: 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."
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