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الوفد الفلسطيني في الضفة الغربية وقطاع غزة: مذكرة رابعة إلى وزير الخارجية الأميركي، جيمس بيكر (بالإنكليزية)
Palestinian West Bank – Gaza Delegation
[Fourth] Memorandum to U.S. Secretary James Baker
East Jerusalem, 26 April 1991
HE Secretary of State James Baker Ill
U.S. Consulate, Jerusalem
We do not wish to repeat the issues and principles raised in our three previous memoranda as they represent the comprehensive and firm Palestinian position.
Our meeting today is charged with the anguish and anger of the Palestinian people who are daily witnessing Israel's deliberate and persistent theft of their lands, livelihood, and the very core of their being. Each visit of yours, Mr. Secretary, exacts from the Palestinians an exorbitant toll in freedom, lives and property.
Israeli arrogance, in defying your efforts at launching a peace process, is immediately expressed in the expansion and overnight establishment of more settlements in the occupied territories, in the confiscation of more land, and in imposing further restrictions on the defenseless civilian Palestinian population.
If this is the price of our commitment to peace, we are afraid that the Palestinian people cannot afford to pay with their very existence for the message of intransigence which Israel seeks to convey to you and to the world at large.
The apparent American helplessness in the face of Israel's policy of creating facts and destroying any prospect for peace discredits the U.S. and its standing in the eyes of the Palestinians and the international community. It also casts grave doubts on the seriousness of American intentions, commitments, and efficacy vis-a-vis the peace process.
Furthermore, the failure of the international community to enforce its will and to bring Israel to comply with the resolutions of the UN and the Fourth Geneva Convention constitutes a reaffirmation of the double-standard charge with the additional accusations of complicity and abdication of responsibility.
We would like to take this opportunity to extend an invitation to you, Mr. Secretary, to be our guest on an alternative, authentic visit to the occupied territories to enable you to witness directly the reality and meaning of the occupation to those who have been made to endure it for so long. An aerial view cannot bring home to you the indignity of checkposts, curfews, closed areas, and other forms of collective punishment; nor is it capable of exposing the obscenity of the settlements and the rape of the land.
We invite you to visit our closed, empty universities and the crowded prisons and detention camps in which Israel holds captive more than 16,000 Palestinians. Thousands of bereaved families in our refugee camps, villages, and towns are willing to receive you in their homes and to share with you their experiences and aspirations.
The Palestinian participation in the peace effort is an act of will and principled commitment which has been sustained in spite of our painful reality. The recent resolutions of the Central Council have reaffirmed the PLO's firm commitment to peace on the basis of international legitimacy.
Peace, however, is not a unilateral act, nor solely a Palestinian responsibility. Should Israel be allowed to persist in its subversive policies and measures, it alone will bear the responsibility of destroying peace.
If, at the behest of the PLO, we are able to meet with you now, the time is rapidly approaching in which no Palestinian from the occupied territories will be able to afford the luxury of talking peace while Israel is actively waging war against the Palestinian nation in captivity.
On behalf of the Palestinian individuals involved,
(Signed) Faisal Husseini
Source: Journal of Palestine Studies, vol. xx, no 4, Summer 1991.