The PLO's top official in Jerusalem, Sari Nusseibeh, shrugs off allegations that he is a traitor for saying a return of Palestinian refugees to what is now Israel is unrealistic. "One should look at the future Palestinian state as the place to where the bulk of the refugees wish to return to their homeland - not to their homes...(as) many of those homes do not exist anymore," he said in an interview.

Yasser Arafat's Palestine Liberation Organisation named Nusseibeh last month to replace the late Faisal Al Husseini as its top official in Israeli-occupied Arab East Jerusalem, home to some 300,000 Palestinians.

One day after his appointment he infuriated many Palestinian refugees by saying some four million Palestinian refugees should stop advocating their right to return to their homes inIsrael. He was condemned in leaflets by his own political faction, Fatah and protesters have branded the urbane academic in recent demonstrations as a traitor for his proposal.

Sitting in his small office of the president of al-Quds University, the 52-year-old commissioner for Jerusalem dismissed the accusations with a smile. "My ideas have existed for some time, long before I became recently associated with the leadership in an official way," Nusseibeh told Reuters in an interview.

He said his recent statements on the refugees, one of the most sensitive issues that derailed talks on a permanent peace deal with Israel, were a repetition of ideas which he published in 1990 in a book he wrote with Israeli author Mark Heller.

"Let me first say what I say in no way represents the leadership's position," Nusseibeh said.
Referring to the book, on scenarios for a permanent solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Nusseibeh said: "In writing that book I referred to the issue of right of return. We both agreed that the implementation of UN resolution 194 cannot actually be implemented literally for various reasons."

The UN resolution talks about the right of return of Palestinian refugees to their homes - many of which no longer exist. Nusseibeh said the Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation must stop and Israeli troops must leave all lands occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.

He believes that once the uprising is ended, the two sides must sit down and negotiate a settlement. "It's wrong to call it an Intifada. It's not a civilian uprising against the Israelis nor is it an armed uprising against the Israelis, it's rather a war by the Israelis against the Palestinian civilian population," Nusseibeh said.

"It's true we have shootings by Palestinians here and there but the picture is one of Israelis using full military force to try to subjugate the Palestinian civilian population." Nusseibeh dismissed any talk that Arafat was incapable of making peace and said that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon could also get the stalled process rolling again. "If anyone at all is capable of delivering, it is Arafat," he said.

Nusseibeh was back in the political spotlight after an eight-year break to pursue his academic career. "My preferred posture is to remain silent when others are doing the talking. But I had to speak up when this moderate voice was absent," Nusseibeh said, some 14 months into Israeli-Palestinian fighting that has claimed almost 900 lives.

Nusseibeh dropped out of public life in 1993, after the signing of historic interim peace deals. The son of the Jordanian-appointed governor of Jerusalem in the 1960s, Nusseibeh is widely viewed by many Israelis and foreign diplomats as a voice of pragmatism and moderation.

A graduate of Oxford and Harvard universities, Nusseibeh played a leadership role in the first Palestinian uprising, from 1987 to 1994. During the 1991 Gulf War, Israel briefly jailed him on suspicion of spying for Iraq but he was never charged. Nusseibeh has been no stranger to controversy.

He said he was beaten by masked Palestinians in 1987 after word leaked out that he had met members of Israel's right-wing Likud party. Nusseibeh said that at the time, he had drafted a secret draft of an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal in talks with Likud members Ehud Olmert, now Israel's mayor of Jerusalem, and Moshe Amirav.

The deal, he said, envisioned Israeli recognition of the PLO and of a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital. But, Nusseibeh said, Likud backed out at the last minute and Husseini was thrown in jail.

"In fact it was a better deal than Oslo reached 10 years later," Nusseibeh said of the interim accords that established limited Palestinian self-rule and charted a path towards statehood.