At the
outset, I congratulate you, Sir, on your election as
President of the General Assembly for this session. We
wish you every success and express our confidence that
you will continue to pursue the great mission
undertaken by the United Nations, which constitutes a
monumental achievement in the history of humankind
towards the promotion of dialogue and understanding
and the resolution of issues and conflicts. That mission
continues to be carried out in accordance with the rules
and principles of international law, including
humanitarian law, and on the basis of covenants that
are consistent with the spirit of the times and the needs
of the Organization in resolving problems and conflicts
and confronting the enormous challenges before us,
including poverty, hunger, the environment and climate
change.
On this occasion, I also wish to commend the role
and positive contributions of your predecessor,
Mr. Srgjan Kerim, during the sixty-second session of
the General Assembly. I would also like to express our
deep appreciation for the efforts, positions and
initiatives of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. They
reflect his foresight and pragmatism regarding the
various issues before us and in all regions that are
suffering crises and that pose threats to world peace,
including in particular in the Middle East region.
37 08-52272
I highly value the Secretary-General’s
understanding of the need to address the political and
humanitarian issues concerning the Palestinian people
and our region, along with the important role that
continues to be played by various United Nations
agencies, including the United Nations Relief and
Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East
(UNRWA), which continues to shoulder great burdens,
especially in the Gaza Strip and in the refugee camps
in the West Bank, Lebanon, Jordan and Syria. In the
absence of such a continuous, outstanding role, we
would have suffered even more severe and perilous
crises than we have experienced to date.
This year, I should have liked to bear news of the
achievement of a comprehensive agreement between us
and our Israeli neighbours, bringing an end to the
Israeli occupation of our land since 1967 and to the
suffering of the millions of our people living as
refugees and displaced persons in exile from their
homeland. I believe that the entire world, with its
differing alliances and trends, shares that desire with
me, especially following the Annapolis conference late
last year and the relaunching of the political process.
That set the necessary guidelines for the advancement of
negotiations towards the conclusion of a comprehensive
and complete agreement on all final status issues. Such
an agreement would lead to the realization of peace
within our region and allow it to enter a qualitatively new
era of relations characterized by good-neighbourliness,
mutual recognition, security and open borders, and not
by walls and barriers.
I am certain that never in the history of the
conflict in our region have so many countries gathered
as those that attended the Annapolis conference or
participated in the consensus that arose there. Those
who met not only demanded vigorous action to
accelerate and advance negotiations towards the
achievement of a final peace agreement, but also
explicitly emphasized the need to remove all of the
obstacles that have continuously impeded the
negotiating process and cast doubt on its credibility,
usefulness and ability to actually resolve all aspects of
the conflict. The main obstacle I refer to is that of the
Israeli settlement campaign and its continuation
throughout the occupied Palestinian territory,
particularly in East Jerusalem.
All of the participants in Annapolis took a united,
firm and unprecedented stand calling for the immediate
cessation of illegal settlement activities. It was
recognized that this was a prerequisite for allowing the
negotiations to resolve the conflict to lead to an end to
the occupation and the grave, historical injustices
inflicted on our people over the long decades.
The participation of most brotherly Arab
countries in the Annapolis conference was not merely a
symbolic gesture. On the contrary, their participation,
in terms of both the level of attendance and the
substance of positions, was a reflection of their
genuine desire to embrace and support the political
process and to address it in real earnest on the basis of
the Arab peace initiative adopted at the Arab summit in
Beirut in 2002.
Allow me, from this rostrum to recall once again
the special importance of the Arab peace initiative. I do
this personally in order to draw attention to the
significance of each of its platforms, because it
represents a major joint Arab undertaking and offers a
historic opportunity for us to achieve peace, security
and mutual recognition for all.
Indeed, it is strange to hear comments, which we
do not understand or accept, that are used to justify the
continuing settlements in East Jerusalem and the rest of
the occupied Palestinian territory and refer to the land
as if it were not occupied territory or as if peace were
possible without an end to the occupation of all of the
Arab territories occupied since 1967, including the
occupied Syrian Golan and the Lebanese Sheba’a
Farms, and without an end to the occupation of East
Jerusalem, the capital of our future Palestinian State
and a city holy to hundreds of millions of the faithful
of the monotheistic religions.
For the purpose of the noble and peaceful
objectives of building of a new Middle East free of
destructive mindsets and irrational tendencies that run
counter to the highest human values preached by all
religions and creeds — a new Middle East free of
weapons of mass destruction — we have been and
remain committed to international legitimacy. We
extend our hands for dialogue and negotiation to
resolve the conflict in a way that provides all that is
required for coexistence and openness to the future so
we can build our societies and nations in accordance
with the aspirations of our peoples to progress and in
the spirit of the times.
In that context, we express our full support for
the continuation of the indirect talks currently taking
place between Syria and Israel with the help of sisterly
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Turkey. We hope that the process will culminate in the
achievement of justice, the implementation of
international resolutions and the affirmation of
international legitimacy.
For our part, we will continue to strive to achieve
the maximum possible progress in the current
negotiations between us and Israel through this year,
benefiting from past experience and relying on the
desire of all our peoples to realize a genuine and
comprehensive peace that will end decades of
occupation and hostilities and result in the attainment
of the two-State solution — the State of Palestine
living alongside the State of Israel on the basis of the
1967 borders — and a just and agreed solution to the
plight of the Palestinian refugees in accordance with
resolution 194 (III). In referring to the benefits of past
experience, I wish to convey clearly that partial or
interim solutions or the dropping or deferral of those
core issues are unacceptable and unviable and will
maintain the roots of the conflict, thus undermining
any achievement on the road to peace. The solution
must be comprehensive, complete, detailed and
wholehearted.
The solution we aspire to must include a
mechanism to ensure its full and faithful
implementation pursuant to the timetable agreed upon.
All that inevitably requires international supervision of
the implementation of the solution, as well as a more
effective role for the international Quartet in
safeguarding the solution we will reach and an
effective guarantor role for the Security Council and
various other United Nations bodies.
At this juncture, I would like to express our
appreciation for the role played by the United States
Administration, President George Bush and Secretary
of State Condoleezza Rice in advancing the
negotiations and the peace process, as well as their
efforts to remove the obstacles that stand in its way. I
also wish to commend the positions taken by the Arab,
Islamic and non-aligned countries, which have always
taken firm stances in support of a just peace. I would
like to express our appreciation for the role played by
the European Union, which has supported our efforts in
every possible way, and the role and positions of the
Russian Federation, the People’s Republic of China
and Japan, as well as of our friends and colleagues in
Latin America and Africa who have always supported
the advancement and continuity of the political
process.
As humankind celebrates the sixtieth anniversary
of the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, the conditions being endured by our people are
increasingly severe and complex. Our nation, which
possesses only a small area of land, continues to suffer
the fragmentation and discontiguity of its cities and
villages as a result of more than 600 checkpoints and
roadblocks on all main and secondary roads. There is
no precedent for that in modern history. The harshest
and most painful of those barriers are those that have
surrounded occupied East Jerusalem, severing the link
between it and its Palestinian surroundings, not to
mention changing the Islamic and Christian character
of our city.
Attacks by Israeli settlers on Palestinian civilians
have become daily occurrences. At the same time,
ongoing tragedies strike every Palestinian family with
the continuing detention and imprisonment of over
11,000 Palestinians in Israeli jails. I know of no
situation in today’s world comparable to ours, where a
people is subject to the detention of such large numbers
of its civilians and where prisons continue to be filled
with more and more accused who are guilty only of
wanting to be free and of envisioning a future that is
different from the reality of occupation, siege and the
loss of hope.
Despite those harsh circumstances, our National
Authority and governing institutions have exerted
every possible effort to improve our conditions in all
fields, including the security, economic, education,
health and cultural sectors.
I wish to express our gratitude to our brothers in
the Arab countries, to the General Secretariat of the
League of Arab States, and to the whole international
community for all the important assistance extended to
our people and our Authority in all aspects of the
endeavour to restore the Palestinian economy, provide
real opportunities for its advancement, and rebuild the
Palestinian security apparatus and the various
institutions and agencies of the Palestinian Authority.
In that regard, I wish to convey special thanks
and appreciation to all the envoys from other countries
who have provided assistance in several fields,
particularly Mr. Tony Blair, the Quartet Special Envoy.
It is with pride that I can say that, even under those
most difficult conditions we have been able to achieve
security, the rule of law and public order for most of
39 08-52272
our towns and districts, despite all the remaining
obstacles we have to confront.
However, we will continue to follow that same
path with firm determination and resolve. In that
connection, the Paris Donor’s Conference, followed by
the Bethlehem economic conference, were two special
occasions in support of our national economy, our
financial and economic institutions and treasury, and
assistance to the Palestinian private sector, which has
unwaveringly borne heavy burdens over the past years
and has not failed to develop and progress.
There is no doubt that the ongoing siege of the
Gaza Strip, where unemployment is endemic, is
compounding the tragic humanitarian crisis there. It is
unprecedented in scope and scale, and the
opportunities for education and medical care are
scarce, punishing and causing the malnutrition of an
entire generation with all the consequent risks for the
future of the entire people.
All of that is in addition to the transformation of
the Gaza Strip into a huge virtual prison holding nearly
1.5 million Palestinians. We have exerted all efforts to
get the siege on Gaza lifted, this dear part of our
homeland. In that regard, we express our deep
appreciation for the role played by the brotherly Arab
countries, especially Egypt, to alleviate the suffering
and to help us save our people from the extremely
difficult situation they find themselves in, including in
particular their efforts to end the division resulting
from the bloody coup led by Hamas against Palestinian
legitimacy more than a year ago.
As I have on more than one occasion, I would
like to reaffirm once again from this rostrum that we
will spare no effort to achieve Palestinian national
reconciliation. We have already announced a
preliminary plan that opens the door for this
reconciliation to be realized and the formation of an
independent, impartial Government that is acceptable
to all, but that will not place us back under siege again.
This Government will prepare for the holding of
legislative and presidential elections. We will continue
building a security apparatus based on professional
tenets, with the support of Arab security. After the
completion of those steps, it will be possible for us to
proceed further towards strengthening our
reconciliation and deepening the participation of all. If
that is not actualized, whoever rejects those principles
and does not conform with them must bear the
responsibility before our entire people and before the
Arab and international positions that reject this
disintegration and division.
In concluding my statement, I recall the words of
our great Palestinian poet, Mahmoud Darwish, whom
we recently lost and whose loss was that of a great
cultural and humanitarian symbol and icon. Mahmoud
Darwish glorified life and cherished his homeland,
calling on our new generations to love life on their land
and to preserve its continuity and to keep the torch
always lit. Mahmoud Darwish said,
“On this land there is something that deserves
life, on this land there was first the beginning and
the end — a land called Palestine — a name that
was and is and will endure”.