Riad Malki is a lecturer at Bir Zeit university on the West
Charter, and present this to the summit for
Bank and a leader of the Palestinian national movement ratification.
inside the occupied territories. The following interview
A sign of the times with him first appeared in the April 29 edition of the
Belgian revolutionary Marxist newspaper La Gauche.
Perhaps a sign of all this agitation was the fact that the first Ibero-American summit in Guadalajara in July 1991 recognized
"the important Native contribution to universal culture" and promised to "support the cultural identities of the existing Native
Peoples and the perpetuation of their lan-
Furthermore, occupied since 1981 by the problems of Native Populations, the UN
Commission on Human Rights adopted on
February 28, 1991 a draft resolution calling for an "International Year of Native
Populations"
Several Latin American Indian organizations are part of the working group charged with working out a draft Universal
Declaration of the Rights of Native
Peoples to be submitted for approval to the
UN general assembly.6 In the end, 1993 - after the end of the 500th anniversary celebrations - has been adopted as the international year.
In April 1991, Rigoberta Menchu declared "We Indians are no longer inclined to serve as cheap labour, objects of study, voting fodder, second class citizens, subjects of missionary work or second class soldiers sent to murder their own people.
We have had enough of this! We will become historical actors, and the masters of our own destiny". A continent wide strike is planned for October 8 to 12, 1992 to coincide with a "Native, Black and Popular" meeting which is being organized for
Nicaragua's Atlantic Coast. *
3. Created in 1981 under General Lucas Garcia to fight armed insurgency, the PAC have about 1 million members, theoretically volunteers. According to the Inter-American Human Rights Commission of the Organization of American States in 1986 these patrols "are too heavy a burden for an Indian population that is already very poor and devastated; they work against their ethnic identity, the development of the customs, languages, ways of life, economy and culture."
4. Final document of the 500 Years of Native, Black and Popular Resistance Campaign, October 1, 1991.
5. Les rendez-vous de Saint-Domingue, edited by
Ignace Berten and René Luneau, published by Centurion, Paris.
6. DIAL, no. 1589, May 2, 1991.
W HAT, in your opinion,
is the significance of the Madrid peace conference and the subsequent ArabIsraeli negotiations?
In my opinion, their main objective is to oblige the Palestinians to make the necessary concessions to politically liquidate the Palestinian question, that is to normalize in every area the relations between Israel and the Arab world. the economic and political embargo that the Arab countries have imposed on Israel since 1948. The Palestinians are the bridge over which it is necessary to pass to attain this goal. It is they who are going to be sacrificed to this normalization.
It is necessary to give world opinion the impression that the Palestinians are participating in the conference, but at the same time marginalize to the maximum this participation by ruling out any independent Palestinian delegation.
This is why Israel has demanded that the framework is that of a Jordanian-Palestinian delegation, including only Palestinians from the occupied territories, but not from Jerusalem or the diaspora. We can see that the Israelis have completely suc ceeded in imposing their point of view. • Under what conditions would you yourself have agreed to participate in the negotiations?
The line of the leading bodies of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) was that this participation should be independent and under the leadership of the PLO, in the framework of an international conference under United Nations auspices and on the basis of the relevant UN resolutions, which could alone impose international legitimacy.
Moreover, we demanded a transitional period during which Israel would evacuate the Occupied Territories while international protection of the Palestinians would be established, with the creation of a Palestinian state as its objective. These were our conditions at the beginning. We are very far from that! • What assessment would you make of what has happened so far?
I believe that this participation, or rather the presence of the Palestinians at Madrid and elsewhere is extremely dangerous, because it comes after the acceptance of all the Israeli conditions. It follows that one also has to accept the results of this conference.
It is obvious that there will be no Palestinian state coming out of this conference. The right to political autonomy will not be recognized.
We will be guided towards a purely administrative autonomy. By accepting this masquerade, we also agree to renounce the possibility of the right of return for Palestinians from abroad. To accept all that is to destroy the foundations on which the PLO has been created and has strug gled. It is extremely dangerous. Today everybody knows that after Madrid, Washington and Moscow, there are still no gains for the Palestinian people. It is not surprising because the basis on which this conference has been convened can yield no gains.
At the beginning, the Palestinian delegation said publicly that the first thing that the Palestinians were demanding was the immediate halting of settlements in the occupied territories. It has clung to this illusion for several months. Now that the USA is exerting pressure on the delegation, this is no longer heard. The delegation has recently presented a document in which it gives its conception of administra- 23 tive autonomy in the territories. The Pales-
June 22, 1992
PALESTINE / GERMANY
NO REPORTERS CAMERA› HOPE tinian state has fallen by the wayside.
I admit that if there was a gain of some kind, like an end to the settlements, I would have recognized that these negotiations had borne some fruits. But it is precisely the opposite that has happened. My original attitude has thus been confirmed. • How are the Palestinians currently reacting?
At present, even the Palestinians who were in favour of the conference no longer hope for anything. The decision of the PLO leadership to convene the Palestinian National Council indicates the admission of this defeat. Everybody knows that the Council will make a balance sheet of six wasted months. I believe that the PLO has understood that the Palestinian people are increasingly hostile to these negotiations.
The problem is the non-existence of real democracy inside the PLO. If there had been such democracy, we would never have gone to Madrid. This lack of internal democracy is a problem that we recognize and that we must face within the framework of the PLO. • It seems that the internal leadership in the Occupied Territories has not played a real role. For example, little importance is accorded to the role of civil disobedience, such as the call for Palestinians not to work in the construction of the settlements.
It is necessary to state explicitly that the Unified Leadership inside the territories is an extension of the external leadership. The errors of the exterior are reflected inside. Of course, there could not be an independent internal leadership. The participation from inside must take place in the framework of the PLO.
The weight of the interior is not negligible, as was especially true in the first year of the intifada. But the internal leadership is financially dependent on the external leadership. That is why the external leadership can influence decisions. It is absolutely necessary to reverse this trend, so that the internal leadership has its place in the PLO and is supported by the exte24 rior.
In the case you mentioned, the internal International Viewpoint # 231 leadership has taken a clear decision to stop any participation of Palestinian workers in the construction of settlements. But a political leadership must be responsible. It must at the same time create alternatives so that the workers can make a living.
But the internal leadership does not possess the financial means to create alternative employment. And these means have not yet been provided by the external leadership. Within the Unified
Leadership of the Interior, we say that what is needed is a policy of revolutionary economic development in the occupied territories. The priority is to arrive at self-sufficiency in food. Then it will be necessary to work on the quality of the products. • Is there a lot of support for this perspective in the Unified Leadership ?
Yes, the Unified Leadership has instituted a Supreme Council of Economic Development, whose objective is the creation of a Palestinian state with a Palestinian national economy. But the external leadership has not taken this seriously and has erected obstacles. Moreover, the question of the Madrid peace conference has become the priority question. Aid has been mainly directed towards the projects of those who were in favour of the conference. • Is it because of the influence of the Arab bourgeoisies that the external leadership behaves like
The leadership of the PLO in the exterior doesn't like to see the power of the internal leadership developing because it sees this as a limitation of its own power. For the same reasons, it does not want to see a decentralization of political decisions. That is why it is not in agreement with the creation of the Supreme Council of the Economy or other things.
Many PLO decisions are not logical. To give work to some tens of thousands of Palestinians, it is necessary to invest. The leadership of the PLO has resources, but it chooses to invest them in diplomacy, in expensive diplomatic delegations. • Then I return to my question: what is the weight of the Arab bourgeoisies?
It is true that the PLO is in the image of the Arab world. The leadership of the PLO is thus a bourgeois leadership which tries to be on good terms with the entire Arab world, whether it is dictatorships or pro-
It is a part of this mosaic. And it is a fact that, because of their financial weight these regimes have influence on the PLO leadership.*