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12-02-09 Video Speech
Announcement

CANDIDACY ANNOUNCEMENT
BY RAY HANANIA
FOR THE OFFICE OF
PRESIDENT OF PALESTINE

For nearly 62 years, and more, Palestinians have been told that their rights in this world will be respected. That one day we will have our own state, a sovereign nation where Palestinians now spread across the globe can call their own. One place on this planet where we can find safety and celebrate in our identity and live as equals. That day has never come. In fact, that day seems to be moving further and further away.

Every day, we witness how another small piece of Palestine is erased by time, by occupation, by settlements and by violence. Instead of finding hope, we find despair, suffering and for many of us still living in refugee camps, destitution and abandonment.

My people, the Palestinians, are angry. They are angry with the endless Israeli occupation and the one-sided concern in the mainstream media that ignores their rights. They are angry with the failure of past peace efforts, sabotaged by extremists seeking to prevent compromise that their chances of defeating the other side might one day be realized. They are angry with our leadership in Palestine and the leaders in Israel who play a selfish game of politics exploiting our suffering for their own benefit.

What do the rejectionists tell us: wait until one-day we will return. They tell us not to compromise and they use the refugees like a bludgeon on our conscience to assert that we cannot abandon the sacred Right of Return. That Right of Return is so sacred that we have chosen to embrace futility rather than hope, a dream that somehow, we can turn back the clocks to 1922 and pretend that Palestine exists as one land mass so we can declare statehood free of the Ottomans, Free of the British and Free of Israel. But that dream has been a constant nightmare of death, destruction and failure.

The rejectionists tell us what they oppose, but they cannot tell us what they support. They tell us the problem but not the solution. They are willing to fight to the death of every single refugee and every single Palestinian to assert their futile point.

But we cannot go back to 1922. We cannot go back to 1948. And after 42 years of rejection and failed leadership, we can’t go back to 1967.

We can go forward. We can save our people. We can turn the nightmare of our despair and destitution of the refugee camps and the occupation into a vision of a new state, one where we can freely wave our flag, rebuild our culture and strengthen our nation. One tiny place on this planet where we can declare without challenge that we are Palestinians in Palestine, a sovereign state with sovereign rights that only come from statehood.

I say enough is enough! I say that there is only one answer to this cycle of violence and the continued tragedy of the Palestinian people. That answer is peace. That answer is accepting reality and recognizing that compromise is our only salvation.

Peace resolves all of the war crimes, the violence and the tragedy we have faced over the years. The price of not embracing peace is steep. Failure to bring peace will result in more war crimes beyond the Gaza Strip and more land confiscations and more expulsions from East Jerusalem, our Holy City. The only answer to the denial of our rights is to assert our rights through peace. If we have peace, we can stop the war crimes, the land theft, the confiscations, the expulsions, the degradation of our being by occupiers.

Israel is our occupier but in peace, Israel can be our friend. Jews, Christians and Muslims are one family originating from the same parent. We’re siblings who battle with passion that turns into emotion that become anger and sometimes turns in to hate. We need to stop that cycle of hatred. Peace will bring us all together again as one.

If we have peace, we will see an end to the expansion of illegal religiously exclusive settlements on Palestinian lands.

If we have peace, the Palestinian Refugees who have been held in purgatory for the past six decades can finally come home to their nation where we can together build an economic prosperity, one of which the world has never seen.

The answer is two states. One Israel and one Palestine.

Two states in which Palestinians and Israelis share Jerusalem with a Palestinian government presence in East Jerusalem the home of our forefathers and the heart of both our peoples.

Two states in which Palestinians and Israelis recognize the results of conflict and require Israel to abandon settlements in the West Bank; and those settlements not abandoned should be compensated with an equal land mass of the same size from Israel. We can shift land in compromise.

We can even share resources. No more battling over who will get water and who will not, whose road belongs to who and whose land belongs to who.

In peace, these issues become resolved and can be worked out.

The answer is to set aside our anger against Israel and for Israelis to set aside their anger against Palestinians.

Let both sides stop the poisonous rhetoric and instead recognize each other’s feelings as expressions of frustrations in a conflict that we cannot control.

In exchange, Palestinians must be prepared to compromise. We cannot take back all of Jerusalem. In reality, much of what is called Jerusalem today is in fact not really historic Jerusalem but outlying areas expanded upon by Israel. We can live with sharing parts of Jerusalem and with a government in East Jerusalem. In the Old City, Israel would take control of the Jewish areas and Palestine would take control of the Christian and Muslim areas.

In peace, we can create a joint commission to oversee Jerusalem’s future and restore it as a city of peace the spirit and power upon which it was named. In peace, we can create joint commissions to resolve all issues of contention and to even monitor and police shared areas.

In exchange, Palestinians must be ready to accept also that they cannot return to homes and lands occupied during the 1948 war and even to some lands occupied in 1967. That means for the first time in Palestinian history since the Nakba, the catastrophe for Palestinians, the Palestinian refugees will be told the truth and given a realistic future that can be achieved instead of being forced to squander their talents packed in refugee camps.

We honor those Palestinian refugees who survived generations in those camps. They made a difficult but important sacrifice to remain and not disappear as others wanted, a powerful statement that Palestinians do exist, that we have rights and as a reminder that the war of 1948 and all subsequent wars that followed were not resolved and remain in contention awaiting a result.

That result is peace based on compromise, the only alternative to watching another four generations of Palestinians being born and then dying in the squalor of those refugee camps.

In exchange, the Palestinian refugees would be moved into the State of Palestine where there is much room to work and rebuild our nation. Some would be returned to Israel under a Settler-Refugee Exchange Program that I believe is workable.

In exchange, the Palestinian refugees would be allowed to live in freedom and to turn their dreams towards a future of prosperity and success and respect, rather than to look back at a nightmare of suffering where the killing of a Palestinian refugee is minimized as a mere statistic.

In exchange, we would demand accountability. We would expect Israel to apologize to the Palestinian people for contributing towards their suffering and participate in the building of a compensation fund backed by the United Nations and the Arab World and the United States. They should be compensated to give them a chance at a new life for themselves and their children and their children’s children.

It’s something that Israel must be prepared to do in exchange for compromise. We both must compromise.

A Palestine State will recognize the equality of our great religions, Muslims, Christians and Jews. Yes, Jews who wish to live in Palestine as Palestinian citizens would be welcomed into our land as citizens. Our state would be secular and no one religion would be placed above the other.

As Palestinians, we must also dedicate our heart and spirit to compromise and when we give our word make it our word of honor, an honor that represents the strength of Palestine.

To the Israelis we say that peace is also their only real hope. That peace can prevent a future in which they are destroyed by their own refusal to stop settlement expansion that feeds the extremists who seek to destroy their nation.

To Israelis, we say we are willing to put aside the past and look towards a future where we can both live together and rebuild a trust and a compassion for one another.

I know that it will be easy for some to pick apart the peace, to find details they dislike and ignore the greater good that compromise can bring. In my plan, we would step back from the details of peace and instead embrace a larger vision that leads to prosperity, security, safety, freedom and dignity for two states, Israel and Palestine.

For these reasons and many others, I am today declaring my intent to run as a candidate on the Yalla Peace/Yalla Salam political party for the office of President of Palestine.

This campaign is not about me. I am a refugee, too. Anyone who cannot return to their homeland is a refugee, refugees on different paths. We are all the same whether we live in a camp or whether we live in a city in another country. The Diaspora is a community of refugees and we need to bring them all home.

I ask for your support. I urge you to see the wisdom of two states and peace. I urge you to reject violence and those who enable violence with rejection while failing to offer real solutions.

I urge you to embrace reason and reality. The Rule of Law is important. But in reality, the Rule of Reason preserves a nation from extinction. We must embrace reality and reason to save our people.

We have a great future. Let’s explore that future and see where it might one day lead. Who knows what can happen in peace? Who knows what great things two compassioned people, Palestinians and Israelis, might do together in a future of prosperity, security, dignity and freedom? Who knows what the future may hold?

Peace will resolve all our outstanding issues. Peace will save both our peoples. Peace will create a new alliance of the most powerful people on Earth, Israelis and Palestinians.

In conflict, we know what the future guarantees. More pain. More suffering. More lost lands. More occupation. More violence.

Peace is the only answer that offers genuine hope. Who knows where hope and peace might lead our two peoples someday in the distant future. Maybe the people of Palestine and Israel will one day return to the brotherhood that was once our bond. But for the immediate future, we know that peace is the only answer to survival for Muslims, Christians and Jews.

Thank you and shukran and salam.

END

VIDEO