Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, May/June 1998, Pages 75-78, 96

Waging Peace

Lisa Majaj Speaks On Palestinian-American Literature

Palestinian-American poet Lisa Suheir Majaj spoke on “Narrating the Diaspora: Palestinian Literature in the U.S.” April 23 as part of the series entitled, “50 Years of Occupation” organized by the Arabic Club of Georgetown University. Majaj is currently writing her Ph.D. thesis at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) on Arab-American literature. She presented a fascinating overview of contemporary Palestinian-American writers and the development of Arab-American writing as a genre.

For contemporary Palestinian authors in the West, the expulsion from their homeland resulted in physical dislocation as well as linguistic, generational and cultural differences with writers in the Middle East. Majaj said that Arab-American authors are addressing the need to translate their identity into language, and this language is usually English. Majaj quoted Sharif Al-Musa, a Palestinian-American poet and editor of an anthology of Arab-American writings entitled Grape Leaves, who wrote that he wanted to “Translate myself into the new words of the new land.”

Majaj discussed five other Palestinian-American authors, four of whom are poets: Fawwaz Turki, Naomi Shihab Nye, Hala Deeb Jabbour, Natalie Hundall and Suhair Hamad. Majaj speculated that Palestinian-American writers often find it difficult to bridge the gap between author and reader in the American context. She reasoned that poetry is the favored genre of writing because it evokes emotions without needing to fully explain the situation. She also suggested that writing poetry is more economically feasible since it does not require the length of time necessary to write a novel.

In the question-and-answer session, Majaj explained that the new generation of Arab-American writers is breaking from earlier Arab-American writers like Kahlil Gibran. Gibran and other authors from that generation wrote in Arabic on general philosophical themes and thought of themselves as challengers to a long, distinguished history of Arab literature. Following Gibran, there was a lack of Arab-American writing at a time when many Arab-Americans were denying their identity. According to Majaj, the new generation is trying to create an Arab-American literary space and genre that places their Arab heritage in an American context.

Majaj was optimistic about the future of Arab-American literature. She noted that as authors like Naomi Shihab Nye gain prominence in the literary world, there will be more Arab-American panels at conferences, more writers and more literary critiques. In Majaj’s estimation, this should lead to a greater number of publishing houses agreeing to publish works by Arab- and Palestinian-Americans. And so the cycle of exposure to American audiences will widen to groups beyond literary circles.

—Randa Kayyali

Georgetown Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding Conference

The Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding of Georgetown University in Washington, DC held a day-long workshop on “Muslim Diasporas in the West: From Sojourners to Citizens.” The April 17 conference focused on the transformation of Muslims to fully involved citizens with increasing involvement and significant representation in Western societies. Speakers and topics included:

Anisa Abd El-Fattah on Developing Models for Muslim Community Life in America; Mumtaz Ahmad on Issues and Controversies: Muslims and the Political Process in America; Slyvie Durmelat on The French Press and the Franco-Maghribi “Time Bomb”; Mamoun Fandy on Islamists, U.S. Foreign Policy and the Muslims of America; Shareefa Al-Khateeb on Muslims and the Resolution of Social Issues; Patrick Laude on Two French Perspectives on Islam; Kathleen Moore on Muslims and Issues of Pluralism in American Law; Sulayman Nyang on Evolution of Muslim Culture in America; Tamara Sonn on A Most Visible Minority: Muslims in South Africa; Peter Steinfels on Covering Islam: One Reporter’s Perspective; Barbara Stowasser on Turks in Germany; Shibley Talhami on Between Scholarship and Public Policy; John Voll on Muslim Diasporas in Island Nations; Nayyar Zaidi on Emerging Muslim Media in the United States; and Amira El Zein on Sufism in the New Ages.

For information on how to reach any of these speakers telephone Dr. Yvonne Haddad, (202) 687 8211.

—Rev. L. Humphrey Walz

Scholars Discuss Developments in Iraq at Middle East Institute

Prof. Aideed Dawisha, Ambassador Richard Murphy, and journalist Alain Gresh discussed recent develops in Iraq at an April 23 presentation at the Middle East Institute in Washington, DC.

George Mason University Professor Dawisha analyzed Saddam Hussain’s recent assertiveness, including dozens of public appearances, Republican Guard deployments virtually on the border of the off-limits Kurdish north, and a renewed “confidence...that borders on cockiness” among the Iraqi political leadership in general, and Iraqi President Saddam Hussain in particular.

Two factors explain this new-found assertiveness, according to Professor Dawisha. First, Saddam Hussain and his regime know they are winning the propaganda war against the United States and, second, Saddam has managed to survive for seven years despite intense U.S. opposition. This has led many Arabs to believe that either the U.S. secretly prefers to keep Hussain in power to maintain instability in the region (and thus prop up American arms sales to the region), or that Saddam really is powerful enough to defy the United States. “Both answers feed into the sense of hopelessness and despair among Iraqis,” Dawisha said.

Former Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Richard Murphy discussed American options for dealing with Saddam Hussain before and after the February agreement brokered by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan. Prior to that agreement, according to Ambassador Murphy, the United States had three options: military action aimed at destabilizing the Iraqi regime, settling for a diplomatic solution, and working with the Iraqi opposition as a long-term solution.

Following the U.N.-brokered agreement, U.S. options changed. In response to these changes, Ambassador Murphy suggested that the United States continue to discourage Saddam Hussain from pursuing weapons of mass destruction, but exercise some flexibility by closing the files on these programs one by one, “starting with the nuclear file where,” he said, there “is little evidence” of current Iraqi violations.

Murphy said the United States also should try to develop widespread support among U.N. Security Council members for a long-term strategy for Iraq, police the U.N. oil-for-food program less cautiously, give oil-for-food-related contracts to companies in countries owed money by Iraq (e.g., France) and, in the long term, bring Iraq into a regional arms control agreement that includes Iran and the Gulf Cooperation Council countries.

Le Monde Diplomatique editor Alain Gresh discussed Russia’s role and foreign policy interests in the Middle East in light of recent Russian initiatives in Iraq. Russia divides the Middle East into three separate categories, Gresh explained. These are Central Asia and the Caucasus, Iran and Turkey, and the Arab world and Israel. Of the three regions, Central Asia and the Caucasus are most important to Russia for geostrategic reasons, according to Gresh. Russia also tries to exert influence in countries where the United States has little or no diplomatic presence, like Libya, Iraq and Iran, Gresh said. He noted also that the Russians believe that they saved the United States from a potentially costly mistake in February by discouraging a U.S.-led military strike against Iraq.

—Shawn L. Twing

Hisham Sharabi Delivers Swan Song After 45 Years at Georgetown

Dr. Hisham Sharabi’s speech, “The Palestinians: 50 Years Later,” delivered March 25 as the Kareema Khoury Annual Distinguished Lecture in Arab Studies at Georgetown University, was his last as a Georgetown University professor. He officially retires in June, after teaching history there since 1953. During his service at Georgetown, Dr. Sharabi has written 16 books, helped to found the university’s widely-acclaimed Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, and is currently chairman of both the Jerusalem Fund and the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine, as well as editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies. Dr. Sharabi’s long and distinguished career has thus combined impeccable scholarship with extensive and effective political involvement in the Palestinian resistance movement and other causes. It was for these reasons that, in his introduction, Georgetown Prof. Michael Hudson of the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies referred to Professor Sharabi as an “activist intellectual.”

Dr. Sharabi was born and grew up in Jaffa, British Palestine. In his eloquent speech, he described the fall of his birthplace and homeland in 1948, when the “well-armed, well-funded, and well-organized” Jewish army fought and conquered the “ill-equipped, under-funded, and disorganized” Arab troops that were sent to defend Palestine. Dr. Sharabi related to his audience the sad story of his grandfather who, after fleeing to Beirut with his family, kept a suitcase packed and the keys to his house in Jaffa in his pocket, waiting to go home until the day he died. He spoke of the bitter irony he felt during a visit, decades later, to his boyhood home, which is now inhabited by an Israeli professor and his family. He spoke of standing at the harbor in Jaffa, where he spent a great deal of time as a child, and overhearing Russian-speaking recent immigrants to Israel who, no doubt, were accorded full citizenship, while Sharabi was in his birthplace on an Israeli-issued, limited tourist visa.

Although he expressed cautious optimism over the recent challenges to Zionist interpretations of history by a new breed of Israeli scholars, Dr. Sharabi also expressed frustration with the “Jewish denial” of what happened that is evident in even the most educated, liberal, and well-intentioned Israelis. He offered the example of a conversation he once had with Amos Oz, who said to him: “If the Palestinians did not fight us, they would still be living in their homes.” As long as this naiveté persists in the hearts and minds of Israelis and other Jews who are sympathetic to the Palestine cause, Sharabi said, it is difficult to believe that there can ever be true reconciliation between the two peoples.

He stressed to his audience that “we know that the idea of expulsion was part of the Zionist plan by the end of the 19th century because Herzl said: ‘We shall spirit them [the Palestinians] across the frontier.’”

Dr. Sharabi’s criticism was not limited to Israel and Israelis, however. He also made clear his disappointment in Yasser Arafat’s leadership of the PLO and the Palestinian Authority. Sharabi wondered aloud to the audience, “Why has the PLO been so utterly defeated, despite vast support from all over the world?”

He then answered his own question: “When the leadership of the PLO was won by Yasser Arafat, the PLO’s fate was sealed…Had George Habash been elected…there is a chance that it might have become a genuine revolutionary movement.” Sharabi described Habash, who was educated at the American University in Beirut, as a “charismatic public speaker” whose liberal leadership would have provided what Arafat has not—namely “political vision and rational organization and practice.”

During a lengthy and often scathing critique of Arafat, Sharabi described his “flair for the theatrical” in impressing diplomatic guests, his “strange capacity to recreate reality to suit his needs, refusal to accept disagreeable facts,” and “failure to mobilize Palestinian talent.” Finally, Dr. Sharabi concluded that “Arafat represents the gravest threat to the Palestinian nation.”

Before closing his speech, Dr. Sharabi called upon Palestinians—including those in the diaspora—to actively engage in a long-term struggle against the status quo by solving internal differences and building coalitions. He also stressed the need for the Palestinian-American community to work against bias and misinformation in politics and the media.

“Will the Palestinians be the Jews of the 21st century?” Dr. Sharabi asked at the end of his sobering lecture. “Perhaps. But they will not be the Zionists of the 21st century.”

—Steve Keller

Daniel McGowan Speaks At CPAP

On April 8, 1998—the 50th anniversary of the last day Palestinians lived in their village of Deir Yassin—Daniel McGowan, founder of Deir Yassin Remembered, spoke at the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine in Washington, DC. McGowan, a professor of economics at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in upstate New York, discussed his organization’s goal to build a memorial at Deir Yassin, located a mere 1,400 meters across the valley from Yad Vashem, the memorial to Jews killed during the European Holocaust.

With Professor McGowan was Ahmed Assad, who was 15 years old when Zionist gangs attacked his village and killed 47 members of Assad’s family, from his 2-year-old cousin to his 96-year-old grandfather. Assad himself, one of 72 villagers trying to defend Deir Yassin, escaped when he and his comrades ran out of ammunition and fled to the nearby village of Ain Kanen. He described seeing mutilated corpses of old people, women and children lying “all over the place,” and said Palestinians will tell the story of Deir Yassin for “generation after generation,” because “no one lost a right that had someone call for it.”

McGowan himself first became interested in Deir Yassin when, during a 1989 visit to Israel/Palestine, he talked to Palestinians fighting the intifada and “each one mentioned Deir Yassin.” He was unable to locate the village on a map, however, and Jewish students he asked at Hebrew University had never heard of the massacre. A few years later he returned to find Deir Yassin and found that the village itself had indeed survived—it was now used as a “progressive mental hospital” for mildly retarded Israeli Jews. McGowan described the institution as an “oasis of Arab buildings” on a hill surrounded by high-rise settlements in an industrial sector outside Jerusalem.

The purpose of McGowan’s campaign is to show “unequivocally to the world that there were Arabs living in West Jerusalem in 1948” and to “allow Palestinians to remember the more than 400 other ‘ethnically cleansed’ towns” that Israel destroyed and on which the Jewish state is built. Since “all people should think of Deir Yassin,” Israelis will be welcome to enter an international competition to design the memorial. The competition, McGowan said, also would serve as an opportunity to disseminate information about the massacre.

McGowan does not expect that Israel—“a land of memorials”—would or could oppose a memorial at Deir Yassin. “Even the [Israeli] right wing cannot deny our right to build a memorial at Deir Yassin, since that would cheapen their own memorials”—particularly the one at Kiryat Arba to the American-born terrorist McGowan insists on calling “Barry” [Baruch] Goldstein. “In that type of land, they will allow us to have a memorial, although they may haggle over the details.”

McGowan saved some of his most scathing remarks for Morton Klein, head of the Zionist Organization of America, which has published a booklet on Deir Yassin McGowan described as “a disgusting piece of historical revisionism.” Clearly unhappy that Klein also is an economist, McGowan takes comfort in the fact that the Klein’s tactic may have backfired, since more people are now hearing about Deir Yassin. In fact, McGowan opined, “Klein is doing for our organization what General Motors did for Ralph Nader.”

McGowan described his biggest challenge as building grassroots support for the memorial and “getting Palestinians to contribute to a national cause such as this.” He has received more suggestions than financial support, and the many suggestions he has followed—to develop a Web site (www.deiryassin.org), to include Hanan Ashrawi and Edward Said on Deir Yassin Remembered’s board of directors, and to publish op-ed pieces, among others—have not resulted in additional funds.* Deir Yassin Remembered’s accomplishments include a new book, Remembering Deir Yassin (see review p. 124), maps, a poster and logo, in addition to the Web site, but McGowan’s frustration at the lack of support from the Palestinian community is evident. He is, however, a persistent and insistent advocate, who concluded his remarks by saying, “I’m 52, and statistically I’ve got 28 years to finish this project—and I will succeed.”

—Janet McMahon

*Washington Report readers wishing to support Deir Yassin Remembered may send contributions c/o Daniel McGowan, P.O. Box 4078, Scandling Center, Geneva, NY 14456.

Georgetown University Arabic Club holds Program Series on Palestinian Dispossession

In observance of the 50th anniversary of the Palestinian people’s dispossession, The Arabic Club of Georgetown University, with the support of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), the university’s Center for Muslim Christian Understanding and Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, the Jerusalem Fund, and the American Task Force for Palestine and other benefactors, held a series of panels and other events over a two-week period starting April 17.

Participants in the first panel, entitled “Selective Morality I: U.S. Policy Yesterday,”included Prof. Norman Finkelstein of New York University, Prof. John Ruedy of Georgetown University and Prof. John Quigley of Ohio State University in Columbus.

Professor Ruedy’s presentation, entitled “Land Expropriation and U.S. Policy,” explored Israel’s methods used to acquire the arable land in Israel from the late 1940s until the early 1960s. He noted that Palestinian material losses in the 1948 war totaled $30 billion in today’s dollars. Of the agricultural land expropriated between 1948 and 1960, most was confiscated and not bought, according to Ruedy. He explained that Jews had acquired 12 percent of the arable land in Palestine legally by 1947 and were in control of 27 percent of the land at that time. Thus, of the 1.6 million-acre total, only a little under 400,000 acres was procured honestly.

Ruedy said that since Arabs owned 70 to 73 percent of the land that would become Israel in 1948, the Israelis used several methods to acquire land during and after that war.

First among these was for Jewish military units to occupy villages and then turn them over to Jewish settlers. If villages were classified as “security risks,” they were simply bulldozed and the land taken over by settlers. In the process, Ruedy explained, the Israelis would loot villages of all useful items and use them to furnish their new homes.

The next stage of the dispossession of the Palestinians from their historical land base, Ruedy said, was the legalization of this ad-hoc land acquisition by Zionist settlers. Between July and December of 1948, the nascent Jewish government began to issue “abandoned property” edicts, which assured that Arabs who had fled or been driven from their homes during fighting, even temporarily, had little hope of returning to these properties.

The Israeli Development Authority began selling Arab properties to the Jewish National Fund in 1950, which then leased these lands to Jewish organizations and to many of the people who had seized it in the first place, according to Ruedy. These practices were in violation of Article 11 of United Nations Resolution 194, which was issued shortly after the 1948 war and which stated that all refugees must be allowed to return to their homes or be given compensation if they refused to return.

Ruedy said that after the 1948 war, Palestinians who had not been driven from their homes, but were unlucky enough to be living near the cease-fire lines on the Israeli side ,were evicted, with the Israeli army then setting up camps in their place. Later, the Israeli troops turned over these vacated Palestinian villages to Jewish settlers.

Still later, the Israeli government made a systematic effort to reduce concentrations of Arab residents within Israeli borders by selectively condemning Arab properties under a “compensated expropriation of land for public use” clause in Israeli land-use regulations. This, Ruedy said, is what is also happening now in the West Bank, occupied by Israel in 1967.

The prices paid as compensation for Palestinian land were always so low that most Palestinian landowners refused to accept them, Ruedy said. Nevertheless, the Israelis cited the proffered payments to refute the charge that they had denied compensation to landowners.

With this system in place, Ruedy said that by 1960 more than half of Israel’s Arabs had lost their land. To further emphasize the enormity of Israeli land expropriations, Ruedy explained that while in 1949 1.2 million acres of arable land inside Israel was still legally held by Arabs, by 1960 this total had been reduced to only 90,000 acres.

Ruedy closed by noting that while the international media are reporting efforts by Jews to reclaim funds stolen by the Nazis or not released to their Jewish owners by international banks, there are virtually no reports of the theft of Palestinian lands seized under duress by the Israelis.

Prof. John Quigley of Ohio State University began his talk on “The (Il)legality of the U.N. Resolutions” by noting that after World War I, Britain permitted Jewish immigrants to settle in Palestine. But then, when Britain began to impose curbs on Jewish immigration to Palestine just prior to and during World War II, British forces were attacked by Jewish paramilitary groups.

After World War II, the United Nations passed Resolution 181 to partition Palestine into a Jewish state, with more than 50 percent of the territory, although Jews comprised only one-third of the population, and a Palestinian state on less than 50 percent of the land area, although Palestinians made up two-thirds of the population of the former Mandate of Palestine. Quigley said that although the United States had been ambivalent on the question of Palestine, it actively promoted the idea of a Jewish state. On the other hand, the Third World on the whole was against the partition resolution, with an ad-hoc U.N. committee in fact rejecting it the first time it came up for a vote. After five days of intense pressure from the United States, however, particularly on several countries which needed U.S. help such as Liberia, Panama and Haiti, U.N. Resolution 181 passed.

Quigley noted that while Israel used U.N. Resolution 181 as the basis to declare its statehood, 181 is a General Assembly Resolution, which is not legally binding under international law. He added that Israel’s current claim that Jerusalem is its capital has even less legal standing, as U.N. Resolution 181 designated Jerusalem as an internationally administered enclave, with no national sovereignty of any kind over the city.

Quigley next discussed United Nations Resolution 194, which provided for the return of persons displaced during the 1948 war to their homes, or just compensation for their lost property. Quigley pointed out that 194 was also a General Assembly resolution, and thus not legally binding, but said that the principle of law would definitely support the Palestinian right of return or just compensation. He added that Israel has worked very hard to interpret the resolution so that it will not ever have to concern itself with the return of Palestinians to their homeland.

The final speaker of the first session was Prof. Norman Finkelstein of New York University, who spoke on the “Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict.” “Once you strip away the mythology, smoke and fog of Zionism, you get a form of conquest,” he explained. In acquiring an already inhabited territory for settlement, Finkelstein said, four steps must be followed; extermination, expulsion, encirclement and exploitation. He presented the analogies of the conquest of western North America by the United States and the attempted conquest of Slavic Europe by Nazi Germany.

Finkelstein sees the Oslo accords as the final stage of the conquest of the Palestinian people by the nation of Israel. He dismisses as mythology the claim that the Palestinians missed numerous opportunities for peace between themselves and Israel, stating that it has no basis in the scholarly record or reality.

He further explained that the “politically correct” view is that Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, sought to coexist peacefully with the Arabs. In reality, Finkelstein said, the Zionist movement in its earliest days knew that a basic clash of interests existed between the Palestinians and the Zionist settler movement and that violent conflict was unavoidable. Finkelstein also dismissed another prevalent myth by stating that the Labor Zionist movement in Israel has been as ruthless in creating an ethnically pure Jewish state as any other Zionist group, including the Likud.

Finkelstein next sought to expand upon Walter Lacquer’s statement that Zionism’s tragedy was that it appeared on the world scene when there were no more empty spaces on the world map. Finkelstein said the real tragedy of Zionism is that it appeared on the world scene when extermination was no longer a permissible side effect of conquest, with expulsion looked upon by Zionist leaders as the next best remedy. These Zionist officials, according to Finkelstein, pointed to the Greek-Turkish population exchanges across the Aegean Sea in the early 20th century as a successful example. With the 1948 war, Finkelstein said, the Palestinian people were successfully expelled from areas of Israeli administration, with 750,000 forced to flee their homes and farms.

Finkelstein sees the June 1967 Six-Day War as stage two of the Zionist goal of conquest, with the West Bank and Gaza coming under Israeli domination. He refuted the Zionist claim that control of these territories was thrust upon Israel against its will, and said instead that their acquisition was part of the master plan of the Israeli government. Noting that the Labor government began the first settlements in the occupied territories, he charged that there is no ideological divide between Labor and Likud on goals, but only on the means to ultimate conquest.

Finkelstein sees phase three of the plan for the conquest of Palestine as the encirclement of the Palestinian people into refugee camps and small enclaves. After 1967, he said, a network of collaborators was established by the Israelis, who then were able to rule the territories with little problem. Finkelstein sees in the Oslo accords the final fulfillment of the 1970’s-era Allon Plan, which intended to contain the Palestinians in small groups in refugee camps and towns, while holding onto most of the West Bank lands.

Finkelstein feels that the Oslo accord did not signal Israel’s decision to withdraw from occupied territory. It has never evacuated occupied land unless force was applied, as in its withdrawal from the Sinai in the late 1970s after Egypt’s strong showing in the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, and Israel’s withdrawal from most of Lebanon in the mid-1980s after strong Lebanese resistance. Since the PLO has no credible force, he reasons, there will be no Israeli withdrawal from the territories.

Further, Finkelstein sees no historical compromise in the Oslo accords, only the realization on the part of the Israelis that encirclement of the Palestinians was the only viable option in lieu of extermination and expulsion. He related that Oslo will likely result in a Palestinian state, just as Transkei and Siskei in South Africa were deemed to be independent countries. He quoted a South African apartheid-era official as saying that the black South African population had the “right to administer themselves and police their own poverty,” a close parallel to the situation of the Palestinians today, Finkelstein believes. Contrary to popular opinion, he asserts that the Oslo accords are not at an impasse, but are instead at a crucial phase leading to the ultimate realization of Israeli plans.

Finkelstein summed up by stating that hope and organization on the part of the Palestinian people may eventually produce results for them, but that it will be a slow and arduous process.