Oxford, UK – H E Sayyid Badr al Busaidi, Foreign Minister, has stated that the creation of a Palestinian State at the earliest is essential to save the Palestinian people from destitution, annihilation and death.
In a speech in Oxford in the United Kingdom on Thursday, H E Sayyid Badr said an emergency international conference must be convened urgently to agree on arrangements for implementing a two-state solution.
The creation of a Palestinian State is an existential necessity, he said. It is quite clear that only with the rights that sovereignty confers can the Palestinian people even hope to survive. Without a state, they are condemned to a perpetual threat of destitution, annihilation and death.
His comments were made in an hour-long lecture – titled ‘Talking to Anyone for the Good of Everyone’ – delivered at Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies.
H E Sayyid Badr also said representatives of Hamas must be included in the emergency international conference to fast-track the establishment of a Palestinian State.
We have to deal with the reality we inhabit. And that reality includes Hamas. The international conference will have to include them too. Hamas cannot be eradicated. So, if there is ever to be peace, the peacemakers will have to find a way to talk to them. And to listen.
This will require a change in thinking, and the development of forms of practical diplomacy that are suitable for a multipolar world in which we all have to learn to talk to anyone, for the good of everyone.
Far too many talk mainly to their friends, and make it a point of principle to refuse to talk to those people they define as their enemies. Confronted with the horrifying human catastrophe in Gaza, there’s a refusal to do the one thing that might open up a pathway to peace, H E Sayyid Badr elaborated.
He argued that new thinking is needed to adapt to the realities of the modern multipolar world. History has moved on faster than we have. We need to catch up with history.
Calling for an end to the poisonous sectarian logic that defines identity in religious terms, he said it is time for the people of the Middle East to see ourselves (and to be seen) as people with complex social and cultural identities, rather than defined entirely in terms of religious affiliations.
He added, I am not saying that the people represented in Western media as the bad guys are really the good guys. That’s just the same kind of binary thinking. What I am saying is that bad and good just aren’t helpful categories when trying to make sense of a complex and dynamic situation and act responsibly within it. There are all kinds of different players with different interests and different perspectives. Only if you talk to them and listen to them, can you find out what their interests and perspectives really are and start to work out how to work with them. This has to be the basis on which we halt the catastrophe in Palestine. And it has to be the basis for diplomacy in a multipolar world.
H E Sayyid Badr concluded his lecture with a series of practical proposals. He said the emergency international conference charged with agreeing arrangements for Palestinian statehood must be convened by leaders of a number of countries properly representative of the global majority.
I am concerned that the present crisis is deepening divisions between the Global South and the Global North. The last thing we need is to construct another false global division of the kind we suffered during the Cold War.
He also called for reform of the United Nations Security Council, arguing that its voting structure is a relic of the Cold War. It is not properly multilateral. The veto is part of a zero-sum logic and should be removed, he said.
Following the lecture, H E Sayyid Badr was the guest of honour at a dinner in the centre’s Oman Hall, made possible by a generous gift from the late Sultan Qaboos bin Said.
The lecture and dinner were attended by diplomats, academics and distinguished foreign policy experts.
