I want to seize this occasion to reassert in the most emphatic and categoric fashion that the Palestinian leadership is still totally committed to the strategic choice of Peace, and still totally committed to negotiating with the government of Israel a permanent settlement of the conflict on the basis of international legality, building upon the implementation of the agreements already signed and putting an end to the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territory. I want to emphasize that we havnever turned our back to negotiations, never indulged in the fatal illusion that one could choose one's partner in peace or in war. We engaged in this peace process in Madrid in 1991 with good faith and flexibility, with patience and hope. After eight years of unkept promises, or commitments not implemented, of obligations violated, of clauses and articles never materialized, our people is in the streets of our besieged country to demand an end to the violence of occupation, an end to the violence of colonization, an end to the violence of repression and aggression, an end to the denial of its most elementary human rights. Occupation is illegal.
Settlements are illegal.
But resistance to the tyranny of an illegal foreign occupation is legal and legitimate. We are determined to explore all possible avenues in order to de-escalate the confrontation on the ground, and create conditions which will make it possible to revive negotiations. But it must be very clear that it is the occupying power who is in a position to set the de-escalation mechanism in motion. The government of Israel is the only party which has the capacity to put an end to the spiral of confrontation, terror and counter-terror. Not, as it seems now intent on doing, by intensifying both its aggression on the ground and its campaign against the PNA in the international arena, but by lifting the siege, freezing settlement activities and returning to the table of negotiations.