AddressBy  BY H.E. President Yasser Arafat To
International Middle East Committee Ramallah,

October 30^th, 1999

Mr. President, Mr. Secretary General,

Brothers and Friends,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is both an honor and a pleasure to welcome you once again in Palestine on the occasion of this meeting of the Socialist International Middle-East committee. The Socialist International is not only a political family to which we are proud to belong. It is also a moral authority, whose decisions constitute guidelines for more than a hundred and fifty parties and organizations throughout the world, and the importance of this meeting, on the eve of the oncoming Paris Congress, should not be underestimated. For you are going to discuss and adopt a draft resolution to be presented to the Council, and finally to the Congress, and which will therefore constitute a basic term of reference for the years to come. Let us all be aware of this responsibility and let our work today be a success.

Allow me also to send our Israeli comrades present here a special and warm greeting. For our partnership is the key to progress in the search for peace, and holds the promise of a better future for all the children of this area, who have lived too long under the threat of war and under the pressures of conflict and tensions, fear and bitterness. Our people and our movement have, for many years now, made the choice of peace, the Peace of the Brave, and we have not stopped upholding this an irreversible strategic option, even under the harshest of circumstances, and even when many of our people tended to despair of the very idea of Peace in the face of the difficulties, the setbacks and all the unkept promises. And I want to seize this occasion to salute the memory of all the victims of this century-old conflict, but particularly of those who have fallen in the combat for Peace, from Said Hammami, Ezzeddin El Qalaq, Issam Sartawi and so many of my brothers, to my late friend and partner Yitzhak Rabin, who had the courage to take the hand extended by the Palestinian people, and paid with his life for his determination to move towards peace and historical reconciliation between our two peoples.

Dear Comrades,

After three years of crisis and almost total stalemate under the previous Israeli government, hope has been revived. The victory of Prime minister Ehud Barak in the last May Israeli elections, expresses the will of the majority of Israelis to pursue the peace process announced in Madrid, and launched in Oslo. They have given him a clear mandate to achieve a just and durable peace in our region: to implement all the signed interim agreements, from the September 1993 Declaration of Principles to the Wye River Memorandum, through the September 1995 Interim Agreement and the Hebron Protocol, and to engage in serious negotiations to reach a permanent agreement on the issues which constitute the very substance of the conflict: the status of Jerusalem, the fate of Settlements, the Return of the Refugees, and the Borders of the Palestinian State, together with the crucial issues of Water, Environment, Regional Cooperation, as well as other issues.

Thus could we reach the Sharm El Sheikh agreement on a timeline for the implementation of the signed agreements, paving the way to the resumption of the negotiations on permanent status formally opened in May 1996, but never conducted.

Thus could we rejoice in seeing some crucial elements of the agreements at last implemented: another phase of Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank, two successive waves of prisoners release, the beginning of operation of the long-delayed safe passage between the two parts of the Palestinian territory. And we hope to see this forward motion continue until the full implementation of the interim agreements: the release of all prisoners, further redeployment, fully-safe passage for all Palestinians on both the southern and the northern route, the construction of the Gaza Harbor, and the return of the Palestinians displaced as a result of the 1967 war. This will create the conditions for fruitful negotiations on permanent status, while allowing us to pursue, with the help and support of the international community, the construction of our economy and the democratic development of our society.

But none of this, dear friends, will be of any avail unless Israeli settlement activities on the Palestinian territory stop effectively, and not selectively. Settlements, all settlements, are illegal. They contravene international Law, they contravene the agreements signed, which ban “unilateral measures liable to prempt, or prejudice, the outcome of final status-negotiations”. Above all, settlements are obstacles to peace, and they are also war-horses, the bastions and the banner of the enemies of Peace. Settlements are instruments of war, of conquest, of confiscation by force. They are incompatible with peace. A total freeze of all forms of settlement activity, land seizure and closure is a basic condition of success for the impending negotiations, where we will discuss the future of the existing settlements.

This applies equally to Bethlehem and Jerusalem, and Jerusalem is also on the agenda of our talks. The Israeli government must, in conformity with the spirit and letter of the agreements signed, abstain from unilateral measures in occupied Arab East Jerusalem, and negotiate the permanent status of Holy Jerusalem, the Capital of our Palestinian State, on the basis of UN Resolutions 242 and 338 – the fundamental terms of reference of the Peace-Process as a whole.

Allow me, dear friends, to say a word about international legality. International legality is indivisible. The UN Charter, the Geneva Conventions, all International Treaties are equally binding for all and everywhere. And it is an indispensable parameter in the search for a durable peace, even more so for reconciliation. Not absolute justice, which does not exist in this world, but true justice: Fairness and Equity, without which Peace cannot strike roots among the peoples. This is a matter we must remember when we approach the drawing of a just solution to the issue of Palestinian Refugees, on the basis of UN General Assembly Resolution 194.

Dear Friends, Brothers and Sisters, Ladies and Gentlemen,

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the core of the Arab-Israeli confrontation. It does not sum it up. There will be no real and durable peace relations between Israel and the rest of this area unless an Independent, Sovereign Palestinian State with Holy Jerusalem as its capital becomes a central element of regional stability. But there can be no stable Palestinian-Israeli peace unless we achieve progress on the Syrian and Lebanese tracks.

In the long and difficult path to end the conflict, however, we have discovered we were not alone. We have enjoyed the active support of the successive US administrations, whose tireless efforts to maintain the peace-process alive and to keep it moving forward. We highly value these efforts, the importance of which should not be underestimated, and next week I will meet with President Clinton and Prime minister Barak in Oslo. We have also enjoyed the support of the International Donors Community including the European Union, Japan, China, Russia, Norway, the Non-Aligned countries, the IMF and the World Bank, who have helped us survive under the very difficult conditions imposed upon our renascent economy. We have also enjoyed considerable economic, but also moral support from the European Union as a whole, and from its member-states individually, in the brave spirit of the March 1999 Berlin Declaration, besides the consistent support of our Jordanian, Egyptian, and other Arab brothers.

Last but not least, we have enjoyed the support of the Peace forces in Israel, and first and foremost of the majority of the Israeli electors who have voted for Peace.

Let your Resolution today reflect these basic facts. Let’s make it useful in our common endeavor to progress towards peace and a different future for all our children.

In the name of the PLO, in the name of the PNA, in the name of the Fatah Movement and in my own name, let me once again welcome you on the blessed land of Palestine.

Thank you for your attention.