upset the prevailing powerless equilibrium. And we re-created new tools of redress and introduced new paradigms and relationships. And this came, of course, as a result of self-confidence and self-respect of a people who firmly believe in their rights and refuse to be victims. We articulated a new discourse – the language of the disempowered, the people, was always excluded from polite and official discourse. And we destroyed prevailing stereotypes and labels. In that sense we also created forms of internal solidarity – of human solidarity. Popular committees, neighbourhood committees, there were the very unique experience of the Palestinians under occupation in the sense that we do not have a centralized government. We were a people under occupation and so our organizing principles always drew on what we call the NGOs and institutions of civil society and voluntary organizations and underground work. As much as I always thought that NGO was a very convenient title, I try to stay away from defining people by what they are not. We certainly are not governmental associations, but we should define ourselves by what we are. It’s not enough to say we are also institutions of civil society. We really are also, as many people have said, people’s organizations – human organizations. That’s much more important than saying that there are governments and then there is everybody else that is not government.

Another experience is the peace process, which represents an even greater risk than resisting military occupation and oppression. But through the peace process we also show the willingness to explore the hitherto exploited and unorthodox course of the peaceful resolution of the conflicts, again as an act of will and affirmation. It was an act of historical intervention, of engagement, and, of course, transforming the peace process into an instrument for change. Introducing new realities and, of course, widening the scope so that we would have the politics of inclusion and recognition rather than denial and exclusion. And as a process of rectification, we viewed the peace process as one of historical redemption.

Ours was an agenda for a comprehensive peace, a just peace with a constituency. Therefore we needed to legitimize that peace process. This was where you had the distinctive paradigm shift, particularly in perceptions, but also in relations between victim and oppressor. Despite all the current flaws in the peace process, and I don’t have time to go into details, but at least that was a major transformation that created also a global solidarity for peace. If the victim itself, himself, or herself is not willing to reach out to make peace, you cannot expect to reach out beyond the narrow confines of the conflict to create solidarity – a global solidarity for peace. If, no matter how valid and thought provoking any theory is, if it does not have a concrete application, if it does not emanate actually from genuine, concrete, tangible reality, then it just becomes a mere exercise in political virtuosity. And unfortunately, most of the peace process has been confiscated from the people and instead of a dialogue you have negotiations at the highest level with very little constituency and substance.

But I use these experiences just as an illustration to show that the greatest global vision is generated usually from the most humble experience and initiative – we must not discount that. We must also not discount the will to step outside the constraints of the moment, the safe havens of the familiar image, and the redundant or repetitive pattern the closed language of formulaic jargon. If there’s one thing I’m tired of, it’s the repetition of jargon and clichés to define myself and my reality and even my future agenda. I would like to be part of the formulation of a new vision with a new discourse. A process of transformation may begin with simple convergence of wills on issues of personal involvement and responsibility. I will not go into the moments of anxiety and deep soul searching on what gives me the right to take a risk, what gives somebody else the right to take a risk? How can we jeopardize people’s lives? But if you firmly believe in something so basic and simple as your most essential humanity and your right to freedom, then you certainly have to take risks in that direction. If you believe peace is a human right, and I believe it is, then you can take risks for peace rather than be a passive victim of a war that is not of your own making.

This, in turn, this act of will introduces a new dynamic relationship unhampered by complacency, aesthetic relationships or set roads, and it creates a form of relationships and alliances that are actually quite fluid and mobile, firmly embedded in a system of said values. Then you certainly have to take risks drawing on essential values in that direction. Bringing together different sectors of interstate and intrastate players for the realization of a common objective and vision. Their three new partnerships are binding by definition and produce self-systematising systems that are mobile, adaptable and flexible. There is a feature of our emergent realities; it is the feature of mobility and change, underneath for adaptability and flexibility. The essence of this new expression of solidarity is its value orientation and of course its propensity and drive towards active engagement, not spectatorship, and its networking capacity for augmentation and expansion. We are not isolated units, we are not vulnerable individuals; we do have the capacity to expand and reinforce augmenting manners. Driven by the human and moral rather than the power imperative, such solidarity partnerships are authentic means to draw on the immense resources available to all of us. Therefore, they are in many ways self-perpetuating.

Now, everyone talks about globalization; I understood in the Secretary-General’s introduction that fighting globalization is like fighting gravity. I believe taking a position on globalization, whether I want it or not, is like taking a position on the Industrial Revolution. Of course it’s happening – it is there – but how can we intervene? How can we imbue it with human values? How can we set up systems of monitoring and accountability? How can we articulate a modern code of ethics and values to govern what is called globalization on the rampage? How can we use, how can we avail ourselves and maximize the tools, the instruments of globalization for the service of our own agenda – the human agenda – rather than for the service only, and look at it only as a mean of power networking or economic exclusion or economic monopolies.

We have at our disposal as a result of the knowledge revolution, the IT revolution is the fact that there are new definitions of power, authority and leadership. That we can gain access to information, we can influence information, and, therefore, we can mobilize, we can act quickly, and we can intervene. And the traditional tools of power and exclusion especially by Third World and autocratic governments – the exploitation of the ignorance of the people are maintaining blackouts or the withholding of information. These are no longer available because people can gain access, and we should be able to help each other gain access not only to information, but to reaching the conclusions that the facts and information and events will lead us into. Once you reach conclusions, you have to have, of course, plans-of-action in order to be able to intervene and rectify.

I have always maintained that it is our will – it is our goal – our destiny, perhaps, to intrude on history and not to be the passive recipients of history, but to shape it. To intrude on it in this sense is to change the sort of relationship of being a passive humanity waiting for the future to happen somehow. No. But, rather an active humanity that has a will in order to shape the course of the future, and to do, what I think we have to do, mobilize the energy and the power that is represented in this room in ways that are self-sustaining, systematic, incremental and ever-expanding. We have to have the courage and the will to intervene in a pre-emptive way. Not just as a post-hoc way, but as a constructive, pre-emptive, preventive way in order to prevent the perpetuation of injustice, prevent situations of inequality and of oppression. And, among the other factors available to us, of course, the components or the constituents of globalization or the expression of globalization would be acceleration and compression of time. Of course, we can use that to our advantage, as well. There is potential for democratization or levelling down. And, of course, there’s the other potential of creating a new world of "haves" and "have-nots", and so on. Therefore, we have to ensure that the infrastructure is in place while we are addressing the issues of the wealth of ideas and access to information.

Speed, efficiency and timely intervention in a constructive manner are now available to us and this opens the doors for effective engagement and participation and allows us to integrate our efforts and our plans. This will be done, I assume in the next couple of days in this important meeting for institutions of civil society – including NGOs.

I believe also, that all sorts of facile, simple definitions have to be challenged by globalization, whether it’s the issue of territoriality, geography, or questions of sovereignty. These should be laid out wide open because we have to discuss the issue of accountability, the issue of responsibility, and particularly the responsibility of power and set up global systems of genuine accountability and reform. And of course, I am not afraid of globalization as a great eraser that will erase the authenticity of our identity or our own individual cultures. I firmly believe that that the other side of the coin of globalization is the question of the celebration of the very rich fabric of pluralism and cultural diversity and of course, identity and authenticity. And globalization exists only if there is a genuine respect for the specific, for the unique identity and diversity and unless it can create a harmony and not a uniformity among all the players within this very diverse fabric.

Of course, in the atmosphere of cyberspace, there is no exclusive domain; we must claim our own domain and we must use it. And, ultimately, I believe it is our job to create a global rule of law. The UN will, as a source of international law and legitimacy, which is something we hold onto as our anchor in our struggle for peace, must also redefine in the inventive sense to be able to look at new systems of accountability and intervention and can also redefine the mentality of the partnership and control that governments tend to have over their nation states as they go back to the 19th century. Perhaps we support the new 21st century agenda on internal and domestic accountability that is open to inter-state, not just intra-state intervention.

So we must take the initiative. We must, so to speak, take the bull by the horns. Do not be passively redefined as we are nowadays. I think we are in a unique position in Palestine where now that we have a government or pseudo-government that it set up a ministry of NGOs. So this is a contradiction in terms. I wish to have an ongoing debate about the NGO laws that the NGOs drafted and we adopted in the legislative council and of course the ministry of interior has decided to write a set of regulations that totally contradict the law. They gave themselves the right to do that. So, we must not be redefined by others, we must define ourselves and our task and our agenda. We must not only shape the vision, but articulate the vision and maintain a model qualitative edge. This is our strongest point, I believe. The human commitment and the model qualitative edge attack immersion and power politics and self-interest – that is what makes us victims, I believe.

You must challenge the prevailing ideas and norms, declare a sense of purpose and mission, formulate inclusive plans of action and intrusive plans of action and of course, as is normal of all gender-sensitive and people-sensitive agendas, we build on consensus-making. And therefore, we exercise collective responsibility. In this context, I must say that the road to peace must always precede the outbreak of conflict and violence. I don’t see how people talk about peace only in the context of a reaction to war. No! Peace is a state of being that must exist. War is the reaction. And we must be involved in this ongoing continuum of preparing conditions to prevent the outbreak of negative outbreak and hostilities. And, of course, other peace-making, other conciliation efforts must emerge from the terrain of the conflict itself. Therefore, we cannot bypass, evade, circumvent or overlook any feature of the landscape or what we call the warscape. Because all the elements, all the grievances, all the injustices that are building up to create conflict and the outbreak of hostilities and war are there in the making. No conflict should take us by surprise – I firmly believe that. We must be able to discern all the symptoms of hostilities of war, of violence before they reach the situation, the stage, where the only and absolute outcome is the outbreak of violence. And this can be done.

Of course, we cannot superimpose on any conflict simple and good old ready-made solutions. And I can go on and on and tell you how the Americans constructed a simplistic paradigm for our peace process and they expected everyone to think like Americans, to behave like Americans. It took me a long time to convince the U.S. state department that this may not be the most authentic, appropriate peace process for us because all the elements that go into the making of the conflict have been excluded for the sake of simplicity.

Conflicts are very complex and we shouldn’t be worried about addressing all the components of conflicts and redressing all the sources of grievances and injustice. That’s the only way to make peace There are, of course, no artificial shortcuts. For example, we have a people to people program. And it has become not very respectable, if I may say so. I’ll tell you why.

When we started the dialogue with the Israelis, we took risks because we dialogued with like-minded people of principle who were fighting against occupation, against oppression, against injustice – this was an authentic dialogue. And we are faced with severe consequences – we could go to jail for ten years. The Israeli authorities didn’t like that – the occupation authorities, way back in the 70’s – it’s not new. And of course, many Palestinians didn’t like it because how could you talk to an oppressor? And, we said, we are talking to each other as human beings with the same goal. We weren’t paid then. We didn’t have donor countries coming and saying, well, if you talk to Israelis now, we will fund your project. Now its very sexy, it’s very trendy, it’s very popular to find anything that is Israeli/Palestinian. And this might create a false notion of symmetry or partnership. But it is donor-driven, it is artificial and quite often, it separates the people from the dialoguers or the ones in the shared partnerships.

I would much rather have an authentic dialogue that is rendered in the service of a common vision of peace; the vindication of the human agenda rather than to separate a few elite who will talk to each other above the heads of their people in the way governments are talking to each other, negotiating and subsuming the real dialogue. Again, there should be no false assumption of a false symmetry, or a false assumption of a symmetry between occupied and occupying oppressor and oppressed. Peace cannot be made by coercion and intimidation. What we must do, again, is even challenge all those paradigms and attempts at peacemaking that incorporate this equilibrium of power.

And we must have the courage to speak out because governments do not. Everybody says we will look the other way regardless of the sins and inequities of the Palestinian authority or the Israeli government or whatever. The main thing is that they stay in the peace process. No, I think the main thing is that they must have the legitimacy of having a constituency – of being genuinely democratic leaders while upholding the rule of law and democracy in their own countries. We must get rid of the mentality of racism and occupation in Israel and get rid of the mentality of self-perceived weakness and victimization in Palestine. The two mentalities are not constructive. Of course we must have the courage to look injustice, oppression, exclusion, disenfranchisement in the face, not only to stare it down, but to deconstruct it entirely, and to provide viable alternatives and solutions. It’s not enough to say what is wrong with the status quo or with the prevailing systems. It’s important to have viable alternatives and to show that they work, and to create these alternatives as operative systems. To dismantle its constants, to scrutinise and expose its inequities, and to dare to stand on the side of the victim, and to stand up to victimisation. This requires a defiant stance versus appeasement and accommodation. And heaven knows we have seen sufficient stances of appeasement and accommodation at the expense of the people themselves.

And there is no such thing as genuine neutrality. There is hypocritical neutrality, but there is commitment to justice and to values. You cannot be neutral when it comes to that. And, of course, there is no co-operation possible between victim and victimizer. In a relationship like that, the dialogue of inequity is stilted, but only when parity is restored. With genuine solidarity, can you introduce, and genuine solidarity, is introducing parity and equality of rights. I cannot translate objective weakness and deprivation to mean detracting from or undermining parity of rights no matter how weak a country or a nation is – or people, or an individual. He or she, or it, or they must have equal rights in accordance with a universal rule of law. Power does not imbue the powerful with greater rights to violate international law as we are seeing. So genuine solidarity for working on that act of solidarity and introducing a quality of rights uniform standards and yardsticks and ethical dimensions for the effective alleviation of suffering.

Not just, aspirins and panaceas, but the effective alleviation of suffering, which means, creating again, alternative systems that work for empowerment. Thus in the spirit of interdependent partnerships, I always describe it as a pyramid of government, the private sector, and civil society. I cannot exclude any because they are all effective players. But I look at civil society as the corrective voice, almost as a conscience, but not as an abstract conscience of both economic and governmental forces. You have to hold them both accountable now. I’m flattered by self-interest or power politics capable of legitimizing what I call the human contract. We do understand what the social contract is; perhaps now we should talk about the human contract its inter-relationship through peaceful and sustained intervention and empowerment.

Civil society and NGOs are not just an agent for change. They are a driving force and a connecting factor that provide both the motivation and the moral fibre of globalisation. And, of course, human rights, were the first organizations and initiatives to indulge in globalization. Who was the first to talk about the universality of human rights? Certainly not IBM and Ford! It was civil society. Right? These were human rights organizations. And the first charters and conventions had to be the human rights and of course, the rights of the disempowered and the individuals. And, of course, civil society can cut across traditional defining boundaries. Sometimes I find a national or so-called political enemy with more solidarity on issues of social justice and empowerment than I would in a political ally, perhaps even within the Arab world on issues of social justice and women’s rights, for example. So you have to be, again, flexible and we have to deal with those issues in a way that cuts across the traditional the traditional limits and boundaries that have defined us so far. And we must redefine power with integrity through integration and inclusion. Solidarity, of course, is identification with the disempowered, disenfranchised, and so on, but must introduce systems of action. We as Palestinians are starving for the legitimisation of two cultures now simultaneously and of course they are interdependent. The culture of democracy and the culture of peace. The dual process of nation-building must be based on a genuine respect for the rule of law, democracy, respect for human rights, of course, building institutions that are transparent and accountable, effective and efficient and at the same time we are dealing with peace-making only on the basis, of course, of justice and parity if we want to have static reconciliation, it must be based on international legality. To do that, of course, we need identification and legitimization of our identity. Right now, we are probably the only people who are not states as international players. Right? We are always considered important, effective, introducing ideas, disrupting even the status quo, provoking, challenging, and so on. But everybody says, but you do not qualify for anything else because you still are not a state. I said I would like to reach the level that I am a state so I can say "Ok, the hell with statehood, let’s move beyond it". And we must be recognized as an equal among nations even if we are deprived of statehood. This kind of solidarity, of course, overcomes the tyranny of a dominant culture. The cultural authentication and recognition is very important and the dominant economic powers or military power does not necessarily produce a dominant culture, particularly if we can deconstruct the tools of power that it chooses. Because sometimes within the authentic culture you can find tools for redress and for intervention more powerful than military and economic tools. Anyway, that’s another issue. Human culture and multi-class of civilization that Samuel Huntington talks about – human culture as human reality – is that which celebrates uniqueness, the varied rich fabric of diverse cultural life entities while embracing cohesiveness of global human values. It is finally, indeed heart-warming, to witness and to participate in this conference; to see such a convergence of wills, and again to adopt the unorthodox view and look in a different perspective at reality. And, as the UN embarks on its 21st century quest with an agenda of peace and partnership that is capable of forming new relationships with civil society institutions and NGOs, and comes to grips with emerging global realities and challenges -- and the great challenge, of course, is to also have the UN redefine itself and reinvent itself and carry out, as an act of will, the necessary changes. I wholeheartedly wish you success and power in this endeavour. Thank you very much.

Accreditation
Form 2006

22-23 Feb. 2006 Annual DPI/NGO Orientation
Programme