Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 1998, Pages 80-83

Waging Peace

HANAN ASHRAWI VISIT TO ATLANTA FEATURES SPEECHES, MEETINGS WITH JIMMY CARTER, TED TURNER

When Palestinian Minister of Education Hanan Ashrawi departed Atlanta she had a Braves jacket and a host of new friends made at her two major talks, a number of interviews and a sojourn in Braves owner Ted Turner's box at Atlanta Stadium which she and her party shared with former U.S. President and Mrs. Jimmy Carter. More important, however, were the insights she left behind with her audiences during her Oct. 13-15 visit to Atlanta arranged by the Georgia-based Palestinian Human Rights Campaign Inc.

In an address at Emory University entitled "Can There Be Peace?" Dr. Ashrawi spoke movingly of the despair felt by the Palestinian people suffering under Israeli occupation while watching their land being confiscated for Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Gaza.

"It's a game in which God takes sides and once one side claims God, then the other side brings in their God and the time warp of occupation is frozen into collective punishment, illegal settlement and confiscation of the land," Ashrawi explained.

Calling Jerusalem "the lynchpin for peace," she told the audience "there can be no peace with the present imbalance of power...There must be parity and reciprocity...Peace without justice will never work." Accompanied on the stage by Dr. Gordon Newby, chairman of the university's Middle East studies department; chairman Dr. James Rogers of the Palestinian Human Rights Campaign; and Professor Don Reed as moderator of questions, Ashrawi vividly described the manner in which Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is systematically destroying the peace process.

"Interim phase agreements are not being implemented," Ashrawi said. "Israelis keep regressing to the starting point" while the United States does nothing to enforce the agreements. "Israel systematically defies international laws and is a rogue state of self-interest. They use interim phases for further negotiating what has already been negotiated instead of implementing what has already been agreed," Ashrawi explained.

Noting that "third-party intervention is necessary for peace,"Ashrawi said that "the U.S. alliance with Israel is a hindrance to the peace process and an impartial third party is necessary. The U.S. Congress cannot decide to whom to give Jerusalem and should not be involved. The U.S. is a major power and moral politics are needed, not self-interest," she complained.

"The U.S. is allowing Israel to continuously weaken the Palestinian side, which is not in the interest of peace but a complicating factor. There was an erosion of the U.S. position. First the settlements were 'illegal.' Gradually they became an 'obstacle to peace,' then a 'complicating factor,' ill-timed and regrettable, followed by building more homes 'for a natural population increase...'" she concluded. "The whole world has recognized a Palestinian state, sine qua non, except for the U.S.We do not want any peace or at any price. We need a just peace."

Dr. Ashrawi concluded to thunderous applause. She then took questions, one of which was whether she believes the U.S. is a "neutral broker":

Her response: "We are not going to allow the U.S. to continue in blissful ignorance of what is going on because we really need to be able to challenge such a policy. We have relationships with European countries which have more even-handed policies."

Following her Emory University speech Dr. Ashrawi was feted at a dinner at the Emory conference center. Principal speaker at that event was Georgia Democratic Representative Cynthia McKinney, who expressed her long-standing admiration for the Palestinian guest of honor and lightened the evening with her warm sense of humor and even a "marhaba" (hello) in Arabic. The following day Ashrawi, who was accompanied throughout her visit by Rula Dajani, director of the Palestinian Ministry of Higher Education, had a two-hour meeting at the Carter Center's Division of Human Rights and Conflict Resolution at Emory University followed by broadcast programs at the Cable News Network Atlanta headquarters. From there she went to Georgia State University for a question-and-answer session at the World Media Forum where she spoke to a large and enthusiastic audience.

CNN owner Ted Turner and his wife, Jane Fonda, invited Ashrawi to dinner and then to join them in their box at an Atlanta Braves baseball game. When Ashrawi declined on grounds that she had no suitable attire, a member of the sponsoring organization whisked her off to a local store to buy something to wear, while Turner went to the players' bench and brought back an Atlanta Braves warm-up jacket as a souvenir. President and Mrs. Jimmy Carter were also guests in the Turner box.

Evaluating the visit, participants in the 200-member Palestine Human Rights Campaign, who raised the money to provide for Ashrawi's Atlanta expenses, gave special credit to members Gwen Maddock and Jean Rogers for conceiving the idea of the visit, and doing most of the planning that gave it such a wide impact.

To commemorate the visit, the group established a scholarship fund at Bir Zeit University in recognition of Ashrawi's "work and life of dedication to Justice and Peace."

—Rita Fairchild

MAMOUN FANDY DISCUSSES "CYBER RESISTANCE" AT MEI

Georgetown University professor Mamoun Fandy discussed the role of telecommunications in opposition politics in Saudi Arabia Nov. 7 at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC. Entitled "Cyber Resistance and 'Hyper Real' States: the Case of Saudi Arabia," Fandy summarized the results of field research done in Saudi Arabia during the summer of 1997.

Echoing the Arab saying "don't confuse the mirage with the oasis," Fandy began by saying that "In this world, signs for the real are often confused for the real itself, but that's not always the case." One such example, he said, is opposition outside Saudi Arabia that uses advanced telecommunications methods, including faxes and the Internet, in an attempt to discredit the ruling Al Saud monarchy.

For example, the Committee for the Defense of Legitimate Rights, an opposition organization based in London, gained notoriety during the Gulf war by sending faxes into Saudi Arabia alleging excesses by the ruling Al Saud family. A significant amount of attention was paid by the media to this organization and its allegations of Saudi wrongdoings. In retrospect, however, the CDLR may have been totally inconsequential in Saudi internal politics.

After the Gulf war, the committee eventually degenerated into "a gossip column," according to Fandy, and split into two factions, one that wanted to focus solely on Saudi Arabia, and the other on the Gulf as a whole. What once was regarded as serious opposition in reality may have been nothing more than a few individuals with a fax machine and a Web site on the Internet.

Fandy pointed out that the CDLR example is part of a larger dynamic where outside observers, especially in the Western media, overemphasize certain elements in Saudi Arabia's political and social culture. When these elements become the focus of newscasts, they create a false image of the country, he said.

—Shawn L. Twing

EHUD SPRINZAK LOOKS AT ISRAEL TODAY

On Nov. 6 the Middle East Institute and the Washington, DC Jewish Community Center jointly hosted a special lecture by Dr. Ehud Sprinzak of Hebrew University in Jerusalem at the DCJCC. Sprinzak is currently a visiting fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington. The title of his talk was "Religious Extremism and Currents of Crisis in Israel Today."

He opened his remarks by painting a grim picture of Israel today. Since the election of Binyamin Netanyahu one and a half years ago, a marked deterioration in the quality of public life has taken place. Religious freedoms for the great majority of Israelis are being curtailed by a small group of vocal ultra-Orthodox Jews who, emboldened by the support they receive from the current Likud government, seek to force their interpretation of Judaism onto the rest of the population.

Examples of that narrow interpretation include the closing of Bar Illan Street in Jerusalem by ultra-Orthodox Jews on the Sabbath and attempts to pass a conversion law which would only recognize conversion to Judaism by Orthodox rabbis in Israel, nullifying conversions by Conservative and Reform rabbis unless they take place outside Israel.

The rule changes in the last general election in May of 1996, which allowed Israelis to vote separately for prime minister and for members of the Knesset, Sprinzak feels, played one of the defining roles in this transformation. These elections saw normally anti-Zionist Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Israelis acting for the first time to advance their agenda by actively participating in the Zionist electoral process. The result was that ultra-Orthodox Jews elected 23 Knesset members and thus were able to form a ruling coalition with secular rightists of 66 Knesset members, completely reconfiguring the power structure. Dr. Sprinzak stated that Netanyahu would not have been elected without this new-found interest in the Israeli electoral system on the part of the Orthodox. In turn, Netanyahu's debt to Orthodox voters goes a long way toward explaining the decisions made by his government in the past one and a half years.

Sprinzak said the coalition which brought Netanyahu to power was unstable from the start, with Likud Party leaders Benny Begin and Dan Meridor driven out of the coalition in recent months due to internal friction. He further explained that the settler movement and Orthodox Jewry are the two main pressure groups which Netanyahu is forced to deal with in holding together his coalition.

Sprinzak next dealt with Netanyahu's amazing staying power, even though, according to Sprinzak, Prime Minister Netanyahu is the worst in Israeli history, single-handedly returning Israel to the status of a pariah state. Sprinzak explained that there are two competing cultures within Israeli society—the culture of confidence and security and the culture of insecurity. The prime minister relies upon the latter manifestation in order to hold onto power.

Sprinzak said the first group is open-minded, universalistic, secular and open to the world, and is made up overwhelmingly of Ashkenazi (European) Jews, who are educated and upper-class in make-up. The overriding philosophy of this group, according to Sprinzak, is that Israel has won the war with its neighbors and is now ready to reap the consequent rewards, free from any sense of guilt. In addition, this group feels that with the U.S.S.R. defeated, Israel can be magnanimous in victory. They believe that making concessions to the Palestinians and their other Arab neighbors is the right strategy to employ.

Sprinzak listed the culture of insecurity as predominantly Sephardi in nature, with many in this Oriental Jewish group considered the underclass of Israeli society, largely uneducated and poor. They feel that while a battle has been won in Israel's fight with the Arab and Muslim world, no paramount victory has been achieved. They see new threats arising in Iran as an example of the need for continued vigilance. This culture's overall philosophy is that the outside world can't be trusted and is just biding its time while devising new plans to wipe out Israel. It is in this group that Netanyahu finds his largest support.

At this point Dr. Sprinzak revealed the next in his list of terms for the right wing in Israel, classifying the newly politicized Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox as the "soft right" in the country. He explained that only two weeks before the May 1996 general elections, the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox mobilized to campaign for Netanyahu.

Sprinzak listed several reasons for this new wedding of the Orthodox and the secular right within Israel. First, is the desire of Gush Emunim to compete in the yeshivas on the level of the Torah. This resulted, according to Sprinzak, in the Kahanezation of the ultra-Orthodox, who aside from studying the Torah, were not intellectually oriented and fell under the influence of the late Rabbi Meir Kahane's extremely hostile views on Arabs.

Sprinzak pointed out that the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin was fueled by this movement. Sprinzak said this period also coincided with the rise of Shas, the Sephardi religious political party, which preaches cabalistic repentance through a rediscovery of Oriental Orthodox roots using mysticism. While he noted that the Shas Party makes up only a small percentage of the Sephardi community, it significantly affects that community's outlook.

Shas-inspired radio stations preach hatred of Arabs and the Israeli left, including Labor and Meretz, and love for the likes of the perpetrator of the Hebron mosque massacre, Baruch Goldstein, Sprinzak said. He described the incident several months ago in which Netanyahu was overheard by media microphones speaking to a prominent Shas rabbi about his belief that Jews of the left in Israel were not really good Jews.

Although this caused an uproar within Israel, Sprinzak said, it caused the prime minister no real harm since Israel's demography is on the side of the culture of insecurity. Sprinzak said that Rabbi Ovada Youssef, the Shas Party leader, is very strong politically, while the left has no comparable energy.

Listing some causes for hope for those desirous of moderation in Israeli politics, Sprinzak pointed out that the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jews are soft right, meaning they do not care about settlements or the Eretz Israel ideology of the settlers. Nor do they have any desire to fight, as evidenced by their refusal to sign up for service in the Israel Defense Forces.

Sprinzak predicted that if Netanyahu continues to pursue the same policies, he may well lose the next elections. Even if this were to occur, however, Labor would still have to compromise with the culture of insecurity, Sprinzak said. This would leave Labor Party leader and likely candidate Ehud Barak with most of the same problems presently facing Netanyahu.

Sprinzak listed three points he felt were needed for Labor to make a comeback. These are better organization than was in evidence during Shimon Peres' failed election bid in 1996; support for like-minded groups and organizations at the grass-roots level (Sprinzak cited as an example the fact that the Oslo process began in the early 1980s only after hundreds of Israelis and Palestinians already had started to open dialogues); and finally to point out that the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox play power politics with none of the spirituality that they allegedly espouse. He closed out this section of his remarks by stating that while American millionaire Irving Moskowitz's policies in Israel are not good, at least he stands for his principles, hinting that Labor could learn from him about zealous commitment toward one's goals.

Sprinzak went on to state that the current political situation in Israel is not as bad as the cultural situation, with nearly one million Russian Jews who have immigrated to Israel in the last decade outnumbering the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox Jews. Sprinzak said the Russians are of the culture of security. It is because of the voting power of this group alone, according to Sprinzak, that Rabin was elected in 1992 and Netanyahu brought to power four years later, both times because of this group's dissatisfaction with the incumbent government's handling of their situation within Israel. It is this group, according to Sprinzak, which any party seeking power within Israel ignores at its own risk. He finished this section of his talk by remarking that one reason for the success of the Israeli economy in the 1990s has been the integration of Russian Jewry into it.

Sprinzak noted that Israel's Peace Now movement currently has a chip on its shoulder as a result of the 1996 elections. The movement's rhetoric had in fact pushed the Orthodox to the right because Peace Now had simply assumed Orthodox Jews wanted peace, and didn't see the necessity of openly engaging them in dialogue. Sprinzak described the Israeli culture of confidence born of the fact that, in his words, many Israelis do not believe in the irreversible process of history. Sprinzak went on to say that the majority of the soft right in Israel wants peace, with Israel not becoming a Middle Eastern Sparta. The end game is that a better economy promotes peace and that a war mentality promotes war.

In closing Sprinzak stated that the real victims of what has happened since May of 1996 have been the Palestinians, with their standard of living since the signing of the Oslo accords down an astounding 30 percent. Sprinzak let his true feelings show when he related that he cared about what effect the continued occupation of the West Bank and Gaza would have on Israel's soul. He further stated that the bantustanization of the West Bank is a fire in the making, as any hope of winning the demographic war in the Middle East on the part of Israeli Jews is simply a lost cause. His final remarks began with an analogy to the apartheid-era government of South Africa. That government used to liken itself to Israel, claiming Afrikaaners had arrived in a desert land and made it bloom. South Africa aside, Sprinzak said he felt it necessary to separate Israelis and Palestinians, with the continued mix of settlers and Palestinians simply too dangerous to sustain.

—Michael S. Lee

RAMI KHOURI SPEAKS AT CPAP

"There is rising skepticism [in Jordan] about the policies of the Israeli government," particularly as those policies relate to relations with the Arab world, said Jordanian journalist Rami Khouri during a Nov. 14 discussion at the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine in Washington, DC.

Many factors complicate the Jordanian-Israeli relationship, he said, including the pervasive belief among Jordanians and Palestinians that Israel wants to exploit Jordan as "a stepping stone to the rest of the Arab world." Despite an estimated $25 million in annual trade between the two countries, and an "enormous increase" in Israeli tourists traveling to Jordan, the average Jordanian is not feeling the benefit of relations with Israel, Khouri said.

Blatant imbalances in their bilateral relationship further complicate the peace between them. For example, Khouri contrasted King Hussein's highly publicized visit to the families of seven Israeli school girls killed by a Jordanian soldier, with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's trip to Jordan, "like a thief in the night," to arrange for the release of Israeli Mossad agents captured in Amman after a failed assassination attempt against Hamas spokesman Khaled Meshal. These disparities weigh heavily on the minds of the Jordanian public, Khouri opined, making it likely that Jordan and Israel will have a "cold peace" not unlike the Egyptian-Israeli relationship.

"The dehumanizing actions of the state and army of Israel—not fringe lunatics—particularly in Lebanon and Palestine," makes it difficult for Jordanians and Palestinians to embrace peace with Israel, he said. Added to this is the "collective humiliation of the Arab world that has to bow first and foremost to Israel's security and national mythology when making peace." This has led many Jordanians and Israelis to believe that "the peace process, as it exists today, will only secure an American-Israeli hegemony" in the Middle East, Khouri said.

"People [in Jordan] have become apolitical," he concluded, because "the Arabs have been dehumanized by the Israelis to the point where they don't believe they have control of their future, or even a say in their past."

—Shawn L. Twing