H.E. Dr. Ahmed Al Madbuh Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Palestine

H.E. Dr. Ahmed Al Madbuh was born on November 15, 1966, in Lebanon.
He graduated from the Lebanese University in Beirut with a BA in political sciences. He has an MA in general medicine from the Medical University of Rostov-on-Don. In the period 1996-2001 he took his doctor’s degree in Urology at the Moscow State Medical and Stomatological University. He headed the Urology ward in a medical centre in Russia. Member of the European Association of Urology and Nephrology, of the World Association of Sterility, and the Russian Association of Urology. In 2008 he completed a diplomatic course in the Diplomatic Academy of Moscow.
Member of the Palestine Liberation Organization since 1984.
Secretary of the Democratic Organization of the Palestinian Youth (1986–1990).
Representative of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine in the Russian Federation (1999–2008).
As Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Palestine to the Republic of Bulgaria he presented his letters of credence to President Georgi Parvanov on January 21, 2009.
Married, with one child.

A unique fusion gives the country its specific image. Here no foreign citizen feels they are in a foreign country

A year after his arrival to Bulgaria on October 27, 2008, Ambassador Al Madbuh invited us at the embassy to express his position on the cause of the Palestinian people. The pages of Bulgarian Diplomatic Review are open for one of the magazine’s main ideas: to present the viewpoints of the countries with representations in Bulgaria.
During this one year we saw exhibitions of traditional and contemporary Palestinian art, a couple of books were published among which the poetry of Mahmud Dervish. Active, sociable and hearty, the Ambassador of Palestine to Sofia has made many friends in Bulgaria. The very life of H.E. Dr. Ahmed Almathbouh and of his family is an example of a human story marked by the fate of their motherland. This is why we started our conversation with retrospection.

I was born in Lebanon in a Palestine refugee camp. In the camps live families and descendants of families banished from Palestine in 1948 after the establishment of the State of Israel. My mother and father come from Haifa, this is what their passports say – that they were born in Haifa, Palestine.
The Almathbouh family is known for their participation in the fight against the British Mandate before the Second World War. After 1948 they continued to defend their native lands. Naturally, after the establishment of the new state the sons of the family were sought by the Israeli occupation army. The Almathbouhs scattered between Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. There they lived in refugee camps. My grandfather had two sons and a daughter. My uncle died during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, my aunt married in Jordan.
After the Arab-Israeli War of 1967 and after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1973 my parents had to emigrate once again. They had to flee for the third time in 1982 during the next Israeli invasion of south Lebanon. Now they live in the Beka valley in Lebanon.
We are two brothers and seven sisters. We all have good education – two of us are doctors, one PhD chemist, a pharmacist, the rest of the girls have professions in the field of cosmetics and services.
I’ve studied in the UN schools created by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Middle East (UNRWA). I studied political sciences at the Lebanese University and later I received a scholarship by the PLO to study medicine in the former Soviet Union. In 2008 I was appointed Ambassador of Palestine to Bulgaria by the President of Palestine. This made me very happy for two reasons: first, I am honoured to represent my people, and second, I am happy that I am among Bulgarian people who have always manifested their friendship and support, warmly embracing the Palestinian cause.

Your Excellency, how did you feel during this year in Bulgaria?
Not once have I felt like in a foreign country. On the contrary – I feel at home. The more I get to know Bulgaria, the more I love it. My first impression of the country was positive and it’s getting better and better.

In Bulgaria there’s something from Russia, from Europe and the Middle East. And it is this fusion that gives the country its specific image. Here the European feels like in Europe, the Russian – like at home, and the citizen of the Middle East – like in the Middle East. Maybe Bulgaria is the only country in the world to have this quality.

You worked as a surgeon for many years. Don’t you miss the doctor’s profession now?
I do miss it. I hope to find a solution in Sofia. Some hospitals have offered me to be part of surgery teams and I am trying to figure out how to combine surgery and diplomatic engagements. A surgeon really needs to work with his hands constantly.

Where does this love for medicine in your family come from?
If we make a statistics of the Palestinians around the world we will see that it is probably the Palestinian people that have the highest percentage of university graduates. This may be due to the misery we live in in the refugee camps. All of us keep dreaming to return to our native land. We believe that good education is the best way to draw the moment of this return closer. And the choice of medicine is logical because we have seen enough victims and we have grown to want to learn how to help the others in such situations. There is indeed a very big number of doctors among Palestinians.

What is the image of your motherland you hold in your mind, since you were not born there and have practically not lived there?
The Zionist movement hoped that the generations who are born outside Palestine would lose touch with their native places. This idea proved wrong from the very beginning. We take the name of Palestine with our mother’s milk. To us it means motherland and mother at the same time.

I’ve been in my town, Haifa, but unfortunately as a foreign guest. I would by no means be allowed to visit Haifa as a Palestinian refugee.

When I entered the town I felt that this was my home. I went to Nazareth, Tel Aviv, Yafo, but I didn’t get the same feeling. Palestinian refugees carry the nostalgia in their hearts. To return to our native lands is our right, guaranteed by the international law documents. I would mention specifically UN Resolution 194. Israel, however, counteracts with a couple of arguments. In the first place, that the return of the refugees would mean a change in the demographic structure of the population of the State of Israel. At the same time any Jew, no matter where in the world he or she lives, needs only to ask to live in Israel and no one would stop them, on the contrary. While the indigenous population of this land and their descendants are deprived of this right. Throughout the history of the Palestinian lands Christians, Muslims and Jews have lived together. Even today in the territories of Palestinian autonomy, in the West Bank live a large group of Samaritans, indigenous population of Palestine, professing Judaism. This community had a representative in the Palestinian parliament too. There is no hostility between us and the Judaists but between us and the Zionist movement, which came and colonized our territories.

Currently Israel is undertaking massive actions for changing the Arabic character of East Jerusalem, which is an occupied territory too. It is a well-known fact that in 1980 Israel declared Jerusalem its “unified and undivided” capital. This was an act of annexation, which contradicts the international law documents. Until now not a single state has recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Even the United States keep their embassy in Tel Aviv. Lately a plan for massive destruction of Arabic quarters in Jerusalem is underway, so that they would be replaced with housing for the new Jewish immigrants. This is a forcible change of the demographic character of the town.

Bethlehem is Palestinian?
Bethlehem – yes, but without Jerusalem there’s no solving the Palestinian question. Right now negotiations with Israel are frozen and Israel is responsible for this because they refuse to fulfil their obligations ensuing from the Road Map. And more specifically – completely cease the construction of settlements, including the so-called sprawling of already existing ones. The Road Map sets out obligations first for the Palestinian side which we, according to US observers and to Israeli security officers, have fulfilled. Now Israel must fulfil theirs, the most important of them being to end settlement colonization of the occupied Palestinian territories. There is also the obligation to remove the check points of the Israeli occupational army located across the territory of the West Bank, and to restore the road connections between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Also to stop the military raids, the incursions of the Israeli army into Palestinian towns. All these conditions have not been laid down by the Palestinians but are conditions which Israel should observe in compliance with the Road Map, which is an international document, if they truly want to manifest a serious will for peace.

Do you think peace is possible?
Peace is possible. Israel just needs to understand that it is in their best interest that an independent Palestinian state should exist, because time and history work in favour of the Palestinian people.

Do you have friends who are Jews?
Yes, many. While I was working in Russia I had many Jewish friends. The Orthodox Jews movement of Neturei Karta is famous, it unites rabbis from all parts of the world, particularly from Great Britain and the US, who fight for the rights of the people of Palestine and for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.