Anan Ameri Jabara

By Rex Wingerter

In a field dominated by men, Dr. Anan Jabara stands in sharp relief. A founding member of the Palestine Aid Society of America (PAS) and its national president for the last four years, Dr. Jabara is the only Palestinian woman in the United States to head such a large, national organization devoted to charitable work on behalf of Palestinians and Lebanese.

"What we do," says Dr. Jabara, in a serious voice which reflects her no-nonsense manner, "is not only to get Palestinians here (in the U.S.) to donate money, but to give them a way to support and help politically their Palestinian brethren in Lebanon and (those) under Israeli occupation."

Under her stewardship, PAS has increased its membership and fund-raising, and expanded its programs to acquaint Palestinian children with their cultural and national heritage.

PAS was started in 1978, and at its first convention two years later Dr. Jabara was elected president. She has since been reelected four consecutive times. From her Detroit headquarters she directs 23 chapters spread throughout the U.S., with over 3, 000 members. And she is still the only full-time staff person.

Putting Funds to Work

Funds raised by PAS are put to work in Lebanon—where PAS believes the greatest need exists—through Association Naideh ("assistance" in Arabic). Established in 1977 to provide humanitarian aid to persons—mostly widows and orphans—displaced by Lebanon's civil war, Association Najdeh helps women find decent jobs and sponsors educational and vocational training programs in Lebanon's major Palestinian refugee camps and in other poverty-stricken areas of Beirut.

Yet, Dr. Jabara explains, even though PAS channels most of its aid to women, it is not an organization composed only for and by them: "It has both men and women as members. Leadership positions go to those who do most of the work and, as it happens, women do more work than men. We have succeeded in politically mobilizing many Palestinian women and they now have leadership positions in PAS."

Self-reliance and self-administration on the local level are stressed in all Najdeh-PAS supported projects in Lebanon. In 1983, according to Dr. Jabara, PAS funds went to rebuild a community center in the Sabra refugee camp destroyed during the September 1982 massacre. The new center will include a kindergarten and workshops for women in embroidery, sewing, typing, and English language study, as well as a carpentry shop for men. Past PAS enterprises have included the purchasing of a mini-bus for one of Najdeh's daycare centers, building a bomb shelter in Borj el Shemali refugee camp in southern Lebanon, vocational training facilities for men, and maintaining overhead expenses of kindergarten schools.

One of the more creative methods used by PAS to accomplish several objectives at once is its practice of selling in the U. S. some of the products—such as embroideries and woodcrafts—made by Palestinians in the Najdeh workshops. Often these goods are offered for sale at Arab American conventions and large get-togethers. As a result, funds are raised at the same time that Palestinian cultureis being promoted.

PAS's decision this year to expand its services ironically was the result of Israel's invasion of Lebanon in June, 1982. International outrage and condemnation of the invasion was accompanied by increased financial donations to help Palestinian and Lebanese refugees. "With these new funds to Association Najdeh," explains Dr. Jabara, "PAS decided that it would begin supporting community development projects in the West Bank and Gaza." This new work will be in addition to PAS's annual sponsorship of an American delegation to Nazareth—where every August people from different countries volunteer to work on neighborhood projects as an expression of solidarity with the Palestinian people.

Becoming Politicized in Amman

Dr. Jabara's family is from West Jerusalem and was forced to resettle in the eastern part of the city during the 1948 war. Later her parents moved to Amman where Dr. Jabara received her B.A. from the University of Jordan and where she was caught up in the Palestinian resistance movement.

"It was Israel's 1967 invasion and occupation of the West Bank and Gaza that really politicized me," she says. "That was the beginning of my evolution from an educator to a political activist." After receiving her M.A. from the University of Cairo, Dr. Jabara went to Beirut and worked for two years at the Palestine Research Center, studying the sociology of Palestinians.

She moved to the U.S. in 1974 to attend Wayne State University in Detroit. There she received a doctorate in sociology and, for a time, fulfilled her childhood ambition to become a university teacher. A year ago, however, she gave up teaching to devote full time to her PAS duties. For now, clearly, her academic pursuits have been supplanted by full-time dedication to the concerns and needs of the people of Palestine.

Rex Wingerter, a long-time student of U.S. foreign policy and the Middle East, currently studies law in Washington, D.C.