Richard WAGMAN, Paris correspondent of the Canadian review OUTLOOK, met Dr. C.V. on September 21, 1993, on her return from Tunis. Dr. VELLUET, a 35-year-old Jewish physician, works as a volunteer for Médecins du Monde (MDM) [Doctors of the World]. She is the medical coordinator of MDM for Palestine, and was at the PLO headquarters at the moment of the signing of the “Gaza-Jericho” accords. We publish broad excerpts from this interview.
Richard Wagman (R.W.): How long have you been the medical coordinator of MDM for Palestine?
Ciella VELLUET (C.V.): With Médecins du Monde, I am responsible for a number of missions in Africa, in the Caucasus, and now in Palestine. With the major events that have unfolded — notably last Thursday, September 9, with the effective mutual recognition between ARAFAT and RABIN, the Norwegian negotiator having shuttled back and forth — at the leadership of Médecins du Monde we decided that I should leave immediately, that very day, for Tunis, to make contacts on several counts with the Palestinians on the spot.
On the one hand, symbolically, to bring our support at this historic moment for Palestine, for Israel, for the Middle East, but perhaps also for Europe and for the world.
On another count, a medical one this time: you should know that we have been working for more than three years in the Gaza Strip with Palestinian non-governmental organizations. There is a whole host of organizations, notably the Palestinian Red Crescent, directed in Cairo by Dr. Fatia ARAFAT, ARAFAT’s brother. We said to ourselves that, with the birth of what is going to be a future State, there would be the establishment of an administration that would coordinate all the activities that previously depended on individuals or more or less connected groups.
I met a number of people, notably Mr. Hayel AL FAHOUM, who is the Director for Europe of Foreign Affairs of the PLO, and Dr. Sami MOUSSALAM, who is the Chief of Staff of Yasser ARAFAT, who has been dealing for five years now with social and health activities for the Palestinians of the Occupied Territories and the Palestinians of the Diaspora. She has just founded “Palestine Avenir” [Palestine Future], a foundation that will be responsible, among other things, for the evacuation abroad of Palestinians from the Territories or the Diaspora who require care that cannot be provided on site.
The constant in all the discussions I was able to have with Palestinian political leaders is their will to acquire quickly, in a first phase, the technical and administrative competencies of the Westerners, in order to enable them, in a second phase, to work on an equal footing with the Israelis. It is clear that if one rushed at present into a cooperation — desirable for the future — there would be both distortion and disparity of roles, the Palestinians being in a situation of inferiority. This is desirable neither for the Palestinians immediately, nor for the Israelis in the long run.
What they wish first of all, and the reason for which I was sent on mission, is that we quickly send a mission of experts in health and social matters to Gaza to assess the existing structures and to make proposals — knowing that what interests them is the functioning of the French health and social system. This system has the merit of having a Western functioning, on the one hand, but of not having the disadvantages of the savage capitalist liberal systems, on the other; and our system of social protection interests them. (…)
R.W.: Do you, at this moment, have a partial assessment of the situation of public health in the Occupied Territories?
C.V.: Yes, the health situation is quite good, owing to the activities of the organizations. The structures exist. The technical equipment is sophisticated, the Palestinian doctors are highly capable. It is just that, since the Gulf War, owing to the financial crisis that has burdened the functioning of the PLO — and therefore all of its activities in the Territories and in the Diaspora — there has indeed been a certain neglect over the past two years that will have to be overcome. We are therefore going to draw up an assessment, but it is clear that, thanks both to the Israeli military administration, to the Palestinian non-governmental organizations, to the international non-governmental organizations, to UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Works Agency) and to the WHO (World Health Organization), this health and social infrastructure exists. It is just that what is now at stake is to move from a wartime economy and health system to a peacetime economy and health system, where everyone coordinates their efforts toward a single goal and without serious political distortion. (…)
In this perspective, I brought to Tunis Professor Gilles BRUCKER (a public health specialist and Honorary President of MDM) and Dr. Pierre PRADIER (Director General of MDM, who was for two years the WHO envoy to Gaza and who knows the situation well); both met with ABOU ALA, who is in charge of the economy and planning of the PLO and who holds the rank of minister. (…)
We also met, together with Dr. Bernard GRANJON (President of MDM), Dr. Jean PORRINI (Secretary General), and Dr. Brigitte MAITRE (in charge of Gaza), Mohamed DAHLAN, a young man of 30, the political chief of Gaza, who has spent more than 10 years in Israeli prisons since the age of 14. He is one of the leaders, if not the leader, of the Intifada. Expelled from Israel in 1986, he assists President ARAFAT. He is his right-hand man and a political and military leader of Gaza. So much so that, as Mrs. Souha ARAFAT told me, the former generals of the PLO, the military chiefs, are all under the orders of this young fellow who was only 30 years old. She specified that “the future belonged to youth, to the people who were on the ground, both in the Diaspora and in the Territories.” This is an example of the placing of the people most able to do what is necessary as quickly as possible for the good of the Palestinian population.
R.W.: How many staff does MDM’s medical personnel count in Palestine at the moment?
C.V.: At the moment, we have two expatriate people on the ground who are at the AL AHLI hospital, the only hospital in the “formerly occupied” territories that is run and organized by the Palestinians. We therefore made the political choice to work there rather than elsewhere. We brought a Palestinian to Paris to train him as a laboratory technician. In addition, we have set up on site a local laboratory technician and a local nurse, to take charge of bringing back into operation a former section of the hospital’s laboratory.
R.W.: You live in Paris, but you have traveled a great deal in the context of your missions with MDM.
C.V.: That’s correct. I was born in Paris to an English mother. I know the Israeli-Palestinian problematic well, because my mother is herself an activist for Israeli-Palestinian rapprochement, and has been since 1955. I myself have always closely followed all the activities in this region since 1975. Concerned that the Palestinians should at last be recognized as a people, that their right to the land and ultimately their State (coexisting alongside Israel) should be recognized, I met Mrs. Marjolaine MENDÈS-FRANCE as early as 1983. I instigated and helped create the Institut Pierre Mendès-France, of which I was a member of the Board of Directors until 1990. I took part in the examination of all the Institute’s archives, including those on the Israeli-Palestinian question. (…)
R.W.: Did you notice cultural differences between the Palestinian and Israeli officials with regard to the practice of medical care and public health?
C.V.: The Palestinian political leaders have exactly the same aspirations as the Israelis. You should know that all these cadres were trained in Western countries, they all have substantial higher education, and moreover, selected as they were progressively, over the years, they are often more brilliant than mediocre people. They are not the functionaries one can see in important posts in Western countries who are there because the bureaucratic machines have been installed for a long time and end up functioning for themselves and no longer to serve the objectives for which they were put in place.
That is not too much the case, fortunately still, for the Israelis either. I know — for having been in Israel — young people between 25 and 45 who are the ages of the future Palestinian leaders I met, and who, I am sure, will work tomorrow, when the Palestinians are ready, together very fruitfully, for both peoples, for both States, for this part of the Middle East, for — I think — even the whole of the Mediterranean (thus the countries of the Maghreb, Egypt, Palestine, Israel, Jordan). One cannot yet know what Lebanon and Syria will become. Turkey, in any case, certainly too. (…)
R.W.: Did you spend any time in Israel apart from your medical mission?
C.V.: In 1989 I was sent by the Fédération Internationale des Droits de l’Homme [International Federation for Human Rights] into the Occupied Territories and into Israel during the Intifada, to draw up a brief assessment of the medical situation. I was with lawyers, Maître FEDER and Maître CHARRIÈRE-BOURNAZEL, who were assessing the situation in the prisons. It is a mission that I coordinated (being bilingual English-French) and of which I was the rapporteur; at the time, I noted a fairly significant convergence between what the Israelis said about the situation in the Territories and what the Palestinians said about their own situation. The convergence was especially notable in the analyses of progressive Israelis. (…)
The convergence bore on the analysis of the situation, the absolutely unbearable administrative harassment for the Palestinians. One had to go to 7 different offices to have a paper signed, to obtain a paper that allowed one to move about, and even then it was not enough to leave Gaza. And it is clear that between that and the incessant curfews without notice, the incessant curfews without scheduled hours, the closures of schools — all of this constituted a climate that was far more oppressive and far more serious than the 500 dead there were in five years of Intifada, and the few thousand wounded — figures that are, all in all, when one relates them to what is happening in the world, in Sri Lanka or in South Africa for example, (…) more than minimal, and reflect no will of genocide or carnage. (…)
What was important was not the blood shed — even if it is always unbearable — but rather what the blood endured while still living. And it is clear that any occupation — no, whether administrative or military — induces perverse phenomena. I believe this one was harmful both for the Palestinian people and for the Israeli people. It led to the alienation and the radicalization of the Palestinians, to a perversion of the traditional Jewish ideals, and to a corruption of ethics.
R.W.: On the subject of the traditional Jewish ideals, do you feel any contradiction, as a Jewish woman, in working with Palestinians, or on the contrary do you feel a certain complementarity?
C.V.: I feel no contradiction, because, first of all, I do not work as a Jewish woman but as a human being. So, I am a human being, a woman, a physician. These are my human and social characteristics. Then, it happens that, historically, my mother is an English Jew, of German-Austrian origin, and my father is a French Catholic, of Scottish origin (in the 15th century), which allowed me to be raised not in religion — for neither of my parents was observant — but in an already plural culture. Moreover, it happens that I had as a putative father a great Arabist and Muslim, unfortunately deceased in 1978, named Moustapha EL HABIB, the grandson of SADOK BEY II of Tunisia (the last Tunisian vizier, along with MONCEF BEY, before independence in the 1950s — Editor’s note). Moustapha EL HABIB nurtured me in Arab culture. He was himself chief curator of the Musée des Arts africains et océaniens [Museum of African and Oceanic Arts] in Paris, a specialist in Arab-Muslim art, in Arabic calligraphy and epigraphy. (…)
I must say that having lived in a communal student house where there were at once atheists, agnostics, Jews, Christians, and Muslims; having a knowledge — through an interest of family scope — of the Israeli-Palestinian problem, and the awareness of the necessity that the Palestinian people be recognized and have their State as the Israelis have theirs, do indeed make me a certainly privileged interlocutor. In any case, for me, all of this constituted, indeed, sources of enrichment that allow me today to work both with the Palestinians and with the Israelis in total trust, with those who deserve it.
And I must say that the Palestinians I met in Tunis showed remarkable intellectual maturity, a quite impressive loftiness of vision. I am eager for these Palestinians (whether from the Territories or from the Diaspora) to meet the Israelis I know, who do not today hold posts of political responsibility but who are capable of having them, and who work in any case either in the press, or in the legal milieu, or in the medical milieu. They have the same openness of mind, the same loftiness of vision, and are not only intellectuals but also people of the field who, in Israel, have fought for the dignity of the Palestinian people. (…)
R.W.: To conclude, do you have a particular message you would like to convey to our Canadian readers?
C.V.: Yes, I would like to say that if we went, as Médecins du Monde, straight to Tunis on Thursday, September 9, as soon as ARAFAT had signed and RABIN had signed — through the intermediary of the Norwegian — a letter of mutual recognition, it was not in order to be the first there. It was not out of opportunism; we have been working with the Palestinians for a long time. It was at once symbolic and out of a concern for effectiveness.
What is at stake now is that the whole world mobilize. All those who can, each at their own level. The smallest level is always important, because it is the sum of small, different, and complementary things that can make great things and allow this part of the Middle East to develop; thus allow the Palestinians to develop. The Israelis, for their part, already are. They can now turn their economy toward a development economy. It was extremely burdensome for the Israelis, psychologically but also economically, to have nearly 50% of their budget allocated to war.
So, they will now be able to reorient themselves, given that they have all the structures and all the human and technical infrastructure necessary for their development, equivalent to a Western development. The same means must be given to the Palestinians. This would allow the Palestinians and the Israelis to work together in the medium term, as quickly as possible, for the development of this region. (…)
I have already heard Palestinians say: “Today, at the end of the twentieth century and at the dawn of the twenty-first, if humanity does not realize that the problem is no longer a problem of borders but a problem of cooperation between peoples — so that everyone may live, eat, clothe themselves, work, and have leisure, all of which should be the best for everyone — well, then, it would be failing to look ahead.” (…)
R.W.: One last question: the PLO has requested international aid. (…) Given the relative economic health of Israel, do you believe that the State of Israel has a certain moral obligation to help the Palestinians restore their economy in the Occupied Territories?
C.V.: I think that is clear. Shimon PERES said so himself, and he has already begun to do it (…). The Israeli government and Israeli organizations have already acted to ensure that all those who can mobilize in the international Jewish community do so in favor of Palestine and the Occupied Territories.
I can tell you that Mr. AL FAHOUM, whom I met, told me that the problem is almost that the first to come forward are Israelis and international Jewish organizations. They are their objective and natural allies of tomorrow. But for a matter both of dignity and, above all, of political realism, the cooperation must take place on an equal footing and not by setting up communicating vessels that would currently work to the disadvantage of the Palestinians, and to the advantage of the Israelis, only in the short term. For it is obvious that if the cooperation is unbalanced, in the medium and long term it would be harmful for both parties. “It is almost too fast; it is going too fast!” Hayel EL FAHOUM told me: “The smallest Palestinian merchant here, established in Tunis, already has offers from the largest international Jewish commercial bodies to work hand in hand. We are not ready! If we work with them right away, we are going to get devoured.” The wolf of yesterday must not, in becoming overnight the big brother, end up killing the little brother through excess of zeal. (…)
It is clear that when both sides have reached a political and psychological maturity, and an economic maturity within a framework of peace, they will be able to work together better. So, really, the problem does not even arise. The problem is the reverse: the Israelis and the international Jewish community are almost too eager to move forward… They both know very well that their interest is mutual. The Israelis and the Jews were thus the first to be on the doorstep, even before the Washington ceremony had taken place.