- Oct 3, 2018
- 3,986
STATE OF PALESTINE
His Excellency President LaFleur
The White House
Washington, D.C.
Mr. President,
I write to you as one man asking another to understand a moment that I fear is slipping beyond anyone's control, including my own.
The Palestinian people have been, for far too long, the victims of false promises. They have been forced to endure much. I will not stand before you and claim our hands are entirely clean, nor will I claim that our hearts have always been pure. We are not a people without fault, and I will not insult your intelligence or my own conscience by pretending otherwise. But a people can be flawed and still be owed justice. I ask you to hold both of those truths at once, because I certainly must.
In 1993, the late President Clinton, with all his personal charisma, sought to build something rare: a vision rooted not in ideology but in reason.The plain, difficult recognition that two peoples on this sacred land must find a way to co-exist. That vision has now come apart in the hands of those who inherited it. The decision by the Israeli government to withdraw from the Oslo framework is not, I believe, the disease itself. It is a symptom of something deeper, factions on both sides of this conflict, who have concluded that war satisfies something in them that peace cannot: vengeance, or craving, or the simple exhaustion of believing in anything else. I do not exempt my own people from this affliction. I only observe that it now runs in both directions.
I believe, more than at any point in my lifetime, that the opportunity for a peaceful resolution is dwindling under the current Israeli government. I have enclosed for your review the most recent letter I received from that government, so that you may judge its tone and its substance for yourself, without relying on my characterization of it.
Mr. President, I will be honest with you. I cannot keep the lid closed here. There is a pressure building in this land that I can feel in every meeting I hold, in every street I am briefed on, in every young man who no longer listens to men like me. It is a pressure cooker, and the actions of the current Israeli government, the checkpoints, the visits to sacred ground staged for cameras, the closed doors where open ones were promised continue to put fire under the pot. When it blows, Mr. President, the reaction will be catastrophic. Not just for my people. For yours, for Israel's, and for this region.
I know that many come to your office, for all its wealth and power, expecting it to resolve their problems for them. I would be ashamed to ask that of you. I am not asking you to solve this. I ask only for your words, and your pen. I ask you to lend what weight you carry to the calmer voices that still exist in Israel, voices that are being drowned out with each passing week. I ask you to help give my people, and whatever remains of a peace camp on the other side of this conflict, a fighting chance, the chance to negotiate, one day soon, with a partner who wants peace as much as we say we do.
I do not know how much time remains for that chance. I suspect neither of us does. But I did not want history to record that I failed to ask.
With respect and, I hope, continued friendship between our peoples,
Marwan Barghouti
President of the State of Palestine
Chairman of the Palestinian Liberation Organization
Ramallah, Palestine
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Odinson
Securely Enclosed: Letter from the Government of Israel.
