"Read Edward Said" Re: ADC Mourns Passing of Prof. Edward Said

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

At 3:17 PM +0000 9/25/03, loupaulsen@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> Whenever anyone asked me, "What can I read to understand the
> Palestinian struggle?" my response would always include the words,
> "Read Edward Said."

At 4:07 PM +0000 10/16/03, loupaulsen@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> It makes absolutely no sense to talk about the organized campaigns
> conducted by Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, or
> other organizations in Palestine as if they were "individual
> terror".  There is nothing "individual" about them.  They are
> carrying on guerrilla war with, it must be said, the overwhelming
> support of the population in Gaza and the West Bank.

Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, and other combat
organizations do have some support, but is support for them really
overwhelming?

Note that, in his article "Emerging Alternatives in Palestine,"
Edward Said criticizes not just the state of Israel and the Zionist
"Peace Bloc" but also the PLO and its Islamist challengers like Hamas
and Islamic Jihad.  His argument is that there is an emerging secular
nationalist current in Palestinian politics, the current that can
probably command the allegiance of the "silent majority" of
Palestinians who feel misled and misrepresented by both the PLO,
Hamas, and Islamic Jihad; and, moreover, that Palestinian solidarity
activists in the USA and elsewhere should take actions to "stand side
by side with this major new secular Palestinian initiative," rather
than be uncritical of all Palestinian factions that claim the mantle
of "the resistance."

*****   January 14, 2002
Emerging Alternatives in Palestine
By Edward Said

. . . To make matters worse, the Palestinian Islamists have played
into Israel's relentless propaganda mills and its ever-ready military
by occasional bursts of wantonly barbaric suicide bombings that
finally forced Arafat in mid-December to turn his crippled security
forces against Hamas and Islamic Jihad, arresting militants, closing
offices, occasionally firing at and killing demonstrators. Every
demand that Sharon makes, Arafat hastens to fulfil, even as Sharon
makes still another one, provokes an incident, or simply says -- with
US backing -- that he is unsatisfied, and that Arafat remains an
"irrelevant" terrorist (whom he sadistically forbade from attending
Christmas services in Bethlehem) whose main purpose in life is to
kill Jews. . . .

A closer look at the Palestinian reality tells a somewhat more
encouraging story. Recent polls have shown that between them, Arafat
and his Islamist opponents (who refer to themselves unjustly as "the
resistance") get somewhere between 40 and 45 per cent popular
approval. This means that a silent majority of Palestinians is
neither for the Authority's misplaced trust in Oslo (or for its
lawless regime of corruption and repression) nor for Hamas's
violence. Ever the resourceful tactician, Arafat has countered by
delegating Dr Sari Nusseibeh, a Jerusalem notable, president of
Al-Quds University, and Fatah stalwart, to make trial balloon
speeches suggesting that if Israel were to be just a little nicer,
the Palestinians might give up their right of return. In addition, a
slew of Palestinian personalities close to the Authority (or, more
accurately, whose activities have never been independent of the
Authority) have signed statements and gone on tour with Israeli peace
activists who are either out of power or otherwise seem ineffective
as well as discredited. These dispiriting exercises are supposed to
show the world that Palestinians are willing to make peace at any
price, even to accommodate the military occupation. Arafat is still
undefeated so far as his relentless eagerness to stay in power is
concerned.

Yet at some distance from all this, a new secular nationalist current
is slowly emerging. It's too soon to call this a party or a bloc, but
it is now a visible group with true independence and popular status.
It counts Dr Haidar Abdel-Shafi and Dr Mustafa Barghouthi (not to be
confused with his distant relative, Tanzim activist Marwan
Barghouthi) among its ranks, along with Ibrahim Dakkak, Ziad Abu Amr,
Ahmad Harb, Ali Jarbawi, Fouad Moghrabi, Legislative Council members
Rawiya Al-Shawa and Kamal Shirafi, writers Hassan Khadr and Mahmoud
Darwish, Raja Shehadeh, Rima Tarazi, Ghassan Al-Khatib, Nassir Aruri,
Eliya Zureik and myself. In mid-December, a collective statement was
issued that was well-covered in the Arab and European media (it went
unmentioned in the US) calling for Palestinian unity and resistance
and the unconditional end of Israeli military occupation, while
keeping deliberately silent about returning to Oslo. We believe that
negotiating an improvement in the occupation is tantamount to
prolonging it. Peace can only come after the occupation ends. The
declaration's boldest sections focus on the need to improve the
internal Palestinian situation, above all to strengthen democracy;
"rectify" the decision-making process (which is totally controlled by
Arafat and his men); assert the need to restore the law's sovereignty
and an independent judiciary; prevent the further misuse of public
funds; and consolidate the functions of public institutions so as to
give every citizen confidence in those that are expressly designed
for public service. The final and most decisive demand calls for new
parliamentary elections.

However else this declaration may have been read, the fact that so
many prominent independents with, for the most part, functioning
health, educational, professional and labour organisations as their
base have said these things was lost neither on other Palestinians
(who saw it as the most trenchant critique yet of the Arafat regime)
nor on the Israeli military. In addition, just as the Authority
jumped to obey Sharon and Bush by rounding up the usual Islamist
suspects, a non-violent International Solidarity Movement was
launched by Dr Barghouthi that comprised about 550 European observers
(several of them European parliament members) who flew in at their
own expense. With them was a well-disciplined band of young
Palestinians who, while disrupting Israeli troop and settler movement
along with the Europeans, prevented rock-throwing or firing from the
Palestinian side. This effectively froze out the Authority and the
Islamists, and set the agenda for making Israel's occupation itself
the focus of attention. All this occurred while the US was vetoing a
Security Council resolution mandating an international group of
unarmed observers to interpose themselves between the Israeli army
and defenceless Palestinian civilians.

The first result of this was that on 3 January, after Barghouthi held
a press conference with about 20 Europeans in East Jerusalem, the
Israelis arrested, detained and interrogated him twice, breaking his
knee with rifle butts and injuring his head, on the pretext that he
was disturbing the peace and had illegally entered Jerusalem (even
though he was born in it and has a medical permit to enter it). None
of this of course has deterred him or his supporters from continuing
the non-violent struggle, which, I think, is certain to take control
of the already too militarised Intifada, centre it nationally on
ending occupation and settlements, and steer Palestinians toward
statehood and peace. Israel has more to fear from someone like
Barghouthi, who is a self-possessed, rational and respected
Palestinian, than from the bearded Islamic radicals that Sharon loves
to misrepresent as Israel's quintessential terrorist threat. All they
do is to arrest him, which is typical of Sharon's bankrupt policy.

So where is the Israeli and American left that is quick to condemn
"violence" while saying not a word about the disgraceful and criminal
occupation itself? I would seriously suggest that they should join
brave activists like Jeff Halper and Louisa Morgantini at the
barricades (literal and figurative), stand side by side with this
major new secular Palestinian initiative, and start protesting the
Israeli military methods that are directly subsidised by tax-payers
and their dearly bought silence. Having for a year wrung their
collective hands and complained about the absence of a Palestinian
peace movement (since when does a militarily occupied people have
responsibility for a peace movement?), the alleged peaceniks who can
actually influence Israel's military have a clear political duty to
organise against the occupation right now, unconditionally and
without unseemly demands on the already laden Palestinians.

Some of them have. Several hundred Israeli reservists have refused
military duty in the occupied territories, and a whole spectrum of
journalists, activists, academics and writers (including Amira Hass,
Gideon Levy, David Grossman, Ilan Pappe, Dani Rabinowitz, and Uri
Avnery) have kept up a steady attack on the criminal futility of
Sharon's campaign against the Palestinian people. Ideally, there
should be a similar chorus in the United States where, except for a
tiny number of Jewish voices making public their outrage at Israel's
military occupation, there is far too much complicity and
drum-beating. The Israeli lobby has been temporarily successful in
identifying the war against Bin Laden with Sharon's single-minded,
collective assault on Arafat and his people. Unfortunately, the Arab
American community is both too small and beleaguered as it tries to
fend off the ever-expanding Ashcroft dragnet, racial profiling and
curtailment of civil liberties here.

Most urgently needed, therefore, is coordination between the various
secular groups who support Palestinians, a people against whose mere
presence, geographical dispersion (even more than Israeli
depredations) is the major obstacle. To end the occupation and all
that has gone with it is a clear enough imperative. Now let us do it.
And Arab intellectuals needn't feel shy about actually joining in. .
. .

<http://www.counterpunch.org/saidtruths.html>   *****

Why not re-read Edward Said?
--
Yoshie

* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/>
* Calendars of Events in Columbus:
<http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>,
<http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/>
* Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/>
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/>
* Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio>
* Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>


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