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<text>
<title>
Palestinian Delegation's Statement, Oct. 31, 1991
</title>
<article>
<hdr>
Foreign Policy Bulletin, November/December 1991
The Madrid Middle East Peace Conference, October 30-November 1,
1991. Palestinian Delegation, October 31.
</hdr>
<body>
<p>Dr. Haider Abdul Shafi, Head of the Palestinian Delegation,
October 31, 1991 (Excerpts)
</p>
<p> We meet in Madrid, a city with the rich texture of history,
to weave together the fabric which joins our past with the
future, to reaffirm a wholeness of vision, which once brought
about a rebirth of civilization and a world order based on
harmony in diversity.
</p>
<p> Once again, Christian, Moslem and Jew face the challenge of
heralding a new era enshrined in the global values of democracy,
human rights, freedom, justice and security. From Madrid we
launch this quest for peace, a quest to place the sanctity of
human life at the center of our world and to redirect our
energies and resources from the pursuit of mutual destruction
to the pursuit of joint prosperity, progress and happiness.
</p>
<p> We, the people of Palestine, stand before you in the fullness
of our pain, our pride, and our anticipation, for we have long
harbored a yearning for peace and a dream of justice and
freedom. For too long the Palestinian people have gone unheeded,
silenced and denied--our identity negated by political
expediency, our rightful struggle against injustice maligned,
and our present existence subsumed by the past tragedy of
another people.
</p>
<p> Your excellencies, ladies and gentlemen, for the greater part
of this century we have been victimized by the myth of "a land
without a people," and described with impunity as "the invisible
Palestinians." Before such willful blindness, we refused to
disappear or to accept a distorted identity. Our Intifada is a
testimony to our perseverance and resilience, waged in a just
struggle to regain our rights.
</p>
<p> It is time for us to narrate our own story, to stand witness
as advocates of a truth which has long lain buried in the
consciousness and conscience of the world. We do not stand
before you as supplicants, but rather as the torch bearers who
know that in our world of today, ignorance can never be an
excuse. We seek neither an admission of guilt after the fact,
nor vengeance for past inequities, but rather an act of will
that would make a just peace a reality. We speak out, ladies and
gentlemen, from the full conviction of the rightness of our
cause, the verity of our history, and the depth of our
commitment. Therein lies the strength of the Palestinian people
today, for we have scaled the walls of fear and reticence and
we wish to speak out with the courage and integrity that our
narrative and history deserve.
</p>
<p> The cosponsors have invited us here today to present our case
and to reach out to "the other" with whom we have had to face
a mutually exclusive reality on the land of Palestine. But even
in the invitation to this peace conference, our narrative was
distorted and our truth only partly acknowledged. The
Palestinian people are one, fused by centuries of history in
Palestine, bound together by a collective memory of shared
sorrows and joys and sharing a unity of purpose and vision. Our
songs and ballads, our folk tales and children's stories, the
dialect of our jokes, the images of our poems, that hint of
melancholy which colors even our happiest moments, are as
important to us as the blood ties which link our families and
clans.
</p>
<p> Yet an invitation to discuss peace, the peace we all desire
and need, comes to only a portion of our people. It ignores our
national, historical, and organic unity. We come here wrenched
from our sisters and brothers in exile to stand before you as
the Palestinians under occupation, although we maintain that
each of us represents the rights and interest of the whole. We
have been denied the right to publicly acknowledge our loyalty
to our leadership and system of government, but allegiance and
loyalty cannot be censored or severed. Our acknowledged
leadership is more than just the democratically chosen
leadership of all the Palestinian people; it is the symbol of
our national identity and unity--the guardian of our past, the
protector of our present, and the hope of our future. Our people
have chosen to entrust it with their history and the
preservation of our precious legacy. This leadership has been
clearly and unequivocally recognized by the community of
nations, with only a few exceptions who had chosen, for so many
years, shadow over substance.
</p>
<p> Regardless of the nature and conditions of our oppression,
whether the dispossession and dispersion of exile or the
brutality and repression of the occupation, the Palestinian
people cannot be torn asunder. They remain united, a nation
wherever they are, or are forced to be.
</p>
<p> And Jerusalem, ladies and gentlemen, that city which is not
only the soul of Palestine but the cradle of three world
religions, is tangible even in it claimed absence from our midst
at this stage. Its apparent, though artificial, exclusion from
this conference is a denial of its right to seek peace and
redemption, for it too has suffered from war and occupation.
Jerusalem, the city of peace, has been barred from a peace
conference and deprived of its calling. Palestinian Jerusalem,
the capital of our homeland and future state, defines
Palestinian existence--past, present, and future--but itself
has been denied a voice and an identity. Jerusalem defies
exclusive possessiveness or bondage. Israel's annexation of
Jerusalem remains both clearly illegal in the eyes of the world
community and an affront to the peace that this city deserves.
</p>
<p> We come to you from a tortured land and a proud, though
captive, people, having been asked to negotiate with our
occupiers, but leaving behind the children of the Intifada, and
a people under occupation and under curfew, who enjoined us not
to surrender or forget. As we speak, thousand of our brothers
and sisters are languishing in Israeli prisons and detention
camps, most detained without evidence, charge or trial, many
cruelly mistreated and tortured in interrogation, guilty only
of seeking freedom or daring to defy the occupation. We speak
in their name and we say: set them free.
</p>
<p> As we speak, the tens of thousands who have been wounded or
permanently disabled are in pain: let peace heal their wounds.
As we speak, the eyes of thousands of Palestinian refugees,
deportees, and displaced persons since 1967, are haunting us,
for exile is a cruel fate: bring them home. They have the right
to return. As we speak, the silence of demolished homes echoes
through the halls and in our minds: we must rebuild our homes in
our free state.
</p>
<p> And what do we tell the loved ones of those killed by army
bullets? How do we answer the questions and the fear in our
children's eyes? For one out of three Palestinian children under
occupation has been killed, injured or detained in the past four
years. How can we explain to our children that they are denied
education, our schools so often closed by army fiat? Or why
their life is in danger for raising a flag in a land where even
children are killed or jailed? What requiem can be sung for
trees uprooted by army bulldozers? And, most of all, who can
explain to those whose lands are confiscated and clear waters
stolen, the message of peace? Remove the barbed wire, restore
the land, and its life-giving water.
</p>
<p> The settlements must stop now. Peace cannot be waged while
Palestinian land is confiscated in myriad ways and the status
of the Occupied Territories is being decided each day by Israeli
bulldozers and barbed wire. This is not simply a position; it
is an irrefutable reality. Territory for peace is a travesty
when territory for illegal settlement is official Israeli policy
and practice. The settlements must stop now.
</p>
<p> In the name of the Palestinian people, we wish to directly
address the Is