The answer given to this question by Dr. Ian Douglas, who teaches courses on political science at An-Najah National University and is a member of the BRussells Tribunal Committee, is an open and clear “Yes.”

The massive tragedy that has been taking place right next to our country since April 2003 is unfortunately not given enough coverage by the Turkish media. The editorial “kitchens” of newspapers and televisions have become so used to the killing of dozens of Iraqis every day by Americans, insurgents or Al-Qaeda members that they have ceased to attach any news value to these killings. Although the tragedy that claims lives every day seems to have created a kind of sentimental stupor in the media, this definitely does not mean that the tragedy is no longer there. This bloody tragedy, which we have become so used to, is stripping ourselves of our humanity, and is suffered every single day with all its terror in a country right next to us. Every moment it leaves a woman childless, husbandless, fatherless, brotherless, or leaves a child motherless, brotherless, fatherless, or without a grandfather, uncle or aunt.

Before the very eyes of a numb-hearted world, a country is being pillaged and plundered; a nation is being wiped out step by step. While dozens of people are killed every day, maybe hundreds are forced into leaving their homes, hometowns and homeland.

Dr. Douglas rises against this, articulating that “this is a full-fledged genocide.” He has decided to inform as many people as he can and calls on everyone he reaches to be much more sensitive toward the genocide being perpetrated in Iraq. It is impossible not to see the genuine pain of having witnessed massive destruction in the eyes of this man, who has also visited me to share his views.

Maybe we should stop for a moment to associate Iraq only with the existence of the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the north of the country and the threat it poses to Turkey, or with projects being realized by Turkish contractors and businessmen in Iraq, and once again try to see what is really happening there.

Dr. Douglas states that the United States began its genocide in Iraq 17 years ago and notes, “The 2003 US invasion of Iraq was the culmination and intensification of a consistent US policy of destroying Iraq as a national and state entity.” Having figured out that around 1.5 million people, most them children and women, died because of the 13-year UN-led embargo on Iraq, which was enforced as a result of heavy pressure from the US, Dr. Douglas adds that the number of people killed in the war since 2003 has exceeded 1 million. He benefits also from Lancet and the Iraq Body Count in reaching the quoted figures and holds the United States responsible for the killing of a total 2.5 million people in Iraq — apart from the cultural, social and economic destruction it has inflicted on the country. He bluntly describes this as downright genocide.

Dr. Douglas notes these under the title, “Implementing genocide in Iraq.” He says: “The US has sought to: 1) destroy Iraq physically and culturally, and principally militarily, so that it can never re-emerge as an economic, political or military power; and 2) break Iraq as a state and a nation, substituting the state with three or more conflicting and weak entities based on ethnic and sectarian affiliations that presage the destruction of Iraq’s Muslim Arab identity. These two objectives, if achieved, would allow for the plunder of Iraq’s resource riches, control of its median position in order to attain global pre-eminence and serve in the protection of the US’s offensive regional instrument and proxy, Israel.”

Dr. Douglas also accuses the international community. “The international community not only failed to prevent the illegal US invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, but also supported what from 1990 has been a gathering US-led genocide in Iraq. This is a catastrophic betrayal for the Iraqi people and an injury to us all,” he said.

“The Iraqi people have the legal right to resist occupation, colonialism and genocide by all available means, including armed struggle,” says Dr. Douglas, adding, “The national popular resistance in Iraq is combating genocide directly where international law as a preventative and protective mechanism has failed.”

He also makes two calls: “In defense of civilization, people all over the world should rise up in support of the national liberation struggle of Iraqi people. In defense of international law, jurists and law associations should work to bring the charge of genocide against the US, its leaders and its allies.”

Who can claim that Dr. Douglas’ accusations and calls are unfair or ill founded?

This interview was conducted a few days before the court looking into the Dujail case reached its verdict passing the death sentence on former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Ramsey Clark was unceremoniously evicted from the court, prior to the pronouncement of the verdict.

A friend and New York activist recently told me an “apocryphal story” about Ramsey Clark: that he was born of the elite, schooled in high principles of justice, ethics and art, but that during that critical time, perhaps in adolescence, when the sons and daughters of the ruling class are spirited away to some secret camp and told, “this is what the world actually is. Here is how you will rule, and why you must rule, and who your enemies are,” Clark had the measles and never received the message. He went out into the world with an armoury of ideals, and no cynicism.

Ramsey Clark, 78, former attorney-general of the United States under President Lyndon B Johnson, appears indeed a believer in truth and justice when we speak in the East Village apartment days after his latest return from Baghdad, and ahead of key US mid-term congressional elections. Clark is a lead defence lawyer in the trials of Saddam Hussein, the first of which is slated to reach a verdict 5 November.

The attorney-general of the United States, in theory, is the chief protector of justice while also the embodiment of law and thus the establishment. Now you are widely recognised as one of the most outspoken critics of American governments, particularly American imperial thinking and practice. Was there a turning point in your life when the call of justice outweighed defending the establishment, or has the establishment gravitated towards unlawfulness?
I think the duty of an attorney-general in the narrow sense is to the constitution and law of the United States, and in a more general sense to truth and justice. I think the task is to protect rights, to fulfil rights, not to serve a political party or political interest, or a particular administration. I’ve often thought it important to have an attorney-general from the opposite political party, or no political party, because there is no room for partisanship outside of what we consider the legislative programme. The legislative programme is where you have policy discretion to establish new law, or change old law. In my time, something like the Voting Rights Act was seeking to establish new law, to first create and then protect the rights of people to vote, regardless of race and other absences of equality. When you start there, my criticism of the Vietnam War was as strong as any other violation of laws and principles that has occurred. That doesn’t mean to say it was equal in degree.

Illustrations can make the conflict of law and politics clear. When Mayor Daly in Chicago during the race riots said they would shoot looters, my response, publicly and immediately, was that anyone who shot a looter would be arrested under federal law. You can’t shoot a looter. You can’t use deadly force against a 12- year-old kid for stealing a basket of apples, or anything else. To intervene was urgent because life was in danger. Second, it was a duty because shooting looters, however politically attractive to some, or expedient in terms of stopping a riot, is something you just can’t do. The race riots occurred after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. When King was shot I flew down that night to Memphis. He wasn’t a public official, but he represented, to me, the highest ideals of the American people. To me, the government had the highest duty to respect his life and pursue those who took it, and to show our commitment to law enforcement in those circumstances. In other instances there were powerful interests that wanted extensive wire-tapping and I prohibited it in all kinds of fields.

So at that time, defending law was also defending justice?

In an ideal situation the same lawyer can be a prosecutor and a defence counsel and as zealous in each pursuit as ethical conduct would indicate appropriate. If you have to take sides in everything you’re not living by principle, you’re living by self-interest: your side against their side. The problem is that we assume that there are sides: the government side and those who criticise the government. I’ve always thought that the highest form of patriotism is to criticise your own government in a time that is it doing wrong in your opinion. Silence in the presence of unlawful conduct by your own government is the most unpatriotic thing you can do.

By this definition, there have been few American patriots of late, though their number appears to be growing.
A long time ago The Nation, our oldest magazine, asked several others and myself for a definition of patriotism. Betty Jean Craige wrote a book on my definition entitled American Patriotism in a Global Society. My definition was: “a personal commitment to make one’s country honest and just in all its acts, and to motivate the whole country to be as good a neighbour in the community of nations as the conscience of individuals motivates them to be in the communities where they live.”

Any other form of patriotism is ultimately destructive because you’re taking sides, right or wrong. The ultimate cowardice and failure of patriotism is to say “My country, right or wrong.” You’re saying if your country’s wrong, you’re for it. You shouldn’t even be for yourself if you’re wrong. We need government, but we better need just government. We won’t solve problems of war and peace, of poverty, hunger, sickness and ignorance without systems designed to effectively address those problems, to share resources and instill a commitment to help the hungry and the sick and the weak wherever they are, and to design means of controlling violence, and to eliminate it from our technology and our character. A government that pursues the opposite agenda is the enemy.

The present US administration appears uninterested in anything but power. Do you think this is a fair assessment?

Just government is a commitment to fulfil human need wherever it exists and prevent violence wherever it threatens. The present US administration is the antithesis of that. It’s a government by and for wealth, leading to more concentration of wealth, and a greater spread of poverty. By definition, it’s a plutocracy, and that’s a very dangerous self-serving, destructive worldview and form of government. One weapon it wields is deception and manipulation of opinion — the distortion of truth to serve an end. The theory has existed at least since Aristotle’s time, which means thousands of years before that, that the best form government is government by the select, the wealthy; that you concentrate power in order to control and prevent the self-destructiveness of human nature. In fact, that concentration is the most destructive aspect of our nature.

The Bush administration appears to be pushing further in that direction than any other in recent history. Is this your view?
You have to be careful in how you describe the present administration. It’s hard to argue with the seeming reality that most administrations, going back to the very beginning, have been aggressive; have sought expansion and domination over territories and people, whether in continental North America or the whole world. In addition, it’s very difficult to identify a strongly divergent view between the major political parties. But what you have here is a president who seeks to advance the same interests that most American administrations have, but in an unprecedented and unprincipled way. It’s the same goal, but there are no rules in the way you play the game. Between the two, if they’re divisible (not playing by the rules or seeking domination), seeking domination is the more dangerous. People who seek domination without restraint are obviously inhumane.

Yet the present bid for empire is so stark, so garish, that it fails. When Bush is exposed to the world, and he is, his plans have no efficacy.
The problem with saying that Bush is exposed is that the administration is still able to manipulate, dangerously, a huge sector of the public, leading, perhaps in most given elections, including the use of dirty tricks, to the ability to win. It’s not clear what is going to happen in the 7 November congressional elections.

What this means — and it’s happening — is that the part of the world that sees how violent and immoral the Bush administration is also sees that the American people are unwilling or unable to stand up to it. That makes a different form of enemy. Usually everyone is careful to distinguish between the government and the people. Now it becomes harder to do, with the extremism of the Bush administration. It’s a real test for the American people. There’s an assumption that this is democratic society. It’s more than an assumption; it’s almost unchallenged when it has never been a democracy and it’s the furthest thing from a democracy now. It’s a plutocracy in the classical sense and they use the mass media (after all, they own it) very effectively to blindside the people and create a false sense of history and patriotism, and all the rest.

So the future in America is bleak?

The thing that may happen from the Bush administration is that it will go further than any other administration could have gone, because of its means, in bringing down the system that both parties have used to seek in general the same goal. His father sought the same goal but he was far more pragmatic. This president doesn’t see that some things don’t work, which is what has happened in Iraq and what will happen if he continues this military policy. However omniviolent the technology, they can’t use it without self- destruction; and they can’t win because even in a country like Iraq their numbers are insufficient to prevail.

Some say the American empire is buried in Baghdad; that this time marks the end of globalisation by war.
That would be nice, but the cat has nine lives. I remember pointing out to the first Bush, that Alexander the Great died in Babylon, so he ought to be careful where he goes. Perhaps now, however, marks a decisive turning point in history.

Recently The Lancet put the number of “excess” deaths following the 2003 US-led war on Iraq at 650,000. Added to the massive civilian toll of the preceding 13 years of sanctions, does such a figure not reflect the intent necessary to be deemed genocide?
I think sanctions were genocidal. Clearly. They took a million and a half lives or more. The Food and Agricultural Organisation reported in October of 1996, just six years into sanctions, that 570,000 children under the age of five had died as a direct result of the sanctions. Given that this was foreseeable a commitment is suggested to destroying in whole or part Iraqis as a national, racial or religious group. Now we’re three and half years into “Shock and Awe” and it would be hard to argue there are not half a million dead already, and the rate is accelerating.

Even worse than the idea of genocide is the “let them kill each other” strategy, and that’s obviously a strong element that’s involved here. Kissinger said at the beginning of the Iran-Iraq war, “I hope they kill each other,” by which he meant that its our policy that they should kill each other. Although we’re responsible for all the killings, because we turned the faucet on, one of the saddest things is that Iraqis are killing Iraqis.

And now, though the invasion was a war of aggression, US presence is justified in the name of stemming civil war.
Right. And if you don’t begin with the war of aggression, you’re not addressing the single most dangerous element of what happened. Because it is clearly and beyond question a war of aggression — there’s no possible justification for it. It violates the first articles of the UN Charter that prohibit threat of assault against equal sovereign states. Article 51 doesn’t save it, because there was absolutely no threat. It would be hard, in fact, to find a country that was less a threat to the United States than Iraq was when it was attacked.

That’s the thing that makes impeachment of Bush so critically important, because if the American people can’t or are not willing to restrain their government from arbitrary wars, and have no way of knowing what is going on — both because of deception and because of diversion — then we’re mere consumers, not citizens.

Some say this is all just a blunder. I’d suggest the goal has been constant and the means have been getting harsher as resistance has grown. How do you see it?
I think it’s false that the idea is to establish democracy and freedom. It would be wrong even if it were the purpose because you have no right to decide for other people how they live their lives. Also the idea that the United States made an effort to simply stabilise Iraq seems patently false. If you go beyond the point of diminishing returns in letting people destroy a society you create a vacuum that’s going to draw in larger and larger areas and you can’t control it. It’s not like having Iran and Iraq destroy each other; for this administration that would be the best of all worlds. They’ve made the armed resistance a rod for their own backs because they’ve killed too many young people in a war that made no sense whatsoever — not that any does. Now, in Baghdad, you have to assume that our purpose is not saving Iraqi lives, but in further diminishing their ability to resist, which is at a remarkably high level, considering all they’ve been through.

US generals are saying openly that their pacification plans for Baghdad have failed. I’m surprised that they declare defeat, but suspicious of their declarations also.
It’s pitiful. Casey’s there with the US ambassador, just days ago, saying that within a year to 18 months Iraq will be able to protect itself. It’s baseless propaganda, and I suspect these other statements on Baghdad are also. What they’re saying is for the benefit of the Bush administration, in the election, pure and simple. When they talk about it not working, then the public thinks, “Well, the generals had this idea and they carried it out and it didn’t work. Can I blame George Bush for that? Can I blame the Republicans for that? They’re trying to do these things they say they’re trying do, which is bring democracy to the Middle East and freedom of the people,” when in fact Bush has done more than any president in our history to destroy liberty.

Bush loves to say liberty, but he’s the principal enemy of liberty in the world right now: undercutting the writ of habeas corpus, the right not be arbitrarily detained without charges or people knowing where you are, or what’s happening to you, the right to not to be tortured, demeaning the Geneva Conventions as not relevant to current societies. The deceptions are very difficult for societies to deal with, even if they want to. It’s very hard on the streets here to know what to think about what’s going on in Iraq. How do you find out?

While there is talk of impeachment, there seems little will to uphold applicable instruments of international law relative to alleged war crimes in Iraq, even while some of those imputable — for example, Paul Wolfowitz — are formally out of government. Will this change?
Well, ideally. But that’s why the United States has gone to such lengths to reject international law altogether; to gut the International Criminal Court (ICC) statute before it’s ratified; to coerce 80 countries into agreeing not to surrender US citizens to the ICC by bilateral treaties that are above the law. The problem is that the United States remains dominant. Look at the UN Security Council. It’s quite amazing. China and Russia are sitting right there with them, and then others, doing nothing, despite all the power they have.

Turning to Saddam Hussein, will a verdict on the Dujail trial be issued 5 November? Reports last weekend suggest it could be delayed a second time.

With this court you’re never sure. They’ve said things before that didn’t happen. They said that they’re going to announce it on 5 November and the thing that gives it credibility is not their announcement but the fact that that’s two days before US congressional elections.

It is hard to imagine anything but an execution order being issued from this court, and yet militarily and politically executing Saddam in the current context in Iraq — especially after 300 tribal chiefs, including leaders from Kirkuk, called for him to be reinstated as president — seems suicide for the US.
Well, you can always do a foolish thing. You can always misjudge and be self-destructive. Originally the verdict was due 16 October. They probably moved it because they were afraid of more chaos, which would be counter-productive around the time of the US elections. Now, from Sunday 5 November to Tuesday 7 November, when the polls open, they can control the appearance of any outbreak. It’s cruelly calculating and Machiavellian.

On the other hand, it’s hard to imagine a more fraudulent case than the Dujail case. It’s a case brought by the Dawa Party. Jaafari was apparently directly or personally involved in planning some of the assassinations, including the assassination attempt on Tarek Aziz, between 1980 and 1982. It’s a case that involves a judicial proceeding, whether you like it or not, because from the time of the event until the time of signing the death warrants three years went by. If your purpose was vengeance or to show your arbitrary power and strike fear into people you’d have hung them immediately, stuck their head on poles so the people can learn what happens. Instead, they couldn’t even find some of them after three years because they’d gotten lost in the prison system or been released.

It’s so incredible that of all charges they could bring they brought a Dawa Party case. Dawa is a party that was formed in Iran to overthrow the Iraqi government. They took up arms against that government when the nation was endangered. I oppose death penalty in all circumstances, but while you have the concept of nation, treason against the nation is the most dangerous assault on that institutional concept of international regulation. Bush signed 152 death warrants as governor of Texas, and that included people under 18 at the time of the offence. It included women and retarded people, included aliens in violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Never a commutation, never a pardon, just a belief in killing: stamp out sin by death.

Will there be a right to appeal?
I don’t think the right to appeal is any more meaningful than the right to trial under these circumstances. Even under the structure it’s ridiculous because you’ve got to appeal within 10 days and there’s a dispute whether the execution has to take place within 30 days of the entry of the judgement of the trial chamber, or the decision of the appeals chamber. Either way, it can be very quick. It can’t be in two days, though. One of the virtues of 16 October, so to speak, was they could have had an execution before congressional elections. Now they’ll go to polls with the headlines. Sunday in the electronic media it will be “Saddam to hang,” and the same Monday in all the print media. So the undecided going to the polls will say, “we were always for justice!”

I heard from a Geneva source that the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention has concluded that the trial of Saddam does not conform to binding principles of international law. If true, given the group’s mandate to make legal determinations, will this opinion have an impact on the outcome of the trial?
There is an opinion pending from the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention but it has not been released so I cannot comment on it. We have already had several rapporteurs and commentators say that this trial is unfair. As much as I believe in these institutions and hope for their effectiveness, if some UN agency says the trial is unfair it makes little difference when Bush says its fair. It’s a court that’s totally lacking in independence with judges that are totally lacking in impartiality — a trial that’s as unfair as it can get. Judges are lifted off the court and defence counsel tortured and murdered, and this is a fair trial?

One power that you have is to change public perception of the trial, yet people don’t seem to know how numerous and grave the procedural irregularities have been, or how decisively contested is the legality of the Iraqi Special Tribunal overall.
Of course, but that’s a criticism, too, of institutions and individuals. The flaws are all public record. Anyone can dig them out, including any member of the press. Most journalists are aware of the most grievous facts, even if they don’t report them.

Given your view that the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq was illegal, do you advocate popular resistance? International law would appear to deem the resistance, including armed struggle, the only legal entity in Iraq.
The greater responsibility and urgent need for corrective action is with the people of the United States. We share a degree of responsibility for the actions of our governments. We need to react effectively, and with the least violent potential, not only to relieve the problem that exists now but also to prevent it from happening again. I think armed resistance is a solution, but it’s the least desirable means to accomplish an end that has to be accomplished. I like to think that there are a range of non-violent alternatives to armed resistance that are not only less destructive of life but more likely to prevail.

The present condition in Iraq has degenerated to the point where, while the greatest hatred is towards the occupier, what some people call sectarian struggles are taking far more Iraqi lives than US or other lives. For all the talk the US is still planning to stay. They’re hardening bases. The embassy is rising above the walls of the Green Zone. They think they can finish it and protect it. With US casualties at 100 a month and Iraqi casualties at 5,000 a month, the US can hold out a long time.

But the majority of that 5,000 are victims of death squads that serve forces of the US-installed political process. They are the means of terrorising the population to suppress its support of the resistance.
That’s true. It’s a tragic story of failure of principle here and the reign of violence there. But the most important thing for the people of Iraq to do is recognise that they’re going to self-destruct if they don’t unite. If they can unite the United States will understand right away; it will understand that it has a serious fight on its hands. They need to unite in a common purpose of eliminating the occupation.

The interviewer is visiting professor in political science at An-Najah National University, Nablus, Palestine.

I come to his door, it is open. He breaks off from typing, rises, eyes averted, guarded though we have previously met. Mordechai Vanunu has a lot on his mind. He seems, as we speak, in some way behind his own thoughts, somewhere in the back of his own mind, locked in combat. Only once in two hours will his granite-like gaze be broken — laughing that anyone but God can be reached on a cell-phone. A butterfly flutters in the inner courtyard of St George’s Cathedral, his haven. For exposing the State of Israel’s secret nuclear weapons programme, Vanunu endured 18 years’ imprisonment, 11 in solitary confinement. Kidnapped in Italy in 1986, held hostage by Israel in 2005, though out, for Mordechai it’s not over.

What is the current status of your case?
They gave me one more year to stay here. I finished one already. And they’ve kept the restrictions: not to travel freely, not to meet foreigners, not to go to embassies. I’m also charged in court, for the interviews I gave. My lawyer is trying to prove that all these charges and restrictions are contrary to human rights and democracy. What is in court is Israeli democracy and how it relates to freedom of speech. The United States and Europe speak about Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East, but in fact it doesn’t exist. I suffered 18 years in prison because I demanded freedom of speech.

The last time we met you told me that had you accepted these restrictions, hid in your room, Israeli security would see that you were damaged and would find ways to magnify that.
From the beginning I said I have the right to speak to anyone. I am a free human being. They insisted I would not meet anyone, nor speak, so they kept me for 18 years. After 18 years, I decided if they let me go I should live as a normal human being. Not to fear, not to play obeying orders, like I’m a spy. I should go to the street and meet anyone and talk, because I want to exercise my humanity. For these reasons I’m challenging them and speaking all the time. If I were to follow their orders they would come with more orders, and orders for others. I also want to use my case to let the people in Palestine — the Palestinians — see how to challenge Israel and the rules it puts on them. They should exercise their freedom of speech on every subject.

So it’s important that you stay to fight the legal case.

Yes. But I know in Israel you cannot find real justice or real rights. So I took the risk that an Israeli court would punish me. I also believe that by speaking and meeting people I’m bringing my case to the world media. If I kept silent the media would ignore my case. By talking my case will be open and the world media will judge Israel according to what they do to me or to others. For that reason I think it will be very difficult to punish me in the name of these restrictions.

Given that you have nothing new to reveal about Israel’s nuclear programme, these restrictions must be related to a broader purpose.
It is part of the Israeli system. There is a central power that is guiding and controlling people according to certain rules; what it wants people to know, how to behave. By challenging them I’m challenging this system. From the beginning this case was a challenge to the system. They used to remind the Israeli people constantly, “holocaust, holocaust!” but then I came and let them see that the real problem is Israel’s atomic bomb. That is the real holocaust. Or what they did to the Palestinians is the holocaust. We cannot live in the past. I am here saying, “No, we should see what you are, what kind of a society you are building here.” We can see what is happening now, what Israel is doing, how they behave. They are treating people like animals. This is what Nazism did. And this is what Israel is doing now to the Palestinians, or to me.

What is bothering them is that I continue to speak loud and clear. The world knows my case, so it is not a solution to silence me or punish me. They should find real answers. And that is a problem for Israel now: how to continue their brainwashing campaign. They know the world is not swallowing their propaganda — the holocaust, the past, the right to come to this land and expel the Palestinians. If they really want to be a state, respected as a democracy, as a normal society, then they should follow the world standard of equality in human rights, not Jewish special rules.

The blood myth — race, purity — underpins Nazism likewise the “Jewish state”: both seem out of step with history, anomalies or echoes from the 19th century.
From 2000 years ago! This Israeli state poses problems to the whole world. The world was moving towards freedom, democracy, liberty, equal rights, and then the Jewish state came, in 1948, and brought a kind of negative democracy. In the name of state security you can do whatever you want. You can seize rights, invent rules, punish without trial. This system is destroying what the world built from the Greek state until now, and in 50 years. It will not survive long. It has become more and more an apartheid state. They play like a democracy, yet you see there is a super-race state for the Jews. So I believe this will change or be changed in the future; the world cannot swallow it. If the Jewish people had built a state 1000 years ago, maybe we couldn’t have reached the democratic ideals that we have now.

It is a politico-historical problem, or one based in Judaism?
It’s one of the Jewish people following the Jewish religion of 2000 years ago. The Christian faith in Jesus Christ developed and moved, from the old tradition to modern life. One simple change, they moved from the moon calendar year to the sun, accepting developments in science and technology. The Jews, they have their own system of following the moon. They still believe they are the only super-race, the only God-chosen people, while the Christian faith accepts all kinds of people — black, white, slaves, non-slaves. There is no super-race. They are all children of God. So that is the Jewish problem, and I think they have no choice but to accept as equal all the peoples of the world.

To question Judaism these days is quickly labelled anti-Semitism. How do you answer that?

Every race, every human being can believe whatever he wants. But if you want to rule a state, there is only one standard: equal rights and respect of human rights, whoever you are. You cannot put religion above that. So we are not anti-Semitic. You want to keep believing your old faith, very primitive faith, we don’t care. Everyone can go to his synagogue. But to have a parliament, government, that should be for all the people, not biased by religion. In Europe, and everywhere in the world, the Jews have the right to do whatever they like, in their synagogue, in their private life. They should give equal rights to the Palestinians in Israel and the occupied territories, and end the occupation. We cannot accept a Jewish state. We demand a secular state.

Given your views about equal rights — or the lack of them — in Israel, presumably you’re not in favour of a two-state solution?
Right. I think the most acceptable solution — and permanent solution — is one state. If you have two states, there’ll still be conflict. You’ll have a Jewish, racist, apartheid state that will not respect the Palestinians (the so-called “Arab Israelis”) and a small state, Palestine, trying to behave like a democracy under effective Israeli power. The Jews may not be ready for a one state solution, but sooner or later they will learn that there is only this solution, if they wish to have a state.

The other thing they have to realise is that you cannot force a people into peace. If you are building the wall and taking land, building settlements, what kind of peace or future exists for the Palestinians? This militaristic attitude should end. It is politicians who need this [military] power. Part of evolution in every state should be to abolish the army. Here, there’s no one to fight, so now they fight civilians. Israel is exporting to the world new kind of activities for military powers — ruling, controlling civilians. Manning checkpoints. Arresting civilians. Checking them. Following them. Questioning them. The model for what America did in Iraq.

On nuclear weapons, given the history of the Jews, isn’t there justification for Israel having a nuclear deterrent?
No, because I think the only way towards safety and peace, towards surviving, is by peace. You cannot survive or save anyone by killing others. The only function of the atomic bomb is if they want to commit suicide: to kill others and to kill themselves. So it is a mistake to say that nuclear weapons are about deterrence and survival. It’s not true.

What did you think of the collapse of nuclear non-proliferation talks at the UN in May?
They came to ask me, “What is your message to this conference?” and I told them I’ve been tired of this treaty for many years because it didn’t do anything. I said, now we want timetables as to when the world will be free from nuclear weapons. Zero nuclear weapons. It’s not enough to say, “We’ll do this; we’ll do that.” We want timetables, years, exact dates. And they should deal with the State of Israel. The time has come to speak out. Israel should abolish its nuclear weapons. The world should no longer accept that a small state cheats. That is what Israel introduced to the world: proliferation and dissimulation — or, lying — not the opposite, which is where the world should go. Now the world knows exactly what’s here and they cannot ignore it. So I’m happy that the meeting collapsed because it made it clear that there’s no real non-proliferation treaty.

In 1986, when you spoke out, the major powers were moving towards weapons reductions. Yet Israel was increasing production.
I came out telling the world that they have the power to produce 10 atomic bombs every year, and that maybe they had 200 already. One of the reasons I sought to publish the Israel nuclear secret was because I felt they were producing too much. Even if you believe in deterrence you can believe they need one, two or four. But I saw they had gone mad, producing 100, 200, and were moving towards producing a hydrogen bomb, which is just for killing millions of people. The United States and Russia abolished their nuclear race. I didn’t accept the idea that the United States is ready to use thousands of atomic bombs to survive, to kill 100 million people in Russia in the name of keeping their capitalism. If socialism or communism is no good it will collapse from the inside. That is what happened.

You don’t need an atomic bomb; you don’t need anything. In fact, nuclear deterrence kept communism alive. It would have collapsed years ago, when Stalin died. It didn’t work. The people were hungry. The same here — Israel became worse, and it’s because of the weapons they have, the atomic bomb. They know no one can tell them what to do. If they didn’t have the atomic bomb they would realise that they have to follow the rules of democracy and human rights, accepting the Palestinians and peace. The message from the Jewish holocaust is that they should respect all human beings, not build atomic weapons. So atomic weapons, in fact, do not ensure survival but the opposite: one day Israel will collapse like communism collapsed.

They should have thanked you for the warning, if not the remedy. How would you describe life in Israel’s prisons?

I understood the game early. I knew that there was a kind of secret warfare engaged by hidden agents. Normally, I am in prison with the guards; there are no state security agents, and no one is fighting me. But underground I concluded there is secret, psychological warfare being conducted by deep-level agents using very sophisticated systems — brainwashing, fighting me. I was very alert. I started to suspect everything, watch everything, accepting nothing as normal. I saw that it was about mind war: their mind against my mind. Their target was to conquer my mind, change it or break it or destroy it. I said to myself that I would use my mind.

My target each day was to find out what exactly they want; what is their mission, what is their purpose. I refused to show I was suffering. Even if I’m in prison, in their hands, I’m still firm and continue to believe in my way. My faith and my mind are very strong. So no matter what they do, how they disappoint me, cause me pain, I refused them the satisfaction of seeing me upset. Even I try to cause them damage — psychological damage. If they try to push me to this side I will go to the other side, the opposite direction. If they try to remind me of the holocaust, I answer them by enjoying German opera. If they try to bring me to the Jewish faith, I answer them by enjoying Christianity or celebrating what is opposite to the Jewish faith.

So it was psychological warfare between us, everyday, for many years, but always underground. My brothers used to come to tell me, “No one is after you, all of them have abandoned you; you are alone.” But it was not true. And that is why they gave me 18 years, because they know if they can change you a little in the beginning — very small, even one millimetre — after 18 years it will become one kilometre change. So from the beginning you fight this one millimetre change, even to go to the other direction, so that after 18 years you will be the same. That is what the world witnessed. When I got out from prison I demonstrated that I want to be the same as I was and to speak and do exactly as I used to 18 years ago, like nothing happened.

Couldn’t your release be not an end but an extension of the game?
Yes, but I think now they realise that after 18 years, if a man still survives such treatment, they’re never going to win. My message is that the human mind, the human spirit, is very free and no one can destroy or change it, not by any system. As long as I am in Israel, they are trying to continue the game. When I get out from here, I’ll feel much more free and continue.

Do you feel a psychological burden from being forced to endure, for 18 years, every moment in a heightened state of alert?
No, it’s not burdening. It’s the opposite. It’s helping me to see much better: to see the reality and understand everything in my own way. And now because I’m free and I can see in the free world — in the street, in shops, on TV — this game, this system, how it is working, how it is controlling.

You had strategies for surviving prison, including music.
I did many things. I started by reading in a loud voice. I cannot speak to anyone so I exercised my speech by reading the New Testament in a loud voice each day, singing, praying in a loud voice. I was fighting those fighting me and strengthening myself. By just hearing myself speaking, reading, singing, it inspired me to know I am strong and alive. If you are quiet, you feel like you not exist. Later I started enjoying music — opera. I enjoyed opera before, but now I asked people to send many more operas. I used to hear them and feel totally free, and happy, like an opera singer. And if something happened to me, disappointed me, if they were punishing me, I could enjoy opera. Every two or three hours, running away from the prison to the opera.

Why opera?
The structure of the music is good. In classical music, the structure is strong. It gets you also to think, to build your thinking in the same pattern.

At 50, towards what aspirations do you intend to direct your energies?
I need to give a course about secret government, or the death of democracy. I would like to find means of teaching a new way of seeing what is happening here; in what kind of society we are now living, what type of life, what type of government we are we having. It is not only here. In every democracy there is a secret power that is governing the government and the state: they use any part of the state, from the media to industry to health, to accomplish their target. So if you have Tony Blair in England or George W Bush in America, it is because these hidden powers decide that these men will serve them. The question is not now. The question is what United States wants to be, 20, 30, 50 years. Take the wall. No other prime minister would have done it. But it was not coming from Sharon. They decided to build the wall in 1990. To succeed, you needed Sharon. And so they brought him and he built it.

What is your view on the Western-Israeli alliance?

Europe and the United States are not ready to accept the Arab world as equal, and the Muslims as equal. And for that reason they ignore what Israel is doing to the Palestinians and Arabs because they treat Israel as a Western state. They believe that Western people are much more advanced; that Arab society is not enough developed to equal them. That’s what the Israelis used to believe about Jews coming from North Africa and the Middle East. But the Arabs can adopt the Western democracy lifestyle and build a modern society, exactly like Europe. For that reason I wrote about the Muslims who modernised their faith. They should let women come to the mosque, pray together, or sit together; not sit on the ground but in chairs; not to wash their feet or face before praying, because they are clean. By doing such things they are keeping themselves behind all the changes in the world.

So sitting here on plastic patio chairs is civilised not assimilated?
I’m not telling them to adopt everything Western, but they should change certain things that are primitive. Why should they kneel on the ground five times daily? You don’t think the church with seats is more civilised than sitting on the ground?

No, I think it’s more human, more humble, to kneel on the ground.
Well, we are working with machines, new games — computers. And we see all these movies of science fiction: that is the direction of the human race.

But we don’t have to establish that direction as truth.
It’s not truth, but we become dependent on watches and mobile phones. Speaking of mobile phones, you can speak to anyone in all this earth, except you cannot speak to God! Why we don’t have his number! At any rate, change is happening. Is it a conspiracy against Islam, or is it development, evolution, new thinking?

You’ve said that you’d be happy to go to the US — that you favour American-style democracy. Has that view changed?
No. I want to be in a very open, free place. I think the United States is a very good place for exercising freedom. Maybe the policy of the government there is not good, but as an individual you can enjoy liberty and freedom. Freedom is having the right to choose what you want, especially to exercise freedom in your political life or beliefs. Freedom of speech is one of the most important freedoms and I fight for it, continue to fight for it, and suffer for it until now. I can accept those who do not accept me, but I don’t want someone to impose on me his direction.

But in America power operates through freedom. You can do what you want, say what you want, no one blinks. Where people are policed in what they say, there is the possibility of real freedom. If the state is absolute there is no need for censorship. Democracy is empty in the West because nothing that is said counts. And an open system is much more stable and difficult to challenge than a closed one, like many we have in the Middle East.

Well, I’m seeing freedom in such a way that no one intervenes in your private life. You can do what you want, as long as you are respecting the laws of the state. No one can dictate to you. This is what you have in Europe and United States. I need to be in a state that offers possibilities. Elsewhere, even if more freedom exists hidden, below the surface, the state is not developed enough for people to exercise that freedom. For that reason I prefer the United States or Europe because they give you more possibility to exercise your freedom. You can travel to anywhere you want, buy anything you want, chose whatever you want to read, because everything is available. Perhaps elsewhere there is freedom, but you don’t have the choice to exercise it, so your freedom is limited.

Sure, the West has choice but the options are predictable. There’s no poetry to life, just “consumer opportunities”.
Yes, the West is boring. Everything is built, standard. You’re not expecting any change, any big event. Everything is in your mind. But I’d still like to experience this other side. That is my aspiration: to be far away from Israel — to be totally free from this Jewish state. I don’t want to be part of this. I’m waiting to get out from here: that is the most important thing — to feel free, totally free. For no one anymore to be interested in what I said or what I do: to enjoy, as a private human being, what I want; to have a normal life, a family; to travel, to see a lot of places around the world, many people, and to find time to read and write. I’m here waiting to end the story. When I leave Israel, it will be the end, a new life. I’m waiting for this new life.

The interviewer is visiting professor in political science at An-Najah National University, Nablus, Palestine.

The trial of Saddam Hussein is the straw that will break the back of America in Iraq, whichever way it goes. A conviction on the basis of what we are seeing will make a martyr of Saddam, reveal the entire process as a foregone conclusion, and steel the national popular resistance for years. Unless the neocons in Washington have a secret agenda of bankrupting the United States, it is already over for them, bar the shouting. The resistance fights not for Saddam, but the trial will be seen — like the constitution, like the elections — as another fait accompli railroaded upon Iraq, and to which the resistance will respond. Even if Saddam’s defence fails, America has already lost. It is one thing to establish an illegal tribunal (and under articles 64 and 67 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the keystone of international humanitarian law, this tribunal is outlawed), but it is quite another to televise proceedings which expose law as machination in naked iniquity. This is what this trial is achieving. On the other hand, if the prosecution fails, and Hussein walks — and on the basis of its opening salvo it would be hard to proffer otherwise — the second shoe falls, after the lies about weapons of mass destruction, and no justification remains for the illegal pre-emptive war the neocons waged. Bye, bye the Iraq chapter of the Project for a New American Century.

Let us roll up our sleeves and be frank. The United States did not enter Iraq to liberate the Iraqi people. Nor was the euphemism of Saddam being a “threat to his neighbours” — read the state of Israel, not Kuwait or Iran on Iraq’s borders — credible. The United States waged war on Iraq because the oil economy is on death row. At current rates of consumption, it has 35 years left. So the world’s most oil-dependent economy, backed by the world’s least ethically educated military, took advantage of the opportunity of the “new Pearl Harbour” that was 11 September in one of the most audacious moves in the history of power politics. But ours must be an infamous age, because none could tell the truth of what was really in play. Every justification, bar the honest one, was evoked: weapons of mass destruction, Saddam’s regional ambition, ties to Al-Qaeda and the events of 9/11, gross human rights violations. While the majority of the world’s population instinctively understood the lie, corporate media — fearful of government disfavour — fell into line. The best we get now is “We should have probed deeper.” Yet truth was on the surface. Who but the gullible or idle was convinced by Powell’s UN performance? Not even he is proud of it. And who believed Hans Blix had a free hand, or that anyone would have listened if his final report contradicted what had already been decided, as indeed it did?

The neocons who staged a coup d’etat in Washington in 2000 prepared for regime change in Iraq in the 1990s. This was their contribution to the legacy of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Everything now was possible. And by the time they were ready, Saddam wasn’t playing ball. On 1 November 2000, Iraq began selling oil in euros, and others (Venezuela, Iran, Russia, Libya) soon followed. Later Iraq converted its $10 billion reserve fund at the UN, also to euros. So in the aftermath of the 7 November 2000 presidential election, with a supplicant media and collapsed domestic opposition, time was not merely ripe but urgent. Having seized enough room for manoeuvre, the Republican right dusted off their wildest dreams, driven by their gravest nightmares. If the oil economy were to shift to euros (the US long having forced the situation whereby OPEC oil sales would be transacted only in dollars, in exchange — particularly in the case of Saudi Arabia — for security guarantees), the American economy would collapse. This is the context surrounding the secret deliberations of the Bush energy policy task force in early 2001. All indications are that this was also the time when the draconian measures later embodied in the Patriot Act, Patriot Act II and the Homeland Security Bill were drafted. The ground was being prepared not only for the destruction of Iraq, but ahead of the global war sure to occur — most likely in the middle period of this century — as capitalism confronts the largest challenge it has ever faced: the end of the oil economy, and the dollar economy with it.

The crisis ahead will make the Cold War look like a storm in a children’s paddling pool. The United States, under the leadership of the neocons, is preparing for that moment by perfecting its methods as history’s most vicious imperial empire. Indeed, 11 September was a convenient trigger. Serious questions about that day remain completely unanswered and practically untouchable by mainstream media. With a swiftness that is suspect, US military planners launched the “global war on terror”; a war (and at least they are candid on this point) that Vice President Dick Cheney said would “not end in our lifetimes.” Indeed, Iraq is just the beginning. But this is also what makes Iraq so important. At stake is not only the moral right of a people to live and be sovereign on the lands of their forefathers, free from oppression by foreign forces, but the future of all nations as the primary source of global energy production dwindles. The golden age has already passed. Until New Year’s eve 2040 there are two possibilities: one player controls everything (the United States), shielding itself from the effects of the destruction of capitalism at the cost of all others, or the community of states wakes up, faces the inevitable, and the preventable, and charts a common path to a different way of living and co-existing in this world. Though the responsibility was not of their choosing, the Iraqi popular resistance bears the burden of being the most important anti-imperial force in history, for above all other demands they fight for sovereignty over Iraq’s natural resources.

Set against this context, Saddam Hussein appears but a small player, yet he is key — more to the Americans than the Iraqis. Having chosen the path of brutal military imperialism in a bid to control all that remains of the age of oil, the destruction of Iraq and requisitioning of its natural resources became imperative to the neocons. Iraq, however, was a sovereign state with a sovereign leadership, and no Iraqi was about to sign up for the loss of their country. Attempts to end Iraqi sovereignty indirectly (the murderous sanctions regime which claimed one and a half million Iraqi lives and the illegal no-fly zones used as cover for a continuous campaign of bombing) failed. A different approach became necessary: occupation, the highest form of dictatorship. Yet the unlawful assumption of property that belongs to another is not a principle lauded openly in the discourse of international politics. Luckily for Bush et al, Americans and the world had already been primed. Saddam, Saddam, Saddam: Iraqis would be better without him. The demonisation campaign kicked in, picking up where it had left off in 1991. Now, with the weapons of mass destruction lie exposed, along with the absurdity of American claims to be the guarantor of human rights (Abu Ghraib, Fallujah, Tel Afar?), the “butcher of Baghdad” is the last card the Americans have got: they have to make this trial pay.

From the start, this trial has had nothing to do with restitution for Iraqis. In a superb piece published last week on uruknet.info, Sara Flounders of the New York-based International Action Centre writes, “Since the days of the Roman Empire, victor’s justice has meant humiliation, degradation and placing the defeated leader in the dock in order to establish a new order. It hides the brutality of overwhelming force and gives legitimacy to the new rulers.” With this agenda it is no wonder that the trial is flawed. The court is illegal: it was established under occupation, in clear violation of international humanitarian law. The court is not competent: not only had its judges to be schooled in international law and war crimes procedure by US handlers and academic mercenaries, but by definition the court lacks legitimacy in being exceptional and contrary to prior Iraqi judicial practice. The court is far from impartial: funded to the tune of $75 million and politically vetted by the United States, it’s hard to imagine that anything but conviction — which means execution — awaits those over whom it claims to hold jurisdiction. In previous articles I have outlined these flaws in detail. But this isn’t even the point. No armistice was ever declared. The Iraqi army never capitulated. Like it or not, Saddam Hussein is the president of Iraq and this court has no claim over him or his aides.

Under Article 40 of the 1970 Iraqi interim constitution, “The President of the Revolutionary Command Council, the Vice-President, and the members enjoy full immunity. No measures can be taken against any of them without a priori permission of the Council.” This, along with pointing to the illegality and legal incompetence of the court, and the impossibility of the presumption of innocence amid an international demonisation campaign spanning more than a decade, is the essence of the defence. The court, however, seems unwilling to even countenance that domestic Iraqi law, never mind international law, has any bearing on this trial. During heated discussions in last week’s court sessions, presiding Judge Rizgar Mohammed Amin was provoked to declare twice, “This is a legitimate court!” Denying leave for high-level defence advisors former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark and former Qatari Justice Minister Najeeb Al-Nuaimi to intervene prompted a walkout by the defence. After a short recess when Clark was allowed to address the court, demanding better security following the assassination of two defence team lawyers since the opening of the trial on 19 October, the judge cut him short after five minutes, ordering Clark to sit down. Referring to the court in interview with journalists, Clark summed it up: “Reform is impossible.”

Saddam Hussein himself remains anything but cowed. If this court is to apply law in full transparency he has every reason to be confident. As Robert Verkaik wrote in The Independent, “The charges boil down to Saddam signing death warrants in his capacity as president, raising the question of whether the tribunal can convict him for an offence of obedience to Iraqi law.” But Hussein knows — as the defence team knows — that this is a political show trial, and so he is giving them hell. After complaining about his guards to the judge and receiving the answer that the judge in his capacity would ask for rectification of his grievance, Hussein snapped back, “You are the chief judge. I don’t want you to tell them. I want you to order them. They are in our country. You have the sovereignty. You are Iraqi and they are foreigners and occupiers. They are invaders. You should order them!”

US officials would like to portray such scenes as grandstanding, and his defence team as “stalling” and “manoeuvring”. “His strategy is to derail the trial, and if he can’t do that, disrupt the trial, and if he can’t do that, discredit the trial,” opines Michael Scharf, director of the International Law Centre at Case Western University; one of those who helped train the judges and officials partaking in this sad affair. Much to the contrary, it appears Hussein fully understands that in court, as for the past 15 years, the fight of Iraqis continues for their sovereignty. It is a powerful message, and in accordance with law, and doubtless speaks to sentiments US legal experts just can’t understand. “When I speak, I speak like your brother,” Hussein said to the judge during one exchange. “Your brother in Iraq and your brother in the nation. I am not afraid of execution. I realise there is pressure on you and I regret that I have to confront one of my sons. But I’m not doing it for myself. I’m doing it for Iraq. I’m not defending myself. But I am defending you.”

Even Iraq’s puppet government is asking questions, eager to see the whole affair over already, or place blame somewhere. “The judge is doing a very bad job,” National Security Adviser Mowaffak Al-Rubaie recently told The Washington Times. Al-Rubaie expressed concern about “public disquiet” resulting from the slow progression of the trial. “People want to eat the judge now and not Saddam,” Al-Rubaie said. Vice President Ghazi Al-Yawer joined him in sentiment, quoted as saying, “I don’t know what this is. It’s a comedy show. I don’t know who is the genius who is producing this farce.”

With only flimsy evidence to go on, indication is that the prosecution hopes to deploy the controversial principal of “command responsibility”; that Saddam is guilty because he gave reign to subordinates who acted with murderous violence. In this regard, the absence of a “smoking gun” is moot. Simply by being head of state, Saddam bears responsibility. For human rights advocates who have long opposed the principle of state immunity this is a step forward in the struggle against state violence. The problem for Saddam’s prosecutors, however, is that the principle goes both ways. If Iraq is sovereign, as America needs to claim, the US military but subcontracted as mercenaries, how is it that after at least nine major offences across Western Iraq this year, killing thousands and displacing hundreds of thousands more, Iraqi’s puppet president, indeed the whole interim Iraqi government, is not standing in the dock alongside Saddam answering to charges of mass murdering their own people?

The answer is simple: the US war against Iraq never ended, and neither did the occupation. On the record, US forces remain in Iraq by request of the US-protected interim government — a precaution to ensure stability. Yet which stabilisation force, anywhere in the world, uses white phosphorus — a chemical weapon US officials are working overtime to present as “legal” — as well as napalm equivalents against civilians in cities? Add to this the “useful” role afforded by US authorities to torture, the deliberate targeting of hospitals and educational institutions, the conscious disbanding of the police, clearing the way for a campaign of covert terrorist operations conducted by British and American operatives aimed at fomenting sectarian and ethnic tensions, and the failure to protect Iraq’s cultural and religious heritage, one sees the outline of an unmistakable strategy: the US entered Iraq to divide it and own it.

In the last article I wrote on Saddam’s trial I asked which state would have courage to stand up, use the mechanisms available — the UN General Assembly, special rapporteurs in Geneva on summary executions, arbitrary detention, and the independence of judges — to ensure referral of Hussein’s trial to a competent international body. There are two reasons why this should happen and one why it won’t. But there is also a very good reason why it shouldn’t. Because legality is being flouted in the current trial in ways not possible if an appropriate international court were established, the argument can be made that the trial should be taken out of Iraq. An ancillary reason is the security of the defence. Second, because an international court would be obliged to adjudge the invasion of Iraq illegal, because it was, and thereby everything that followed — court, constitution, elections — also illegal, it could forestall the Project of the New American Century before its architects open up new fronts, or more Iraqis die fighting it in Iraq. The reason why no international court is forthcoming is implicit in this second reason as to why it should be.

Yet, while the two arguments for an international trial are persuasive, there is a principle at stake that is lost if an international court is formed: the principle of Iraqi sovereignty. It is for the Iraqis to decide if they wish to judge Saddam and his regime, and for that to be possible the occupation must end. What exists at present is the worst of all worlds: a trial that pretends to be Iraqi but is actually US-directed, taking place in a court as far removed from Baghdad as The Hague. The international community did not act to protect Iraqi sovereignty and an international court would mark a further violation of it. The Iraqi national popular resistance, in the absence of the government, is the legitimate and legal representative and protector of that sovereignty.

The people of Iraq have the legal right to decide their own future, the use of their resources, and the fate of Saddam Hussein. After all, who knows better than the Iraqi people what Saddam Hussein has done or has not done? Not only will this sham trial never reveal or allow Iraqis to confront the contemporary history of Iraq, it is set up by an occupying power diametrically opposed to everything Saddam represented. Undeniable is his refusal to bend to the will of American imperialism. It was not human rights abuses under Saddam that pricked the ears of the Americans. It was how close Iraq came to the potential of being an independent, secular welfare state, whose population was able to achieve democracy in the Middle East, a function of the insistence of Saddam on the control of Iraqi oil as the age of oil ends. An international court would be victor’s justice cloaked in legal precision.

Perhaps the point is not so much that states propose this alternative, as they demand the end of the occupation and prevent the kidnapping of other heads of state and the acquisition by force of the sovereign resources of sovereign peoples.

The writer is visiting professor of political science at An-Najah National University in Nablus, Palestine.

This week Iraqis voted on a document written by local agents of an occupying power; a power that regardless of domestic considerations is never leaving Iraq entirely. Now, amid kidnappings, organised crime on an unprecedented scale and a death toll from bombings and assassinations reaching around 500 a month — in short a situation where everyone is made to feel a target — Iraqis are being invited to witness the greatest travesty in the history of law: the trial of Saddam Hussein.

Why is Saddam important? To most Iraqis he’s not. Since the beginning of the war in 2003, its architects have continually refused to see that being Baathist in Iraq is not synonymous with being Saddamist. The former is anti-imperialist, pan-Arab and socialist in orientation; the geostrategic reasons obvious as to why the neocons in Washington blur the two together. If sympathy with Saddam remains, it is only to the extent that he, particularly since his capture (and parading him in his underwear didn’t help), is a mirror of the humiliation that befell the entire country at the hands of the US-led invasion. It is that and the brutality of the military occupation (the turning point being the wholesale decimation of Fallujah) that people in Iraq are so conscious of. How can this occupation, they ask, which has killed, according to the original figure which The Lancet intended to publish but which was deemed too shocking for a Western public to believe, around 200,000 Iraqis, judge anyone else on war crimes? How can the United States, which championed sanctions for 14 years and invaded under the name of “shock and awe”, have the audacity to cry with the Iraqis over their loses? As one Iraqi who spoke on condition of anonymity to Al-Ahram Weekly remarked, “Let them execute Saddam; but who will execute them?”

Saddam could have been important. The truth of the 20th century history of Iraq could have been revealed. For Iraqis, it was perhaps not so much that there needed to be a period of “reconciliation”. Many of the tensions that supposedly divide Iraq now are new, being accentuated by politicians on the make. Prior to the 2003 invasion, Iraqis were Iraqis first, only secondarily Sunni or Shia or Kurd. The canned history of Iraq peddled by the American government and a mainstream media pumped by “embedded journalists” is but a caricature of a complex reality. Even according to figures published by the De-Baathification Committee established by the military occupation, 52 per cent of those identified and removed from public office are Shias. As Iraqi novelist Haifa Zangana once stated, there was only one democracy in Iraq: that anyone could be the target of the regime.

Why, then, should anyone care about Saddam? Well, through a twist of fate that surely the engineers of the Project for a New American Century have not foreseen, Saddam’s case ironically is about the rule of law itself. His trial is a clear metaphor not only for the fate of Iraq, but the fate of international relations in this low-point of American hegemony where law is being subjugated by force. The abuses of his legal rights, for which there is incontrovertible evidence known to the key players, is characteristic not only of the approach of the US to Iraq, but attempts to transform by force the entire map of the Middle East. Aside from the very real obligation that falls upon us all to protect the human rights of the most vilified in our societies — who often are not the once strong but the weak and minorities — protecting Saddam Hussein’s rights is imperative for those who oppose the changing current in international relations whereby the multilateral system is being destroyed as many thousands in positions of authority, with ready access to the media, are silent.

How ironic the comments of Pierre-Richard Prosper, US ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues, to the Iraqi Special Tribunal (IST) conference in London in October of last year where the judges who will this week try Saddam were gathered. He spoke of concentrating on the “big fish”, of not attempting to delve too deeply into the detail, of building “the rule of law”, ending the “culture of violence” and “rule by might”, and most incredulously of all, “ending impunity”. Impunity is the lens through which Iraqis understand the entire entry of the occupation. It is the signature not only of how America is breaking Iraq, but how this tribunal must treat Saddam if it is to cover the complicity between the United States in the 1980s and the very regime it deposed in 2003. Just as no one at the Office of War Crimes Issues in the State Department would this week comment on allegations made by lawyers close to Saddam’s case that he has been systematically denied rights of due process, including the right to chose counsel and to meet with such counsel as frequently as required and in confidence, don’t expect this trial to bring to light anything but a sanitised version of the recent past of Iraq. The Weekly reported on this issue over one year ago. Remarkably, nothing has changed.

“The president (Saddam Hussein) does not have nor has he ever had since that start of his detention in December 2003 any lawyers of his own choosing. Mr Khalil Al-Dulemi was chosen by the occupying powers’ special court and has himself indicated repeatedly that the president wishes to meet other lawyers. The president himself has also asked to see certain lawyers, but has each time been denied that right. Even when the Iraq authorities have agreed to allow other lawyers to meet the president, the United States has refused to agree and no meetings have taken place,” Curtis Doebbler, a prominent international human rights lawyer, told the Weekly in interview Tuesday. Further, “Any person, whether from the Iraqi interim authority or the United States government, who tells you that the president has a lawyer of his own choosing is lying. This vital human right, among many others, has been violated for almost two years and is being violated even as the trial starts.”

Persistent efforts to locate someone in either the State Department in Washington or the US Embassy in Baghdad authorised to go on the record and respond to these charges — which starkly contradict statements made this week by State Department Spokesman Scott McCormack concerning the free access the US government claims Saddam enjoys to defence counsel — failed by time of going to press. A similar disconnect between lawyers and politicians exists on the ground in Iraq. Kamran Al-Karadaghi, a spokesman for Iraqi President Jalal Talabani, said Thursday that Saddam is freely able to meet with defence lawyers. The hard fact appears that this week is set to witness the opening one of the most important legal cases in recent memory and the defendant, Saddam Hussein, has one court-appointed lawyer who he has barely seen and who may not be permitted, let alone able, to appear at the opening in whatever courtroom has been constructed in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, according to sources close to the case.

Denial of access to legal counsel is not the only but perhaps the most glaring violation of due process that makes this week’s trial opening a salutary joke. Aside from the wider context — that arguably the IST and the entire proceedings are illegal, in that the war on Iraq was illegal under international law, in that the statute of the IST has been recognised only by a government that was elected under protection of a military occupation (a state of affairs as much discerned on a de facto as a de jure basis) — the rights of Mr Hussein have, defence team advisors charge, been so gravely violated as to bring to question whether any trial is possible at all. Having met with Hussein only a handful of times since December 2003 it is not surprising that Duleimi has gone on record as saying he is inadequately prepared. Appointed by the IST, he is not even a criminal lawyer but a commercial lawyer, surely — and to his credit by his own admission — not one with a comprehensive expertise in the detail of international law, still less war crimes tribunals.

Will the illegality of the war that is the foundation of everything that has followed — and which annuls everything that has followed — ever be raised in court? Not if this sham is permitted to continue. Given that the legitimacy of the whole proceeding is a preliminary question that has yet to be decided, a criminal defence is not even at stake, some lawyers say.

The difference between Saddam Hussein’s trial and the proceedings of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague is beyond comparison. Wolfgang Schomburg, a senior UN judge who sits on the ICTY, said recently that the IST betrayed features of “victors’ justice”. If, for some, the ICTY has a fault it is that Slobodan Milosevic, for one, is being afforded too much opportunity to outline his defence, his case now running for over three years. Saddam Hussein, according to statements of Prime Minister Ibrahim Al-Jaafari, will be lucky to be afforded three weeks. For Michael Ratner of the New York-based Centre for Constitutional Rights, the problem lies in the very notion of special courts; that they are, based on special rules to try special cases, by definition often slanted towards the prosecution. “The reason the Geneva Convention doesn’t like special courts, and they’re outlawed by the Geneva Conventions, is because when a power takes over of course they’re going to set up courts that have a surface legality to them, but underneath they have serious problems,” Ratner told the Weekly.

Ominously, the IST and its statute provide no requirement to prove guilt beyond reasonable doubt. Guilt for what is a whole other question. Sources close to those who have been working on a defence but who shy from being described as “defence lawyers”, having been denied all access to the defendant, are unsure if Saddam will face one trial or 12. Rumour has also spread that witnesses quoted in the prosecutor’s case file (which did not reach Duleimi until weeks shy of the stated 45-day time period allowed by the IST) were not even named. Surprising to some, the trial will not open with hearings on Saddam’s worst alleged atrocities: the Anfal genocide and the infamous “gassing of his own people” Halabja case. Rather, initial — possibly final — hearings will focus on the killing of 143 in Al-Dujail following an assassination attempt on Hussein in 1982. If a criminal defence is made it is expected to be that as head of state Saddam merely signed warrants for executions as afforded under Iraqi law. A broader line of defence would be to press the issue of legal immunity enjoyed by Hussein as head of state during the period over which the IST claims jurisdiction (prior to 2003). Article 15 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights — to which both the United States and Iraq are party — evokes the legal principle of nulla poena sine lege, or no punishment without law, meaning that one cannot be held guilty of a criminal offence for an action that was not an offence under law at the time when it was committed.

Further question marks about the tribunal and whom precisely it takes authority from were generated on 10 August when its statute and rules of procedure were altered and re-promulgated. Renamed the Iraqi Higher Criminal Court, the IST in theory now falls under the authority of the interim Iraqi National Assembly, though this as yet not official as the statute and rules of procedure have not be published in the official government gazette. It is open to interpretation, therefore, if the IST has de jure authority to meet at all this week. One rule in the new statute is that Saddam would, if found guilty and sentenced to death, have to be executed within 30 days of the exhaustion of the process of appeals. In addition to being draconian, this would practically assure that none of the major war crimes allegations would be tried in court were Saddam to be convicted in the Al-Dujail case.

Given how brazen and obvious the denials of due process are in Mr Hussein’s case, one would almost conclude that the US cares nothing about the legitimacy of the IST, nor the credibility of the Iraqi government which is tied to it. Can Saddam possibly face a fair trail when the Iraqi prime minister and president frequently call in public for his execution? What exactly is the United States doing in backing this tribunal? States don’t normally “do” random. There must be a reason. Why is the IST so clearly inadequate; Hussein’s rights so clearly violated? Even Geoffrey Robertson, QC, one of the British barristers enlisted to train the judges of the IST, has lost faith in the tribunal. “I also had a number of arguments with the Americans, who want him to swing from a makeshift gallows in some dusty square with thousands of Shias screaming in delight. I can’t think of anything more likely to rev up the civil war,” Robertson was reported as saying. The question now is: are there mechanisms, even at this late stage, which would permit the transferral of Saddam Hussein’s case to an independent international tribunal where justice not vengeance could be sought, and be seen to be done?

The answer is yes, if the right people act. One possible route is if the General Assembly of the United Nations (UNGA) asks the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for an advisory ruling on the legality of the IST in statute and procedures. A UN member state would have to initiate this by drafting an advisory opinion and tabling it before a UNGA vote. Possible areas of concern might include questioning the legal foundations of the IST or its proceedings, or indeed anything else that has occurred in Iraq since the US-led invasion, including the legality of the government elected in January. A positive ruling from the ICJ would certainly add pressure on the United States and the Iraqi government to at least ensure that the deficiencies of the IST are remedied, and may provide grounds for an alternative international tribunal. Like pressure, albeit non-binding but authoritative, could be levied through the UN Commission on Human Rights (UNCHR) — specifically through the special rapporteurs on the independence of judges and lawyers, on arbitrary detention, and on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary execution. The rapporteurs in this instance — especially the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention — could push the violations of due process in Saddam’s trial onto the agenda of the UNCHR, which could then add weight to any concerns extant in the UNGA, possibly triggering states to act. Defence team advisors have stated in the past that with the exception of the US, the UK, Italy and the EU, representatives at the UNGA have largely been sympathetic to concerns expressed over the IST.

Normally speaking, only the UN Security Council (UNSC) can establish international tribunals. With the United States as a permanent member with veto power, this is almost certainly unthinkable in the case of Saddam. However, under the Uniting for Peace Resolution, the UNGA could — if the ICJ deemed the particular case in point a threat to international peace and security — be empowered to create an international tribunal in the event that the UNSC could not or refused to act. One might imagine that a travesty of justice in the trial of Mr Hussein would not be so grave as to be a threat to international peace and security. As mentioned earlier, few Iraqis care for the fate of Saddam. But the precedent set by a show trial at this level is grave, and the wholesale undermining of international law by the United States in Iraq is arguably a critical threat to world peace and security.

As to other measures, one possible option would be the Inter-American Commission (IAC) of the Organisation of American States. In April 2003, one international human rights lawyer filed a case with the IAC questioning the legality of the war on Iraq. Saddam Hussein’s name was added to the petition in December, though at that time the IST had not been set up. Before Mr Hussein’s supposed legal transfer to Iraqi authority, an urgent petition was filed for precautionary measures, which was refused two weeks later. To date, the IAC has not taken up the case and have indicated that they will not do so at the present time. According to some legal experts, however, they may if a future ruling against Hussein violates his rights in a substantial manner. In short, if the case is weak and the trial filled with procedural flaws, the IAC might step in. The basis of doing so is the notion within international law of “extraterritorial jurisdiction”. In essence, human rights instruments apply to state parties when they act abroad. As yet it is not a principal that has strong standing in international relations, though cases are pending which may establish precedents that could be evoked.

In all of the above routes, the defence of justice depends — as it so often does — on the action of but a handful of players. The world must now ask, as the future of international relations, not just Saddam, may rest on the answer, who has the courage?

Is it true that Islamic Jihad members were arrested recently on their way to a double martyrdom operation in Jerusalem?
This was in the news for a reason. We consider it an extension of the targeted Israeli attack on the Islamic Jihad movement from the first day of the truce. Up to this moment it didn’t stop for a minute. Jihad is officially committed to the truce. If it is to be broken, we will announce it to the world.

So you’re denying it?
Yes. The movement denied it in an official statement and emphasised its commitment to the truce, no matter what the Israelis say.

But they were reportedly carrying explosive belts.
This is a lie. This is an Israeli pretence, manufactured as justification to continue hitting Islamic Jihad. This campaign runs from the north of the West Bank to the south, starting with chasing the sons of Jihad in Tulkarem and killing them. The Palestinian Authority is also chasing Jihad. Shin Bet can pretend whatever they want. These mujahadeen were wanted from the very beginning, before the truce.

Do you believe Israel is a partner in peace?
From the very beginning, and amid all this talk about peace, Islamic Jihad hasn’t thought of Israel as a partner in peace. Along with dialogue went the confiscation of lands, the killing of Palestinians and the tightening of the space of freedom in their lives. Delaying the execution of agreements, peddling biased interpretations for its own sake, Israel also manipulated international law for its own benefit. It had the will and the ability to present itself as a country with a peace vision; after all, there is logic to it talking about peace, and presenting itself as being earnest about peace. In reality, this is all decoration: marketing to make peace a hot issue. Meanwhile, the violation of agreements, the killing, is ignored.

Jihad doesn’t see anything called peace with Israel because Israel is an intruder in this region, occupying Palestinian lands using violence and power. It forced people off their lands”a whole nation”and replaced them with other intruders. Thus, we don’t think it is fair to talk about peace with a state that uprooted a whole nation from its land and soil and took its place. That is not right. That’s why the movement believes that talking about peace with something called Israel doesn’t have any place in the lexicon of justice. The reality is that Israel occupied this area and the only right is the right for the Palestinians to demand Israel to leave. If we talk to the Israelis about peace, it means that they have a claim in the region.

In the absence of pan-Arab coordination, how will this situation be resolved?
Talking about a solution between the two sides is a difficult thing because there is an occupier and an occupied. The international equation is balanced in favour of Israel, because America controls everything in the region. The strategic rationale has nothing to do with solutions but is simply about protecting Israel, keeping the peace, maintaining security. The world over is revolving around American foreign policy concepts. It is not for Islamic Jihad to propose peace. Peace is not the alternative.

Our vision of a solution is that the international community pressures Israel to leave the region. Any alternate ‘solution’ is a question, or problem, for Israelis, not the Palestinians. Islamic Jihad believes that the problem will burn as long as Israel remains in an Arab-Islamic region. It is not a matter of generations. Maybe some Palestinians or Arabs and Jews can make peace with each other. The issue has to do with dogma, religion, history and the geography of the land. Peace negotiations will only ever lead to temporary agreements, so long as the State of Israel remains. Things may be cooled down for a while, but there won’t be a solution. There won’t be peaceful relations between two countries, Arab Palestine and Israel. Why? Because we cannot delete from our memory that this land is Palestinian, that the Israelis occupied and forced our people out of it.

So the problem is with the State of Israel, not Jews as such?
The issue is always presented to the world by the Israelis as being one of Muslims holding enmity towards Jews. In fact, it is not about animosity towards Jews. Our problem is not with the Jews. Our problem is with invaders who occupied lands belonging to others, regardless of religion or nationality. There were always Jews living in Islamic states, in Arab countries. The problem is not with the Jews and not with their dogma. Likewise, there have been always Christians. We have no problem with other religions so long as they don’t wage wars on Muslims and attack Muslim and Arab lands. Israel tries to propagate an opposite picture in order to stir up the issue and gain the sympathy of others.

Even if established by force, the State of Israel is nearly 60 years old. It is almost unimaginable that it will simply roll over, pack up shop and go away. In this context, aren’t your demands unrealistic?
Since it was established until now, Israel created a reality for its existence and imposed it on the Arab and Islamic world. It recruited international opinion for its right of existence and was successful, in part, because the Palestinians recognised it, or a big part of the Palestinian nation did. Islamic Jihad’s point of view is that the Palestinian right is a right that shouldn’t be given up, and it won’t change its opinion that Israel is an occupier in Arab and Islamic lands, no matter how hard Israel tries to recruit public opinion and accrue more power. Power shouldn’t dictate right. We wish that the whole world supports our cause because, in our opinion, it is a fair cause, and our demands are the least asked by a nation oppressed and dispossessed of its land. We take courage from the example of previously occupied countries, from international law that gives occupied peoples the right to fight back, to defend themselves against power. Strength may dictate, but it cannot impose right. If now we agreed on the right of Israel to exist on our land, the occupation would last forever.

So the current ceasefire is trivial?
Temporary compromises are possible, but they won’t solve the problem. The problem will remain so long as there is occupation. Right now, the world is concerned to maintain calm. But this situation is apt to explode at any moment. The world is trying to fix a culture: one of the impossibility of the death of Israel. This and other concepts are being fixed in the minds of Arabs and Muslims. This is what we call the psychological war. It is a propaganda war carried out by the West and Israel. We, in Islamic Jihad, are trying to build another culture against that idea: the ability and possibility of removing Israel and winning the conflict against it. It’s becoming like nobody is allowed to say that we can win. Islamic Jihad is trying to convince people that we can win. The other side is holding on to the opposite.

What is your assessment of the role Egypt is playing in Gaza?
We welcome the role of Egypt as a mediator. All the Arabs should have a role to play in the Palestinian issue. The Palestinian issue is an Arab-Islamic issue. To focus only on the Palestinians as though they were separate from the broader Arab nation is dividing it and making it weaker. For some time, Israel was trying to establish individual dialogues and refused all international conferences and meetings with Arabs in general. We need to oppose that logic.

We think that Israel will not withdraw from Gaza in line with the right of the Palestinians but just for the sake of getting rid of a burden. They were forced to do it by the resistance. If people think that Islamic Jihad doesn’t approve of Israeli withdrawals from here or there, they are wrong. We are with them getting out from every inch.

But this, too, is temporary? Presumably, if the State of Israel was disbanded and a single Palestine reestablished, Jewish settlements could stay?
The Jews present in Palestine are living in houses, or on lands, that belonged to Palestinians. How can the problem of a person or a nation be solved at the expense of another? The problem of X cannot be solved at the expense of Y, W or Z.

From the very beginning, they came and kicked the Palestinians out. Israel tries to give a bad image about the Palestinians, that they will kill and kick the Jews out. I repeat; our problem is not with the Jews at all. Coexistence with them as Palestinian citizens is possible. But it shouldn’t be at the expense of our nation. The Europeans made this Jewish problem here. ‘What shall we do with those Jews living here? They don’t have a land or a home.’ It became our fixation. This is the culture that the Europeans fixed over the last 50 years. It became the Palestinians’ problem to solve the problem of the Jews.

How much is the Palestinian Islamic Jihad driven by politics and how much by religion?
Jihad doesn’t separate between politics and religion. We think that dealing with political issues should be borne of a religious stance. Politics should follow religious regulations: the Holy Qur’an, the Hadith and the history of Islam, political fiqh [Islamic thought] and ishtihad [Islamic wisdom and practice]. For example, some people asked: Is entering the PLO halal [permitted] or haram [taboo]? This form”the PLO”is not found in Islamic regulations, so the movement resorts to ishtihad, which is followed and depended upon in Islam.

There’s no contradiction in saying that politics and religion are inseparable while holding that the problem is not with Jews but with the State of Israel?
As I said earlier, we do not discriminate on the basis of religion. Rather, we take wisdom for political action on the basis of our faith.

Traditionally, Islamic Jihad has been closely supported by Iran. What is your view of the pressures bearing down now on that country?
The pressures on Iran from the West are the same as the ones on the resistance movements Palestine and Lebanon. America imposes pressure on Iran because of its stance with the Palestinians. It is the same with Syria. And it imposes pressure on the Palestinian movements because of their stance against Israel. The Palestinian issue is a central issue. American favour depends on a given country’s relation with Israel. If Egypt holds an affable stance towards Israel, America is good to Egypt. If Egypt takes Israel as an enemy, America takes Egypt as an enemy. If Iran were to cooperate with the Zionist project, America would clear all the obstacles from Iran’s path, casting aside all of its claims about nuclear programs, and so on. Pakistan and India already have nuclear weapons, but America ignores them because they are working with the American and Israeli project.

So the war on terror is not cover for a war on Islam?
America supported religious movements against Russia. If Iran applied the religious as America wants, agreed on what America and Israel do, stayed away from international politics, America would keep silent. Islam in the mosque, that which doesn’t exceed the mosque, America accepts. But Islam that demands a political role, America is against. For us politics and religion cannot, should not, be separate.

Recently, Islamic Jihad organised a march in Gaza calling for Palestinian national unity. What do you perceive as the current threats to national unity?
Israel has always been betting on the unity of the Palestinians parties”that it won’t last long. Always, it has done all things possible to penetrate the small gaps and start fights between the movements. But the Palestinians are awake to this, and it hasn’t gotten to that stage. From Oslo or Madrid until now, the Authority put much pressure on the movements, even resorting to arresting the leaders and members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. But even still, we didn’t reach the stage of open clashes. Hamas and Jihad were flexible in dealing with the Authority. Also, the Authority was flexible, to tell the truth. Dialogue was still there. During this Intifada, the dialogue became deeper and stronger. This made Israel lose its balance and self-restraint: to see that all of the movements, despite local conflicts and differences in ideology, agree upon one aim, which is the necessity of getting Israel out of Palestine.

The policy of Islamic Jihad was to stress Palestinian unity; it wanted to awaken the consciousness of the Palestinians. Jihad succeeded, to some extent, in opening dialogue between Fatah and Hamas, for example, to solve problems surrounding local elections. The demonstration in Gaza was a way of ringing the warning bell to the other movements, reminding them of the greater unifying issues. The refugees are still there, the land is still taken, and the Israelis still exist there. The killings and the invasions are still happening. So you, Hamas and Fatah, should talk, should solve issues in dialogue, and remember the bond of your blood, and that of all the martyrs who sacrificed themselves for the sake of the situation and this unity. It was a way of saying, ‘Do not waste that!’

Western media always talks about the Palestinian ‘factions’, as though there were a problem in Palestinian society, as though Palestinians have no real idea about democracy. On the contrary, of all the Arab countries, Palestine has one of the more vibrant democracies, with a healthy dynamic of opinion. To me, the movements are not factions but political parties, do you agree?
We don’t see anything wrong in the variation of points of view. Variety is a healthy phenomenon. It is a mistake to picture difference as a source of conflict. It can be an entry point towards agreement. It is all relative to the psychological build up of the individual and society. People can disagree in point of views but not the overall aim.

Can you tell me something about the Popular Resistance Committee, which seems a way of ensuring this unity?
Arranging and organising the parties is a must. Islamic Jihad thinks that individual efforts are scattered and useless. There should be an agreement between parties and a general policy set by the nation and the Palestinian Authority. The Authority working in isolation from the public doesn’t serve the Palestinians cause and vice versa. Intra-Palestinian dialogue is critical, as is that between Palestinians and the broader Arab nation. I want to point out that Islamic Jihad even attended one of the Arab summits, to give voice to the Palestinians, and try to gain the support of Arabs and Muslims for the Palestinian cause. Others sometimes try to make Jihad look closed, always refusing dialogue. The truth is the opposite. I disagree with the PLO and Fatah in many things, but I encourage dialogue with them so we can be in the same stream of resisting the Israeli occupation. We believe that Jihad alone won’t be able to liberate Palestine; it cannot work in isolation from the other movements.

Isn’t the Popular Resistance Committee principally a means of coordinating the armed resistance? Political coordination is one thing, but joint action on the ground is another.
There is an arrangement there. But, honestly, I don’t separate the military part of a movement from the political. If dialogue is closed from one side, it will be closed from the other. It all goes back to the prevalent culture and way of thinking. The military and the political in Palestine complete each other.

I’d like to ask some questions that specifically concern Islamic Jihad. On 6 June there was a pretrial hearing in Florida for several men”including University of South Florida professor, Sami Al-Arian, accused of running a funding cell for Islamic Jihad in the 1990s. Do you have a comment?
Anybody who tries to offer any sort of humanitarian help [to Palestinians] is accused. I think it is clear when you look at the campaign orchestrated against some charity funds. In the Gaza Strip, America put pressure upon the Palestinian Authority to close the accounts of charities handling donations for orphans. Those donations are not even sufficient for orphans to buy food and essential needs. America can arrest and charge anybody who offers help to a martyr’s family, or the family of someone injured, as a terrorist. Human rights organisations should pay attention to this because it gives the state license to arrest whoever it wants. It is so clear now, and I read many articles of complaint by those who call for the defence of freedoms in America. It does not only touch Islamic Jihad members, not even Palestinians; they can be Europeans one day. It is not a fleeting issue; it has to do with the future, and the future of freedoms in America.

In the US State Department’s Country Reports on Terrorism 2004, published last month, Damascus is named as the principal headquarters of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Is there any operational basis to this claim?
The Palestinians departed from their land for other countries like Lebanon and Syria. Israel and America want to get them out from Syria now. They are there because they were forced there, not by choice or free will. If anyone is to choose where the Palestinians should go, it is the Palestinians. Or should we be thankful that the United States regards Palestinians as a more urgent case, more important to find a solution for, rather than looking for one for the Jews? How many times can one be made a refugee in a lifetime?

At the beginning of May, Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for the killing of Rami Al-Malakh in his village near Tulkarem. Allegedly, he confessed to collaborating with Israeli security forces, giving information that led to the killing of Islamic Jihad activist Shafik Abdul Ghani. Isn’t there another way of dealing with the problem of collaboration aside from mirroring Israeli tactics of extra-judicial killings?‘
Islamic Jihad calls for the application of the force of law on anybody who attacks the Palestinians, either by revealing where resistance members are, in order that Israel kills them, or by themselves killing them. Throughout the second Intifada, Islamic Jihad has been asking the Palestinian Authority to take such individuals to court, as they are doing with those resisting Israel now jailed in Jericho. Do you know any country that doesn’t charge spies? Collaboration, or spying, is the biggest factor preventing the Palestinians from winning the war with the Israelis, or exercising the pressure necessary on them. If Jihad took the law into its own hands and killed somebody, then it has to do with the resistance members on the ground where it took place. This is something the movement itself can’t always control in detail.

This instance highlights an endemic problem in Palestinian society, the absence of trust.
There is trust between Palestinians, and instances of collaboration are but small in number. They are dangerous, though, and something should be done to prevent them. Israel doesn’t only kill, but by illegal means makes people fall into immoral ways that are dehumanising, like exerting financial pressure, using psychological games, taking certain photos of a wife or sister, spreading drugs and alcohol. Israel does all of this in front of the whole world, but when the Palestinians kill a spy it becomes a morality question. Protecting the Palestinian nation is not separated from resisting the occupation. Killing won’t solve the problem”we know that. But there are big cases and in such instances something must be done. The guy you mentioned admitted to collaborating with Israel, not only in providing information that led to movement members, but in agitating in the Palestinian street. His killing will protect many others.

But the two are crimes: he “allegedly” was an accessory to murder and those who killed him are murderers. Not only that, but such actions undermine the moral standing upon which the Palestinian struggle is founded.
Perhaps.

What is your view on the disarming of militants?
Israel is striving towards that and America is helping it. To go along with disarmament would kill the resistance. If we were disarmed how should we resist? Resistance wouldn’t mean anything. We think that if the Authority did what it was asked to do, it would be a success for the Israelis, principally in dividing the Palestinians. Jihad will refuse to give over its weapons. It is taboo and the Authority knows it.

But one of the conditions of negotiations is to do this.
There are many things that the Israelis should do to allow for negotiations. We are always the ones who give. The arms that we have are negligible compared to those that they have. But we don’t have to think of ourselves as weak. Though we don’t have weapons, we think we are strong: we are strong morally, because we are owners of right. In this, we are stronger than Israel. They always speak about”are obsessed with”security, because they are always afraid, while we talk about our rights with ease.

Indeed, the Palestinians cannot be disarmed of their principal weapon, which is moral right.
It is this weapon that frightens Israel, not the guns we keep.

So you’d say that when Israel talks about peace they really mean getting the Palestinians to forget their rights?
As I said earlier, peace lessens the importance of Palestinian rights. But it’s bigger than this. Sometimes Israel enacts massacres, and then some Arabs, even Palestinians, come and say: ‘Let us forget about what they did this time.’ The Israelis are doing all that they can to kill the national sentiment; that is, whatever the Jews do, or whatever the Israelis do with the Palestinians, we have to ignore, both this and the occupation. Yesterday, there was reaction for the killing of two, but today the killing of 200 or 2000 or 200,000 doesn’t elicit reaction. This didn’t come all at once; it came following humiliation after humiliation for the Arabs and Muslims, to force them to this point. They got to a point where even if a whole nation and land was occupied, the Arab summit and the Arabs wouldn’t do anything. The will to defend the nation was killed. For example, Iraq was occupied and massacres enacted, with atrocities committed in Abu Ghraib, with the Holy Qur’an desecrated and dishonoured in Guantanamo Bay. How did Arab leaders react? All this has to do with the future and something bigger than limited killing.

What is Islamic Jihad’s strategy for moving forward?
Our strategy revolves around recruiting the Muslim Arab nations on the side of the resistance, which we see as the only solution for stopping the Israelis and pushing them to give the Palestinians their rights. Four years ago, there was nothing called the apartheid wall. With this they are trying to create a new reality. The Islamic Jihad, with the other movements and the ‘alive’ powers in the Muslim Arab world, think that peace with this entity is a fake solution. Palestinians will never be able to build their country so long as there is Israeli occupation because the Israelis won’t let that happen. This is proven historically and has to do with logic and dogma: if there is Israel, there are no Palestinians. If anything like a limited Palestinian state were to be permitted by Israel it would be temporary; to give them some time to reorganise themselves, and for the Palestinians to relax a bit, tired after such a long period of continuous pressure on them from the world and Israel. In my opinion”not only me, or the Islamic Jihad, but all Palestinians”there is no way to coexist in peace and security as they claim because on their terms there won’t be justice and it wouldn’t be fair. If justice is absent the reasons to fight will remain. In the absence of justice, the solution is the resistance, which is a legal right for every occupied nation.

Two weeks ago he turned his head and said, quite matter-of-fact, “My car was set on fire last night, perhaps you would be interested to know.” Abdel-Sattar Kassem is a picture of respectability. Born in 1948, white haired but burly, a professor of political science at An-Najah National University in Nablus and early runner in the recent Palestinian presidential elections, a virulent critic of the Palestinian Authority, Kassem is no stranger to the risks of the written word. He is author of over a thousand articles and a dozen books, the most controversial of which, The Road to Defeat , traced the deleterious effects, as he sees it, of the Palestinian Liberation Organisation on the Palestinian people, especially under the leadership of late President Yasser Arafat. Imprisoned by both the Israelis and his own government (the latter three times), he describes himself, while laughing, as a “continuous, relentless fighter”. We spoke at his home, beginning with why threats to his life have resumed.

Your car was set on fire, your life threatened. Why?
This is just part of a phenomenon in the West Bank and Gaza, one of the genius acts of Yasser Arafat. For 10 years, things have been solved in this way, and people have been frightened and terrorised by armed men who belong to the Palestinian Authority. It was the same in Beirut. I know because I visited several times. What I used to see was horrible. He used to terrorise people, gathering around him those ethically of a very low standard. All the time I thought this kind of behavior does not befit a revolution. On the contrary, it is suitable for surrender. He repeated the same experience here. I wrote several times about that. It deteriorated. I’m sure that Yasser Arafat was planning this, to make sure Palestinian society would not recover after he died–to ensure that his character remained here. You might not believe me because you do not know the exact details about this man. I followed him for more than 30 years. I always thought these kinds of people would never liberate Palestine.

When he came here I started writing, telling the people he’s a great liar. Don’t listen to him, he’s not going to make a state, he’s going to fragment society, pit brother against brother, and against his sister, his father. He was a very insincere man, very deceptive. Of course he always had a lot of money. He could bribe people–so many. They just receive salaries from the Palestinian Authority for doing nothing. In 1995 I wrote an article entitled “Democracy and Our President”. I made a comparison between Yasser Arafat and Hell; that he is putting democracy under his backside. So he sent somebody to shoot me, and they did.

What exactly happened on that day?
I wrote that article and it was published in a newspaper in Gaza that belongs to Hamas. At that time the editor was Imad Al- Qaluji, who became a minister afterwards. They came after him and beat him. He called me after and told me, “Now look, these people are going to shoot you.” I said, “Okay,” so I had bodyguards. I used to go the university with bodyguards, had bodyguards in my office, in the classroom, when I went to the market, and so on. I discovered that being with bodyguards turned your life into a terrible thing, so I sent them away.

On 28 August 1995 I was returning home from the university. As you know, it’s a five-minute walk to my home. Always I pay attention when I walk, but on that day I was absentminded. Suddenly I saw somebody in the street, near Al-Qasr Hotel. He asked me, “Are you Dr Abdul-Sattar Kassem?” I said, “No”. I looked around to see an open door. Nothing. The houses on my left were closed, and I discovered later that the owner collaborated by closing all the doors and windows. He grabbed my hand. I pulled my hand away and raised it to beat him. Somebody else came out and started firing. I was hit by four bullets, but remained standing. I got into a taxi and went to the hospital. I remained there for six days.

Believe me, that was a horrible day in Nablus. All of Nablus was there in the hospital. It was a public issue. It was there I found out that the one who shot me was named Maher Danden, living in Balata refugee camp. The one who guided him to me was an An- Najah University student named Muslama Thabit. The one who sent Dandem to shoot me was named Jamal Atirawi, an officer in the Palestinian intelligence, while the one who asked Jamal Atirawi to recruit a criminal was Tawfik Atirawi, then head of Palestinian intelligence in the West Bank. It was Yasser Arafat who ordered Tawfik Atirawi to recruit somebody. I learned all this immediately, because in Arafat’s office there was never any secret. I also learned that on that day one of Arafat’s aides asked him to call me. Arafat told him that if he called I would never answer the phone. He was damn right.

I presume you spoke to him at some point during his life?
Never. And I never felt that I needed to or that I should. I always thought of him as an Israeli collaborator or Israeli agent. If you are a true leader and you want to build a country you will be an ethically integral person and you will work hard on productive projects, on the creation of friendships between your people, in strengthening social and political and economic ties, and so on. This man was doing completely the contrary. He succeeded where even the Israelis failed. He was very, very successful. During so many years of the Israeli occupation they were never able to divide society in the way Arafat did, or to create such an insecure atmosphere as Arafat did. Occupation itself means insecurity. But the insecurity made by Yasser Arafat was just more intense than that made by the occupation. I’m not exaggerating that.

So they tried to silence me, but I refused to stay silent. I continued writing. I wrote The Road to Defeat in 1998 and distributed around 1500 copies under the table. People were scared to buy the book. I’m not scared to publish the book; the people are scared to buy the book. And some are scared to read the book. You see, because of the dictatorship, people are cowards. They have learned this over centuries. This part of the world has been ruled in a very harsh and violent way. So people don’t have the courage. People are scared to read because they think the intelligence apparatus is everywhere, behind every curtain, and will say, “Why did you read that book? You’re going to prison for six months because you read that book.” This has been true in some Arab countries, like Iraq, Syria and Saudi Arabia. It’s a sad part of the Arab tradition. But I was not scared. I wrote that book and published it.

In many parts of the world the word remains a danger to established powers. You seem to accept the dangers the word poses to the writer.
Some people write, but for me, I think I have the courage to say it as it is. I don’t go around it. When I used to write about Yasser Arafat I used to mention his name–Arafat. Some others would say “the Palestinian leadership”. Probably they mean the prime minister or a minister or the head of a security service, something like that. I used to just mention the name. Because of my frankness the Palestinian Authority gets angry. Sometimes outraged. And they sometimes tell me, “Well, don’t mention this, just say something around it.” I refuse. I should be direct and honest and state the right thing. And I refuse to be bought. I speak as an independent. I don’t want to be imprisoned by any organisation or to be the agent of any state. When I am free I can write what I think is right. That’s why they have been making so much trouble for me. And I have been making so much trouble for them too.

You believe in combining the activist and author, correct?
Yes. In 1999, I was the first signatory on the “Petition of the 20″. By then there was so much corruption. A few people decided we have to make a statement to the Palestinians. I wrote that statement. People were always scared to talk about Yasser Arafat as the source of corruption. I insisted that in that petition his name be stated. Twenty signed. And I told them–the people who met in the first instance–”Look, if we put Yasser Arafat in the petition, in the statement, we will be imprisoned, and that will make the statement very valuable. If we don’t mention Yasser Arafat they are not going to put us in jail, so that will make the statement worthless and meaningless. So we have to put Yasser Arafat there, and we will go to jail.”

It was distributed in the morning of 28 November 1999. During the night, the intelligence just roamed around picking us up. They came here around 10.30pm. I didn’t open the door. So they stayed down in the street. At 3am they came back, I opened the door and went with them. They arrested, I believe, nine people. Some of us were members in the Legislative Council. Arafat ordered that they should be arrested, but his aides advised him not to do so. So those who were not members were put in jail. Since we were put in jail all the mass media became very much interested in the situation and my prophecy was fulfilled. If they had not put us in jail nobody would care. Arafat was stupid, was very much stupid. So everyone started to talk about it. But the problem was, those who were not arrested did nothing to make the people move. You need a public movement. Nobody cared. According to the public polls, 70 per cent of the people said that we were right in our statement. But nobody went out in the street, demonstrating for our release. Only our wives did. That’s one of the problems that we face in Arab countries; they will tell you, “Yes, what you are doing is good,” but they will never support you. They only give you verbal support.

Our people still do not have the courage to face their leaders, although they are convinced that these leaders are cowards, and they are not the right people to lead. We have been facing the Israelis for years–not all of us, some of us–and we haven’t been able to face 100 corrupt people in the Palestinian Authority. This is probably true for Iraq too. If you look at Iraq, for so many years Saddam Hussein was a very absolute dictator; they didn’t resist him. But they have been resisting the Americans. Probably we need external occupation to make us move. Internally we have been a failure. I think many peoples in the world ask, why are the Arabs not rebelling against their leaders? They see that these leaders are very corrupt, they are US-Israeli agents and puppets, they have been wasting all the money, and so on.

Lately the Palestinian Authority has been arresting people from Islamic Jihad and other organisations. You are lucky, by the way, if you are arrested by the Israelis. The Israelis, within 18 days, will tell you why they are arresting you. And if they don’t have any reason they will release you. And if they interrogate somebody and if there is a confession, they will bring him to court, and he will be sentenced. But if you are arrested by the Palestinian Authority you might never know why they arrested you. And you never know for how long you will stay there. I was arrested in 2000. Nobody ever told me why I was arrested and I never knew why I was released. I stayed six months there. So I talked about these people–who are 11 now–in Jericho prison. I talked about them, and I published written statements they sent to me, about how they were treated by the Authority. The Authority didn’t like it, so they burned by car.

This 11 are related to the February bombing in Tel Aviv?
After the explosion in Tel Aviv on 25 February 2005 the Israelis arrested some Palestinians from Tulkarem area and a few hours later the Palestinian Authority arrested some others. My brother was imprisoned by the Israelis. They got him into court and they sentenced him for five months. He’s the imam of the local mosque. The Authority has arrested some others, until now they don’t know why exactly. They sent me statements about their treatment by the Authority, what they have seen in the Tulkarem jail and in Jericho. Even when we were in Israeli jails we used to smuggle things out. Always you are creative in the circumstances you live in. So they sent me these papers, I published them.

Apparently the Palestinian Authority did not like that. So an officer called me and told me they are not happy about it, and said in Arabic that you don’t know there are kata’eb–brigades. What he meant, I think, are the brigades of Shuhada Al-Aqsa. So I said, okay, but I told him, if you don’t like what I published, and you see that I made mistakes, send me what you think is right and I am going to treat you in the same way; I would just say, I received so and so from so and so, and that’s it. Or if you don’t like we can just go to court. So what he did, he just sent people to burn my car.

The officer who talked to me is the leader of Preventive Security in Tulkarem. So I suspect–strongly suspect–that he is behind burning my car. So it’s the Palestinian Authority that has done this. And it’s not strange or weird because the Authority has always spread confusion and insecurity in the Palestinian street.

Interesting that he mentioned kata’eb. Recently I interviewed Nasser Juma, leader of the Kata’eb Shuhada Al-Aqsa. He expressed similar views to your own about corruption and graft within the Palestinian Authority. Rather than a problem, I think you’d find allies there.
I am in touch with him, with Nasser Juma. And I am in touch with some others. But the problem is that Kata’eb Al-Aqsa does not have a unified leadership, so everyone can describe himself as Kata’eb Al-Aqsa. You never know who is truly a freedom fighter and who is not. When he talked to me about kata’eb I know he is talking about zo’ran –just street boys. So he probably just sent somebody from the institution, from Preventive Security, or one of his relatives. I don’t think that the true Kata’eb Al-Aqsa is involved. Actually some of them visited me in the afternoon, here, and they said they were ready to get their guns and open a front against these people. I said, “No.” The gun should have a code of ethics. It is there to defend the Palestinians, not terrorise them. I’m sure many in the Kata’eb Al-Aqsa are ready to resist that.

I’m unclear about how far this is all characteristic of the Palestinian Authority at a structural level, or it’s the legacy of one man, Arafat.
All the mass media supported Yasser Arafat; even Al-Manar, which belongs to Hizbollah, never talked against Arafat. But now, after the people started to the see impact of his policies, they start now to realise that these policies were made by him. Most the time people used to say, “Well, the bad people are his aides, but he’s a good man. If he knew that his aides are bad he wouldn’t keep them.” But of course that was a kind of ignorance–naiveté. A leader might make a mistake in a couple of his aides, or three, but not all of them! And even when he discovers that one of his aides is corrupt he will bring him to court or just fire him, or do something. But the tradition of Yasser Arafat was that whenever he saw that someone was reaching a level of excellence in corruption he would upgrade him. That was his behavior. If someone proved that he was a son of a bitch, he was promoted! But, his legacy, I think, will stay not more than a couple of years.

What is your view on the Oslo Accords?
In 1967, 1968, Israel told the Arabs, “Well, look, you want a solution to the Palestinian question? Okay, we want a solution. But the solution comes only through bilateral, direct talks with Israel.” That is, every Arab state should sit down at the table with Israel and talk directly about the problem. The outcome of the negotiations will be the solution. And the Israelis told us that they are interested in an Arab authority in the West Bank and Gaza, because they are not interested in ruling other people. They are interested in their own security. So they needed a Palestinian authority, or an Arab authority, to run the daily life of the Palestinians.

Arafat and his people always said that those who accept the Israeli solution are traitors and they should be shot, they should be hanged. We accepted all of that in 1993 with the Oslo Accords. And Arafat considered that an achievement. That was very stupid on the side of our people. The Oslo solution was offered in 1967. And Golda Meir talked about it in 1973. In 1977, Menachem Begin, then prime minister of Israel, offered us autonomy. In 1981, Sharon, when we was minister of defence, proposed autonomy. We could have saved our lives, our homes, our trees, and avoided so many atrocities. What Arafat achieved over the years was but to lead the people from one defeat to another, from one frustration to another, until the people were ready to accept the Israeli solution of 1967-8.

Arafat portrayed himself as a hero and as a liberator by signing the Oslo Accords. But he just led the people to gradually accept the Israeli solution. Nobody in 1967 was ready to recognise Israel or shake hands with Israelis. We needed so many defeats to realise that the Israelis are the supermen of the Middle East, and so Arafat led us there. In 1993, psychologically, the people became ready for the defeat, to recognise the defeat, and we did.

But this was on the back of the first Intifada. How can we say that people were ready to accept defeat when they were out throwing rocks?
In 1988 the people were fed up. That Intifada was not an Intifada of public awareness. It was an Intifada of the inability to see any future, to see anything. The people were so frustrated that they went out into the streets. Why? The PLO was doing nothing for the people. The Arabs were disregarding the Palestinian question and were engaged in the Lebanese question. The Americans and the Soviets did not pay attention to Palestinians. We felt that nobody was left to support us. I was very active during that Intifada. Four times I was imprisoned by the Israelis, under administrative detention. I spent a couple of years in Israeli jails, through 1988, 1989 and 1990.

You would seem to be in a no man’s land: critical of the occupation yet critical of the Palestinian Authority. But you’re saying that there is a link between the Palestinian Authority and the State of Israel, therefore to be critical of the Authority is not what the Israelis want to hear.
Exactly. They need to have the people supporting the Palestinian Authority because this is their chance to have peace. And if you look, during the Al-Aqsa Intifada, they did not dismantle the Authority. In the mass media everyone was saying they are against the Authority. That was a big lie. What the Israelis did was to hit the chairs and the offices, and they did not hit the people, the persons–the individuals. Nobody from the Palestinian Authority was killed.

What they did–in hitting the chairs, the offices–was to make the Palestinian Authority popular. Attacking the offices of the Authority was part of the mechanism of deepening the Authority’s grip on the Palestinians. For example, one day Ahmed Qurei was at an Israeli checkpoint and a soldier started shooting in the air. So in the mass media they started shouting about Qurei–the Israelis shot at his car, they tried to kill him! That was not true. We are sure that was something planned just to give Qurei a push. They elevated his popularity. Even Arafat, when he was put under siege: I personally said many times–so many times, openly–in my articles, that Arafat could never be shot by the Israelis. He will die an ordinary death. Nobody is going to shoot him because he is protected by the Americans and the Israelis. And the Israelis elevated his popularity by putting him under siege. Afterwards they came to think that Arafat was worthless. And we know that if the Israelis extract all they need from somebody, they just put him in the trash. Arafat was just put in the trash basket.

There’s no credence to the idea that Arafat was poisoned?
No. Why should they poison him then? They could have poisoned him when he was a revolutionary in Beirut. Once they ordered a Syrian plane to land in Israel while it was making a trip from Cairo to Damascus. Why? Because they thought George Habash was in that plane. Arafat was always there in the sky, before the Oslo Accords, and they never harmed him. And when his plane crashed in Libya, the Americans became hysterical. They mobilised all of their technological might to find Yasser Arafat, and they did. They told Qaddafi about the location of Arafat and Qaddafi rescued him. But at a certain point for the Israelis, Arafat became useless, worthless. He was unable to offer any more services. They needed somebody else.

If the logic holds that Israel destroyed the infrastructure but left the individuals alone in order to bolster the popularity of the Palestinian Authority among Palestinians, why did Sharon publicly back Abbas before the presidential elections?
Ah, but Sharon realised that he made a mistake. That’s why afterwards he ordered his cabinet members not to praise Abu Mazen at all. He made such a statement and it was published by the Israeli mass media.

Now look, about Yasser Arafat, when there were elections in 1996 between Netanyahu and Peres, an Israeli officer called me. He used to work in Tulkarem and he always used to interrogate me. He called me and said, “Do you think if Netanyahu wins he will shake hands with Yasser Arafat?” I told him “Yes, he will.” Not only shake hands, he is going to sit down, at the same table, and talk with Yasser Arafat. He said, “Are you sure?” I said “Yeah.” He told me that Netanyahu is saying on his platform that he is not going to sit down with Yasser Arafat. I told him that Netanyahu does not have the black briefcase in his hand. The black briefcase is still in the hands of the prime minister. There, there are secrets. And Netanyahu will, afterwards, sit down with Yasser Arafat. He said, “Okay, after the elections we’ll see.”

So, after the elections–two weeks after the elections–Netanyahu called Yasser Arafat, over the phone, and they talked. He called me, that officer. He said, “Yeah, you are right!” I told him, “No, I am not right. I told you that he’s going to sit with him at the same table.” So a few weeks later Netanyahu was sitting with Yasser Arafat on the same table. So the officer called me. I told him, “Well look, you are an army officer; you don’t know anything! You are a dumb person! I have been following Yasser Arafat and your leaders for three decades. I’m good at this now!”

Actually, I made so many prophecies, and all of them came true. For instance, I predicted the recognition of Israel. I wrote that in 1979. In 1982, I told an assembly at An-Najah University that the PLO was going to recognise the Security Council resolutions 242 and 338. There was uproar in the assembly, but it came true. And I told them that Arafat is going to come to the West Bank and Gaza, and he came. That he’s going to bring corruption, and he did!

You said something to me recently that was quite startling; that the occupation is humanitarian compared to the Palestinian Authority. You’re serious?
What we have been getting is worthless. Under occupation we had it better. For instance, under occupation I used to travel in Palestine, to go to Hebron, to go to Gaza, even to go to Haifa–in my car! After Oslo I couldn’t. I lost that privilege. Before Oslo the Israelis never used tanks or airplanes or helicopters against us. After Oslo they started doing so. Before Oslo I didn’t have 1000 governmental employees who are doing nothing. We had few employees, with the Israelis paying their salaries, and they were more efficient than the Palestinian Authority. And the social fabric, the ethical fabric, was much stronger than it is now. People think that we have gained something? No. We are not in a better situation; we are in a worse situation. So those who are weak and not interested in surrendering to the enemy must wait. Of course we should not wait doing nothing. We have to prepare, inside and outside. Now things are getting tight. The Americans have a tight grip on the area. The Israelis are very strong militarily. But there is the other side of the coin: the underground Arab and Islamist organisations are improving their methods, and their style, against the enemy. So I think in the near future, yes, we are suffering, but they are going to suffer too.

You’re sympathetic with the Islamist movement?
I sympathise with the Islamist movement, but differ on certain cultural and social attitudes, particularly on the limits imposed on the freedom of women. Why? This is an Arabian tradition, not an Islamic one. Personally I think that societies that will advance and will achieve tremendous progress should be free societies. They [the Islamists] have that dogmatic, stupid thing, that if you are not part of us then you are not a true Muslim. They are not ready to cooperate with non-Muslims, like Christians. So what I see is a kind of narrow-mindedness. There are so many things that belong to the past, to backwardness. I think should read Islam in a deeper way, although we agree on political issues.

What is your vision of the future prospects of the peace process?
Internally, I am very much interested in having free Palestinians who can express their thoughts, who can work and participate in decision-making. If we are not free we will never be able to free our land. Unfree people cannot free anybody. Corruption should be eliminated. We might not be able to eliminate it 100 per cent. But we can make progress. We can advance. We have to be honest in using public money, and also in providing information to our people. Our people are misled. They don’t receive the right information, or at least they don’t receive all the information that they should. So we have to make tremendous changes, not only reforms. Reform is not enough. We need tremendous change in the social, economic, political, cultural and social spheres, and I have my platform and I have a clear idea what should be done.

On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, there is one point, and if it is fulfilled the whole question will be resolved: the right of return. The Palestinians should return to their homes and property in Palestine of 1948. Otherwise I’m not ready to talk about anything else. I don’t want a state–I don’t need it. We have 22 Arab states. That’s good enough. I want the right of return, that’s it.

So, expanded Arab representation under a single system?
Exactly. We are talking about democracy. We are not talking about sectarianism. We are talking about democracy and human rights. There are international resolutions supporting the return of the Palestinians. There are international conventions. And there are universal principles at stake. So there is no logic, whatsoever, to talk about issues which are of very minor value. The most important issue is the refugee problem. They are five million people who have been suffering for a very long time. For 57 years and they have been living in these filthy refugee camps. First, solve this problem. Before any negotiations between warring states they solve the human issues first. They release the prisoners, they settle the question of the refugees and then they start the negotiations–in all cases, except for the Palestinian case. Once they are back they can talk with the Jews and the Jews can talk to them, and they can find a solution. I’m not ready to talk about a state, or the recognition of the State of Israel, or the recognition of UN resolutions and so on. Talk about human rights. That’s it. That’s the solution for me.

I’m sympathetic, but the Israelis will never agree to it, so the conflict remains unresolved.

Then the international community should not be tailored according to the wishes of the Israelis.
I agree, but practical solutions have to be possible also.

If we want to talk about practicalities, why was it practical in 1917 to start bringing the Jews into Palestine who afterwards kicked the Palestinians out? Why was that practical and it’s not practical to have the Palestinians back, although housing in Israel occupies only 13 per cent of the total land area? There is enough space. So what we are talking about is not practicality. We are talking about international bias against the Palestinians. And that bias, I’m sure, is controlled by the balance of power. If we get stronger, I’m sure the international community will start to talk logic. But now, as long as we are weak, yes, everyone will be talking about the right of Israel to remain a pure Jewish state. So it has nothing to do with practicality, it has to do with the balance of power.

So how will the Palestinians shift the balance of power?
If you look at military developments in the area you will find that the Palestinians, lately, have been very effective against the Israelis. In 1967 we were unable to throw a stone at the Israelis. In 1987, 20 years on, we made an Intifada, and the stones were flying everywhere. Afterwards we used new methods, for instance kidnapping and killing soldiers. Then we started having guns, started to shoot at the checkpoints, killing Israelis here and there. Then we started to see martyrdom operations against the Israelis, and that was effective, security-wise. Militarily speaking, we are still very weak. But we can inflict much damage against the security of Israel. Our methods and means developed over the years. Egypt, for instance, the biggest Arab state, couldn’t manufacture a rocket. The Palestinians in Gaza could. It doesn’t hit the right target, that’s true, but once you create such an instrument you will be able to make improvements in the future. So we will develop, I am sure. And I am sure that our Palestinian people are going to develop chemical instruments–to make a chemical weapon doesn’t require sophisticated technologies. We will do it. One day we will do it and we will make real threats to the Israelis.

Your response surprises me. I expected you to underline the importance of education, of inner strengthening.
No, this is a struggle. It’s a twist of arms. You have to equip yourself with the necessary power. If the power of the other is overriding, as in the last year when Israeli measures have been very effective, leaving the Palestinians crippled, you need time to think; we need time to think what kind of instruments we should to develop to face Israeli measures. It’s expected that so many Palestinians will be killed, homes will be demolished, trees will be uprooted and lands will be confiscated. All of that is expected. That’s because we are weak, not because we are not educated. Education is good. It is a very necessary element, but it’s not decisive. Only might is decisive. Education can improve your might but it cannot impose a solution.

So what we are saying about education, well, that’s good enough, but it’s not enough to liberate our land. I am sure that the Israelis are not going to accept the refugees back. So they must be defeated, to have the refugees back. In the foreseeable future I am sure we are not going to defeat the Israelis. But in the far future, Israel has no chance to stay in the area. Strategically speaking, Israel is small in area, small in population, and no matter how it is developed economically it remains small. The best and the most effective instrument that Israel has to stay in the area is the weakness of the Arabs. We are weak. This weakness is due to internal problems, not to external powers, because we have so many filthy, stupid Arab regimes; they are dictators, they are very corrupt people. One day there will be change in Arabia–in Saudi Arabia, in Egypt, in Syria and so on. I am not talking about in 10 years or 15 years, but it is coming. It may seem that we are taking steps towards this moment, but this moment is rather taking steps towards us. It is inevitable.

What will happen to Israel?
Israel will remain alien in this Arab region. It will always be an aberration. That is why it and the United States are so interested in normalising relations with Arab countries. They understand that this is the only way for Israel to stay in the area. They themselves realise that military might is not a solution. The stronger is not the strongest. And if you are the strongest now, it is not assured in the future. Strength or might is something relative. Empires fall. Others arise. History is in a state of flux. The Arab states are around 14 million square kilometres. The Arabs are around 300 million people. The international community is advancing. We are not an exception. We might be slower than other nations, but someday we will push forward. And once there is a new future for the Arabs there will be a deteriorating future for Israel.

If I were Israeli I would accept the return of the refugees, for the safety of Israel 50 years from now. But they think only with their muscles, not with their brains. That’s their problem. They are buying the animosity of the Arabs and the Muslims. The current situation is also the solution of rotten regimes. It’s the solution of Yasser Arafat, of Hosni Mubarak, of King Hussein, and so on. It’s not the solution of the peoples of the area. If you want to remain here in the area you have to build friendships in the area. The behaviour of the Israelis and the Americans does not facilitate friendship. The kind of normalisation that they are talking about is not going to happen. They want us to accept Israel as a part–an organic part–of this area. It’s a joke. Under these circumstances it will never happen.

They have nuclear arms, they have tanks, they have rockets, and that is the only thing that keeps them here now, along the weakness of the Arabs. If the Arabs are not weak they are not even going to be able to use the nuclear bombs that they have. They are going to hit Damascus, Amman, Cairo? In other words, they are going to commit suicide. So, I’m not in a hurry. I know there are so many atrocities that the Palestinians have been suffering for 57 years, but that’s no justification for us to accept Israeli conditions. If we make a solution now, while we are weak, the solution is not going to be in our favor. I strongly think that it is unwise to negotiate from a position of weakness. If you are weak, wait. As long as you are weak there are no negotiations, actually. That’s why I believe the Palestinians are not negotiating with the Israelis. The Palestinians are asking the Israelis to give them certain things. That’s the difference.

The old city is a sea of colours and eyes. My contact picks me up and we wait in a café for the interview that took seven weeks and much risk to arrange. “Did you notice the guy on the bridge?” No chance. “He just left.”

We pause for a moment, next heading off through a hundred small alleys, up and down steps and stairways, seemingly in circles, to an assigned location but Jumaa is not there. None other is either. “Don’t be surprised if he doesn’t show,” I’d been told earlier.

Nasser Jumaa is reputedly No. 1 wanted by the State of Israel. Between the first and second Intifadas he has existed one night here, one night there, for 17 years. Rarely can he spend more than a couple of hours in one place. As one of three who founded the Kataaeb Shuhadaa Al-Aqsa (Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades), and the only one remaining, Jumaa can be sure that no suspension of Israel’s assassination policy applies to him. But when we do hear a voice and he appears from around a corner his greeting is warm and his welcome genuine.

He is not what I expected, at least not what I feared. His soft-spoken voice is in harmony with his words, which are as much about feeling as reasoning. A journalist does not take sides, but it’s simply a fact that along with his eloquence his eyes betray sensitivity, intelligence and decency. This is a man who has been imprisoned by both sides, Palestinian and Israeli. He was tortured by the Palestinian Authority and has borne witness to, and been active within, over a quarter of a century of Palestinian struggle.

What are your reflections on the current situation as you experience it?
Right now we’re busy with internal issues; despite the continued existence of the occupation, internal issues take so much of our times, energy and attention. As you know, the entire Palestinian scene lacks harmony, or in other words a clear vision. I am speaking from several backgrounds; as one of the leaders of Kataaeb Shuhadaa Al-Aqsa, as a member of Fatah’s district committee — the supreme leadership body in Nablus — and of course as a Palestinian citizen, but let us talk about the current situation for the resistance. Perhaps we can say that the resistance has realised it made a number of mistakes leading to the result we have now. It should, from the very beginning, have found and followed a clear strategy, one that defined aims and a logic towards achieving those aims.

Unfortunately, wings of the Palestinian resistance with different political viewpoints and different religious beliefs, and in a way that was uncalculated, vied off with one another, without a clear vision, specifically in regard to the strategy of suicide operations, which in the end classified the Palestinians and the Palestinian resistance as terrorists, preventing us from defending the legitimacy of the resistance before public opinion, even in front ourselves as Palestinians, and with those whom we considered allies and friends. Our position is very weak regarding the legitimate right as Palestinians to resist, which at least in theory is guaranteed by international covenants, being an occupied country. This way we lost a right that should have been invoked in a mature manner.

Above all, we gave permission to Israel to use all their forces to hit the resistance, and to hit the Palestinians in general. We also gave to Sharon, to Sharon’s government — indeed to the Israeli logic of the conflict — permission to impose a lot of Israel’s goals, a lot of Sharon’s dreams, of controlling and grabbing the greatest possible extent of Palestinian lands. The resistance and the official political leadership were on two different sides, which prevented the Palestinian voice from reaching world public opinion. Because of the absence of a unified voice we ended up in a situation that is wracked with problems, a lot of corruption and chaos. We are searching now for a strategy to get out of this miserable abyss.

How will you do that?
I believe it will be hard. We’re talking now about the Palestinian elections as a strategy and point of entry to starting the process of reform and change in Palestinian political society. Palestinians at a ground level no longer trust the peace process, they don’t feel that we’re going in the right direction, that any real progress will be achieved, simply because of the existence of Sharon’s government. So we decided to start by getting our house in order. And we will be serious about that.

In the process of internal change, we crashed into a very important issue, one that represents something so important on the Palestinian stage, which is Fatah and the crisis within the movement; logically that the corruption in the Palestinian Authority (PA) is by default an extension of that existing in Fatah, or that it is reflected from Fatah to the PA. So it was necessary to reform Fatah — being the biggest power on the ground in Palestine — to achieve reform and change the PA. Now there is a battle inside Fatah between the old Fatah leaders, trying to control Fatah via the old guard, and the young leadership and the different organisational levels of Fatah bodies. It’s not always a dispute between right and wrong or angels and devils; it’s sometimes between two evils, within the corrupt core itself. Until now those with a new vision — that of amending and reforming — lack the presence necessary to make essential changes inside Fatah’s leadership institutions.

If we can make that change in Fatah then eventually we can make a big change inside the PA. This matter is not easy. It’s very complicated. For around 40 years Fatah has been dependent on a format that Arafat injected into it. It’s not easy to get rid of this right now.

Is Fatah still the biggest power on the ground?
Practically yes, but organisationally, as a result of the internal crisis, Fatah lost to Hamas — the second power on the ground — on more than one occasion. We see clearly that the internal disputes are reflected in the performance of Fatah, which offers space to smaller factions — much smaller even — to defeat it in more than one field.

Abu Mazen has charged officials with the task of “disarming wanted militants within two weeks”. Will he be able to?
This is also murky, or let us say ambiguous. If Abu Mazen talks about the arms of the resistance he knows that factions outside his influence, that refuse to disarm, own the majority of these weapons. But if he talks about the weapons that are used to create disorder — fawda al-silah, weapons outside the resistance–we previously agreed and we asked more than once for the PA to collect these arms. Maybe the whole issue is about Israeli pressure exercised on the PA and on Abu Mazen specifically, as if they are testing him, or pushing Palestinian society towards civil war as a result of these demands. It is very clear that this is a local Palestinian issue and when Israelis withdraw we will solve it internally.

A week ago the PA appointed General Nadal Asoli, security commander in Nablus, to the position of West Bank security chief. Is this a signal to the city of Nablus?
Asoli is one of the closest people to Haj Ismail Jabr, former head of the PA Preventive Security Services. He belongs to him and works under his supervision. Practically, when they fire Ismail and hire Asoli we don’t feel any real change. If they aimed to reform the security institutions by this change, sorry to say it, this is nonsense. It’s a joke. Changes are taking place within the same corrupt cycle. Asoli sees Ismail as his model.

On the expulsion of Al-Aqsa’s wanted from the presidential compound in Ramallah, what happened and do you feel betrayed by Abu Mazen?
In the end, it’s bad handling. From the very beginning, when the PA worked on the file of “the wanted” they didn’t deal with it appropriately, especially regarding Kataaeb Shuhadaa Al-Aqsa. At the time that the Palestinian political core was meeting and talking with the other Palestinian factions, and with the other military wings, the brothers of Kataaeb Al- Aqsa and their leaders were ignored. There was no communication apart from occasional messages passed from one or two security officials but never a Palestinian politician. No one bothered to inform us about new developments on the political level. This treatment is behind events in Ramallah.

When Abu Mazen ordered the removal of the wanted people from the muqataa, claiming that there were American guarantees for their safety, they didn’t feel secure, didn’t trust these guarantees as many incidents were preceded by such guarantees and agreements with the Israelis. The wanted brothers needed someone to hear their concerns and understand their point of view; that the Israelis were still in the streets of Ramallah and every other Palestinian city; that it’s our natural right to carry arms to defend ourselves — not to attack, but simply to defend if Israelis attack us. I think it’s a natural right for them to keep their weapons in defense of themselves. But political elites on the Palestinian side always deal with things in an upside down manner.

The real problem is that Israeli soldiers remain in the Palestinian territories, that the occupation remains, invasions continue. The Palestinian side should stay focused on this; push them to get out, for Israelis to withdraw. We are living in tension, worried about invasions, arrests, chasings, assassinations, and you are telling me to disarm? This is nonsense.

Do you think Abu Mazen will succeed in getting the Israelis out?
As Palestinians we’re used to tragic endings, whether to struggles on the political level or sacrifices in the field. What Abu Mazen is doing is a result of American and Israeli pressure. What we are asking of Abu Mazen, begging of him, is not to submit to their demands. We did not reach the point of open internal confrontation yet, which is, by the way, what the Israelis have been pushing for and laying bets on. Now they are trying to achieve this through the Palestinian leadership, with brother Abu Mazen — unilaterally and ahead of Israeli reciprocity — carrying out Palestinian commitments to the peace process. Abu Mazen and the leadership should pay very good attention to this issue. I repeat, we must not submit to this pressure.

What do you think the conditional amnesty reportedly offered by Israel to the list of wanted Palestinians?
During the negotiations about us — the wanted — I was maybe closer than anyone to those who were talking with the Israelis on this issue, and I was always sensitive to using the expression, “pardon”. I refused more than once the use of the expression “Israeli pardon of the wanted”. From the very beginning I also refused, and still refuse, a security-based solution to the wanted. I said there must be a political agreement because we are part of the general conflict, so we must have place in the political solution and not simply be contained according to security logic. We have long experience with the Israelis and we know how they like to arrange things.

Let us be clear, the resistance is not only Kataaeb Shuhadaa Al-Aqsa. There is also Hamas. Hamas has its own wanted, its own fighters, its own armed forces, but we can’t see, we don’t see coming up to the surface, any problem between Hamas and the PA. This problem only comes up with Shuhadaa Al-Aqsa and one of the main reasons is that there is a huge crisis inside Fatah. This crisis tried to express itself, and reflect itself, in Shuhadaa Al-Aqsa. Because the Shuhadaa is a Fatah wing for sure it lives this crisis of Fatah.

That’s why we always said we have to solve the Shuhadaa Al-Aqsa issue in an organisational manner as well as in the context of Fatah. On more than one occasion when the issue of the Kataaeb was transferred to the security level we objected and boycotted it. The proposed solutions always led us to a dead end, forestalling progress on other issues. The most important issue to Israel now is the truce. If the most important step is cooling down the situation, if everything follows from this, the Palestinian leadership should to give more attention to the issue of the wanted.

The Kataaeb from the beginning, when they spoke about a cooling down of the situation, made a huge effort to maintain calm in order to give Abu Mazen and the political leadership the chance to make all political efforts towards reaching solutions we think would benefit the Palestinian people. The leadership didn’t care or give real attention to this issue, the truce, with the Kataaeb, although through us something could happen that perhaps would put an end to this truce and put the Palestinian leadership in an embarrassing situation. The leadership should have redoubled their efforts with the Kataaeb, especially that they know that the Kataaeb doesn’t have a central or political leadership that they can deal with or reach an agreement with. They know that the Kataaeb consists of tens of groups and cells in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, so they would have needed to have made, in order to achieve an agreement and to ensure that the Kataaeb honoured the proposed truce, a much bigger effort.

The only thing we felt was their negligence and we remained for a while, we in Kataaeb Al-Aqsa, feeling we don’t know where we are going, because the Palestinian political elite doesn’t communicate with us.

Why did they ignore you when they know you’re armed?
I have long experience in this with the PA. First, the current state of corruption in the PA and the Palestinian leadership reflects itself on everything. I remember two years or more ago European parties moved to maintain a truce between the Palestinian military wings, including Kataaeb Al-Aqsa, and the Israelis. It was promoted by the European Commission — I don’t remember names but they used to come here a lot. They asked one of the leaders of the security forces to arrange a meeting with the Kataaeb commanders. He pointed to specific people who had no relation with the Kataaeb. He just wanted to seem like the one who controlled things on the ground. Of course the Commission considered that he was a leader of a security force and his information would be worth something.

The representatives of the Commission went to certain addresses, sat and talked with whoever was there, as if they were Kataaeb leaders, and they achieved a stack of easy agreements. They felt it was simple. And when they went to the Israelis to report the good news, the Israeli side asked, “With whom did you get these agreements — clowns sitting in their houses? If we wanted them we’d go get them.”

I emphasise again, the corruption exercised by Palestinian officials is reflected in everything, in every aspect of Palestinian life. Therefore we asked Abu Mazen from the beginning to start with political reform, embracing every Palestinian institution. The Palestinian Legislative Council, a parliament institution, is part of this political corruption. We need immediate and total reform, not only changing the faces but also procedures and strategies.

Isn’t there more than negligence and corruption at work here? You, yourself were imprisoned and tortured by the PA.
It is the scale of the corruption, which means there is no judicial institution that acts independently. This played a big role in keeping me jailed for 15 months; there is no logic to keeping me there without accusation, without charge, even if this charge were a lie at least would have I understood why I was there. Once a prosecutor came to me and said, “I don’t know why you’re here.” This was a sign I was imprisoned by a gang, not by an authority; only a gang would act in this manner.

Two days ago I was with the new minister of justice and I asked him about the men who tortured us. In few simple hours my friend, Mahmoud Jumail, was killed in front of my eyes. They were convicted by a Palestinian court and sentenced to 15-year terms. They didn’t spend 4 months in prison before being set free. One of these guys was sent to Algeria, for a training course in something related to the army, I don’t remember. So I asked the minister, “do I have the right to wonder why those men were released though the murder they committed was 100 per cent premeditated?” “You have a full right to complain,” he replied, “but I don’t know that anything will come of it.” Up until now he doesn’t talk about instituting real change in the legal institutions. He knows that this is related to the present Palestinian political situation, as much as the political situation is sound, as much as the legal apparatus is genuine, but he didn’t give a real answer.

These guys are now in Gaza. I have the ability to communicate with those who work with me there, with the Kataaeb in Gaza, and say, “Go and carry out the execution order… kill them,” but I’m criticising a situation of corruption so I don’t like to practice it. I don’t allow myself to do it. I remain bound by law.

The ceasefire you declared in November excluded soldiers and settlers. Do they remain legitimate targets despite the present ceasefire?
Indeed, it is this way. We can’t under any circumstances accept, as Palestinians, the existence of the settlers and the existence of the soldiers in the Palestinian territories. But from the point of view of not giving the Israelis excuses to break the ceasefire we suspended militant wing activities. That does not mean that we lend legitimacy to the presence of soldiers and settlers.

Would Palestinian resistance operations be possible without Israeli complicity? Isn’t there advantage in exposing the fissures within the Israeli society itself?
I can’t tell exactly if there’s any help in such operations. I can speak about how Sharon’s government prays to god to have such operations taking place, which gives reason and excuse to attack the Palestinians and to disavow Israeli obligations. It was good justification to build the separation wall, stealing a huge amount of land.

I’m referring to individuals, Israelis, who use the Intifada for personal profit.
I know one guy who had a friend, his girlfriend, who helped him. As I remember she was jailed for 13 years. I’m sure that no intelligence agencies, nor even settlers, help in committing such operations in the spirit of serving their own interests. It’s not even willful negligence. It’s obvious that were any facilitation offered, even merely that of neglecting security restrictions, this would lead to a government collapse.

We are living with them [the Israelis] for years. We understand them clearly; we know their red lines.

Didn’t Arafat once say the Palestinians didn’t need Hizbullah for weapons as the Israelis provided them?
For sure a segment of Israeli society makes it easier for us to get weapons, for money of course. The Palestinian side used this aberration within Israeli society; in other words, we used every means and method to get arms. Most of the weapons in the West Bank, or a great proportion of weapons, have come from Israel. But in general the lines of dependence are reversed: I can see that they depend on our failures. I already mentioned the stupid mistakes we have made. We didn’t have a clear strategy for the Palestinian resistance. We should have specified the place for its work as the occupied territories, and made its target the settlers and the soldiers that exist to protect them. It would have been possible this way to win a voice within Israeli society. It would also have prevented outsiders from denying our rights to defend our land and expel those who stole and occupied our land.

Members of Al-Aqsa in the West Bank reportedly said a couple of days ago they received money from Hizbullah to fund operations. Is this true?
I’m not aware of anyone saying so, but a relation with Hizbullah started in the early moments of this Intifada. Hizbullah fights the same enemy on the same land, and there is a natural and legitimate affinity between liberation movements and resistance movements worldwide. We are not ashamed to say there is a relation on this level. Hizbullah recognised that the Palestinian resistance movement needed help and it offered help, but without interfering in internal Palestinian affairs or seeking to shape the goals of the resistance. As for Iran, however, Hizbullah’s main sponsor, perhaps they wish that the Palestinians continue fighting Israel, and have an interest in the continuance of the conflict, so that attention is drawn away from them.

Mustafa Barghouti once said the Israelis want Palestinians to feel they lurk behind every house, every window. Does Israel have a hand in the destruction of trust within Palestinian society?
We’ve already mentioned that Israel is eager to see internal clashes within Palestinian society and its political institutions. This is not new. Certain tactics are used that keep Palestinians busy and then Israelis interfere in different ways. No one speaks optimistically about the near future. Everyone fears an explosion in the situation at any moment. The reason behind this is the Israeli insistence on never giving the Palestinians their legitimate rights in their lands. The continuous expansion of settlements, the continued construction of the wall, the permanent creation of problems in the daily life of Palestinians, the huge number of roadblocks and military checkpoints; all these things will push the ceasefire to end. No nation could continue this way, under this pressure.

History will record that they, the Israelis, invented one thing: the world’s biggest prisons. They build prisons on people — literally over them. The life that Israel has imposed upon Palestinians is impossible to live, and there will come a day, it isn’t far away, when the prisons will be destroyed. God alone gifted us with the mental power, the fortitude and stamina, to endure under enormous pressure and in impossible circumstances.

And the future?
We, the brothers and leaders of the Kataaeb Al-Aqsa, played a leading role in the ceasefire and don’t want to be in the lead of it collapsing. We know very well that Israel has no interest in ceasefires, as illustrated by the assassinations of Raaed Al- Karmi and Salah Shehadeh in January and August 2002, both in the context of ceasefires on the Palestinian side.

So we expect that Israel is striving to find ways of ending the current ceasefire, principally because Sharon’s government’s existence is predicated on war not peace. Given that it has to create reasons for its existence, it has to create conditions of war.

The Kataaeb remains alert to all scenarios, to all possibilities, and along with all the military wings, we will learn well, you can be assured, from past mistakes.

What is your view of Sharon’s disengagement plan?
It’s unilateral for the sake of the Israelis. Sharon cannot bear the consequences of the resistance in Gaza and he’s trying to look good internationally. Meanwhile, Israel will continue confiscating land and enlarging the settlements in the West Bank.

Is settlement expansion reason enough for Hamas to break the ceasefire?
Yes, and not only that; all kinds of aggression are reason enough to break the ceasefire. We have not seen a single positive gesture from the Israeli side. We’re being patient to prove to the world that the problem is Israel, not the Palestinians. We are not optimistic that the ceasefire will continue because Israeli aggression is intensifying and broadening, not decreasing. There cannot be a ceasefire from one side.

Is it realistic to hope that all West Bank settlements will be dismantled?
The West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem are occupied territories and everybody in the world knows it. If the Israelis want a ceasefire with the Palestinians they should withdraw from all occupied areas.

And the written understandings Bush passed to Sharon in 2004?
The US and the world should decide whether a solution is to be based on justice or the current situation. If the decision falls against justice there will be no truce, no ceasefire, and no solution. I think this would create a big problem for the West, especially the US and the Europeans, because they will look like hypocrites. They speak about democracy but they don’t believe it. They speak about freedom — freedom of expression, freedom of people, human rights — and do the opposite. They themselves sow the seeds of all kinds of hatred against them, the fruits of which spread throughout the world.

If integrated into the Palestinian political system, will Hamas move away from armed struggle?
Yes, under one condition: the Israeli occupation ends. Once the Israeli occupation ends we will not continue fighting as we will have no one to fight. Now there is occupation. We cannot be just a political party because ending occupation cannot come through political work alone: we tried all political avenues. We couldn’t do anything, and I think you are aware of that. When we resorted to armed struggle we were forced to do that. From 1948 until 1965 we did not shoot one bullet. We were waiting for the United Nations and other countries to help us. Nobody helped. When we give up hope of being helped we began fighting to achieve our goals. So it’s not that we like fighting, but we were forced to fight. If you know anyone in the world able to bring us our rights, please tell us and we’ll stop fighting, go to them, and ask for that.

What is your assessment of the current Palestinian leadership?
We don’t see a lot of changes. Many promises were given, still they are just promises, they are not tangible in real life. We don’t feel many changes and I think ordinary people feel no changes at all.

And Jericho and Tulkarem?
It’s a joke. It may be funny for those who are outside Palestine, listening to the news, “Oh good, it’s going well,” but if you live in these areas, the Israelis pulled out from the city centres and blockaded from outside. Nobody can enter or leave without permission. So what kind of pullout? They can sell these things to the world, but they cannot sell them to our people.

Would you respect a peace deal negotiated by Abu Mazen, even if it didn’t align with your own stance?
If it did not align with the Palestinian stance, nobody would respect it.

But there are differences among Palestinians.
We have a common strategy: that all the West Bank and Gaza, all the lands occupied in 1967, should be freed, with dismantling of the settlements and solving the problem of the refugees. This is agreed upon by everybody. Less than that, no one would agree — not Hamas nor the Palestinian people.

And the Geneva Initiative?
It was rejected by most Palestinians.

It was not rejected by the Palestinian Authority…
Well, they did not even agree upon it. They did not dare to agree upon it. And they would not have been able to agree upon it.

They didn’t scotch it either.
If they were afraid to announce publicly that they agreed with it they would not have been able to pass it. When Yasser Arafat was asked to sign at Camp David he said one thing to Clinton: “I can sign it but then you will be invited to my funeral.” No Palestinian can agree to what Yasser Arafat refused or agree to less than that, or maybe he will be having the same funeral Arafat was speaking about.

But Israel will never agree to UNGA 194.
Israel will not agree to many things. Israel is not thinking of returning the West Bank to Palestinians. Israel is not thinking of returning East Jerusalem to Palestinians. Israel is not thinking of stopping the killings. Israel has its own agenda. Our people will continue putting pressure on Israel until Israel will be forced to agree. We know in the end that Israel will be begging us to agree on things they don’t agree upon now.

Why did Hamas refuse to field a candidate for the presidency while it will run in the Legislative Council elections?
That was a political decision. We’re not looking for that position. But our people are demanding we run for the Legislative Council. We have many things that we can do through the council that we cannot do through the presidency. We’d like to have complete saturation, and complete saturation begins from the bottom up.

Is the Islamist trend in Palestine merely a reaction to Israeli abuses in the context of the current Intifada, or is it a deeper current?
It’s a deeper move not only in Palestine; it’s all over the world. People have tasted communism, secularism, nationalism, they tasted American democracy — especially that of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. They began to return to Islam. More now believe in Islam than any time before, at least in the last century. Take a poll of the Palestinians: 80 per cent would like to have an Islamic state in Palestine.

Apart from military means, what other means of pressure can be put on Israel?
We are not limited to military pressure. That’s why we talk to people; we’d like to make a coalition with people all over the world who refuse unjust acts. We are open to everyone in the world who believes in human values. Europeans consider Israel and the United States as the main violators of human rights in the world; the majority of people do not like the policy of Israel, the policy of the United States and I don’t think that they respect Sharon or Bush. We’re working on all levels and in the future we will achieve more.

The propaganda machine you’re confronting is very intense.
It’s not so much that they are working well. The problem is that we are not working well enough. What I mean by “we” is the Arab governments. Every debate we have with the Israelis we win. So it’s not difficult to convince people all over the world that Israel is the source of the problem.

But can you convince even Arab governments of this?
Arab governments have a different strategy. They will be convinced. They will be convinced or changed. In 1989, I was asked by US Congressmen why people in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe could demonstrate against their rulers and change them while Arabs could not change theirs. I told them it’s because the Americans were supporting the people in Eastern Europe against their rulers. In our case, America supports our rulers against our people.

But increasingly US pressure is bearing on Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Syria.
Sooner or later our rulers will understand that they are no more than puppets in the hands of the Americans. Once their role ends, the US will kick them out without any tears. Maybe they will understand that.

The US is supposedly working towards democratisation in the Middle East, yet democratisation, if it meant anything, would be a problem for Israel.
That’s right. That’s why Israel and the United States are against democracy in the Middle East and the Islamic world.

But they sure talk about it a lot.
Well, Israel is talking more than anyone else about human rights. This is a dilemma that the United States must solve, because they cannot support dictatorship and speak about democracy. The result is that people do not trust American foreign policy.

How do you view the separation wall?
The separation wall is designed to eliminate any possibility of a contiguous Palestinian state in the West Bank. It’s like knowing the final score at the beginning of the game. It’s not a security wall. It’s a wall that decides borders that should not be decided now. At the same time, its effect on our people is criminal. Continuing with the wall, or leaving it like this, I don’t think there can be any peace with the Israelis. We cannot agree on having a state of zones. This is what the Israelis are proposing to give us. And they would agree that we call it an empire, the great empire of Palestine. But it is zones. And they cannot sell us this kind of joke.

It is ominous that it is Sharon who is doing this. Is he ready to give the Palestinians a state because the last thing he wants is a bi-national solution?
The Palestinian state is a need for the Israelis. But it’s not a state that we think of; it’s a state that they think of. It’s a state of zones. An area here and an area there that is surrounded by the Israelis: a state that controls less than 40 per cent of the West Bank. And that’s not the state we are looking for.

My fear is that a state will be established only to be destroyed by another war…
That’s good for us. It is not a state that we will shed tears over. That will increase the armed struggle and it will increase the problem with the Israelis. There was a great Soviet Union, where is it now? History does not stop. Neither Israel nor the United States will continue for long to be great powers in the world and to do what they want. So we are not in a hurry. Once I told the Israelis they waited 2,000 years to return back to their homeland, as they say. Well, we have struggled less than 70 years. We can wait another 10 or 20 years. But every Palestinian knows that the Israeli problem will be at an end soon — sooner than anybody thinks.

The operation started around 5pm, Tuesday. The two men killed in what is unquestionably a case of targeted assassination were found hugging each other between two rocks below the Baraka settlement that looks over Huwara checkpoint in eastern Nablus. They had apparently been dragged there by an Israeli army unit that earlier surrounded the village of Kufor Kaleel in search of the men. At least one tank and a helicopter provided cover throughout. It is unclear if the men were dead or alive when they were dragged. Palestinian sources report they were not armed and no gunfight had occurred. Further, they claim that the men were apprehended, interrogated and then shot.

The bodies arrived at Rafidia Hospital around 11pm. Paramedics who retrieved them had been prevented from doing so for three hours. The local District Command Office told them that if they tried to reach the men it would not be responsible if they were fired upon. The two men killed — reportedly members of Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades — are Issam Hamza from Balata refugee camp in eastern Nablus and Mahyob Kaneh from Kufor Kaleel village. They were between 25 and 26 years old.

Israel claims they were about to carry out a suicide operation.

“This is not a gunshot wound,” Samir Abu Zarour tells me as he lifts the left thigh of one of the assassinated men. The skin has been punctured behind the knee around half an inch deep and a similar wound is on the man’s left buttock. An even deeper wound has been inflicted around the anus. The man’s clothes have been torn in these areas and no burn marks, indicative of gunfire, are visible. “He was stabbed by a knife, probably a bayonet,” Zarour states.

This man had most likely bled to death. A gunshot wound around four inches in diameter is on his left thigh, which cut the main artery in his leg. Another is on his right side, at the top of the hip. A further gunshot wound is on his upper right arm.

The second man was also found with multiple gunshot wounds. Below the man’s neck are about 20 small wounds, indicative of a kind of bullet that explodes inside on impact.

“There are death squads that come, not normal units,” a Palestinian tells me outside the hospital. “They don’t come to arrest anyone, they just come to kill them.”

The terms of any ceasefire are strained to breaking point when one side commits acts like these. The horror is infinitely sharpened when that side is one of the best-equipped militaries in the world deployed against an occupied people which at best stages its defence by ready-made or light arms. It seems again that Sharon, Mofaz and the upper levels of the Israeli security structure want to goad Palestinians into responding, seemingly assured that the death of Palestinians never elicits an equivalent revulsion to the death of Israelis.

How many more tests of good will must Palestinians endure? Perhaps this should have been on Abu Mazen’s mind in Sharm El-Sheikh as he stretched to shake the hand of the prime minister of Israel.