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April
3, 2006
VOL.
44, NO. 7Oakland,
CA
Palestinian
diplomat urges U.S.
to support two-state solution
CLEVELAND
(CNS) -- Some 2 million Palestinians living in the West Bank of the Jordan
River are losing millions of hours of work and family time daily because
of the existence of hundreds of Israeli-run checkpoints across the territory,
said the Palestinian representative to the United States.
Afif Safieh, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization mission to
the United States in Washington, said the lost time comes at the 450 checkpoints
the Israeli government has established to control the movement of all
Palestinians, Christians and Muslims alike.
“It’s an arbitrary system, where the indigenous population
of the country is made to feel unwelcome every moment of every day,”
Safieh said in an interview with the Catholic Universe Bulletin, Cleveland
diocesan newspaper. “And our mistake is simply to have existed.”
A Catholic, Safieh, 55, was in Cleveland in mid-March to urge the local
Palestinian community to see their homeland as a “nation in progress”
and to support the nation-building effort by sending money home and speaking
out about the situation in their homeland.
Acknowledging that the Christian population in Bethlehem and Jerusalem
has declined dramatically during the last two decades, Safieh blamed Israel
for creating a territory where no one except Jews is made to feel welcome.
Safieh urged the United States to broker peace in the region while pushing
for a two-state solution to allow Palestinians to establish their own
nation. U.S. alignment with Israel is making America unpopular abroad,
he said.
“I personally believe that the American national interest and the
Israeli territorial appetite do not necessarily coincide. ... Nonalignment
is in the best American interest.”
Safieh was critical of Israelis for constructing a “wall of shame”
around Palestinian communities. “(The wall) has no security value,”
he said. “It’s separating Palestinians from Palestinians,
urban centers from the villages, the villagers from their farming land,
the farming land from the wells that irrigate them.”
Israeli officials say the walls are necessary to prevent terrorism.
Prospects for peace were further clouded in January when Hamas, a militant
organization that has used terrorism to promote its push for an independent
Palestine, became the majority party of the Palestinian Authority Legislative
Council.
A member of the Palestine Liberation Organization rather than of Hamas,
Safieh said he expects to continue in his diplomatic position based on
his long years of service to the Palestinian effort and broad experience
as a diplomat in the West.
“Me being a Christian, I’m not threatened in my work by Hamas,”
he said.
Since 1967, Safieh has considered himself a “wandering Palestinian”
because he has been unable to return to his home after Israel took control
of the West Bank. He had left Jerusalem in 1966.
Afif Safieh
CNS photo/William Rieter
