Speech of Sari Nusseibeh
The New York Times
October 17, 2001,
BYLINE: By JOEL GREENBERG
DATELINE: JERUSALEM, Oct. 16
In a speech to an overflow crowd of Israelis at the Hebrew University on Monday night, Sari Nusseibeh, the new political representative of the Palestinians in East Jerusalem, aired views rarely heard here after more than a year of violence.
He criticized the Palestinian uprising as hopelessly mired in bloodshed and argued that a peace agreement incorporating a Palestinian state could only be reached if the Palestinians abandoned a longstanding demand for the return of refugees dislocated in war more than 50 years ago to their former homes in Israel. "The Palestinians have to realize that if we are to reach an agreement on two states, then those two states will have to be one for the Israelis and one for the Palestinians, not one for the Palestinians and the other also for the Palestinians," he said.
Yasir Arafat, the Palestinian leader, appointed Dr. Nusseibeh, 52, a well-known political figure and academic, last week to succeed Faisal Husseini, who died in May. Dr. Nusseibeh had worked closely with Mr. Husseini for years, guiding the first Palestinian uprising in the late 1980's and negotiations with the Israelis in the early 1990's. Despite his outspoken views, like Mr. Husseini he has impeccable nationalist credentials and roots in a leading Palestinian family in Jerusalem, factors that influenced his selection.
Although Dr. Nusseibeh is not formally a member of the Palestinian Authority -- because Jerusalem remains under Israeli control -- his appointment carries political weight. As the person representing Jerusalem's Palestinians to visiting foreign officials, Dr. Nusseibeh, like Mr. Husseini before him, is a symbol of Palestinian aspirations for a state with East Jerusalem as its capital.
While sharing many of his predecessor's views, Dr. Nusseibeh has been voicing opinions that reflect an important strain of dissent from the official Palestinian line.
The most effective ally the Palestinians could enlist in their struggle for statehood is the Israeli public, Dr. Nusseibeh argued in his lecture on Monday. "The Palestinians' real ally for the future is their enemy," he told his Israeli listeners, "and your real ally is the Palestinians." He also called the current Palestinian uprising a convulsion more than an organized revolt -- aimless, and sowing confusion among Palestinians.
Such unorthodox views, and frequent contacts with Israelis, have gotten Dr. Nusseibeh, an Oxford-educated philosophy professor, in trouble. In 1987 he was attacked by militant students who broke his arm after he held meetings with members of Israel's rightist Likud party to discuss outlines for a peace settlement.
In an interview today, Dr. Nusseibeh insisted that he was "not a political leader." Yet, after several years of political seclusion, his re-emergence to handle sensitive diplomatic contacts may indicate otherwise. He may be on the path to resuming the prominent role he played more than a decade ago, when he held secret talks with Israeli politicians, charted strategy for the first Palestinian uprising and later for Palestinian peace negotiators.
In 1994, Dr. Nusseibeh withdrew to academic life, becoming president of Al Quds University in East Jerusalem. But after Mr. Husseini's death, there were increasing indications that Dr. Nusseibeh, his close associate, might take his place.
Mr. Husseini's power base was Orient House, the headquarters of the Palestine Liberation Organization in East Jerusalem, where Dr. Nusseibeh worked for two years organizing teams of experts supporting Palestinian negotiators in talks begun at the Middle East peace conference in 1991 in Madrid. But he says he has no intention
of taking on the range of roles assumed by Mr. Husseini, an informal mayor for the Palestinians whose headquarters at Orient House, seized by Israeli authorities in August, also provided social services and legal aid.
Such services, he said, should be budgeted by the Palestinian Authority and delivered through nongovernmental organizations.
Instead of a political leadership centered on one man, Dr. Nusseibeh has proposed a congress of Palestinian community leaders in East Jerusalem that would look after local affairs and hold direct contacts with the Israeli municipality to solve problems.
The uprising has alienated even moderate Israelis, he said, degenerating into what he called sterile violence.
"We're telling the Israelis that we're going to kick you out: it's not that we want liberation, freedom and independence in the West Bank and Gaza, we want to kick you out of your home," he said. "And in order to make sure that the Israelis get the message, people go out to a disco or restaurant and blow themselves up. The whole thing is just crazy, ugly, totally counterproductive."
"The secret is to get the Israelis to side with you. We lost our allies."
