Transcript of a press conference given by the Prime Minister and Prime Minister Salam Fayyad of Palestine on the London Business Forum on Trade and Investment with Palestine, Downing Street, 15 December 2008.
Prime Minister:
Good morning. I am delighted to welcome Prime Minister Fayyad. He has been a good friend of mine over many years and I am very pleased that we are this morning opening the London Business Forum on Trade and Investment with Palestine. The UK is committed to securing a comprehensive and just peace in the Middle East. We are working hard to ensure that progress is possible during 2009.
The Foreign Secretary and I have held intensive meetings with Middle Eastern leaders in recent visits to the region and here in London.
I will meet Prime Minister Olmert who is coming from Israel tomorrow. We will welcome the renewed focus on the Arab Peace Initiative embodied in the recent letter by 22 states calling for President-elect Obama to prioritise achieving a comprehensive peace and we want to seek to build on the progress that has been made after Annapolis which was undertaken by President Bush and then made in negotiations over the past year.
A Two-State solution lies at the heart of our vision for peace. A democratic Palestine must exist peacefully next to a secure Israel. Establishing a viable Palestinian State with a stable economy and a flourishing private sector is a crucial part of this process and that is what today’s Business Forum. that many people will speak at, is about. It will promote Palestinian economic development, it will demonstrate the resilience of the Palestinian private sector, it will show the considerable opportunities for partnerships with the United Kingdom. 60 business representatives from East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza will meet with over 100 UK delegates. The Palestinian-Britain Business Council will be established today to facilitate closer co-operation on trade and investment. The United Kingdom enjoys a close relationship with the Palestinian people. I hope today’s conference will cement this, and I hope in the coming days we can move further and faster towards the peace settlement that everyone wants to see happen.
Prime Minister Fayyad.
Prime Minister Fayyad:
Thank you very much Prime Minister Brown. I am pleased to be here. Thank you for your hospitality and your hosting of this forum on investment in Palestine, …… I look forward to a successful day today here in London which we view as an important element of the effort going forward building to a successful and functioning economy. We have had an opportunity to discuss that this morning with Prime Minister Brown as well as the overall context in which all of this is happening, this effort to build towards Palestinian statehood. And there as you heard …. we talked about the importance of the Arab Peace Initiative and the period ahead in terms of providing an overall framework within which the objective of seeing that this conflict is brought to an end with the occupation that took place in 1967 is brought to an end with the emergence of an independent, viable Palestinian State on the territories occupied in 1967 with East Jerusalem as its capital. All of this is now being viewed in the context of the promise which the Arab Peace Initiative provides for a future in which there is normalisation, if indeed these requirements are met. It is an important context in which to view the overall effort that we in the Palestinian Authority have been making towards statehood. Once again, we view what we are doing here as an important element. Building towards statehood requires building strong competent institutions of the Palestinian State, delivering services to our people in all areas of service delivery and also having a well functioning economy, one in which the private sector is actually given the opportunity to function and operate, all of which requires an improvement in the overall context in which we are operating. Here we are talking about the importance of the need for the removal of restrictions, barriers to movement and access which is critical to trade and successful business, but we are also talking about settlement activity which is a key negative element of the context in which we are operating. Today’s discussions provided me with an opportunity to thank Prime Minister Brown for the principled and sensible position his government has taken on this issue. It is very important for there to be full compliance with Road Map obligations, key amongst which on the Israeli side is a complete freeze on settlement activity. This is critically important to the continued viability of the solution concept that became a matter of international consensus in 2002. For that to be preserved, clearly settlement activity has to stop. We need to work more on that. We need full compliance by both sides, by us and by Israel with Road Map obligations. We need close monitoring. We need for the monitoring exercise that emerged after the Annapolis Conference to be turned from an exercise in accounting to an exercise in accountability. This is very important as we move forward in the period ahead. Accountability is key and it ought to be demanded equally of both sides if this effort is going to take us to where we are headed. Thank you very much.
Prime Minister:
It is a measure of the work that Prime Minister Fayyad has done over recent months that there are new investors ready to come into the Palestinian areas, that we are able to announce the British-Palestinian Business Council that will take place and Prime Minister Fayyad was telling me this morning that Bethlehem a few years ago only 400,000 tourists. This year potentially 1.5 million tourists and so the position is changing as a result of the economic progress that has been made by the work that he has done, and I congratulate him on it.
Question (In Arabic, not translated):
Question:
Economic progress is dependent on progress on the political track. What is Britain and the European Union proposing to do to achieve political progress that will free up both political and economic progress?
Prime Minister:
I have had a number of very intensive meetings with leaders in the Arab world. I am meeting Prime Minister Olmert tomorrow. I will be putting some suggestions to him that have arisen from the talks that I have made. I think it is important to recognise that the Arab Peace Initiative, the 22 Arab States calling on President-elect Obama to prioritise the achieving of a comprehensive plan, is a very important development indeed. It is the 22 Arab countries coming behind progress that can happen quickly in their view. Asking the new Presidency in America to take this as an urgent priority, and we are very much of the same view and we will do our best to promote that initiative.
Prime Minister Fayyad:
I was asked a question, so shall I answer it in Arabic?
[Answer in Arabic - not translated]
Question (Jeremy Bowen, BBC):
A question to each of you if I may. First of all to Mr Brown. Britain has said that Israeli settlement activity ought to stop. Can you tell us why that is important and why you believe Israel is not stopping settlement activity. And to Mr Fayyad, shouldn’t you be working harder to mend the rift with Hamas?
Prime Minister:
Well we have consistently called for Israel to dismantle settlements. I spoke to the Knesset only a few months ago and made it absolutely clear that Israel should freeze settlements and withdraw from settlements and I stated that a future Palestinian State should be based on the 1967 borders with Israel (sic) (?Jerusalem) as a capital for both Israel and Palestine. The reason that this is important and that is the question you ask, is I think everybody now sees the contours of what a Two-State solution would like. A Palestinian State that was secure and viable economically, an Israeli State that is secure within its own borders and where its worries about peace and stability were answered. One of the blockages to that is clearly the settlement issue. We have consistently said, and I have said this to successive Israeli Prime Ministers and Presidents when I have met them, we have consistently seen this as a barrier to reaching the agreement that everybody thinks is possible and I hope that in the talks in the next few weeks and months this will be recognised to be a barrier that has got to be overcome.
Prime Minister Fayyad:
Indeed it is an absolute requirement for the reunification of our country for there to be a reconciliation. We attach a great deal of importance to that for all the right reasons. The solution that Prime Minister Brown was talking about, settlement of this conflict, definitely would require that we be reunited. That is not the only reason. What that would produce actually is catastrophe of unprecedented proportions. Actually the worst that the Palestinians have suffered since the occupation in 1967. It is for that reason that we in the Palestinian Authority have been making every effort working with our colleagues in the Arab League, Arab countries, to try to find a way in which national dialogue can be resumed, started in a way that could lead to reconciliation. The requirements for that to happen are amply clear. What is really absolutely required as a measure of immediate importance is for there to be agreement on a government that can run the country. There will be national consensus on a government that can run the country both on the West Bank and Gaza. Also agreement needs to be reached on a transitional arrangement for security to help us with our efforts to build our security capabilities in Gaza, but also to provide basic security services for our population there transitionally, until our security services are rehabilitated. This would provide a good backdrop against which dialogue on the political platform on all these matters can take place. That has been our submission for many, many months now and we have been engaged with our colleagues in the Arab world in an effort to try to make this happen. We thought that the dialogue that was actually the effort that was led by Egypt to try to get us there was going indeed to be a landmark event that could indeed bring about a resolution and reconciliation …. and uniting our country. Unfortunately Hamas who balked and decided not try. This said, we should not give up. We are grateful to our Arab colleagues for the effort that they have been making to try to bring this to an end. We stand ready and we continue to work with them in an effort to revive the possibility of starting the dialogue that is absolutely essential for all the right reasons. But I think, like everything else, that the elements of success are issues that we need to focus on and look at what is absolutely required in order for that unity to be established, or reunification, reconciliation. Those two basic elements that I mentioned to you I believe are imminently doable. What is so difficult in a population of 4 million people to have national consensus on 20 men and women …to run the country transitionally in the run-up to agreed transitional elections. It should not be so difficult. And likewise the issue of security that I mentioned to you is something that is basic. A basic fact and issue who is going to provide a normal security service in the Gaza Strip in the run-up to this period when our own capabilities have been restored and how it is that we are going to get to the point where our own security services are rehabilitated. I invite everyone to look at those issues in a practical way and in fact I believe that agreement on them is not so difficult and once we are there then all the other issues that are related to the political programme, differences in view as to what the political platform should be, these are issues that are much better handled against a backdrop of a reunified country as opposed to the current state of affairs, sad state of affairs, in which 1.5 million of our people continue to suffer, and where, and here I am talking about the Gaza Strip of course, the misery there has never been higher.
Question:
I have two questions also. Prime Minister Fayyad, I would like to ask you about Gaza. As you spoke about it, the situation continues to deteriorate. You speak about building up institutions and building up a country. However, Gaza is actually crumbling. To what extent is the suffering that Gaza is enduring is actually going to hold back any possibility of a feasible Palestinian State, and what obligations do the international community have towards Gaza regardless of political differences?
To Prime Minister Brown, I would like to ask you, you speak of the Arab Peace Initiative. That has been on the table for many years. What real progress is there in this initiative becoming the centrepiece for peace in the region and why do you think the Israelis have yet to really accept it?
Prime Minister Fayyad:
As I said it is not going to be possible for us to build a state without that state being comprised of both Gaza and West Bank including East Jerusalem. And that is another reason - not the only reason - why everything that can be done should be done in order to reunite the country and end the current state of drift and ….. But what we have been able to accomplish over the past year in the West Bank provides me with every bit of assurance that the same can be done in Gaza as soon as we are given the opportunity to do in Gaza that which we have been doing in the West Bank for the past year. In terms of getting the institutions of state stronger, in terms of the overall effort to prepare for statehood, in terms of beginning to get the economy to begin to move after several years of weak economic performance, if not outright recession. All of this is doable and Gaza geographically is a much smaller place than the West Bank. Actually we are talking about only 360 kilometres square. We can do that which we did in the West Bank … in Gaza as soon as we are given the opportunity to do it. I am happy to tell you that in the Conference that we are having today here in London there are several representatives of the business community from Gaza who have been able to join us. Gaza is foremost in our thinking when it comes to economic development. Planning for example, our development plan is inclusive of projects that are designated for implementation in Gaza. As soon as we are able to get there and do these things we will and I think we can do them and do them fast.
Prime Minister:
I approve of the improvements in security in the West Bank. It is unfortunate that the Gaza security situation is so much more difficult and that the Israelis are threatened by that. The UK is providing £100 million to the UN Relief and Works Agency to help Palestinian refugees in the region and Gaza will also benefit from our funding to public services through the World Bank and the European Commission to pay for teachers and doctors and engineers. As far as the Arab Peace Initiative, I think it is the urgency with which it has been put forward, I think it is the coming together of all these states in a meaningful way in advance of President Obama taking over in America, I think it is the direct approach to President-elect Obama which makes it such a significant initiative, and although we are building on the negotiations that have taken place since Annapolis, the fact that this letter has come from all the Arab states and is directed to President-elect Obama is a sign that there is a wish throughout the world - that includes Britain and America - but also from the Arab states that 2009 could see real progress in a settlement between the longstanding problems of the Palestinian areas and Israel and therefore I believe it is significant for that reason there is an urgency about the …..
Thank you very much.
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