By Afif
Safieh
(This
is a transcript of the unwritten lecture delivered by
Afif Safieh the Palestinian General Delegate to the U.K.
at Chatham House/The Royal Institute for International
Affairs on Wednesday July 13-2005).
I feel
privileged to have been invited to address such a
distinguished audience at such a prestigious forum.
Speaking today, almost a week before the end of my
official duties in London, I cannot but recall that I
started my assignment in London with a Chatham House
lecture in September 1990 when I had to step in at the
last moment to replace Hani Al Hassan in a session
chaired by the late Sir John Moberly.
Let me
first give a short history of the Palestinian diplomatic
representation in
London.
Location: >From the early 1970s until
1986 the Palestinian diplomatic representation was part
of the Arab League
Office in 52 Green Street. In 1986 it moved to
independent premises in South Kensington at 4 Clareville
Grove. For austerity measures, in 1996 we moved again to
a smaller but more modern office in a lesser
neighbourhood-Hammersmith at 5 Galena Road.
Appellation: From the early 1970s
until 1988 the mission was called PLO Information
Office. Then in 1988, because of our peace initiative
based on our acceptance of the two state solution, and
in agreement with her Majesty’s government, the
Delegation was upgraded to PLO General Delegation. In
1993, just after the
Oslo breakthrough, the delegation was renamed
Palestinian General Delegation, representing the PLO and
the PNA at the same time. We were then authorised to
fly the Palestinian flag which we did at a very moving
ceremony attended by William Ehrman the head of NENAD
the Near East/North Africa Department on behalf of the
Foreign Office and the members of the Council of Arab
Ambassadors.
Representation: The first PLO
representative was the late Said Hamami, from the early
seventies until he was assassinated in 1978. I never
met Said but he was undeniably a very effective
representative and I still feel the impact of his
passage in London. He
was succeeded by Nabil Ramlawi, from 1978 to 1983, who
was then transferred to the U.N. in Geneva. He is now
in our Foreign Ministry in charge of the unit for
diplomatic training. Faisal Oweida followed from 1983
till 1990 and from here was transferred to Austria.
Unfortunately he died two years ago from cancer.
I am
the 4th Palestinian representative in
London. I do not
know if there were any assassination attempts. Any way,
if there were, they passed totally unnoticed by me.
Concerning my health, yes I suffer from diabetes,
cholesterol, high blood pressure and I am over weight
and a chain smoker. My doctor, every time she sees me,
tells me: “Bravo Afif for still being with us”.
Size:
In 1990, I inherited an office with 12 employees
including the secretary, the receptionist and the
driver. Then, because of budgetary constraints, the
number was brought down to five, to rise again gradually
up to 8 .
In
those 15 years, I have dealt with 3 Prime Ministers:
Margaret Thatcher, John Major, and Tony Blair. With 4
Secretaries of State: Douglas Hurd, Malcolm Rifkind,
Robin Cook and now Jack Straw. With ten Ministers of
State: William Waldgrave, Douglas Hogg, Sir Jeremy
Hanley-during the Conservative period, then with the
late Derek Fatchett, Peter Hain,
Brian Wilson, Geoffry
Hoon, Ben Bradshaw, Baroness Symons and now with Dr. Kim
Howells.
During
these 15 years I have arranged and organised 10 Arafat
visits to
London, three of them mainly connected to meetings with
Madeleine Albright. We have more recently arranged a
visit for our Prime Minister Abu Ala’a last year and
this year for President Mahmoud Abbas for the London
conference on the 1st March.
The
upgrading was gradual. Landing in town in September
1990, it was prohibited for me to have any ministerial
level contacts. Since then I have become familiar to
10 Downing
Street, to the Foreign Office and to
Westminster-Whitehall in general. Christ’l and I
started being invited to the Tea Garden Party by Her
Majesty the Queen, first with the crowd, then we were
upgraded to the diplomatic tent, which is for junior
diplomats and then to the Royal tent itself. We have
been invited to a Royal Banquet in Buckingham Palace for
a visiting Head of State. We are also yearly invited to
the Trooping the colours, the Lord Mayor’s Banquet and
to Ascot, only to discover that I am not particularly
enamoured with horse racing. Without forgetting the
annual invitation to the prestigious Diplomatic Dinner
by De La Rue who hope to be contracted to print one day,
hopefully soon, our national currency.
Job
Description: What does a Palestinian
representative do? We have all the responsibilities,
burdens and expectations of an embassy. Yet we neither
have all the privileges nor the immunities nor the
financial capabilities of a normal embassy. We are
still a national liberation movement, still struggling
for independence and statehood.
How do
I define my job description? Wherever I am posted , I
consider that there are 10 layers of work that we have
to handle:-
1-
Government
2-
Parliament
3-
Political parties
4-
the Diplomatic corps
5-
the media
6-
the NGO’S
7-
the Palestinian
community
8-
the Arab community
9-
the Muslim community
10-
the Jewish community
This in
addition to the regular reports to the leadership and
some consular duties. We neither issue passports nor
visas but we authenticate documents, power of attorney
etc… In moments of optimism we do have some commercial
duties with companies consulting us about potential for
economic transactions.
Let me
go through those different “layers” of work:
1-
The government: At the very beginning it was mainly
the
Foreign Office and at a sub ministerial level. Now it
is the Foreign Office at all levels, but beyond it, we
have to deal with many other departments, including the
Prime Minister’s office and different Ministries.
2-Parliament:
I really gave great importance to my dealings and
interactions with both Houses of Parliament. I was
invited three times for hearings by the Select Committee
for Foreign Affairs, the first time in April 1991.
In the
House of Commons we have 5 institutional interlocutors
and channels of communication. The first is
CAABU, the
Council for the Advancement of Arab British
Understanding that has a triple chairmanship now from
the three major parties: John Austin, Crispin Blunt and
Colin Breed. The second is the Britain/Palestine all
party parliamentary group, that was presided over first
by Ernie Ross then by Dr. Phyllis Starkey and now by
Richard Burden. Then we have the Labour Middle East
Council, the Conservative Middle East Council -which was
created by Lord Gilmour and Sir Dennis Walters, then was
presided over by Nicholas Soames - and the Liberal
Middle East Council that was presided over by Lord David
Steel and now by Sir Menzies Campbell.
3-
Relations with political parties take place
throughout the year and each time I have a dignitary or
a delegation, I make sure that they meet the leadership
of the opposition parties as well. But the busiest
period is during the season of the annual party
conferences in late September and early October. I
usually have one or more fringe meetings. Those fringe
meetings are extremely important because they help shape
perceptions, policies, projections and predictions.
4-
The Diplomatic Corps : In a lesser capital,
relations within the Diplomatic Corps are more
horizontal: a bridge club, a tennis players network,
frequent gastronomic trips from The Hague to Brussels
etc… Such leisurely pursuits are unthinkable in
London. Because
of the intensity of bilateral relations, the volume of
visiting delegations, ministerial, parliamentary etc,
the size of the community, relations are more of a
vertical nature. But the Council of Arab Ambassadors
remains an extremely important forum and the resulting
joint activities are of great value. I have always
drawn the attention of our British interlocutors to the
exceptional importance of this Council composed “of
former ministers and those who never wanted to be
ministers”.
5-
The Media:Beside the importance of the British media
and its pool of sophisticated and knowledgeable
journalistic community and the heavy presence of
international media outfits,
London is also the media
capital of the Arab world. It hosts all the Pan Arab
dailies distributed from Morocco to Mascat, as well as
many weeklies and monthlies, without forgetting the
proliferating T.V. satellite stations many of whom were
born in London or have their second most important
offices located here.
6-
The N.G.O’s : This is the largest “layer” and to
which I devoted much time. It includes Churches, trade
unions, university campuses, think tanks, human rights
institutions, solidarity groups etc… On the lecturing
circuit, this is the most demanding category. To take
the Churches as an example, I have had the privilege to
address the Annual General Assembly of the Church of
Scotland and of the United Reform Church, to lecture
twice at Wesley Chapel of the Methodist Church, stayed
regularly in touch with the Archbishop of Canterbury and
the Cardinal Head of the Roman Catholic Church.
7-
The Palestinian Community: It might not be as big as
our communities in the U.S.A.,
Chili, Canada, Australia
or even Germany but it an extremely important community,
concentrated mainly in the London area and is in more
intense contact with the homeland and the region than
other diaspora communities.
For
example, because
London is such an
important Arab media center, we probably have here more
than a 100 Palestinian journalists, second numerically
only to Palestine itself. Throughout the years, many
institutions were established in London. The
Association of the Palestinian Community, of which I am
the patron, has a constitution, a general assembly every
two years, democratic elections and already 7 successive
presidents. In addition, there are charities like
Medical Aid for Palestinians MAP and Interpal or
organisations dealing with lobbying and raising
awareness like The Return Center or Arab Media Watch.
We the
Palestinians, we have become the Jews of the Israelis
and today, because of our geographic dispersal, we are
“a global tribe”. With the right approach, we could
turn that into a source of empowerment.
8-
The Arab Community: We dispose of no accurate
figures because in the national census there is no such
category for “Arabs” but “Muslims” and “Others”. A
conservative estimate would be of over 400.000 British -
Arabs. Politically speaking it is still an invisible
community, the last ethnic minority to be totally
unrepresented in both Houses of Parliament. This is due
to the a combination of factors: absence of any
governmental encouragement and insufficient
assertiveness by the community itself. The Arab Club
and national associations are regular interlocutors of
the Palestinian delegation.
9-
The Muslim Community: Now close to 2 millions with
already 5 members in the House of Lords and 4 elected
members of the House of Commons. Their electoral weight
is increasingly being felt. Since my arrival to London,
I am in regular contact with the Union of Muslim
Organisations U.M.O. and the Muslim Council of Britain
M.C.B., lectured at the invitation of “City Circle” a
network of second and third generation Muslims who work
in the City….
10-The
Jewish Community: Wherever I happen to live or work,
I devote a lot of time interacting with the Jewish
community and many of its institutions. I have
frequently lectured in the Liberal Synagogue in St
John’s Wood, always kept close relations with the Jewish
Socialist Group, Jews for justice, friends of Mapam,
friends of Peace Now, Neturai karta, etc … June
Jacobs, Rabbi David Goldberg and many others are
personal friends of both
Christ’l and myself.
Some
years ago, the Jewish Chronicle published, unaltered, a
long letter of mine where I said: “I never compare the
Palestinian Nakba / Catastrophe to the Holocaust. Each
tragedy stands on its own. I never indulge in
comparative martyrology. If I were a Jew or a Gypsy,
Nazi barbarity would be the most horrible event in
History. If I were a Native American it would be the
arrival of European settlers that resulted in almost
total extermination. If I were a Black African, it
would be slavery in previous centuries and Apartheid
during last century. If I were an Armenian, it would
the Ottoman/Turkish massacres. If I were a Palestinian
– and I happen to be one – it would be the Nakba.
Humanity should condemn all the above. I do not know of
a way to measure suffering or how to quantity pain but
what I do know is that we are not Children of a Lesser
God”
The
broader picture: evolution of European perceptions
1948:
European public perceptions of the Palestinian problem
passed through a variety of phases. European
anti-Semitism was decisive in the birth then the success
of Zionism in
Palestine. Without the “Dreyfus Affair” there would not
have been Theodore Herzl’s manifesto: “The Jewish
State”. Without Hitter’s accession to power in the early
1930’s and Nazi atrocities, Zionism would have remained
a minority tendency within Jewish Communities. Both Abba
Eban and Nahum Goldman wrote in a variety of books that
the “exceptional conditions” of the birth of Israel
wouldn’t have been possible without “the indulgence of
the international community” as a result of the World
War II. “Exceptional conditions” meant the atrocious
conditions in which the majority in Palestine became the
minority and the minority a majority.
Alas
the Palestinian dispossession and dispersion, the Nakba,
took place with
Europe… applauding. We
were the victim of the victims of European history and
were thus deprived of our legitimate share of sympathy,
solidarity and support.
1956:
I do not think that the tri-partite
aggression against Egypt
in 1956 made much of a fracture in the political
establishment here in the U.K. Yes it shortened Anthony
Eden’s premiership. Yes, the late Lord Christopher
Mayhew committed political harakiri when it was
predicted that he had prime ministerial potential. Yes,
the late writer Peter Mansfield resigned from the
Foreign Office but there was no major crack in society.
In France, its impact was by far more serious. It helped
terminate the 4th Republic and the political
careers of Gaston Deferre and Guy Mollet, brought back
de Gaulle to power in 1958 and thus contributed to the
reorientation of French foreign policy.
1967:
If one reads the book of Livia Rokach, the daughter of
the first Mayor of Tel Aviv, on the Diaries of Moshe
Sharett, one learns that Ben Gourion had two strategic
doctrines. One was the periphery theory: since our
environment is hostile, we have to make an alliance with
the environment of our environment meaning
Turkey, Iran and
Ethiopia. The other doctrine could be summarised thus:
we should know how to provoke the Arabs into provoking
us so that we can expand beyond the narrow boundaries we
have had to accept in 1948-49. That model applies
perfectly to the escalating crisis that led to the 1967
war. General Matti Peled was known to have said:
“believing that Israel was in danger in 1967 is an
insult to the Israeli army”.
1967 is
important because
Israel starts to be
perceived as an occupier. The facilitation of mass
Palestinian departures to get rid of undesirable
demography, the illegal annexation of expanded East
Jerusalem, the beginning of settlement building, all
start to tarnish the Israeli image.
1973:
That was an important strategic moment and undeniably a
demarcation line.
Europe shows understanding towards the Arab military
initiative to reawaken a dormant diplomatic front. The
oil crisis that followed revealed the depth of
interdependence, economic and on the security level
between Europe and the Arab World and the risk of
regional over-spills. The Euro-Arab dialogue is
initiated and the need for an equitable solution for the
Palestinian problem emphasized.
1977:
The first electoral defeat by Labour liberates more
segments of Western public opinion anesthesized by the
soothing discourse of the labour leadership and their
savoir-faire in matters of public relations. The raw
discourse of Likud, their vociferous and vehement
statements reflect better the reality of oppression.
The Kibbutz movement , this “paradise on earth” used to
seduce public opinion is discovered as a fading
phenomenon that never represented more that 3% of
society and of the Israeli economy anyway mainly built
on confiscated Palestinian land. Under
Israel, Palestine. A
very stubborn Palestine indeed.
1982:
The invasion of Lebanon
was an eye-opener. An unprovoked war. Analysts said
then that “it was a war out of choice not out of
necessity” Many Jewish and Israeli writers announced
“the end of the purity of arms”.
1987:
The first Palestinian Intifada. Mainly non violent
coupled in 1988 by the P.L.O. peace initiative of a
Two-State solution and ushers a new era in which the
media starts to better balance its coverage giving more
time and space to Palestinian spokespersons carrying our
version of history.
My term
of duty in London
Let me
first say that
London, for an Arab or a
Palestinian diplomat, is an emotionally difficult
posting, from the Balfour Declaration to the Gulf wars.
Yet I have to commend all my interlocutors for their
profound decency and extreme professionalism.
1990:
I landed in town in September 1990 and it was not a
soft landing coinciding it coincided with the first
Gulf crisis and Saddam Hussain’s occupation of
Kuwait.
We were
accused then to have bet on the wrong horse. My major
concern was not to get politically marginalised. I
detested Saddam, the occupation of
Kuwait, the rapid
deployment of foreign troops and the preparations for
war. I kept my adherence to the diplomatic option that
I favoured. On a David Frost Sunday programme I stated:
“You have seen Yasser Arafat kiss the cheeks of Saddam
but you did not bother to ask what he was whispering in
his ear”.
1991: With
the end of the Gulf war, James Baker started his shuttle
diplomacy. From London,
we played an important role to project the image of the
indivisible nature of the Palestinian people and of its
national movement. In London several publicised
meetings took place between PL.O. officials, Palestinian
personalities from the occupied territories and
diaspora intellectuals
like
Edward Said and Ibrahim Abu Lughod. The British
Government offered us facilitations so that Faisal
Husseini and Hanan Ashrawi could “slip” through
London to Tunis
for consultations. My position was: the P.L.O. is, at
the same time, an institution and an idea. If ten
thousands work in the institution, the 9 million
Palestinians are the powerful vehicle of the idea. The
P.L.O. has represented the Palestinian people for over
25 years. Now it will be the Palestinians representing
the P.L.O. I frequently repeated then that the P.L.O.
had become “unreasonably reasonable” having accepted
that in the Madrid conference the Palestinians were
“half a delegation, representing half the people seeking
half a solution”.
1992:
While negotiations are stagnating in
Washington, the Oslo
process starts… in London. On the 2nd of
December the steering committee of the Multilateral
Talks held its meetings in London. Abu Ala’a was the
coordinator of the Palestinian negotiating teams but
could not--the P.L.O. was still excluded--attend
himself. While the formal official event was taking
place in Lancaster House, Abu Ala’a and myself met at
the Ritz Hotel with Yair Hirshfield an assistant of
Yossi Beilin, with Terry Larsen, the Norwegian, hovering
on the sides.
1993:
The
Oslo breakthrough
and the White House
signature. History in the making, I kept repeating.
The specificity of the Palestinian situation: “a
leadership in exile, a demography dispersed, a geography
occupied” could move towards normality or the semblance
of normality of “an authority over a demography over a
geography”.
1994: My
application for “family reunification” in
East Jerusalem submitted
by a distant relative …my mother, was rejected by the
occupation authorities. I had planned to abandon
politics and diplomacy and start an English weekly in
Jerusalem: “The Palestinian”.
The
beginning of disenchantment with the peace process. My
message was : Israel seeks a diplomatic outcome that
would reflect: 1- Israeli power and intransigence, 2-
The American constant alignment on the Israeli
preference, 3- Russian decline, 4- European abdication,
5- Arab impotence, 6- and what they hope to be
Palestinian resignation. My advice was: do not confuse
realism with resignation.
1995:
All Palestinian factions abide to an unproclaimed
cease-fire. Assassination of Rabin by a Jewish
extremist. The Israeli Government provokes the Islamic
tendencies by the assassination of Shikaki in
Malta and the “Engineer”
in Gaza.
1996:
Successful Palestinian Presidential
and legislative elections. Retaliation of the Islamic
tendencies in response to Israeli assassination policy.
Peres wages war in
Lebanon ending with the Kana massacre. “Retaliation” of
the Palestinian Israeli voters through abstention and
election of Netanyahu whom I described as “a pyromaniac
on a power keg”. My lectures are often titled: “From
breakthrough to breakdown?”. Still then followed by a
question mark.
1997: Diplomatic
stagnation. Instead of a permanent peace we live
through the farce of a durable… peace process.
1998:
Three meetings between President
Arafat and Madeleine Albright in
London. Increasing
irritation of the American administration with
Netanyahu’s rigidity. His damaging of American-Israeli
relations is one of the factors that lead in 1999 to his
electoral defeat opposite Barak.
1999:
Barak a monumental disappointment. A complex
individual, he alienated his colleagues within Labour
and antagonised his coalition partners. Freezes the
Palestinian track and flirts with the Syrian track.
2000:
Barak wants to over jump the interim
phases and move directly to final status talks. Arafat
makes known that he believes that to be premature
because insufficient home work was done. The American
side restricted itself to convey to us Israeli
proposals. David Aaron Miller, in a recent candid op-ed
in The Washington Post-titled: “Israel’s lawyer”--writes
that had the American side presented the “Clinton
Parameters” in Camp David in July rather than, too late
in December, we would have had an agreement then.
The
failure of
Camp David heightens
tensions. The provocative Sharon visit to the Dome of
the Rock ignites the situation. The Mitchell report,
some time later, admits that the second Intifada started
by being non-violent and that the ferocious repression
by the Israeli side, causing more than a hundred
fatalities the first two weeks, pushed a few on our side
to resort, unwisely, to using arms.
2001-2002: In the internal debate, I
lobby for a unilateral Palestinian cease-fire.
Clinically, I believe that the Israelis should be aware
that they cannot terminate the Intifada and that we
should be aware that by the Intifada alone, we cannot
terminate the occupation. There is a need for a
diplomatic initiative.
2002:
The Diplomatic initiative occurs when the
Beirut Arab Summit
adopts the Saudi peace initiative. It is, alas, followed
by a Hamas suicide bombing in Netanya. Sharon, offered
a choice between reciprocating to a diplomatic ouverture
or a retaliating to a military provocation chooses the
latter. The world suffering from self-inflicted
impotence, watches the reinvasion of the already
occupied territories. The Nakba is definitely not a
frozen moment in history that has recurred sometime in
1948.
2003:
The previous September, Tony Blair,
at the Labour annual conference, is very warmly
applauded when he announces that he will convene an
international conference to help resolve the conflict.
The conference convened turns out to be more modest than
expected: “on Palestinian reforms”. Even that
displeases Sharon who tries to sabotage the
London gathering by
preventing Palestinian ministers from travelling.
Fortunately modern technology and video-conferencing
salvage the day. Here in London, I have to carry the
burden. The Message: “Reform, meritocracy, transparency
are not conditions to be imposed on us by the outside
world. They are a Palestinian expectation, aspiration,
a right and even a duty. Yet I warn: the issue of
Palestinian reforms should not be the tree that hides
the forest and in this case the forest is an ugly
spectacle of occupation and oppression.
2004:
Again, during the Labour party
conference end of September, Tony Blair gets the loudest
applause for his passage “Come November…. I will make it
my personal priority…” I have, since then, often
invoked this Blair speech to prove that Yasser Arafat
was not the obstacle to peace. End of September, Arafat
was not dead. He was not even ill. By “Come November”,
Tony Blair meant when we have the American presidential
elections behind us.
2005:
With the disappearance of the founder
of the contemporary Palestinian national movement, I
frequently refer to Max Weher who spoke of the phases of
leadership and legitimacy: 1- the traditional phase, 2-
the charismatic phase, 3- the institutional phase. The
successful presidential elections, competitive and
internationally monitored is a good omen for the
future. Having witnessed the end of the charismatic
era, a managerial revolution should now be on the
agenda. We all know
Sharon’s intention. How the world and the Quartet will
carry the peace process beyond the unilateral Israeli
disengagement from Gaza remains to be seen.
In
Conclusion:
We have
an excellent working relationship with Her Majesty’s
Government and with the entire political establishment.
In Parliament, it is the pro-Israeli lobby which is on
the defensive, more confortable in supporting an
Israel run by
Labour rather than the internationally embarrassing
Likoud.
All
opinion polls in
Britain, but also across
Europe, show that the trend is overwhelmingly in favour
of ending the Israeli occupation that has started in
1967 and the establishment of a Palestinian State. It
is no more a left wing phenomenon but we enjoy
confortable majorities among the voters of the Liberals
and also the Conservative.
Unlike
1973, when European Governmental positions were more
advanced than their public opinions, today public
opinions are more sensitive and supportive of
Palestinian aspirations than their governments. The
future looks promising. It is no more politically
suicidal to be pro-Palestinian. It is no more
electorally rewarding to be anti-Palestinian. Quiet the
opposite.
Thank
you very much
