The Washington Diplomat

Cover Profile / Maen Rashid Areikat

With Widening Israeli-Palestinian Gulf,
PLO Envoy Clings to Statehood Dream

by Larry Luxner

Born in Jericho, one of the oldest cities on Earth, and raised in the thick of one of the world’s most vexing political conundrums — the Arab-Israeli conflict — Maen Rashid Areikat knows exactly what he’s up against.

As representative of the Palestine Liberation Organization to the United States, Areikat has been the official voice of his people in the United States for the past eight months. Declaring himself “Palestinian to the bone” during an interview with The Washington Diplomat, Areikat outlined his vision for a future Palestinian state in the face of increasing anger over Israeli settlements in the West Bank and unrelenting poverty in the Gaza Strip — and apparent failure by U.S. mediators to tackle either situation.

“I share the same goals and objectives as all Palestinians: to be independent and get rid of the Israeli military occupation,” he said, speaking from his second-floor office at the PLO mission just off Dupont Circle. “And I would like to believe that I represent all Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and also here in the United States.”

The 49-year-old diplomat says he’s optimistic about the future, though it’s hard to see why — especially in light of continuing bitterness between the Hamas and Fatah political movements and the hard-line policies of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who seems to have no intention of ending Jewish colonization of the West Bank. Despite growing fears that stalemate has become the new status quo in the decades-long conflict, Areikat insists peace is still the only viable endgame.

“I think that with the Obama administration’s assertion that it’s a national security interest to have a Palestinian state next to Israel, we’re seeing a different tone and hopefully a different approach than before,” he said. “The United States will not allow this conflict to persist and undermine its interests. I think this is my strongest source of optimism. I see an administration that has not abandoned the pursuit of peace. They may have taken a break for the time being, but I believe strongly that they cannot afford to let it slip out of their hands.”

That’s because, he says, the United States for the first time has a president who understands the needs of the Arab world. “President Obama is doing the right thing,” Areikat told The Diplomat. “His administration is genuine and sincere about its intentions. The president himself is personally committed to this objective. They have an excellent team at work, one of the finest that’s ever been assembled. But it’s only been nine months, and I don’t want to judge if they succeeded or failed. It’s too early.”

Still, Areikat did little to hide his displeasure at the White House’s recent backpedaling on the issue of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, which Israel calls “Judea and Samaria.”

In a landmark speech in Cairo last June, Obama boldly declared that “the United States does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements. This construction violates previous agreements and undermines efforts to achieve peace. It is time for these settlements to stop” — even calling for a halt to so-called “natural growth” expansion.

But two months ago, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praised Netanyahu for offering a 10-month partial freeze on settlement construction, even though he insists on the completion of 3,000 housing units and on building anywhere inside East Jerusalem, which the prime minister vows will never be divided to become the future capital of a Palestinian state.

Clinton also called on Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas to re-engage in negotiations with Israel, saying those Jewish settlements should not be an impediment to ongoing talks. Abbas at first refused to resume negotiations — now frozen for more than a year — saying the proposal fell far short of initial demands that Israelis stop all settlement construction without exception. But in December, he suggested that if Israel completely froze all construction — including in East Jerusalem — a comprehensive peace deal was possible within the next six months. “I suggested to [Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak] three weeks ago that Israel freeze all construction in the settlements for six months, including East Jerusalem,” Abbas told the Israeli daily Haaretz. “During this time we can get back to the table and even complete talks on a final status agreement. I have yet to receive an answer.”

Netanyahu spokesman Mark Regev responded that it was time for Abbas to return to talks, rather than dictate more preconditions.

Areikat clearly doesn’t hold out much hope for a resumption of talks if it hinges on Israel cracking down on settlements. “Israel’s moratorium on settlements is a total joke,” he charged. “Just a few days ago, the same Israeli government that announced the moratorium said it would pump millions of dollars into settlements they consider important to Israel’s national security. I don’t think the Israeli government is serious about this. The only way they can prove they are is to rein in these extremist settlers, who are not only threatening Palestinians but also defying their own government which is protecting them.”

Yet many Palestinians say the Israeli government has never been serious about confronting settlers or curbing their growth, as evidenced by the numbers on the ground. Since 1967, the number of settlers in the West Bank has grown to 300,000, while some 180,000 Israelis live in Jewish neighborhoods built in East Jerusalem. In addition, Israeli construction of a 250-mile separation barrier (projected to stretch more than 400 miles) has successfully prevented suicide attacks but also disrupted Palestinian life in the West Bank, effectively annexing more than 12 percent of Palestinian land according to pre-1967 borders.

As New York Times columnist Roger Cohen recently put it, “These are not small developments. They have changed the physical appearance of the Middle East. More important, they have transformed the psychologies of the protagonists. Israelis have walled themselves off from Palestinians. They are less interested than ever in a deal with people they hardly see.”

To that end, Netanyahu’s 10-month moratorium not only disappointed the Palestinians, it didn’t exactly please many Israelis, provoking massive protests from the Jewish settler community in a sign of just how domestically explosive the issue has become. And in mid-December, ultra-Orthodox Jewish vandals raided a mosque in the West Bank village of Yasuf, burning furniture, prayer rugs and holy texts and defacing the mosque’s walls. The attack outraged local Arabs, despite the fact that a group of Zionist rabbis and Jewish peace activists from across Israel later visited to help clean up the mosque.

“We always warned against activities like that,” the PLO representative said. “Torching the Koran is a repugnant act taken by these fanatics. This proves that these extremists will do whatever they can to undermine any prospect of peace in the region. And I don’t know if Netanyahu is willing to take them on and risk losing his own coalition. By accepting them to be in a coalition in the first place, he basically handcuffed himself.”

Meanwhile, Abbas, fed up with the settlement logjam and U.S. backtracking, seems just as handcuffed. Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rudaineh recently admitted that the U.S.-mediated peace process is “in a state of paralysis, and the result of Israel’s intransigence and America’s backpedaling is that there is no hope of negotiations on the horizon.”

After unsuccessfully floating the idea of a unilateral U.N. declaration of statehood, Abbas said he’s not interested in running in the next Palestinian presidential election, which had been originally scheduled for this January, when his five-year term as president was supposed to have ended. For now, the PLO has approved the extension of his term and that of all Palestinian institutions until new elections are held in June 2010. If no breakthrough is reached in the next six months though and the moderate, Western-friendly Abbas leaves the scene in June, chances for any kind of peace could crumble.

Areikat says Abbas’s frustration shouldn’t come as any surprise. “When you have high expectations, you end up not realizing them, it’s natural to feel disappointed,” he said, carefully avoiding any direct criticism of Obama or any members of his cabinet. “What we would like to see is a translation of their good intentions into practical steps that would lead to a just, comprehensive solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. This can only happen if the U.S. takes a balanced, even-handed approach. You cannot cover up for one party that is not responding or even being receptive.”

Yet it’s not exactly as if the Palestinians have their political house in order. Abbas only controls the West Bank, after his Fatah party was ousted out of the Gaza Strip in 2007 by its political rival, Hamas, which has refused to recognize the six-month extension of Abbas’s term anyway. And reconciliation talks between the two sides mediated by Egypt remain deadlocked, leaving the Palestinians without a united voice in any peace negotiation — a situation that doesn’t look like it will be changing anytime soon.

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