Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September 1998, pages 71-76

Waging Peace

Egyptian Copts Warn Against Congressional Pressure

Three representatives of Egypt’s Coptic community visited the United States in June to express their community’s concern that passage of legislation by Congress aimed at alleged religious discrimination abroad could provoke a backlash against the long-established Christian community in Egypt.

At the completion of their 27-day mission to the United States, of which a week was spent in the national capital, the Egyptian Copts met with reporters June 26 at the Arab American Institute in Washington, DC.

The group consisted of executive editor Youssef Sidhom of Watani newspaper, managing director Mounir A. Fakhry Abdel Nour of the French-Egyptian Society for Food and Agricultural Industries, and president Mourad Stino of Tex Consult company.

“Our task was to describe the situation as far as Egypt is concerned,” Stino explained. “Our opinion is that we have problems, but those problems are not the problems described abroad. There is no persecution, a word that is too easily applied.

“We have been able to solve those problems with our Muslim brothers. When a foreign power has tried to get involved, it has failed. So we thank you for your concerns and you are free to enact any bill you want, but we think that enacting unilateral sanctions is very dangerous.

“You are putting minorities in a very dangerous position. I would hate to see myself accused of trying to deprive my country of whatever advantages it is enjoying today, such as foreign aid. I think what the U.S. should act to support is democratic values,” Stino said, noting that the U.S. stands for human rights as well as religious freedom.

“We have problems,” he explained, “but we are able to cope with them. The interference of a foreign power is not required or called for. The introduction of sanctions is very dangerous.”

Editor Sidhom warned that sanctions imposed upon Egypt, for which Egypt’s Christian community would be blamed, would harm that minority.

By contrast, “addressing human rights would help the whole community.” Sidhom said that “recently we have encountered a better environment. We are working with our Muslim brothers on the intellectual level, not yet on the official level, but it is getting better. We don’t want to jump from the frying pan into the fire.”

Stino pointed out that Copts are in the police and the army and are now are getting permits to build new churches (a matter over which Egyptian authorities have been criticized in the past). “A lot of us are seen as public figures.” he noted. “We have our own channels to solve a lot of our problems. We have 45 Coptic Orthodox churches. We have three bishops.

“We also have our extremists who have their own newspapers and who are not doing things the right way. We are on the right track, but this will not happen overnight.”

Mr. Abdel Nour said that there are some 420,000 Egyptians in the United States, making them the second-largest Arab- American group after the Syrian-Lebanese community. Of these Egyptians, between 6 and 7 percent are Copts. He said that the Egyptians who arrived in the United States in the 1960s do not get involved in political activities in the U.S. as a community, but among those who came later, some of the Copts are very vocal. “We did get in touch with the group of moderate Copts in the United States,” he said. “They are ready to come to Egypt to talk and to calm down.” He added, however, that there is a group of Copts centered in Jersey City whom he described as “extremists” and whom his group did not contact.

Describing the problems of Copts in Egypt, Stino said that standards of living in rural areas are low, and that Coptic university graduates cannot find jobs. Many therefore desire only to go to the United States.

“I don’t think the congressmen looking into this issue had in mind getting into the internal affairs of other countries,” Sidhom noted. He pointed out that the Coptic Pope Shenouda had declared that “we can achieve more thorough love and brotherhood than through pressure.”

—Richard H. Curtiss

Nehad Abul Kosman Discusses Egyptian Women’s Rights

Nehad Abul Kosman, executive director of the Egyptian Committee for Women’s Rights (ECWR), addressed the issues facing Egyptian women in a July 7 program at the National Democratic Institute in Washington, DC. An Egyptian lawyer and civil activist, Abul Kosman expressed concern over the gap between Egyptian constitutional law and everyday practices.

Although the constitution stipulates that men and women should have equal rights, the two genders, in reality, remain unequal in the eyes of the law. Egyptian laws that discriminate on a gender basis include a nationality law which allows fathers, but not mothers, to pass Egyptian citizenship to their children, and a law which forces a woman to obtain permission from her husband before traveling abroad.

Abul Kosman stressed the importance of increasing awareness and education among Egyptian women. Traditionally, parents have placed more importance on educating their sons, while encouraging women to prepare for domestic responsibilities. As a result, the illiteracy rate remains higher for Egyptian women than for men, especially in rural areas. In addition, among educated Egyptians, males are more likely to complete a higher level of education than females.

The ECWR was created “to increase the awareness of women regarding the nature of their problems and how to effect change,” Abul Kosman said. ECWR sends workers to organize and lead discussions among Egyptian women both in Cairo and in surrounding areas. The organization, established in November 1996, currently sponsors programs in 16 regions, with the total number of women involved exceeding 16,000.

In groups of approximately 20 people, the women learn more about the democratic process, including parliamentary representation and the right to vote. ECWR also encourages women to obtain a voting card and to participate actively in Egyptian elections. In some cases, the organization has even coordinated bloc votes among groups as large as 1,000 women.

ECWR helps Egyptian women understand the importance of electing a candidate who shares their goals and values. In the past, candidates have relied primarily on the votes of friends and family members, but increased awareness among the Egyptian population has forced office seekers to mount more serious campaigns based upon issues.

ECWR also invites Egyptian women to view the relationship between the state and the individual as a cooperative one involving mutual obligations rather than an oppressive one. Ms. Abul Kosman said that since the individual pays taxes to the state, in return Egyptian citizens can expect certain services from their government. By regarding the state-individual interaction as a give-and-take relationship, Egyptian women are learning to take a more active role in politics.

ECWR has organized 1,461 discussion groups throughout Egypt to date to raise awareness among Egyptian women. It currently is planning a new campaign to continue the increase in voter registration among women, Abul Kosman concluded.

—Samia A. El-Mahdi

United Nations Headquarters Hosts North American NGO Symposium on the Question of Palestine, 1998

The annual North American Non-Governmental Organizations Symposium on the Question of Palestine was held at the United Nations Headquarters June 15-17 in New York City. The symposium on “50 years of dispossession of the Palestinian people” addressed historical aspects of the Palestinian issue, strategies for contesting the future, and consequences for NGO work in North America.

In the opening session, chairman David Graybeal of the North American Coordinating Committee for NGOs on the Question of Palestine (NACC) presented the positions of North American NGOs in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict especially after the Oslo agreements. “We are generally agreed that Israel’s aggressiveness and intransigence is a major problem,” he said. “We are divided about the Palestine Authority. Some support it as the most comprehensive, authoritative voice of the Palestinian people. Some rebuke it as being too compliant in agreeing to sign the Oslo accords and too willing to overlook human rights abuses by its own police officers.”

Graybeal explained that North American NGOs believe that the U.S. favoritism toward Israel has “made a mockery of [the American] claim to be an honest broker between the parties.” He concluded his opening remarks by calling upon the United Nations to confront the United States over “shameful” misuse of U.S. power.

In the first plenary session, entitled “Memory: Remembering Palestinian History,” Dr. Ibrahim Abu Lughod, professor of political science at Birzeit University and professor emeritus at Northwestern University, discussed the historical consequences of political developments since the adoption of the partition resolution. “Not only was the experience of dispossession a national one, but Palestinians lost any control over their identity, politics and development,” he said. Describing why diaspora Palestinians view the Oslo accords critically, Dr. Abu Lughod said, “Only by meeting the legitimate rights of the Palestinians to sovereignty, statehood and return, by ending every vestige of military occupation and by accepting the principle of equal coexistence of Palestinian Arab and Israeli Jew on the land of Palestine, could we project a future of peaceful relations in Palestine and the region.”

Dr. Don Peretz, professor emeritus at the State University of New York, also discussed historical consequences of the Palestinian problem. In his lucid review of the development of the question of Palestine, Mr. Peretz focused on the question of refugees and their “right of return.” He concluded by calling upon the world community to help in securing Palestinian rights: “The hope is that a new Palestine will soon arise, a new and more secure Palestine than the one the refugees left 50 years ago. This will be possible with assistance from the world community, and especially from the U.S. and from Israel.”

In her presentation on “Memory and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict,” Randa Farah, associate researcher at the Centre d’études et de recherches sur le Moyen Orient contemporain in Amman, focused on “How did popular memory contribute to the forging of the Palestinian ‘nation’ and, in turn, how changing nationalist politics are re-shaping memory/identity.” Based on an anthropological inquiry conducted in al-Baq’a refugee camp in Jordan, Ms. Farah stated that the Oslo agreement jolted the dream of return of the Palestinians, but the dream continues to exist even though it is being transformed. The Oslo agreements, as they are being implemented (or not implemented), are entrenching and/or creating new schisms in Palestinian society, Farah argued. Farah quoted one of her interviewees in al-Baq’a refugee camp saying:

“We cannot go back to 1948…This peace is not for us, it is for the ’67 people and maybe they [the Israelis] won’t let those return…But for us…the 1948 people, if they allow us to return to the 1967 territories, here it is a camp and there it is a camp…Why should we move again?”

Dr. Marc Ellis, research fellow at Harvard University and professor of American and Jewish studies at Baylor University, presented a “Meditation on the Next 50 Years of Israel/Palestine.” He argued that any proposed unity between the Palestinians and the Israelis can be envisioned only if the following understanding is embraced: “Israel has now conquered all of historic Palestine, from Tel Aviv to the Jordan River. The Palestinian population within the expanded Israel, almost 3 million people, are now a remnant population.”

In order to create a future beyond the limitations of the past, Professor Ellis proposed that the old options should be eliminated. The options that “must be left behind,” he said, are: options of “two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side; a Palestinian mini-state in the West Bank and Gaza; Palestinian autonomy without statehood.”

At the second plenary session, “Conscience: Strategies for Contesting the Future,” University of Ottawa law professor Michael Lynk, a labor lawyer, discussed the need for international protection and support for the Palestinian people. He said protection of Palestinians should focus on three spheres: human rights; economy, territory and resources; and refugees.

NGO workshops held during the symposium focused on issues such as East Jerusalem, Palestine refugees, and Israeli settlements, mobilizing North American public opinion, NGO support for respect of the Fourth Geneva Convention with regard to the question of Palestine, and the effects of closure.

On the closure issue, Ms. Amira Hass, Gaza correspondent for the Hebrew newspaper Ha’aretz, gave a comprehensive description of the effects of closure on the daily life of the Palestinians living in Gaza and the West Bank. “Closure is not a reaction to Hamas mass suicide attacks inside Israel; it was implemented long before anybody could imagine that Hamas activities would evolve into such a phenomenon of mass killing in Israel,” Hass said. She argued that closures, meaning among other things that Palestinians are denied freedom of movement, were started in 1991 by the Likud government and then developed by the Labor government. “The main effect of the closures is that there is an ongoing separation between Gaza and the West Bank,” she said. Hass currently is writing a book about her journalistic experience in the Palestinian occupied territories with special focus on the closure issue. Hass expects to return to the U.S. in September in connection with publication of her book.

The U.N. Symposium was preceded by a two-day NGO town meeting organized by the NACC. The town meeting’s objective was to have a participatory forum for frank and open discussion of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, separate from deliberations involving the Palestinian and other official delegations to the U.N. Ellis, Gabriel Habib, and Hass were three resource people for the meeting who enriched the discussions with their practical insights. The town meeting dealt with NACC elections, the basis upon which the NACC exists and operates, and the closure issue. The town meeting produced several resolutions, including one providing that the list of organizations that can run for elections and vote in elections can be expanded to include all organizations that are accredited to the U.N. Committee on the Exercise of Inalienable Rights of the Palestinians whether or not they are present at the U.N.’s North American NGO Symposium. NACC Coordinator John Ihnat said this resolution would expand the electorate of the NACC and hopefully “lead to action” since “one of the bases for judging the effectiveness of this symposium is whether this event has led NGOs to be more effective and more influential in work that contributes to justice.”

—Raja’ M. Abu-Jabr

Oussama Kanaan Speaks at the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine

The Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine (CPAP) hosted a luncheon meeting with Oussama Kanaan, an economist at the International Monetary Fund, on the Palestinian economy after Oslo on July 10 in Washington, DC.

Noting that since the signing of the Oslo accords the economic situation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip has deteriorated dramatically. Dr. Kanaan argued that the accords do not provide an independent Palestinian economy as many have assumed. This is illustrated by the labor situation, one of the most fundamental issues for the Palestinians, with one-fifth of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank GNP coming from workers employed in Israel.

Dr. Kanaan said that Oslo calls upon both the Israeli and Palestinian signatories to normalize the movement of labor across their borders, while retaining the right to regulate such movements into their own areas of jurisdiction. Such an agreement sounded “fair” to the original Palestinian negotiating team, Dr. Kanaan said, noting that indeed it “appears very fair and gives both sides equal rights.” In fact, however, the agreement is unfair because it does not take into account the economic dependence of the Palestinians upon the Israeli economy, he explained.

Dr. Kanaan warned that unless the Palestinians address the issues of the Palestinian seaport and airport in Gaza, the Palestinian economy will stay largely dependent on the Israeli economy. “There has to be direct involvement of the (largely-European) donor community to accelerate the opening of the seaport and the airport,” he said.

Emphasizing that Israeli closures of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are extremely harmful to the Palestinian economy, Dr. Kanaan discussed the effects on the private sector. “The occurrence of closures has actually diverted the resources of donors to emergency assistance to the Palestinian Authority and away from the public investment program,” he said. “Whenever there is a closure, the unemployment rate increases dramatically.”.

As most of the economic frustrations the Palestinians are suffering have occurred after Oslo, Dr. Kanaan believes that “the agreement itself has not incorporated some provisions to specify the conditions under which Israelis can impose restrictions on trade with the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”

He proposed several measures to reverse the declining trend in Palestinian living standards. His basic premise was that any improvement of investment incentives and a more balanced pattern of investment depends on the “stabilization and liberalization of the external trade environment.”

At the end of his lecture, Dr. Kanaan distributed copies of two of his papers dealing with the topic, one published in Finance and Development (June 1998), and the second in a special 1998 report of the International Monetary Fund.

This event was the first to be hosted in the newly expanded facilities of the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine in its former Virginia Avenue location near the Department of State.

—Raja’ M. Abu-Jabr

Edward Said Proposes Unemployment Fund to Help End Illegal Jewish Settlements

Illegal Jewish settlements are supported by Palestinian labor and the unavailability of alternative work and employment support programs for Arab laborers, Edward Said told a gathering or more than 600 Arab Americans during a suburban Chicago appearance May 24.

He also issued a strong rebuke against those who advocate violence as a means of achieving Palestinian independence, criticized those who advocate a sectarian, religious state, and denounced the PNA’s “stupidity” and failure to eliminate corruption in their own systems.

Said, considered one of the most distinguished Palestinian diaspora intellectuals, said that a special unemployment fund should be created to give Palestinians who work on Israeli projects, such as Israeli settlements, a choice.

Saying the “struggle is on the ground” and the “battle is over territory,” Said explained that he was surprised to discover that the vast majority of laborers who are building the new, illegal Jewish settlements are Palestinians who feel they have no other means to support their families.

“The Israeli settlements are being built by Palestinian laborers ...There is no effort to prevent Palestinians from working to destroy their own country,” Said declared during an address to the Arab American Action Network banquet in suburban Chicago.

A special “unemployment fund,” he said, could be established “to prevent or at least discourage Palestinians from taking these jobs.”

The author of 16 books said that he had approached several Palestinians working to build illegal Jewish settlements in areas of the West Bank and Gaza Strip during recent trips.

“I asked them why and a Palestinian worker said they can’t find work to put food on their tables for their families,” Said recalled.

“We can contribute to a monthly fund...to create a fund...so that these Palestinians will not have to work for the Israelis. This is an urgent necessity which I think we have to consider and act on.”

Said blasted the Palestinian National Authority on several levels, but said that the PNA was employing more than 100,000 people “who are doing absolutely nothing. Their loyalty is being bought.”

Said also called on Palestinians to adopt the principles of nonviolence that were the foundation of successes by leaders like Mahatma Gandhi and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

“We are not in a position to engage in violent struggle,” Said told the audience.

“But, a sustained series of peaceful marches on settlements...we have to organize this. No one is going to do this for us. We need to organize marches that impede construction, block construction at settlements.”

Said also lamented that he did not see any programs to assist in rebuilding Palestinian homes demolished by Israeli policies and the Israeli military.

“We need to do something that has never been done, an international campaign against settlements, against Israeli apartheid. These are principles for which we stand that are important not just for Palestinians but for people throughout the world,” Said emphasized.

During the question-and-answer period that followed, Said confronted a young man who asserted that the Palestinian cause “was an Islamic cause.”

Said, respectfully, told the young man that organizations that advocate a single-religious solution to Palestine were making the same mistakes as did Zionism.

“It is invidious. We have been fighting that kind of discrimination ourselves. The only basis is to be secular,” Said insisted.

Said explained that while he opposed the view that Palestine should be an “Islamic state,” as advocated by some political Islamist groups, he understood the rights of individuals to believe in what is right.

“I am not asking you to suspend your faith or change your religion...but, you will fall into the trap of Zionism,” he said.

(Ray Hanania’s columns and news reports are archived on the Media Oasis Webpage at http://www.hanania.com)

Qatar Selects Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Arts

The Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development has selected Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Arts to develop the Shaqab College of Design Arts in Doha, Qatar. The agreement was announced July 22 at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

Groundbreaking for Shaqab College is taking place this summer in Qatar, but the institution will open its doors in September in one wing of a Qatar Foundation building in Doha. When it is fully operational by about 2005, the four-year Shaqab College will have about 200 students. It will award undergraduate degrees in fashion design and merchandising; communication arts and design (computer graphics); and interior design. Related courses will be offered in ceramics, drawing, photography, art history, jewelry, fabric and the business aspects of the design professions.

Shaqab College of Design Arts is the first of four specialized Qatar Foundation colleges to be established with the participation of major U.S. universities. The others will be in the areas of pre-medicine; petroleum and gas engineering, and business administration.

“Our mission has been to develop new university programs that provide the latest research, training and tools to the young people of Qatar, while also introducing them to new cultures,” said Dr. Wijdan Shami Basit, head of the Qatar Foundation’s Shaqab Institute board of governors. He said the initiative is supported fully by the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, and his wife, Sheikha Moza, who advised the Qatar Foundation on the need for a college of design. Sheikha Moza visited a number of American institutions of higher education in November 1996, in a search for suitable U.S.-Qatar educational partnerships.

“Being asked to develop a design college from the ground up is an extraordinary honor,” said VCU president Dr. Eugene P. Trani at the press conference. He said the agreement followed more than a year of discussions between VCU and the Qatar Foundation He said VCU faculty members toured Qatar and the college site, evaluated art portfolios of Qatari students, and observed high school arts training in Qatar.

In May, a VCU team traveled to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates to assist in recruiting the first class, which will consist of about 30 students. About 20 VCU faculty members, including both full and part- time instructors, will comprise the Shaqab College faculty each year when the school is fully operational. VCU will recruit visiting professors for its own arts school while full-time VCU faculty are on leave to teach at Shaqab each year.

Shaqab College will be the first design program and private university in Qatar, and the first four-year program of its type in the Arabian Gulf region. Among its facilities will be state-of-the-art computing technology to offer students training with the latest professional design tools. The new building also will feature personal faculty studios adjacent to teaching areas.

—Richard H. Curtiss

Raji Sourani Discusses Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories at the CPAP

In a June 9 event hosted by the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine (CPAP), in Washington, DC and co-sponsored by the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Center for Human Rights, Raji Sourani, director of the Palestinian Center for Human Rights and 1991 RFK Human Rights Award Laureate, discussed the current human rights situation in the occupied Palestinian territories and the now-overdue final status negotiations.

“After the Oslo agreement, high hopes were raised and people thought that things would be rosy and promising,” Sourani said. He focused his discussion on charges in the agendas of human rights organizations after Oslo, and their role in Palestine.

“After analyzing the Oslo agreements, human rights organizations concluded that they have to work on two agendas: the Israeli occupation agenda, which is the same agenda of focus before Oslo, and a Palestinian agenda,” Sourani explained.

Human rights movements in Palestine have concerns about several issues in their “Palestinian agenda,” he said. These issues are related to freedom of expression, massive arrests of opposition groups—especially the Islamists—the militarization of Palestinian civil society resulting from the presence of a large security apparatus, the absence of legal counseling in the formation of the state security courts, violations by the Palestinian Authority of the independence of the judiciary, the PA’s lack of respect for the Palestinian Legislative Council’s decisions, and corruption and monopolies in the economic sector.

Regarding the “Israeli agenda,” Sourani explained that Oslo gave Israel control over most of the Palestinian territories. (At present Israel retains control of 43 percent of Gaza’s 365 square kilometers and 97 percent of the West Bank territories.) “Since the Oslo agreements, unprecedented Israeli human rights violations had occurred,” Sourani said. Israel’s closure policies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are the most harmful to the daily life of the Palestinian population. Their results are that Gaza students are not allowed to go to their universities in the West Bank, Muslim and Christian worshippers are denied access to religious observances in Jerusalem, Gaza farmers are not permitted to export their products even to the West Bank, and unemployment rates have increased dramatically. Sourani argued that five years after Oslo, “85 percent of the problems of ordinary Palestinians are originated by the Israeli occupation.

“Palestinian human rights movements are genuinely interested in having a healthy Palestinian civil society and institutions in order to pave the way for Palestinian independence and the state,” Sourani stated. With the United States putting pressure on the Palestinian Authority, however, Palestinian institutions are not functioning in a healthy way.

An example of this pressure was Mrs. Albright’s September 1997 public insistence on a visit to Gaza that the Palestinian Authority destroy the infrastructure of Hamas and Islamic Jihad. Mr. Sourani added that this pressure resulted in the immediate cracking down on 22 institutions.

Mr. Sourani called upon the U.S. government instead to encourage the Palestinian Authority to respect Palestinian human rights. “There is a moral and political responsibility on the U.S. government to promote human rights instead of pressuring the Palestinian Authority to violate Palestinian human rights,” Mr. Sourani concluded.

—Raja’ M. Abu-Jabr