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City Club of Cleveland - Ambassador Afif Safieh
City Club of Cleveland
 
 
 
Afif Safieh, head of the PLO mission in Washington since November 2005, was born in Jerusalem and studied at the College Des Freres. Having finished high school in 1966, he left for Belgium to attend the Catholic University of Louvain. Absent from the West Bank when it was captured by the Israelis in 1967, he was not allowed to return home. Safieh says that the 1967 war made him a 'wandering Palestinian' and that he still is.

In his 2005 Christmas letter to President Bush, Safieh, a Roman Catholic, complains that 'the birth place of Jesus Christ has been totally caged in by the Apartheid Wall' the security fence that Israel is building in the West Bank, and that Israel refuses to facilitate Palestinian legislative elections in East Jerusalem.

Safieh was president of the General Union Palestinian Students in Belgium (1969-71) and in France (1974-75) and was deputy director of the PLO Observer Mission to the United Nations in Geneva (1976-78). From 1987 to 2005, Safieh was PLO representative to Netherlands and Palestinian general delegate to the United Kingdom and the Holy See. In January 2005, he joined the Vatican-sponsored International Board of Trustees of Bethlehem University.

Safieh's articles and essays have been published in two books: Self Determination and One People Too Many?, and his recent essays include 'Children of a Lesser God?' and 'Peace Process: From Breakthrough to Breakdown.' According to Israel's Haaretz newspaper, Afif Safieh 'is considered the most articulate Palestinian diplomat in Europe, and possibly the world.'
March 13, 2006