Moderator - Jane Wales: For the past half century the Middle East has been a prime concern for the United States. Crisis in the region have unfortunately been frequent. We are in the midst of one now, a conflict involving Israel and its neighbors as well as non-state actors, Hezbollah and Hamas. We're pleased to welcome tonight the head of the Palestinian mission to Washington D.C., Ambassador Afif Emile Safieh, he will discuss these and other events. He was born in Jerusalem in 1950. He obtained degrees from Catholic University in Louvain, Belgium where he met his wife and also got a degree from the Paris Institute of Political Studies. Early in his career he served as Deputy Director of the PLO's observer mission to the United Nations in Geneva and in 1978 he worked as a staff member to Yaser Arafat's office in Beiruit. Uh, he was in charge of European affairs and United Nations institutions. He later held academic positions at the Catholive University in Louvain and at Harvard University's Center for National Affairs. Following uh, that brief respite in academe, he returned to public life. He served as PLO representative to the Netherlands, was involved in the 1988 Stockholm negotiations that led to the first official U.S. PLO dialogue. And for the past fifteen years he has served as Palestine's ambassador to England and to the Holy Sea and he's assumed his current post in Washington D.C., in October of 2005. Please join me in welcoming Ambassador Safieh.
Ambassador Afif Safieh: Mrs. President, Ladies and Gentlemen for my wife and I it is a great privilege to be with you this evening in the World Affairs Council of the San Francisco branch. You know when we left London a joke was extremely fashionable in the academic circles and this was about the question: What's the difference between an ambassador and camel? And apparently the answer was that a camel can drink for ten days, sorry, a camel can work for ten days without drinking, while an ambassador can drink for ten days without working. Well, I want to set your heart at ease I'm closer to a camel. Number two ladies and gentlemen, whenever people know that I happen to be a Christian Palestinian, I'm often asked when did you convert to Christianity? And my answer is usually to say have we forgotten that Christ and the Christian message were born in my country and we took them and brought to Europe and beyond and they didn't come to us with the colonial era. And in a way being a descendant of the the early Christians, I mean by way of the historic if not a priest or a Christian. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm on a lecturing circuit in the Northern part of California and my message in a way to my different audiences has been constantly the same; I personally believe that history is undecided and the dilemma, the moral dilemma, the political challenge in the Middle East is the following: We either have one people too many, this time we the Palestinians, or we have a state which is missing. And I always tell my audiences, I never belong to the optimistic school of thought that promises victory and salvation to the oppressed. Unfortunately, Mrs. President, history is a symmetry of oppressed people who remained oppressed until they vanished into the historic oblivion. So usually I invite my audiences telling them, history is undecided, please help history make the right choice. My message to American, to American public opinion is the following: I'm not inviting you to sacrifice the tradition, friend. I'm offering you an additional friend, Palestine. And I believe many Americans and many Americans are not aware that the first country that were to recognize American independence was not France, who yes, deployed Lafayette and input was decisive on the contact of operations on the theater, but it was an (unidentified) country who was the first country in the world to recognize American independence, Morocco. And very few Americans and very few Palestinians as a matter of fact, know that after the first World War when our people realized that if you want to have the independence promised by foreign domination, we Palestinians then in 1919 would have preferred to have an American mandate, rather than a British mandate and that was for three different reasons and factors. One your anti-colonial experience, the founding fathers that defied the colonial rule, that was the first factor. The second factor was your late president, Woodrow Wilson, who went to the conference in Versailles, upholding the principle of self-determination and the third factor was the fact that in 1919 Capitol Hill Congress, Capitol Hill sent a congressional fact finding mission to Palestine and came back saying to Capitol Hill that the Balfour Declaration can only be implemented unless massive use of force is used against the indigenous population, which made Capitol Hill then extremely lovable to our ears and to our eyes. So ladies and gentlemen, I believe that between us and the Arab world in Palestine and between you in America, we do not have any differences on neither values or principles. We share the same principles and I remember 20 years ago reading the autobiography of Dean Acheson, the late Secretary of State, titled Present at the Creation, where he devotes enormous chapters to the creation of the UN where he said the UN charter is the condensed version of American political philosophy and American ideology and that's why I'm sometimes surprised that here in America, some have made it a vocation, a profession, a hobby, to attack the UN and the UN charter. Because the UN charter is the condensed version of American political philosophy that I happen to share. And I believe that what we expect from America is to reconcile its power with its principles, it will be better off in the world and in Palestine. Now moving around this country, my wife and I, I will not concede from you and (unidentified) transpiring through the whole hour. We are fascinated by American society. I believe America is a nation of nations. I believe you are the world (unidentified). And that gives you added responsibilities in our contemporary world. What is our contemporary, national system? During my lifetime, we have moved from the bipolar system with the rivalry of two nuclear superpowers where we in the third world were both afraid of superpower collision and sometimes of superpower collusion that would have been a political expense. Today we live in a unipolar, one polar, international system after the collapse of the Soviet Union. And I personally believe, ladies and gentlemen, that in a unipolar, one polar, international system, non-alignment should be what characterizes American foreign policy and let me tell you why. Because you are a nations of nations whenever America aligns itself on one belligerent party in a regional conflict, not only does it antagonize, offend and agitate all the other players of the regions in the conflict, but it also offends and antagonizes and agitates and ghettoizes a domestic component of your own national, social domestic fabric. Believe you me. I'm a foreigner in this country, but it must not have been easy to be a Palestinian-American, an Arab-American or a Muslim-American because often the perception was that your country of adoption is not sensitive to the aspirations, to the sufferings of your country of origin. Being a nation of nations, being the world of (unidentified) gives you Mrs. President, added responsibilities. Now I am known in my circles, among my friends and some of my foes as a peace enthusiast. And let me share with you why I believe the peace process so far has not been conclusive and fruitful and has failed for the last 12, 13 years. I believe the major flaw was that too much was left to the local, belligerent parties, the local negotiating partners to sort it out. And since we are speaking of two asymmetrical players. Israel was constantly tempted to dictate conditions on the other side. And the other side was constantly reduced to negotiate at the mercy of a very unfavorable balance of power. So we could not progress. And I told the many interlocutors I have in the Israeli political establishment, I told them it seems to me that Israeli political establishment left, right and center, you expect a diplomatic outcome that reflects Israeli power and in transitions, the constant, distinctive American on the Israeli preference, Russian decline, European advocation, adept importance and what you hope to be Palestinian resignation. (unidentified), it doesn't work that way. Such a diplomatic outcome can neither be equitable, just and fair, nor can it be permanent, lasting and durable. Let me tell you. I as a person from the third world, I'm a nostalgic loyalist. I was warned by friends of mine, never to show my pro-French, my Francophilia and never to mention the (unidentified) because it might make me less lovable and more unpopular than I should be. But in San Francisco, that enlightenment, that enlightened segment of American society, I'll take that risk. I am an admirer and a fan of General De Gaulle. I believe he's a statesman like they make them no more. And let me tell you, De Gaul after the '67 war, before he was a statesman, because he was familiar with what I call the pathology of conflict and the psychology of belligerence. He had a proposal of his own which unfortunately was disregarded. What was his proposal? He called for what he then called (Unidentified), meaning the coordination of the major four countries, China was not yet in the security council. And anyway he wanted the major four powers to discuss what is desirable for peace making in the Middle East and to notify and inform the local belligerent parties what the world expects from them. Ladies and gentlemen, unfortunately this proposal of (unidentified), never took off the ground. Why? Because America in '67 was not unhappy with the Israeli military victory. It compensated humiliations of Vietnam. The Soviet Union short sighted like they frequently could be, preferred a bipolar constellation and rapport and didn't see why they should give equal status to lesser countries like England and France. The English were unenthusiastic simply because the idea was French to begin with and ladies and gentlemen since then we have not permanent peace, but a permanent peace process which is the symptom of its failure. Now I for one, believe that (unidentified) that was occupied in six days can also be evacuated in six days, so that the Israelis can rest on the seventh and we can engage in the fascinating journey of nation building and economic recovery. What's lacking is the political willingness. And I'll tell you frankly, I believe that peace is too important to be left to one party to decide upon and peace between Israelis and Palestinians is not a compromise for me half way between labor and food, half way between Bebe and Barak, half way between Shimon and Sharon, no I believe we should have the international law and UN resolutions and our guiding commerce. And to tell you frankly, I am constantly intrigued by what I call American self-inflicted impotence as far as Israel-Palestine is concerned. America, today is the only superpower who behaves as a superpower all over the world, it has even conducted two controversial roles in the last five years. Yet we who are calling America to wage peace on us, still have to wait. And believe you me, if America was to wage peace on us, we would be the consenting victims. And let me tell you, not because I want to have anybody steal (unidentified), I personally believe the unorganized nature of the Palestinian tragedy is what has poisoned international relations in the last two decades. The unresolved tragedy of Palestine and we have become unreasonably reasonable. Today, we the Palestinians, the victims in this equation, we have become the Jews of the Israelis. We have been the victims of the victims of European history. We are the ones who moved faster beyond double negation towards mutual recognition in yet, we are still nowhere. Our society gets born from birth to death from womb to tomb, knows nothing else but of Aryan, military occupation. And let me tell you, you cannot envision what military occupation means for Palestinian society. Let me take one dimension without any emotion. Because of the 450 unnecessary military checkpoints that are tormenting my society, tripling its energy, suffocating the economy and strangulating the vibrancy of that society, we as Palestinians ever day lose 8 million working hours delayed on military checkpoints. In a world that is measured by "competivity" and productivity, we dilapidate and squander unnecessarily 8 million working hours everyday at checkpoint. I'm not speaking yet of the humiliation, the (unidentified) and the oppression that accompanies that. I believe enough is enough. Yet, to tell you very frankly, as a peace enthusiast, as the person who has had the privilege of introducing the two persons who became the negotiators of Oslo in London in December '92, I can tell you, if we are left to ourselves, we would never achieve this. What is acceptable to the Israelis is unacceptable to the Palestinians and vice versa. There won't be peace unless there is an assertive, visible, vocal, input by the third parties. And whoever speaks today of third parties thinks of the U.S. administration. And I believe that input should come with the U.S. as the engine and the locomotive, but through the quartet as you know this diplomatic construction of 2002 that has the U.S. aid, E.U., Russia and the U.N. To represent all the others. And I personally believe we all know what should be the contours and the content of that desirable peace. Its (unidentified), the two state solution along with the '67 alliance. We all know what should be the content and the contours, its the political willingness that is still lacking. Now we have been posted to Washington for the last nine months. We came here with great excitement, because my personal belief is that I would battle for independence and statehood, will either be won or lost in the U.S.A.. And I'm confident that our cry for freedom out of captivity and bondage will be heard by you. And let me tell you, we as Palestinians, we have the feeling that we have suffered three successive denials. And all denials are nauseating and revolting, including the ones that have been inflicted on us. We have suffered, Mrs. President, the denial of our mere physical existence, you are not without knowing that a founding principle of Zionism was that Palestine was a country without a people for the people without an (unidentified). Our mere physical existence was denied. Then for another denial of our national rights. For of them the other denial, denial of our suffering, which is extremely painful and often those who would recognize that yes, maybe history has been slightly unjust to us, everything is compared to the other one, its banal or they say that our suffering is of our own making so well deserved. Let me tell you as, I as a Palestinian and a Palestinian spokesperson, I've never compared national tragedies, I've never compared our neck by the catastrophe to the Holocaust. For the simple reason, one I don't like (unidentified) accountancy, I don't like comparative marketology, yet I've said and I've written that had I been a Jew or a gypsy, the Holocaust would have been the worst thing that would have happened in the history of mankind. Had I been a Native American, it will have been the arrival of the early European settlers that has resulted in almost a total extermination of the indigenous population. Had I been a black African, I would be slavery in previous centuries and apartheid in the last century, and had I been an Armenian, it would be the Turkish Ottoman massacres and if I were a Palestinian, and I happen to be a Palestinian, it would be the (unidentified), big catastrophe of 1948. But to humanity, and you are humanity, you should consider all the above as politically unacceptable, morally repugnant and I believe that you also believe that we are not children of a lesser god. And anyway, I don't like comparative (unidentified), because up until today, I haven't found a mechanism to measure pain and quantify suffering. I'm against suffering, I want termination of suffering and I don't enter into this city to have a discussion of comparative (unidentified). Now we are in America, my wife and I and we have carried our battle, trying to carry the message across the country from the east coast to the west coast gradually. And let me tell you, naively, and I promise to be grotesquely transparent. My conviction is that there are two America's, two historical (unidentified), two political cultures, not one and those two political cultures do not correspond to democratic America and republic American. Yes there is the first America of the early settlers that resulted in almost total extermination of the indigenous population. Yes there is the America that institutionalized slavery, yes there is the America that had a nasty conception of its frontiers and expanded the detriment of Mexico, yes there is this America. And maybe when Sharon used to speak of shared values, it was that common history that he had in mind. But ladies and gentlemen, fortunately for you, for the world, for us Palestinians, there is that other America. There is the America of the Founding Fathers of the Republic who defied the colonial rule. There is the America of Abraham Lincoln that took the painful decision of waging this Civil War to rid itself of slavery. It is the America of Wilson who went to the Versailles Conference upholding the principle of self- determination and yes there is the America of Martin Luther King Jr. who had a dream that we share across continents, across oceans. And you are that America, that second America, and I believe that America will listen to our cry for freedom out of captivity and I believe that is the America that we have to engage in a dialogue with so we can mobilize it for human rights, for peace. And today, ladies and gentlemen, in our planetary global village, there is no more local conflict, every local conflict has a global significance and believe you me, any conflict in and around Jerusalem, has by definition, a global significance. Let me end to leave more time for our interaction, ladies and gentlemen, by saying that even in the bleakest of moments, I've always considered that Palestine will resurrect and as you know, we in Jerusalem, we have had some previous experience in resurrection. Thank you.
