H.E. Mr. Ahmad Abdelrazek:

I will start with the last question. It is what I stated at the outset, which is that Israel considers itself as a democratic country and so must respond to the international community. The Senator is right that one cannot ask a dictatorship because it is a dictatorship. It is like that. However, when one states that one is a democracy, one must behave like a democracy and not like a dictatorship or a coloniser. I agree completely with the Senator in what he has said about the description of the situation. The United States, the European Union, the United Nations and the Russian Federation have constituted the Quartet and it has put forward a kind of roadmap to solve the problem.

They should normally supervise the negotiations between Israel and Palestine, but the Israelis refused to allow the Quartet to participate in the negotiations. What we do not understand is why the Quartet accepted the Israelis' condition. For example, Mr. Martin Indyk was charged with participating in the negotiations by the United States, but he was not allowed to participate in them. He was briefed after them and nobody can register what went on between us and the Israelis. That is our big problem. That is why we think that when the Quartet supervises the negotiations, there will be great progress.

On many occasions I ask our representatives who go to negotiations how they have gone. They say they do not agree, that they start, stop, restart, stop and restart; every time they go they have nothing because nothing is registered, as there is nobody to witness what is going on. Of course, everyone, whether Israeli or Palestinian, states their version of the negotiations, but we do not want that; we do not want people to believe our version. If one wants to have serious negotiations, we want the Quartet to witness and supervise them.

We are seeking the solution and asking for the protection of the United Nations. We ask for it because we do not know what to do. The Israelis have the military power. In the face of this problem we can only ask for the United Nations' protection. We have a right to this and will ask for it - I repeat - if there is no change in the attitude towards this problem.

To answer Deputy Boyd Barrett on why we still continue in negotiations, it is because we think to have a sustainable peace we have to negotiate. We cannot keep fighting because we will keep fighting for generations, which is not in the interests of anybody. It is not in the interests of our people.

I have lived as a refugee all my life. I was born a refugee. I do not want my children to remain in this position. I go to Palestine with a French passport; I do not have the right to go there with a Palestinian passport. I go with a French passport, as a tourist; otherwise I cannot go there. I want to be normal like everybody else. I want my children, at least, to be normal like everybody else. That is what we are looking for, which is why we keep hope. However, as I said, the hope now is, after what happened in Gaza, that we will not keep the door open infinitely. We have one way - to choose another way - and I think we will choose it. We have started to choose it. We started to prepare for it in case going for serious negotiations failed. That is another choice for us.

Really, we do not know because we are negotiating with Israelis. We are trying to live side by side with Israelis but we ask the European Union to apply the agreements with Israel, the partnership with Israel based on respect for human rights. We ask the Europeans to respect the agreements with Israel. We are calling only for the boycott of the settlements because we Palestinians are negotiating with Israel. We are not going to take the step in question as long as we are negotiating with Israel. As I said, the settlements are illegal. We are clearly calling for a boycott of them. We did not decide yet on the next step we will ask for if one day the door of negotiations closes.