Queen Noor al Hussein |
March 16, 1984
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Queen Noor al Hussein
Queen of Jordan; Founder, Royal Endowment for Culture and Education; Founder, Arab Children's Congress; Founder, The Jerash Festival for Culture and Arts
Club Introduction
Thank you, Mrs. Black, for your most gracious welcome, and Mr. Maynard for your kind and generous words of introduction. It is always a pleasure to be in San Francisco, especially as I have many friends and relatives in the Bay Area. My father and brother are Stanford graduates, and I would have attended that distinguished institution but for the irresistible opportunity to be one of the pioneers in Princeton's first class of women. So being here is a special pleasure because it gives me the chance to meet with you, both as a representative of Jordan and as an individual who is happy to be with family and friends.
The Commonwealth Club enjoys a worldwide reputation for its activities and the objective and impartial standards that mark its distinguished programs. I understand that representatives from our region of the world will be participating in your activities this year, and of course my brother-in-law, Prince Hassan, spoke to you in l982 on Middle East issues. Clearly, your concern for peace in our region is paramount, and I am gratified by your presence here today.
I speak to you as a Jordanian, and also as a woman who began her life here in America. As a child and as a young adult, I was privileged to benefit from the very finest that this great country has to offer, in education, in the arts, and in the quality of life that provides so much opportunity for the fullest expression of an individual's abilities and talents. More importantly, I was guided by the rich wellspring of American principles and virtues. This is a precious legacy that I shall always value, and hope to be able to share with my children.
Most of the fundamental principles of the American way of life are mirrored in the concepts that have guided Arab and Islamic life for more than fourteen hundred years. In Islam, such principles are obligations of our faith, and encompass equality before God and the law, justice, tolerance and compassion. It is obligatory in Islam to give a portion of one's income to the poor and needy, and to respect the beliefs of others. Islam also instructs us to seek knowledge, and to educate our sons and daughters equally. Both of our countries are sustained by religious faiths that are tolerant, constructive and enduring. Both have contributed a great deal to the common heritage of mankind, to the aspirations of people to be politically free, economically strong, intellectually productive and morally valiant.
One of the noblest concepts of our Arab and Islamic heritage is found in the word peace, "salaam" in Arabic. Salaam is the daily greeting of every Arab and Muslim, and honesty in this search for peace is our moral duty.
I have journeyed with ease between the Arab and American worlds precisely because these two worlds are so close in character and moral fiber. But, as I look to America now from my home in Jordan, I see a different America confronting my husband's, my children's, my people's, and my country's hope for a better future. In American and Arab efforts to reach that long, elusive goal of peace in the Middle East, the noble image of America as a world's banner of justice, freedom and equality, has had to face many challenging tests. From time to time, the quality of that image has suffered from the disturbing weight of government policies dictated by political expediency at the expense of national principles.
No test, however, has been as challenging, in the range of all its difficulties and complexities, as the one now confronting the United States. The tragic situation in Lebanon, which was so disastrously compounded by the Israeli invasion in 1982, represents a major arena of political upheaval and loss of human life in the Middle East. An arena where the forces of radicalism are gaining power and now reach out to threaten the security of the entire region.
While the conflict in Lebanon is on one level the manifestation of an internal political struggle, it is on the wider level one more terrible consequence of the root conflict in the Middle East. In essence, it represents the latest and most disastrous price our region has had to pay for a conflict that has remained unresolved for more than three decades, despite all regional and international efforts to reach a solution. That conflict holds at its center the fate of a people, the Palestinians, who still struggle to regain their homeland, who are still denied their inalienable human right to self-determination on their own soil.
In its invasion of Lebanon, Israel believed it could resolve the Palestinian problem by destroying its fighting force and dispersing its people once again. She was wrong. The Palestinian people, like most displaced peoples, no matter how many times they may be uprooted by force, will continue to struggle to regain their rights. The deadly magnitude of Israel's assault upon the Palestinians in Lebanon revealed to the world, more vividly than ever before, the tragic human dimensions of the Middle East conflict and the heavy price Lebanon has paid and is still paying as a result.
Force will never resolve the problem, and any political decision predicated on the use of force to quell human resistance is bound to fail. In the past 36 years, five wars have been fought in the Arab-Israeli conflict. Each, in turn, only succeeded in magnifying the problem, and making its solution more complex and difficult. King Hussein, Jordan's leader for more than thirty years, has pursued every viable peace initiative in the Middle East conflict, has always been deeply convinced that force is not the answer, that it has not worked in the past and will not work in the future. Today no nation or people can be subjugated by force.
We no longer live in geographical or political isolation on this earth and the suppression of a people in one corner of the world, no matter how remote, has immediate and profound impact on the entire international community. Nations have reached a point of interdependence, that requires not only a sharing of natural resources, technological knowledge and economic wealth, but also calls for mutual respect for the moral principles of national conduct. It is essential that nations, in pursuing their interests, guard against the expediency of compromising those principles.
The United States, in its role as peacemaker in the Middle East conflict, has not lived up to its commitment to the principle of human rights, and has damaged its interests in the economic, political and strategic stability of the area. In light of these interests, we in the Arab world are perplexed by America's continued unconditional support of Israel, and we are dismayed by the degree to which the United States, in the process, has been led to compromise its fundamental principles of human rights and justice under the law.
With regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict, these principles have been, and still are being, blatantly violated by Israel. The continuing practice on the part of the United States to either ignore or excuse these violations has seriously tarnished the American image in Arab eyes. As a Jordanian of Arab-American background, I am deeply concerned about the consequent damage this may cause to the friendly relations and mutual interests which for so long have existed between the United States and the Arab world. I hope that what I have to say today will be received as a constructive contribution to our friendship.
For almost 17 years, Israel has been systematically violating the basic principles of international law and human rights that govern the conduct of every nation that considers itself a democracy. Ever since 1967, in its occupation by force of Arab territories, Israel has been in the process of trying to retain its illegal hold on these lands, changing their demographic character and annihilating the national existence of the people that have lived on this land for all time.
These people, the Palestinians, number almost four million men, women and children. Two million of them live in exile in various countries around the world, including Jordan, displaced as a consequence of Israel's military actions and occupation practices. Of the other two million, almost one and a half million live under the oppressive bondage of Israeli occupation in the West Bank and Gaza. The remainder endure life as second-class citizens in Israel itself. This, in cold numbers, is the human dimension we have to consider.
With methodical purpose, in defiance of all international norms and all United Nations resolutions censoring its conduct, Israel has persisted in a policy aimed at keeping the land and depopulating it of its indigenous inhabitants. Except for a mild reprimand every now and again, the United States generally has turned a blind moral eye on the legal and human abuses Israel has been committing to realize its aim. This continuing contradiction between America's principles and practices has distressed all of us in the Arab world, who look to America as our friend and ally. American credibility among Arabs, especially after Israel's devastating invasion of Lebanon, has never been so low.
If Arab faith, and the faith of many other disillusioned peoples in other regions of the world, and the noble image of America as a champion of democracy is to be restored, and if a lasting peace in the Middle East is ever to be realized, it is time for the United States to bring its practices in line with an active and unambiguous exercise of the principles that govern its democracy.
Consider first the principle of inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force, which is set forth high in the United Nations charter. In l956, America honorably upheld this principle when it took the strong political stand that resulted in the withdrawal of Israeli, French and British forces from Egypt. Yet in all the years of Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands taken by force, the United States has failed to make a similar strong stand. While the United States politely voices displeasure over the illegal settlements that Israel has been establishing on those lands, it continues to provide her with enormous amounts of foreign aid every year, part of which finances the expansion and increasing number of those settlements.
Consider also human rights and the concept of self-determination, an ideal that America's President Wilson gave to the world. Why is it that the United States refuses to apply it to the Palestinians? Why is it that in Grenada United States takes military action in the name of freedom and at the same time ignores Palestinian demands for equal freedom? Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and Gaza are experiencing every day what it means to be denied the freedom of self-determination over their own lives and future. For years they have been suffering the denial of human rights in every aspect of their lives - morally, physically, materially.
To date, Israel has succeeded in expropriating over 50 percent of the West Bank and Gaza lands, as well as over 80 percent of all water resources. It has formally annexed Jerusalem, a city holy to all of us who believe in one God. It has also formally annexed the Golan Heights, and in the West Bank and Gaza, under its creeping annexation policy, it has already established 165 Jewish settlements, and plans by 1985 to have 150,000 settlers in residence there. These facts on the ground are rapidly changing the demographic character of the West Bank and Gaza, creating a new political reality that will become more and more difficult to reverse.
As for the Palestinian people themselves, Israel's human abuses include expulsion by force or intimidation, imprisonment and detention, destruction or confiscation of personal properties, curfews, road blocks, censorship, restriction on travel, arbitrary closure of schools and universities, collective punishments and penalties. These suppressive measures and others like them are intended to break the spirit of the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza, and drive them to the point of leaving their homelands in despair.
Such Israeli conduct is in specific defiance of the Fourth Geneva Convention of l949, that international document signed by so many nations - including Israel. It should be noted that the protections set forth in that convention were a result of the violent persecution of the Jews during the first part of this century, and were specifically drafted to prevent a similar tragedy from happening to any people anywhere in the world again. Ironically, in Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, the ones persecuted have themselves become persecutors.
It is time for Israel to return to the ethical traditions of its Judaic heritage. In recent years we have been hearing voices of peace emerging from the people, from those Israelis who have become burdened by the heavy immoral weight of their government's illegal and intransigent policies and its continuing abuse of another people's rights. These Israelis want peace now. They recognize that there is no alternative if they are to reach a free, prosperous and secure life of co-existence with their Arab neighbors. Behind all the complexities of the problem, the issue finally comes down to a central point: the legal and human rights of the Palestinians to live in freedom and dignity on their own land. For decades the Arab peoples and their leaders have been insisting on no more and no less than those legitimate rights.
King Hussein, who is deeply committed to the principles of democracy in the leadership of his country, has long been a champion of those rights. He has always advocated moderation and sought peaceful solutions rather than violence and war. Moderation, however, does not imply weakness. Firmly, with no deviation, and in unequivocal terms, King Hussein and other Arab leaders have repeatedly spelled out the basic requirements for a just, comprehensive and lasting peace. The international community, through its unanimous voice in more than one United Nations resolution, chiefly in Security Council Resolution 242, of November, 1967, has called for the very same requirements.
The formula for peace is not new; its terms are based on an irreducible reality that Israel still refuses to face. Since l967, King Hussein drew the bottom line when he said, "Israel may either have peace or territory, but she can never have both." Since then, time and time again he has repeated that acquisition of territory by force is a contradiction of peace and a guaranteed threat to security - that only peace can secure a nation's border. Simply and clearly defined, the prerequisites for peace demand that Israel withdraw from all the Arab territories it has occupied since 1967; that the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination on their own land be recognized; and that the sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of all states in the region be respected. Through dedicated political action by people of goodwill in America and in the Middle East, the long suffering of the Palestinian people can be ended, and our region can finally experience the peace we so much desire.
As my husband once expressed it, "We want to hear the tracks of bulldozers, not tanks; the footsteps of travelers, not troops. Let war be banished from these lands forever so that we may all engage our minds and energies in the development of the area, and build a future of peace, prosperity and hope for all our children."
I know this can happen; that the principles upon which this great country was founded, principles that begin and end with freedom, justice and human rights in all their various manifestations, can make it happen. I have faith and confidence that America's ideals will more actively guide her national policy, and that one day soon, the United States will put into practice in the Middle East the noble exercise of its humanitarian spirit.
Thank you, and God bless you.
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