Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 1999, pages 109-112

Human Rights

Fawaz Turki Speaks at MEI

Renowned Palestinian author and poet Fawaz Turki discussed Palestinian society on Nov. 12 at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC. Although his talk was entitled, “The Palestinian Authority, Civil Society and the Peace Process: A Critical View,” Turki asserted that it should have been called “The Palestinian Authority, Civil Society and the Peace Process: The Lack Thereof.”

Turki began his talk with the story of his return to the house in Haifa where he was born. The Israeli man now residing in the house opened the door and addressed Turki in Hebrew. Turki responded in English, explaining that he wanted to see the house of his birth. The Israeli man responded, “You were born here and you don’t speak Hebrew?” After further dialogue, the man refused to let Turki enter the house.

“Today I stand before you as an advocate,” Turki said. “We [the Palestinians] do not have a civil society. We lack a representative government, free press, and a governing body of laws with appropriate checks and balances.”

Turki referred to the Palestinian parliament as a “toothless institution” and the Palestinian media as a “sorry excuse for a free press.” As a result, people turn to the street to express their opinions through means such as political graffiti and demonstrations.

“Why have the Palestinians remained immune to change?” Turki asked rhetorically. “Why have they missed the boat in terms of obtaining their goals?” He said that Arabs have a tendency to blame their problems on a legacy of divide-and-rule from colonialism, but the fact is that much of the Arab world is ruled by authoritarian regimes that rely on violence, and terror to obtain obedience and conformity, Turki said.

The average Arab lives in a broken society of coercion, an oppressive society resistant to change, Turki continued. “When you are raised on an ethic of fear, you become spiritually exhausted. We are born tabula rasa. We come into this world as pure beings, and we are shaped by our objective reality.”

Palestinian leadership is “characterized by confusion and lack of vision,” Turki charged. “The Palestinian leadership in power today is bankrupt.” He said that because people have turned sour, they seek representation and self-expression in organizations such as Hamas.

Turki criticized the Wye agreement. He stressed that Israel must realize that something revolutionary happened when the Palestinians recognized Israel and understand that, in return, the Palestinians want freedom. If Palestinians cannot have freedom, he warned, they will keep turning to Hamas. “If I cannot choose the way I live, I will choose the way I die,” Turki concluded.

—Samia El-Mahdi

1998 Gaza Students Campaign

On Thursday, Nov. 19, 1998, Gaza Students International Action Day took place in over 20 countries throughout the world, with simultaneous protests across the United States, Palestine, Japan, Canada, Germany, Britain, France, Italy, Holland and Norway. Activities included demonstrations outside Israeli embassies, submission of over 20,000 signatures from petition drives calling for academic freedom for Gazan students, conferences, film festivals, photo exhibits, simulated checkpoints on university campuses and other awareness-raising activities.

Gaza Students Action Day and the Gaza Students Campaign were established to protest the denial of education for Palestinians by Israeli authorities. Students who live in the Gaza Strip are unable to attend the six universities located in the West Bank because Israel requires students to have travel and residence permits—but these permits are denied as a matter of course. Apart from a handful of six-month permits issued in January 1998, no permits have been issued to Gazans who have chosen to study in the West Bank since March 1996. Gaza students who ignore the permit restrictions and attend West Bank universities have been rounded up, arrested, jailed and forcibly returned to the Gaza Strip. These restrictions on education are in violation of numerous international treaties signed by Israel, as well as provisions in the Oslo accords between Israel and the PLO.

To mark the International Day of Action for Gazan Students a protest gathering was held in front of the Palestinian Ministry of Civil Affairs to assert the responsibility of the ministry to solve the issue of Gazan students and affirm their right to education. Following the protest gathering, a press conference was held at Birzeit University. An Internet link was set up at the university in order to allow Gazan students to talk to fellow students from around the world.

The Gaza Students Campaign called on Israel to adopt, publish and follow standardized and transparent procedures that will enable all students to continue their studies uninterrupted and without restriction. Because Palestinian education is of great importance to a real and just peace, the Gaza Students Campaign asked Israel to ensure that this education is not denied or restricted. Supporters of the Gaza Students Campaign around the world include Hanan Ashrawi, Edward Said, Noam Chomsky, Eric Hobsbawn, Sir Dennis Walters, R. Cookson and Sir Yehudi Menuhin.

For more information readers may contact the Gaza Student Campaign press office by phone at 011 970 2-298 2059, by fax at 2-295 7656 or by e-mail at gaza-students@usa.net or gsc@admin.birzeit.edu

For background information on the campaign contact the campaign Web site at http://www.birzeit.edu/aff

—Jonathan Elsberg and Monica Tarazi

Middle East Peace Symposium at Southern Illinois University

Some 150 people gathered on Oct. 22 and 23 in Carbondale, IL to attend a symposium on “Conflict and Peace in the Middle East.” Sponsored by the Illinois Consortium for International Studies and Programs, the Illinois Consortium for International Education, the Public Policy Institute of Southern Illinois University (SIU) at Carbondale, and John A Logan College, the symposium was dedicated to “new ways of finding solutions to very old problems.” Former U.S. Senator Paul Simon, who founded and now heads SIU’s Public Policy Institute, presided over the event, which coincided with the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations at Wye Plantation in Maryland.

Prof. John Woods, director of the Middle East Studies Center at the University of Chicago, placed the problem in historical context and sought to demythologize the terms central to American stereotyping: Islam, Arab world, and Middle East.

Retiring Congressman Lee Hamilton of Indiana, ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, said the U.S. needs to “resolve and contain the regional conflicts” because “we need the oil—you and I are addicted.” He noted that under the present “peace,” Palestinians have suffered a severe decline in their standard of living, and admitted that the U.S. Congress is “not even-handed” in the peace process “for domestic political reasons.”

He explained that “Israeli leaders understand our system very, very well [and] because they understand our system they can exploit it.” He said the U.S.-Israel alliance should never be broken, but at the same time Palestinian statehood is a necessary component of peace. He added that “Some of my [congressional] colleagues will read this speech, and be quite upset.”

Dr. John Duke Anthony of the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations spoke eloquently on “The History of the Arab-Israel Conflict,” providing an indictment of Zionism and of the legacy of Western intervention in the Arab world. Eitan Naeh of the Israeli Consulate General in Chicago defended Israel’s desire for peace with “wide security margins,” and urged that it’s “not conducive [to peace] to talk about the past.”

Dr. Samih Abid, the Palestinian Authority’s deputy minister of planning and international cooperation, described the destruction of Palestine’s economy, Israel’s “unilateral activities” in Jerusalem, the continuous expropriation of Palestinian land, and the demolition of Palestinian homes as gross violations of human rights which destroy hope among Palestinians and undermine peace even as it’s being made. “We need security as much as they,” he said.

—James Lee von Bockmann

Canon Naim Ateek Describes Palestinian Christian Aspirations

The Reverend Canon Naim Ateek discussed “Christian Communities in Palestine: Between the PA, Israel and Oslo,” at the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine in Washington, DC on Nov. 5.

Reverend Ateek, who is an Episcopalian priest from Jerusalem, began by talking briefly about the work of the Sabeel Ecumenical Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem, which he founded. He stated that the two foci of the center are justice issues—meaning justice for Palestinians and security for Israelis—and the ecumenical ministry of the center, which acts to bring Christians communities within the Holy Land closer together.

Along these lines, Ateek noted that Sabeel will be hosting between 50 and 100 clergy from Jordan, Palestine and Israel in February of 1999 in Tiberias. They will be working to map out the future of the Christian community in these areas, which numbers only 2 percent of the total population.

The main concern of Sabeel is political injustice, according to Ateek, with the Palestinian community concerned about what the ultimate dimensions of any Palestinian state will be, both geographically and politically. Ateek asserted that nothing less than all of the West Bank and Gaza as well as East Jerusalem are essential for the realistic formation of a viable Palestinian state.

Ateek went on to discuss the duplicitous nature of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s office and of the so-called “Christian Embassy” in Jerusalem by relating the efforts of the two to misrepresent the Palestinian Authority as a persecutor of Christians. Ateek charged that the “Christian Embassy” is a powerful Christian Zionist organization that hates both Christians who are from the Middle East and Muslims.

Ateek said that there has been a movement underway for the last 20 years toward the indigenization of Christian churches in the Holy Land through the appointment of Palestinian rather than foreign bishops. This has been done by the Lutheran, Roman Catholic, and Anglican churches.

The Israeli government’s objection to the Vatican’s choice for bishop of the Melkite (Greek Catholic) Church, Boutros Muallem, on grounds that he was a security threat, strained Israeli-Vatican relations, Ateek said. Ultimately Israel relented and agreed to the appointment.

Israel currently is battling with the Greek Orthodox Church in Palestine, the former leadership of which sold land to the Israelis, Ateek noted. He said appointment of a Palestinian to leadership of the Greek Orthodox Church there will halt further Israeli land-grabbing plans.

Ateek closed by explaining that the Israeli government has controlled many of the church leaders in the region by giving them all manner of perks, thus buying their silence. All the more reason, he noted, to continue to fight for justice in the region.

—Michael S. Lee