This page is subject to the extended confirmed restriction related to the Arab-Israeli conflict.Diana Buttu is a Palestinian-Canadian lawyer and a former spokesperson for the Palestine Liberation Organization.
"[7] Buttu has held a fellowship at the Stanford Center for Conflict Resolution and Negotiation and is currently listed as an instructor at Harvard Extension School.
[8] In an NPR interview given early in her tenure as a PLO adviser, Buttu posited that the U.S. should not be "allowing the Ariel Sharon government to do whatever it wants to do", as it currently was, in her view.
This, she explained, meant forcing Israel to "completely withdraw from the West Bank and from the Gaza Strip," thus allowing "all Palestinians to live in freedom.
"[16] In a November 2012 op-ed for the Globe and Mail, Buttu called Gaza "an open-air prison" and charged that "Israel's latest bombing campaign...does not distinguish civilian from combatant, adult from child."
She accused Israel of setting "policies on the minimum number of calories needed to prevent malnutrition" and of strictly limiting Gaza's access to the sea.
In the same interview she expressed the desire that Mahmoud Abbas would "sign on to the International Criminal Court," "hold Israel accountable for the settlement construction and expansion," and "declare this apartheid.