Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May 2000, pages 91-93

Arab-American Activism

Hanan Ashrawi Addresses Problems in Peace Process

Former Palestinian Authority Education Minister Hanan Ashrawi, who now is secretary-general of MIFTAH, an Arabic acronym for a West Bank-based Palestinian human rights group (The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy), spoke March 14 at the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine (CPAP) in Washington, DC on the failures to date of Palestinian-Israeli negotiations. She began her talk by reminding her audience of “the grave historical injustice that befell the Palestinians,” and the need for the international community to reject the Israeli version of reality.

Ashrawi stressed the importance of a two-track process of Palestinian reconciliation and the need for Israelis to recognize Palestinian rights, return occupied land and forge “new realities.”

In addressing the “peace process,” Ashrawi labeled current Israeli-style negotiations as “sign first and negotiate later,” as was the case with the Oslo accords. Intervention, she stressed, must occur to rescue the main objective, which is peace.

During the current interim phase, she said, there is no “territorial integrity,” only “territorial fragmentation.” Meanwhile, in the succession of interim agreements that followed the Declaration of Principles (Oslo accords) signed on Sept. 13, 1993, Israel has accelerated its settlement activity, land confiscation, and demolition of Palestinian homes, while demanding absolute security for Israelis.

Along with this Israelis are using “absolutist language” and taking actions based on what Israelis maintain is their divine right and insistence that Jerusalem remains the “eternal, undivided capital” of the Jewish state.

Similarly, Ashrawi said, Palestinians should insist upon East Jerusalem as their national capital in accordance with U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which affirms the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war.” She was equally insistent upon the Palestinian right to reject all of the Jewish-only settlements in the West Bank and Gaza, because they interrupt the contiguity of Palestinian land and institute an “apartheid system” for maintaining Israeli hegemony over all of Palestine.

As for the Palestinian refugees, Ashrawi insisted that the right of return is an international “human and political right.” The number of Palestinian refugees who remain trapped in camps in neighboring Arab countries has reached “unacceptable proportions,” she said, adding that their host countries should not be negotiating on their behalf because the Palestine Liberation Organization remains the sole, legitimate political representative of the Palestinians.

On the issue of Palestinian statehood, Ashrawi stressed that, in the minds of Palestinians, “we are still committed to a true state.” This, she continued, is based on an understanding of Jerusalem as being a vital and integral part of the Palestinian state. More importantly, she said, Palestinians need to be “liberated from the injustices of the past.” Just like all other countries, Ashrawi said, the Palestinians, “need to be able to have our day in the sunlight, as a nation among equals.” As for the nature of that Palestinian nation, she said the Palestinians should establish a “contemporary democracy” that would allow for a pluralistic society.

Finally, Ashrawi said, “we cannot make peace through appeasement.” Peace must be based on honesty, and not by automatically adopting the reality of others. This, she stressed is something that every Israeli must recognize. “Reconnecting the past with the future,” is the issue at hand, she said, warning also that “[we] cannot make peace with part of the people, and not the whole.”

—Adila Masood

Arab American Heritage Month Declared

The Montgomery County Board of Education declared the month of April 2000 to be observed as Arab American Heritage Month at a March 27 meeting in Rockville, Maryland. Superintendent of Montgomery County Schools Dr. Jerry Weast read the motion on behalf of staff, students, and parents of the county. He said, “The Board of Education takes great pride in the ethnic diversity of our school system and actively seeks and values the contributions of people of all races and ethnicity.” Dr. Weast noted that there are approximately three million Arab Americans residing in the United States. “Montgomery County is home to an active Arab community,” he said, “whose valued presence has contributed to the rich cultural mosaic of our community.” He added that the county takes particular pride in its kindergarten to 12th grade curricular activities that promote awareness of the many achievements of Arab Americans.

Three students—Rama Taib (pictured left), Alia Saad (right) and Karim Al-Hibry—described what it is like to be an Arab American. Ms. Saad spoke of the sense of pride she has for ancient Arab traditions and culture passed down to her from her parents and grandparents. Ms. Taib talked of the negative stereotypes of Arabs in the media. She said she felt it was her responsibility to educate those she meets that those stereotypes are wrong

—Delinda C. Hanley

Saad Eddin Ibrahim Discusses Egypt’s Peace with Israel

Until the publication of the book When the Guns Fall Silent by Egyptian author and journalist Muhammed Sid-Ahmed in 1974, “no Arab intellectual of any eminence [had] ever dared to think about peace with Israel,” said Saad Eddin Ibrahim at a March 29 Center for Policy Analysis (CPAP) briefing in Washington, DC. Yet now, “it is fitting that there would be a very passionate debate over the peace process in Egypt,” according to Ibrahim, professor of political sociology at the American University in Cairo. He discussed four distinct groups within Egypt that maintain differing approaches to peace with Israel—the Islamists, the Nasserites, the Marxists, and the “pro-peace camp.”

Ibrahim, who is also a trustee of the Arab Thought Forum in Amman, Jordan and chairman of the Ibn Khaldoun Center for Development Studies in Cairo, began with what he termed the far right of the spectrum—the Islamists. This group views Israel as a “theocratic state” which is “racist,” “exclusivist,” “expansionist,” and “evil.” The Islamists, said Ibrahim, argue that Israel should be “fought until the land of [historic] Palestine is completely liberated.” The models of their approach are Hamas and Hezbollah.

The Nasserites have a similar outlook to the Islamists, said Ibrahim, but their approach is decidedly secular. They don’t view Jews as enemies, but rather the Zionists. They see “Israel [as] an extenstion of…Western colonialism, it is part of the imperialist plot.” In fact, Ibrahim argued, “conspiracy” is a key word in their outlook. The Nasserites argue that they must “expose” these conspiracies and “then fight” them. They believe that although they wouldn’t win a struggle now, they “must hold fast.” Their models include, at least until the recent peace discussion between Israel and Syria, Syrian President Hafez Al-Assad.

Ibrahim said the Marxists, the third group he discussed, are distinguished by their complexity. Within the Marxist group, “you find variations…actually differences of significance,” he argued. The Marxists have supported the two-state solution and “for many years they…were smeared.” Yet, he said, the “majority” of the more outspoken Marxists oppose “peaceful coexistence until certain conditions are met,” such as the need “to rectify the imbalance of power [and] to restore the rights of Palestinians.” Muhammed Sid-Ahmed came out of this group.

Finally, Ibrahim referred to the “pro-peace camp,” a group he spent the most time discussing. The pro-peace camp includes those who left the previously mentioned groups as well as “middle- and upper-middle-class Egyptians with some Western education” and those “who have seen that the Arab world has suffered tremendously as a result of this protracted [Arab-Israeli] conflict.” Their main question, Ibrahim argued, is how to develop “schemes for co-existence.”

Members of the pro-peace camp have practiced a “second track” to the governmental negotiations on key negotiation issues such as Jerusalem. “They believe that the governments…do not give these issues enough…investigation,” he said, so the pro-peace camp explores these sticking points of the negotiations, while publishing statements and papers about their discussions. Ibrahim argued that “they have been the target of all the anti-peace groups that I mentioned earlier...however they feel the future is important enough for them to withstand all this pressure.”

—Wendy Lehman

Polls Indicate Basic Differences in Perceptions by Palestinians and Israelis

The American Committee on Jerusalem hosted a March 29 briefing at the National Press Club in Washington, DC on “Palestinian Public Opinion on Jerusalem” by director Ghassan Khatib of the Jerusalem Media and Communications Center. Speaking on the importance of public polling, Mr. Khatib indicated that polling of the Palestinian community seemed to have gained more credibility and significance since the beginning of the peace process.

As a result of his seven years of tracking public opinion polls, he identified trends that have characterized Palestinian attitudes toward the peace process, as well as different interpretations of the same terms by Israelis and Palestinians. In general, he said, Palestinian support for a negotiated peace remains steady, but support for specific Palestinian leaders and parties has declined, as has support for specific agreements.

Khatib identified support for the Palestinian leadership on three levels: support for President Yasser Arafat of the Palestinian Authority (PA), support for the PA in general, and support for Arafat’s Fatah political party. While reminding the audience of the understandable reluctance to express openly opposition to the PA or its leader, Khatib said that his polls reflect that support for Fatah has reached a record low of 30 percent.

A second, and equally important, trend is that Palestinians generally look positively at the peace process. A vast majority of Palestinians, ranging between 72.7 percent to 78.1 percent, support peaceful negotiations as a means of resolving differences with the Israelis.

However, Palestinian public opinion is divided over support for specific peace agreements. Ever since the Oslo agreement, Khatib argued, Palestinian support for peace agreements has witnessed a downward trend.

Another discernable trend is the substantial increase of Palestinians who do not support a specific political organization or leader. Asked which political faction they support, a third of Palestinian participants indicated indifference to any political organization. Khatib said that this demonstrates that neither Fatah nor Hamas are convincing to a majority of Palestinians. Instead, “a substantial majority of Palestinians is very much fragmented,” “alienated,” and “disenchanted with its leadership.”

As for final status issues, Mr. Khatib asserted that “Jerusalem is the most important and difficult” of these. Furthermore, recent polling indicates a hardening of Palestinian attitudes regarding Jerusalem. Palestinians now place Jerusalem right at the top of their priorities, followed by refugees, Palestinian statehood and, finally, Jewish settlement-building. Fifty-seven percent of Palestinians want a unified Jerusalem to be the capital of a future Palestinian state; 13 percent preferred combining East Jerusalem and Palestine and West Jerusalem and Israel; and 9 percent wanted Jerusalem to become an international city. In one survey, Palestinian participants were presented with a hypothetical question: if the last obstacle to a lasting peace with Israel was Jerusalem, should the Palestinians give up Jerusalem for the sake of peace? Only 2.3 percent answered in the affirmative.

Contrary to a common assumption, Palestinians do not view the establishment of their state as the most significant priority. Mr. Khatib argued that this is partly due to the fact that an independent, sovereign, democratic state does not seem attainable in the near future to most Palestinians. “They [Palestinians] are realizing that the kind of state that is emerging is not the same one they were expecting at the beginning of the peace process,” he said.

Mr. Khatib also noted growing gaps between the Palestinians and their leadership on one hand, and also between the general Palestinian public and its Israeli counterpart on basic understanding of critical issues. For example, whereas 20 percent of Jewish participants supported the notion of “the right of return” for Palestinian refugees, the Jewish respondents believed that the place of return for Palestinians should be the place of their present residence. This is in sharp contrast to interpretation of the same concept by Palestinians, who view it as a return by refugees to their place of origin in historic pre-Israel Palestine.

Similarly, although a growing minority of Israelis support the idea of dismantling Jewish settlements, not all settlements are perceived as such by Israelis, who instead consider some of these as “towns.” Interestingly, 30 percent of the Jewish community agreed with the proposition that actions by Jewish forces in 1948 are responsible for today’s refugee problems.

In conclusion, Mr. Khatib stated that “the gap between the two publics [Palestinian and Israeli] and the gap between the two leaderships do not allow for a conclusion of the peace process any time soon.”

—Asma Yousef