Nayef Hawatmeh (DFLP) Interview Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit East West Record via Bill Koehnlein http://www.eastwestrecord.com/articles/NayefHawatmeh.html March 18, 2002 EWR Exclusive Interview: Nayef Hawatmeh, Secretary General of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine The Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) Secretary-General Nayef Hawatmeh has been a key member of Palestinian political and intellectual circles since the 1960s. Hawatmeh has always favored Palestinian armed struggle against Israel, but rejects attacks against civilians and the resort to hijacking planes and ships. The DFLP plays a special role within Palestinian organizations and forces. The DFLP is a critic of the Palestinian Authority (PA) and the policy of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. EWR correspondent Hashem Kassem interviewed Hawatmeh about the Arab plans and initiatives that failed, mainly the plan of Saudi King Fahd at the Arab Summit in 1982, the equation of late Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, the ideas of Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah as well as his expectations concerning the Arab summit and the future of the Intifadah. EWR: How do you describe the situation of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank? Nayef Hawatmeh: The situation of Palestinians is very difficult and dangerous. It is open to all possibilities. It is difficult due to the enormity of the Israeli military attacks that carry [Israeli Prime Minister Ariel] Sharon's political scheme. Such [a] scheme cannot occur except through military force. It is not true that Sharon only wants to kill and destroy, as Palestinian circles and Arab countries say. EWR: What is his [Sharon's] political project? Hawatmeh: His project is based on the principle of buying time as much as possible. In this context, Jerusalem is Judaized by seizing areas from the B sector that falls under Palestinian administration and some settlements and annexing them to Jerusalem to complete the Judaization process. Moreover, Israel is consolidating its settlements in the West Bank along the Jordan River for the strategic purpose of establishing the state of Israel from the [Mediterranean] sea to the [Jordanian] river. EWR: Where would the Palestinian state be according to this map? Hawatmeh: The Palestinian state is at the heart of Israel. It is mutilated and linked by passages to Egypt and Jordan. The Palestinian state is not unified geographically. It does not have complete borders in the south of Gaza Strip with Egypt and Jordan. EWR: What will the Palestinian Authority do to face Prime Minister Sharon's scheme? Hawatmeh: The Palestinian Authority is resuming negotiations to reach a new transitional period ranging from between five to ten years, which benefits Sharon. During the transitional period, Israeli troops will re-deploy in the West Bank on a surface estimated between 3 and 6 percent of the West Bank's total surface. But the re-deployment needs between five and ten years to be completed. This is a clear divisional move. Sharon will gain a lot in the transitional period. EWR: What do you believe will happen after the transitional period? Hawatmeh: After agreeing on the transitional period, Sharon would be willing to recognize the Palestinian state on 42 percent of the Palestinian territories that were occupied in 1967, without Greater Jerusalem and without dismantling settlements. The re-deployment of the Israeli army will be based on the negotiations on the pillars of the Arab-Israeli conflict. EWR: What do you mean by "pillars of the Arab-Israeli conflict"? Hawatmeh: I mean negotiations on Jerusalem, the refugees, the settlements, [and] the border. Those issues will be discussed between both states after the transitional period, without setting any schedule because gaining time is the basis of the Israeli vision. EWR: In your opinion, do all Israeli political parties agree on that plan? Hawatmeh: Yes, they do. But Sharon knows that such a project cannot happen but by the use of violence and sophisticated weapons to divide Palestinians and lead them to despair and thus to accept his political plan. That's why I said the situation was difficult, dangerous and complicated. EWR: Does the United States support that [Sharon's] plan? Hawatmeh: The US administration supports Sharon in many ways. It [the current US administration] does not want an Arab Eastern Jerusalem and another Western Jerusalem, but rather a unified city that Palestinians can access through tunnels or bridges linking the Gaza Strip and the West Bank to sacred Islamic and Christian sites. On the other hand, the US and Israel agree that there is no return for the refugees according to UN Resolution 194. According to both countries, the solution to the issue would be given by Israeli-Palestinian regional [and] international negotiations. UN resolutions would be completely ignored. This is how the US understand UN Resolution 194. EWR: What will be the fate of millions of refugees in Arab and foreign countries? Hawatmeh: The US-Israeli scheme will decide the following: to reunite a limited number of refugees (100,000 Palestinians) over a period of ten years, the return of 500,000 Palestinian to the Palestinian state within ten years, [and] the settling of the rest, about 4 million Palestinians, in Arab and foreign countries. As to the issue of the border, the US administration adopts the Israeli project. All Arab projects and initiatives failed and came to a dead end. EWR: How do you evaluate Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah's initiative that calls for complete normalization with Israeli in return for full withdrawal from the occupied territories? Hawatmeh: Those ideas are not new. They are stipulated by UN Resolution 242 and the process of their execution is included in UN Resolution 338. They are also included in [Saudi] King Fahd's initiative during the 1982 Arab summit after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. King Fahd's project aspired to meet half way with [former US President Ronald] Reagan's plan that was proposed to us one day before we left Beirut. Then, there was the Egyptian-Jordanian initiative. EWR: Despite all those projects and initiatives, there was no result. Why? Hawatmeh: The Arabs' problem is that they are not united in order to support UN resolutions and create an Arab-Israeli balance. Thus, there is no need for more initiatives. We need to promote Arab capacities, which are divided, disunited and dormant. EWR: How do you evaluate the US response to Crown Prince Abdullah's initiative? Hawatmeh: Both Democrat and Republican US administrations do not conceal their visions, policy, and common viewpoints with Israel. The [current] Bush administration welcomed the prince's idea of normalization, without linking it however to the withdrawal of Israel from territories it occupied in the 1967 war, but rather called for settling the issue through negotiations. In other words, through balances of power, that is, there is no return to the pre-1967 borders, which is clearly in the line of Sharon's policy. Sharon said there would be no return to the pre-1967 borders neither on the Palestinian front nor on the Syrian front. [Also] The Israeli government noticed that the Saudi ideas failed to mention the right of return. EWR: You explained the positions of both Israel and the US toward Crown Prince Abdullah's initiative. Where do you stand? Hawatmeh: We believe the Intifadah expresses exactly the Palestinian mood and national climate. The Intifadah came as a refusal of Oslo's policy and the "step by step" policy. It started with restoring calm on the Egyptian and Syrian fronts to contain UN Resolutions 242 and 338. The implementation of both resolutions was suspended until now and peace was not reached according to the "step by step" policy. EWR: Don't you believe Crown Prince Abdullah's ideas offer something new given the current Arab situation? Hawatmeh: The ideas of Prince Abdullah, King Fahd's plan and what late President [Hafiz] al-Assad presented in his equation [full withdrawal in return for full peace] are initiatives suspended in the air because they are not realistic, although Assad's equation is somehow different because Syria has a strong army and large capacities. Despite that, Assad's equation failed. Ten years of negotiations ended without any result. Assad offered everything on the level of security measures, water, the border and diplomatic relations. But [former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud] Barak refrained from proposing precise ideas and suggestions and [former US President Bill] Clinton abstained from pressuring Barak. Then, the Geneva summit was held between Clinton and Assad on the basis that there were "new ideas" from Barak's government. But Assad discovered that Clinton was proposing Israeli expansionist ideas in the Golan, that is, to keep the useful part of the region with Israel and give the black barren mountains to Syria. In other words, Israel would control the Wazzani and Banias water sources, the northeastern coast of Tiberius, and the summit of the Golan Heights. Assad answered, "I cannot discuss these issues. I refuse the whole proposition." EWR: What should be done then? Hawatmeh: Crown Prince Abdullah's ideas are not based on mobilizing the potential Arab capacities that would create a new balance of power based on serious and practical Arab solidarity. I would like to make the following remarks: First, the prince's idea came up in the light of pressure on Saudi Arabia, after it turned out that 15 out of 19 hijackers that executed the September 11th attacks were Saudis. Americans are launching campaigns saying that Saudi educational and social structures were responsible for producing thousands of Islamic fundamentalist terrorists. In this context, the prince' s ideas aim to limit those campaigns. Second, the ideas of Crown Prince Abdullah came following pressure exerted by the US on all Arab governments, on the eve of the Arab summit that will be held in Beirut on March 27th and 28th. Saudi Arabia occupies a special place in Islamic and Arab countries, which allows Americans to exploit the situation in a selective and hypocritical way to pressure Arab capitals by saying "Saudi Arabia is giving a sign that it is willing to normalize relations with Israel if the Jewish state pulls out from all occupied territories." The US is telling Arabs "What are you waiting for especially after what happened in Oman, Qatar, Tunis, Morocco and Mauritania?" [These countries have trade relations and political contacts with Israel] Third, US President George W. Bush said [that] the prince's ideas were good and focused on the normalization part, but indirectly added that such ideas would be ready for realization [only] after the execution of the Tenet plan and the Mitchell report, that is, after the Intifadah stops. They have been prohibiting us from resisting from Madrid until the Intifadah broke out. EWR: Who prohibited you from maintaining the Intifadah? Hawatmeh: Three weeks after the Intifadah broke out, there were attempts to stop us. The Sharm el-Sheikh summit aimed to contain and stop the uprising, but it failed. EWR: What do the US administration and Israel want now? Hawatmeh: The Americans, just like some Arab governments, are prompting the Saudis to back down on the resolutions of the Cairo and Amman summits and are pressuring weak Arab countries to impose normalization on them. Americans aspire to revive the offices of Israeli interests in Morocco, Tunis, Qatar, and Oman and open new offices in several Arab countries by threatening to accuse them of terrorism and through the policy of temptation and intimidation. EWR: Given the current situation of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, will the Intifadah be able to continue? Hawatmeh: Certainly. It is proved by 18 months of uprising and courageous resistance. Our people now say, "Once and for all." EWR: Some observers say that there are negative factors that could prevent the Intifadah from continuing and therefore achieving its goals, such as the existence of many Palestinian organizations, the limited capacities of the Palestinian people and the failure of Arab countries to support such capacities. What is your opinion? Hawatmeh: In complete honesty, the results are linked to the profound deficiency in the Palestinian situation. EWR: What is that deficiency? Hawatmeh: There are four controversial issues threatening the Intifadah and we were unable to solve them until now. The first is the need to structure the Intifadah from top to bottom to make it a collective effort emphasizing social solidarity. Out of the total funds provided by the Arab summit for the Intifadah, $600 million were spent in the "mill" of administrative and security bodies. The Palestinian base, which includes hundreds of thousands of unemployed people and owners of destroyed homes, did not receive any part of those funds. Second is the need to maintain armed resistance that could really take us to independence. Hizballah's leading experience in Lebanon comes to my mind. Hizballah [during Israel's occupation of Lebanon] targeted the Israeli military, not civilians, except when Israel attacked civilians and infrastructure. We need to attack Israel in all the historical lands of Palestine and refrain from doing anything that could harm the cause of independence. We should take advantage of Hizballah's lessons, that is, armed resistance against the Israeli army and the militias of settlers and abstain from attacking civilians. Third, there is a lack of a unified political program for Palestinian groups and authorities. Finally, there is a need to rebuild [a] coalition [of] institutions for the Palestinian people, that is, reviving the institutions of the Palestinian Liberation Organization as the Palestinian people's only authority. EWR: What is preventing Palestinians from agreeing on those points and why? Hawatmeh: I repeatedly urged [Palestinian President] Yasser Arafat through phone calls, messages and messengers, the latest being Mr. Abbas Zaki and Mr. Hani Hassan, to turn the embargo in Ramallah into a strategic historical advantage for the Palestinian people by establishing dialogue with all Palestinian forces in order to solve controversial issues. But Arafat failed to make any step in that direction because his policy follows the Oslo Accords and the "step by step" policy rather than UN resolutions that call for global negotiations to reach solutions based on full Israeli withdrawal to the pre-1967 borders, solving the issue of refugees and dismantling settlements. Arafat's policy is encouraged by the US, which does not want to deal with the Palestinian national coalition because it unifies all Palestinian and does not want to deal with any serious Arab solidarity. The US wants to deal with each Palestinian group and each Arab country alone. Arafat is also encouraged by some Arab governments that do not want the Palestinians to unite. EWR: What do you think about the arrest of Popular Front members who assassinated the Israeli Tourism Minister Revaham Ze'evi, and about all the arrests made by the Palestinian Authority? Hawatmeh: We are against all types of political detention. Any detention is wrong. We have a lot of experience in this issue. The Palestinian Authority arrested hundreds of DFLP members. EWR: Can Sharon crush the Intifadah before the Arab Summit or make it unable to influence politically the Summit and Arab circles? Hawatmeh: That's impossible, even if Sharon intended to invade Palestinian territories controlled by the Palestinian Authority, because it would make him confront three million Palestinians. EWR: What do think about US threats against Iraq and other countries? Hawatmeh: The threats are serious and dangerous. However, Iraq can avoid US attacks by being flexible with the return of inspectors to determine a set date for lifting the sanctions and the embargo and by normalizing its relations with Gulf countries and recognizing the Kuwaiti-Iraqi border. EWR: What are the DFLP's common factors and disagreements with Hamas and Islamic Jihad? Hawatmeh: We agree on fighting Israel through the Intifadah and by resistance. However, all Palestinian groups disagree with Hamas and Islamic Jihad on the issues of political program, the national coalition and the Palestinian resistance. The political program of both groups calls for establishing an Islamic state in the future and they are opposed to UN resolutions and political solutions in this period. They are also opposed to the principle of negotiations even if such negotiations resulted in implementing international resolutions. We [the DFLP] call for taking advantage of Hizballah's experience that combined resistance with direct and indirect negotiations. Hashem Kassem is an expert in Islamic and Arab organizations and is a regular EWR correspondent. ********************************************************************* "The first duty of a revolutionary is to be educated." --José Martí ********************************************************************* The Theater of the Oppressed Laboratory http://www.toplab.org ********************************************************************* ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytact-04.16.02-22:29:32-25756