Open Letter to Mahmoud Abbas:
No Surrender!
This letter, signed by 108 eminent Palestinians, was delivered by hand to Mahmoud Abbas on 10 April 2014
Mr Mahmoud Abbas
President of the Palestinian National Authority
Ramallah,
Palestine
5th of April, 2014
Dear President Abbas,
In view of the intense pressure being brought to bear on the Palestinian National Authority by Israel and the U.S. Administration to negotiate a final agreement which will claim to settle all past and present rights and demands of the Palestinian people, and considering the present interruption in negotiations brought about by Israel’s customary practice of reneging on its commitments, we Palestinian and other Arab scholars and professionals with longstanding commitments to the Palestinian cause send you the following message:
1. We urge you to stand firm for the national rights of all Palestinians, and to declare that no individual or group of individuals has the unconditional authority to reach a final agreement on behalf of the Palestinian people. Only the Palestinian people, in their global multitude, have the right to accept or reject a final settlement proposal. Any such proposal must be submitted for consideration to a Palestine National Council (PNC) whose members are chosen by all Palestinians in free, fair and open elections, and meeting in freedom beyond Israeli interference.
2. Notwithstanding U. S. and Israeli pressure, the Palestinian people have a number of fundamental collective and individual rights, above all the internationally-recognized right of return to their homeland. These rights inhere in the Palestinians as individuals, as families, and as a people; by their very nature, they are not subject to negotiation and cannot under any circumstances be bartered away.
3. The parameters of the current talks, like those that preceded them, preclude the fundamental Palestinian right of self-determination; an Israeli return to the pre-1967 borders without adjustments; removal of all or even the majority of Israeli colonists and colonies from the West Bank and East Jerusalem; Palestinian sovereign control of East Jerusalem; autonomous control of borders, airspace, water and other resources, and the freedom to enter alliances with other states, which are the minimal hallmarks of sovereignty. What is on the negotiating table, in other words, is not a sovereign Palestinian state, even in those fragments of historic Palestine whose future status is nominally being negotiated, but rather the shimmering and evanescent outline of such a state, wholly inadequate to the rights and needs of even that minority of the Palestinian people currently resident in the territories occupied in 1967.
4. Nor do these talks seriously address the rights — above all the right of return — of the members of the Palestinian diaspora who live in exile outside historic Palestine and who constitute about half of the Palestinian people. Neither do these talks address the rights of Palestinians living within pre-1967 Israel, including their right to equality with Jewish citizens and the restoration of the property that had been confiscated from them in the wake of the Nakba of 1948. On the contrary, in the new demand that Israel be recognised as a “Jewish state,” these talks threaten to confirm official Palestinian acceptance of the negation of all these rights. Such recognition would abandon these Palestinians to continuing discrimination and in all likelihood a deterioration of their circumstances, if not outright ethnic cleansing. By excluding Palestinians inside Israel and those in exile, the negotiating framework excludes the majority of the Palestinian people.
5. Given the above, while the Palestinian people should be consulted via the democratic process already alluded to in order to make their determination, it is in effect inconceivable that they would accept now or in the future the parameters of the present negotiations, which are incompatible with their rights and legitimate aspirations. We therefore believe that the time has come, once and for all, to declare a final break from the pattern of endless negotiations established more than two decades ago at Oslo, which has only provided time for Israel to annex and colonise more territory and impose crippling restrictions on Palestinian life. The time has come, then, to facilitate a new dialogue among the Palestinian people about the future and aims of the Palestinian struggle, and the appropriate means to secure the rights of all Palestinians — those living under occupation, those living with second-class status in Israel, and those living in enforced exile. We are confident that you will enjoy the support of the overwhelming majority of the Palestinian people if you take it upon yourself to help facilitate a new national dialogue with these ends in view.
6. It is abundantly clear not just to us but to countless other observers that you and your leadership will soon be trapped in an impossible situation, which calls for urgent action to pre-empt. We call on you to take the initiative rather than helplessly waiting for the inevitable moment when you will be presented with what will be packaged to the world as an honest and neutral set of American proposals but will in fact have been jointly concocted with Israel and will be irreconcilable with the fundamental rights of the Palestinian people. You will in effect have no choice but to reject these proposals, thereby allowing the U. S. and Israel, yet one more time, to depict you and the Palestinian people as obstacles to peace. Rather than waiting, we urge you to act pre-emptively, and to declare, before the anticipated Framework of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry becomes public, a clear statement of principles making clear in positive rather than negative terms that you are committed to a formula for peace that is premised on the internationally-recognized rights and needs of all Palestinians.
After decades of struggle to achieve fundamental Palestinian rights, we are not ready to surrender, and we reject the attempt by anyone to surrender in our names. We call upon you in your capacity as Chairman of the PLO to recall without delay a democratically reconstituted Palestine National Council (PNC) and entrust it with the process to articulate a new path to a just and lasting peace that will secure the rights of the Palestinian people. Were you to follow this course, you would have not only the support of the Palestinian people but also surely the endorsement of the majority of the people of the world, who have for decades been resolute and steadfast in their support of the Palestinian cause.
Respectfully,
Dr Raja T. Abboud, Professor of Respiratory Medicine
Mr Ali Abdolell, Professor of English Literature
Dr. Faiha Abdulhadi, Writer& Research Consultant
Dr Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi, Professor of Race and Resistance Studies
Dr As’ad Abdulrahman, Executive Chairman, Palestine International Institute
Mr James Abourezk, Former US Senator for South Dakota
Dr Salman Abu Sitta, President, Palestine Land Society, London
Dr Jose Abu-Tarbush, Professor of Sociology
Mr Yehya Abughaida, Consultant in Aviation
Dr As’ad AbuKhalil, Professor of Political Science
Dr Baha Abu-Laban, Professor of Sociology
Mr Khairi Abuljebain, One of the founders of the PLO
Mr Nader Abuljebain, Engineer
Dr Lila Abu-Lughod, Professor of Anthropology and Women’s Studies
Dr Bashir Abu-Manneh, Professor of Comparative Literature and Middle East Studies
Dr Ali Abdullatif Ahmida, Professor of Political Science
Dr Gilbert Achcar, Professor of International Relations
Dr Mamdouh Aker, Physician & Human Rights Activist
Mr Naser Al Ardah, Economist & Founder of the NGO Engage and Social Enterprise
Mr Hani Al Hindi, A Founding Member of the Arab Nationalist Movement
Dr. Bayan Nuwayhed al-Hout, Professor of Political Science
Dr Anis Mustafa Al-Qasem, Lawyer, Member of the Palestine National Council
Dr Marwan Al Sayeh, Engineer
Dr Saif Al Zahir, Professor of Computer Science
Dr Reem Alissa, Professor of Architecture
Dr Abdul Wahab Altura, Medical Doctor
Dr Ibrahim Aoude, Professor of Ethnic Studies
Dr Naseer Aruri, Professor of Political Science
Dr Farid Ayyad, President of the Canadian Arab Federation
Mr Moussa Hanna Baggili, Independent Consultant
Dr Halim Barakat, Professor of Sociology
Mr Tayseer Barakat, Member, Board of Trustees, Palestine International Institute
Dr Hatem A. Bazian, Professor of Near Eastern and Ethnic Studies
Dr Salah Bibi, Medical Doctor
Mr Ghassan Bishara, journalist and former media director for MERIP
Dr George Bisharat, Professor of Law
Ms Diana Buttu, Lawyer
Dr Hasan Charif, Professor of Sustainable Development
Dr Georges Corm, Professor of Political Science and Former Lebanese Minister of Finance
Dr Omar S. Dahi, Professor of Economics
Dr Nabil Dajani, Professor of Media Studies
Dr Souad Dajani, Independent Consultant
Dr Zahi Damuni, Professor of Biochemistry/Chair, Palestine Right to Return Coalition
Dr Seif Da’na, Professor of Sociology
Dr Ghada Abdullah El Yafi, Medical Doctor
Dr Randa Farah, Professor of Anthropology
Dr Hani A. Faris, Professor of Political Science
Mr Awni Farsakh, Chartered Accountant
Dr Leila Farsakh, Professor of Political Science
Dr Jess Ghannam, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Global Health Sciences
Dr Sobhi Ghosheh, Medical Doctor and former member of the Arab Council of Jerusalem
Dr Mahmoud Haddad, Professor of Economics
Dr Bahjat Hafez, Economist
Dr Elaine Hagopian, Professor of Sociology
Dr Muhammad Hallaj, Professor of Political Science
Dr Amr Hamzawy, Professor of Political Science and Public Policy
Dr Sari Hanafi, Professor of Sociology
Dr Charles Harb, Professor of Psychology
Dr Marwan Hassan, Professor of Hydrology
Dr Khair El Din Haseeb, Chairman of Executive Committee of CAUS
Dr Nubar Hovsepian, Professor of Political Science
Mr Monadel Herzallah, U.S. Palestinian Community Network
Dr Naila Saba Jirmanus, Physicist
Dr Ray Jureidini, Professor of Sociology
Dr Taher H. Kanaan, Member of Board of Trustees, Institute of Palestine Studies
Dr Ghada Karmi, Professor of Middle Eastern Studies
Dr Anis F. Kassim, Attorney & Legal Consultant
Dr Nabeel Kassis, Director, Palestine Institute for Economic Policy Research
Dr Mujid Kazimi, Professor of Nuclear Engineering
Dr David Khairallah, Professor of International Law
Dr. Tarif Khalidi, Professor of Arabic & Islamic Studies
Mr Ahmad Khalifeh, Managing Editor, Majallat Al Dirasat Al Filistiniyya
Dr.Khalid khalifeh, Consultant and General Surgeon
Ms Fadia Rafeedie Khoury, Attorney
Dr George Kossaifi, Social Scientist
Dr Atef Kubursi, Professor of Economics
Ms Rania Madi, UN Geneva Consultant on Human Rights
Dr Riad Mahayni, Professor of Community and Regional Planning
Dr Lisa Suhair Majaj, Professor of American Culture and Arab-American Literature
Dr Saree Makdisi, Professor of English and Comparative Literature
Ms Jean Said Makdisi, Author and Independent Scholar
Dr John Makhoul, Engineer
Mr Nasser Mansour, Engineer
Dr Nur Masalha, Professor of Politics
Ms May Masri, Film Director
Dr Fadle Naqib, Professor of Economics
Dr Isam Naqib, Professor of Physics
Dr Ahmad Said Nufal, Professor of Political Science
Dr Dana M. Olwan, Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies
Dr Mohamed Olwan. Professor of Law
Dr. Mufid Qassoom, Vice President of the Arab American University of Jenin
Dr Mazin Qumsiyeh, Professor of Genetics
Dr Anthony Sahyoun, Professor of Surgery
Dr Najib E. Saliba, Professor of Middle East History
Dr Taleb Sarie, Professor of Statistics
Ms Rosemary Sayigh, Professor of Anthropology and Oral History
Dr Youssef Sawani, Professor of Politics
Dr Ahmad Sbaiti, Engineer
Dr Sherene Seikaly, Professor of History
Mr Ibrahim Shikaki, Economist
Ms. Abla Shocair, Musician
Mr Jaber Suleiman, Researcher in the Right of Return Movement
Ms Rima Tarazi, Former President of the General Union of Palestinian Women
Dr Rabab Ward , Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Mr Riad Yassin, Engineer
Dr Antoine Zahlan, Professor of Physics
Mr Mahmoud Zeidan, Human Rights Specialist and co-Director of Nakba Archive
Dr Elia Zureik, Professor of Sociology
After lengthy deliberations, this Open Letter was composed by a coordinating committee entrusted with the collection and verification of signatures, follow-up and the handling of a reply, composed of:
Dr Hani Faris, Dr Saree Makdisi and Dr Seif Da’na
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