Washington Report, March 2006, page 62

Arab-American Activism

Asmi Bishara Keynotes Palestine Center’s Annual Conference

AN URGENT yet hopeful tone pervaded the annual Palestine Center conference, held Nov. 18, 2005 in Washington, DC. Noted scholar Dr. Naseer Aruri introduced the theme of the conference, “Palestine and the Middle East in a Global Context,” with the question, “Is there now a new global environment?” Aruri sketched out mounting U.S. threats against Syria and Iran, as well as the rising power of states like Brazil, Venezuela, South Africa and China—all in the so-called “Global South.”

Appearing by video, keynote speaker Asmi Bishara, a Palestinian member of Israel’s Knesset, stated that in the current global context, American hegemony was the most important factor in the region. This being implemented, Bishara said, by the neocon policy of overlapping the struggle against terrorism with the attempt to “export democracy as if it were a commodity,” with very bloody results. Bishara described talk of democracy as a pretext to divert attention from the U.S. public’s discovery of the Bush administration’s lies that led up to the war on Iraq.

According to Bishara, the neocon theory was that democratization of the Middle East would cut the Palestinian issue into a “normal size,” and focus on the issue of statehood instead of principles of justice and redress. The ultimate Palestinian goal, however, he said, was not statehood but liberation. “Palestinians want a state as an expression of justice. [George] Bush and [Binyamin] Netanyahu and [Ariel] Sharon want a state instead of justice,” added Bishara—and a bantustanized state at that.

By creating a Palestinian statelet without resolving the issue of refugees, Bishara contended, those in the diaspora would be expatriates or immigrants, not stateless refugees. Regarding borders and Jerusalem, Bishara said that Washington and Tel Aviv hoped the occupation would become a territorial dispute between two states, taking away the stink of occupation.

In the day’s first panel, Omar Dajani, who has participated on various negotiating teams, said he found hope in Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s personal intervention on the Rafah crossing talks, especially for pushing along Israel’s concession to allowing European monitors at the crossing. He cautioned, though, that it could be viewed merely as an opportunity to counteract bad Bush press in the U.S., and that actual implementation remained to be seen. Dajani also posited that the U.S. might be beginning to separate the issue of Israeli security from other issues.

Professor Asad Abu Khalil was less optimistic, saying he was unimpressed that Rice had negotiated for Palestinians to cross into the West Bank under armed Israeli guard.

Abu Khalil said he fears that the U.S. clearly intends to control all facets of life in the Middle East, from who could run in the Palestinian elections to the Rand Corporation restructuring of Kuwaiti curricula. However, he observed, pointing to the quagmire in which the U.S. is wallowing in Iraq, plans do not always work out. He also noted that the U.S. had over 41,000 prisoners in Iraq, more than could fit “in Saddam’s jails.”

Israeli Professor Ilan Pappé focused on Israel in the global context. The gap between reality and representation, he said, was bigger than ever, especially in the U.S. There was never a real peace process, he maintained, only an Israeli attempt to lose as little land and as many Palestinians as possible, and there was no significant anti-occupation movement in Israel in 2005.

Pappé accused Israeli academia of cloaking the occupation, physicians of treating injured Palestinians for further torture, lawyers of giving legitimacy to prison without trial, and psychiatrists of detraumatizing occupiers so they could go back and occupy some more. All enable the occupation, he stated.

A two-state solution would only deepen the occupation, Pappé argued, and recommended that the rest of the world treat Israel as a pariah state, as had been done with South Africa, including divestment and boycott. Though not guaranteed, he argued that there were few other options, and it at least would be better than sitting idle as every day the situation in Palestine worsened.

During the second panel, author and activist Phyllis Bennis echoed Bishara in noting the rising powers of the Global South. She discussed the various kinds of power they wielded—economic, military, political, as well as through civil society and the U.N. Emphasizing the role civil society and new anti-war and peace and justice movements were playing world-wide, Bennis also cited some governmental challenges to U.S. hegemony, such as those posed by Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and other Latin American responses to American free trade proposals.

SUSTAIN co-founder Mark Lance also stressed civil society and the growing grass roots movements in the U.S. Saying he came as an activist, he challenged leaders of the Palestinian community in this country to attend and address functions of the various solidarity groups, and to translate words into action through divestment and boycott, as Pappé suggested. Lance also called for unity among the various groups.

Professor Norman Finkelstein discussed the paradox between the broad scholarly consensus regarding the Palestinian narrative historically, legally, and in human rights circles on the one hand, and the passionate disagreement in the public discourse. There were two types of disagreement in the public discourse, he contended: legitimate—based on reaching a differing moral judgement from acceptance of the same facts—and artificial, based on denial of the facts. Those who disagree with the academic consensus on the issue of Palestine, according to Finkelstein, both pretended that the issue was very complicated and dragged in unrelated issues, most obviously the Holocaust.

—Sara Powell

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