Suicide attacks 'immoral' says Arafat aide

At the end of a week in which Palestinian gunmen and suicide bombers killed nine Israeli civilians and two foreign workers, Yasser Arafat's chief political representative in Jerusalem yesterday denounced attacks on civilians as "deplorable" and called for a return to peace negotiations.

Sari Nusseibeh, an Oxford-educated philosophy professor, started a petition a month ago in which 55 Palestinian intellectuals condemned such attacks as counter-productive. In an interview with The Independent, Dr Nusseibeh went a step further and rejected them as immoral.

He said: "The use of violence as a means of solving problems is demeaning to us as human beings." Unlike other Palestinian spokesmen, he made no distinction between Jewish settlers and residents of Israel proper. "Attacking civilians of any kind anywhere is totally unacceptable."

Dr Nusseibeh, 53, head of Al-Quds University in east Jerusalem, agreed the Palestinians had a right to resist the Israeli occupation but argued that violence was not the way.

He said: "What is morally and practically useful is non- violent resistance."

And he deplored Israeli violence as much as Palestinian. "We live on each other's doorstep. We have to think about how we can create a life where both of us can live as friends, as neighbours.''

Asked if it was not too late after 22 months of violence, Dr Nusseibeh said: "If you want to have life, it's never too late. By using force against us, the Israelis will not break our will. Nor will the use of force by us against them break their will.

"I think we will witness a slow return to the path of sanity." Negotiations would begin "within months" and take "two to three years", he said.

Dr Nusseibeh does not care if he sounds like a voice in the wilderness.

Smiling, he said: "It would be lovely if people agree with me. But I'm not going to make the number of people who agree with me a condition for what I say or do not say. I'm in politics, but I'm not a politician, so I don't calculate what is going to happen in the next election. I create influence, maybe long-term influence. I create debate."

Dr Nusseibeh was on the receiving end of Israeli sanctions last week. In a raid condemned by Western governments and human rights groups, police closed his administrative office, seizing papers and computer records.

Israel has accused the university of acting as an agent of the Palestinian Authority (PA), which is barred from operating in Jerusalem. Around 5,000 Palestinian students from in and around east Jerusalem attend the university.

Israel's Internal Security minister, Uzi Landau, accused the university of acting as an agent of the PA, which is barred under the 1993 Oslo accords from operating in Jerusalem. Dr Nusseibeh replied that he represented the Palestine Liberation Organisation, which is allowed to work in the disputed city.

He said: "I deny that the university is an organ of the PA. But I do not deny that some activities, for instance telephone calls, letters, maybe some meetings I hold, have to do with the political life of the Jerusalem Arab community."

Dr Nusseibeh insisted, for instance, that when he hired a lawyer to represent families whose homes were being taken over by right-wing Jews, he did so on behalf of the PLO, not the PA.

With his office sealed, Dr Nusseibeh receives visitors in the lobby of the American Colony hotel, an east Jerusalem hive of foreign journalists and international officials. One of his interlocutors last week was Israel's Transport minister, Ephraim Sneh. Israeli politics has its mavericks too.

¿ A train driver was being treated for stomach wounds yesterday after a remote-controlled bomb exploded beneath the engine of a commuter train travelling south of Tel Aviv.