Edward Said, Abu Lutuf and Criticism of Oslo: The Hanging Plane Theory

By Ray Hanania

There are two truly eloquent Palestinian spokesmen, and I have heard both.

The first is Edward Said, the misunderstood prophet of Palestine’s academic bourgeois. The second is his alter-ego, Farouk Kadoumi, the “Palestinian Foreign Minister” and the representative of pedestrian Palestinian politics.

As I have said, both are eloquent, and both are equally harsh when it comes to the Oslo “Accords” and the Wye Plantation “Memoranda.” (Have you noticed that pro-Wye commentators are starting to call it the “Wye River” agreement hoping that the term “Plantation” doesn’t appear too apropos?)

This past weekend, I had the privilege of hearing through an ADC interpreter, Kadoumi, who is better known as Abu Lutuf, explain his misgivings concerning Oslo. He, like Edward Said, makes some valid, appropriate and painfully truthful points.

However, like Edward Said, Abu Lutuf also makes the same mistake. And because this is such an emotion-charged issue to debate and it causes many not to read these words, I am going to use an original analogy to explain it.

The situation of the Palestinians who live under the post-1967 occupation—remember there are two occupations, one in 1948 and one in 1967—can be compared to that of the passengers of a plane that has crashed landed and that teeters on the edge of a precipice.

Outside the plane are people like me, Edward Said and Abu Lutuf, all telling those who live inside Palestine what they should or should not do. Advice is good, but the final decision is up to them.

Nevertheless, I argue that Oslo is the only alternative and that we must try to begin a process to salvage as much of Palestine as possible—sort of using Zionist strategy against Zionism.

The fundamental strength of Zionism is not in what its harshest critics call its extremist anti-religious views and the menage ù trois marriage of Judaism, politics and nationhood. It is in their clever principle that the Zionists should take whatever they can get, whenever they can get it, as much as they can get, and as often as they can get it. It is the honing of the process of the fait accompli which Israel has turned into a fine art.

The Zionists wanted “the Nile to the Euphrates” in 1917 but settled for a piecemeal build-up to the 1948 U.N. Mandated Partition Plan, plus whatever they could “take.” They waited for the right opportunity and in 1956 took more, returned it, and took it again in 1967. Even after they have taken, they continue to “take” through expulsion, transfer, sophisticated public relations strategies and finely crafted political manipulation.

I say, let us Palestinians also take what we can, when we can and as much as we can, like they did. We should have done that in 1947 and declared a Palestine State, and East Jerusalem would already be our capital. (That might not have gone over well with the handful of corrupt Arab authoritarian regimes that have controlled our lives over the years.)

And then, we should take more as the opportunity arises in the presumed environment of peace. If peace fails, then go to war, but let the true nature of Zionism rear its ugly head and be the initiator of that war as it was in 1947, 1956, 1967 and 1982 (Lebanon).

Edward Said and Abu Lutuf argue the opposite. I’d love to debate both of them. (Why not? I’ve debated better, Abba Eban, and I was only in my early 20s at the time! I didn’t beat him on the Benelux system. I beat him on the facts: Abba Eban was born Aubrey Solomon in South Africa but can go to Jerusalem any time he wants, yet my father, born in Jerusalem, could never go there.)

They say no, reject Oslo and push the plane over the edge because, according to their arguments, the plane will fly and will not crash and destroy what little remains of the Palestinian people.

I might agree with Edward Said and Abu Lutuf if certain conditions existed. The most important condition is that the Palestinian Diaspora and all its political factions must be united and must provide the kind of support that Zionists received unwaveringly from the “majority” of Jews in the West.

And frankly, we are not united. In fact, we are worse than not united. We are miserably disunited.

Faced with this disunity and the dysfunctional nature of the Palestinian leadership across the board, from the Palestine National Authority and Yasser Arafat, all the way to Sheikh Yassin and Hamas and Islamic Jihad and all the rest, we are truly a Dis-United Palestinian nation.

Can Edward Said and Abu Lutuf really look the Palestinian people in the eye and tell them that the better alternative to a terrible peace process is to instead push their broken-down airplane off the edge of the cliff and hope that some miracle will start its engines?

Telling the Palestinian people that would be the height of arrogance and irresponsibility.

Ray Hanania is a Palestinian-American author and journalist. His columns are archived on the web at www.hanania.com