Peace treaty with Israel is a temporary measure

High-level officials in the Palestinian Authority (PA) have said, at different times, both that their peace process is intended to achieve a permanent peace with the State of Israel and also that it is only a temporary measure.

Introduction

Acceptance of Israel's right to exist in peace is the first of the PLO's obligations in the Oslo accords. In Yasir Arafat's September 9, 1993 letter to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, as part of Oslo I, Arafat stated that "The PLO recognizes the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security." Statements and actions of Arafat and other leaders in the PLO and the Palestinian Authority (PA) during the years since Oslo I was signed might well be construed as saying that the PLO and the PA do not hope for, or intend to achieve, a permanent peace with the State of Israel. These views may be distinct from the views of the common Palestinian citizen. A large number of observers in Israel and the West believe that the PLO and PA's statements reflect a policy that views the peace process with Israel as being only a temporary measure.

Many of the following statements refer to making the territory of pre-1967 Israel into a Palestinian state; some have hypothesized that this is only a claim that Palestinians want to annex some Israeli territory into a new Palestinian state; however, the internal documents and statements of principles that the Palestinians refer to include the entire territory State of Israel as their goal. No documents from Palestinian sources exist which make lesser claims.

Examples of statements from high-level Palestinian leaders that explicitly state that the peace process is only temporary

Arafat said on the PA's Voice of Palestine radio station in 1995, "The struggle will continue until all of Palestine is liberated." (Voice of Palestine, November 11, 1995)

In a 1995 speech, Arafat named two cities within pre-1967 Israel among those to which the Palestinian Arabs will be returning: "Be blessed, 0 Gaza, and celebrate, for your sons are returning after a long celebration. 0 Lod, 0 Haifa, 0 Jerusalem, you are returning, you are returning." (Ma'ariv, September 7, 1995)

Rashid Abu Shbak, a senior PA security official declared: "The light which has shone over Gaza and Jericho (when the PA assumed control over those areas) will also reach the Negev and the Galilee (which constitute a large portion of pre-1967 Israel)." (Yediot Ahronot, May 29, 1994)

Faisal Husseini, former Palestinian Authority Minister for Jerusalem, is well known in Israeli circles as a Palestinian dove and moderate. He was an extremely high-ranking official who represented the most liberal faction of the Palestinian Authority. The following quotes on his view of the PA's peace process with Israel come from the June 24, 2000 issue of el Arav, an Egyptian newspaper. In a taped interview with journalist Shafik Ahmed Ali he stated: "The Oslo agreements were a Trojan Horse....The strategic goal is to liberate Palestine from the river to the sea." When asked about the intentions of Arafat and the Oslo peace deal signed in 1993, he stated "I said three things then. First, after a long period of pregnancy, we brought into the world a child that was smaller, weaker and uglier than what we had hoped for. But despite everything, it was still our child, to foster, develop and strengthen until it could stand on its own two feet... Second, we are the 'Jews' of the 21st century. They snuck into our country in a variety of ways... and we only have to act now as they did in their day: To return to our country, to settle, to strike new roots, whatever will be in the country from which we were driven out." He then recounted the classical Greek story of the Trojan horse, and stated that "we all know what happened afterwards. Had the US and Israel understood before Oslo that all that remained of the Palestine liberation movement and the Pan-Arab movement was the Trojan Horse named Arafat or the PLO, they would have never opened their fortified gates and let him in." Husseini stated that he told Israelis and Americans "Get on the horse and don't ask what it is made of. Get on the horse, and your entry inside will turn into the dawn of an era of building and not an era of the end of hope!" Finally, he explicitly stated that the official view of the Palestinian Authority was that it is the obligation of all the Palestinian factions to view the peace process as "temporary" and "gradual" steps. "We are setting an ambush for the Israelis and cheating them." He ended by pointing out that the final goal of the Palestinian Authority is still the "liberation of all Palestine from the river (Jordan) to the sea (Mediterranean),...[even if it takes] 1,000 years, or generations upon generations."

The PA's Voice of Palestine radio broadcast a Friday prayer sermon by Yusuf Abu Sneineh, official preacher at Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa Mosque, in which he asserted: "The struggle we are waging is an ideological struggle and the question is: where has the Islamic land of Palestine gone? Where is Haifa and Jaffa, Lod and Ramle, Acre, Safed and Tiberias? Where is Hebron and Jerusalem?" (Voice of Palestine, May 23, 1997)

Arafat and other PA officials have assured Arab audiences that the Oslo agreement is one phase in the PLO's 1974 [Strategy of Phases]?. The Strategy of Phases was adopted by the PLO's National Council at its session in Cairo during June 1-8, 1974. Prior to the 1974 meeting, the PLO's position was that it would never accept anything but the immediate destruction of Israel. At the 1974 meeting, the PLO decided to seek Israel's destruction in phases, by first establishing a small PLO state, then later seeking to conquer the rest of Israel. Point #2 of its 10-point 1974 platform declared that the PLO should create "a national, independent fighting authority on every part of the Palestinian land to be liberated." Point #8 explains that "the Palestine national entity, after it comes into existence, will seek to complete the liberation of the entire Palestinian soil."

In an interview with Egyptian Orbit TV on April 18, 1998, Arafat was asked about his decision to sign the Oslo accords. He replied: "In 1974, at the Palestinian National Council meeting in Cairo, we passed the decision to establish national Palestinian rule over any part of the land of Palestine which is liberated."

In an interview with the Palestinian Arab newspaper Al Ayyam on January 1,1998, when asked his view of the Oslo agreement, Arafat replied: "Since the decision of the Palestinian National Council at its 12th meeting in 1974, the PLO has adopted the political solution of establishing a National Authority over any territory from which the occupation withdraws."

PA cabinet minister Abdul Aziz Shaheen told the official PA newspaper Al-Havat Al-Jadida (January 4, 1998): "The Oslo accord was a preface for the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian Authority will be a preface for the Palestinian state which, in its turn, will be a preface for the liberation of the entire Palestinian land."

Arafat has also compared the Oslo accords to peace treaties that Mohammed, the founder of Islam, signed and then later discarded. In the Palestinian Arab newspaper Al Quds on May 10, 1998. Arafat was asked: "Do you feel sometimes that you made a mistake in agreeing to Oslo?" Arafat replied: "No .... no. Allah's messenger Mohammed accepted the al-Khudaibiya peace treaty and Salah a-Din accepted the peace agreement with Richard the Lion-Hearted."

The Khudaibiya agreement was a 10-year peace treaty between Mohammed and the tribe of Qureish. After two years, when Mohammed had improved his military position, he tore up the agreement and slaughtered the Qureishites. Salab a-Din was the Muslim leader who, after a cease fire, declared a jihad against the Crusaders and conquered Jerusalem.

In an interview with Egyptian Orbit TV on April 18, 1998, Arafat declared that the Oslo accords are comparable to "when the Prophet Mohammed made the Khudaibiya agreement.. .we must learn from his steps.. .We respect agreements the way that the Prophet Mohammed respected the agreements which he signed."

Speaking in a mosque in Johannesburg, South Africa on May 10, 1994, Arafat stated that the Oslo Accord was akin to the temporary truce between Muhammad and the Quraish tribe: "This agreement, I am not considering it more than the agreement which had been signed between our prophet Muhammad and Quraish, and you remember that the Caliph Omar had refused this agreement and considered it a despicable truce...But the same way Muhammad had accepted it, we are now accepting this peace effort." (Ha?aretz, May 23, 1994)

The PA uses maps showing all of Israel labeled as "Palestine." Such maps appear on PA Television; in the offices of PA officials; in textbooks used in PA schools; and on the shoulder-patches of PA police officers. The significance of the use of such maps was pointed out by the Washington Post back in 1988, when the PLO applied for admission to the World Health Organization, and used the map of all of Palestine in its application papers. The map "wipes out symbolically.. .a member-state" of the WHO, the Post remarked. (Washington Post, May 1, 1989)

Examples of statements from high-level Palestinian leaders that explicitly state that the peace process is permanent and irrevocable

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