'Just World News' with Helena Cobban

Safieh to step down

Afif Safieh, who has been an articulate and effective representative for the PLO/PA in Washington for the past 18 months, announced yesterday that he has asked Abu Mazen to relieve him of his duties.

In the announcement, Safieh says this is for health reasons. But even a quick reading of the announcement shows that there are probably many other reasons for his request to step down, as well. The full text is given below.

I'll note that Afif Safieh is himself a staunch son of Jerusalem, so the anguish he expresses over the plight of the Palestinian half of the city is probably very deep and very real.

In 1995, during the height of "Oslo fever" in the west, I traveled to Jerusalem and wrote a multi-part series for Al-Hayat on the tragic situation in the city. Prior to Oslo-- and all during the first intifada, 1987-93-- East Jerusalem had been a central node of Palestinian political activity. Intellectuals and activists based there could travel with remarkably few restrictions throughout the West Bank and throughout Israel, as well as into Gaza. Shortly after the conclusion of the Oslo Accords and the return of the PLO leadership to Palestine-- but to Ramallah, not to Jerusalem-- East Jeruslaem became surrounded by a ring of steel checkpoints as the Israelis worked to cut its 160,000 residents off from contact with the West Bank, and vice versa.

During those visits to Al- Quds in the 1990s, I often checked in with Afif's sister, Diana Safieh, who ran a travel agency on Salahuddin Street and was active in the leadership of the East Jerusalem YWCA. She and her friends there gave me many details of the effect the ring of steel-- and the continuous encroachment into East Jerusalem of Israeli settlements, large and small-- was having on their lives.

Since then, the ring of checkpoints has been replaced with the even more suffocating Separation Barrier, 30 feet high and punctuated with guard towers, which cuts neighbor from neighbor throughout the Palestinian part of the city and looms like a concentration camp wall over many Palestinian neighborhoods. I can certainly understand where the angst that Safieh expresses about the city comes from. Back in 1995, I heard many similar expressions of anguish from Faisal al-Husseini (God rest his soul) about the degree to which the PLO/PA leadership had neglected Jerusalem's Palestinians during their pursuit of the chimeric "peace process" of those days.

Here is Safieh's announcement:

PLO Mission, Washington, DC

January 15, 2008

Subject: Static Diplomacy

From: PLO Mission - Washington, DC

Afif Safieh, the Head of the PLO Mission, has returned to Washington from Palestine. While in Ramallah, Safieh attended the meetings with visiting President Bush / met with President Abbas/ with Prime Minister Salam Fayyad/ attended the meetings of the Fatah Council which discussed the situation in Gaza and the preparations for the Fatah Conference before Summer 2008/ visited Bili'in where a heroic protracted non-violent struggle is waged against settlement-building and land-confiscation and met with the entire leadership of the village/ attended the exquisite Daniel Barenboim piano concert in Ramallah where the size of audience again demonstrated Palestinian thirst for a life of normality or the semblance of normality...etc.

Safieh deplored what he called "Static Diplomacy" in spite of the thousands of hours that are invested in talk about talks, negotiating pre- negotiations and pre- negotiating negotiations. On the ground the situation continues to deteriorate: the inhuman siege of the Gaza Strip and the daily bombardments, the frequent and repeated Israeli military incursions in the urban centers of the West Bank, settlement expansion mainly in and around occupied East Jerusalem and the number of the check-points that was not reduced strangulating the society and suffocating the economy.

Safieh was distressed by the conditions in East Jerusalem, the future Capital of Palestine, a city politically orphaned by the death of the Faisal Husseni and the illegal closure of The Orient House. Safieh in a meeting with 12 personalities from Jerusalem took a commitment to constantly raise the issue of the necessary reopening of The Orient House as stipulated in the first phase of the Road Map.

During his stay in Ramallah, Afif Safieh has asked President Abbas to relieve him, soon, during 2008, of his duties in Washington for health reasons. Safieh has suffered in 2006-2007 of a herniated disc and has undergone surgery last May.