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Palestinian West Bank – Gaza Delegation: 4th Memorandum to US Secretary James Baker

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.