From Catholic News Service

Catholic Palestinian diplomat criticizes Israeli checkpoints

By Dennis Sadowski, Catholic News Service

CLEVELAND (CNS) -- Some 2 million Palestinians living in the West Bank of the Jordan River are losing millions of hours of work and family time daily because of the existence of hundreds of Israeli-run checkpoints across the territory, said the Palestinian representative to the United States.

Afif Safieh, head of the Palestine Liberation Organization mission to the United States in Washington, said the lost time comes at the 450 checkpoints the Israeli government has established to control the movement of all Palestinians, Christians and Muslims alike.

"It's an arbitrary system, where the indigenous population of the country is made to feel unwelcome every moment of every day," Safieh said in an interview with the Catholic Universe Bulletin, Cleveland diocesan newspaper. "And our mistake is simply to have existed."

A Catholic, Safieh, 55, was in Cleveland in mid-March to urge the local Palestinian community to see their homeland as a "nation in progress" and to support the nation-building effort by sending money home and speaking out about the situation in their homeland.

Acknowledging that the Christian population in Bethlehem and Jerusalem has declined dramatically during the last two decades, Safieh blamed Israel for creating a territory where no one except Jews is made to feel welcome.

"The name of the game is how Israel can occupy as much of Palestinian geography as possible with as little Palestinian demography as possible," the diplomat said.

Safieh was critical of Israelis for constructing a "wall of shame" around Palestinian communities. "(The wall) has no security value," he said. "It's separating Palestinians from Palestinians, urban centers from the villages, the villagers from their farming land, the farming land from the wells that irrigate them."

The Israeli government in recent years has been building massive razor-wire-topped walls around areas where Palestinians live in an effort to separate them from Jewish settlements. Israeli officials say the walls are necessary to prevent terrorism.

Prospects for peace were further clouded in January when Hamas, a more militant organization that has used terrorism to promote its push for an independent Palestine, became the majority party of the Palestinian Authority Legislative Council.

The Hamas victory was fueled in part by the extensive network of social welfare programs it has developed.

A member of the Palestine Liberation Organization rather than of Hamas, Safieh said he expects to continue in his diplomatic position based on his long years of service to the Palestinian effort and broad experience as a diplomat in the West.

"Me being a Christian, I'm not threatened in my work by Hamas," he said.

Hamas has no plans to oust Mahmoud Abbas, who was elected president of the Palestinian Authority in January 2005, he added.

"We the Palestinians, we the Arabs, are in favor of democracy," he said. "I believe it's our expectations, our aspirations, our right. It is our duty."

Safieh urged the United States to broker peace in the region while pushing for a two-state solution to allow Palestinians to establish their own nation. U.S. alignment with Israel is making America unpopular abroad, he said.

"I personally believe that the American national interest and the Israeli territorial appetite do not necessarily coincide. ... Nonalignment is in the best American interest."

Since 1967, Safieh has considered himself a "wandering Palestinian" because he has been unable to return to his home after Israel took control of the West Bank. He had left Jerusalem in 1966 after completing high school to study at the Catholic University of Louvain in Belgium.

Prior to his appointment to the U.S. in October, Safieh was the Palestinian general delegate to the United Kingdom for 15 years. In 1995 he also became Palestinian general delegate to the Holy See.

As the Palestinian representative to the Netherlands in 1988, his work led to the first official and direct U.S.-Palestinian discussions.

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