State of Palestine, 2012

I wish to

begin by extending my appreciation to the heads of all

the delegations who in their statements to the Assembly

stressed the urgency of progress towards the realization

of a just peace in our region, one which would allow the

Palestinian people to enjoy their inalienable national

rights.

Developments over the past year have confirmed

what we have persistently drawn attention to and warned of: the catastrophic danger of racist settlers moving into

our country. During the past months, attacks by terrorist

militias of Israeli settlers have become a daily reality,

with at least 535 attacks since the beginning of the year.

We are facing relentless waves of attacks against our

people, our mosques, our churches and monasteries,

and our homes and schools. They are unleashing their

venom against our trees, fields, crops and properties,

and our people have become fixed targets for acts of

killing and torture, with the complete collusion of the

occupying forces and the Israeli Government.

The escalation of settler attacks should not

surprise anyone, for it is the inherent byproduct of

the continuation of the occupation and a Government

policy that deliberately fosters the settlements and

settlers and deems their satisfaction to be an absolute

priority. And it is the inherent byproduct of the racist

climate fuelled by a culture of incitement in Israeli

curriculums and extremist declarations and fatwas,

which are rife with hatred and are rooted in a series

of discriminatory laws created and enacted over the

years against the Palestinian people by the Israeli

security apparatus and courts. Those entities provide

excuse after excuse for the settlers’ crimes and for

their accelerated release should one of them happen

to be arrested. Official and military commissions of

inquiry fabricate justifications for soldiers who have

committed what are clearly considered war crimes and

have perpetrated acts of murder, torture and abuse of

peaceful Palestinian civilians.

Over the past year, since the convening of the

General Assembly’s previous session, the occupying

Power has persisted with its settlement campaign,

focusing on Jerusalem and its environs. It is a campaign

clearly and deliberately aimed at altering the city’s

historic character and the glorious image of the Holy

City as etched in the minds of humankind. It is a

campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Palestinian

people of Jerusalem via the demolition of their homes

and prevention of their reconstruction, the revocation

of residency rights, the denial of basic services,

especially with regard to the construction of schools,

the closure of institutions and the impoverishment of

Jerusalem’s community via a siege behind walls and

checkpoints. That chokes the City and prevents millions

of Palestinians from freely accessing its mosques,

churches, schools, hospitals and markets.

The occupying Power has also continued its

construction and expansion of settlements in different areas throughout the West Bank and has continued

its suffocating blockade, as well as raids and attacks

against our people in the Gaza Strip, who to this day

suffer from the disastrous impact of the destructive war

of aggression committed against them a few years ago.

Nearly 5,000 Palestinians remain captive as prisoners

and detainees of conscious in Israel’s jails. In that

regard, we call upon the international community to

compel the Government of Israel to respect the Geneva

Conventions of 1949 and to investigate the conditions

of detention of Palestinian prisoners and detainees, and

we stress the need for their release. They are soldiers in

their people’s struggle for freedom, independence and

peace.

At the same time, the occupying Power continues

to tighten the siege and impose severe restrictions on

movement, preventing the Palestinian Authority from

implementing vital infrastructure projects and providing

services to its citizens, who are also being prevented

from cultivating their land and deprived of water for

irrigation. The occupying Power is also obstructing the

establishment of agricultural, industrial, tourism and

housing projects by the Palestinian private sector in

vast areas of the occupied Palestinian territory, which

are classified as areas subject to the absolute control of

the occupation, areas that encompasses approximately

60 per cent of the West Bank.

The occupying Power continues to deliberately

demolish what the Palestinian Authority is

building — projects funded by donor brethren and

friends — and is destroying the Authority’s building

projects involving roads, simple homes for its citizens

and agricultural facilities. In fact, over the past 12

months, the Israeli occupying forces demolished 510

Palestinian structures in those areas and displaced 770

Palestinians from their homes. Those measures have

caused great damage to our economy and impeded our

development programmes and private-sector activity.

They compound the socioeconomic difficulties of

our people under occupation, a fact confirmed by

international financial institutions. Israel’s overall

policy is ultimately leading to the weakening of the

Palestinian Authority, undermining its ability to

carry out its functions and projects and to implement

its obligations. This threatens to undermine its very

existence or cause its collapse.

All of that is taking place in the context of an Israeli

political discourse that does not hesitate to brandish

aggressive, extremist positions. In many aspects and in their practical application on the ground, they incite

religious conflict. That is something we firmly reject,

based on our principles and convictions and due to our

understanding of what it means to fuel such fires in this

sensitive area, which is full of explosive f lashpoints,

and how that can fuel the action of extremists from

various quarters, especially those trying to use tolerant,

monotheistic religions as an ideological justification

for their terrorism.

For our part, as proof of our seriousness and our

sincere intention to create an opening in this impasse,

we conducted exploratory talks with the Israeli

Government at the beginning of the year, at the initiative

of the brotherly Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. We

have also encouraged the expressed desires of several

countries to contribute to efforts to break the cycle of

deadlock and have ourselves undertaken initiatives

to create favourable conditions for the resumption of

negotiations. Unfortunately, however, the result of all

those initiatives has been very negative.

There can be only one reading of the Israeli

Government’s actions and practices in our homeland

and of the positions it has presented to us regarding the

substance of a final status agreement to end the conflict

and achieve peace: that the Israeli Government rejects

the two-State solution.

The two-State solution — namely, the State

of Palestine coexisting alongside the State of

Israel — represents the spirit and essence of the historic

compromise embodied in the Declaration of Principles,

which was agreed to in Oslo and was signed, 19 years

ago, by the Palestine Liberation Organization and the

Government of Israel under the auspices of the United

States of America and on the White House lawn. It is

a compromise by which, for the sake of making peace,

the Palestinian people accepted to establish their State

on only 22 per cent of the territory of historic Palestine.

Recent years have actually witnessed a systematic

acceleration and intensification of Israeli measures

aimed at gutting the Oslo Accords of their meaning,

while simultaneously building facts on the ground in

the occupied Palestinian territory that are making the

implementation of the Accords extremely difficult, if

not completely impossible.

The Israeli Government aims to continue its

occupation of East Jerusalem, to de facto annex large

areas of the rest of the occupied Palestinian territory

and to continue occupying a large portion of the territory under different designations. It refuses to

engage in any serious discussion of the issue of the

Palestinian refugees. It wants to continue its occupation

of Palestinian aquafers and its control over the most

fertile agricultural areas in our land, as well as over our

air, skies,water, borders and our life in its entirety.

The final map and borders that can be drawn in

accordance with Israel’s official positions reveal to us

small Palestinian enclaves surrounded by large Israeli

settlement blocs and walls and checkpoints, and vast

security zones and roads reserved for settlers. The

enclaves would therefore remain subject to the full

dominance of military and settler occupation, only

packaged under new names, such as the unilateral

plan for a so-called State with provisional borders. I

repeat — a State with provisional borders. That is a

project that we categorically reject from A to Z because

it will not bring about peace.

Israel refuses to end the occupation and refuses to

allow the Palestinian people to attain their freedom and

independence. It rejects the establishment of the State

of Palestine. Israel is promising the Palestinian people

a new catastrophe — a new Naqba — a new setback.

I speak on behalf of an angry people who feel

that while they demand their right to freedom, adopt a

culture of peace and adhere to the principles and rules

of international law and resolutions of international

legitimacy, rewards continue to be illogically bestowed

upon Israel, whose Government pursues a policy of

war, occupation and settler occupation. Israel continues

to be permitted to enjoy impunity, and some continue

to obstruct the adoption of a decisive position regarding

its violations of international law and covenants. That

represents a licence for the occupation to continue

its policy of dispossession and ethnic cleansing and

encourages it to entrench its system of apartheid against

the Palestinian people.

Despite our genuine feelings of anger, we — in

the name of the Palestine Liberation Organization, the

sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian

people — will not allow our country to be divided in

two.

We are the sole legitimate representative of the

Palestinian people. I reaffirm without hesitation that

we are as committed — equally and by the same

measures — to peace and international legitimacy and

its covenants and resolutions as we are to upholding

our inalienable national rights and aspirations. And we reaffirm that we are committed to non-violence

and reject terrorism in all its forms, particularly State

terrorism.

Despite our disappointment, we continue to sincerely

extend a hand to the Israeli people to make peace. We

realize that ultimately the two peoples must live and

coexist, each in their respective State, in the Holy Land.

Furthermore, we realize that progress towards making

peace can be achieved through negotiations between

the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel.

Despite all the complexities of the prevailing

reality and all the frustrations that abound, we say

before the international community that there is still

a chance — maybe the last — to save the two-State

solution and to salvage peace. However, this urgent task

must be pursued via a new approach.

Whoever rushes to advise us to repeat an experience

that has proven to be futile, such as negotiations with

the Israeli Government without clear terms of reference,

must understand that this will result in the reproduction

of failure and again provide cover for consecrating the

occupation and will deal the final blow to an already

dying peace process. Whoever advises us to wait must

realize that the hotbeds of tension and the festering

situation in our country and our region have their own

timing and cannot withstand further procrastination

and delay, nor are they amenable to being relegated to

the bottom of the global agenda.

The approach required for salvaging the chance for

peace must, first and foremost, be predicated on the

understanding that the racist settler occupation must

be condemned, punished and boycotted so that it is

completely halted and eliminated. That approach also

requires a reaffirmation of, and adherence to, the terms

of reference and the foundations of the solution to the

conflict, which have been endorsed by all here.

We do not need to belabour the core components

of a just solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Rather, what is needed is the will to implement those

components. Marathon negotiations are not required to

define them, rather it is the genuine and sincere intention

to reach peace that is needed. Those components are

by no means a mysterious puzzle or intractable riddle;

they are the clearest and best-known secrets in the

world. They include, in brief, the establishment of an

independent State of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as

its capital, over the entire territory occupied by Israel

since 1967, and the realization of a just, agreed solution to the Palestine refugee issue, in accordance with

resolution 194 (III), as prescribed in the Arab Peace

Initiative.

The fundamental components of the solution to

the conflict exist in the documents and resolutions of

the United Nations. Member States already have them.

The components of the solution are also endorsed in

resolutions of regional organizations, beginning with

the League of Arab States, the Organization of Islamic

Cooperation, the Non-Aligned Movement and the

African Union. They can also be found in the statements

of the European Union and the international Quartet.

However, what is the use of all those terms of reference

if Israel continues to refuse, and is encouraged by

others to continue to oppose the terms of reference?

The international community, embodied in the

United Nations, is required now more than ever to uphold

its responsibilities. The Security Council is called upon

to urgently adopt a resolution comprising the pillars

and foundations for a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli

conflict that would serve as a binding term of reference

and guide for all if the vision of two States, Israel and

Palestine, is to survive and if peace is to prevail in the

land of peace — the birthplace of Jesus, peace be upon

him, the ascension of the Prophet Muhammad, peace

be upon him, and the final resting place of Abraham,

peace be upon him — Palestine, the land of the three

monotheistic religions.

All things considered, the establishment of a free

and independent State of Palestine is a sacred right of

the Palestinian people and an entitlement that must be

realized, for it has been overdue for too many decades.

It is not a grant to be bestowed upon us by anyone. It is

a right, and the Palestinian people are entitled to that

right.

At the same time, the Palestinian Authority has

affirmed, through the implementation of its State

institution-building programmes, the ability to create

an advanced model for an effective, modern State

through the development of the performance of its

institutions and public finance management and

through the adoption of standards for transparency,

strict accountability and rules of good governance.

Those achievements have been deemed by the Ad

Hoc Liaison Committee for the Coordination of

the International Assistance to Palestinians, the

World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to

constitute an impressive undertaking and success story. Those achievements were again commended in the

latest report just a few days ago, which confirmed the

Palestinian Authority’s total readiness for the transition

to an independent State while at the same time stressing

that the Israeli occupation remained the only obstacle

to the realization of the State of Palestine.

During the previous session of the General

Assembly, we submitted our application for

consideration by the Security Council to allow the

State of Palestine to assume its rightful place among

the community of nations as a full Member of the

United Nations. A major and hostile uproar was raised

by some against that political, diplomatic, peaceful

step par excellence aimed at saving the peace process

by asserting its principles and foundation. Despite the

fact that the overwhelming majority of the countries

of the world supported, and continues to support, our

application, our endeavour was aborted. I do not see

even a single reason for opposing that request.

Yet when the countries of the world had the

opportunity to declare their stance without any

restrictions or veto during the previous autumn, they

voted, despite enormous pressure, in strong support of the

acceptance of Palestine as a member State of UNESCO.

A year has passed, and Palestine, the homeland of

Mahmoud Darwish and Edward Said, is playing its

role in UNESCO with a high level of responsibility and

professionalism. Palestine is committed to international

conventions and is cooperating with all member States

in order to advance the objectives of the organization

and providing a model of what its positive, constructive

contribution in international organizations would be.

In order to enhance the chances for peace, we will

continue our efforts to obtain full membership for

Palestine at the United Nations. For the same reason,

we have begun intensive consultations with various

regional organizations and Member States aimed at

the General Assembly’s adoption during this session

of a draft resolution considering the State of Palestine

as a non-member State of the United Nations. We are

confident that the vast majority of the countries of the

world support our efforts to bolster the chances for a

just peace. In our efforts we do not seek to delegitimize

an existing State, that is, Israel; but rather to establish

the State that must be realized, that is, Palestine. We

are not trying to delegitimize them; they are trying to

delegitimize us.

More than 64 years have passed since Al-Nakba

and a large number of those who were its immediate victims and witnessed its horrors have died. They died

with memories, preserved in their minds and hearts, of

their beautiful world that was devastated, their warm

homes that were demolished and their peaceful villages

that were erased from existence, and of the renaissance

that was undermined, and their loved ones, dear

men, women and children, who were killed in wars,

massacres, attacks, raids and incursions, and of their

beautiful country that was a beacon of coexistence,

tolerance, progress and a crossroads of civilization.

They died displaced and in refugee camps to which

they were expelled following their uprooting from their

homeland, as they awaited the moment in which they

would resume their suspended lives, complete their

interrupted journey and repair their shattered dreams.

They died while they clung to their legitimate human

right to justice, freedom and redress for the historically

unprecedented injustice inf licted upon them. Has the

time not come to undo that injustice?

At present, 77 per cent of the Palestinian people are

under the age of 35. Although they did not experience

the horrors of Al-Nakba, they know very well all its

horrendous details from the accounts of their parents

and grandparents who endured it. They continue to

suffer from its ongoing effects today and every day

as a result of the practices of the occupation and of

the settlers on a land that is diminishing in size. The

horizon before them is closed to their simple, ordinary

dreams. They see their homeland and their present and

future vulnerable to continued usurpation and they say

firmly: we shall not allow a new Al-Nakba to happen.

I say to the Assembly that the brave Palestinian

people will not allow themselves to be the victims

of a new Al-Nakba. We will not allow that. We will

stay on our land. My people will continue their epic

steadfastness and eternal survival journey in their

beloved land, every inch of which carries evidence and

landmarks affirming their roots and unique connection

to the land throughout ancient history. There is no

homeland for us except Palestine and there is no land

for us but Palestine. We shall not accept an alternative

homeland, nor an alternative land. Palestine is our

homeland and shall remain our homeland.

Our people will continue to build the institutions of

their State and strive to achieve national reconciliation

to restore the unity of our nation, people and institutions

via resorting to the ballot box, which will confirm our

people’s pluralistic democratic choice. Our people

are also determined to continue peaceful popular resistance, consistent with international humanitarian

law, against the occupation, against the settlements and

for the sake of freedom, independence and peace.

Let us prevent the occurrence of a new Al-Nakba

in the Holy Land. Let us support the realization of a

free, independent State of Palestine now. Let peace be

victorious before it is too late.