At the outset,
I would like to congratulate His Excellency Mr. Vuk
Jeremi. on his outstandingly successful presidency of
the General Assembly at its previous session. I would
also like to congratulate you, Sir, on your assumption
of the presidency at its current session and to wish you
every success.
I am pleased, indeed honoured, to address the
Assembly today for the first time in the name of
the State of Palestine, following the Assembly’s
historic decision on 29 November of last year to raise
Palestine’s status to that of a non-Member Observer
State. As representatives of their Governments and
peoples, Members have championed justice, right and
peace, while affirming their rejection of occupation
and standing for principles and ethics and on the side
of peoples yearning for freedom. For that, I once again
offer my deepest thanks and gratitude today on behalf
of Palestine and its people. The Palestinian people
celebrated resolution 67/19. They rightly felt that they
were not alone in the world and that the world stood
with them. They celebrated because they realized that
the overwhelming result of the Assembly’s vote meant
that justice was still possible and there was still room
for hope.
I assured the Assembly last year that our quest to raise
Palestine’s status was not aimed at delegitimizing an
existing State, the State of Israel, but at consecrating — I
repeat, consecrating — the legitimacy of a State that
should exist, which is Palestine. I have also affirmed
before the Assembly that our quest was not intended to
affect the peace process, nor is it a substitute for serious
negotiations. On the contrary, our quest is supportive of
the choice of peace and has revived a process that was,
in truth, moribund. As we have repeatedly affirmed and
proved in practice, the State of Palestine, which abides
by the Charter of the United Nations and resolutions
of international legitimacy, will exercise its role and
uphold its responsibilities within the international
system in a positive and constructive manner that
reinforces peace.
A new round of negotiations was launched a few
weeks ago, thanks to the tireless and appreciated efforts
of the President of the United States, Mr. Barack Obama,
and of the United States Secretary of State, Mr. John
Kerry. I affirm before the Assembly today that we
have begun those negotiations and shall continue them
in good faith and with open minds, strong will and
determination and a sharp focus on success. I assure
Members that we shall respect all of our commitments
and foster the atmosphere most conducive to continuing
the negotiations seriously and intensively, while
providing guarantees for its success and aiming at a
peace agreement within nine months.
As we engage in a new round of negotiations, we
must remind everyone that we are not starting from a
vacuum or from point zero, nor are we lost in a labyrinth
without a map or a compass, at risk of losing sight of
the destination. The goal of the peace that we seek is
defined and the objective of the negotiations is clear
to all, just as the terms of reference and the basis and
foundations of the peace process and of the agreement
we seek are longstanding and within reach.
As for the goal of peace, it is embodied in redressing
the historic, unprecedented injustice that befell the
Palestinian people in the Al-Nakba of 1948. It is the
realization of a just peace, the fruits of which can be
enjoyed by the Palestinian and Israeli peoples, as well
as by all the peoples of our region.
The objective of the negotiations is to secure a
lasting peace agreement that immediately leads to the
establishment of the independence of a fully sovereign
State of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital,
on all of the Palestinian land occupied in 1967, so that
it may live in peace and security alongside the State of
Israel. The negotiations must also resolve the plight of
Palestine refugees in a just, agreed-upon solution, in
accordance with resolution 194 (III) and as called for
by the Arab Peace Initiative.
We reaffirm our refusal to be drawn into the
whirlpool of a new interim agreement aimed at the
perpetuation of an interim State with interim borders,
or to enter into transitional arrangements that will
become the fixed rule rather than an urgent exception.
Our goal is to achieve a permanent and comprehensive
agreement and a peace treaty between the States of
Palestine and Israel that resolves all outstanding issues,
answers all questions and allows us to officially declare
an end to the conflict and to all claims.
The terms of reference and parameters of the
negotiations, their goals and the basis of the agreement
we seek are all found in the Assembly’s historic decision
to upgrade Palestine’s status, as well as in the countless
resolutions of this body and of the Security Council
and those of the League of Arab States, the European
Union, the Non-Aligned Movement, the African Union
and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation. In fact,
over the years, the parameters have become the basis
of an international consensus, indeed, near unanimity.
Exactly 20 years ago, precisely on 13 September
1993, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the
sole and legitimate representative of the Palestinian
people signed, together with the Government of Israel,
the Declaration of Principles Agreement on the White
House lawn in Washington, D.C, in the presence of our
departed leader, Yasser Arafat, and Yitzhak Rabin,
the late Israeli Prime Minister, the King of Jordan and
former President Bill Clinton.
Some five years earlier, on 15 November 1988,
the Palestinian National Council had adopted our
programme for the achievement of peace, thereby
taking an extremely difficult decision and making a
historic, painful and harmful concession. However, as
representatives of the Palestinian people, and having
long been aware of our responsibilities to them, we
mustered the necessary courage to accept a two-State
solution, namely, Palestine and Israel on the borders
of 4 June 1967 and the establishment of a Palestinian
State on 22 per cent of the land of historic Palestine.
Thus we realized our part in achieving a historic
settlement, upheld our obligations and fulfilled all of
the requirements from the Palestinian side as set by the
international community, in order to attain peace.
At the same time that the PLO affirmed its choice of
peace as a strategic option and a solution resulting from
negotiations, the PLO firmly repudiated violence and
affirmed an ethical, principled rejection of terrorism
in all its forms and manifestations — especially State
terrorism — while affirming respect of international
humanitarian law and United Nations resolutions.
As a genuine historic breakthrough, the signing
of the Oslo Accords led to an unprecedented political
movement that fostered great hopes and generated
high expectations. The PLO worked with dedication to
implement the Accords in order to end the occupation
and to realize a just peace. However, 20 years on, the
picture appears dispiriting and bleak: great dreams have
been shattered and goals have become more modest.
As much as we felt in those days that peace was
at hand, today we realize how far we are from it, for
the goal of the Accords has not been achieved, its
provisions have not been implemented and its deadlines
have not been respected. All the while, ongoing intense
settlement construction, which aims to change the facts
on the ground in the occupied Palestinian territory, has
violated the spirit of the agreement, struck at the core
of the peace process and caused a deep fracture in its
cornerstone, that is, the two-State solution.
The start of a new round of negotiations is good
news, but it cannot serve as grounds for complacency
or an exaggerated sense of tranquility on the part of
the international community. The negotiations we
are undertaking today with the Israeli Government
under the auspices of the United States require that
the international community exert every effort to
make them succeed, namely, through international and
regional organizations and individual States upholding
the international consensus on the goal of peace, the
objectives of the negotiations, the terms of reference
and the basis for a permanent peace agreement.
However, at the same time, the international
community is asked to remain vigilant. The international
community must condemn and put an end to any actions
on the ground that would undermine negotiations. In
that regard, I refer above all to the continuation of
settlement construction on Palestinian land, particularly
in Jerusalem. There is an international consensus
among the countries of the world, international and
regional organizations and the International Court
of Justice on the illegality and illegitimacy of those
settlements. The position of the European Union with
regard to settlement projects is a positive model of what
can be done to ensure an environment supportive of
and conducive to negotiations and the peace process.
It is also imperative that the near-daily attacks on the
religious sites in occupied Jerusalem, the foremost of
which is the Al-Aqsa Mosque, cease, as the continuation
of such attacks will have dire consequences.
History is the best teacher. It teaches us that waging
war, imposing occupation and building settlements
and walls may provide temporary quiet and temporary
domination, but they certainly do not ensure real
security or guarantee sustainable peace. Such policies
may create a specific reality on the ground, but they
certainly do not create a right or provide legitimacy.
Such policies may impose weak stability, but they
cannot prevent the inevitable explosion, because such
polices in fact fuel situations that are already inflamed
and cause them to explode. Above all, such policies are
incapable of extinguishing the aspirations of a people
for freedom, and cannot eradicate their living memory
or their narrative.
Therefore, what is required now is to heed the
lessons of history, to abandon the mentality of force
and occupation, to recognize the rights of others
and to work on an equal footing and in full parity to
achieve peace. What is required is to stop relying on
exaggerated security pretexts and obsessions in order to
consecrate occupation and to stop contriving demands
that push the conflict out of its defined political arena
and towards the abyss of religious conflict in a region
burdened with such sensitivities. That is something that
we categorically reject.
I am confident that the Israeli people want peace
and that a majority of them support a two-State solution.
We have always expressed our firm positions and have
always explained them at the negotiations table with the
Israeli Government and in the meetings and contacts
that we have intensified in recent years with a wide
spectrum of actors from Israeli society.
Our message is rooted in the idea that the two
peoples, the Palestinians and Israelis, are partners in
the task of peacemaking. That is why we keep reaching
out to the Israeli side, saying: let us work to make the
culture of peace reign, to tear down walls, to build
bridges instead of walls and to open wide roads for
connections and communication. Let us sow the seeds
of good-neighbourliness. Let us envision another future,
one that the children of Palestine and Israel enjoy in
peace and security, where they can dream and realize
their dreams, a future that allows Muslims, Christians
and Jews to freely reach their places of worship, and a
future in which Israel gains the recognition of 57 Arab
and Muslim States, the States of Palestine and coexists
in peace and each of their peoples can realize their
hopes for progress and prosperity.
While we discuss the realization of peace between
Palestine and Israel as an imperative to achieve a
comprehensive peace between the Arab countries and
Israel in accordance with United Nations resolutions,
we bear in mind the current volatile reality and
unprecedented dynamics besetting our region.
Palestine does not interfere in the internal affairs of
Arab countries, but we have clearly affirmed our stance
in support of the demands of the peoples of our region,
their choices and their peaceful popular movements to
achieve those demands, along with the programmes and
road maps they have adopted to reach their goals.
Furthermore, while we have condemned the crime
of the use of chemical weapons in Syria, we have
affirmed our rejection of a military solution there and
stressed the need to find a peaceful political solution to
fulfil the aspirations of the Syrian people.
The overwhelming majority of the Palestinian
people were born in Palestine and were sent into exile
after the 1948 Al-Nakba. However, 65 years afterwards,
they continue to be its direct victims. Since the start of
this year, 27 Palestinian citizens have been killed and
951 have been wounded by the bullets of the occupation,
and 5,000 fighters for freedom and peace are currently
being held captive in occupation prisons. Does anyone
deserve an end to this occupation and the realization of
a just and immediate peace more than the Palestinian
people?
This year and in the past few years, Palestinian
refugees, despite their neutrality, have continued to pay
the price of conflict and instability in our region. Tens
of thousands have been forced to abandon their camps
and to flee in another exodus, searching for new places
of exile. Do the Palestinian people deserve justice less
than the rest of the peoples of the world?
Since the beginning of the year, construction has
been under way on thousands of settlement units by the
occupation authorities, and construction tenders have
been issued for thousands of others on our occupied
land, even as additional vast areas of land are either
expropriated or declared off limits; 850 homes and
structures have been demolished.
Palestinians are forbidden to plant on their own land
and to use the majority of the area of our country, which
is only 22 per cent. They are prevented from using their
own country’s water to irrigate their crops. The wall
and checkpoints continue to tear apart the lives of the
Palestinian people and to destroy their economy. The
siege is growing tighter, along with the attacks and
oppressive discriminatory measures against occupied
Jerusalem, its holy places and its citizens. In Gaza,
for years an unjust blockade has been imposed on our
people.
So is there any people more deserving of freedom
and independence than the Palestinians? Since the
beginning of the year, 708 terrorist attacks have
been perpetrated by settlers against our mosques and
churches, our olive trees, our agricultural fields and our
homes and property. Is there the shadow of a doubt in
anyone’s mind that the Palestinian people have the most
need of security?
Also, is there a nobler mission on the international
community’s agenda than realizing a just peace in the
land of the monotheistic faiths, the birthplace of Jesus
Christ, the site of the ascent of the Prophet Muhammad
and the resting place of Abraham, the father of the
prophets?
As they remain steadfast on their land, the
Palestinian people also continue to build their
institutions, to strengthen internal unity, to achieve
reconciliation by returning to the ballot box, to
wage a peaceful and popular resistance to counter
the oppression of occupation and of settlements and
settler terrorism, and to hold fast to their rights. The
Palestinian people do not want to remain “out of place”,
in the words of Edward Said. Our people are waiting for
the day when their cause ceases to be a fixed item on
the agenda of the United Nations. Our people want to
have freedom, God’s gift to humanity, and to enjoy the
grace of living an ordinary life. For we, as Mahmoud
Darwish wrote, cultivate hope and shall one day be
what we want to be: a free, sovereign people on the land
of the State of Palestine.
I personally am one of the victims of Al-Nakba,
one of the hundreds of thousands of my people who
were uprooted in 1948 from our beautiful world and
thrown into exile. Like hundreds of thousands of other
Palestine refugees, I knew as a youth the pain of exile
and the tragedy of the loss of loved ones in massacres
and wars, as well as the difficulties of building a new
life from zero. In refugee camps and the diaspora,
in exile, we knew the bitter taste of poverty, hunger,
illness and humiliation, and the challenge of affirming
one’s identity.
Our people have walked the path of armed revolution
and have risen from the ashes of Al-Nakba. They have
collected their shattered souls and identity to put their
cause to the world and ensure that the recognition
of their rights is enshrined. We have walked a long,
difficult path and sacrificed dearly, and yet we have
affirmed at all times our active quest for peace.
Twenty years ago, on behalf of the Palestine
Liberation Organization, I signed the Declaration
of Principles Agreement, and we have since worked
faithfully and diligently to implement it, affirming to
all our respect for our commitments and the credibility
of our positions. The successive setbacks encountered
have not shaken our strong faith in the objective of a
just peace, and we shall continue to work tirelessly
and unwaveringly to see it realized. My own personal
hope is to see the day when a just peace reigns so that
the generation of Al-Nakba can pass on to its children
and grandchildren the flag of an independent State of
Palestine.
Time is running out; the window of hope is
narrowing and opportunities are diminishing. The
current round of negotiations appears to be a last
chance to realize a just peace. The mere thought of the
catastrophic and frightening consequences of failure
must compel the international community to intensify
efforts to seize this opportunity.
The hour of freedom for the Palestinian people has
rung. The hour of the independence of Palestine has
rung. The hour of peace for the two peoples — Israeli
and Palestinian — has rung.