When Mustafa Barguti (Jerusalem, 70 years old), Palestinian doctor and politician, thinks about his land back in 1967, the year that President Pedro Sánchez mentioned this Tuesday when reporting the recognition of the State of Palestine, what he remembers is a town already occupied by the Israelis; also a nation that had lost hundreds of thousands of people since the declaration of the State of Israel in the late 1940s. Barguti, visiting Madrid with the Novact Institute, admits that his childhood ended suddenly. “I realized that others would not solve our problems,” he says in a Madrid cafeteria.
At the beginning of the century, Barghouti founded, together with the philosopher Edward Said, the Palestinian National Initiative, a formation under which he came second in the 2005 presidential elections, behind Mahmoud Abbas, leader of Al Fatah and current president of the Palestinian National Authority (PNA). ). Two years later, Barguti would occupy the Ministry of Information.
Ask. How does the recognition of the State of Palestine affect the identity of its people?
Answer. Recognition does not give us identity; the identity gave us the recognition of 146 countries. It is an important moral step, also psychological, because it means that we are not alone. We appreciate the role of the Spanish Government because they pressured others to recognize Palestine. Other countries such as Malta and Slovenia and, probably, Belgium will be able to join. Maybe this will make France jealous [se ríe] and also recognize Palestine. But we know that this is not enough. We are not only subjected to occupation, but to barbaric genocide and other crimes: war, the crime of ethnic cleansing and collective punishment, even using hunger. And for that we need, in addition to recognition, punitive sanctions against Israel to force it to implement the resolution of the International Court of Justice that calls for stopping the war.
Q. What is your Palestinian State like, the one you dream of and for which you have worked for so many decades?
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R. A democratic State with equal rights for all. Where there is no discrimination based on religion, nationality or ethnicity; where people have equal opportunities. A country that will prosper because it has very talented people. What we need is freedom. It is up to the Israelis whether it is one state or two.
Q. He defends the idea of one State, even when it seems impossible to think of two.
R. Spain, Ireland and Norway not only recognize Palestine, but our right to self-determination, whether in two States or one. Some tell me that Israelis will never accept a democratic state. And my answer is that they do not accept the two-state solution either. [El ministro israelí de extrema derecha Bezalel] Smotrich, who calls himself a “fascist homophobe,” says they will fill the West Bank with settlements and settlers until the Palestinians lose all hope of having a state of their own. The Palestinians will then have to choose between leaving Palestine, which is ethnic cleansing, or accepting a life of subjugation to the Israelis, which is apartheidor die, which is exactly what they are trying to do now in Gaza, which is a genocide.
Israel has to decide what it wants. If they want to separate us, they have to agree to end their occupation and settlements. But they don’t want to do that. We can live together in a democratic State.
Q. A single State for everyone with the same rights. Right now, that seems difficult.
R. What is easy? My friend [el compositor] Daniel Barenboim once told me something very interesting: sometimes the impossible is easier than the difficult. No one can claim that he supports the two-state solution without the elimination of the occupation; the expulsion of all settlers from the occupied territories; reverse the decision to annex East Jerusalem, and finally allow Palestinian refugees to return home. Without this, anyone who talks about a two-state solution is practicing hypocrisy. It is just a slogan to give Israel time to finish the annexation job.
Q. Is the ANP the best possible government entity?
R.No, it is a structure that lacks democracy and that needs to be reformed. Governance reform means the right of the Palestinian people to have democratically elected leaders.
Q. Can this democratic process be developed in the midst of war?
R. Not when it’s over. But until this happens, we need a government of national consensus, accepted by all parties, so that we can work and maintain unity between the West Bank and Gaza. A government that is interim. Once the war is over, it has to prepare for free democratic elections. In 2021, we were about to have elections, but Israel obstructed them and the United States did not support them. The ANP made a big mistake by not accepting what we proposed, elections in Jerusalem without Israeli permission, to turn it into an act of non-violent resistance.
The ANP itself was afraid of the elections, so they canceled them. If we had had elections in 2021, no party would have won a majority. It would be a pluralistic and democratic structure. We would not have had this war, because we would have had a unified government for the West Bank and Gaza, and, probably, this would have improved the chances of lifting the siege on the Strip. See how many opportunities we missed. We could have saved the lives of 45,000 Palestinians.
Q. Among these political actors in Palestine is Hamas, the main objective of the Israeli offensive.
R. Israel claims so, but its target is not Hamas. Their objective is the entire Palestinian people, to carry out ethnic cleansing in Gaza. Netanyahu said they should evacuate everyone to the Sinai, to Egypt. For him, the war was not about October 7 [fecha del ataque de Hamás en territorio israelí que causó la muerte de más de 1.200 personas y decenas de secuestrados]. For him, it was an opportunity to solve the demographic problem by ethnically cleansing the inhabitants of Gaza.
Q. Have you seen a war like the current one in your 70 years of life?
R. No. We have never seen something so barbaric, so drastic, so cruel and so criminal. Not in ’67, not in ’48. This is the cruelest war ever waged. And the target is the civilian population. My heart breaks because I see the results. It is not only 36,000 people that Israel has killed, but 46,000 because there are 10,000 who are still under the decaying rubble. This is the longest war in Israel’s history. They destroyed all the universities, the schools, most of our medical facilities, 34 of the 36 hospitals. They killed 500 of my colleagues, doctors, nurses, health professionals. They prevented journalists from entering Gaza. And then they killed 144 Palestinian journalists. It is a terrible genocide. 81,000 people were injured and many will not survive because there are no medical services to help them.
Q. We talk about the recognition of Palestine, the ceasefire, negotiations, borders, but peace is something else: reconciliation, forgiveness, responsibility… How long will it take the Palestinians to overcome this?
R. It will take time. But we will not be hostages to the fact of being victims. We are victims, but we will not stay in that corner. We will have to find solutions so that more attacks like this do not happen again; so that no more Palestinians die, and so that there are no more genocides. That’s why I say now, thank you for the recognition, but please impose sanctions.
Q. What sanctions do you propose?
R. Military and economic. It is unacceptable for any country to provide military equipment or purchase it from a country that is committing genocide. Furthermore, the EU must suspend the association agreement with Israel. They can do it because it is shameful that they continue to support the establishment Israeli, who is committing war crimes.
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