[NYTr] Democ Now - Nov 28 on Annapolis Daniel Levy, Mustafa Barghouti

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

sent by Ed Pearl

Democracy Now - November 28th, 2007
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/28/159212

Israelis, Palestinians Open U.S.-Backed Conference 
with Vague Statementon Timeline, Goals

Israel and the Palestinian Authority have agreed to launch peace
negotiations with the goal of reaching a full treaty by the end of
2008. But Israel has already said it will delay talks on core issues,
including the status of Jerusalem, the borders of a Palestinian state,
the future of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the fate of
Palestinian refugees. We speak with Palestinian lawmaker and physician
Mustafa Barghouti and former Israeli peace negotiator Daniel Levy.


In Annapolis, Maryland on Tuesday, Israel and the Palestinian Authority
announced they have agreed to launch peace negotiations with the goal
of reaching a full treaty by the end of 2008. President Bush opened the
Annapolis conference by reading aloud a joint statement agreed upon by
the two sides just minutes before.

    * President Bush.

Bush went on to say Israel and the Palestinians would try to reach an
agreement on a treaty and Palestinian statehood by the end of next
year, when Bush is due to leave office. The first negotiations would
start on December 12th, with meetings to be held every two weeks after
that. The announcement was made before high-level diplomats from nearly
50 countries and international bodies. They included top envoys from
more than a dozen Arab states, including Syria and Saudi Arabia. In his
speech, President Bush said reaching a full peace deal by the end of
2008 was possible.

    * President Bush.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the talks must include the
status of Jerusalem as a Palestinian capital and the future of refugees.

    * Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told conference attendees that the
negotiations inaugurated at Annapolis would address issues that
previous talks had avoided.

    * Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.

While the Bush administration has sought to portray the Annapolis
conference as a milestone, skepticism of the outcome is high. Major
differences remain between the Israelis and Palestinians over core
issues like the status of Jerusalem, the borders of a Palestinian
state, the future of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the fate
of Palestinian refugees. Meanwhile, Hamas, which controls the Gaza
Strip, was not invited to the conference. The group denounced the talks
as tens of thousands of supporters rallied in Gaza City in protest. In
the West Bank, Palestinian security forces broke up several protests
against the Annapolis gathering. One man was killed in Hebron, and at
least 35 people were wounded. And in Jerusalem, Israelis gathered at
the Western Wall to protest against the conference.

For more on the Annapolis conference, we are joined by two guests. They
both join us from Washington, D.C.

    * Mustafa Barghouti. Independent Palestinian lawmaker and democracy
activist. He is the former information minister of the Palestinian
Authority. In 2005, he ran for president, finishing second to Mahmoud
Abbas.

    * Daniel Levy. Former Israeli peace negotiator and has served as
adviser to the governments of Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Rabin. He is
currently a senior fellow of the Middle East Policy Initiative at the
New America Foundation.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: In Annapolis, Maryland on Tuesday, Israel and the
Palestinian Authority announced they have agreed to immediately launch
peace negotiations with the goal of reaching a full treaty by the end
of 2008. President Bush opened the Annapolis conference by reading
aloud a joint statement agreed upon by the two sides just minutes
before.

      PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: The representatives of the government
of the state of Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization,
represented respectively by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and President
Mahmoud Abbas in his capacity as Chairman of the PLO Executive
Committee --

AMY GOODMAN: Bush went on to say Israel and the Palestinians would try
to reach an agreement on a treaty and Palestinian statehood by the end
of next year, when Bush is due to leave office. The first negotiations
would start on December 12, with meetings to be held every two weeks
after that.

The announcement was made before high-level diplomats from nearly fifty
countries and international bodies. They included top envoys from more
than a dozen Arab states, including Syria and Saudi Arabia.

In his speech, President Bush said reaching a full peace deal by the
end of 2008 is possible. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said the
talks must include the status of Jerusalem as a Palestinian capital and
the future of refugees.

      PRESIDENT MAHMOUD ABBAS: [translated] To achieve that, peace does
not depend on the Arab and Islamic position itself, but requires
meeting this position with a reciprocal strategic willingness that
would basically lead to ending the occupation in all Palestinian
occupied territories of 1967, including East Jerusalem, as well as the
Syrian Golan and what remains of occupied Lebanese territories, as well
as all other issues relating to the conflict, especially the
Palestinian refugee question.

AMY GOODMAN: Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert told conference
attendees the negotiations inaugurated at Annapolis would address
issues that previous talks had avoided.

      PRIME MINISTER EHUD OLMERT: [translated] We will not shy away
from any topic. We will deal with all the core issues. I have no doubt
that the reality that emerged in our region will change significantly.
This will be an extremely difficult process for all of us, but it
nevertheless is inevitable.

AMY GOODMAN: While the Bush administration has sought to portray the
Annapolis conference as a milestone, skepticism of the outcome is high.
Major differences remain between the Israelis and Palestinians over
core issues like the status of Jerusalem, the border of a Palestinian
state, the future of Jewish settlements in the West Bank and the fate
of Palestinian refugees.

Meanwhile, Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip, was not invited to the
conference. The group denounced the talks, as tens of thousands of
supporters rallied in Gaza City in protest. In the West Bank,
Palestinian security forces broke up several protests against the
Annapolis gathering. One man was killed in Hebron, at least thirty-five
people wounded. And in Jerusalem, Israelis gathered at the Western Wall
to protest against the conference.

For more on the Annapolis conference, we're joined by two guests.
Mustafa Barghouti is an independent Palestinian lawmaker and democracy
activist. He is the former information minister of the Palestinian
Authority. In 2005, he ran for president, finishing second to Mahmoud
Abbas. Daniel Levy is a former Israeli peace negotiator. He served as
adviser to the governments of Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Rabin. He is
currently a senior fellow of the Middle East Policy Initiative at the
New America Foundation. They join us both from Washington, D.C.

Daniel Levy, what did you expect to come of the conference? Did it meet
your expectations?

DANIEL LEVY: Well, the expectations were low, Amy. And thank you for
having us on, and it’s an honor to be with you. And when the
expectations are low, they expectations can be met. So I think we knew
in advance that this conference wasn’t going to be about substance.

MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: I can’t hear him. Is he speaking?

DANIEL LEVY: What we weren’t sure is whether they’d get the optics
right. Here, I think Secretary Rice has something of a feather in her
cap. She got all the attendees there. She got a joint statement. We had
uplifting speeches. And we got a presidential commitment. That means at
least that they’ve got more invested in this than they have for the
last seven years. So at least when there’s an investment, you’ve got a
bit more to lose.

MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: Now I hear him.

DANIEL LEVY: Having said that, everything now is about what happens
next on the ground. Are there serious negotiations, or do the
negotiations get stalled? And the daily situation that you had a little
report about there, does that daily situation improve for the people,
or is it just as dreadful? And if it’s the negative side of that ledger
-- and unfortunately that’s probably where the bookmakers would be --
then no one comes out of yesterday smelling of roses, and we’re all
back where we started.

So I think it’s good that the Americans are engaged again, but the kind
of engagement matters, and I’m not sure we’re going to see a change. I
was very worried by the old divisive global war on terror -- dividing
the world into good and bad -- narrative that the President used
yesterday.

AMY GOODMAN: Mustafa Barghouti, your response to the summit at the US
Naval Academy in Annapolis?

MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: Well, the only official thing that came out of this
is the statement, the joint statement, and in that statement, the
Palestinian delegation failed to present any of the Palestinian
demands. Basically, the Palestinian delegation, being very weak and
with great doubts about how representative it is, made one concession
after the other. And everything they promised the Palestinian people,
they failed to achieve. They didn’t mention the issue of Jerusalem; the
issue of borders; the freeze of settlements, which we’ve been asking
for. And basically the whole document and the whole outcome of the
meeting has practically met every Israeli need or demand. What Livni
promised has happened, which is that security comes before
negotiations, and it becomes a condition of negotiations. What is most
drastic is that after all this big gathering and all these expenses on
such a conference, or a meeting, all we get is the same road map that
was there back in 2003 and that was never implemented.

And in my opinion, what happened was very risky, because instead of
discussing the real issues, the Israeli side managed to mobilize the
American side; to marginalize completely the Quartet, which has no role
from now on; to completely ignore and omit any mentioning of the basis
and reference of negotiations, like UN resolutions, United Nations
decisions --

AMY GOODMAN: The Quartet being -- Mustafa Barghouti, the --

MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: -- everything that used to be mentioned, like
international law, international humanitarian law. Everything was
dismissed. The only reference that remains is what Israelis accept and
what they don’t accept. And the whole issue becomes an issue of how the
Palestinian Authority will be transformed to become a security subagent
for occupation. And that is a condition. If the Palestinian Authority
does not fulfill that, which is objectively impossible, then there will
be no progress on any field. In my opinion, that is very dangerous. And
it is really quite dangerous that the Israelis managed to get
everything they want without any balance.

AMY GOODMAN: The fact, Mustafa Barghouti, that Saudi Arabia appeared in
this kind of summit with Israel for the first time, a public meeting?

MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: This is not the first time, by the way. This is
again exaggerated. Saudi Arabia attended the first international
conference in Madrid Conference -- in Madrid, sorry.

AMY GOODMAN: In 1991.

MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: In 1991. And they were present there. And Saudi
Arabia was instrumental in presenting the Arab initiative, which drew a
very detailed plan of how peace could be achieved, mainly specifying
that Israel must end the occupation of Palestinian territories and Arab
territories, and in exchange Israel would get complete and full
recognition and total peace with all Arab countries. Unfortunately,
even the Arab initiative not mentioned. And the Saudis said they came
with great hesitation. I am sure they came because they didn’t want to
upset the United States. But I think all the Arab countries will
probably walk out of this conference feeling very bad about how they
were treated, about ignoring the Arab initiative. And I know that the
Israelis consider this as a big achievement, because they think this
gives them a green line now for -- a green light now for normalization
with Arab countries without solving the Palestinian issue.

But in my opinion, you know, Palestinians have made a big compromise.
The Arabs have supported that compromise, which is two-state solution.
The Palestinians have accepted to have a state in less than half of
what was assigned to them back in the United Nations resolutions in
’47. And now what are they getting? The Road Map. You know, there comes
a point where you cannot further compromise the compromise. And what
happened in Annapolis was basically, in my opinion, a big blow to the
possibility of peace based on two-state solution. And this might be the
last opportunity.

AMY GOODMAN: Daniel Levy, your response?

DANIEL LEVY: I’m afraid I only caught the very end of Mustafa’s
comments.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, one of the key issues that he’s talked about is that
basically Israel got its way at this conference, and he also felt that
the Palestinian negotiating team was very weak.

DANIEL LEVY: First, I think the Palestinian negotiating team were
starting from a weak hand. First of all, there's the structural reality
of the conflict, which Mustafa, of course, is more aware of than
myself, which is the imbalance between occupier and occupied. When the
outside power that convenes the conference is also historically closer
to the occupier, then, of course, you really have an entire process
that’s out of sync.

I think Mustafa, in that respect, referred to the Quartet. You see, the
Quartet was an opportunity to redress that balance, in a way, and to
have the international community, alongside the Americans, giving this
not only more international legitimacy, but a different framing. And I
think yesterday, reading between the lines, was almost the death of the
Quartet, because all the follow-up and all the monitoring will be
exclusively American-led.

AMY GOODMAN: And just to clarify, the Quartet being European Union, the
United Nations, Russia and the United States.

DANIEL LEVY: Absolutely. I can maybe set Mustafa a little bit at ease
in terms of where the Israeli papers have come out this morning. The
Israeli papers are not celebrating this as a great victory for Prime
Minister Olmert, and they’re focusing more on the -- this was not
normalization. And I think in that respect, Mustafa is right. There was
an element of prematurity about bringing all the world together for
something that was the beginning of the beginning of new negotiations.

The possible positive is that there’s a momentum out of these talks.
But the negative, as Mustafa says -- and I agree with him -- is that
you can’t do a conference like this every week, OK? So if you bring
together this kind of a conference and something serious does not come
out of it, then we’re in an even worse place, not only because hopes
have been raised and expectations dashed, but because also here, I
mean, you, the people listening to this, think, “Oh, you know, these
guys have been killing each other for thousands of years. They’ll carry
on. And why should we bother being involved?” And everyone loses faith
and loses belief. And that’s a net negative.

I would argue that that means we have to do everything, despite all the
odds being, you know, not great. We have to do everything to try and
turn this into a process that works. I agree that that’s very difficult
and that the leadership role played by the United States would have to
be radically different to what it has been in the last seven years.

AMY GOODMAN: One of the other issues Mustafa Barghouti raised was the
sidelining of the Arab League deal. Why is it taking so long for that
to be acted on for a Palestinian state, Daniel?

DANIEL LEVY: Absolutely. And I think -- let me speak as an Israeli and
a former Israeli official here. I think we’ve gotten to “yes.” The Arab
initiative is Israel getting the recognition it yearned for ever since
its establishment and its creation. Mustafa’s right: in 1991, at the
Madrid Conference, everyone was there. People forget that in 1996 there
was a summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, where the Arabs States attended,
together with Israel and President Clinton. So we’ve been building and
building, and in 2002, there it is: a formal Arab League initiative
offering full normal relations for a comprehensive -- comprehensive --
land for peace. That should have been the “yes” moment for Israel.

Somehow, we’ve plodded through the last five years, partly because
Ariel Sharon was prime minister, and I don’t think he had any
intentions to make peace, partly because President Bush was the
president of the United States, and he made no effort whatsoever to
turn this Arab initiative into a workable peace process. The challenge
for Israel -- and by the way, I think for all his detractors and for
all the reality on the ground, which I think Olmert has not done
anything significant to improve, I do think the Israeli prime minister
spoke in very empathetic and sincere terms yesterday, and I give him
some credit for that. But the real challenge is, can Israel embrace
this offer and say yes to the '67 lines, say yes to, in fact, 78% of
mandatory Palestine?

AMY GOODMAN: What is Israel's interest in rejecting the deal?

DANIEL LEVY: You know, Amy, I wish I could tell you and give you a good
answer. My best answer at that is, there are groups inside Israel who
are not inconsequential, who are Greater Land of Israel
territorialists, who believe that this is God-given land. You have your
own religious fundamentalists here in this country. That’s one section,
and they're quite effective politically, and prime ministers tend to be
worried when they go against them.

You also have security hawks, who will always find the security reason
why, even if we can make a compromise one day, we can’t do it tomorrow,
and we need to be here for our security. In 2007, to tell me I need a
hill on the West Bank for my security, I think, is ridiculous.

But there’s a third reason, which is that Israel, rather than turning
to its friend America and that friend saying, “Hey, guys, this is in
your interest, it’s in our interest, let’s do this,” America is
normally saying, “If you want to carry on your crazy self-destructive
policy of occupation, don’t expect us to change it for you. In fact,
we’ll continue to back you.” It’s like a drunkard turning to his friend
and the friend giving him another bottle of vodka and then giving him
the car keys.

AMY GOODMAN: We're going to go to break and come back to this
discussion. We’ll get Mustafa Barghouti’s response. We’re speaking with
Daniel Levy, who’s a former Israel peace negotiator and has served as
adviser to the governments of Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Rabin. We’ve also
been speaking with Mustafa Barghouti, independent Palestinian lawmaker
and democracy activist. We’ll be back with both of them in a minute.

[break]

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking about the US Naval Academy at Annapolis
summit that took place yesterday. It’s continuing today in Washington,
D.C., where our guests are. Our guests are Mustafa Barghouti, a medical
doctor, head of the Palestinian National Initiative, independent
Palestinian lawmaker, a presidential candidate and democracy activist.
He was the former information minister of the Palestinian Authority.
Daniel Levy is with the New America Foundation, a former Israeli peace
negotiator under both Yitzhak Rabin and Ehud Barak.

Mustafa Barghouti, respond to what Daniel Levy has said and also what’s
happening on the ground right now in West Bank and Gaza and the fact
that Hamas was not included, what that means.

MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: Well, first of all, let me say that I almost agree
with most of what Daniel said. I think we’re both in agreement because
we both see that there is not only a loss of opportunity here, but even
a killing of an opportunity.

Originally, Israel occupied the Palestinian and Arab territories in
’67, and since then it’s been claiming that it wants peace and that the
territory can be exchanged with peace. The Palestinians made their
deal. They made their compromise by accepting a small little tiny state
in West Bank and Gaza as a solution. And the Arabs have made the deal,
the compromise, and said if Israel ends occupation they will have peace
with Israel.

What we see today is an Israeli retraction from that. What we saw in
Annapolis is a situation where the Israelis are saying occupation will
continue, basically, and the Americans are saying that’s OK. And
instead of talking about final settlements that would end all the
elements of the conflict, they are talking again about the Road Map,
which was invented in 2003, and that has failed.

What does it mean? It means that the Road Map includes two basic points
in the first stage. The first one is that Israel should freeze all
settlement activities. But now the Israelis are saying freeze of
settlement activities does not mean stopping the growth of settlements
that already exist, and there are 133 settlements already in the West
Bank and Gaza Strip that were built illegally. These are colonial
colonies that are illegal by international law. They say, “We want to
continue their growth, but we will not build new settlements.” Well,
they don’t need new settlements, because already 133 is enough to
destroy the option and potential for a Palestinian state.

On the Palestinians side, the first stage obliges them to provide
certain security measures, which would simply mean that the Palestinian
Authority should become a security subagent for Israeli occupation.
This is the first time in history of human beings that the people who
are under occupation, who are under oppression, who live in an
apartheid system, have to provide protection to their occupier, who
happens to be Israel, which has the fourth, probably, largest military
force in the world, being the strongest military force in the region,
having a larger nuclear arsenal than France, a bigger air force than
Britain, and definitely it is the fourth or fifth largest military
exporter in the world.

The Palestinians cannot fulfill that demand, and that’s why they’re
doomed to fail, because if they become a security subagent for Israel,
first of all, this is difficult to achieve, because they don’t have
sovereignty, they don’t control the roads. The Palestinian Authority
cannot even move hundred policemen from one city to another, because we
are under occupation. On the other hand, if they go far in oppressing
their own people, they will lose completely their legitimacy. So, in my
opinion, the Road Map is about putting Palestinians in front of an
impossible mission and then use that as an excuse for Israel to impose
its unilateral solution, which is nothing but an apartheid system.

In talking about that and the reality on the ground, let me just give
you a few figures. Israel maintains 562 military checkpoints. They
didn’t remove a single one of them. There are also 610 flying
checkpoints that make the people's life miserable. It doesn’t allow
freedom of movement. It prevents freedom of economy. It prevents
people’s accessibility to health and education. More than that, Israel
is continuing to build the apartheid wall, which will be three times
the length of the Berlin Wall and would destroy contiguity of the
Palestinian territories.

And in addition to that, in daily life, what you see is a very profound
system of discrimination. On average, a Palestinian is allowed to use
no more than fifty cubic meters of water per year, while an Israeli
illegal colonialist can use up to 2,400. We have to pay double the
price for water and electricity. And we pay for our own water, which
Israel controls. Out of 936 million cubic meters of water in the West
Bank, Israel takes away 800 million. And if you take GDP, for instance,
the Israeli GDP now is thirty times more than the Palestinian gross
domestic product. At the same time, we are obliged to buy products at
Israeli market price, and we are obliged by the agreements that were
concluded before to give Israel our taxes, and then Israel will decide
whether we can use our own money for our health needs or education
facilities or to pay the salaries of teachers and doctors. This is
nothing but a system of discrimination that can only be called an
apartheid system.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask Daniel Levy about your description, which is
not yours alone, of comparing the situation in Gaza and West Bank as an
apartheid system. Yesterday, Daniel Levy, we played a speech of the
former South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu that he gave in Boston. He
was disinvited from the University of Saint Thomas in St. Paul for
making comparisons to apartheid, but he has been reinvited to that
university to speak. Would you call it an apartheid system?

DANIEL LEVY: Well, I guess some people might expect at this stage that,
as a patriotic Israeli, I reject the comparison and I explain that,
against all our best intentions, Israel has been forced into this
occupation, there’s nothing we’d like more than to end it. I’m not
going to do that, because I’m not going to defend the settlements and
the occupation, because I’m a patriotic Israeli. And to me, the fight
over the descriptive word of whether this is apartheid or not -- and
plenty of Israelis would use that terminology also -- is less important
than saying we’ve got to end this occupation, we’ve got to end the
settlements. And as a patriotic Israeli, I’m not going to defend
something that is so against Israel’s national interest, just as I
imagine many people would say, “I’m a patriotic American, and that’s
why I think this war in Iraq or bombing Iran would be an absolute
disaster for America, and that makes me more of a patriot than the
people who are going to tell me, no, you have to stand behind the
military, etc.”

Mustafa, with or without the term -- and all I’m saying is I think the
debate can sometimes distract us, because I think the important thing,
especially, is the equation that Mustafa drew out, and it’s one that
people have, for some reason, real difficulty getting their heads
around. And we saw a repeat, as he said, of the same equation
yesterday, which is that somehow, under conditions of occupation,
Palestinians will provide Israelis with full security. Now, many
Israelis are mature enough and have experienced this for long enough
that we understand that that’s a nonsense, that occupation and security
don’t go together. Sure, we would like to see more security, even as we
pursue a peace process. And absolutely, a post-occupation Israel should
be absolutely secure and live in peace, and there should be no question
of violence being used by their neighbors.

AMY GOODMAN: Daniel Levy, you’ve been living in Washington, D.C. Can
you talk about the climate here? As you said, this was a US initiative,
this summit in Annapolis. What are the forces, the pressures on the
Bush administration? Who are they responding to? Do you think there is
less of a debate in this country than there is in Israel?

DANIEL LEVY: Well, there is less of a debate. I mean, everyone
constantly heaps praise on the vibrant democracy that is Israel, and
rightly so. I mean, that’s one of the things I most love about my
country. But I wish, in the heaping of that praise, people would be as
open and as self-critical and as questioning about everything that goes
on there as we are. Back home, just to take one example, look at the
pages of Haaretz today. Haaretz’s lead foreign editor turns around and
says the most important thing that would happen next would be if you
had Palestinian unity talks between Fatah and Hamas.

And I know Mustafa knows they’re not the only factions, and I respect
your Mubadara initiative, but I think sometimes it’s too easy to say
that there is a monolithic lobby here that stifles debate. I don’t
think that elected public officials in America or the broader American
public should get off that easy, if I may say so. I think, you know,
every American has the right and the ability to say that they think
this matters, that they think that we're doing America no favors,
Israel no favors, and certainly the Palestinians no favors, by not
putting front and center the fact that we need a peace now that’s based
on an end of occupation.

Yes, a Bush administration has a rightwing Republican Jewish
constituency that’s very rightwing, and you hear the language of the
candidates today. You have the Christian fundamentalist Zionist right,
who are actually, in many ways, more aggressive than the national
Jewish organizations in some of their positions. You have the
neoconservatives, who I think have been the most disastrous factor. But
on the Democrat side, I’d like to see more people saying, “Hey, we
can’t go along with this war on terror narrative. We can’t go along
with business as usual.” The majority of American Jews are with us on
this. You have great organizations out there: Israel Policy Forum,
Americans for Peace Now, Brit Tzedek v’Shalom. And we should get behind
those and other initiatives to try and say this is the alternative to
the current policy, not more of the same that some, at least, of the
Democrat candidates unfortunately give voice to.

AMY GOODMAN: Mustafa Barghouti, we're going to end with you. I also
want to ask you about the prisoners, more than 400 prisoners the
Israeli government released -- your response to that -- ahead of these
talks.

MUSTAFA BARGHOUTI: Well, that’s another joke or a misleading statement,
because Israel is going to release 432 prisoners. Half of them have
finished already half of their term. One-third have already finished
two-thirds of their terms. But the most important thing is that during
the same period of time, Israel has arrested 1,650 new prisoners. Since
January, up ’til now, Israel released 900 prisoners, with -- including
the 432 they will release this week. But during the same period of
time, Israel has arrested 3,750 new Palestinian prisoners. So the total
number of prisoners is increasing. And we are having now 11,500
prisoners in Israeli jails. Most of them are political prisoners,
including ninety women, including 350 children that are kept in jail,
including many leaders, including forty-six members of our Palestinian
parliament.

And nobody is protesting against that. I mean, I feel very -- it’s
really interesting when people speak about democracy, but at the same
time not a single word is said about Israel arresting one-third of the
members of the Palestinian parliament.

On the other hand, I want to make one clarification here. When I
struggle for the freedom of the Palestinian people and struggle for
ending this apartheid system and this occupation, I do not see myself
and my colleagues as people who struggle only for Palestinians. I feel
I have struggled also for Israelis, because an Israel that is creating
an apartheid system in the twenty-first century is not going to be
secure, and an Israeli state that creates apartheid and continues
occupation leaves its citizens with a very bad feeling, because they
cannot feel proud about being the only apartheid in this world at this
time. And that’s why I think the struggle we do is not only for
Palestinians; it’s for our freedom, but it’s also for their freedom,
because only when occupation ends and only when this injustice and
discrimination stops, then Israelis themselves will feel really free.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to leave it there. I want to thank you both
very much for being with us. Mustafa Barghouti ran for president. He is
an independent Palestinian lawmaker, a medical doctor, former
information minister of the Palestinian Authority, ran for president,
lost to Mahmoud Abbas. We also have been joined by Daniel Levy, former
Israeli peace negotiator who is now with the New America Foundation,
served as an adviser to the governments of Ehud Barak and Yitzhak Rabin.