In Paris, I stayed with President Mahmoud Abbas in the same hotel where I had stayed with the late President Yasser Arafat, may he rest in peace; and in Davos, I used to meet with Abu Ammar in the same suite where Abu Mazen stayed thereafter. Many faces around the two presidents have changed, while other faces have since remained. In the last time in Davos in 2001, Dr. Saeb Erekat and Nabil Abu Redeina for instance, were present at the side of Abu Ammar, and were also present with Abu Mazen in Paris last week. In Davos, and in the last week of January 2001, Dr. Saeb came to us from Taba carrying maps of Jerusalem, and saying that both parties have agreed and with only final touches left for signing an accord. However, the war criminal Ariel Sharon then won the elections two months later and destroyed the entire peace process. In Paris, I sat down with the long-struggling friend [Erekat] going over the different phases of the Palestinian cause we have witnessed so far and I told him jokingly: But there are no negotiations, chief negotiator. Personally, I see no need for negotiations since the fascistic government of Israel does not want peace nor does it actively work for it, and while everyone is talking these days about the settlements as if this is the core issue with Israel, the latter is nothing but an illegal outpost on the land of Palestine in its entirety. I thank God here that I do not have any official capacity that would allow me to say what I want, and what everyone knows even without anybody stating it. In any case, I will not try here to draw any comparisons between Abu Ammar and Abu Mazen, and like they say, “every Sheikh has his “order”. I just want to say that if the cause is the main concern for everyone, then talking about it with Mahmoud Abbas would last until one o'clock in the morning or so, and with Yasser Arafat, until four o'clock or after. Meanwhile, Abu Mazen's visit to Paris gave me the chance to meet the Palestinian Ambassador there, Hind Khoury, who is a former minister. She has managed in a short while to build good relations with various French officials, particularly at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I also noticed that the majority of the staff working at the Palestinian embassy in Paris are women, which must be a favourable matter for the French. I was also pleased to find Hala Abu Hassireh among the Embassy's senior staff; I had heard about her work in Africa where she was posted for more than seven years, and where the job's hardship must have been alleviated by the fact that most Africans support the Palestinian cause. Moreover, I saw in the President's hotel suite Samir Gebran, from the “Gebran trio”. They are very talented artists, and will perform “An evening in the shadows of words” in Paris on the tenth of October in honour of the late Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish. We were going over the results of the president's talks with him, after I arrived from London with Bassel Aqel (Abu-Amin), one of Abu Mazen's closest friends, and were then joined in Paris by Hani Salam, and of course there was with us also the dear colleague Randa Takieddine, Al-Hayat's bureau chief in Paris. I usually nickname colleague Randa “Mukhtara” [Ar. neighbourhood official] since she knows everyone, and everyone knows her. She is always present on Sarkozy's plane in official trips before any other French reporters, and was also always present on Chirac's plane before Sarkozy, and Mitterand before them both. In fact, I will be lucky in Paris to get assistance should I need it, since with the Mukhtara Randa, there is also the Mukhtara Dania Senno, whom I met when she was the assistant of then Foreign Minister Jean Obeid. After that, she settled in Paris, and was present at the hotel to welcome President Abbas and his delegation. I do not think that there is any “worthy” person between Paris and Beirut that Randa and Dania do not know, and would even compete with Google in the information they have about. We and Abu Mazen were received in Paris with some rain, and I felt that there was a hidden hand, perhaps Israeli, timing the rain with every time I left the hotel. In the end I bought a small umbrella but then the rain stopped, and the sky remained clear as long as I held the umbrella in my hands. I took a stroll in the famous Faubourg Saint-Honoré Street, and stopped in front of the Elysée Palace. I remembered there was a parallel street I used to go to when I visited the late dear Alia Al-Solh, rest in peace. Her home in Paris, like her former home in Washington and every other home she lived in had a white marble Damascene fountain in its central reception lounge. She is the daughter of a dignitary, Al-Jabri al-Solh, but first and foremost an Arab struggler and activist, and I hope that one day her biography will be written. In fact, whenever Abu Ammar visited a city where Alia lived, he would visit her for a political conversation that lasted until the wee hours of the morning. I had met them both many times in her Paris home, where only close friends were invited, because she would otherwise receive other people in a suite in a famous nearby hotel. I miss Alia very much; she was the daughter of Palestine as much as she is the daughter of Lebanon and Syria and every other Arab country. She used to “amicably” criticize most of what I wrote, but then met with me and with everyone in supporting the cause. The people of Lebanon must really miss Riad al-Solh; an anonymous person in fact wrote on the latter's tomb: “Rise O Riad al Solh, and fight the harm of brothers and relatives, who took the keys to the country, and handed them over to foreigners.”
