In the Middle East we believe that the war on terrorism, perhaps inadvertently, has broken the base for terrorism, has made terrorism mushroom and many capitals in many cities of the world, has made most of us feel less secure, has ingrained more fear in the hearts of people everywhere, and therefore, I think all of us have to think more deeply about what can be done in facing this situation.  What can we do in order to ensure that the war on terrorism doesn’t get these counter-productive results? 

But before doing that we have to ask, "Why did we get here?" and I would like to share with you a few ideas that I have.  I believe that one of the first reasons why we got here is that the war on terror seemed to polarize peoples, countries and religions to one extent or another.  Muslims are terrorists, [it is said], Arab countries are havens for terrorism, Western civilization [is the] model for democracy, [setting it] against third world countries which need to be civilized, reformed, democratized, whatever.  By doing so, the people of the middle ground [are crushed], they who are always the best guarantee for dialogue among cultures, among religions, among nations.

The second reason, I believe, is the discrepancy prevailing between rhetoric and reality. While in the Middle East we hear all the talk about security, justice, democracy, and the liberation of women, what actually takes place on the ground is the logic of the use of force.  Whoever doesn’t have military force can be killed or crushed. I brought some newspapers with me, and unfortunately I left them in the hotel, to show you things you never see here in the United States.  Iraqi men, for example, being rounded up with humiliating plastic bags over their heads, with their hands and legs tied, 20--30 of them with two American soldiers guarding them.  The one question that needs to be asked is if their hands and legs are tied, why put plastic bags on their heads? 

The one word we all think of in the Middle East nowadays is the humiliation--that is a key word--that’s what we feel.  We do feel humiliated by this way of dealing with things. 

The other factor in this war on terrorism is the establishment of preemptive policy that we have to fight a war in order to prevent something from happening.  People are killed because they were thought to be planning an operation.  This is absolutely amazing when we read the language, killing people on suspicion of intent.  Mind you, this is a daily practice of what is happening to the Palestinians today.  Before the war on Iraq, Syria argued relentlessly that the way to establish peace and security in the Middle East is to start with the Middle East conflict, to start solving the Middle East conflict which will necessarily help in combating terrorism, in facing the situation in Iraq, in undermining any dictatorship and in paving the way for freedom.  Of course, we were not listened to and the war on Iraq, as you all know, took place and I think the results are bad for all of us.  Today I believe we stand in one boat.  We are going either to swim or sink together.  I think fear now is taking hold of all of us and I believe the happiest people nowadays are the terrorists who are gaining more ground and who are gaining more support. 

For Arabs and liberal-minded Muslims who have been fighting for years against Muslim fundamentalism it’s absolutely shocking to be put in the same basket with Muslim fundamentalists and to lump all Arabs and Muslims together.  The mere idea of accusing a country of being a terrorist country, a nation or a race or a group of religious people--there’s something wrong with that, isn’t there?  In Islam there is this very good verse in the Koran that says "No one can be blamed for something that another person does," even if it’s your father or your son or your sister.  It is very common in the Arab world to find someone who is a socialist and another who is a conservative.  It’s very common for two sisters, one of them to be absolutely veiled and the other  one to be walking without a veil.  So how could we utter such assessments?  But I believe in dangerous times we cannot engage in recrimination and in distributing blame to each other.  We have to look forward and we have to be positive.  And in order to look forward and to be positive I think we have to change this strategy.  We have to have a different way of thinking and I will share with you what happened with me two weeks ago. 

Two weeks ago the Foreign Office minister in Britain, Max Shane, told the Muslim community in Britain that the Muslim community has to choose between the British way of dialogue and the Islamic way of terrorism.  That was on the first page of the Guardian.  I am a columnist, I write a column in four Arab newspapers, so I wrote a column answering him and I said that not only Muslims have to stand against this being said but all Western people have to stand against this kind of mentality, because it is this mentality that is supporting terrorism.  We all have to fight that because this is racist, this is unbelievable, and the only strategy against terrorism is to change this frame of mind. 

As I was traveling from Damascus to London on Saturday, on the 6 December, on the first page of the Guardian the same Foreign Office minister said that Romano Prodi has to go back to Italy.  He’s not good for the European Union.  You see, it’s a state of mind not only against Muslims and Arabs, but against anyone who is tolerant, against anyone who doesn’t agree.  So I believe at this dangerous moment in history we are all in the same boat--men and women, Arabs and Muslims, Americans and Europeans and Africans--we are all in the same boat and the only thing we can do that is going to be very useful is to speak to each other as human beings, to deal with each other on a parity of dignity. 

I am sure things do not reach you as they happen in our region because if they do you would take a very different stance.  I am sure you would not accept [seeing] houses with soldiers entering in, violating every respect for every human being.  I am sure none of you would accept knowing that 250 Palestinian children under the age of ten have been deliberately killed in the last three years--and I say "deliberately" because the shot was in the head or in the chest.  No one of you would accept [knowing] that 10,000 Palestinian houses have been destroyed in the last three years, and you have only to ask what happened to the 10,000 Palestinian families.  Two hundred thousand olive trees were uprooted in the last 15 years.  A wall is being built nowadays and the Israeli [government] said ten days ago that 232 settlements--new settlements--are being planned on Palestinian territory.  The only logic that leads to all this is the logic of military force.  We said many times that the policy of Sharon is the policy of military force.  He announced that he wants to break the will of the Palestinians and bring them to capitulate.  History teaches all of us that people everywhere in the world fought against occupation and fought for their freedom and people will continue to do that -- in Palestine, in Iraq, everywhere in the world.  They will continue to do that. 

I will touch briefly on Syrian-American relations.  As my host has mentioned, Syria was one of the first countries to cooperate with the United States on the war against terrorism.  The Syrians cooperation has saved American lives in several instances.  I don’t know how many of you have read Seymour Hersch in The New Yorker who wrote about this and Secretary Powell, a senior American official spoke about this.  The question I ask is "How could Syria be a country that cooperates against terrorism and how could it be a country that harbors terrorism?" 

I believe that Syria and the United States have a lot in common.  Syria is a very important Arab country with historical and cultural weight.  If the objective of the United States is to create peace and stability and security in the Middle East, Syria is a very active and very ready partner to do so.  But if the objective is to maintain occupation and settlements, then we have a different story.  I met with someone from the Baltimore Sun two days ago and he said to me, he argued, that the United States cannot do anything.  It is up to the Palestinians and the Israelis to start a peace process, and he asked me "What could the United States do in this very difficult situation?"  And I replied, "As President Bush said, this wall is no good and people who are trying to make peace should not build walls."  The least thing the United States could have done is not to use a veto to abrogate a resolution against this wall. 

One of the issues that we always notice is an underestimation of the intelligence of people [in the Middle East].  You know, I’m telling you how the message comes to us.  It’s probably not intended to be so, but this is how it gets to us.  It gets to us that "these Iraqi people are neither civilized nor cultured nor intelligent. There’s about 150 people crossing the border into Syria and these are the ones who are creating trouble."  You know, for us the logic sounds funny.  There are 22 million Iraqis who have never in their history accepted occupation, so why the expectation that these Iraqis would accept to be occupied and would not fight occupation and it’s only Syria and Iran or Turkey who are making trouble?  So the assumption is not correct there.  Syria has cooperated with the United States in controlling the border and not allowing any of the Iraqi regime to get in and trying to cooperate with Hezbollah to keep the borders between Israel and Lebanon quiet.  We received many thanks from congressmen and from the Secretary of State, but the final thanks we received is the Syrian Accountability Act for all that we had done.  So, we really wonder what is going on and why it’s going on. 

The other point I want to say is that what is happening in the region is not only against the interests of Arabs and people in the region.  Again, it is against the interests of American people.  Why should the U.S., the strongest, the greatest superpower in the world, not be welcomed anywhere it goes?  Why should the United States build its embassies with these huge high walls?  It is the wall of trust that should be built.  It’s the wall of love, it’s the wall of confidence, and I assure you that Arab people, Muslim people, do not hold the American people responsible for what is happening.  They do not even hold the entire administration responsible for what is happening.  They understand that there are different forces that are struggling with decision-making.  We all the time acknowledge the peaceful forces in the United States and Israel.  We never speak along religious lines or ethnic lines. 

The one question no one will ever ask you in Syria is "What is your religion?" because we are a multi-confessional society.  It is an extremely impolite question in our culture to ask.  We’ve always lived Jews, Muslims and Christians.  There’s no religious problem in the region.  There’s a political problem.  There’s a problem of occupation, or settlements, and there’s the basic problem of humiliation.  That is the basic problem.  Dignity is the key for all of us.  That is the word that’s making all forces get together in the region against liberal, Western, democratic ways of thinking. 

You know when President Bush gave his speech about democracy and the rights of women, I really smiled in front of our television.  My grand-grandmothers were writers and merchants and businesswomen.  The first businesswoman in history, I believe, is the wife of Prophet Mohammed Khadijah.  She was the first businesswoman.  I think those of you who have visited Syria would know that Syrian women are everywhere.  Sixty percent of professors in my department are women.  At least 50 percent of university students are women.  Imad Moustapha, my advisor here and I were in a committee recruiting women to our department in the foreign ministry.  The problem we have is that we have too many women.  They’re so good--in languages, in culture--they’re so good.  Everybody keeps saying to us, "please send me a man.  I have so many women at work." And so to see Western dress and speaking about the rights of women in the Arab world makes us smile really.  We have women ministers, women ambassadors, businesswomen everywhere, but the one thing about women in Syria that we enjoy a lot is that you find Syrian women and their families at 2 o’clock in the morning traveling on the road -- no problem.  It’s a very safe country for women as well, which is very good for us. 

So what I’m saying is that we come from different cultures.  We come from different worlds, we have to communicate better, we have to understand each other better.  There are things in my country that I do not want to change.  Everybody asks us, "Are you changing?  Are the reforms going to take place in Syria?"  There are slow reforms in Syria.  Why don’t they just come?  Well, for God’s sake, it’s our country.  We have a stake in reform. We have a stake in doing things better and we’re certainly intelligent enough to be able to handle our affairs.  I can’t see why the U.S. should be more keen on political reform in Syria than the Syrian people.  I really can’t.  And there are so many things in my culture that I would not like to change at all.  At one point a Syrian agricultural minister took the decision not to buy any fertilizer for the country.  You know what the result is?  All our food is organic food now.  It’s beautiful, the fruit smells like fruit and the vegetables smell like vegetables and it’s beautiful.  Why should we change this?  In fact, they are finding that the partnership we are signing with the European countries does not change our food and our vegetables and our fruit. 

So that’s the way we would love to talk to each other -- to accept our differences, to deal with each other with respect and to try and build a better world. 

We were always fighting against fundamentalism, but fundamentalism is not confined to Islam.  There is Jewish fundamentalism, there’s a Christian fundamentalism and there’s Muslim fundamentalism and I will leave you with this example.  When Yitzak Rabin was killed there was an article that said he was killed by a Jewish extremist.  When Anna Lind [of Sweden] was killed they said she was probably killed by a Christian conservative or fundamentalist.  But when Abdul Majid al-Khoi was killed in Iraq, he was killed by a Muslim terrorist.  So when a Muslim kills he is a terrorist, but when a Christian or Jewish person kills he is an extremist or conservative or whatever. So I would just invite you to think more about what you read, although I can see that in the American media you don’t see much really about what is happening in the Middle East. 

I read the Herald Tribune, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and I try, of course, to publish more, but I wonder why should American writers be the formulators of opinion and not have more voices from the region.  Why not have more writers from the Middle East?  There are hundreds of writers who write beautiful English and who are dying to publish and to tell you now what we think about things but we have no chance. 

So I believe the only thing we have to do, the most urgent thing we have to do, is to create better bridges of communication, to see each other more, to talk to each other more, to try and explain to each other more what the problems we are facing are and how we can build a better world.  Because we do not believe that any people can live in isolation of another.  We have to build a better and more secure people for all of us.  That’s why those who argue for the security of Israel I say, you have to argue for the security of all countries in the region, because unless we are all secure, no one can be secure.

Thank you very much.