July 1996, pgs. 66-74

Arab-American Activism

Two American Boys Die in Qana, Grandmother Denied Medical Visa to U.S.

Waroud Abboud, 65, was entertaining her two grandsons from the United States when Israel began shelling southern Lebanon. The woman, who lived in the Lebanese village of Qana, decided the situation was too dangerous to stay in her home. She gathered her grandsons Abdul-Muhsen, 9, and Hadi, 8, and ran to the United Nations base camp just blocks away, believing she and her family would be safe there.

She was wrong.

On April 18, Israeli artillerymen shelled the Qana U.N. base camp after Hezbollah guerrillas fired Katyusha rockets from an area nearby. Abdul-Muhsen and Hadi were killed and their grandmother was badly injured. The boys’ parents in Dearborn, Michigan, saw Mrs. Abboud on CNN being carried out of the wreckage. Her left arm had to be amputated. The boys were among 100 civilian refugees killed in the attack on the camp. Israel has said it regretted the incident and claims the shelling was meant to hit the guerrillas who had launched rockets into Israel’s so-called “security zone” in southern Lebanon. Nearly 150 Lebanese are believed to have died during Israeli attacks in various parts of Lebanon including suburbs of Beirut.

The Lebanese-American community in Dearborn, estimated at 35,000, was devastated by the Qana bombing and many tried to comfort the boys’ parents, Haider and Chadia Bitar. “We’ve been offering the parents support and friendship but there’s really nothing you can say or do,” said Mariam Bakri, a member of ACCESS, an Arab-American community group in Dearborn. She and ACCESS organized a 40-day memorial for those killed in the Qana attack and brought some 3,000 Arab Americans to Washington, DC on April 23 to protest the Israeli bombing. Haider, 35, and Chadia Bitar, 30—both American citizens—attended the Washington protest carrying pictures of the children they lost in the bombing.

“I ask President Clinton and the American administration that gave Israel the green light to destroy Lebanon and to kill the innocent children: What did these innocent children do to be killed?” said Haider in an emotional statement made shortly after the bombing.

In the two months following the attacks, efforts by Haider Bitar and ACCESS have been concentrated on getting the boys’ grandmother to the United States for hospital treatment. The staffs of U.S. Sen. Spencer Abraham (R-MI) and Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) have been working to obtain a medical visa so Abboud can travel to the United States. So far the State Department has denied this request, saying the medical emergency was not severe enough to warrant such travel.

Reem Khraizat, who works at the ACCESS health clinic in Dearborn, visited Abboud in the Mount of Hope hospital in Saida, Lebanon. She said Abboud’s amputated arm had become infected from the poor conditions in the overcrowded hospital and that the infection had spread. “Her arm has not been dealt with properly because the hospital has been overwhelmed with victims from Qana,” Khraizat said. She added that Abboud was very distraught during the hospital visit because she had just been informed that her grandsons had died in the bombing.

Khraizat and ACCESS have arranged medical treatment for Abboud if she is allowed to travel to the United States. Saratoga Hospital in Detroit, Michigan has agreed to treat her without charge and ACCESS will cover her travel expenses.

Khraizat believes the State Department’s reluctance to issue the visa has more to do with political than medical reasons. “If we brought her here, there would be talk about why she’s here and what happened to her,” Khraizat said. “The fact that these were U.S. [-made] bombs that killed these children is not something the U.S. government wants to talk about.”

—Geoff Lumetta

Karmi Discusses Jerusalem at NAAA Breakfast

The stranglehold of the Israel lobby on American politics may never have been clearer than in October 1995, when Congress voted overwhelmingly to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. In a paper delivered at a National Association of Arab Americans breakfast May 10, scholar Ghada Karmi presented reasons why prematurely moving the embassy—and recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital—is bad policy for Middle East peace and for the United States.

“The decision is misguided at best and unjustifiable at worst,” said Karmi, who is chair of the International Campaign for Jerusalem and a research associate at London University. “It should really call into question the power and influence the Israel lobby has over Congress.”

The bill was introduced in the Senate by then-Sen. Bob Dole (R-KS) and in the House by Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-GA), regardless of the results of the negotiations agreed to in the Oslo accords signed at the White House in September 1993 and September 1995. It mandated completion of the U.S. Embassy move by May 1999, unless the president decides at that time that the move is not in the national interest.

Congress saw the bill as a gesture to celebrate Israel’s commemoration of Jerusalem’s 3,000 years as a city. Karmi said the move is “legally, morally and politically wrong” because it ignores the city’s additional dimensions as a Muslim city, a Palestinian Arab city and as an international city.

On the legal issue, Karmi pointed out that the United Nations never intended for Jerusalem to be a part of either a Jewish or Arab state when it voted to partition Palestine in 1947. Resolution 181, she said, designated Jerusalem as a “corpus separatum,” or separate entity. “It envisaged that both Arabs and Jews would have equal rights in the city, as well as freedom of access to the holy places,” Karmi said. Resolution 181, which was approved by the United States along with other U.N. member countries, is the reason the world’s embassies (and the Israeli foreign ministry) are located in Tel Aviv, not Jerusalem.

“The fact that many people, including the previous American secretary of state, James Baker, are ignorant of this does not detract from the truth of the position,” she added. She said that Baker, shortly after he became secretary of state, was told by Palestinian spokesperson Hanan Ashrawi that Jerusalem was not Israel’s capital. Baker responded: “Is this true? I don’t believe it.”

She also said that the land in West Jerusalem that was offered to the United States as the site for the embassy is Palestinian “waqf,” Muslim religious endowment land, that was illegally confiscated by the Israeli government. “The U.S. shouldn’t accept the land,” she said. “It cannot be used for anything but Muslim community [activities].”

Karmi said the moral argument against moving the embassy is even stronger because the United States would be symbolically recognizing and approving the displacement of Palestinians. The part of Jerusalem seized in the 1967 war was wholly Palestinian Arab, Karmi said. Palestinians in East Jerusalem now are left with 13.5 percent of their original land. She has documented that the Israelis have claimed more than 130,000 acres of land seized since 1967 from the Palestinians.

“Today they [the Palestinians] are a minority in their own city,” Karmi said, “choked off by settlements from their compatriots on the West Bank and the objects of a policy of municipal discrimination.” An example of this discrimination is the system that makes Palestinians pay 26 percent of Jerusalem’s taxes while receiving 5 percent of the services, she added.

Despite these factors, world opinion has not sided with the Palestinians. Karmi said that even some European countries, which have historically considered Jerusalem property illegally annexed by Israel, are starting to take a different line toward Israel. Since the 1980s, the British Parliament has continued to “water down” its position to be more in line with American policies, she said.

Even more discouraging is the lack of interest Arab and Muslim countries have taken on the Jerusalem issue, Karmi said. She alleged that there has been little outcry from the Middle East over Israel’s annexation of the city that is sacred to Muslims and Christians as well as to Jews. Without international support, the Palestinians have little power to stop Israel’s plans.

“The Palestinians have only one card to play, and that is the power of the veto,” she said. “They can stop being party to the peace process and that is an important factor.”

—Geoff Lumetta