Dr. Hanan Mikhail-Ashrawl: An Embodiment of Her Embattled People

By Janet McMahon

During the Gulf war, with the occupied territories under an almost unremitting Israeli curfew, Dr. Hanan Mikhail-Ashrawi was one of the few Palestinians visible to the outside world. Millions saw her on CNN and American network television as she told of the smothering effects of the curfew on Palestinian lives and society.

Since then, this West Bank educator has continued to speak to the world about the realities of Palestinian life under occupation. One of the participants in meetings of Palestinian leaders with US Secretary of State James Baker on his successive visits to Israel after the Gulf war, it was she who, on the one hand, wrote a series of memoranda detailing the Palestinian position and, on the other, talked to Baker about the "human reality" of the Israel occupation. Secretary Baker, she says, "reacted in a very compassionate way."

Indeed, it is this very insistence on human reality, coupled with an intellectual discipline honed in her chosen environment of academia, that makes Ashrawi such a formidable writer and spokesperson for her cause and her people.

The Luxury of "A Normal Life"

A poet and short story writer as well as a professor of literature at Bir Zeit University, Hanan Ashrawi says, "I would like nothing better than to have a normal life. " Born in the predominantly Christian West Bank town of Ramallah, where she lives today with her husband and two children, Ashrawi attended the American University of Beirut, where she received her BA in English and earned a master's degree in textual criticism. This background is evident when she speaks of Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir's "peace proposal" as an "exercise in deconstruction, " and when she describes earlier peace initiatives as "Israel calling for a dialogue with the United States in order to discuss whether there can be preliminary talks in Egypt between the Americans and the Egyptians about whether a dialogue can take place between the Palestinians and the Israelis under the Egyptian-American auspices."

Surprisingly for so contemporary a person, her Ph.D., from the University of Virginia, is in medieval and comparative literature. Ashrawi explains this as "a certain amount of self-indulgence," a refuge "when reality is too much a presence." Plus, she laughs, "I tend to have a pedantic streak, " which academic research satisfies.

Prior to the closing of Palestinian universities by Israeli authorities at the outset of the intifada, Ashrawi was head of Bir Zeit's English department for eight years, followed by four years as dean of the faculty of arts, where she acquired a reputation as a skillful administrator. She then returned to teaching and, for the past four years, has greatly missed the academic life which has been so thoroughly disrupted by the Israeli occupation. She speaks feelingly of being deprived of her intellectual environment, the lectures and other cultural activities normal to a functioning university, and of the difficulties and dangers of teaching alternative classes, which have been outlawed by the Israeli occupation authorities.

Although the practice of her chosen profession has become a luxury for Ashrawi, the work she is prevented from carrying out, she believes, is critical to the future of Palestine. The seemingly rarified field of comparative literature offers Ashrawi the opportunity to "teach skills, train people to analyze and think critically, and to open up horizons" for her students. Clearly, the long-term ramifications of denying an education to Palestinian youth are damaging far beyond the levels of basic literacy.

Today, Hanan Ashrawi describes herself as "by necessity a political being, not a politician," because she has "no aspirations to a government post. " Being a visible embodiment of her embattled people is a role she did not choose, but which "reality has imposed" on her, and to which she brings a "sense of service. " Indeed, she is matter-of-fact about the demands on her time and energy, the frequent travels, lectures and media appearances: "People need to know. "

"Being Born is All it Takes"

"The struggle needs every single person, " she states, and each contributes in his or her own way. Asked if, because of her visibility, she is in particular danger of being arrested by Israeli authorities, she responds that, in the occupied territories, everyone runs that risk: "Being born is all it takes."

Ashrawi is equally adamant that the Palestinians' "commitment to peace is not a tactical maneuver. " Nor do the Palestinians have much choice. Adhering to the Palestine National Council's 1988 commitment to nonviolence is "much more difficult than armed struggle," she says, but to do otherwise would be "suicidal." The Israelis would like nothing better than a resumption of the armed struggle tactics that failed the Palestinians in the past, since it is precisely the "moral aspect of the intifada which has disarmed Israel. "

In the meantime, "Israel proceeds with a policy of creating facts, with exercising de facto sovereignty," she says. "With everything it does, Israel is buying time until irreversible realities are created."

In the US, Ashrawi sees "no real critical scrutiny of what Israel is doing—almost as if people don't want to believe what Israel is capable of." She speaks out against the double standard, whether it be in the area of human rights—with US State Department Assistant Secretary for Human Rights Richard Schifter escorted by the army on his visits to Israel and never talking to Palestinians or visiting the occupied territories—or terrorism: "Israel is practicing state terrorism and not being held accountable."

"The PLO," asserts Ashrawi, "is quite willing to discuss terrorism, charters, constitutions—but treat all parties evenhandedly. " Regarding Israel's insistence on talking with "moderate," non-PLO Palestinians, she observes: "Moderate ... means that you are a Palestinian who has abandoned the Palestinian substance and adopted either the Israeli or the American substance ... It's very hard to find Zionist Palestinians."

When Hanan Ashrawi speaks of the systematic devaluation of Palestinian lives and human rights, " her words are informed always by the "human reality " of her life as a Palestinian. She describes how Israeli soldiers are kidnapping Palestinian 10-to-15 year-olds, "kids who've done nothing, " and then ransoming them to their parents for $500 to $2,500. She adds, simply, "It happened to my nephew. " It also is happening at a time when many Palestinian parents are without income.

Asked about the basis of her short stories depicting women erecting barricades and throwing stones ("I grasp the stone damp with blood and with all my strength hurl it at the pointing guns"), she becomes animated as she recalls the feelings of strength, nationalism and feminism she shared with other women, determined to "do anything we could do," at just such a barricade.

But when she talks about her 1989 poem "Metamorphosis," about two mothers transformed by the deaths of their sons, her daughters' playmate Raja shot at the funeral of his best friend Yasser, the words come haltingly. It is still painful to discuss.

"We Will Hang On"

For her, however, there are no doubts: "We have to hang on and we will hang on.” Before the Gulf war, she explains, when there was great fear of mass transfers being implemented, the Palestinians in the occupied territories held public meetings and made pacts agreeing to die in their own homes rather than be made to leave.

What kind of woman is this, who would die with her family before being driven from the town of her birth, rather than live in exile as two-thirds of the world's Palestinians have been forced to do? Born in 1946 to a Lebanese mother and a father descended from one of the seven brothers who founded Ramallah over six centuries ago, Ashrawl was the youngest of five daughters. She uses adjectives like "brilliant" and "perfect" to describe her husband, a filmmaker and musician who works as a photographer for the UN in Jerusalem, and daughters Amal,14, and Zeina,10, both of whom are "extremely musical. " It's obvious that Hanan Ashrawi need not go far from home to be surrounded by artistic and loving people.

Since the war, however, Palestinians are facing "very real deprivation, especially in the refugee camps and Gaza. " In order to survive, individually and collectively, the Palestinians have set up a system of sharing incomes and resources. This is in addition to efforts already underway to build an infrastructure which will become the basis of the future state of Palestine.

And it is to create such a future, "where people can live a normal life," that Hanan Ashrawi's efforts are dedicated. Even while she declines to express optimism for particular political or diplomatic developments, she remains steadfastly "optimistic in the rightness of the cause."

She is "confident in the political maturity of the Palestinians, their confidence and sense of rightness about how to proceed not just to put an end to the occupation, but to build a future for our children."

Janet McMahon is the managing editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.