Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October/November 1998, pages 107-108

Human Rights

The Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine Holds its Seventh Annual Conference on the Legitimacy of Resistance in Palestine

The Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine (CPAP) held its seventh annual conference Sept. 11 in its newly expanded facilities in Washington, DC. Focusing on the theme of the conference, “The Legitimacy of Resistance: Options for Palestinian Survival,” a distinguished international panel examined options available to the Palestinian people to end Israeli occupation and establish their own independent state.

“The subject of the conference is a politically urgent one,” noted CPAP Chairman Dr. Hisham Sharabi. He called for a “truthful picture of reality” in answering two critical questions regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict: “Do the Palestinians have the right to reject what is being offered to them as a solution to the Palestine problem, namely, the Oslo agreements as interpreted by Mr. Netanyahu, the land-for-peace formula as rewritten by the Clinton administration, and Palestinian statehood as presaged by Mr. Arafat’s Palestinian Authority? And if they do have the right to reject this solution, what are the alternative options?”

Although the suffering of the Palestinian people has continued for the past 50 years under the very eyes of the United States, the European powers, and the United Nations, Dr. Sharabi said, the Oslo agreements and the peace process have dramatically failed to accomplish peace in the region. “Behind the façade of the peace process, Palestinian land is being systematically expropriated, Palestinian homes daily demolished, and ethnic cleansing carried out on a scale hardly to be seen today anywhere in the world, including the Balkans.”

The way the United States shapes its policies has played a dramatic role in the Palestinian tragedy, according to Dr. Sharabi. U.S. policy in the region “seems to have been no longer shaped by its own moral and material interests, but more and more by Israeli interests and ambitions of domination,” he said. Criticizing the Oslo accords, he argued that the Palestinian-Israeli conflict can be settled by an international effort, but not by a peace agreement “signed on a moonless night!”

Dr. Azmi Bishara, a Palestinian member of the Israeli Knesset and a professor of philosophy at Birzeit University, said a fundamental problem facing the Palestinians is that they are hostages to every change that happens inside Israel. For example, “they are hostages not only of the conflict between the Israeli right and left parties, but also of the conflict inside the right party itself.”

Discussing problematic aspects of the Oslo accords, Dr. Bishara said “the problem is that the Israelis did not accept even the minimal principles accepted by the Palestinians.”

In a panel on “Palestinian Realities,” three speakers assessed the possibilities of resisting the status quo in Palestine. British journalist and author Graham Usher argued that “the Palestinian Authority banned newspapers, arrested journalists and insisted on an editorial line in which nationalist legitimacy was equated with support for the national authority.” Usher called upon Palestinians to establish a free press able to fight for democratic sovereignty in Palestine.

Palestinian journalist and writer Lamis Andoni argued that Oslo, being an agreement of fragmentation of the Palestinian land and people, has led to the delegitimization of resistance not only in Palestine but also in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan. “Oslo also redefines the political identity of Palestinians to suit Israeli goals,” Andoni added.

Khader Shkirat, founder and general director of LAW, the Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment, criticized Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat’s policies in the Palestinian territories. Now, according to Shkirat, Palestinians suffer not only from Israeli occupation and oppression, but also from human rights violations by the PA including lack of media freedom and a massive militarization of Palestinian society.

“Out of 300 decisions made by the Palestinian Legislative Council in the last two years, only three decisions were implemented by the PA,” Shkirat said.

An Islamic justification for the legitimacy of the struggle for the liberation of Palestine was presented by Azzam Tamimi, co-founder and chairman of Liberty for the Muslim World. Presenting the official viewpoint of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) regarding the conflict, Tamimi quoted Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, founder of Hamas, who said that the movement struggles against Israel because “it is the aggressing, usurping and oppressing state that hoists the rifle in the face of our sons and daughters day and night.”

“The post-Oslo picture is darker than ever, as expansion and erection of Jewish settlements, de-Arabization of Jerusalem, adoption of collective punishment against Palestinians, closure of Gaza and the West Bank, occupation of Palestinian territories, and demolition of homes are still carried out by Israel,” Tamimi observed. “The peace process has not improved the conditions of Palestinians under Israeli occupation and does not promise any better future,” Tamimi concluded.

CPAP hosted a luncheon meeting at the Roof Terrace Restaurant of the Kennedy Center which was addressed by Ambassador Eric Rouleau, executive director of the Center for World Dialogue. He argued that only the Palestinians can decide for themselves what kind of procedures they want to follow for their future resistance.

The second panel discussed “Perceptions of Legitimacy,” in which speakers presented insights derived from their personal experiences. Mohamed Sid-Ahmed, an intellectual and writer, warned policymakers that violence in the region will return and spread if the status quo in Palestine continues.

Veteran ABC Middle East analyst John K. Cooley, who is based in Cyprus and who has written several books on the Middle East, discussed several reasons for the bad images of the Palestinians in the Western media. He cited the power of the pro-Israel lobbies in the West, especially in the United States; stereotypes about Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims in American media and literature; the absence of pan-Arab efforts to defend Palestinian rights; and the corruption and absolutism of the PLO and PA.

Recalling the signing of the peace accords at the White House on Sept. 13, 1993, which he attended, Cooley said: “Few of us realized, I think, how hollow, vague, deceptive and probably unenforceable, even with an Israeli government more benign than Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s, those agreements were.”

Elaine Hagopian, professor emeritus of sociology at Simmons College, discussed Palestinian options for resistance, drawing lessons from Black America and South Africa. She recommended that Palestinians should concentrate immediately on self-development, cooperation and coordination of activities with other Arabs, formation of coalitions with Israeli and other Jewish peace groups, and reaching out to the international community.

The third panel dealt with various modalities of resistance in Palestine. Nancy Murray, project director of the Bill of Rights Education Project at the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, compared the Palestinian situation to the apartheid system in South Africa. She also criticized the shortsightedness and ignorance of the West, especially the U.S., about the functioning of civil society in Palestine. As a result of this ignorance, she said, “Israel now is able to demolish Palestinian homes, expel Palestinians from Jerusalem, confiscate Palestinian land, expand settlements and bypass roads, and carve up the Palestinian territories into bantustans with virtual impunity.”

In his concluding remarks, Dr. Sharabi recommended more efforts to analyze the current Palestinian situation and its dilemmas. “The Palestinian people are facing an enemy who is powerful and dominant and has definite powers to divide, oppress and deceive them,” Dr. Sharabi said.

Proceedings of the conference, which attracted more than 175 participants, will be available on the Internet at www.palestinecenter.org

—Raja’ M. Abu-Jab