Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Syrian President Bashar Assad (AP)
Dr. Sari Nusseibeh was the PLO representative in Jerusalem from 2001 to 2002 and co-founder, with Israeli Knesset member Ami Ayalon, of the People’s Voice movement. He gave an interview to the Jerusalem Post last week to mark the publication of his new book, Once Upon a Country:
“I’ve come across many people in my life - whether Israelis, Palestinians, Americans or others - with whom, if you sit with them and begin to have a conversation, you feel there’s mutual respect. And then there are people with whom you feel there’s no mutual respect. I know from experience that with the latter, you will not be able to establish the kind of political agreement that is required here.
“If you go back to Palestinian-Israeli negotiations: We have people on our side who are very clever, and people on the Israeli side who are very clever, but who might, when they sit at the table, not come to an agreement because of the absence of this basic requirement - one which needn’t exist when negotiating a business transaction. But you do need it when you’re negotiating peace, because what you’re creating is made up of human beings. And the human element has to be incorporated into every step taken along the way.”