Her Majesty Queen Rania Al-Abdullah
Her Majesty Queen
Rania's Interview with NPR - All Things Considered
April 22, 2009
Washington, DC
U.S.A.
Listen to Her Majesty's Interview on:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103375546
Queen Rania: World Cannot Afford
To Be Cynical
All Things Considered April 22, 2009 · King Abdullah of Jordan had a
warning for President Obama on Tuesday when the two met at the White House: Time
is running out for a two-state solution for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The king's wife, Queen Rania al-Abdullah, who is also in Washington, is
reinforcing that message.
The queen, who is Palestinian, has used her position to talk about a range of
issues, from finding peace in the Middle East to educating women and girls, and
addressing stereotypes about Muslims.
Last year, she launched her own
YouTube channel. She explained why in a send-up
of David Letterman's "Top Ten." The No. 1 reason on her list is because
"intolerance and mistrust are driving us apart."
Queen Rania tells NPR's Michele Norris that she knew she was exposing herself
when she created the channel to help foster debate over the Middle East peace
process. But she says that through the exercise, she was able to hear the
"various points of view unedited, unfiltered."
"When you're a public personality, no matter how much you try to remain open,
invariably there will be filters around you — and you may not hear it as it is,"
Queen Rania says. "It's not until you really interact with the other side, where
you put yourself in their shoes and try to see things from their eyes, that you
start to empathize. That's where you get more tolerance and acceptance among
people of different cultures."
The queen says though the world's financial markets are integrated, the world's
cultures are not. She says it is important to keep trying to integrate the
world's cultures, especially to fight one of the "greatest enemies" plagues the
Israel-Palestinian peace process: cynicism.
She says that the world cannot to afford to be cynical, because then it would be
"writing off the futures of hundreds and thousands, if not millions of people,
condemning their lives to hardship and really saying that there's no future for
them."
"We know what the solution is to this problem," Queen Rania says. "What we need
is the political will and the commitment from all parties to really take the
steps that need to be taken on the ground. We mustn't let the extremists on both
sides dictate the agenda and the path toward this process."
In an
interview with NPR's Michele Kelemen, Queen Rania's husband, King
Abdullah, said that Israel has to decide if it wants to be a part of the
neighborhood or continue to be "fortress Israel."
Queen Rania says her husband was talking about the Arab Peace Initiative, which
was endorsed by 22 Arab states and supports the two-state solution.
"Ultimately, peace for Israel is going to come from being accepted regionally,"
she says. "It's not going to come from building walls or barriers from conflict
and from war and from isolation. That is not the kind of life that Israelis want
or deserve."
Queen Rania also says that she wants the Obama administration to hold both sides
accountable.
"The new president enjoys an incredible amount of credibility all over the
world, as you know, and particularly in our region," she says. "And we hope that
his administration is able to articulate and map out a vision for our region —
and to be able to expend his political capital in the right way, and to invest
it in really trying to find a final solution to this long-standing issue."
She says she thinks the U.S. has "the opportunity to put its best face forward."
"I believe that, unfortunately, [for] many in our region, the only American face
that they have been exposed to is that of a military personnel," she says. "With
all due respect to the military, I think what Americans really excel at is
innovation, is their humanity, their philanthropy, the way they like to help
people. We need to see more of that face in the Arab world."