Senator George Mitchell, special envoy for Middle East peace, interview with Middle East Bulletin, “Progress Requires Patience, Compromise and Courageous Leadership,” December 1, 2009:
“Fundamental to our goal of achieving a peaceful Palestinian state alongside a secure Israel, we must pursue political, economic and security tracks simultaneously and in integrated fashion. It is critical to match our efforts to restart negotiations and to move discussions meaningfully on the political track with efforts to build the Palestinian state from the ‘bottom up.’ This means showing average Palestinians immediate and tangible benefits in helping them get goods to market, children to school, and themselves to jobs. To do so, they must be able to live in a system of law and order, functioning and sustaining institutions, and with a degree of assured movement and access for people and goods. In a sense, Prime Minister Fayyad’s program for the PA, released in August, 2009, integrates aspects of the ‘top-down’ political/ negotiating track and ‘bottom-up’ economic/security/institutional development track, given the degree of cooperation and interaction between Palestinians and Israelis required on both tracks. …We are working to ensure that our assistance efforts match the intentions of this plan and are leveraged to meet our shared objectives to the fullest extent possible.”
