January/February 1997, pgs. 58-59

Waging Peace 

MEPC Hosts Peace Process Discussion

The Middle East Policy Council, a Washington, DC organization directed by former senator and democratic presidential candidate George McGovern, hosted a Nov. 21 discussion entitled “Arab-Israeli Negotiations and U.S. Interests in the Middle East: Second Term Imperatives.” Speakers were Aaron David Miller, deputy special Middle East coordinator at the Department of State; Ambassador David Mack, a former deputy assistant secretary of state who currently is a senior counselor at C & O Resources; Arab American Institute president James Zogby; and educator and columnist Alon Ben-Meir.

Although Miller reiterated the long-standing U.S. commitment to solving the Arab-Israeli dispute, calling it “one of the great conflicts of this century,” he conditioned his remarks by saying that the Arab-Israeli conflict “evolved in stages, and must be resolved in phases.” Nevertheless, Miller’s forecast for the future of the peace process was bright, based on his belief that an alternative to the often-violent status quo “is profoundly in the interest of Israel, the Palestinians, and key Arab states.”

Ambassador Mack discussed U.S. national security interests in the Middle East, focusing on the linkage between the Arab-Israeli peace process and U.S. geostrategic interests in the Gulf. Mack, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Arab Emirates during and after the Iran-Iraq war, discussed in detail perceptions by the region’s leadership that U.S. policies in the area are driven by Israeli interests rather than by American national interest. Reinforcing that belief, he said, has been the Clinton administration’s tendency to announce important new U.S. policies in the Gulf, such as the “dual containment” policy against Iran and Iraq and new sanctions against trading with Iran, before pro-Israel audiences such as the annual convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Israel’s principal Washington, DC lobby.

AAI president Dr. James Zogby offered a hard-hitting critique of the peace process, saying that “it’s time to recognize the fact that the. . .peace process has failed both Arabs and Israelis.” Zogby spoke at length about the disparity between frequent U.S. pressure on the Palestinians and the relative lack of pressure on Israel in peace negotiations, which he attributed in part to an “asymmetry in compassion” in the U.S. government that leans more favorably toward Israel. He said that popular support among many Arabs for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussain prior to the Gulf war was “the ultimate measure of Arab alienation” from the West, and particularly the United States.

Discussing the Palestinian-Israeli peace process and chances for peace between Israel and Syria, Prof. Alon Ben-Meir argued against separating the Israeli and Palestinian populations, saying that they instead need to come to terms with one another. Among Ben-Meir’s more controversial statements was his belief that “the Palestinians have to accept the reality of a Jewish settler presence in any future Palestinian state.”

In reference to Syria, Ben-Meir maintained that withdrawal from the Golan Heights would not be too great a price for Israel to pay for peace with Syria because the Golan “would lose its strategic importance if peace were to exist.” He said that Israeli-Syrian negotiations will be difficult, however, because “in Israel, the Golan is synonymous with national security; in Syria, it’s synonymous with national pride.”

—Shawn L. Twing

Speakers Refute Stereotypes of Women and Islam

Seven experts on Arab women’s issues, all but one Arab women themselves, and all but one contributors to a newly published book on the subject, spoke at a Middle East Institute conference on Nov. 7 in Washington, DC.

The general thrust of their presentations was an assertion that in Arab/Islamic society, women’s liberation comes through better understanding of shariah, Islamic law, not wholesale rejection of it in favor of imported Western/European values.

Dr. Suha Sabbagh, professor of women’s studies at Birzeit University and editor of the aforementioned book, Arab Women: Between Defiance and Restraint (1996, Olive Branch Press), noted that in the Arab world the family is the basic social unit that makes up society, whereas in the U.S. it is the individual. Stating that “very few [Arab] women feel the impact of the state in their lives,” she maintained that the Arab family is the “modern day corporation” in countries where state-run social security is often inadequate. She concluded that for Arab women, “the family both supports and suppresses women.”

Dr. Fadwa El Guindi, professor of anthropology at the University of Southern California, asserted that the current “Islamic movement is feminist” and has put gender at center stage. She noted that the origin of the women’s movement in Egypt around the turn of the century was similarly embedded in the nationalist movement itself. Contesting the Western stereotype that women are oppressed by Islam, El Guindi recalled that “women, in fact, initiated the Islamic movement in Egypt” in the early 1970s,when women university students suddenly started to wear the veil. “Please, please, remove the veil, ya binti, until you’re married,” she parodied the baffled mothers of these young women, “You look like a tent!” This powerful Islamic movement, she observed, was not a passing fad, but grew in the 1980s and 1990s and continues to grow in strength all over the Arab/Islamic world.

Continuing Sabbagh’s theme, El Guindi said, “You cannot have an individual-based system and a group-based system together,” so the Western feminist concept of equal rights for individual women cannot be slapped onto Arab/Islamic society. She referred to American feminists as “very provincial” because their values are “culture-bound” to American society’s individualism at the expense of the family.

She said that while there is no conscious movement to liberate women within the Islamic movement, there is liberation when women acquire critical knowledge of Islam. Women, she said, who gave up Islamic learning for “foreign languages and short skirts,” actually lost ground by leaving the interpretation of shariah to men who would naturally put their own interests first. It is through a more critical and in-depth knowledge of their rights within the shariah , she maintained, that Arab/Muslim women will be empowered.

Continuing the theme that women’s empowerment is best found within Islamic society, Amira Sonbol and Judith Tucker, assistant and full professor, respectively, at Georgetown University, gave anecdotal evidence that the more recent, often imported, legal reforms of the late 19th century and the Ottoman Family Code of 1917, specifically, were actually disadvantageous to women. Divorce, for example, became more difficult for women to initiate than before the so-called “reforms.”

Nagat El Sanabary of King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, spoke of the progress of literacy and school enrollment for women in Arab countries. Currently, she said, girls’ education is growing at a faster rate than boys’ in the Arab world. She advocated more single-sex schools and female teachers to help further Arab women’s education.

Lamis Abu Nahleh, professor of English and linguistics at Birzeit University, reviewed the findings of a recent survey on technical training undertaken by the Palestinian National Authority. She concluded that women need to be better targeted and informed about technical and vocational jobs that are not traditionally “female” in order to encourage higher participation of women in training programs and the workforce in general. Sabbagh concluded the conference with an analysis of the new Palestinian Women’s Declaration of Principles, a document worked on by the major Palestinian women’s organizations which will improve the economic, civil and political rights of women under the Palestinian National Authority once it is enacted into law.

The conference, entitled “Arab Women: Between Shariah and State,” was co-sponsored by the Middle East Studies Department of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and the League of Arab States.

“Silence of the Palace” Shows at Georgetown University

The widely acclaimed film “The Silence of the Palace” (Samt al Qasr) was presented Nov. 4 at Georgetown University’s Intercultural Center in celebration of the 40th anniversary of Tunisia’s personal status laws expanding legal rights for women.

Directed and written in 1994 by Moufida Tlatli, the movie tells the story of Alia, a young singer who returns to the palace where she was born into servitude, for the funeral of a prince. The empty yards of the palace remind her of her adolescence at the time of Tunisia’s fight for independence, and of her mother’s harsh life in the palace as a maid and mistress for the princes.

During her visit Alia decides to keep the illegitimate child she is carrying, as her mother did with her. Alia’s decision demonstrates her will to challenge society’s norms and symbolizes the beginning of women’s struggle for emancipation in Tunisia, a struggle that contributed to the adoption of the personal status codes.

The movie generated an hour-long discussion with the director, Moufida Tlatli, who gave an elaborate description of the current state of women’s rights in Tunisia.

Baker Criticizes Clinton Policy on Settlements at Washington Conference

The Center for Middle East Peace & Economic Cooperation, which is the Middle East division of the World Affairs Council of Washington, DC, held a day-long “Retrospective on the Peace Process” on Dec. 5, with more than a dozen speakers including a keynote address from former Secretary of States James Baker, III.

Baker, who served as White House chief of staff and secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration and then as secretary of state in the Bush administration from 1989 to 1992, offered his thoughts on the current state of the Arab-Israeli peace process and the eroding position of the United States as an honest broker under the Clinton administration. He summarized the wisdom garnered from his tenure as secretary of state by saying, “When we are willing to act as a real honest broker for peace in the Middle East, chances for peace are enhanced.”

Baker criticized the Clinton administration for recently abandoning the U.S. government’s long-standing position that Jewish settlements in the occupied territories are “obstacles to peace,” and instead dismissing them as merely “complicating factors.” “It’s a mistake to change the rules if you want to make progress,” he said.

Baker’s comments led to a pointed response from State Department spokesman Nicholas Burns during a Dec. 6 question-and-answer session with journalists. “We choose very carefully the words we use to describe ‘problems’ because we believe that’s the best way to promote progress in resolving those problems,” Burns said. “Settlements are a complicating factor, and they’re unhelpful in the Middle East peace negotiations.”

When asked if he would be willing to lobby Congress for a more balanced U.S. role in the peace process, Baker responded, “I’ve already walked that walk.”

Following the keynote address, the rest of the day was broken up into four panel discussions, a briefing on the current state of the peace process by State Department special Middle East coordinator Dennis Ross, and a luncheon address by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman. The panels were entitled: “Oslo and Jordan: How and Why These Negotiations Worked,” “The Syrian-Israeli Negotiations: Could They Have Worked?,” “Regional Economic and Political Cooperation,” and “Permanent Status and Comprehensive Regional Security.”

The impressive list of speakers, who often sat on more than one panel, included: General Secretary Ahmed Abdel Rahman of the Palestinian National Authority; Asad Abdul Rahman, head of the PNA’s refugee department; Osama El Baz, senior Egyptian undersecretary of state and President Mubarak’s chief foreign policy adviser; former Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Yossi Beilin, a candidate for leadership of Israel’s Labor Party; Alon Ben-Meir, a professor of international relations at New York University and columnist for the Christian Science Monitor; Yossi Genosar, who served Israel’s Labor Party under Prime Ministers Rabin and Peres as liaison to PNA Chairman Yassir Arafat; Dore Gold, chief foreign policy adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu; former Maine Democratic Senator George J. Mitchell, who currently is President Clinton’s special adviser to Northern Ireland; Uri Savir, director-general of Israel’s Foreign Ministry from 1989 to May 1996 and former chief negotiator for Israel to the Palestinians and Syria; and Jordanian Ambassador Fayez Al Tarawneh.

—Shawn L. Twing