Ibrahim Abu-Lughod

By Arun Kapil

For those advocating a more even-handed US policy toward the Middle East, it is easy to become discouraged in the face of the overwhelming power and resources of the pro-Israel lobby in America. An exception, however, is Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, chairman of the political science department at Northwestern University and a leading Palestinian intellectual in the US. Evaluating the evolution of American attitudes toward the Arab-Israeli conflict, Abu-Lughod says that he has never felt more optimistic over the prospects for change in US policy. The Palestinian position is now making itself heard and understood both in Washington and elsewhere in the country, Abu-Lughod maintains, to a much greater extent than at any time in the past.

Ibrahim Abu-Lughod is well-qualified to make such an assessment. Born in Palestine, he left in 1948 and has lived in the US since the early 1950s. Educated at the University of Illinois and Princeton, he taught at Smith College and McGill University before joining the faculty at Northwestern in 1967. Abu-Lughod spent part of 1982 in Beirut, where he was working on a feasibility study for the Palestine Open University, and he experienced at first-hand the Israeli siege and the devastation of the city.

A co-founder of the Association of Arab-American University Graduates (AAUG), Abu-Lughod has also been a member of the Palestine National Council since 1977. He has written numerous articles and edited several books, among them The Transformation of Palestine, published in 1971 and reissued by Northwestern University Press this year, and The Arab-Israeli Confrontation of June 1967: An Arab Perspective.

Abu-Lughod points to several trends to explain his optimism. Through the 1960s and much of the 1970s, the Arab position was accorded little legitimacy in mainstream political discourse. There was a dearth of organizations and publications putting forth the Palestinian case to either the political and intellectual elite or to the American public at large. This has changed, and Abu-Lughod sits on the editorial board of two such publications, MERIP Reports and Arab Studies Quarterly.

Abu-Lughod cites polls that show an increasing desire by the American public for a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A change is also evident among American Jews, Abu-Lughod maintains. He cites organizations such as New Jewish Agenda and even mainstream Jewish figures and groups, many of whom now recognize the legitimacy of Palestinian aspirations and oppose continued Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. It is clear, Abu-Lughod says, that Israel no longer possesses the total propaganda monopoly in the US it once enjoyed.

Other indications of the fissures now appearing in the unquestioning US support Israel once enjoyed for any action it chose to take are the positions taken by many former public officials. Such luminaries as former Undersecretary of State George Ball, ex-senator and former Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern, and former President Jimmy Carter, along with a number of former Foreign Service officers have called insistently and publicly for a more even-handed US policy in the Middle East. Abu-Lughod feels that Carter, while president, gave the Palestinian cause a certain legitimacy in US public opinion by focusing attention on the need of the Palestinians for some type of homeland.

When asked which political party is potentially more receptive to the Palestinian cause, Abu-Lughod replies that it is the Democrats. In spite of the historically close relations between the Democratic Party and the American Jewish community, Abu-Lughod believes the Democrats are the party most likely to heed the Palestinian cry for self-determination. Although Democratic Party figures and candidates generally take ardent pro-Israel positions, the party has always been more sympathetic than the Republican Party to Third World movements, the Palestinian academic continues. In addition to Carter, President Kennedy, in spite of his support of Israel, tried to understand Egypt and the Arab position at the time.

The Arab world, on the other hand, has often fared badly under Republican administrations, according to Abu-Lughod. Whereas there is a diversity of views among Democrats on foreign policy, the Republicans tend to be more monolithic, generally viewing the Middle East solely through the prism of the superpower rivalry. This has led Republican administrations, Abu-Lughod maintains, to take an antagonistic stance toward Arab nationalism, which they have viewed as being inherently anti-American.

In evaluating the current field of Democratic presidential candidates, Abu-Lughod cites Jesse Jackson's long-standing support for a just solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. He feels that Jackson's candidacy can push the Democratic Party toward a more progressive stance on the Middle East. As for the other candidates, Abu-Lughod does not seem to be overly concerned by their pro-Israel pronouncements, viewing them as standard campaign rhetoric. They just haven't heard our side of the story yet, he says.

Arun Kapil is a graduate student in political science at the University of Chicago.