Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi:

I thank the Chairman. Regarding the issue of internal reconciliation between Palestinians, we have now engaged in another attempt to bring back internal unity between Palestinians. I myself attended the most recent meeting in Cairo in which all the 14 political parties in Palestine participated. We have come up with an agreement that we hope to fully implement, which would come to a practical end with the establishment of a unified Palestinian leadership within the Palestinian Liberation Organisation, PLO. It would also allow elections to take place. It is hoped such elections would be held no later than the end of 2018. We have not had such elections since 2006. It would also allow us to have a national unity government again.

It is very important for further reconciliation to succeed for us for two reasons. First, it will make us much stronger in confronting all of these oppressions from the Israeli side and in changing the balance of power. However, it is also important to bring democracy back to Palestine. It is important to bring our parliament back to life because it has been paralysed since the collapse of the national unity government in 2007. Bringing back democracy, elections and the principle of separation of powers is very important internally for Palestinian people and for the future independent Palestinian state for which we hope.

This will not succeed unless the international community also supports the reconciliation efforts. We had a very painful experience in 2007. When we formed our national unity government I personally mediated between Fatah and Hamas, being an independent party to both of them, and we succeeded in forming a national unity government. We were besieged by embargoes from the United States and many European countries and Israel suspended the transfer of our tax revenue, which it controls. As the committee knows, Israel controls 70% of our tax revenue and deducts 3% as a commission for doing so. When it suspended the transfer of all our tax revenue, the world community partially participated in that siege on us. That unity government collapsed. That is why it is very important that Europe supports unity between Palestinians not with words, but with actions. That is why it is not acceptable to impose conditions on Palestinian political parties.

I would like to mention one small point. Everybody keeps saying that Hamas should recognise Israel. Hamas asks why it should recognise Israel when Israel does not recognise Palestine? Why do people not speak about mutual recognition? The PLO recognised Israel, but Israel never recognised Palestine. As a matter of fact, Israel is the only country in the world that does not define its borders. I hope, in any future encounter committee members have with any Israeli officials, that they would ask them what the borders of Israel are. It will not define its borders because it continues to expand them in violation of international law.

A question was asked on what the alternative would be if the two-state was killed. For Israelis the alternative is what we have today - the system of apartheid, discrimination and continuous occupation. This is not the solution for us. It is probably the opinion of most Palestinians that if Israel kills the two-state solution, and if the world community does not intervene very quickly, we will have no option but to struggle for a one-state solution with full democratic rights for everybody. In that case we could never accept that Israel could be a Jewish state. Israel cannot be a Jewish state if more than half the population are Palestinians. It has to be a state for all its citizens. That means equality for everybody. Therefore Israel has two options, either a two-state solution immediately or a one-state solution eventually. However, we know that it will be a long struggle against the system of apartheid, which was described very well to the committee.

I have one last point on the EU projects which were destroyed. It is unacceptable that Israel is allowed to continue to destroy projects which the EU is funding with the money of Irish and European taxpayers. The European Union must take action. Protest is not enough. I believe that the European Union should immediately take action so that damages for any EU-funded projects in area C which are destroyed by Israel would be deducted immediately from any co-operation agreement between Israel and the European Union. More than that, the fact that Israel is destroying European projects in the occupied Palestinian territories should be a reason to suspend all these agreements between the European Union and Israel.