UN Asian Meeting on the Question of Palestine (Hanoi) – Press release

AT THE ASIAN MEETING ON THE QUESTION OF PALESTINE

DELEGATES CALL FOR THE CREATION OF AN INDEPENDENT

PALESTINIAN STATE WITH PRE-1967 BORDERS

AND EAST JERUSALEM AS ITS CAPITAL

HANOI, 1 March – At the first plenary session of the United Nations Asian Meeting on the Question of Palestine, the representative of Egypt said the question of Palestinian refugees was one of the oldest problems in the contemporary world. Four million Palestinian refugees were living in exile and in refugee camps, and deprived of their legitimate rights to return to their land. As an occupying power, Israel continued to see itself as standing above all international laws or treaties, even those of which it was a party. The time had come, he said, for the international community to adopt a resolute stance against Israeli practices and force it to face up to its responsibilities. Egypt, which was the first to advocate peace in the region, invited all peace loving peoples including the Israelis to continue the peace process without delay. To this end, Egypt would host for the fifth time a meeting of the Committee on the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian people in Cairo next June.

Suleiman Alnajjab a member of the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Special Envoy of PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, called for the creation of an independent Palestinian State with pre-1967 borders and East Jerusalem as its capital. Mr. Alnajjab declared that the right to self-determination for the Palestinian people was an intrinsic, natural right that could not be the subject of any negotiation by Israel or any other partner. No one, he said, had veto power over this right.

In his keynote speech, Mr. Alnajjab called for the upgrading of the status of the Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to enable its full participation in the upcoming United Nations Millennium Summit scheduled for September this year. He also asked that the Conference on the Fourth Geneva Convention be reconvened to reassess the Palestinian situation and take measures against Israel for violating these Conventions.

VNAM/QP/2000/22

The Palestinian leadership was committed to the peace process in the Middle East. This pledge would guarantee the security and well being of all States and people of the region – Israeli and Arab alike. The Palestinian people had refused to capitulate to the dictates of the Israeli Government. They were more united than ever, he said, on the main goals to rid itself of the Israeli occupation, establish an independent Palestinian State, and solve the Palestinian refugee problem.

Sari Nusseibeh, President, Al-Quds University, Jerusalem told the Meeting the Palestinians had been prodded by the Israelis and the Americans to adopt a negotiating approach of signing a series of interim agreements, leaving an end-product contract to the end. The initial negotiation engagement could be effected with relative ease. But once the engagement was effected, it would then become an uphill battle all the way to the top. It was never clear, he said, that the destination would in fact be reached. To lure the Palestinians to step into this path, various key words and concepts had been incorporated into the general framework of the interim agreement, such as resolution 242, the right to self-determination, the international consensus, and so on.

This step-by-step approach had led to disappointments in the peace process. Rather than assuming deception, high expectations on the Palestinian side were to be blamed. Israel had committed itself to United Nations Security Council resolution 242 as a foundation on which the negotiations would have been predicated. In doing so, Israel surely had also committed itself to the principle on which this resolution was founded, namely, the inadmissibility of acquisition of territory by force. The underlying logic of this argument could easily be extended to other areas slated for the final talks such as settlements, borders and water.

In his view, Palestinian expectations from these negotiations were solidly based on an internationally legal foundation to which Israel had committed itself in the negotiations. This being the case, there now existed a clear standard by which to determine whether Israel was using a genuine or deceptive strategy. Was Israel’s procrastination in implementing the interim agreement part of a grand deception strategy or an incidental and side issue arising from unnecessary complications in the mechanics of the negotiations of the interim phase? He wondered what Israel would gain from such procrastination. He called on Prime Minister Barak to state in unequivocal terms his readiness to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza, just as he had stated his willingness to withdraw from Lebanon.

Tamar Gozansky, a Member of the Israeli Knesset, said Israelis and Palestinians who had pinned their hopes for a peace settlement on a change of government in Israel had been disappointed. Prime Minister Barak had missed his own deadline of 13 February 2000 for signing a framework agreement with the Palestinians, and a third withdrawal set for 15 January 2000 had not been implemented. Talks between Israel and the Palestinians regarding a permanent settlement had been suspended.

The policy of land confiscation and usurpation that characterized the previous Israeli government had continued under Prime Minister Barak’s leadership. Since he had taken office, Israel had confiscated from Palestinian residents in the West Bank about 1,000 dunums of land, and an additional 5,700 dunums west of Ramallah and in the northern part of the West Bank were declared to be military “training areas.” In addition, the Israeli organization “Rabbis for Human Rights” had calculated that since Prime Minister Barak had taken office in June 1999, more than 100,000 dunums had been confiscated or declared off limits in the Hebron area alone. It was obvious that this policy of “quick grabs” sabotaged negotiations with the Palestinians and overshadowed his stated desire to quickly reach a permanent settlement with the Palestinians.

The establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, the evacuation of all settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and a solution to the issue of Palestinian refugees in accordance with United Nations resolutions were all basic conditions for a stable Israeli-Palestinian peace.

Lasting peace in the Middle East meant the establishment of firm security and stability in the region, the Meeting was told by Valeriyan Shuvaev of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. The peoples of the region must feel secure and must be certain that tomorrow would not bring a new confrontation, a new war and destruction. He had no doubt that the most important element guaranteeing the political conditions of security in the Middle East was the achievement of the legitimate national rights of the Palestinian people including its right to its own State.

It was clearly necessary to establish some kind of mechanism to guarantee the implementation of the agreements which had been concluded and fulfilment of tasks which would inevitably arise in the region under new conditions. He drew the Meeting’s attention to a Russian proposal put forward in January 2000 by Mr. Ivanov, the Russian Minister for Foreign Affairs, at the multilateral talks held in Moscow. In his opinion, such an organization would become the “heir” to the Madrid process and would constitute the essential structure to ensure long-term regional cooperation. An independent Palestinian State would be one of the key members and active participants of this body.

Judith Kipper, Director, Middle East Forum, Council on Foreign Relations, said that unlike some of the other participants she was optimistic about the future of the Middle East peace process. A Palestinian State was, for the first time in history, inevitable. According to statistics, over seventy per cent of the Israeli public said they believed there would be a Palestinian State. The conflict in the Middle East, in her view, was one of legitimate claims on both sides. Both parties, in the name of suffering and agony, had committed brutal deeds and crimes. Nevertheless, Israel and the Palestinians had decided themselves to sit together, to reduce tension and rhetoric. The apparent political paralysis in the current Israeli Government, she said, was due to “tribal” politics and internal divisions in Israeli society that had been exacerbated by the Netanyahu Government.

In her view it was a mistake for either side to strive for a victory in the peace negotiations. People should not think of peace as a victory. Peace was about gaining enough of what was being negotiated so that it would motive you to keep your agreements. It was quite extraordinary to see relationships develop between Palestinian and Israeli officials. In spite of profound disagreements in the course of the negotiations, they enjoyed very cordial personal relationships. Unless the parties developed empathy for each other, it would be unlikely that negotiations would move forward and produce results.

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2019-03-12T20:32:48-04:00

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