WASHINGTON, DC—The S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace hosted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas for dinner on Wednesday, June 9, 2010, with 30 top leaders of the American Jewish community and former American administration officials. The dinner, hosted by Center founder and chairman Dan Abraham and Center president Robert Wexler, was organized at the request of Abbas in a meeting between Abbas, Abraham, and Wexler in the region earlier this year.

Guests included Alan Solow, Chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations; Mort Zuckerman, Editor-in-Chief of U.S. News & World Report and former chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations; Lee Rosenberg, President of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC); Howard A. Kohr, Executive Director of AIPAC; Robert Sugarman, National Chair of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL); Sandy Berger, former National Security Advisor; Steve Hadley, former National Security Advisor; Elliott Abrams, former National Security Council Middle East adviser; Dov Zakheim, former Undersecretary of Defense; John Ruskay, CEO & Executive Vice President of UJA Federation; Debra Delee, President & CEO of Americans for Peace Now; Peter Joseph, President of the Israel Policy Forum; Wayne Firestone, President of Hillel; Rabbi Jack Moline, Director of Public Policy of the Rabbinical Assembly; John Shapiro, President of the Jewish Federation of New York; and other American Jewish community leaders and foreign policy scholars.
   
The meeting lasted two hours, was on the record, and consisted of unscripted questions from the assembled guests, preceded by short introductory remarks by Wexler, Abraham, and Abbas.

During his address and subsequent responses, Abbas rejected the use of violence: “You know that from the year 2000 to 2005 we had a period of Intifada. That period destroyed everything that had been built earlier. … When I ran for the Presidency I raised the slogan, ‘No violence against Israel. No armed struggle against Israel.’ All these things, to tell everybody that I believe in peace and everybody from our people should believe in peace. Now you can go and see that the culture of peace is prevailing.”

Abbas voiced support for Jewish historical claims to the land of Israel and the city of Jerusalem: “I am the first [Palestinian leader] maybe who recognized Israel. I led the negotiations in Oslo and I convinced many of my leadership to recognize Israel. … Nobody denies the Jewish history in the Middle East. A third of our holy Koran talks about the Jews in the Middle East, in this area. Nobody from our side at least denies that the Jews were in Palestine, were in the Middle East.” He also said: “West Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. …. The East part as Palestinian, the West part will be Israeli.”

He told guests that he recently sent his ambassadors in Warsaw and Moscow to attend Holocaust commemoration events “because I want to tell everyone that these people suffered and we are suffering. Now we want peace between each other. And we do not deny, as rumors say, we deny the Holocaust.”

Abbas recognized the paramount importance of Israeli security concerns. “I agree with you that Israelis are in need of security. They should be provided with security. When we suggested for a third party [security force] to be located in our territories it is because we want the Israelis to feel that they are secure in their country.” Though he said that he could not agree to the presence of Israeli troops in a future Palestinian state, “because it means that the occupation stays,” he noted “that if the third party comes from Jews it doesn’t matter to me, or from Europe. … I can accept any religion from any country around the world to come to our country as a third party.”

When asked by one participant about incitement to violence in Palestinian textbooks and on state-run television, Abbas said: “I accept your accusations but let us settle it around the table.
… There was a committee established during the era of Wye River, trilateral committee to deal with the incitement. Anytime they want to revive this committee we are ready to sit around the table and to talk about the incitement from both sides. … We are ready to eliminate any kind of incitement.” He discussed his efforts to curb incitement in the Palestinian territories, including passing a new law against incitement and regulating inflammatory speeches in mosques: “I heard that some of the mosques on Friday, their sermons are against Israel. I unified all the sermons in the West Bank – it is the first time, it is the first country around the Arab world, around the Islamic world, that these sermons are unified, only in the West Bank because I don’t want any incitement against anybody.”

In response to a question about the possibility of reaching a deal with Israel while Hamas controls the Gaza Strip, Abbas said: “Hamas knows that myself as the head of the PLO is in charge of the negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis. But despite that I know that we cannot reach peace agreement without reconciliation between us and Hamas. … Hamas is still reluctant, till now, why? Because they are under the instructions of Iran. … We will continue our efforts to restore our unity with this kind of reconciliation between us and Hamas. I know that it is difficult but we will not stop our talks with Israel, we will continue our talks with Israel. If we reach an agreement we will send it to a referendum.”

In discussing his efforts to convince Israelis that he is serious about peace, Abbas spoke about his recent interview on Israeli television. “I think everybody praised it, from the Israeli people. I asked Netanyahu to appear on our TV. He refused.”

Numerous guests encouraged Abbas to enter direct talks with the Israeli government. Abbas reiterated his intention to do so as soon as there were “any positive sign” of “progress from the Israeli government concerning the two core elements – security and borders” during the proximity talks. “This is what [the American administration] proposed to us and we accepted,” Abbas said. “We do not reject at all the direct talks.”

Abbas insisted that settlement construction freeze is not a precondition for moving to direct talks.
“Of course we are not in a position where we can demand preconditions from the state of Israel or from the American administration. … When we are asking for a stop of settlement activity, we are not placing preconditions. We are basically restating agreements that have been reached between us and the Israeli side and also what has been clearly stated in the road map as well as what has been agreed upon by the Quartet.”

Abbas’s final message to the guests was about the urgency of finding a peaceful resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “We don’t want [the Palestinian people] to lose the hope. It’s a matter of time because if they lose hope they will turn back, maybe a new intifada, they will do beyond the imagination. For that I am asking everybody around the world, please, we want peace, the sooner the better, otherwise the alternative will be disaster.”