July 2000, pages 94-102

Human Rights

Afif Safieh Tells Holy Land Foundation Dinner Guests of Grave Problems Facing Christians in the Holy Land

Ambassador Afif Safieh, the Palestinian general delegate to the United Kingdom and the Holy See, spoke at a May 6 Holy Land Foundation (HLF) dinner at the Franciscan Monastery Commissariat of the Holy Land, in Washington, DC. Dinner speakers sought to focus the attention of Christians in the West on the grave problems their Palestinian co-religionists must overcome in the Holy Land today to enable them to remain in the land of their ancestors.

That is also the mission of the Holy Land Foundation, according to its president, the Rev. Peter F. Vasko, OFM. The HLF is a worldwide ecumenical Christian organization founded in 1994 to preserve the Christian presence in the Holy Land with formal support from the Roman Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, and Presbyterian churches worldwide. Reverend Vasko introduced Ambassador Safieh, who was involved in the 1988 Stockholm negotiations that led to the official and direct American-Palestinian dialogue, and who is also author of Children of a Lesser God?, The Peace Process: From Breakthrough to Breakdown?, Self Determination and One People Too Many?

Palestinian Christians have been leaving the Holy Land for some time, Safieh said, ever since “we Palestinians became victims of the victims of European history.” Safieh described the “hemorrhage after the violent birth of Israel in 1948,” and the ethnic cleansing that first began at that time. Another wave of Palestinians fled in 1967, and those who were abroad studying (as was Safieh) or just traveling at the time were not permitted to return.

Severe political and economic hardships are even now causing an estimated 500 Christians to leave the Holy Land each year. There are only 160,000 Christians remaining there, and it is quite possible that the Christian church may cease to exist in the Holy Land without help from Christians around the world who, by and large, don’t know about the hardships faced by Palestinian Chistians in the birthplace of their religion. While the average Israeli income is $22,000 to $23,000 per year, the average Palestinian only earns $4,000 to 6,000 per year. Politically motivated closures of the West Bank and Gaza from Israel have cost those living within the Palestinian territories millions of dollars in revenue every day because Israel controls all borders, preventing imports and exports. Forced closures and travel restrictions have also prevented Palestinian workers living in the occupied territories from getting to jobs in Israel, resulting in high unemployment and eventual replacement of Palestinian workers with foreigners.

In addition to the economic harassment and travel restrictions Palestinians face under Israeli occupation, Safieh said, they also face daily humiliations when “they are confronted by 18-year-olds with tommy guns.” As for Palestinian Christians living within Palestinian Authority-governed areas, Safieh said that they are always treated fairly. In fact, he said, there is an over-representation of Christians in parliament and, of the four major cities with a Christian presence, there will always be a Christian mayor, even though demographics are changing.

Safieh expressed his increasing disenchantment with the open-ended peace process and said, “We’re having a lasting peace process, but what is lasting is the process and not the peace that is so desirable.”

He wondered why it is taking so long to return the land captured by Israel in the 1967 war. "What was occupied in six days can be evacuated in six days, so we can rest on the seventh!” he said. “Palestinian demands are unreasonably reasonable. We’re asking for 22 percent of what was legitimately ours in the beginning of the century. We offer 100 percent peace for 100 percent of the land occupied in 1967.” Safieh went on to say the existence of Israel is no longer at stake, what with its nuclear monopoly, and aviation powers equal to the French plus the British combined (and with more chance to practice, in Lebanon). In addition, Safieh said, Israel has an unwritten alliance with the U.S. that is even better than a written alliance that requires proper behavior from a junior partner. He explained that an unwritten alliance means Israel can be an undisciplined ally and use its lobby to get financial, political and moral support.

With regard to what kind of an American president is required to help forge peace between Israel and its neighbors, Safieh said “the president should have the ethics of former President Jimmy Carter, the popularity of Ronald Reagan in order to combat the lobby, and the strategic audacity of Richard Nixon.”

Meanwhile Israeli settlements, built on land confiscated from Palestinian Christians and Muslims, are rapidly expanding, forging a ring around East Jerusalem and Bethlehem and pre-empting the natural growth of those cities. Christian tourism will soon suffocate as Israel plans to build more and more hotels which will kill the Palestinian hotel business. Safieh said Israel even has a project to build a new “old Bethlehem” so tourists can bypass the real “Little Town of Bethlehem.”

Israel is also putting the squeeze on church-owned lands. Over the centuries Franciscans have acquired tracts of land in the Holy Land, but now Franciscans are under pressure to build on these lands or they will be confiscated by Israel’s annexation program. The HLF is using this land and creating new housing for Christians who are contemplating leaving the Holy Land because of critical housing, education and employment shortages. Within the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem, the Franciscan Custody’s Community Development program has built more than 300 apartments. Two complexes have been completed in Beit-Hanina, Bethany, and Ram. The initial goal of the HLF is to raise $30 million to fund training and job opportunities, provide academic scholarships, and build 194 subsidized housing units in Bethpage, Jericho, Beit-Hanina, Nazareth and Bethlehem. Safieh asked Christians to support this vital work financially and also to try to meet the local communities, or the “Living Stones,” when they visit the Holy Land.

He reminded the audience that the pope was one of the first leaders to recognize the Palestinians’ right to a state. “The Palestinian state is the right of the Palestinian people in addition to being the moral duty of Jews and Israelis toward us, the Palestinians,” Safieh said, “because they know the human price we Palestinians have had to pay individually and collectively for the birth of Israel. Now we must struggle for the size and viability of that state.” Safieh concluded, “One day Palestine will have a resurrection. We in Jerusalem have had previous experience with resurrections.”

For more information call or write the Holy Land Foundation, 1400 Quincy St, NE, Washington, DC 20017, (202) 269-5430, hlfusa@aol.com or contact Richard Sontag, Jr., director of Tekton Ministries, (317) 726-1679 or e-mail: <tektonrs@indyweb.net>

—Delinda C. Hanley

Amira Hass Speaks on Israel’s Closure Policy at CPAP

Amira Hass, a renowned reporter for Tel Aviv’s Ha’aretz, spoke at the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine on May 8. Her speech dealt with Israel’s closure policy, in effect since 1991.

Hass began her speech by observing that her parents had come to Israel as refugees. Therefore she cannot accept Israel as a colonialist endeavor. Instead, she would prefer to have the six million back and no state—to keep the diaspora.

From 1970 to 1991, Palestinians in the occupied territories had the full right of movement. The General Exit Permit, Moshe Dayan’s idea, was meant to integrate the territories’ economy with that of Israel. Dayan hoped that by doing so, Palestinian aspirations would die away. The Palestinians would be “occupied, but occupied in all of Palestine.” Even during the intifada, Hass noted, the movement’s leaders traveled from Gaza to Jerusalem to have their leaflets printed, then traveled back to Gaza at 2 a.m. to distribute them.

On Jan. 15, 1991, Israel closed all of the occupied territories for three days only. The move was seen at the time as temporary, but it was not. Since Oslo (in 1995), closure has been seen as a “natural law” in Israel. Of the 2.8 million Palestinians in the territories, Hass claimed, only about 150,000 have travel permits. These permits are mostly given on the grounds of the holders’ functionality to the Israeli economy or the political situation. Thus drivers, workers, merchants and Palestinian Authority members are most likely to obtain the visas.

Closure has led to a double division. The first is territorial: the northern West Bank is cut off from the southern, and Gaza is further isolated from the West Bank. The second is social: movement is no longer a right but a privilege. One cannot fight for the right of all, else one’s own permit is lost. The policy has made people stand alone in dealing with Palestinian officials who, in turn, must serve as intermediaries with Israeli officials who decide who gets a permit. In terms of dividing Palestinian society and breaking its political unity, the policy has been a “huge Israeli success.”

The social division is coupled with the territorial. Israel says that the Palestinians may get 60 percent of the West Bank, but this area is not contiguous. The patches are linked by a system of roads that connect settlements and the west of Israel to the rest of the Middle East. These new roads often divide Palestinian villages from their schools or fields. Ariel Sharon first proposed such roads in the 1980s, but they were opposed by Palestinian lawyers in the courts. Rabin told Arafat that these roads were a requirement if Palestinians were to be offered peace, and Arafat agreed to them. The roads mean a permanent Israeli military presence. If one assumes that the Palestinians will be angry about these roads, there must be a constant military presence there.

The current situation is that there are two peoples living in the country, but only one has full rights as citizens and as human beings while the other does not. Through its closure policy, Israel has weakened the PA in the eyes of the population. It does not matter, Hass said, if the Palestinians vote for their own parliament or president. The situation is based upon Israeli control of Palestinian development and growth.

Ms. Hass said that the patent injustice of the closure policy—coupled with other Israeli human rights violations—leads her Palestinian friends to constantly ask her, “Tell me, Amira, don’t Israelis think about their grandchildren?”

—Hugh S. Galford

Palestinian Islamist, Mayor Shaikh Ra’id Salah

His name is Shaikh Ra’id Salah. When he was only 31 years old, he was elected mayor of the Arab municipality of Um El-Fahem, a town within Israel’s pre-1967 borders that is home to 35,000 Arab Palestinians. Recently, Um El-Fahem has been the scene of repeated clashes between Arab residents and the Israeli government. The clashes came as a result of the Israeli announcement in 1998 of its decision to confiscate Arab-owned lands near Um El-Fahem for a large new Israel Defense Forces base to be constructed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The base was intended to serve as a primary training center for Golani Brigade infantry soldiers and to replace bases being shut down as a result of land withdrawals from the West Bank and Gaza.

In the past, the Israeli government has confiscated lands on the pretext that they are to be used as military installations, only to turn them over to civilian authorities to build settlements reserved exclusively for Jews. As part of this procedure, when the lands were confiscated, they were designated as “closed military areas” with restrictions on entry that effectively prevented Palestinian farmers from cultivating their crops.

News of the Um El-Fahem confiscations therefore sparked protests by Palestinians in September of 1998. Confrontations with Israel Defense Forces resulted in 600 injured from the Palestinian side. Attempting to punish the area for its staged protest, Israeli security forces further orchestrated an attack on the local high school of Um El-Fahem in which students and teachers were assaulted with clubs, tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets. Close to 100 students suffered injuries as a result. Until today, library and classroom walls remain bullet-riddled. Peace and human rights activists, Jewish and Arab alike, joined residents of the town in staging protests condemning the attacks, chanting “today we are all Um El-Fahem.”

Under the administration of the previous Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, the project was put on hold. Now, however, plans to construct the base have been publicly endorsed by the current government of Prime Minister Ehud Barak, sparking yet more clashes between Israeli forces and local Palestinian residents. The most recent clashes took place last March at a peaceful demonstration during the annual observance of Land Day. Like Um El-Fahem, other areas such as Sakhneen and Um El-Sahala are threatened by Israeli plans for military installations. Local resistance to the illegal confiscations have resulted in further clashes with Israeli security forces.

Shaikh Salah, who has witnessed these clashes over the years, is on a U.S. tour speaking to audiences about the Palestinian Arabs living within Israel’s “Green Line” borders of June 4, 1967. While in Washington, DC, he was sponsored by the newly established American Muslims for Jerusalem. In an interview with the Washington Report, Shaikh Salah shared his views on Um El-Fahem, the current peace process, and its effects on the Arab Palestinian population.

Shaikh Salah identified Israel’s Palestinian community as a minority that first and foremost has a legitimate right to remain on its land. Nevertheless, he said, the Israeli government continues to practice deliberate, calculated discrimination toward Palestinians. Such discrimination, he contended, is premised on Israeli denial of the Palestinian right to exist, which in turn justifies egregious violations of Palestinian rights.

Palestinians continue to fear that at any moment the Israeli government may decide to confiscate what remains of their land. Already, Palestinians who live within Israel and represent 20 percent of the total population have been reduced to ownership of only 3 percent of the total land, Shaikh Salah said. As a result, abrupt land confiscations continuously undermine any sense of normalcy among the citizens of these villages. Moreover, Shaikh Salah added, “Our religious shrines are still confiscated even though they represent less than .06 percent of total land.”

American audiences gasp in disbelief when he tells them that dozens of Arab mosques and churches are confiscated and later used for commercial purposes to serve as bars, restaurants, and hotels in complete disregard of their religious sanctity. In addition, he said, “There are 300,000 Palestinians who see their usurped land owned and inhabited by foreign settlers while the Palestinians are prohibited from visiting, let alone owning it.” There are more than 70 other Palestinian villages that face the same detrimental issues threatening Um El-Fahem.

Aside from confiscations of Palestinian lands, the Jewish State carries out religious persecution and ethnic cleansing of its Palestinian minority through policies deliberately aimed at undermining any efforts to enable Palestinian areas to be more developed or self-sufficient. “Repeatedly, our areas are excluded from any plans to encourage industrial, commercial, or general economic development,” Shaikh Salah said.

As a result, he continued, “our areas have more than 20 percent unemployment.” Moreover, Palestinians are prevented from building institutions of higher learning in their areas, and some of their existing institutions, such as the college of Dawa and Islamic Sciences in Um El-Fahm, have not been recognized by the Israeli government.

Worst of all, said Shaikh Salah, “If we resist any of the government’s illegal and unjust policies, even through peaceful demonstrations, we run the risk of encountering brutal Israeli forces, which are trained to use excessive force, especially when dealing with Palestinians.” Repeated confrontations with Israeli government forces have resulted in hundreds of casualties and political prisoners. In addition, systematic intimidation, harassment, and physical attacks on Palestinian leaders continue.

These terror campaigns have targeted heads of local municipalities, religious leaders, and Arab members of the Israeli Knesset. Palestinians are concerned that these life-threatening actions by the Israelis are driving Palestinians to emigrate in search of a better life outside their native land. “Do you think that a Palestinian would remain if he or she continues to live with no land, no home, no job, and no future?” Shaikh Salah asked.

With respect to Middle East peace, he argued that the Palestinian track should be the real measure of the successes or failures of the Middle East peace process. And, so far, it has failed to address the most critical issues for Palestinians. “We know today that there are more than five million Palestinian refugees whose future is still unknown,” he pointed out. “The status of Jerusalem has been intentionally excluded from negotiations, which renders the future of the Al-Aqsa Mosque ambiguous and subject to questioning.” Moreover, he argued, from the Oslo talks to the Wye River Agreement, the peace process has led to further fragmentation of Palestinians geographically and politically. More importantly, he said, “This ‘peace’ has created a fragile Palestinian state devoid of the most basic characteristics of a legitimate state: independence, autonomy, representative democracy, etc.”

There are other critical issues which Shaikh Salah argues are either conveniently forgotten or purposely omitted from negotiations. For example, political prisoners from Gaza and the West Bank who remain captive in Israeli prisons are yet to be discussed. Some of these prisoners go back to the 1948 war, and their destiny remains subject to the uncertain outcome of the negotiations. Moreover, Shaikh Salah added, the peace process has neither discussed nor alluded to the future of the Palestinian minority that resides within Israel, whose number has reached 1.2 million.

Shaikh Salah said the Palestinian Authority has failed miserably in the only way it could have been of help, namely through influencing negotiations in favor of Palestinian interests. The Palestinian negotiators have been forced to exclude the topics of Palestinian political prisoners, Jerusalem, and refugees from the current negotiations, which practically eliminates the possibility of coexistence.

Moreover, Shaikh Salah warned that despite the apparent withdrawal of Israeli forces from small areas in Gaza and the West Bank, it is clear from official statements that military concentrations involved may be relocated to Arab-owned lands within Israel’s Green Line borders. He said that in addition to the government’s well-publicized plans to confiscate 42,000 dunams of Arab-owned farmland near Um El-Fahem to create a military area, more lands are to be confiscated from the Palestinian village of Sakhneen. The Israeli government is already finalizing such plans.

In addition, the Israeli government has made public statements about the possibility of transferring militiamen from the Israeli-funded “South Lebanese Army,” who fled southern Lebanon in May, to Palestinian areas. The Israeli government has formed a committee to oversee the transfer of these militiamen and their families. Shaikh Salah believes this effort is intended to undermine the very social fabric of the minority Palestinian communities.

“It is clear that we, the Arabs of 1948, are now entering a new violent era,” Shaikh Salah said. “Excessive force, as never witnessed before, is being used on us. I see this as a result of the integration into our areas of military elements that were used against our people in the West Bank, Gaza, and southern Lebanon.” He added that such intense violence has not been witnessed previously by the Palestinian community, not even during the intifada times. He asserted that mainstream Israeli society also is witnessing an unprecedented wave of violence, which he attributed mainly to the reintegration of Israeli soldiers back into Israeli civilian society, especially after the withdrawal of Israeli forces from various occupied areas. “Even the Jewish State can no longer deny that there is a sharp increase in its rates of domestic violence, homicide, and violent crimes in general,” he noted.

“We hope that Palestinians learn from the various painful experiences they have endured since 1948,” he said. “One such lesson is that it is imperative that we put emphasis on institutions, as opposed to leaders. Leaders come and go, but our institutions and principles should not be compromised.” He emphasized that Palestinians should be tolerant of all political opinions “regardless of political orientations and views.”

With respect to intercommunal relations, Shaikh Salah said that Palestinians have united to create the Committee of Local Arab Municipalities, which includes Palestinians who belong to various faiths and political camps. “As an Islamist, I feel it’s critically important to deepen the bonds between Palestinians which have been weakened in the past few years,” he said.

Under his leadership, Um El-Fahem annually hosts an event, named “Al-Aqsa Is in Danger,” in which Christian and Muslim religious leaders come together to discuss the continuing threats posed by the Israeli government on Jerusalem and Al-Aqsa Mosque. The most recent gathering this year attracted 70,000 participants.

Finally, Shaikh Salah concluded that “the issue of land is a life or death matter to us. More Palestinians are holding on to their lands. We are able and prepared to resist anyone who tries to take them away. It is the land on which we were born, will continue to live, and will die.”

Following mounting protests by human rights organizations regarding the conduct of Israeli security forces at Um El-Fahem, and especially in light of the Knesset’s decision in December of 1998 not to establish an independent committee to investigate the events, Israeli Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein ordered an investigation of the incident. On January 2000, he supported the internal review’s decision to clear the police of all responsibility for the clashes. Further, he recommended that all complaints filed against individual officers be dropped “due to the excessive difficulty of identifying particular individuals.” Recently, however, he referred the case back to the Internal Investigation Department, which decided to re-open the investigation.

—Asma Yousef

Falk, Von Sponeck and Halliday Call for New Steps to Replace Failed U.N. Iraq Policy

Denis Halliday and Hans Von Sponeck, the two most senior United Nations officials ever to have resigned on principle, and Richard Falk, professor of international law, spoke about Iraq under sanctions at the Woodrow Wilson School in Princeton on May 4th. According to Falk, “It would take a primitive mind to fail to comprehend the impact that sanctions have had.”

He described the American-driven United Nations sanctions against Iraq as indiscriminate warfare that bypasses the military and focuses on civilians. As such, he said, they constitute a crime against humanity.

Charging that American policy toward Iraq has failed, but continues through “lethal momentum and malicious inertia,” Falk said U.S. leaders find it difficult to acknowledge the failure after having mobilized so much propaganda behind the policy, which is reinforced by the media.

The central question is the role of citizens when their government persists in a failed policy, Falk said. The lesson of Nuremberg is that citizens have the right, even the duty, to protest their government’s criminal actions. But, unlike the situation in Vietnam, there are no American casualties and therefore no intense public pressure to change course.

Falk quoted Arthur Miller: “Few of us can easily surrender our belief that society must somehow make sense. The thought that the state has lost its mind is intolerable and must be denied.”

Hans Von Sponeck resigned his position as assistant secretary-general of the U.N. in March of this year after a 32-year career with the organization. He described the situation in Iraq today as a horror story. Pre-sanctions Iraq had state-of-the-art medical services, road and sanitation systems as good as anywhere in Europe, and a 90 percent literacy rate for both men and women. Today it is in the category of least-developed countries. Iraq’s infrastructure has collapsed. Twenty-one percent of Iraqi children under five are malnourished. Diseases that had disappeared, such as typhoid and cholera, are now the major killers of children. The U.N. estimates that 5,000 children die every month because of the economic sanctions. Teacher training facilities have disappeared and the literacy rate has dropped to 66 percent. Cyberspace is unknown.

Von Sponeck described Iraq as a laboratory for experimenting with the effects of comprehensive sanctions. The current oil-for-food phase provides $252 per year for each Iraqi, an improvement but far from adequate. At the same time, Iraq’s oil production equipment is not allowed to be rehabilitated.

A further problem is that 20 percent of all items requested by the Iraqi government have been blocked because of paranoid fear that Iraq might find a military use for them. Pencils, for example, are on hold because they contain graphite. Von Sponeck said reports that Iraq is purposefully restricting humanitarian items are untrue.

His predecessor in Iraq, Denis Halliday, resigned in September 1998 after 36 years with the U.N. Halliday said the outlook is changing. Seventy U.S. congressmen signed a letter opposing economic sanctions. Europe and Great Britain have come to view sanctions as a blunt instrument that doesn’t work. Halliday proposed specific steps that take into account the concerns of Iraq, the U.N., and the U.S. to resolve the problem:

• The U.N. should re-establish weapons inspections until there is no more nervousness in Washington, but to be in compliance with Resolution 687, the U.N. should include the entire Middle East.
• Impose smart sanctions that target the government in Baghdad and profiteers, but lift economic sanctions.
• Iraq needs help to rebuild its economy. Steps should be taken to facilitate private and public investment in Iraq’s infrastructure.
• The $900 million for oil production equipment on hold in the U.N. sanctions committee should be released and reparations to Kuwait postponed until Iraq has begun to recover.
• End the almost daily American bombing of the no-fly zones and stop the Turkish invasions in the north.
• Iraqi Kurds need semi-autonomy until they work out an arrangement with a recovering Iraq.
• The American government should re-open a dialogue with Iraq, rather than continuing to isolate it, and should stop demonizing Saddam Hussain.
• Iraq should be given some credit for co- operating with UNSCOM, accepting the new border with Kuwait, and cooperating well with the oil-for-food program.
• The U.S. must find an alternative way to live with Iraq and stop punishing children not yet even born.

The event was jointly sponsored by the Center of International Studies, the Woodrow Wilson School, the Office of Religious Life at Princeton University, and Citizens for Justice and Peace for Iraq.

—Jane Adas

AU’s Center for Global Peace Hosts International Conference: “The Kurds: Search for Identity”

American University’s Center for Global Peace, in conjunction with the Mustafa Barzani Scholars Program of Global Kurdish Studies, held a conference on “The Kurds: Search for Identity,” April 17 and 18 in Washington, DC. The conference, attended by some 250 scholars, policymakers, diplomats and journalists from the U.S., Canada, Europe and the Middle East, was convened by Prof. Abdul Aziz Said, director of the Center for Global Peace and the first occupant of the Mohammed Said Farsi Chair of Islamic Peace at American University. He stressed the critical importance of the just resolution of the Kurdish issue in promoting peace and prosperity in the Middle East. He also criticized governments in the region for having “no long-range plans to deal with the Kurds beyond stopping civil wars and violence.”

Professor Edmund Ghareeb, adjunct professor at the School of International Service at American University, followed with an analysis of the visionary leadership role of Mustafa Barzani in promoting Kurdish cultural and political rights. Ghareeb, stressing that the Kurds are understudied and are often misunderstood, said they seem to be in a “twilight zone,” going from “being victims, to being invisible, and then terrorists” all within a matter of a few decades.

Although they seem to be “late-comer” nationalists in the Middle East, Ghareeb said, the Kurds in fact had nationalist ideas dating back to the late 16th century. But the Kurdish issue is complex in nature because the Kurds themselves overlap state borders, the Kurdish-populated areas are less developed, the Kurdish struggle has in some ways affected security concerns in other states, and as a result of all of this the Kurds are in a constant state of dispersion.

The first panel, “Kurds in the Global Arena: Perceptions and Misperceptions,” included presentations on “Arab States’ Perspective” by Dr. Michael Collins Dunn, editor of the Middle East Journal, “An American Diplomat’s Perspective” by Mr. Francis J. Ricciardone, U.S. Department of State, and the “European Perspective,” by Dr. Kendal Nezan, president of the Kurdish Institute of Paris. The panel was moderated by former Assistant Secretary of State Richard Murphy.

Syria, Dunn pointed out, has a significant Kurdish population that suffers from a lack of geographical continuity, being spread throughout the desert, in eastern Syria, along the Turkish-Syrian border, and in the center. Today these estimated 200,000 Kurds in Syria are officially “stateless,” since in the 1962 Syrian national census an attempt to filter out “aliens” stripped 120,000 Kurds of Syrian nationality. Further, while showing little recognition of their own Kurdish population, Syria has repeatedly played host to various exile groups from Turkey and Iraq. Thus, Dunn said, “Syria is mainly driven by national geo-politics because of the age-old rivalry with both Iraq and Turkey.” He added that “Damascus and Baghdad have been countervailing poles of power in the Fertile Crescent” for many centuries. The highlight of their tensions arose in the early 1990s, with the prospect of an autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan state. This, Dunn emphasized, was “unacceptable for an Arab nationalist state like Syria, whose own borders include a number of minorities, some linguistic (Kurds, Armenians) and some religious (Alawites, Druze, various Christians and Jews).”

The rest of the Arab world is less directly involved in the Kurdish question than Iraq or Syria, Dunn said. He added that no Arab country is eager to encourage separatism in another Arab country, primarily because many of these states have ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities of their own and “a resultant fear that separatism encouraged in one place might spread,” thereby directly affecting the other Arab states.

In the past, Dunn pointed out, “Sunni Arab dominance has sometimes been achieved by cutting a deal with Sunni Kurdish leaders.” Yet, an Iraq in which the Sunni Arab dominance was removed, with a separate Kurdish state, would make way for a Shi’i majority, which clearly poses a threat to the Saudis and Kuwaitis. This, Dunn stated, “explains the insistence of most Arab governments, particularly in the Gulf, on an undivided Iraq in the post-Saddam period.” Concluding, Dunn re-emphasized that the Arab world as a whole pays little attention to Kurdish issues, with the exception of Iraq and Syria, which are directly involved.

The next speaker, Francis J. Ricciardone, gave the perspective of the U.S. Department of State. He began by making three key points. First, “there simply is no overarching U.S. government policy toward ‘the Kurds,’ as such. Rather, the U.S. interacts with Kurds precisely as it does with any other citizens of the various countries in which Kurds live.” Secondly, as “globalization” is transforming local issues into international ones, non-state players are gaining influence in international relations. And, third, “Iraqi Kurds are among the leaders of those free Iraqis who are breaking Baghdad’s dictatorial monopoly on communications—both among Iraqis and between them and the world.” He emphasized that the human rights of Kurds are to be protected and that adherence to a strong democracy affords the best protection for the rights of all citizens in any country.

Ricciardone said that U.S. policy toward Iraqi Kurds is within the U.S. Iraq policy, which supports the territorial integrity and unity of Iraq as necessary for regional peace and stability. He emphasized that the United States “opposes the creation of separate states or statelets either for the Kurds or for any Iraqi ethnic or sectarian community.”

Next, Dr. Kendal Nezan offered European perspectives on Kurdish issues. He said that the consensus emerging in Europe is that “the key to the Kurdish question as a whole lies in Turkey which is, at once, an ally and an important trade partner of Europe....The settlement of the Kurdish problem in Turkey will greatly contribute to finding a solution for the Kurds in neighboring countries.”

Today, there are 120,000 Kurds in France and a million total in Europe, Nezan said, adding that the image of the Kurds has slowly started to improve, especially in Germany, which has over half a million Kurds. Germany, in fact, has become the most active European country in searching for a resolution to the Kurdish issue. Turkey, on the other hand, has been vehemently opposed and antagonistic toward the Kurds, with strict and minimum cultural and linguistic rights for them in Turkey.

Following the first panel, Dr. Shafiq Qazzaz, minister of humanitarian assistance and cooperation, Kurdish Regional Government, Irbil, Iraq, presented the keynote luncheon address in which he gave an historical account of the Kurdish struggle in search of an identity that can provide a “meaningful definition of cooperation between the ruling states and their respective Kurdish people.” He pointed out that Saddam’s policy toward the Kurds has been to reduce them to a “non-entity.” Qazzaz stressed that the Kurds “need to abandon violence and extremism and work within the democratic and pluralistic system.”

The second panel, “Case Study: Iraq,” was moderated by Ambassador David Mack, vice president of the Middle East Institute, who remarked that the Kurdish people of Iraq “are the most vulnerable when their own leaders are not working together.” The first panelist, Dr. Ali Babakhan of the Kurdish Institute in Paris, spoke on “Federalism as a Model for Democracy in Iraq.” Dr. Andrew Parasiliti, deputy director of the Middle East Initiative at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, spoke on “U.S. Policy Toward Iraq: Implications for Iraqi Kurdistan.”

Rend Rahim Francke, founding member and executive director of the Iraq Foundation, spoke on “The Political Impact of Sanctions in Iraqi Kurdistan.” Francke dealt with the controversial topic of sanctions policy, with Dr. Parasiliti arguing that sanctions hurt only the Iraqi people and Ms. Francke arguing that the effects of sanctions are positive in Iraqi Kurdistan. The final speaker, Dr. Hanna Yousif Freij of Kent State University, spoke on the topic of “The Iraqi State, the Opposition and the Road to Reconciliation.” He suggested the U.N. should be the intermediary involved in navigating the political restructuring of Iraq. This could take place in what he termed a “transition period” of four to five years during which time Iraq would be under U.N. cmntrol, a census would be taken, a figurehead president selected and direct voting and ballots implemented.

The third and final panel of the day, “Case Study: Turkey,” was moderated by Dr. Michael M. Gunter, professor of political science at Tennessee Technological University. The first panelist, Dr. Hakan Yavuz of the University of Utah, spoke on “The State and the Kurdish Question,” commenting that the Turks, like the Kurds of Turkey, are in search of their identity, and that “Kurdish nationalism is a ‘baby’” of the policies of the founder of modern Turkey, Mustapha Kemal Ataturk, who defined national identity on a linguistic-ethnic basis. As possible resolutions to the Kurdish issue, Gunter cited the “Copenhagen criteria,” emphasizing cultural federalism, not regional federalism. He also suggested adherence to Turkish President Suleyman Demirel’s policies stressing individual rights and expanded boundaries of democracy. Gunter stressed that the Kurdish issue should be seen as a human rights issue and a problem of democratization, not nationalism.

The second speaker, Dr. Henri J. Barkey of Lehigh University, addressed “The Kurdish Issue in the Post-Helsinki Era.” Dr. Barkey suggested that the Kurdish issue has been at the center of European-Turkish antagonisms and, although by no means the only issue that divides them, is increasingly assuming the most prominent role.

While increasingly Europeans are looking at the Kurdish issue as a minority rights problem, Barkey stated, “the implication is that the more the Europeans push the minority-rights issue, the more the Turks will move away from it.” The Turks look at Europe as a zone of security, freedom and stability. Yet, ironically, those within Turkey who are most pro-Europe are the Islamists and Kurds, because they think they will gain more rights under the protection of “Europe” than they currently have under Turkish rule.

The third panelist, Dr. Gülistan Gürbey of the Free University of Berlin, addressed the topic of “Perspectives on Conflict Prevention and Reconciliation.” She stressed the necessity of a conflict settlement aimed at the peoples’ right to self-determination through granting minority rights and autonomy.

Following the third panel, conference participants were invited to a dinner banquet in honor of Nechirvan Barzani, prime minister of the Kurdish Regional Government, Irbil, Iraq. In his keynote address, presented in Kurdish, Mr. Barzani stated that “the Kurdish question is in essence the issue of an oppressed people to which, until recently, the world community remained distant.”

Dr. Michael Van Dusen, deputy director at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, gave the keynote luncheon address. Dr. Van Dusen urged Kurdish policymakers and thinkers to “get your acts together” and unite and concentrate their efforts on reconciliation within the Kurdish community and the demand for legitimate political and economic rights. Following his own closing comments, Professor Abdul Aziz Said moderated a final question-and-answer session to conclude the conference.

—Adila Masood

Filmfest DC 2000: 14th Annual Washington, DC International Film Festival

Filmfest DC’s annual international film festival April 5-16 included more than a hundred features, documentaries, short films, and kids’ programs. The festival highlights included special programs, such as CineCafés, an in-depth film viewing experience allowing the audience to meet with directors, critics, and scholars to share views and exchange questions and answers. Also included in the festival were the directors’ roundtable and panel discussions including filmmakers, critics and others discussing the production and distribution of films.

New Turkish cinema was highlighted in this year’s festival. Unlike Hollywood fare, driven primarily by star recognition and special effects, international cinema, including the cinema of Turkey, focuses on relationships, character depth and story. Yesim Ustaoglu’s “Günese Yolculuk” (Journey to the Sun), with Kurdish and Turkish soundtrack and English subtitles, the winner of multiple awards from festivals in Berlin, São Paolo and elsewhere, made its debut showing in North America at this festival. Ustaoglu’s feature is a story of contrasts as Turkey is divided by political tension, so the film is split into two distinct parts. It starts out as a tough urban buddy movie and ends up a deep travelogue back to the roots of the country. The characters’ fear of the future and their desperate attempts to comprehend the situation provided the subtext to the plot.

In addition, the festival included other Middle Eastern films. From Egypt, director Atef Hetata’s “Al Abwab Al Moghlaka” (The Closed Doors), with Arabic soundtrack and English subtitles, deals with the taboo in contemporary Egyptian society and its social and political aspects. Set at the time of the Gulf crisis, it tells the story of a boy who is strongly influenced by his close surroundings. This powerful film attempts to tackle complex themes like oppression, jealousy, virtue, the ideal love and violence. According to Hetata, “The year 1990 was the dawn of a new world order of fundamentalism, frenetic consumerism. The poor get poorer; and for an adolescent in all this confusion the most obvious way is that of fundamentalism, satisfying both his rebellious spirit and the maintenance of his identity.”

Co-presented with The Jerusalem Fund was Lebanese director Randa Chahal Sabbag’s “Civilisées” (Civilized People), with Arabic and French soundtrack and English subtitles. During the civil war, many Lebanese fled to Europe, leaving their beautiful houses and lavish apartments in the care of their servants. The people left behind are the focus of “Civilisées.” Their lives, caught between absurdity and death, are the focus of this savagely funny study of war and human nature. Sabbag succeeds in magnificently creating an unforgettable tapestry of a civil war, in which innocent civilians see their lives destroyed before their very eyes.

Iranian director Ali-Reza Davudnezhad’s “Masaebe-e shirin” (Sweet Agony), with Farsi soundtrack and English subtitles, winner of the best film prize at the 1999 Fajr Film Festival, tackles the pains of young love and family arguments in a modern setting. The story revolves around a camera crew making a film about a dysfunctional family of a young teen (Reza Davudnezhad) who is in love with his young neighbor (Mona Davudnezhad), to whom he’s been promised since childhood. The film offers a witty and comical view of Iranian family life and its surprisingly close similarities to the West.

—Adila Masood

Two Leading Clergymen Provide Christian Perspectives on Jerusalem on Capitol Hill

On May 31 Reverend Naim Ateek, the director of Sabeel Liberation Theology Center in Jerusalem, and Reverend Michel Prior, an Irish Biblical scholar, discussed the religious and moral dimensions of the Middle East peace process, and the issue of Jerusalem in particular, at a Capitol Hill briefing sponsored by the American Committee on Jerusalem.

Reverend Prior, the author of the popular Zionism and the State of Israel: A Moral Inquiry, shared with the audience the evolution of his own perspective on the Arab-Israel conflict. It began with a romantic vision of the state of Israel as “a young, small, unprotected state surrounded by predatory Arab nations, trying to establish its sovereignty and culture in a hostile environment.” Upon closer exposure his perspective changed dramatically, leading him not only to the fervent criticism of the Zionism ideology, but also of Biblical studies supporting Zionism.

The Irish priest’s perception of the Bible changed as well when he started to link up what was happening in Palestine in the second part of the 20th century with the Biblical texts of previous millennia. “I began to read the Bible not with eyes of the slaves liberated from Egypt but with the eyes of the Canaanites, the ones who were either exterminated or pushed aside to give the room to ‘the Bani Israel,’” he said. “That was when I understood that the Bible can serve not only as an instrument of liberation but also as an instrument of oppression and colonialism.”

Rev. Naim Ateek briefly laid out in his speech seven principles elaborated in the document of the Palestinian Christian grass-roots movement, Sabeel.

1. Israel must admit that it has committed an injustice against the Palestinian people.
2. The Palestinians must have their own sovereign, independent and democratic state established on the whole of the Gaza Strip and West Bank.
3. Sovereignty over Jerusalem must be shared by the two states of Palestine and Israel.
4. The right of return must be guaranteed to Palestinian refugees according to international law. All refugees must be fully compensated.
5. All Israeli Jewish settlements on the Gaza Strip and West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are illegal under international law and must be a part of Palestine.
6. A peace treaty must guarantee the full sovereignty and territorial integrity of both states.
7. Both states must fully guarantee respect and protection for the human rights of all their citizens.

According to Sabeel, only the fulfillment of these principles can be a solid start for the Israeli-Palestinian reconciliation and peace.

“The dangers which I foresee,” said Reverend Ateek, “are that if the Palestinian Authority is pressured to agree to an unjust peace, the people of Palestine will not accept it. And if people are not going to accept the peace in spite of the Authority, I think we will see even greater bloodshed and greater violence.

“In regard to the recent Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon, some Palestinians, especially young folks, believe that the only way we can get Israel out of our land is by unleashing more violence and using greater force. The talk about a new intifada is already in the air.”

Reverend Ateek underlined that Washington, DC is a perfect place to hold the conference on the future status of Jerusalem, as the American government is in the best position to facilitate the necessary pressure on Israel to induce it to compromise. “Israel needs to be pressured to enter into a just peace,” he said. “Israel pulled out from south Lebanon because of pressure, and we must look for the ways to express this pressure in a nonviolent form.”

In the question period one of the participants asked Reverend Ateek for his attitude toward Hezbollah and its actions. He replied that in this regard he sometimes finds himself in a state of split personality: “On one hand, I don’t believe in violence,” he said. “And yet, unfortunately, it seems that the only language Israel has accepted so far is the language of violence. I am not denying that there is a peace process going on. But it is dragging more and more. A lot of the people in Palestine think that we should do what the south Lebanese did. From what I know, many Palestinians admire the existence of Hezbollah. They feel that it is Hezbollah’s right to fight because their land is occupied, and Israel has refused to implement U.N. resolutions calling upon them to leave the occupied territory. From one prospective it is their right to resist.”

The answers of both clergymen to the question of security for both Palestinians and Israelis came in unison, when they said that although today it is Palestinians who are the most vulnerable and insecure because of Israeli oppression, from the religious and moral perspective, in the long run it is Israel that needs to be more concerned about its security.

“One will never achieve security through dominating, oppressing and humiliating others,” said Reverend Ateek. “How do you help Israel, which lives in fear and insecurity, to become secure? Israel needs to trust Palestinians and take the risk of peace as it took the risk of war before.”

“Israelis have perpetrated a profound injustice and they have no basis for security whatsoever until they recognize the corrupt and destructive culture by which they attempt to express their hegemony and, like Germans or South Africans did, admit the injustice they have done to the indigenous population of Palestine,” said Reverend Prior, “Israel will not achieve security until it abandons the ideology of Zionism. A lot of Jews around the world understand that the doctrine that Jews can only live in the state of Israel is intrinsically immoral and wrong, and has wrought a profound damage to Judaism.”

The two clergymen emphasized at the briefing that it is extremely important to reach the Jewish community in the United States to let them know the facts about the Middle East.

“I am hoping that the people who support Zionist ideology will understand, first, the damage that has been already done and, second, that it is not a philosophy to stick to for people with any moral perspective,” said Reverend Prior.

“I believe that God loves all people equally,” concluded Reverend Ateek, “But that it is not what Zionism teaches.”

—Alima Bissenova