Former presidential candidate of Palestine says Americans should help native land in reform.
By Gregg Krupa / The Detroit News
" DEARBORN - The new hopes for peace between Israel and the Palestinians will be dashed as long as Israel continues with plans for the large wall and the expansion of settlements in the West Bank, and if there is not a major international peace conference, said Dr. Mustapha Barghouti, a leading Palestinian politician and organizer.
I'm very worried about going back to the same partial, interim, little, small steps," said Barghouti in an exclusive interview Monday with The Detroit News. "That becomes quickly hostage to those who practice violence and those who do not want a peace process to take place, whether they are extreme on the Israeli or Palestinian side.
"That is why I think the only way out of this dilemma is to call for an international peace conference, and the United States must play a role here and put the whole peace process back to what it was originally, which is international legitimacy, and international law, and international direction," he said.
Barghouti finished second to Mahmoud Abbas in the Palestinian Authority's election for president in January. For nearly 30 years, Barghouti has helped build health care and civil institutions in occupied Palestine. He is secretary of the Palestinian National Initiative, an opposition movement, which has advocated for democratizing and reforming the Palestinian politics and government.
Barghouti founded the national initiative with several prominent opposition leaders, including Edward Said, the Palestinian-American intellectual and educator, who until his death in September 2003 was among the leading critics of the Palestinian politics and governance.
He visited Metro Detroit on Sunday and Monday, hoping to raise awareness of the plight of Palestinians in the occupied territories, especially among local Palestinian-Americans.
He also said they should be allowed to vote in upcoming elections in Palestine, as Iraqis were allowed to vote in February for a constituent assembly.
Barghouti told local leaders of the Palestinian community that their participation in the Palestinian struggle has been lacking since the mid-1990s, in part, because of their frustration with the lack of reform and democracy in the Palestinian Authority. He urged local Palestinian-Americans to get more involved, and he said their contribution is potentially crucial to peace and the establishment of a free, democratic Palestinian state.
"As a Palestinian-American, I have never seen a clear mission, a clear vision, a clear agenda to interact with the Palestinian struggle under occupation," said Imad Hamad, Michigan director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), who was born and raised in En-Helwe, the largest Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon.
"I think Dr. Barghouti's call and Dr. Barghouti's presence might give energy or a reason for better connections and organization," Hamad said. "It is long overdue and something that will be warmly welcomed by the community because there is a vacuum, honestly."
Several Palestinians interviewed after Barghouti's hour-long presentation in Dearborn at the Greenfield Manor Sunday night said they were unaware of many of the facts about life under the 38-year Israeli occupation, which he calls "among the longest now in modern history."
"We can not really have a peace process if this wall continues to build," Barghouti said, referring to the 30-foot concrete wall Israel is constructing along about 140 miles of occupied territory in the West Bank. "And we can not think about peace of the settlement expansion continues to happen.
"This is something the world must see," Barghouti told 500 people who gathered at the fund-raiser for the Palestine Office-Michigan.
"This is not a wall that is on the border," Barghouti said, referring to the 1967 border between Israel and the Palestinians of the West Bank. "This is a wall that is inside the occupied areas that touches houses and sometimes cuts the same house into two pieces."
Palestinians assert that because of the path of the wall, some 210,000 Palestinians will be cut off from the land intended for the Palestinian state.
The Israeli government argues that the wall has been made necessary by continuing terrorist attacks against Israelis, including one on a night club in Tel Aviv on Friday that killed four, wounded 50 and was the first such attack in four months.
But Barghouti said the wall is an impediment to both peace and Palestinian aspirations, especially the right they believe they had to return to property seized to form the state of Israel. Beyond the major issues in the conflict, he said, the wall is causing daily distress.
Ambulance rides that were 20 minutes to the nearest hospital now sometimes take hours. Gates intended to allow some limited access through the wall are opened by the Israeli Defense Forces for only 50 minutes each day. Barghouti told the story of a man in the city of Qualquiliya who approached him and said, "You know, we are unable to see the sunset anymore."
Barghouti also talked about 780 checkpoints the Israeli army has set up in the West Bank and how they have sharply restricted the movement of Palestinians. A number of local Palestinian-Americans said that they had no idea the checkpoints were so numerous.
It raised a major point Barghouti tried to impress upon Palestinian-Americans in Metro Detroit throughout his two-day stay: A lack of knowledge about Palestinian affairs in the United States is stifling the move towards democracy and the establishment of a Palestinians state.
"I think one of the major problems is that this narrative is not brought to the attention and the knowledge of people," he said. "If you don't know about this, how could Americans know about this?
"That is why I say that bringing knowledge and reality about our situation is of the most crucial importance," Barghouti said.
Amid their struggle, Barghouti said, 65 percent of Palestinians in the territories are at or below the threshold for poverty. Since 2000, some 60,781 houses owned by Palestinians have been destroyed by Israel.
Barghouti and other Palestinians are beginning to draw comparisons between Israel's strategy and tactics and the former apartheid regime in South Africa.
But while the destruction of homes has been criticized by the United States, the United Nations and others, the Israeli government said it has been necessary to punish terrorists, their families and to provide a deterrent against further attacks, like the suicide bombings that continue to wrack Israel.
Barghouti asserted that Israel has other goals, especially with the continuing construction of the wall and a plan, announced Friday in Jerusalem, for new expansions of settlements in the West Bank.
"What does that mean? Why do they do so?" Barghouti said. "They do so with one clear aim, which is the transformation of the Palestinians of the West Bank from a Palestinian territory with Israeli settlements as foreign bodies in it, to make it an Israeli territory with Palestinian communities as foreign bodies."
In the interview with The News, Barghouti said he and other Palestinians will work to have the votes of Palestinian citizens who live in other countries included in any new elections mounted by the Palestinian Authority. He argued that it is properly the right of Palestinians not in the West Bank or Gaza to participate.
"Iraqis could vote," he said, referring to the election last month in Iraq, "why not the Palestinians?
"And that's why I ask them to demand their rights - and, of course, we will demand it too," Barghouti said.
"I might even be more daring to say that if the Palestinians in the diaspora participated in the election, I probably would have won. So I have a personal interest in this."
