Mohammad Darawshe

Good evening.  Thank you, Harvey [Fields].  I’m very honored to be in Los Angeles, coming to [people] whom I consider very dear friends. 

It’s really very difficult to outsmart all of the people that have talked about the Middle East.  It’s very difficult to come up with good new ideas and it’s very difficult to come up with new solutions.  And, in fact, we’re not about any new solutions.  I think the Middle East is the most over-negotiated issue there is.  Answers are out there and are very, very clear.  They were determined and discussed in Madrid, then they were discussed in Oslo, then they were discussed at Camp David, then they were discussed in Taba, then they were discussed in Aqaba.  Now we have the roadmap, which pretty much is supposed to be just a way to get from A to B.  The “B” is pretty much clear – the solution is pretty much clear.  Everyone knows what the solution is about.  So we’re not going to talk about the solution. 

When Daniel and I really started talking abut our initiative we came out from this premise that the answers are out there, but in the meantime the young men and women in the region, as well as older men and women, are still paying with their lives.  Just in the last years a few thousand have been killed—I’m not counting the thousands that have had new miseries introduced to their lives.  Each one of them is a whole world by themselves that deserve a full presentation just to talk about their names, their backgrounds, and their families.  I think that there is too much talk about politics in the Middle East and less talk about people, people who go through the suffering.

In fact I approached this whole organization and this whole effort out of self-interest.  Self interest as a proud Palestinian that wants to see a future for my people.  I looked and found partners on the Israeli-Jewish side and in the international—American-Jewish side—who also worked out of self-interest for the safety and continuity of their people in their homeland.  As much as I have passion for the place I call my homeland, I also recognize that the Jewish people have a passion for it and they also deserve to call it their homeland.

It’s not a question of rights that we’re talking about.  I think it would be very easy for me to spend the next hour with you, not just ten or fifteen minutes, speaking about why it is a Palestinian land and why it should be only for the Palestinians and why God gave it to us and not to someone else.  It’s very easy depending on what narratives you use, what selective history you use and what kind of upbringing you have.  It’s very easy to make a case of self-righteousness and I used to do it in my school years.  When I was a student I used to do it, and believe me I did very well.  I even got elected to be the head of the student union because of that kind of stuff. 

I know also from the little gray I have in my hair that I’ve seen enough cases in which very intelligent, passionate, Jewish people come to the podium and making a wonderful case for why God gave them that land and why only they deserve it, and that no one else should be there.  It’s very easy to make that case and it depends again on which background you bring to the table, which attitude you bring to the table and which historical reference points you bring about.  You end up with a deadlock usually, and it becomes like talking to the deaf, one person to another, and negotiating basically a position that gets you nowhere.  It ends up being just a matter of pointing fingers.

That same son of mine that Harvey and Sybil [Fields] met who keeps challenging me – he’s now about 8 1/2 years old.  He came to me a few months ago and he hit me on the head and he said, “Dad, let’s go play soccer.”  I said, “I’m watching the news,” and he said, “You watched it yesterday.”  I said, “Yes, but it’s different,” and he said, “What’s different?  It’s the same kind of picture—just like yesterday.”  And I said, “But it’s different.”  It took me a minute to understand what he was saying, but I turned off the TV and I went out to play with him and he asked me a question.  He said, “Dad, has it always been like this?” and I said, “What?”  He said, “What you were watching.  The news.”  I said, “Well, for my forty years of life it has been pretty much like this.  A little bit more, a little bit less, but it’s been like this.”  Then he asked me another question before we started playing soccer.  He said, “Is it always going to be like this?”  And I was lucky this time to find an answer for him.  I told him, “I hope not.  I’m trying to do something about it.”  And this really is my main motivation of why I’m involved in this.  This is a motivation that I hope every one of our members in our initiative, 23,000 have joined our initiative in the last four months, I hope that this is their main motivation.

The problem is clear, and it is claiming a huge price.  The answers are also there. The answers are even clearer than the problem.  The question that remains is why can’t we get from there to implementation?  If the answers are clear, why can’t we implement them?  I would point to two main problems and I will cite three out of many historic incidents, but they are all incidents of failure, of failure to get from the “A” to “B” points.

The first failure was after the assassination of the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.  And obviously there we cannot say it was a failure of leadership. He was a man of great courage and great leadership who unfortunately did not get a chance to complete his job.  At that time the Palestinian public was also receptive to the issue of the political solution, more or less around the same kind of solutions that we are talking about today.  The Israeli public was mostly dominated by an extreme radical group, which ended up assassinating Rabin and putting an end to this process.

The second point of history that I want to make reference to is the Taba negotiations. Everyone in this room must have heard it more than once, that in Taba they were so close. They were very close and they pretty much got all the details of what a solution was going to look like.  But still there was clear failure of leadership, leadership that did not sign the agreement in what ended up becoming the Taba non-paper. It is a document that was not signed, but it is a document that speaks maybe not about 100 percent of the solution, but at least 97 percent of the solution.  Some of the people in those negotiations, including President Yasser Arafat, came out afterwards saying, “I should have signed them.”  And in two incidents he said, “I should have signed them.”  So, obviously, there was a failure of leadership. The leadership should be able to see forward to the proper time.

The third point I want to speak about is not history, it’s current. The last few weeks we have seen the failure of implementation of the Roadmap.  And obviously this time it was also a failure of leadership—failure of both the Israeli and Palestinian leadership in coming forward and answering the will of the people. But in those three incidents I want to point to the second side to blame in this game; not just the leadership, but the people—the Palestinian and Israeli public.  They failed to provide enough support to existing leaders who were negotiating and trying to move forward other leaders who came in to continue the process.  We did not, unfortunately, see the Palestinians marching in the streets when Abu Mazen stepped down. And it was obvious that his stepping down would probably drag us backwards. We did not see hundreds of thousands of Palestinians saying, “We want to continue the peace process.”  In polls almost every other week there is a consistent steady majority of 60 to 70 percent of Palestinians saying, “Yes, we know the solution, and we accept it,” there is that clear majority, but where were they when they were needed?  Where were they when the Israeli public should have seen them also?

At the same time we did not see the Israeli public marching in the streets trying to demand Sharon to come forward to Abu Mazen in the past three or four months and really provide his end of the bargain.  Another question is: Why did they not come through when the Palestinian public was also looking for them?

If the premise is that there is that silent majority—it exists, polls show it almost every day, everyone says to you, “I am for peace. I want peace. I am ready even to pay the price for peace,” The problems are that these numbers and these people are, one, silent and second, they are not quantified. We cannot really measure them and show their real power.  The agenda has obviously been taken hostage by extreme radical groups whose, voices are much louder, and they make the news much stronger.

The smell of blood in the Middle East is absolutely prime time for local and international media. Once you talk about peace and reconciliation, suddenly it is boring.  We have been working on this movement to get 23,000 members, and when we spoke to the Los Angles Times today they said, “Well, there is the [Governor] debate, so it is really shadowing everything else.”  And probably tomorrow you will read a few stories about cooking, or fashion, and all these other things, but if it were promised that one Arab would cut the finger of a Jew, you would have a lineup of newspaper reporters here.  When you speak about blood and you produce blood in the context of the Middle East, you get the media.  I would even charge the media is part of the problem.  Not only that they are taking a side role, but they are part of the problem because they support extremist radicals to continue with their work.  They attract those kinds of actions.

What we want to do is try to give some power to the silent majority.  Daniel, my partner in this, will share with you the details about it.  The concept is to try to seize back the agenda from extremist radicals, to try to take our lives back, to try to say, ”yes” when there is a need to say “yes” and “no” when there is a need to say “no.”  And not just to sit at home and continue feeling desperate, upset, angry, like there’s nothing to do, [ask] what can I do as an individual?  There’s a lot to do as individuals.  We hope that we will be creating a process and we will share with you that process which at the end of the day will produce a very strong wave that either will propel existing leaderships to move forward, or, if necessary, provide legitimacy to produce alternative leaderships.  We’re not shy about our goal—our goal is to seize back the agenda.  We’ve managed to deliver on the ground thousands of people that have joined and become members of our organization by signing a proclamation of principles that recognizes the humanity of the other side to start with, that speaks about seeking a solution in nonviolent ways, and that speaks also about approaching it from self-interest.

We’ve been very self-conscious about mainstreaming this organization so that it’s not a peace organization.  It is about working solutions.  It’s not about justice.  I don’t think there will be any solution that will give Palestinians justice.  I don’t think there will be any solution that will provide the Israelis justice either.  It’s not about what’s right—it’s about what’s possible, what can be achieved.  I think we need to approach this conflict with a little bit more wisdom than heart, although maybe the driving force for me personally is my heart and my family, but we need to try to apply some brains into this issue. 

We’ve been very blessed to have people endorsing our effort, far wiser people than us.  Rabbi Fields has been very supportive in welcoming us, but in addition we also have people like Dr. James J. Zogby, who’s the head of the American Arab Institute who has agreed to join our board.  We have Mr. Edgar M. Bronfman, head of the World Jewish Congress, who agreed to join our Board.  We have the Chief Islamic Justice of the Palestinian Authority who joined our Board, we have the son of Abu Mazen, the brother of Yassar Arafat, we have Mr. Matan Vilnai who is an ex-deputy Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defense Forces and also we have been able to get some people even from the Likud on our board.  We have Michael Ratzon from the Likud.  Sometimes traditional people that want to work for peace look the other way when it comes to the Likud they say, “Oh, they’re not going to come with us in this direction.”  On the contrary, we made a very strong effort.  If we are going to solve this problem we need to talk to the average Israeli and the average Israeli today sits on [side of] the Likud.  If the Palestinians want the solution, they need to speak to the people that they don’t like that much.  Any peace is made between enemies, not between friends.

I want to stop here, hoping that my friend Daniel will cover most of the other issues that I didn’t cover and those that I should have covered.

Thank you very much.

Daniel Lubetzky

Thank you for being here today.  Two days ago Mohammad and I were on a radio station in San Francisco and the interviewer asked us, “You guys are pretty optimistic people, aren’t you?” and I immediately tried to stop him and to explain to him that what we do is not based on optimism but on determination.  It’s not because we believe things are so good, but because we know they’re so bad. 

A week ago I was very worried about some e-mails that needed to go out.  I had too many emails in my inbox and I had to go through them.  One check hadn’t been paid and one assignment hadn’t been done.  As I was trying to just go through these e-mails and get my work done I got one email from my director of outreach and development on the East Coast that basically told me that she didn’t know what to do because her cousin had just been killed in the Café Helo the night before.  Her cousin’s daughter, her niece, had also been killed—she was going to get married the following day.  I was frozen and I didn’t know what to do.  I called her and tried to give her some comfort but nothing was coming out of my mouth.  I didn’t know what to say and she ended up trying to give me some comfort because she knew that what we are doing is the right thing to do, and more so now she felt determined that we have to do this.

I’m sure Mohammad, and many of our other executive members on the ground wake up many mornings looking at the news and wondering, “Can we make a difference?”  I cannot assure you today that we are going to make the historic difference we are determined to do.  The odds are that we’re not, but I can assure you that we’re not going to stop until we achieve a difference, because the minute we stop we have already lost the battle.  Mobilizing millions of Palestinians and Israelis to take back their lives is not an easy task.  So, how are we going to do it?  If the leaders at the top have not been able to agree on these issues, how can we get millions to achieve consensus on these issues?

The methodology I’m about to present to you was developed over the course of two years by over 200 Palestinian and Israeli experts.  It started with brainstorming by Mohammad and I, and it started involving lawyers and pollsters and academicians and scientists and business people—a lot of business people were instrumental in giving shape to this process.  It has two tracks: a communications track and a substantive track.

The substantive track starts with three stages: the first one, which we just completed.  The first track is about building trust; the second one about trying to negotiate an end to the conflict at the grassroots level; and the third one about creating accountability so that whatever the people want will be implemented by the leaders.

The first track started with a very humble goal of highlighting to each side that on the other side there was a constituency willing to work together.  We started with a document which is a proclamation of principles that was created by Palestinians and Israelis together, and when we would present it to Israelis they would say, “Of course, I agree to these things.  This is mom-and-apple pie, of course I agree to this, but the problem is that you’re not going to get the Palestinians to agree to them because they [do not] recognize my right to exist and my right to security and they have to condemn terror.”  And when we presented it to the Palestinians an interesting thing would happen.  They would read it and say, “Of course I agree to everything here.  The problem is that you’re not going to get the Israelis to agree because they recognize my right to freedom and to dignity and to respect.”  The problem that we’re dealing with is that diametric dissonance that has been created by the constant coverage of the worst things on each side.  Each side only perceives the worst of the other and they don’t see the average human being that just wants to move on with their lives.  So that is our challenge.

Before we made this public we decided that we were going to gather 10,000 members—5,000 Israelis and 5,000 Palestinians and we wouldn’t just go to our natural allies, people that are the most liberal or the most academic.  We would go into the tougher areas to make sure that we could prove that that silent majority was out there.  Instead of 10,000 members, with zero advertising and with zero publicity, we got 23,000 members.  Those 23,000 members include people from Gaza, people from the Likud, people from the Jenin refugee camp.  Forty five field workers went into the Jinin refugee camp and, as they got there, some young militants started threatening them and started calling them traitors and saying “how come you’re saying that we have to end terror and you’re equating terror with the occupation,” and it started getting uncomfortable, to say the least.  Fortunately, Palestinian executive director Fathi Dawish had anticipated this could happen.  He had called all day the leaders of the different political movements and the different parties, and the youth committees, not just from PFLP and PATA but also Islamic leaders because Jenin has a very strong Islamic community, and he frantically started calling them over on his cell phone and said, “Please go protect my workers.”  They descended on the street.  These leaders from the Islamic community from the political leadership, from the youth communities, came down and tough dialogue ensued.  They prevailed on the young people to leave these workers to do their work.  The leaders explained to them the importance of letting the workers highlight that the average Palestinian will recognize Israel if Israel will recognize Palestine, and the workers left the Jenin refugee camp with 2,900 members.  Then workers went into Gaza in the month of August and the month of August was a very tough month for Gaza.  There was a lot of violence, targets of assassination, uncertainty, a lot of destabilization but in spite of that almost 8,000 Palestinians signed up to become members of the movement.  They entered their e-mail, their addresses, agreed to the pledge, and agreed to participate in the process, to stand up against extremism and to use nonviolent means for conflict resolution.

So now that we have the 23,000 members and we’ve established and demonstrated that people from both sides, not just the Israeli side from Labour but also we also took it upon ourselves to go into the Likud communities to get our members on the Likud to gather signatures, so we got a couple of thousand even from the right side of the Israeli spectrum. 

Now we’re starting the second stage.  The second stage started last Sunday and the goal of the second stage is to start where the first one left off.  The first stage dealt with principles of agreement which are designed to appeal to the overwhelming majority of Palestinians and Israelis.  The second one is going to start trying to deal with the actual pillars for conflict resolution.  It’s starting with a council of experts that’s gathering tonight at the Rockefeller estate.  It was hosted by the Rockefeller brothers’ fund and they were given a task that up until tonight we literally didn’t know whether if it would have been achievable, but we’re hoping based on that research that we have a good shot at it.  We gave them all the recent key documents of the past – Taba, Camp David, the ICG proposals.  There are a lot of proposals out there, individual documents and government documents and their task was to distill from all these proposals the ten key pillars for conflict resolution.  Ten areas of agreement where they think that the Palestinian and Israeli populations could agree based on the premise that there is a lot more common ground than people realize there is, and that because of all the violence they don’t realize that the overwhelming majority does agree on how to resolve this conflict.  Today I was on the phone with them and, instead of ten areas of agreement, they agreed on twenty pillars.  So, our challenge now is going to be to present it to the people.  We have to decide if we synthesize it into ten or if we keep it at twenty.

Over the next month we’re going to test it with our board members, with different members of our community. Rabbi Fields is one of the people that belong to our honorary board that includes dignitaries like the Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom, like the Islamic Chief Justice for the Palestinian Authority, etc and we’re going to test it with a lot of our constituents to make sure that it can gain traction.  Then what’s going to happen is something that has never happened in history.  We going to present it to the people, we’re going to go straight to the people and allow people themselves to vote, to affirm or reject each of those key issues.  In a referendum that you in California are somewhat familiar with—we’ve decided not to try to resolve any conflicts in California, that’s much harder for us—but the Middle East we can handle.

There are five platforms we’re going to utilize to enable individuals to work on the different issues.  The IBM International Foundation – and I think Bill Brun from the IBM Foundation is here representing IBM; we’re very appreciative of your support—the IBM International Foundation provided us with the technology, the software and the consultancy to build an Internet platform so that people will be able to vote on these issues.  If you have a computer in your home or Internet access you’re going to be able, in the privacy of your home, to vote for these things.  That will enable 80 percent of the Israeli population and about 15 percent of the Palestinian population [to vote].  For those who don’t have Internet access, we’re going to install computer kiosks, which IBM is also donating, in scores or hundreds of NGOs, in areas where there’s no Internet access, so primarily in the Palestinian Authority but also in Israeli neighborhoods with no Internet access.  A lot of member organizations are going to install these computer kiosks in their public spaces in their lobbies so individuals will be able to come in and vote on those different issues.  You are also going to be able to vote through your phone, you’ll be able to call in, listen to the options and vote digitally.  You’re also going to be able to vote through your newspapers.  We’re going to print the proposals in Hebrew and in Arabic in newspapers.  You will be able to tear them off, fill them in and vote.  Also through signature drives, one-on-one so that we can continue reaching into the tougher areas and into the refugee camps and into elderly homes or into areas where technology may not enable us to reach.  We are going to go everywhere we can go, as much as we can go, with as many resources as we can to get as many people as possible to support this.  We are aiming to get tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or perhaps millions involved in standing up and, for the first time in history, voting for these issues. 

Now, what do you achieve by helping people vote?  First of all, a vote is a vote cast with realism.  It’s a weighted voting mechanism.  You’re presented the chief proposals, and let’s say that we end up with ten proposals.  If you say “yes” to everything, wonderful, then you have accepted what the foremost experts are supporting and you’re one more positive vote without reservations.  But if you have problems with any of these issues, then you are not allowed to escape and just say, “No, I disagree.”  Fine, if you disagree tell us how you disagree.  If you disagree on any of the issues, you have to give weight to any disagreement.  We’re going to give 100 negative points for people to utilize as they desire and if they say no to anything they are going to have to allocate those negative points amongst any negative answers to give weight to those negative answers.  So if they say “no” to all ten issues they’re diluting their vote because on average they’re only giving ten points to each thing.  So, they’re starting to learn the need for negotiations and for compromise.  Okay, if the experts are telling me I can vote like this, let me go ahead and say yes to all these things, but this one is near and dear to me and I’m going to put all my weight on this one.  And what’s important about this is that on a personal level it’s hopefully going to be transformational because for years Palestinians and Israelis have been able to say that they are for peace.  Who’s not for peace?  But this time they’re going to have to deal with reality.  If you are for peace, this is what foremost Palestinian and Israeli experts spanning a spectrum and representing different constituencies are telling you that they can achieve.  If you say no, then tell us how you can do it better and hopefully it’s going to break a lot of myths, break a lot of taboos about the interactability of the conflict, and just by presenting those issues to the people it’s going to highlight that there’s a lot more common ground than meets the eye. 

At an aggregate level it’s also going to enable the experts to find out where the areas of agreement are and where are the areas that still need either some education or some fine-tuning.  Imagine the power of enabling the world to know that millions of Palestinians and millions of Israelis have achieved agreement on these pillars of conflict resolution.  Imagine the power of being able to highlight the vision of how the people want to vote, how the people want the conflict to be resolved.  Perhaps the proposal needs to be changed or perhaps the experts need to educate the public about a particular proposal that is not getting enough support, so we’re going to take them to television, start speaking about why that issue was voted that way, and try to dispel myths and to try to highlight the reality.  Hopefully, over the course of voting, we’re going to come up with this document that we’re going to call the “mandate of the people” providing a clear vision for what the people want.  That’s when we get to the third stage.

The third stage is about creating accountability.  It’s about presenting those issues to the political leadership and providing them not just with the vision but with the political cover or the mantle of legitimacy from millions of people that are standing up firm and saying, “This is what we want.  We support you.  Go ahead and do it.”  Providing for people propelling and emboldening political leaders to go and do what the people want them to do.  Hopefully, the political leaders will do that, but if they don’t this provides us the best chance to jumpstart democracy and to provide a new leadership with the constituency necessary to claim that they’re going to do what the people want.  If somebody tries to challenge them as illegitimate or as traitors they’re going to be able to point to a constituency saying, “Two million people voted for this.  I’m just going to do what they want me to do.” 

At the same time as we’re doing this substantive process we have a communications track that tries to highlight this message through five constituencies—who are foremost dignitaries, religious leaders, academic leaders, celebrities and business leaders, business leaders that include business leaders like Edgar F. Bronfman, and several other Saudi Arabian, Egyptian, American, Mexican, European, Israeli and Palestinian business leaders and their message is going to be, “Look at the impact of the conflict on our economy and look at what could happen if we work together and to highlight people to vote for the opportunity for a better future.”  The religious leaders from the Chief Palestinian Islamic Justice to Rabbi Michael McClure the chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom and the Archbishop of Canterbury are going to come up with a unified message saying, “Do not let anybody highjack any of our religions.  Do not let anybody speak for absolutist answers or speak against innocent lives and engage in this process for reconciliation participating in the OneVoice movement.”

From the Los Angeles entertainment community we have a lot of support also.  We have people from Danny deVito and Rhea Pearlman to Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston, Edward Norton, Jason Alexander, and many celebrities who have agreed to also share that message.  We’re going to do public service announcements that talk to the youth to make it cool to be a peacemaker, to talk to the young people and say, “Look, when we do movies we might kill each other and that might be a Hollywood hero, but in real life a real hero has the courage to work with the other side, so we encourage you to dial this number, we encourage you to go to this website and participate in the process.” And dignitaries like Queen Rania and Palestinian ministers and Israeli ministers that Mohammad described are going to stand up and say, “Use the path of nonviolence, use the path of diplomacy, these can lead to some quick changes.  Force is not a sufficient means to resolve this conflict, and neither side is ever going to stand down.  Both sides have too much at stake, both sides are too proud and both sides have an existentialist need to work to survive.  So use nonviolence to achieve the will of the people.”

I want to end by highlighting that in spite of the momentum that we’re generating, and in spite of the incredible support that we’ve gotten, and in spite of the fact that we have a lot more weapons at our disposal than we did two months ago—and now we’re going to do satellite media tours and television announcements and to really try to inspire people—there’s absolutely no guarantee that we can succeed.  I can pledge to you that we’re not going to stop until we have an historic impact, and I hope that those who believe in our mission and our message will pledge to themselves that they recognize that this emboldens everybody and that every person in this room is affected by this conflict one way or another.  It behooves every one of us to do what’s within our power to try to make things better.  So find your way.  Go to our website, www.silentnolonger.org, and there are several things that you can do to help, from spreading the word, signing the proclamation, providing financial support, writing to members of the media, getting others engaged, finding your own way to support the movement because it really is the responsibility of all of us to try to take our lives back.

Thank you.