These days, you’d be hard-pressed to find a foreign ambassador in Cyprus more recognisable than Palestine’s Abdallah Attari.
Speaking in fluent Greek – owing to his many years living and studying political sciences in Greece – Attari has often been invited to talk in television panels, podcasts and interviews, since the outbreak of violence between Israel and Hamas on October 7.
Despite his recognisability, his posting in Cyprus – where he has been for just over two years – is his first as an Ambassador abroad. He reveals that he had never imagined himself as a diplomat, as he still feels a fighter at heart, as all the Palestinian people.
In an interview with Phileleftheros and in-cyprus, he says that the years of violence, displacement and occupation, have made the Palestinians “a tough people” with an abundance of resilience. However, he stresses he would prefer to see his compatriots be able to channel their vigour to creative pursuits such as studying and creating safe livelihoods, something that is not taken for granted in Palestine.
Ambassador Attari also sounds alarm bells about the outcome of the war in Gaza, arguing that “what is happening is a dress rehearsal for the displacement of the Palestinians once again from their homes, their homeland and their land,” as the “expansionist” Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu aims to widen its borders.
Interview with Xenia Tourki and Stelios Marathovouniotis.
Was the Palestinian Authority aware of the October 7 attack?
Such theories sound like science fiction scenarios. I will not go into the process of analysing the theories and information. We, as the Palestinian Authority, have warned many times that the volatile situation in the occupied Palestinian territories has reached a breaking point, but the blindness of the international community and the arrogance of the occupying State of Israel did not take or did not want to take these warnings seriously.
Unfortunately, we had to reach this point, in order to turn our eyes at the issue of Palestine and its occupation. What really saddens me is that the whole world was upset by the events of October 7 only because the blood that was shed was probably different from the blood of the Palestinians that has been shed for decades.
Does the Palestinian Authority officially and unequivocally condemn the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7?
Are you still there? Let me tell you something, all journalists make us all feel that the Palestinian diplomats, and I personally, as Ambassador, in addition to presenting our credentials to the President of the Republic, are forced to give morality credentials to every journalist.
Are you forgetting that the biggest victim of organised state terrorism in modern history is us Palestinians? We live in the age of fast news and the superficial understanding of words and phrases. Therefore, it would be good to look again at the real meaning of each word in order to avoid, even now, the traps of fake news and deliberate propaganda.
What is terrorism and when do we label someone a terrorist? What is self-defence? Is occupying and occupying another country’s territory, killing children and women, self-defence? What does eruption (of fighting) mean? Does the genocide against the Palestinian people qualify as an eruption?
What does conflict mean? Is it possible that 75 years of occupation, apartheid, genocide, and ethnic cleansing can be so simply described as a conflict? Or is it called hostilities? Can the amount of explosives dropped by the Israeli war machine in Gaza, equivalent to 2 atomic bombs, be called hostilities?
Collateral damage? Does the Israelis’ plan for a Greater Israel that would include half the Arab world, the entire Palestinian people of 14 million, count as collateral damage?
What is the International Community? When the International Community stands against Gaza which is unable to pass a bottle of milk to its children, does it act according to what it stands for? When will milk finally reach the children of Gaza? When there are no more children to drink it? What is happening to the 39 newborn babies in the incubators of Al-Shifa hospital, of which only 28 have so far survived because of the attack by Israel’s assassins on that hospital and the cutting off of power and oxygen from the incubators? If these 28 infants manage to survive, who will dare to talk to them about the credibility of the international community?
Israel, wrongly, considers itself a state above international legitimacy, and by its arrogance, it has managed to turn the world against itself. We have not had to try for this. Who do you think led people to chant ‘From the river to the sea Palestine will be free’ at the demonstrations in London, New York and around the world?
How have relations between Hamas and the Palestinian Authority evolved since October 7? Has anything changed with regard to the administration of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank?
The Palestinian leadership since 1963, when the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) was founded, which includes all political organisations and parties (of Palestine), has been the permanent and legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. It is neither Hamas, nor Fatah, nor any other organisation. We are not political and national orphans.
Let’s end the occupation. We are a civilised and politicised people, we have no problem holding elections. Did you wonder why there are no elections? The United Nations, the Security Council and the UN General Assembly have given us 22% of the historic Palestine. This includes the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Palestine. When the Israelis explicitly prohibit any Palestinian Authority presence in East Jerusalem and prohibit us from holding elections there, then we are not holding any elections at all. We are not holding elections without Jerusalem, our capital.
Israel argues that for a solution with the Palestinians, Hamas must be taken out of the picture. How do you respond to this?
We used to say that Israel wants a solution in terms of borders and territories that is tailor-made for them. Now we hear them saying that they also want a people tailored to their needs. They want a society that meets their standards. In other words, who will be the Palestinians that Israel will tolerate living next to them?
Finally, apart from “kill them all”, does Netanyahu know what he wants to do? Does he want to govern Gaza or not? Because the Israeli Ambassador in his interview said that the goal is not to govern Gaza, but the Israeli Defense Minister claims otherwise with statements such as “We are fighting human animals.”
After the new outbreak of violence, what can be a good solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Can there be a solution with the present Israeli government in power?
We, as Palestinians, have thought about the next day. The Palestinian territories cannot be divided. Gaza is a part of Palestine, a part of our hearts. It is not possible to talk about the next day in the Gaza Strip without talking about the next day in all the Palestinian territories, without talking about the next day in Israel, which, at last, must answer to the International Court of Justice for the crimes it is committing against our people.
For this reason, half-solutions are not acceptable to us. Our priorities are ending the war in Gaza and ending the occupation of all of Palestine. As well as the delivery of medicine, water, fuel, electricity and the recovery of bodies from under the rubble, as the smell of death threatens human life in Gaza. Over 1,300 bodies are currently lying under the rubble.
But what about the Israelis? Everyone is saying something different. In the West Bank, and not in Judea and Samaria – as it has become fashionable for Israelis to call it when they want to deny that it is Palestinian territory – we experience, daily, the illegal incursions of the Israeli occupying army, which executes in mafia-style and massacres Palestinians on their own land, in their neighbourhoods, in their homes. Let us not forget that, following the Oslo Accord, these are areas in ‘Zone A’ where any Israeli, be it a soldier or ordinary citizen, is banned from entering.
I would like to tell you that when the Oslo Accord was signed in 1993 we were unjustifiably reasonable. We did not seek absolute justice. We asked for achievable justice. We accepted 22% of historic Palestine as our homeland on the basis that, gradually, over the next six years, the Israeli forces and the West Bank settlers would have completed their withdrawal from our territories.
To give you an idea of the behaviour of not only the current Israeli government but also of the previous ones, instead of withdrawing the settlers from the West Bank, they have multiplied them to an alarming degree. In 1993 there were 120,000 settlers and now there are 800,000. The political parties in Israel may disagree on many things, but they agree on one thing, increasing the number of settlers. After all, one of the key ministers in the Netanyahu government, Israel’s Minister of National Security, has distributed 27,000 weapons to settlers in the occupied West Bank recently.
How is the situation in the Gaza Strip a month and a half after the start of the hostilities?
I would like to start with a clarification: What is happening in Palestine, and by extent in Gaza, is not ‘hostilities.’ It is the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. By ‘hostilities’ we mean a conflict between two states, but in this case, we are talking about an occupying power, Israel, which is committing heinous war crimes with the international community watching on, unable to do anything and a people who have been living under occupation for 75 years, my people.
The number of the dead and injured is rising rapidly. We are talking about one dead child every ten minutes. It is shocking that over 75% of the victims are young children and women and over 1,500 children are missing under the rubble of destroyed houses. To date, 1.7 million people have been displaced from their homes. As you can see, the situation is indescribably tragic. It is a scandal that all the hospitals are out of order because of the power cuts and the lack of medicines.
What is happening is a dress rehearsal for the displacement of the Palestinians once again from their homes, their homeland and their land. The Palestinians were asked to become refugees in their own country from northern Gaza to the south and at the same time, the ruthless Israeli army was bombing the convoys moving civilians, the UNWRA hospitals and schools that were sheltering thousands of Palestinian civilians.
How do you respond to Israel’s claim that it is acting in accordance with international law and that it is trying to reduce civilian casualties?
How is it possible to talk about human lives as if we were at a bargaining table? Who can determine how much the lives of thousands of children are worth? Is even a newborn baby worth killing if the Israeli target is a high-ranking member of an organisation? Please, we are talking about human souls, not animals meant for slaughter.
Personally, I will not go into the operational details of October 7. But I would like to refer you to two reliable Israeli newspapers, Haaretz and Yedioth Ahronoth, which report in detail the initial estimates of the Israeli police for October 7. I mention this because there is a great effort to demonise the entire Palestinian people and to spread fake news, as Netanyahu himself has spoken of a war between civilisation and barbarism.
The Israelis say they have changed and are no longer the same after the events of the day. Indeed, we truly hope that they will indeed become different, that they will love peace and that the occupation will end once and for all. They must finally understand that all the people around them are not anti-Semites, they just want security and dignity.
How do you judge the reaction of the international community to the war?
The truth is that we are fed up with announcements of support from the Western leaders for the Palestinians, which are not followed by actions. Hypocrisy has become the norm and honesty is now the exception.
Here, in Cyprus, we are 300 kilometres away from Gaza, where Israel’s Minister of Heritage, Eliyahu (Amihai Eliyahu), urged Netanyahu to drop an atomic bomb. Is this an admission that Israel has nuclear weapons? But I didn’t hear anyone being shocked. I didn’t hear anyone condemn the minister in the Netanyahu government for threatening our neighbourhood here that they should use nuclear weapons.
How do you judge the reaction of Cyprus to the war?
Palestine and Cyprus are two countries and two peoples whose relationship is based on mutual understanding, and Cyprus was one of the first countries to recognise the independent Palestinian State with East Jerusalem as its capital. Cypriots have a well-developed sense of patriotism and therefore I believe that they appreciate the patriotism of others. They are always on the side of the Palestinian people, and of all peoples fighting for their freedom. We are sincerely touched by the support of the Cypriot people and the initiatives organised to show their support.
But here I want to stress that all over the world the gap between people and governments is widening. People are getting off their couches and reacting. So have the Cypriots. But I will not hide the fact that I am bitter about the Cypriot Government’s abstention in the United Nations vote for an immediate ceasefire on humanitarian grounds.
If I were to be romantic, I would say that any relationship with the occupying State of Israel gives it the courage to arrogantly, and above all, lawlessly continue its terrorist acts, its illegal and destructive occupation practices and its genocide against the Palestinian people. But because, as an Ambassador, I am a realist, I maintain that Cyprus, like any independent sovereign country, has every right to pursue its national interests as its governments see fit.
We fully respect this right, but we believe that international relations should be based on one very important criterion: respect for international law. The only protection that small countries have, which we all have, is international law, and I do not think that Israel has much respect for it.
How can Cyprus, both the government and its citizens, help with the huge humanitarian needs that have been created?
Any initiative is welcome, as is the Cyprus Government’s humanitarian aid initiative. We must not forget that Gaza has been blockaded for 17 years by the apartheid state of Israel, so in the implementation of any humanitarian aid initiative, the occupier has the first say. However, the Palestinian issue must not become a humanitarian issue. It is a purely national, political issue. The occupation must be removed from the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. We are a fighting people and we will continue our struggle with undiminished intensity with all the legal means at our disposal.
(Pictures by George Christophorou)
