Gush Shalom

See for the whole transcript:
http://zope.gush-shalom.org/home/en/events/Annapolis%201194777329

Some points that were mentioned

Gideon Levy (Ha'aretz reporter):
I have greater respect for those who say openly that they don't want peace, and that's that. I prefer that to the disgusting masquerade, as if since the creation of the state until now we are the peace- seekers and the Palestinians are the war-mongers.
It is twenty years that I am constantly going around in the Territories. I rarely meet there with politicians. Since Arafat is gone, I don't do it at all. There are enough others who do that. I am going from house to house, at least one family every week. Not that I am conducting a scientific anthropological research, but I can claim to have some acquaintance with the Palestinian grassroots. And I can say that the Palestinian people really want peace.
Among Palestinians, the real longing is for living together, while among Israelis the desire is for separation - let them separate, disappear, vanish, let us see nothing of them any more behind the high wall. Among the Palestinians, and precisely among the families of the most terrible victims, there is the wish to live together. The best years, which they remember with longing, are "when we lived together, visited the homes of Israelis, participated in parties".

Moria Shlomot (Peace Now):
I have to admit that Gideon has confused me a bit and forced me to change what I intended to say. I would like to refer to what you said and ask myself if I share this assumption, that Israel does not want peace - this very pessimistic position.
I have a strong feeling that very many Israelis do want peace, even if the leadership and government do not, and that in many Israeli homes you would hear the wish to live in peace and not to "separate".

Gadi Elgazi (Hithabrut-Tarabut):
The most substantial thing is that there is no symmetry between the sides. Every diplomatic game is based on fictions, like the UN General Assembly where every state has a single vote, a superpower and the smallest and weakest of states. From afar a fiction is produced of two parallel sides, Israelis and Palestinians, who are told to sit down and talk.
Israel is capable of causing the Palestinian an unimaginable anguish. Even if we put aside the balance of bloodshed, this is a colonial conflict in which one side can change the basic conditions under which the other side lives: land, water, work, family. Not just the physical force of tear gas, bullets and shells, but changing the basic conditions of life. An enormously powerful state facing a disintegrated people.
We should find the way to mediate between the situation that in the long range the occupier and settler has no future, and the present situation of military superiority. It is not possible to turn back the clock sixty years, but a certain degree of justice is vital in order to counterbalance Israel's enormous power. To look beyond the Israeli superiority in the next five, ten or fifteen years to a future where integration in the region is the only solution.

Neta Golan (International Solidarity Movement):
The moderator presented me as a replacement for a Palestinian participant who could not be brought to Tel-Aviv. I was already introduced in worse ways. Once, when I was interviewed in Ya'ir Lapid's TV talk show, concerning my presence in the Mukata'a [Ramallah Presidential Compound] during the siege on Arafat in April-May 2002, he introduced me as someone whose acts arouse disgust. This is certainly worse than being a "Surrogate Palestinian".
The fact that I live in Ramallah and raise these my daughters does not mean that I can speak for the Palestinians. But it is true that I have much in common with the people who live in Ramallah, and I can present a view from the angle of living on the ground. If by chance somebody who does not live on the ground and does not see things first hand will claim he did not understand where things are going, than at least I can provide a personal testimony.
To understand what happens is not possible from Annapolis, but on the ground you can see buildings and roads being built and paved, and see exactly the direction things are taking.
So, for your information - on the ground, Apartheid is being built. Since the early years of the Intifada, a system of roads for Jews only is being created. Now, this is being completed with roads for Palestinians which put them in the places which the system defines for them. The borders of the cantons are defined - "cantons" is Sharon's word, the right and precise word is ghettos.
Near Ramallah, where I live, there are two ghettos which are already finished and completed. Let me present the Bir Naballah Ghetto: a ghetto surrounded by walls on all sides. One side is what is called officially "The Separation Wall". On the other three sides it is officially called "Roadside Fences", beautiful fences which are supposedly intended to prevent noises. That is the official version. On the ground, the meaning is that these walls surround Bir Naballah on all sides, there is only one exist - through a tunnel under the road which is for Jews only. Of course, this tunnel is also under the control of the army, which can close and block it at discretion.
I would like to tell the people in this room, you deserve great credit for having introduced the concept of Two States into the consensus. Such a great success that Bush and Olmert and Sharon understood that you can't beat it and therefore decided to join it, and thereby changed the entire meaning. Nowadays, if you say -Two States- without saying a complete control of water and land and a free access to Jerusalem without walls, than you support Apartheid.
There are those who say that they support peace and in fact they support Apartheid. This is the whitewashing of the occupation, controlling the ground and the borders and "getting rid" of as many Palestinians as possible. That is what was done in Oslo. The Palestinians then had great hopes of Oslo and did not realize that this was what was done in practice - a plan to absolve Israel of responsibility for the Palestinians and keep control in practice.