YouSaid · the spoken record

Muasher

lines on the record: 25
first: 2008-05-20
most recent: 2023-12-29
sittings or episodes: 2
sources: un-security-council

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“By abandoning serious attempts to resolve the conflict in recent years and by ignoring the root cause of the problem — the occupation — we are where we are today. The option to pursue another process along the lines of earlier ones is certainly there, but it will fail, with violence continuing to define the world of Palestinians and Israelis in the foreseeable future. Either a bold decision must be taken to end the conflict now and, although still with great difficulty, to try to effect a viable two-State solution, or the world will have to deal not only with occupation, but with the more difficult question of apartheid. The choice is ours.”
2023-12-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9522 (2023) · source
“The loss of hope for a Palestinian State will translate into Palestinians demanding equal rights with Israelis where they live. The Israelis will not be able to indefinitely rule over a majority in a system where Palestinians would be living under apartheid. If that is coupled with the issue of the generational gap we are witnessing in the West — where younger generations are increasingly more supportive of Palestinians and the issue of rights than older generations — then the world will become increasingly more critical of the occupation, and the problem will start shifting from one focusing on the shape of a solution to one anchored in equal rights. Those are the options for the future. The international community is, in my view, certainly partly to blame for the situation in which we find ourselves today.”
2023-12-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9522 (2023) · source
“Jordan and Egypt have succeeded in drawing international attention to that issue, to the point where the United States and other countries have publicly come out in strong opposition to mass transfer. The Palestinians themselves have learned that lesson from 1948, when 750,000 refugees were forced to leave their land and were never allowed to return by Israel, despite United Nations resolutions to the opposite effect. The third scenario is that, if a two-State solution is not effected soon — indeed, now — and mass transfer proves to be sufficiently resisted by the Palestinians, then it is most likely that the occupation will continue, albeit with changing conditions. The demographic factor will increasingly matter in the years ahead, with a Palestinian birth rate higher than that of the Israelis.”
2023-12-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9522 (2023) · source
“If Israel does not intend to end the occupation and accept a two-State solution, and if it does not want to become a minority ruling over a majority in a situation that many human rights organizations — including Israeli ones — have called apartheid, then Israel’s preferred alternative under that scenario is to try to effect a mass transfer of Palestinians from Gaza to Egypt and from the West Bank to Jordan. We are already witnessing several indications of that. Large parts of Gaza have become practically uninhabitable, and several Israeli Cabinet Ministers, including Netanyahu himself, have been directly or indirectly quoted as promoting the forcible or voluntary transfer of Palestinians. But mass transfers will not be easy to implement.”
2023-12-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9522 (2023) · source
“If a two-State solution is deemed difficult to effect today, it will, in all probability, become impossible in the future due to those demographic and political realities. The second scenario is the mass transfer of Palestinians by Israel outside of Palestinian territories. Israel today is faced with another factor that has become impossible to ignore: demography. The number of Palestinian Arabs in areas under Israel’s control has become greater than the number of Israeli Jews.”
2023-12-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9522 (2023) · source
“That logic states that, in the end, that scenario is the preferred solution for all parties, which at one point in time will come to understand that there is no way out except to share the land by separating the two communities within two States. All one has to do is try to keep things quiet and wait for a better time, when there are Israeli and Palestinian Governments willing to compromise. The problem with that logic is that a preferred scenario is not a sufficient condition to make it happen. It assumes a static status quo, which is not the case with the continued expansion of settlements. If the number of settlers today makes it difficult to separate the two communities, the situation will irreversibly worsen in a few years, when the settler community could reach 1 million.”
2023-12-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9522 (2023) · source
“Even if the political will were to exist to end the occupation and adopt a two-State solution, separating the two communities would still be a daunting task. But the purpose of my intervention is to indicate what a serious political process entails so that illusions of success — if the past is to be repeated — are cast aside. But if the international community decides that is too unrealistic, let us look at what the alternatives might look like. First, there is waiting for better times to effect a two-State solution. That has been the preferred scenario for the Biden Administration, as well as that of the international community.”
2023-12-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9522 (2023) · source
“Seventh, the reconstruction of Gaza becomes a step along the road to a settlement with more parties, such as Gulf States, the European Union or the World Bank, ready to take part, where they are not today. Syria teaches us a lesson here. Despite the fact that the war has been largely over for the past five years there, no reconstruction has taken place in the absence of a plan for the future of the country. Eighth, an international fund is set up to help Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank stay on their land, to alleviate fears of mass transfer of Palestinians outside Palestinian land. Does that sound ambitious? It does not even start to address what to do with the settlements issue.”
2023-12-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9522 (2023) · source
“Second, the United Nations would adopt a resolution recognizing a Palestinian State on the basis of the 1967 borders a priori, with details to be worked out through negotiations. Third, settlement activity would be completely frozen. Fourth, in a reverse engineering process, negotiations become focused on the steps needed to reach that objective rather, than on what the end game looks like. Fifth, fresh elections are held, both in Israel and in the West Bank and Gaza. Over this plan, voters would go to the polls based on this clearly defined political horizon. Sixth, the issue of who rules Gaza becomes a step along the road to end the occupation, rather than an end game by itself. Solutions that were rejected by both parties today because of the absence of an overall political framework will be revisited.”
2023-12-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9522 (2023) · source
“They did not specify an end game, and therefore negotiations took place forever while Israel was building more settlements and rendering the very concept of a two-State solution, which we are all in support of, impossible. If we cast those difficulties aside, I would like the Council to engage with me, at least hypothetically, in imagining the elements of a process that would learn lessons from the past, that would be seen as serious and that would address the root cause of the problem — the Israeli occupation. The contours of such a process might look like the following. First, the United States would lead a political plan that would declare a priori a clearly defined objective of ending the occupation within a specified time frame — say, three to five years. Both sides will have to agree to that objective.”
2023-12-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9522 (2023) · source
“But the divide in Israel today is not between the pro-peace and anti-peace camps, as was the case decades ago. It is merely between the pro- Netanyahu and anti-Netanyahu camps, with both sides holding a hard line and almost identical stance against a Palestinian State. The Palestinian Authority also has not had elections since 2006, and its approval rating was very low even before 7 October. No side can claim to represent the Palestinians in any political process without elections. For all those reasons, the stars are not aligned for a political process that is going to be serious. If we are to learn from earlier processes, the one major shortcoming that all earlier processes had is that they were open-ended.”
2023-12-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9522 (2023) · source
“One has to acknowledge a priori that the elements necessary for a serious political process are not there. The three parties needed to be part of such a process do not seem to be ready. The United States is approaching an election year where the chances for launching a political process that will involve pressure on all sides, particularly Israel, are remote. The current Israeli Government has repeatedly and publicly declared that it has no intention of ending the occupation or helping to establish a Palestinian State. History, as well as public opinion, suggest that this Government will probably be out in a year or so because of Israeli public opinion holding it responsible for what happened on 7 October. All polls suggest that the opposition would handily win any new elections if they were held tomorrow.”
2023-12-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9522 (2023) · source
“The repeated killings of civilians on both the Israeli and Palestinian sides, the destruction of Gaza once again, the creation of another potential 1.5 million Palestinian refugees and the looming danger of mass transfer should teach us that we cannot solve the problem by sticking to old paradigms that did not work. All the scenarios presented so far have been unrealistic because they focus on the day after Gaza, rather than present solutions with an overall package that goes beyond Gaza and addresses the root cause of the problem — the Israeli occupation. That is the context in which 7 October took place. As abhorrent as the targeting of civilians is, on both sides, the big prison that Gaza practically was, coupled with the lack of any political horizon in the past 10 years to end the occupation, are factors that cannot be ignored.”
2023-12-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9522 (2023) · source
“Mr. Muasher: I will focus the bulk of my intervention today on the day after the war and the prospect for a political settlement. But first I need to point out that the first priority has to be to end the war on Gaza immediately and permanently. The Palestinians have suffered enough, and there is no humanitarian or international law that condones the carpet bombing of civilians that we witness today, regardless of the cause. The question that is being asked repeatedly by the international community is: who is going to rule Gaza after Hamas? That is the wrong question to pose if the implication is that this is the end game. Any policy based on that will lead to disastrous results.”
2023-12-29 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.9522 (2023) · source
“In that regard, we deem it important to move towards making the humanitarian and development appropriations more fungible in order to ensure a swift and appropriate international response to possibly rapidly changing needs on the ground. We need to and we can leverage our cumulative experience better in order to make tangible progress on the ground. We are willing to work with our partners in the United Nations system and the international community to that end.”
2008-05-20 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5895 (2008) · source
“In that regard, we believe that the fiduciary principles accord that is currently being prepared by the United Nations Development Group and the Bank will significantly improve the administration of such trust funds and deliver results to the beneficiary population more rapidly. In order to be strategic, large-scale post-conflict trust funds should be built upon post-conflict needs assessments, transitional results matrices and sector analysis. They do not always cater to the needs of the start-up phase, such as initial facilities needed by a new government, human vulnerability and emergency employment creation. A number of other funds, for instance the Peacebuilding Fund, can cover that phase without the need for a separate assessment.”
2008-05-20 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5895 (2008) · source
“With regard to more rapid and flexible funding, when properly designed, large-scale post-conflict multi-donor trust funds can play a critical role during the reconstruction process, as we have seen with the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund and the Trust Fund for Timor-Leste, for instance. For the Bank- administered multi-donor trust fund for South Sudan, I am pleased that progress has been made and that, at the recent conference in Oslo, both the Government of South Sudan and donors confirmed that they saw the trust fund as an effective instrument, with donors making substantial new pledges to it. However, we will have to deal with the tension emanating, for example, from the trade-off between ensuring fiduciary standards and showing quick results. That tension could hamper implementation.”
2008-05-20 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5895 (2008) · source
“The Peacebuilding Commission recently undertook a mission to Guinea-Bissau, in which the Bank participated. That mission assessed the current situation in the country and resulted in the establishment by the Government of a national steering committee that will elaborate a peacebuilding strategy and prioritize programmes for funding. On civilian capacity, the Bank has just established a callable roster for rapid deployment and we will seek to link our callable capacity to that of our partners with a view to jointly mobilizing our rosters in crisis situations.”
2008-05-20 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5895 (2008) · source
“We acknowledge, however, that in the immediate post- conflict phase, capacities and instruments often do not exist. It may, thus, be necessary to put in place an alternative and temporary mechanism to deliver services and assistance. The international community must also deliver a coherent message to post-conflict governments, based on a shared platform for post-conflict recovery planning and joint monitoring. For example, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a broad-based effort by the European Commission, United Nations agencies, the International Monetary Fund, the African Development Bank and the World Bank as well as main donor countries, including Belgium, France, the United Kingdom and the United States, was able to harmonize donor views for discussion with the new Government on government priorities for reforms.”
2008-05-20 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5895 (2008) · source
“With regard to leadership on the ground, we believe that the leadership of the Special Representatives of the Secretary-General is critical and we look to their guidance, particularly in diplomatic and security areas. To that end, a Special Representative of the Secretary-General must enjoy the full support of the international community. We strongly believe in supporting a country's institutions and systems as the best way to secure national ownership and render reconstruction sustainable. Concurrently, measures for accountability to citizens and for empowering all citizens need to be included. Furthermore, we need to strengthen our measurement of results in fragile and post-conflict situations and scale up what works. To implement coordination, we View a government's multi-year budget as the preferred starting point.”
2008-05-20 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5895 (2008) · source
“On the country level, our goals include practical examples of successful international support to peacebuilding transitions, consolidation of governance reform, progress towards the Millennium Development Goals and private sector development, particularly with our private sector window, the International Finance Corporation. Thirdly, we aim at delivering visible results through a coherent World Bank Group approach. Our goal is for a World Bank Group that is able to intervene quickly and effectively, drawing on an expanded field presence, while exercising flexibility in internal operating procedures and close work with external partners. Against that background, I will now turn to the concept note prepared for this debate. I commend the United Kingdom for its succinctness.”
2008-05-20 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5895 (2008) · source
“The objectives and expected results we aim to achieve under that strategic theme fall into three broad areas. First, we aim at promoting better global understanding. The World Bank aims to promote better global understanding of the dynamics that affect fragile situations and effective strategic and operational approaches to assisting them. An important starting point is to increase the consensus on international frameworks and priorities to approaches in those countries, including diplomatic, development, institution-building and security linkages. Secondly, we aim at promoting improved country-level collaboration.”
2008-05-20 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5895 (2008) · source
“On the analytical side, the Bank has commissioned applied research in areas such as conflict and development and natural resources and conflict, in collaboration with renowned research institutions. I am emphasizing here the importance of the contribution of research to our policy at the Bank and to the international discourse at large. Overcoming the multifaceted problems of countries coming out of conflict or seeking to avoid the breakdown of the State is crucial to the Bank's development mission, its sustainability and effectiveness. As more countries graduate from the International Development Association, our concessional finance window, we expect an increasing share of our partner countries to be fragile and conflict- affected countries.”
2008-05-20 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5895 (2008) · source
“While our knowledge base for countries in post-conflict or on a gradual reform track is good, we still need to know more about how to achieve results in terms of conflict prevention and poverty reduction in countries facing deteriorating governance or a political impasse. Our partnership with the United Nations system will prove essential in order to refine our operational approach. The Bank recently approved a new state-building and peacebuilding fund to address the needs of state and local governance and peacebuilding in fragile situations that offers the promise of high impact. It aims to complement the Peacebuilding Fund of the Peacebuilding Commission of the United Nations and other efforts.”
2008-05-20 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5895 (2008) · source
“The President of the World Bank, Mr. Robert Zoellick, is unable to be with us today and asked me to transmit his greetings and appreciation to you, Mr. President, for organizing this open debate and for inviting the World Bank. I welcome the statement of the Secretary-General and wish to assure him of our commitment to work jointly with the United Nations system to meet together the challenges of post-conflict countries. Over the past 15 years, the World Bank has considerably expanded its work on conflict and fragility, both operationally and analytically. With the broad support of our Board of Directors, the Bank focuses more on peacebuilding, State building, institutional reforms and partnerships.”
2008-05-20 · UN Security Council · Security Council, S/PV.5895 (2008) · source