WASHINGTON, Feb. 12 (UPI) -- Resolving the Palestinian question is key to bringing an enduring peace in the Middle East, Palestinian Authority legislator Hanan Ashrawi said Thursday.
"What's good for the Palestinians could be what's good for the region and for humanity," Ahsrawi said.
She said that the hands-off approach of the United States, the one nation she believes could influence Israel's behavior, would do little to address the real problems behind building peace.
The United States has placed issues of Palestinian democratization on the "back burner," she said, while engaging in crisis management, verbal commitments, and de facto, if not unconscious, accommodation of Israeli measures. Any vacuum created by the absence of a third party, particularly the United States, is going to be filled by Israeli unilateralism, she said. She argued that neither the European Union nor the United Nations would be willing to act without genuine U.S. involvement.
Ashrawi suggested an international military force intervene to bring about peace, adding that the quartet that sponsored the "road map" to peace had been sidelined. She said that the quartet was waiting for a signal from the United States to resume the peace process.
Since the intifada started in September 2000, more than 2,800 Palestinians and at least 875 Israelis have been killed in the violence. Most of the Israeli deaths have been from Palestinian suicide bombers.
Ashrawi's speech came on the heels of violence Wednesday when Israeli troops killed 15 Palestinians and wounded at least 50 in two raids in the Gaza Strip.
In addressing the "road map" -- the U.S.-backed plan set forth in June 2003 -- she said Israelis found fault with it and issued 14 reservations about it. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, she said, only accepted the parts of the "road map" that were consistent with the Israeli Knesset's decisions.
"The integrity of the text is there, but the integrity of behavior is absent," she said.
Israel made its own security a precondition for the "road map," she said, adding that the act's clauses were supposed to have been implemented simultaneously, while Israelis decided the steps would be taken sequentially. She said that the postponement of implementation meant that Israelis would continue to commit acts of violence.
The "road map" has been backed by the Quartet -- the United States, United Nations, European Union and Russia -- but has been put on hold in the continuing violence.
Ashrawi's view was that Palestine "must prove that they are worthy of being negotiated with" since the United States lacks the political will to make sure that Israel complies with the agreement.
The barrier being constructed by Israel to separate itself from Palestine is "an apartheid wall, and it renders any kind of viable solution impossible," she said.
In the Middle East, Ashrawi said, the U.S.-led Iraq war sparked feelings of injustice and inequity, feeding violence and extremism.
The war "served to confirm Arab people's worst views of the United States," she said, which led to "tremendous suffering."
The key to resolving the conflict, she said, was developing free and fair elections, beginning on the local level.
"You need to give people a political process, and a chance to produce a peace that is viable, that has sustenance," she said.
Ashrawi stressed the importance of the United States in positively intervening in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
She was not seeking recognition of Palestine as a state, she said, because it already was a state.
"We have a state," she said. "The problem is our state is under occupation."
