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What do you see as the role of violence on both sides in escalating the conflict?
Clearly there is no military solution. Violence only aggravates the situation and claims more innocent victims. And this has to apply to both sides, despite the imbalance in power. The occupied are being held accountable, are being told that they have to take whatever Israel dishes out but there must be no response, otherwise we'll be labeled as the culprits while Israel is in a state of self-defense. I've never seen an occupation described as a state of self-defense.
This cycle of violence has its causes, of course, in the occupation itself. Not in any sort of genetic or cultural attribute, as if Palestinians were born violent and Israelis are wonderful, innocent people. The fundamental reality is a very lethal situation, a very abnormal situation, a situation of occupation, and that has to be addressed.
Do you think that suicide bombing is a legitimate form of resistance?
No, not all. I think suicide bombing is the weapon of the desperate. And I often wonder, what would drive individuals to such a point as to transform themselves into instruments of death, willing to die and take others with them. What kind of mindset, what kind of emotional or mental state would drive persons to do these things? Particularly given the fact that historically, our culture is not a suicidal culture; historically, the incidence of suicide among Palestinians has been very low.
Suicide bombing is an extreme measure, a new way to make a statement that claims other innocent lives. In this sense, I feel that the suicide bomber is a double victim. Most suicide bombers who have left messages claim they are inspired by the need for revenge. And in turn, these bombings create greater hostility and greater feelings of revenge among the Israelis. So here we are locked in a cycle of revenge.
Every time there's a period of quiet, during which the Palestinians somehow manage not to respond to anything that Israel does, you end up with an act of deliberate and willful and timed escalation, such as the assassination of a leader. And that is like an invitation for the young people to respond, to take revenge. This cycle has locked us all in prisons, both peoples, and we can't get away.
If there were to be peace between Israel and Palestine, what would it look like?
To me the final result would be the two-state solution. We have accepted the 1967 boundaries, which would mean a Palestinian state that would include only 22 percent of the Palestinian homeland. That is a major historical compromise. To accept the two-state solution means that our homeland is a thing of the past. We make the distinction between a homeland and a state—that we did have all of Palestine, and we no longer do. And you cannot go back and say, I will claim all of Palestine. When we accepted UN resolutions 242 and 338 as the basis of negotiations, we said that we accepted the existence of Israel on 78 percent of historical Palestine, and that we would build our state on the remaining 22 percent, which is the West Bank including Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. That would mean that you would have two states living side by side, hopefully as good neighbors. We need to have a democratic state, a contemporary state in Palestine, a state that will respect the rule of law and the rights of all its citizens—and thus will be an agent for change in the region.
That was our dream, our expectation. Unfortunately right now we are seeing a real deterioration. Sharon's policies are designed to prevent a viable Palestinian state with territorial contiguity.
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