PA PM Fayyad: “Non-violent resistance” has “enormous substantial and moral power”
Headline: “The Prime Minister praises the youth initiatives to end the rift”
“Prime Minister Salam Fayyad emphasized in his weekly radio address that an end to the [Fatah-Hamas] rift is essential to complete the national readiness for establishment of the state. He praised the youth initiatives calling for an end to the rift…
Concerning his initiative to end the rift, the Prime Minister said: ‘In view of this challenge, there is no choice but [to adopt] an initiative and speedy action to meet this internal demand [for unity] and to end this catastrophic and tragic chapter in the history of our people. This has led me to take the initiative and to announce a practical and simple proposal, and I believe that it will facilitate an immediate end to the occupation and a start to restoring unity [i.e., a functional national unity government] to the homeland and its institutions, as a step towards achieving national reconciliation, which is a result to be consolidated gradually and not a precondition for restoring unity. This will come through the positive turnabout in the Palestinian situation which unity will bring about, and the positive atmosphere which it will create, contributing to a calming of tempers and improving the general popular mood…
This direction has been based on the need to focus efforts at this stage on one issue – the agreement to establish a national unity government, which will start with a definition of the security perception which is implemented in practice by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and which is officially carried out by the PA in the West Bank. [This perception] is based on ruling out the option of violence in our people’s legitimate effort to achieve their national rights, especially since the non-violent resistance has proved, on decisive and important occasions, to possess enormous substantial and moral power, capable of carrying our issue to the moment of realization of our historical right…
This is what is borne out by experience of the first Intifada, and the popular revolutions and youth revolutions in the Arab countries – all of which were non-violent and democratic in nature. The [national] unity government, which will operate within the framework of the homeland as a whole, in the West Bank as well as the Gaza Strip, will be entrusted with supervising the implementation of this security perception, by means of the institutionalized arrangements that exist in the West Bank and in Gaza, as they are and without any change, in addition to its routine tasks.’”
“Prime Minister Salam Fayyad emphasized in his weekly radio address that an end to the [Fatah-Hamas] rift is essential to complete the national readiness for establishment of the state. He praised the youth initiatives calling for an end to the rift…
Concerning his initiative to end the rift, the Prime Minister said: ‘In view of this challenge, there is no choice but [to adopt] an initiative and speedy action to meet this internal demand [for unity] and to end this catastrophic and tragic chapter in the history of our people. This has led me to take the initiative and to announce a practical and simple proposal, and I believe that it will facilitate an immediate end to the occupation and a start to restoring unity [i.e., a functional national unity government] to the homeland and its institutions, as a step towards achieving national reconciliation, which is a result to be consolidated gradually and not a precondition for restoring unity. This will come through the positive turnabout in the Palestinian situation which unity will bring about, and the positive atmosphere which it will create, contributing to a calming of tempers and improving the general popular mood…
This direction has been based on the need to focus efforts at this stage on one issue – the agreement to establish a national unity government, which will start with a definition of the security perception which is implemented in practice by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and which is officially carried out by the PA in the West Bank. [This perception] is based on ruling out the option of violence in our people’s legitimate effort to achieve their national rights, especially since the non-violent resistance has proved, on decisive and important occasions, to possess enormous substantial and moral power, capable of carrying our issue to the moment of realization of our historical right…
This is what is borne out by experience of the first Intifada, and the popular revolutions and youth revolutions in the Arab countries – all of which were non-violent and democratic in nature. The [national] unity government, which will operate within the framework of the homeland as a whole, in the West Bank as well as the Gaza Strip, will be entrusted with supervising the implementation of this security perception, by means of the institutionalized arrangements that exist in the West Bank and in Gaza, as they are and without any change, in addition to its routine tasks.’”