Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October/November 1997, Pages 66-69

California Chronicle

Rashid Khalidi Compares Peace Process to Titanic, Issue of Jerusalem to Iceberg That Sank It

By Pat and Samir Twair

Palestinian American scholar Rashid Khalidi isn't optimistic about the dying peace process but neither is he pessimistic about the eventual outcome in the Middle East. In Los Angeles June 20 to discuss the crisis in Jerusalem, he answered a few questions from the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs before his address to the Greater Los Angeles Chapter of the National Association of Arab Americans.

Headlines from the Middle East that day dealt with renewed clashes in Hebron six days after the U.S. Congress condoned moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. We asked Khalidi, who teaches Middle East history at the University of Chicago, if he believed the resurging violence in Hebron was the onset of a new intifada.

"I wouldn't call it an intifada yet," he replied, "but it is a sign the peace process no longer exists."

Nor does Khalidi agree with predictions that a new war between Syria and Israel is imminent. "I don't think any Arab country is entertaining the illusion it could successfully launch a war with Israel. If it were invaded it would have to go to war, but other than that, it's unlikely Israel can draw any Arab state into war. At this point, I am not optimistic at all. Arab governments are unable to defend their minimal interests."

What does he foresee in the near future?

"Things are likely to get much worse. The Palestinians have been faced with a 10 percent decrease in their GDP every year over the past four years. The people are 40 percent poorer than before Oslo, before the peace process."

As for the prospect of the European Union stepping in to balance Washington's total backing of Israel, he said, "Europe has not yet shown a unified challenge [to the U.S. bias for Israel]. It needs much more coordination.Netanyahu is leading us down the path to a serious confrontation. The situation is putting overwhelming stresses on Jordan."

Khalidi foresees the Israeli army perpetually engaged in skirmishes (with Hezbollah and Palestinians) and an ongoing cold war with the Arab states.

"The Arab countries have no help," he grimaced. "Unless the Arab governments put Palestine in the Number One spot when dealing with the U.S., the impasse will continue. All they have to do is demand that the U.S. tell the Israelis to stop the settlements and live up to Oslo agreements that were signed."

In addressing more than 200 members and friends of NAAA, Khalidi said the fatal flaws in the Oslo accords were bared when Netanyahu opened the controversial "Al Aqsa" tunnel in September 1996 and then announced in March plans to build a large Jewish settlement on Jabal Abu Ghneim in Arab East Jerusalem.

Khalidi, who was an adviser to the Palestinian delegations to the Madrid and Washington Arab-Israeli peace talks from October 1991 to June 1993, said the Oslo accords allowed Israel to brush off any subjects it didn't want to negotiate. Oslo had called for a five-year interim period before Jerusalem, borders, water and statehood would be discussed, Yet, Khalidi stressed, "six-and-a-half years have passed and the Palestinians have only had 7 percent of the West Bank and just 60 percent of Gaza returned to them."

Likening the peace process to the maiden voyage of the Titanic, Khalidi said Jerusalem is the iceberg that sank peace negotiations. "While everyone knows the Titanic can never be restored, some think the peace process can be."

Khalidi, who is president of the American Committee on Jerusalem, continued: "The Netanyauhu government thinks it can manipulate the Clinton administration and Congress—and there is nothing in their miserable records that would lead Netanyahu to think otherwise."

"But," he said, wagging a finger at the audience, "they all are playing with fire on the issue of Jerusalem."

Khalidi pointed out there is an organized Zionist campaign propagating the notion that Jerusalem is not as precious to Arabs and Muslims as it is to Jews. "This is a concentrated, orchestrated effort to say Jerusalem is only important to Jews."

"They are playing with fire. Jerusalem has always been the focus of Palestinian national aspirations. I suggest this resistance will increase when the Arabs realize the Jews are excluding any Palestinian sovereignty in Jerusalem. This awareness is only beginning to percolate.

"There is much worse to come," he predicted. "If it ever comes to pass that the U.S. Embassy is moved to Jerusalem, there will be a reaction in the Arab world that no one has ever seen before. No, I'm not pessimistic—just wait until they start to move the U.S. Embassy."

Lebanese Grandma Imbibes From Fountain of Youth

Most students of Middle East history have read about the Ottoman Empire's rule in the Arab Middle East, and the fighting that brought it to an end in World War I, but Rumza Zahra Johns remembers it.

"Those Turkish soldiers were mean, they forced their way into our houses and grabbed whatever food they found—bread, fruit, meat," she declares. When there was no bread or meat left, Rumza said her family survived for two years on vegetables secretly grown in her village of Kfifan near Batrun, Lebanon. What's more, the villagers shared whatever they had with starving, half-dead Armenians arriving from their own holocaust in Turkey.

At 97, Rumza is remarkable. She doesn't use a hearing aid or a cane. She cooks, cleans house, tends a garden and traveled by herself in May from California to visit relatives in Lebanon. However, in July, after her return, she followed the family doctor's orders and moved into an addition on the home of her daughters in Anaheim, CA.

Born Feb. 25, 1900, Rumza saw her first automobile after World War I. She wasn't very impressed: "It was just a little thing, a Model T Ford."

During World War I, the villagers caught a glimpse of a man riding a motorcycle. They were convinced it was the devil. They also caught sight of an airplane flying overhead, probably destined for Syria.

Rumza and her mother sailed to the United States in 1921. Her father had emigrated to the U.S. in 1912 and had a small ranch in El Paso, TX.

The next year, Rumza traveled to Los Angeles to visit an aunt and there she met Nasrallah Johns, who owned a hardware store. The couple exchanged marriage vows Aug. 13, 1922, in Our Lady of Mount Lebanon Church, Los Angeles, and took a wedding trip to nearby Catalina Island.

Johns operated a grocery store in East Los Angeles for years and later farmed in the Los Angeles suburb of Compton.

"Grandpa always had a politically correct garden," comments grandson Albert Johns. "He sent for seeds from Lebanon and raised mulberry, lemon, fig, olive, pomegranate and orange trees. He also had grape vines, artichokes and strawberries in his garden."

Rumza and her husband became parents of four daughters and two sons. He died in 1984, at the age of 90. The benevolent matriarch is the grandmother of 19 and great-grandmother of 11.

The secret of her longevity? "I worked hard all my life and raised a big family."

What's more, her family is a loving one. "She is our queen," commented her granddaughter, Laura Johns. "We are so proud of her and happy she could make the trip to Lebanon last May."

Thirty-five relatives were waiting for Rumza when she landed at the Beirut airport. When we asked her what the biggest change was since her last visit in 1954, she replied: "The living standard is much higher. The houses are bigger and have all the conveniences. Everyone seems to have a job."

So much for the good old days, which Rumza dismissed with a shrug of her shoulders.

Rumza, who says she is a "90 percent vegetarian," confessed she never expected to live so long. But she is enjoying herself and the love showered on her by her family, "especially my daughters-in-law, who have been just like my own daughters," she said with a smile.

Armenians Rally 'Round "Angel of Karabagh"

Just as Arab Americans gather to strategize against the Israeli takeover of Arab East Jerusalem, Armenian Americans are trying to save the tiny Armenian enclave of Nagorno-Karabagh from being absorbed by Azerbaijan.

While Israel has the most powerful lobby in the United States, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, Armenian Americans charge that Azerbaijan has mega-rich American petroleum companies lobbying on its behalf.

Why? Azerbaijan is believed to have larger oil fields than any region in the world outside the Persian Gulf. And they are largely untapped.

Kathryn Cameron Porter, wife of Congressman John Porter (R-IL), has taken up advocacy for the Armenians of Nagorno-Karabagh, and she discussed this effort at a July 10 fund-raiser in the Glendale home of Savey and Ralph Tufenkian.

Porter told us she is a born human rights activist. Her grandmother, she said proudly, was a full-blooded Cherokee. Trained as an anthropologist, the mother of five has managed her husband's congressional campaigns since his first victorious run in 1980. Her human rights endeavors began in 1981 when she traveled to the Soviet Union to interview some three dozen "refuseniks." Perhaps in retaliation for meeting with opposition figures, she was brutally strip-searched when she left the country.

"I thought then if they could do that to me, what happens to people with no access [to authority]?" she commented.

After that, Porter became involved in the Cyprus problem and led 1,000 Greek Cypriot women who peacefully crossed the Green Line into Turkish-occupied Cyprus.

This led to work with Kurds in Iran, Iraq, Syria and southeastern Turkey. She began to distinguish what she defines as a "chord of Turkish aggression" that led her to Armenia four years ago and again in 1996.

Porter organized the Human Rights Alliance two years ago. The Washington, DC-based group has a "head in the sky, feet in the mud" approach to combating violence and injustice, she said. Her involvement led her to "push" her husband into co-chairing the Armenian Caucus along with Rep. Frank Pallone.

Addressing leaders of the Southern California Armenian-American community, Porter said she had just returned from Bosnia where she had been asked by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to investigate some of the worst charges of abuse.

"I came back from Bosnia with a sense of pain I've never known when visiting Kurdistan, Cyprus or Armenia," she said. "In the latter regions, it is clear what course of action to take, but in Bosnia, evil has many faces."

Porter praised a July 6 front-page article from The Washington Post that pinpointed how former top U.S. aides are lobbying for a pro-Azerbaijan policy change. The men cited in the story are former National Security Advisers Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, former White House chief of staff John N. Sununu, former Defense Secretary Richard C. Cheney, former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and President Clinton's former Treasury secretary, Lloyd Bentsen. All, the article charged, are lobbying the administration to ease restrictions passed in 1992 in protest of an Azeri blockage of supplies to Armenia. Porter referred to the U.S. restriction on aid to Azerbaijan as the 907 provision.

"Because my husband upholds 907, he is being attacked for being 'anti-Turkish,'" Porter continued. "In fact, [House Speak-er] Newt [Gingrich] wrote him a letter
and told him, 'get your wife under control'" she asserted.

Harking back to the Washington scene, Porter said, "The Turks and Azeris are everywhere. I've never seen such a concerted effort."

MPAC Honors Writer of "Nightline" Hajj Documentary

Each year since 1992, the Muslim Public Affairs Council has presented its Media Award to individuals who have improved the overall image of Islam in the West. The initial award went to actor Morgan Freeman for his positive role as a Muslim in the film, "Robin Hood." The next year it went to African-American director Spike Lee for his film, "Malcolm X." Last year, First Lady Hillary Clinton received it for her work with children and for hosting the first Eid dinner for Muslims in the White House. The 1997 Media Award was presented July 19 to writer Michael Wolfe for scripting his eye-witness report of the hajj for ABC-Television's "Nightline."

A convert to Islam, Wolfe is a poet and publisher and has produced two books about Islam: The Hajj: An American's Pilgrimage to Mecca (Grove Atlantic 1993) and Journey with a Thousand Roads (fall 1997), a collection of hajj accounts by travelers to Mecca over the past millennium.

A soft-spoken, serene individual, Wolfe needs only to utter a few sentences before his listeners comprehend he lives and breathes the religion he embraced in 1988. "I wasn't seeking a new life or a new culture, but I had been thinking about Islam for more than 20 years," Wolfe noted.

He had lived in North Africa on an Amy Lowell traveling scholarship for poets and said he admired the texture of Islamic life, but it wasn't until he was in his 40s that he felt a spiritual push. After analyzing and contemplating human activity, Wolfe said he was seeking the lost sweetness of life. He found it in Islam.

The "Nightline" program which aired this past April during the hajj has proven to be one of the most watched programs in its history and certainly has sold the most tapes. Wolfe said he was suspicious initially when ABC approached him about preparing a half-hour program on the hajj. "I was fearful of manipulation," he admitted, "because I'm aware of how easy it is to manipulate images."

Instead, he quickly realized the producers had lived in Muslim countries and sincerely wanted to film an accurate portrayal of the moving human, religious experience of two million people simultaneously making the hajj.

"I had complete autonomy," Wolfe says. "ABC spent a lot of money on that program, more than was customary, and 'Nightline' was overjoyed with the finished product."

Wolfe says he was taken aback when "Nightline" producers told him they were aiming for the 1997 hajj just five weeks hence. Working with a film crew consisting of an Algerian, Palestinian and Egyptian for three weeks, the team produced 42 hours of film, from which 17 minutes of actual footage were used.

"I know what the stations of the hajj are. I wrote the script accordingly, which then was spliced with interviews and commentary," he explained. "Every night we sent our footage to Jeddah. The edited footage was forwarded to London and then to Washington where maps, music and Ted Koppel's comments were interlaced."

As he was presented the MPAC award, Wolfe responded that everyone present was there to celebrate the fact that a major television network asked a Muslim, rather than someone who might not comprehend its significance, to present the hajj to Western viewers.

"Mecca is spiritually energized during the hajj," he continued. "The essential question is what does one take home from Mecca? I've been there three times and I always try to formulate two or three new ideas about how to strengthen my relationship with God."

On his return this year, Wolfe said he reminded himself to count his life in breaths, not in minutes or days. "And every night before I go to bed, I try to cleanse my heart of any hard feelings."

Dar El Tifl-USA Hosts Benefit Brunch

San Francisco's Egyptian Consul General Hagar Islambouly was keynote speaker at a June 8 Sunday brunch benefit sponsored by Dar El Tifl-USA at the Marriott Hotel and Tennis Club in Newport Beach. Explained Dar El Tifl-USA President Dalal Muhtadi, the summer brunch program is a new innovation to raise funds for orphaned children in Palestine, Jordan and Lebanon. Originally, the charity channeled its proceeds to Dar El Tifl orphanage and school in East Jerusalem, but as conditions have worsened in southern Lebanon and Jordan, the nonprofit group is assisting needy children in Amman and Qana.

Consul General Islambouly announced that in addition to its San Francisco mission the Egyptian government will soon be opening an Egyptian consulate in Los Angeles. She had just returned from Cairo where talks had resumed between Palestinians and Israelis at the behest of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

She explained that the United States and Israel preferred bilateral tracks between Israel and each Arab state. Multilateral talks also were designed to study regional ecological and economic problems, but they came to a screeching halt when the Israeli-Palestinian talks did the same thing.

The peace process has died, she said, because of Israel's policy of building new Jewish settlements on Palestinian land and its avoidance of all negotiations dealing with Jerusalem.

"New generations in the Middle East deserve a period of peace and stability," she said, calling on all concerned parties to work out a just peace in the region before the year 2000.

Referring to the October War of 1973, Islambouly said Egypt's then-President Anwar Sadat came to the conclusion that all people in the Middle East must work and live together because the new global system would be based on regionalism. She added that Arab countries have worked aggressively to create a new economic environment in the Arab arena.

"[Former Israeli Prime Minister Shimon] Peres talked about a common market in the region, but this cannot be visualized until our Arab participation is viable," she averred.

Islambouly said that the presence of Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah in Cairo in early June was a harbinger of cooperation between Egypt and Saudi Arabia. She noted that Egypt also is negotiating trade arrangements with Morocco, Lebanon, Syria, the Gulf states and possibly Libya.

She cited the Islamic Conference that convened last March in Rabat, Morocco, as a further example of regional cooperation. Also known as the Jerusalem Committee, the conference concluded it was time to cool relations with Israel's hawkish Likud-run government and to establish the Fund of Jerusalem to support Palestinians and create jobs for them.

When the floor was opened to questions, one of the first dealt with Israel's Likud regime's refusal to recognize Palestinian aspirations.

"In the two years that I have been in San Francisco, I haven't seen mobilization on the part of Arab Americans," the Egyptian consul general replied. "You must believe you are capable of working a change in American foreign policy by informing the American public of what is going on in the Middle East."

In answer to a statement on the suffering of the Iraqi people because of international sanctions again Iraq, she stated: "The Iraqis don't deserve to pay this long for their leader's mistake."

Responding to a query about Egypt's reaction to Israeli nuclear power, she said Cairo is very concerned over Israel's nuclear capabilities, both in terms of its potential use as a weapon and as a risk to the region if there is a leak or functional failure.

Muhtadi announced that Dar El-Tifl-USA has raised an $11,500 zakat (charitable) contribution for orphanages in Jerusalem, Gaza, Jordan and Sidon. The group also is engaged in Project Palestine which will purchase an ambulance to be used in Arab East Jerusalem.

Also on hand were University of California at Irvine Professor Idriss Titi and Dr. Walid Deeb of the Arab American University in Jenin. They will conduct a 10-day workshop in December for Dar El Tifl students aged 12 and 13. Teachers will be trained on the site to conduct experiments in electronics, physics and math in order to learn basic concepts of fluid mechanics.

Jerusalem Groups Demonstrate in L.A.

When Los Angeles peace organizations learned Irish pop singer Sinead O'Connor called off a June 21 concert in Jerusalem because of death threats from Jewish extremists, they decided to protest in front of the Israeli consulate. About 15 activists carried signs calling for a Jerusalem shared by all faiths and, they told WRMEA, they also wanted to show solidarity with the Jerusalem group whose slogan is "Two Jerusalems, Two States" which had sponsored the O'Connor concert. Death threats on O'Connor's life had been sent to the British and Irish embassies in Tel Aviv.

Afterward, Itamar Ben Gvir of the Ideological Front, an offshoot of the outlawed Kach movement, boasted on an Israeli radio station that he had scared O'Connor from appearing. The outspoken Irish singer responded in a public letter: "How can there be peace anywhere on earth if there is not peace in Jerusalem? I ask you that question now, Mr. Ben Gvir."

Albright Addresses L.A. Audience

Enroute to Kuala Lumpur for the annual meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Secretary of State Madeleine Albright stopped in Los Angeles July 23 to address a joint meeting of the World Affairs Council and the Pacific Council on International Policy.

More than 1,000 Californians were on hand to catch a glimpse of the first woman Secretary of State who was out to impress her listeners that she is a no-nonsense diplomat. Albright scolded Cambodia for its human rights violations and forewarned the leadership of Myanmar (which she referred to as Burma) that she is opposed to its admission to ASEAN. No mention whatsoever was given to the major players in the region: China and Japan.

During the Q&A session, Albright was asked about the Middle East and her personal revelation that she is of Jewish ancestry. She replied: "Middle East issues are on President Clinton's and my mind constantly. We are concerned about the deteriorating situation."

Claiming the United States is an honest broker in the peace process, Albright said the Palestinians must understand the Israeli concern for security and the Israelis must understand the importance of not taking unilateral moves on final decisions (in the peace process).

"I am hopeful this difficult period will come to an end and that we can reinvigorate [the peace process]," she continued. "People who are living in the Middle East are suffering from terrorism and from not knowing how their future will work out."

As for the recent discovery that she is of Jewish heritage, Albright said she is an American first.

In her closing statements, Albright warned against isolationism, stated that "problems abroad, if left unattended, will all too often come home to America."