Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Salam Fayyad called on the Quartet – the
US, EU, Russia and the UN – to speak out more forcibly on the issue of Israeli
violence against Palestinians when it meets Wednesday in Washington.
“It
is important for the Quartet to put a lot more emphasis, in addition to what it
traditionally does, on [Israeli] violence in the face of nonviolent Palestinian
protests, settler violence [and] Israeli army incursions into Area A,” Fayyad
told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday.
He spoke with the Post and a few
other reporters briefly on the sidelines of the 7th annual Bil’in Conference on
popular struggle, held in the Palestinian village, which has held weekly
protests against the security barrier for over seven years. The four-day
conference will also include events in Hebron and east Jerusalem.
On the
first day, several hundred participants sat on plastic white chairs under a
large white tent adorned with Palestinian flags, which had been set up in an
olive grove next to the barrier, within eyesight of the Modi’in Illit
settlement.
Both in speaking before the conference and with reporters
afterwards, Fayyad said he supported nonviolent protests and the popular
struggle against Israel.
He called on Israel to freeze all settlement
activity and for Arab nations to make good on their financial pledges to the
PA.
As he stood by an olive tree, wearing a pin of the Palestinian flag
on his black suit jacket, the bulk of his words to reporters had to do with
nonviolent resistance.
“The results may be slow and not dramatic in the
way that people are accustomed to, but they are certain in terms of the
transformation that nonviolence brings with it,” he said.
It has a moral
capacity, authority and power to mobilize people, he said. “I regard it as the
right path.”
The PA prime minister continued: “Demonstrations and marches
are expression of constructive defiance, but they are just
expressions.”
“The essence of nonviolent resistance is the capacity to
preserver,” he said. “To exist is to resist or to resist is to
exist.”
Among the people that surrounded Fayyad at the conference was an
Israeli man named Shay from Tel Aviv, who did not want to give his last
name.
As he posed with Fayyad for a photograph, he whispered to him
advice for his meeting with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu next
week.
“When you speak to Netanyahu you need leverage and the only
leverage you have left is [the threat] of a one-state solution,” he
said.
Afterwards he told the Post that a one-state solution is what will
happen anyway if the two sides do not come to an agreement.
Fayyad told
the audience in Bil’in that continued settlement activity endangered the
two-state solution. When asked after the talk if he thought a two-state solution
was still possible, he answered, “Yes.”