Wide Angle . Suicide Bombers . Transcript

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MISHAL HUSAIN: But on a moral level, I mean, you wouldn't seek to justify this? PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: I certainly wouldn't. I think it's certainly outrageous, morally speaking. And in addition to it's being morally outrageous, I think it's, even from a political point of view, totally counterproductive because, as I say, it's premised on the rejection of seeing others as human beings. And you cannot really advance in peace or in negotiations unless you in fact see others as human beings, as equals. The failure of all talks, all negotiations, all advances in peace is if you cannot see the other party as an equal human being. MISHAL HUSAIN: In purely practical terms, also in terms of the reality of Palestinian life on the West Bank and in Gaza, these are the very acts that make life much worse. They prompt massive Israeli retaliation. PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: Yes, it's like the chicken and the egg. Basically, the situation of desperation that drives these people to act in the way they do leads to even further desperation. MISHAL HUSAIN: But they're making life worse for themselves. PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: And they make life worse for themselves as well for the Israelis. They make advances towards peace negotiations more difficult. It's a closed circuit. And it's a situation in which we continue thinking into a quagmire, unable to find solid ground in which to step, to put our feet on, and to build for the future. And it's worse both for us as well as for the Israelis. And that is why, in fact, we need to somehow find something, catch on to something that would allow us to come out of the hole -- if you like, the quagmire -- and proceed forward. MISHAL HUSAIN: One of the things we keep hearing about in the film is talk about martyrdom. There seems to be something that really drives these young men: the thought that they're going to end up in paradise. Is this ultimately a religious act that they're undertaking? PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: Looking at the film I think you can tell that for the people themselves who are potential suicide bombers, it is really a personal quest. It's a way of escaping from their own lives. MISHAL HUSAIN: But they see it in religious terms. They talk about it in that way. PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: In more than one instance this person was saying he wanted to go out, move around, sit in cafes, live an ordinary life. On more than one occasion you saw these people basically seeking normal lives, wishing to achieve normal lives and not finding it possible within their own circumstances. Now the people who sent them, the politicians or the activists, fed them with ideology, religious ideology, to reinforce this preparedness they seem to have to go out and kill themselves. And they fed them with, yes, with this sense of martyrdom. MISHAL HUSAIN: But as a professor of Islamic philosophy, is there a basis for this in Islam? Are they right to think that this will lead them to paradise? PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: There are two questions. There's a basis in religion for people who wish to interpret it in any way they like probably to interpret that way. Is it right to interpret it [that way]? No, I don't think it's right to interpret it [that way]. I think some people, especially extremists like the ones we saw, basically try to appropriate religion to themselves and to their own political ideologies. They basically impose their own ideologies, their own way of looking at things, to their religion, which they presumably follow. But, in fact, they may follow their own ideology. MISHAL HUSAIN: Is that how you explain the basic paradox that the Koran condemns suicide and yet these young men think that this is exactly the way that they're going to end up in heaven? PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: I think there's certainly a contradiction. I think that suicides are not accepted in the Koran. The Koran, in fact, celebrates life. You're not supposed to go around and kill yourself or kill other people. MISHAL HUSAIN: So why don't clerics step in and condemn this then? If it's that clear in the Koran that life and death is for God? PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: I think clerics often do, but not sufficiently perhaps. And in any case, even if they did, those who interpret the Koran differently will stand up and say the clerics were mistaken in their interpretation. And basically we're talking about radicals who have extremist points of view who make use of whatever text, religion, or ideology they can put their hands on in order to support their extremism. And the question is, Are they allowed by the rest of the community, in this instance the Islamic community, are they allowed to hijack religion to themselves? Are they allowed to blemish the religion and the Koran they way they do? I don't believe they ought to, and I believe the Muslims should stand up and defend Islam for what it is. Certainly as a normal Muslim, growing up as a normal Muslim, I find their interpretation of Islam totally appalling. And it makes me feel totally distant and alienated from my own upbringing. MISHAL HUSAIN: One of the other affects of all of this is perhaps also what it does to create stereotypes in the broader world, particularly in the western world, about Palestinians, about Muslims and their political struggles. That this is exactly the kind of stereotype of the worst kind of face of Islam that goes out to the rest of the world. PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: Well, unfortunately extremists always manage to appropriate the pictures of themselves and appropriate attention by the rest of the world. And that is how it is, but it doesn't mean of course that the underlying reality is like this. The underlying reality, I believe, is that there are a lot of normal Muslims who believe as normal human beings in God, who see the other as also equals, and who are prepared to make peace with Israel. MISHAL HUSAIN: And yet these kind of instances, suicide bombings, they're not isolated incidences, are they? I mean, they have been a growing phenomenon. Older, younger, women, men have all tried or actually taken part in them. PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: It's certainly true and it's a sign of desperation, but I think there are many acts of heroism in peace making that never reach the news. There are millions of instances. And you have to take that into account in order to be able to look at reality in general. And you have to also look at a little bit deeper basically behind the hatred or underneath the frustration. What is it people are after? Some certainly are after some kind of redemption in the afterlife, but a lot are really wishing to have a normal life down here on earth. And it's really up to the politicians and the leaders to try and present them with opportunity to live those lives. MISHAL HUSAIN: But in the immediate aftermath of acts like this, Israel has to respond, doesn't it? It has to respond to protect its citizens from these kinds of acts. PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: Well I think it's true that Israel needs to respond. The question is, How should it respond? Does it respond, for instance, by acting in the same way? For example, by carrying out assassinations in which also young children, women, and so on are taken out or assassinated or killed? I don't believe this is the right answer. MISHAL HUSAIN: But you don't expect the Israelis to turn the other cheek when clearly the bombers aren't prepared to do that? PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: I don't expect them to turn the other cheek. I expect them to take security measures. But I expect them to be actually, if anything, [to take] wiser security measures, if you like, rather than angry actions. MISHAL HUSAIN: So what kind of measures would you, if you were in the Israeli position, think were appropriate? PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: You know I'm lucky enough not to be in the army or anything to do with the military and I wouldn't really know exactly how to go about doing it. Personally, I think every act of violence is in itself not something to be proud of or to try to -- I'm not sure how to put this -- but I'm totally against any kind of violence, including the violence perpetrated by the Israelis against us. But what I'm saying is this: you cannot really address the problem of violence by counter measures in violence. What I'm saying is that you should try to counter the violence by going deeper and seeing what the political problem is and only by addressing that political problem can we then reach an end of the ongoing conflict and violence. MISHAL HUSAIN: But that's a question for the Palestinian leadership, isn't it? I mean, you've had a role in the leadership as you've served as a PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] commissioner in Jerusalem. Isn't it your job to then stop this? It's happening in your society. PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: It's my job as an ordinary citizen, not as a PLO representative, at one point. And it's the job of every Palestinian and every Israeli. MISHAL HUSAIN: But particularly the leadership? PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: Particularly the leadership, but this is too important to be left to the leadership. I mean, we're talking about our lives, our future, and I think it's really the obligation of every citizen, whether Israeli or Palestinian, to look deeper into the reality, the terrible reality, now the tragic reality we have, and to see what can be done, what needs to be done in order to get out of it. And certainly killing isn't going to get us anywhere and building walls isn't, to my mind, going to get us anywhere. I think the only way to go forward is to try and see what would work as a peaceful solution and to try and make that happen. MISHAL HUSAIN: But are you saying then that there is nothing that the Palestinian leadership at the moment, the Palestinian authority, could do about this? PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: I think the Palestinian authority ought to speak in the same way that I've spoken out in the past. Mainly, it ought to speak against violence. It ought to do everything in its power to control violence. It ought to be on the other hand very clear about its commitment to peace -- MISHAL HUSAIN: And it's not doing enough in your opinion? PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: It's not doing enough. But neither, by the way, are the Israeli leadership. I think this isn't something that only one side can do by itself. I think the two sides have to do it. And very often when the leaders can't do it, the people need to be made to do it. MISHAL HUSAIN: But on the Palestinian [side], it's not helpful when someone like Ahmed Qurei, who's your Prime Minster at the moment, says something like, "A hundred thousand Palestinians are willing to become kamikazes." That's almost endorsing the violence. PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: It sounds like it, but I'm sure if you went and asked him, he'll probably say that he was very excited when he said that. But certainly it's not a helpful statement. But as I was saying earlier, the Palestinian Authority ought to do everything in its power to control the violence. And not just control it on the street, but also control it as we saw on television, control it in the mosques, control it in schools. It requires a great deal of effort to do this. But it has to be done. MISHAL HUSAIN: What about also creating other opportunities? Because these are young men who obviously have very little in their lives. I mean, they say themselves that they think their lives are worthless. Why aren't their other things that -- PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: There are some things that the Authority perhaps can do, for example, influence the media, the official media that the Palestinians -- that we -- have. Or influence the mosques and so on. And there are some other things that the Authority cannot do, such as provide, for example, the kind of normalcy in life that you're talking about. This is something that is totally in the power of the Israeli army. It is the Israeli army that blocks off your entry to a village at will. It is the Israeli army that suddenly takes up the land that you have for working. It is the Israeli army that allows you to work or not to work, to reach school, not to reach school. MISHAL HUSAIN: But the suicide bombers have to take responsibility, don't they, for the fact that when they carry out these acts it's exactly that kind of thing that means the sealing off of the Palestinian territories, the prevention of Palestinians getting to their jobs in Israel. PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: What you have to remember is that the Israelis are not just sealing off Israel from the West Bank when they do this. The Israelis are basically in the West Bank, are living in the midst of the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza. And so when they're, for instance, sealing off one area from another, they're basically sealing one Palestinian area from another. So you cannot, as a Palestinian, move from one village to another Palestinian village. You cannot go to school in the next village. You cannot go and see your parents or your cousins in the next village. So what we're talking about is not Israel coming in and preventing Palestinians from rushing into Israel and blowing themselves up in Israel. If they were to do this, it would make sense and indeed, maybe that would be the end of the entire problem. But as it is, they're living in our midst, the army lives in our midst, and it's very difficult therefore for Palestinians, or for the Palestinian Authority rather, to create normalcy when it is under Israeli occupation. MISHAL HUSAIN: In terms of what the Palestinian Authority can do -- this is an authority that received about $20 million dollars from the United States. Why hasn't it created more opportunities to get young men like those we've seen in the film into something much more constructive than what they're actually doing? PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: I don't think this is the way to look at this. Basically what we've had is a good beginning back in 1994 with the beginning of the Oslo process and the construction of the Authority. There's been a lot of investment, a lot of work opportunities, job opportunities, a lot of money was thrown into the West Bank, Gaza, and things seemed like they were going well until they totally broke down in four or five years after Oslo began. Now this means that there's a failure on the part of both the Palestinian Authority but also the Israelis to make the best use of the peace agreement which was reached at Oslo. And as soon as they began to break down everything just collapsed. And as it collapsed, it became impossible for the Authority to provide those conditions you talk about for the Palestinian ... MISHAL HUSAIN: And are you saying that that provided the breeding ground for what we saw in the film? PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: The frustration that grew out of the total ... yes. In 1994, you must remember there was a big hope that the Palestinians had. The Palestinians had a big hope that finally they're going to be free, they're going to have a state, they're going to have independence. It's all going to be different. And I think that after five or six years -- you heard references to this in the film -- people discovered, when they were saying, "We gave Israel the chance and it didn't work out" and so on. I think people just came to the point where they were totally frustrated with the fact that the hopes seem to have broken. And that freedom was not achieved. That was the breeding ground, yes. MISHAL HUSAIN: It's still an indictment of Palestinian society, is it not? What we see in the film is young men who are preoccupied with the act of taking the lives of the people they see as their enemies. PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: I think it's an indictment of the political situation of human nature, of a tragedy that's been going on for the last 50 years unsolved. It's indictment of the United Nations, of the big powers. It's an indictment of Britain, who created the problem. And it's an indictment of the Palestinians too. MISHAL HUSAIN: But as a Palestinian yourself who one day wants to see your own state, this is your youth. How do you build or construct a society and one day a state on this? PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: This is only a part of the picture. I work in education, as you know, and I've been working on education for the better part of my life as a Palestinian. And I'm interacting with students all the time. I see negative signs every now and again, but that's not the picture that I get. I still have a lot of hope. There's a lot of good out there and I think if the opportunity presents itself once again I hope it will be possible to reach peace and to have normal lives and indeed very positive lives for these people. MISHAL HUSAIN: But the fact that Palestinians often perhaps now see themselves as victims, identify themselves with suffering; is that a basis to build a society, a state of the future? PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: It's not the basis, but you have to remember that we have a problem which is unsolved. The problem is that we do live under occupation. There's a war that started that was never finished. You have to remember we have a lot of frustration; we have a lot of people who feel unjustly treated. We have refugees living all over the place. It's a problem. Now in a situation like this, you need to look beyond the immediate reactions of the Palestinians and see how best to move forward. And the only way to move forward is to deal directly with the conflict and the occupation and create peace through the establishment of a state. MISHAL HUSAIN: Now you have been working on your own blueprint for peace in the Middle East, working on it at a very difficult time and you've chose to work with an Israeli on it. PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: Yes. I'm working with Ami Ayalon on the Israeli side, who is a retired admiral of the Israeli navy and an ex-chief of the Israeli security forces. So he represents a good security image from the Israeli point of view. And both he and I believe very strongly that the violence that exists cannot be overcome by violence of any kind. We think that the violence that exists can only be overcome and addressed if there's to be a political solution, a solution that will involve a price to be paid by both sides. But a commitment by both sides therefore to six main principles: two states for two people, Jerusalem to be shared, settlements to be evacuated in the Palestinian state, refugees to be addressed within the context of the Palestinian state, and the security issue to be addressed in the context of demilitarization for the Palestinian state. MISHAL HUSAIN: You make it sound simple, but it's very far from that, isn't it? I mean, you've already faced opposition from your own community. PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: If there's to be peace in that area, it has to be based on some kind of equitable balance. Now you can either divide up the land in the territory for each side so that one side has one territory and the other has another territory. And that's equitable, although we get something like 33 percent, but that's equitable. And the other side, if you can't do that, you have to give equal rights to people. I'm open personally for the two suggestions. In other words, divide up rights among individuals: Israelis, Palestinians, Jews, Muslims, Christians. Let them all live as equals in one system of government. Or, if you do not want that, divide up rights according to territory. But you can't expect the Palestinians to live without rights forever and to feel normal about it. MISHAL HUSAIN: Let's just talk for a moment about the problems that your own community, the Palestinian community, has had with your plan -- crucially the issue of refugees. You are advocating that the Palestinians give up the right to return to homes in Israel? PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: I'm advocating the following: that Palestinians should actually choose from different options, and in this particular instance, basically give priority to the right to live in freedom and independence over the right of return to pre-'67 Israel. I'm not saying that we do not have the right to return. I'm saying we have the right to return and we have the right to freedom, but as often in life when two rights conflict, you have to give priority to one right over another. And so what I'm saying basically to Palestinians is in this particular context, let's give priority to the right to live in freedom, to have a future for ourselves. MISHAL HUSAIN: That's a very, very hard one to sell to Palestinians. We all know how emotional the issue of returning to their old homes is for so many. How do you sell that to them? PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: By knowing what it means because, you know my own mother is a refugee. And I grew up in a house in which I knew exactly what my mother was telling me she was yearning for as she was talking about return. And it seems to me that half of it, almost, is like a yearning to go back in time, not only to go back in space 60 kilometers due west so to speak, which is impossible. And I think it's far better therefore to exchange a dream which is unattainable by a dream which is a dream about the future. MISHAL HUSAIN: But the reality is though that you've already seen the anger of your own people over that issue. You've talked about it for a while. You were once beaten up actually by -- PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: Over something else, though. MISHAL HUSAIN: Not over this particular thing? PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: Not over this particular thing. When I was beaten up, it was when news of talks first broke out among people between ourselves on the Palestinian side with people on the Likud side. This was back in '84, '85, when talking between Israelis and Palestinians was not there at all, and especially with right-wing Israelis. But since then it's become normal. And when I started speaking about refugees, yes, I did break a taboo. I make people begin to address this point openly. People dislike it, but I think people respect me for saying the truth and they know that I'm being honest. I'm basically saying that you can't expect to have a one-state solution. MISHAL HUSAIN: You are a member of the Palestinian elite. You're very well known in the Palestinian community. You run a university. Do you really think that you can take this idea and go into refugee camps? PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: I've done it. MISHAL HUSAIN: Places like Jenin, where most of these bombers come from? PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: I haven't been to Jenin, but I ought to tell you something. The people's voice on the Palestinian side in the name of what we call the People's Campaign for Peace and Democracy, which actually espouses the five principles or six principles I spoke about, including the one about refugees, has or is being supported now by a grassroots movement throughout the West Bank and Gaza. And the leadership of this movement is actually in various refugee camps. MISHAL HUSAIN: But you can't imagine that the kind of young men who we've just seen in the film signing up to this, they don't want a two-state solution. They want an end to Israel. PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: Not specifically those people. Perhaps now they might, but certainly I've got more than 140,000 people so far from refugee camps, from villages, from towns, certainly none of them elites like myself, as you describe me, who have signed up to this on the Palestinian side. It's a very strong grassroots movement and it's unprecedented. There's no other document that's been signed by so many people calling for peace between two people like this. MISHAL HUSAIN: It's still what, only about 5 percent of the Palestinian population, though? PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: But it's better than 0 percent, which is the alternative because there's no other document. And if you take a look at history, none of the U.N. resolutions, none of the agreements back from '48 to today has had any Palestinians and Israelis signing to it. You know, not [U.N. resolution] 242, not 194, not the partition plan itself, U.N. resolution 181. Get me one document which actually Israelis and Palestinians say they agree to that has been signed by all the individuals. This one has had so far over three quarters -- three hundred or four hundred thousand people all together. MISHAL HUSAIN: There are the problematic aspects, though, for both Israelis and Palestinians, with it this issue of Jerusalem being an international city. Again, Jerusalem is something that consistently has been so emotional. PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: We didn't say it should be international. We said basically that it would be open, that Arab neighborhoods would fall under Arab/Palestinian sovereignty, Israeli or Jewish neighborhoods under Jewish sovereignty. When it came to the religious areas, especially the Noble Sanctuary area, which is also called the Temple Mount area, which is really the sensitive area, we basically said let there be no sovereignty there. Let the sovereignty over there be God's, because after all the Muslims give it a lot of respect, for what reason but for the fact that this is God's place. And so do the Jews. MISHAL HUSAIN: Is that realistic, to think no sovereignty over it? PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: It's the best way of looking at it in my opinion. Let there be a God sovereignty over there. And let the Palestinians act on behalf of God, represent him if you like, in looking after the affairs of the Noble Sanctuary, Haram al-Sharif, the Aqsa and the Israeli government again acting on behalf of God looking after the wailing wall on behalf of the Israelis and the Jewish people. As far as the real practical daily affairs of the situation are concerned, the Israelis will feel they have it under their control. The Palestinians would have under their control what they want to have, but the sovereignty would be God's. And so it would not be infringing on each other's historic sense of belonging there. MISHAL HUSAIN: You also speak about the Palestinian state being demilitarized. I mean, again that could be a red light to very many people. Is that a viable Palestinian state? Is that a real state? PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: I think it's the only viable state. I don't see any need, personally, for a militarized Palestinian state. There's no need for a military for the Palestinians because -- MISHAL HUSAIN: They're living side by side with one of the most powerful militaries in the world? PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: Absolutely. Because of that, there's no sense of our being militarized in any way at all because, however much you militarize yourself, you're not going to be able to achieve a victory over nuclear power on the Israeli side, nor indeed protect yourself. So any money that's spent in militarization would be, in my opinion, a waste of money. And it's far better to invest in education and social welfare and health and developing any country for the Palestinians. And actually we would be far more powerful vis a vis Israel, nuclear Israel, if we were totally weaponless than we would be if we carried a few guns. It is totally useless and counterproductive. MISHAL HUSAIN: Again, this is going to be something that is really hard for you to sell to Palestinians. It makes them appear powerless against this hugely powerful neighbor. PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: On the contrary, when you have a neighbor which is so powerful, the only power that you can have is to have no military weapons whatsoever. Otherwise we enter into a race, we put together as many devastating weapons, nuclear weapons, as we can, and what's the point of it eventually? MISHAL HUSAIN: Is it realistic to talk about Jewish settlements being evacuated? The word settlement is in a sense is misleading. Many of these are fully functioning towns with thousands of inhabitants. PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: Well there are some concentrations of those settlements. Now we envision the possibility of a territorial exchange on the basis of one to one, equal both in value and quantity between the two sides. And one assumes that Israel will wish to appropriate those concentrations or settlements, the large concentrations or settlements, to within Israel in exchange for territory to be exchanged for the Palestinian state. I'm not saying that it's very easy to do. And I'm not saying necessarily that everything can be agreed upon very quickly, but the principle is there. It can be done perhaps, that the major concentrations of settlements can be incorporated while the other settlements can be evacuated. But however it works out, we need to have a Palestinian state in which the settlements are evacuated indeed so that they do not constitute neither burden on the Palestinian state nor indeed even on Israeli, which would have to look after them. MISHAL HUSAIN: But if you look at with the light of what we've seen in Gaza, where we've had a sense of how determined settlers are to stay there, it doesn't bode very well, does it? Because the West Bank for Jewish settlers has much more of an emotional and a historical significance. PROFESSOR SARI NUSSEIBEH: It has to be done very radically. It has to be done very committedly. It is going to be painful. Both sides have to realize exactly what their price is. Look, the Israelis would have to put up with the fact that they cannot have settlements inside the Palestinian state. And they will not be able to reach peace if they insist on the settlement policy. And the Palestinians will have or realize on their part that there are some things that the Israelis cannot live with. And so the two sides have to take the bull by the horns. It's not going to help us if we continue to ignore the reality, however painful it is. So we, both sides, have to look directly in the eyes of the main problem, or problems if you like, and reach a solution about them. And this is the only solution.

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Professor Sari Nusseibeh, President of Al-Quds University