Pivoting Toward Final Status Negotiations: A Discussion with Dr. Hanan Ashrawi

On September 25, Dr. Hanan Ashrawi discussed the PLO's current position in the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, as well as how American leaders should understand and address that position. The event was moderated by Amjad Atallah, co-director of the Middle East Task Force.

In speaking about the importance of reaching a comprehensive final status agreement, Dr. Ashrawi touched on a number of important issues which are currently impeding the commencement of negotiations. The Palestinian leadership, she explained, has historically been the party of least resistance when it came to compromising their own positions. As a result, these leaders cannot afford to appear any weaker by making further one-way concessions. Dr. Ashrawi noted that despite the political division between Hamas in Gaza and the PA in the West Bank, all parties recognize the PLO as the sole legitimate Palestinian entity in negotiations.

With regard to previous rounds of negotiations, Dr. Ashrawi asserted that Americans and Israeli negotiators have always taken a bottom-up approach, insisting that the best path to peace was to first tackling small issues-a path which would afford Palestinians increasing autonomy over a long, undefined period of time. Their Palestinian counterparts, on the other hand, were always proponents of a top-down approach of first tackling the big issues, such as defining borders, the status of refugees, and the division of Jerusalem. The Palestinians are, she pointed out, the only people with a permanent Negotiations Affairs Department (NAD).

Dr. Ashrawi also affirmed that while President Obama is "making the right noises," nothing short of decisive action on his part will be understood as progress by Palestinians. This means that the US must have the Netanyahu administration commit to loophole-free settlement freeze. If President Obama cannot have Israel commit to a settlement freeze, she argued, then neither the Palestinians nor the rest of the Arab world will believe that he is capable of convincing Israel to make any other types of meaningful concessions. She stressed that Palestinians still insist that Israel halt settlement activity before permanent status negotiations begin, but admitted that if Israel refused, the Palestinians would expect the United States to take concrete steps to end political, economic, and military support for the settlements in order to create conducive conditions for negotiations

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Participants

featured speaker
Dr. Hanan Ashrawi
Member, PLO Executive Committee
Founder, The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion
of Global Dialogue & Democracy (MIFTAH)

respondent
Amjad Atallah
Director, Middle East Task Force
New America Foundation