Salam Fayyad, the former Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority, discussed the reconstruction of Gaza during a conversation hosted by the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs on Monday afternoon.
Fayyad, a UT alumnus who received a PhD in economics in 1986, touched on several topics relevant to the Israeli-Palestine conflict, including the necessary steps to reconstruct Gaza, during the event, which was organized by the Strauss Center for International Security and Law and the Clements Center for National Security in the Bass Lecture Hall. After the talk, he said the University should have responded differently to the pro-Palestine protests in April 2024, where law enforcement arrested at least 100 protestors.
“We need a transitional period to stabilize the situation to begin to take care of the needs of people,” Fayyad said in the talk.
Fayyad said there must be a multi-year transitional period with an “iron-clad commitment” to nonviolence for there to be any meaningful progress toward reconstruction and the facilitation of life again in the Gaza Strip.
Fayyad also said Palestinians need to take an active role in attempting to achieve statehood.
“I often say there’s a lot to complain about if you are a Palestinian; there’s a lot to even cry about if you are Palestinian. That by itself is not going to deliver freedom,” Fayyad said in the talk. “That can only happen if we live up to our own responsibility and assume full agency in the pursuit of our liberation.”
Fayyad said the University should have “shown more forbearance” during the April 2024 pro-Palestine protests.
Fayyad said he believes in university discipline for violations among campus protesters, such as name-calling and intimidation. However, he said protesters’ actions fell short of this and were met with a low threshold of tolerance by universities generally.
“I’m all for adopting the most expansive definition of hate speech, especially antisemitic speech. There are consequences to that,” Fayyad said.
Fayyad said people conflated criticism of Israel with antisemitism during the protests.
“That’s a judgment people so hurriedly made, and they acted on the basis of that,” Fayyad said. “That’s wrong.”
Editor’s note: A previous version of this article misstated Fayyad’s words in a quote and a paraphrase. Those mistakes have been corrected for accuracy. The Texan regrets this error.
