Press Briefing by Dr. Alon Liel, Director-General, Ministry of
Foreign Affairs, on the Sharm el-Sheikh Fact-Finding Committee
Jerusalem, December 10, 2000
Good afternoon. As you know, we will have tomorrow the first
meeting of the Sharm el-Sheikh fact-finding committee. It will
start at 10:30 in the Prime Minister's office, and will run until
14:00 including lunch, and then the committee is going to Gaza to
meet Arafat and will spend the afternoon until the evening.
You know who the members of the committee are. As far as we heard
so far, all five members will be here. Two of them are coming
tonight already - Solana and Jagland - the rest are coming early
tomorrow morning. Attending the meeting, as far as we know now,
besides the five, will be five aides, one to each member, and a
representative of the State Department. From our side there
will
be, besides the Prime Minister, officials from the Prime
Minister's office, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the
Ministry of Defense. The Ministry of Defense is chairing this
team, that is, preparing the written material. We are working now
in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, with full coordination with
the Prime Minister's office and the Ministry of Defense on the
agenda of the meeting.
We welcome the committee, and we wish its members a lot of luck
in their work and in their effort to reduce the level of
violence, or even eliminate it, and to facilitate the continued
negotiations by the two sides towards a permanent status
agreement. The role of the committee as we see it, is to play a
positive role in bridging gaps and lowering tensions, definitely
not to become a divisive force.
We had, as you know, during the last two weeks, conversations
with the American government and with members of the committee
regarding the terms of reference of the committee, and it took
about two weeks, or ten days, to clarify things. We have the
feeling that the committee understands today the concerns that we
have regarding the terms of reference, and that they all come
with a very positive attitude. They see what's going on, they see
that the violence continues.
You know that we asked the committee to start working after the
violence would be eliminated. They are coming although violence
was not eliminated, and we agreed to this because we have the
feeling that the committee members are determined to try and
assist to reduce if not eliminate the violence. Since there is so
much international concern, in so many circles, in so many
countries, regarding this wave of violence, we thought that we
should give the international community, at least in this form of
this committee, a very serious chance to play a role in this
attempt to eliminate the violence.
Q: Do you have the terms of reference in writing, and, if not,
why did you agree that the committee would start working without
having an official document?
A: First of all I don't know, they are coming tomorrow, maybe
Senator Mitchell is bringing with him something in writing.
But
we, based on the contacts we had with committee members and with
the American administration, we have the picture that our
concerns are very well known to them and understood, and we had
the feeling that based on verbal conversations, some of which
were written down by the sides, we don't have any reason to
worry, and the committee can start working.
Q: How will the committee work?
A: I can tell you how we see it, and I don't know if this will be
exactly the full picture: The sides will submit in writing their
positions on what the committee is going to discuss - the
outbreak of violence, and the means to eliminate the violence.
Both sides will prepare their positions in writing and submit
them. We will probably decide tomorrow on a date for the
submission of the material.
I think most of the work of the committee, as far as we see it,
will be based on documents, materials, positions, submitted in
writing. If they will ask to meet people, and interview people
besides, we will have to confirm it. We don't see the committee
as running in any way an independent investigation and not even
interviewing people without the sides knowing. There will be a
mechanism of dealing with the written material, and the oral
material, and the sides will have a full picture on which kind of
written material and oral material is being submitted to the
committee.
Each side will submit its position on what happened during the
last four-five months in the region, starting from Camp David on.
Based on the material that the sides will submit, I assume that
the committee will work on the events that happened only
recently, and we are not speaking of anything before Camp David.
Our feeling is that the committee has a macro-type of approach
and not a micro-type of approach, but we'll have to hear it from
them. This is how we see it from the conversations. The approach
is more a political type of approach to try and calm down the
emotions and reduce the violence.
Q: When will the material be submitted to the committee?
A The committee requested that the material will be submitted by
the 16th of December. We don't see this at this stage as possible
because December 16th is 6 days from today, and the first meeting
is only tomorrow, so it's 5 days after the meeting. I don't think
the material will be ready by then, and tomorrow probably one of
the things we'll have to discuss is the date for submitting the
material. They also have to go to the Palestinians and discuss
the date with them, but it will not be in the very long future,
we're speaking on a matter of weeks, regarding the date.
Q: (on the Palestinian position)
A: We have seen several interviews by Yasser Abed Rabbo regarding
the committee, and as you know there was a meeting of the
committee members on the November 26th in New York. We send Alan
Baker, our Legal Advisor, and the Palestinians sent Yasser Abed
Rabbo. We saw his interviews after the meeting, and the way he
presented it is totally unacceptable. Some of the worries we had
stemmed from the way Abed Rabbo presented it, dragging it to the
Security Council, dragging it to the Geneva Convention, and
widening the scope to something that doesn't resemble at all the
understanding of Sharm el-Sheikh. Most of our worries were
assuaged by the committee members, and we hope that the attitude
of the Palestinians towards the work of the committee will be a
professional attitude here, and not a propaganda attitude,
because I think this is the key to enable the committee to play a
positive role.
If both sides will try and push it to the propaganda ground and
battle there, instead of submitting material verbally and in
writing, and dealing with it according the modalities agreed upon
in Sharm el-Sheikh, where the main issue was to try and eliminate
violence - if this propaganda battle will start, the role of this
committee will be substantially damaged. So we hope both sides
will try and be precise as possible and present the details from
Sharm el-Sheikh professionally and not emotionally, not as
propaganda but with a legal and professional attitude.
Q: (on the composition and work of the committee)
A: In Sharm el-Sheikh it was agreed that the committee will have
an American chairman, a Norwegian member, an Israeli member, and
a Palestinian member. This was the original structure. We already
agreed to widen it, and the committee looks today more
international than was meant, at least by us, at Sharm el-Sheikh.
The reason we did it was that we felt that there is international
concern regarding this wave of violence, and there is a lot of
goodwill in the international community to try and assist. We
thought that this international goodwill could be channeled to a
fact-finding committee. We really hope that not only we will try
to help the committee in its work, and help it to a constructive
role, but everybody - the Palestinians, the rest of the
international community, and everybody who is now so involved in
attempts to reduce the violence will let this committee work and
give this committee a chance to succeed.
As you know, there are five members. Each of the them has an
aide, who, as far as we have seen so far, are all ambassadors, or
heads of departments in foreign ministries, so most them are
professional diplomats. According to what we have heard, there
are also several technical people, some of whom have police
background. But the main task of this committee as we see it will
be to analyze the written material, to prepare comments or
questions based on the written material. I don't think we cannot
expect five personalities of this caliber to do the technical
work by themselves, so what concerned us mainly was that we
understand how the committee is going to function, and how the
committee is going to see its role. Once we understood what is
the role of the committee, and what are the modalities - if there
is a technical team or not is not as important.
The purpose of this committee is not to put the blame on one of
the sides. This committee is there to see to it that such a thing
will not happen again, and to see how we can reduce the
violence.
We are speaking of a committee that is there to check how a peace
process of seven years deteriorated to a wave of violence, and
how can we prevent such a thing from reoccurring, and how can we
stop the violence. This is the mandate, the mandate stems from
Sharm el-Sheikh. If there will be unreasonable demands on the
Palestinian side to add topics that are not to be covered by the
work of the committee, it will only damage the work of the
committee. There is a very clear written understanding in the
Sharm el-Sheikh decision that speaks on establishing a
fact-finding committee, and speaks of the mandate of the
committee. We don't want to tackle it negatively - what we don't
want the committee to do. We know what the committee is supposed
to do, and we hope that it will do what it is supposed to do for
the benefit of the sides of the region.
Most of what was agreed with the committee was verbal. They said
that the attitude will be very positive, that their approach will
be basically political. They will not go too much into details,
because the purpose is to bridge gaps, to create a new
atmosphere, to reduce violence. They spoke in general terms, and
we trust and believe that the committee members have this
positive approach, and will not start dealing with issues that
might only increase the already inflamed emotions and widen the
differences, the gaps between the sides.
We were concerned about the fact that in statements we saw coming
from the Palestinians there were different expectations, at least
public expectations on the Palestinian side. We were worried that
what we call the terms of reference, or the modalities are not
clear enough. But when we heard about the general atmosphere as
it was conveyed to us, and when we heard about the response to
our very basic concerns, especially that we don't have an
independent investigation going on. We rejected the idea of
having an investigation or inquiry, we said we are not going to
have such an inquiry commission, and the result was a
fact-finding committee. Once we knew that it's really a
fact-finding committee, and we know how the committee will work
approximately, and we see the positive atmosphere, we thought the
committee can start working tomorrow.
The fact that this positive attitude of the committee members was
conveyed to us was a very calming, and how they will draw their
conclusions regarding their work, regarding each incident,
regarding each topic, is, I think, at the moment, not as critical
as the general atmosphere that they are trying to create during
their first visit and the first meetings. I think that it will be
extremely important that after tomorrow, a few hours with us, a
few hours with the Palestinians, the committee members themselves
will leave the region saying, "Look, there is something we can do
here, there is a contribution that we can make," and not go home
and say, "What we have in front of us is something we cannot deal
with it, it's unbridgeable, we give up. Let's go, each of us is
very busy with other things, and we made our political careers
already. Let's not go into this mess."
So I hope very much, because it's very important to us, and I
hope that it's very important to the Palestinians, that after
this short visit of altogether I think 12 or 13 hours to both
sides, the committee members will be motivated to go on and
contribute to peace in the region.