Transcript
MINISTER ABOUL GHEIT: As a background, we for the last, say, year have been trying to compose or establish a Palestinian position that would support cease-fire talks with the Israelis, aiming at the implementation of the road map. So we have been engaging all kinds of different shades of Palestinian national movement, from Hamas to Jihad to Fatah to the democratic front to the popular front to what have you—13 of them. And we were in a certain point of time successful, where we had a cease-fire for 52 days. Then it was broken.
Nowadays we are working again on that project, where we are bringing Hamas, the political leadership—I'm not talking about the military arm of any of such organizations because we do not know them. They are underground. So you work and you focus on the political.
So we bring them to Cairo. They have been there last week; they will be coming—hoping that at a certain point in time they, who's Fatah, would agree on the parameters for a settlement. Also, concurrently, they are conducting themselves, amongst themselves as Palestinians, helped by us that the understandings that have been reached with the Israelis have to stick. We have to honor them. And we will see. Of course, you have to understand that that is all transitional. And if you miss that it is transitional, then you miss it at your peril—meaning, well, we will stop firing, we will accept what Fatah is trying to do or what the Authority is trying to do and the president of the Authority is trying to do, till we see where are you taking us. And because of this, I say the end game and the time frame and what have you. So that is the background.
So we go to Syria and we tell the Syrians, listen, we understand that such organizations are also—you can reach them. Can you? And he says, yes, we reach and we reach well and we are supportive of your effort and we are asking them to cooperate with you and to build that structure you are aiming at. And we verify. And it comes to us back that, yes, the Syrians have been telling them work with the Egyptians, work with the Jordanians, try to structure a situation where the Palestinian, at the end, is being served and served well.
So these were the purposes of such visits. That is on the Palestinian-Israeli. But on the Syrian-Israeli, we also engage in discussions, what do you want out of whatever offers that you can do or make to the Israelis and the responses, and we convey to them such offers. Because what we detect is that Syria is eager to—you refer to Syria as eager to link in the process. You refer to Hezbollah. The problem with Hezbollah, it is not a Palestinian organization. It is a Lebanese organization. So that is, again, an element that goes beyond the equation. It extends to other players.
We have to understand that Palestinian settlement will not solely establish a comprehensive peace. Comprehensive peace will have to include also Syria, whereby the whole concept of the Arab summit of Beirut, land for peace, normal relations for full peace, that will also be applied.
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