two good blog posts from Barry Rubin, illustrating the real nature of Pal politicians - which everybody in the Middle East knows - and Western liberals just haven't got a clue about:
My Discontented Pro-Terrorist Palestinian Intellectual Friend
Today in pondering the mess that is the Middle East, and epecially Arab politics within it, and especially Palestinian politics within that, I was startled to realize that today is roughly the anniversary of a conversation.
Almost precisely 35 years ago I was standing on a balcony in Beirut, Lebanon, with Hisham Sharabi, one of my professors in college, a Palestinian and a strong supporter of Naif Hawatmeh's Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP). It was a small terrorist group that was part of the PLO and which prided itself on being really Marxist as compared to the nationalist Fatah and radical Arab nationalist Popular Front.
We were out of earshot of anyone else and I asked Sharabi about the possibility of peace in the future and whether Palestinians would ever search their consciences about the deliberate targeting of Israeli civilians. Sharabi sighed and said, as closely as I can reproduce his words:
"Many things that have done have been disgraceful. And one day I believe that Palestinian intellectuals will publicly denounce these actions and the movement will become moderate and democratic."
He never made such a speech or wrote such an article.
After all, here was a great man, a student of French philosophy and advocate of major social reform who wrote a monograph arguing that Israel was lying by underestimating its real casualties at the hands of the PLO. The methodology was to go through Israeli newspapers and count up all the obituaries of men between the ages of around 18 to 40. The assumption was that Israel was merely pretending that they had died in traffic accidents or disease when actually they had been shot down by heroic Palestinian warriors.
On this issue, rationality was--and is--suspended. Insanity reigns. And even the best are both participants and victims.
Sharabi did have a brief romance with the peace process in the early 1990s--he always had a strong distaste for Yasir Arafat--and even visited Israel to see his pre-1948 neighborhood here. But this mood didn't outlast a few months. Soon he was back making propaganda for the movement. In our last talk before his death, he was still trying to convince me that Israel would be better off negotiating with small Marxist and radical groups than with Arafat.
He was right about Arafat but wrong about the groups.
Here we are a third of a century after that conversation predicting--and wishing?--that the movement would take a sharp turn and truly break with its past. It still hasn't happened. I can pick up a Palestinian Authority newspaper, listen to a radio broadcast, or hear a mosque sermon and though there has been some change, it falls far short of a decisive break.
Over the years I have sometimes written and frequently contemplated writing my own versions of speeches for Palestinian leaders to make. "My fellow Palestinians, the time has come to lay down our old grievances--however just--and end the conflict in exchange for a state. Of course, all refugees should be settled in the new state of Palestine, using the compensation money that has been offered us. Instead of the dream of total victory we should have the reality of a country developing its culture and economy, working for the security and happiness of its people...."
But I can't write those speeches and neither can Barack Obama or anyone else.
The problem is not just that such a day of real transformation hasn't come yet but that it isn't in sight at all. This is the real tragedy of the Palestinians. This is the real reason why there is no--and is not about to be a--Palestinian state.
And until that transformation comes from within, all the world's statesmen and all the world's diplomats and all the world's foundations and conflict management phonies and experts cannot put it together.
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Posted by Barry Rubin at 1:59 AM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Palestinians
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Palestinian Authority's new government: Anyone Ever Ask Them if They're Ready to Negotate Peace?
The Palestinian Authority (PA) has announced its thirteenth government in fourteen years.
Its prime minister is Salam Fayad, a Westernized professional economist who has no political base whatsoever. Why is he prime minister? The only reason is because otherwise Western donors wouldn’t give the money to the PA to function.
After the ceremony, Fayyad rejected talks with Israel at present:
"I do not think this is the appropriate time to talk about negotiations when Israel is not honoring prior agreements and understandings."
If Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had said anything like that—in Washington he said he was eager to renew talks—the headline on every newspaper in the world would be: Netanyahu Refuses to Negotiate Peace with Palestinians.
But since it is the Palestinian leader refusing to negotiate peace with Israel, nobody pays attention.
And who's the foreign minister? Again, it's my old friend, Riyad al-Malki, once a top leader of the terrorist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine on the West Bank. He's the one charged with making peace with Israel and proving to the West that the PA is moderate, flexible, and would love to get along with its neighbor in harmony and mutual respect.
It is useful to recall what I have previously written about him.
At the Durban-2 meeting, Malki said: "For over 60 years the Palestinian people has been suffering under…the ugliest face of racism and racial discrimination…." and that Israel's position is characterized by "racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance."
It should be noted that for many years, before joining the PA, he was the West Bank leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a terrorist group more radical than Fatah. The PFLP murdered many Israeli civilians--including an Israeli cabinet minister--but its leadership always had safe haven in Arab states. As for "xenophobia" and "intolerance," Israel made agreements with the PLO which gave Malki immunity for the crimes in which he was involved.
Does anyone notice something peculiar about a veteran leader of a terrorist group whose goal was genocide calling others xenophobic and intolerant?
Despite being disgusting, this also has an element of amusement for me. The last time I saw him, we were having dinner in Greece and he told me--he never said it was confidential--that the PLO's policy was a disaster, that Yasir Arafat was a terrible leader, that most of the members in his office were thinking of emigrating to Canada (including his brother who had already gone there), and his sister's children were discriminated against in Jordan because they were Palestinians. He added that the demand that all Palestinians be allowed to live in Israel (the so-called "Right of Return") was a mistake because Israel would never accept it. At the end, he concluded--to my astonishment but these are his exact words, "Maybe we are better off staying under Israeli rule."
Naturally, the next day at the conference he gave a speech saying that all the Palestinians' problems were due to Israel. In response to my complaints about PA incitement to anti-Israel violence, he publicly called for a joint committee to monitor incitement on both sides.
When I approached him after the session and said it was a good idea so we should do it, he practically laughed in my face. We both knew that everything he said was for propaganda purposes and he didn't mean any of it.
This is not a man who one can envision making a compromise peace with Israel or doing anything except trying to make propaganda points by public relations' maneuvers.
Here, too, are broader problems that apply to many in the Arabic-speaking world--horrifying the liberals and dashing their hopes repeatedly--when they deal with Israel or America or the West or even their own societies. Reservations about behavior or knowledge of shortcomings is held privately and can never be made public. A sense of absolute outrage displaces empathy, matched with total contempt for an enemy who can only be destroyed. The idea that the best soluiton is a win-win compromise is not something likely to emerge. Self-criticism cannot become the power fueling reform.
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