Ashrawi says Palestinians must focus on reforms

Palestinian lawmaker Hanan Ashrawi said the Palestinians must focus on reform and find the most "moral and acceptable" means to resist Israeli occupation as they pursue a state of their own.

But Ashrawi told Reuters in an interview that a shift to the right in Israel and the United States along with a rise in Muslim fundamentalism would make it harder to resume a peace dialogue shattered by two years of violence.

"To face Israel we have to deal with our own domestic realities, to consolidate our own ability to withstand external pressures and to put together a system of governance that can work democratically despite the adverse circumstances," she said.

Ashrawi, a leading human rights advocate, said Palestinians would have to launch a serious process of reassessment to end a state of chaos in their territories, largely reoccupied by Israel after suicide attacks.

"We've made many, many mistakes. The most essential debate really has to be in the definition of what is the most effective and moral and acceptable means of resistance," said Ashrawi, a former spokeswoman for the Palestinian peace negotiating team.

"The debate is not our right to resist: we are under occupation," she said.

"From day one I didn't think that adopting the tactics and methods of the occupier that (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon, and Ehud Barak before him, used in targeting civilians, would be the best means of resistance."

Two years after a Palestinian uprising against occupation began, many Palestinians have begun publicly criticising the use of arms and suicide attacks against Israelis during the revolt.

Palestinian critics of the policies of Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority also partly blame it for Israel's crushing response to attacks by militants and seizure of West Bank cities.

Ashrawi has turned down Arafat's offer to become a minister in his new cabinet, which won the Palestinian parliament's vote of confidence last month.

She said the new cabinet had the same old faces. "I think the vote of confidence in a series of reshuffles in the same government was a real setback for the reform movement in Palestine," she said. "We should have signalled a real change in approach."

Ashrawi said US policies in the Middle East were leading to more violence.

She noted that Republicans now controlled both houses of Congress in the United States and Israel was being ruled by a right-wing government until a general election due by late January following the collapse of Sharon's coalition last week.

"It's very clear there's a global shift to the right and towards more hardline politics, unilateralism, military solutions," she said.

"To me, the greatest threat is in the rise of fundamentalism whether in the Christian right in the US or the Jewish right in Israel - and that is also giving rise to Muslim fundamentalism as a response and is closing doors to any genuine dialogue."