Salvaging Palestine & the two state solution...

"... Qaddura Fares, who spent fourteen years in Israeli prisons, has been a proponent of the two-state solution almost since he got out. He heads the Palestinian detainees' society and was a close aide and adviser to Marwan Barghouti, the imprisoned Palestinian hero who is widely acknowledged to be a possible successor to Abu Mazen. During our meeting with Fares, he was critical of everyone but Salam Fayyad.

Fares bemoaned the fact that "the Palestinian national movement, as opposed to Islam, has no media, no message, no vision. Our TV channel shows people singing and dancing." He was disgusted with his colleagues at an academic conference in Lebanon from which he had just returned: "I was the only one who spoke about a two-state solution. The rest of them said it may take fifty or sixty years, but Israel will end. I think we have maybe two years left to save the principle of two states." Fares was disdainful of the PA president: "In the five years and two months since his election, Abu Mazen has had no major achievements. When there's a power vacuum, the only thing to fill it will be Islam. That will be a catastrophe."

Fares used his only positive adjective twice when speaking of Fayyad. "His message is good and his vision for creating a Palestinian state is good. But it won't work if Israel won't allow him to do anything in Area C--not even to put up street signs or agricultural buildings." If the Palestinian state fails, said Fares, the only alternative will be the extreme religious groups, "who are in a hurry to be in paradise." "

A Visit With Salam Fayyad

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100419/pogrebin

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from facebook

Hussein Ibish on Fayyad "A Palestinian state is not going to be theoretical or academic forever. People need to see it's really happening."