The author works for the American Friends Service Committee and is a member of Kehilla.
Five weeks into my Middle East sabbatical it happened: the inevitable convergence and implosion of the always expected unexpected. A week ago I came across the bridge from Jordan to watch Chairman Arafat and President Clinton on television. From almost any ideological perspective, it was a remarkable event.
Two evenings later the United States attacked Iraq. About the same time, it became clear that the Netanyahu government was in its death throes, with little more to decide save when the new elections would take place and whether the Wye process would be frozen during the interim.
These are the first installment of the notes I promised to many before I left for this three-month sabbatical. I emphasize rough notes, not conclusions, or even profound analysis; although that might emerge later. Over the last few weeks I have been in Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Israel speaking with many old friends (including former AFSC staff, Middle East Witness activists and participants in ME trips I have led) and several new colleagues.
Let me work into this week gradually, partly because what happens in the Middle East increasingly ought to be understood in its regional dimensions and partly because I am not entirely certain where my thoughts are leading:
All this has led to a bevy of region-wide problems: increasingly heavy traffic with the resultant pollution, helter-skelter building with disturbingly environmental implications, roads that displace the poor and run roughshod over areas of historic significance. The entire region has had almost no rain for a year. The Hula swamps which Israel once proudly drained to “conquer the land”, are now being re-watered as the land returns to conquer our thoughtless exuberance.
At the same time the poor are getting poorer. Unemployment rates in the Arab states I visited are between 20% and 35%. In Syria, many were selling furniture to garner enough money to celebrate the holy month of Ramadan, which began at sundown last Saturday. The “peace process” and “normalization” have had no discernable impact for most people; to the contrary, their economic slide continues.
It is clear that serious problems remain in and beyond just human rights issues. Nonetheless, freedoms have been strengthened over the last few years: human rights groups are more numerous, more active and have broader support. The press has a greater degree of latitude. And several institutes have become active participants in the process of building a “more civil society”. Among the most active are the Ibn Khaldun Center in Cairo and the New Jordan Research Institute in Amman who are asking questions that would have been unthinkable a decade ago.
I spent a day at the Tantour Institute listening to a dialogue amongst Palestinians and Israelis. It reminded me of dialogues we have had – ten and twenty years ago. We need to work harder to understand how to hear and communicate with each other. One such effort is the Committee Against House Demolition. They meet with a group of Israeli and Palestinian peace groups on a regular basis. It is action that binds them together and helps bring home that there words are not just casual expressions.
To my surprise, one of my favorite Jewish families has remained in Damscus although some of their family has gone to the U.S. But there is great antipathy towards Israel in the Arab world. While its basis is political and focussed on Netanyahu, it has clearly spilled over into anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic attitudes. This is evident in statements, cartoons, books and discussions.
In Israel, efforts to “judaize” Jerusalem and other strategic areas continue. Across the street from the Hyatt Hotel on French Hill I saw Arab housing which was under pressure to sell to Hebrew University for its expansion. Jerusalem is actually being “orthodoxized”: not just Arabs but all non-orthodox are inexorably being encouraged to leave. I have been constantly reminded of the powerful psychological wall between West and East Jerusalem. Jewish drivers are often unwilling to make the trip. UPS, among others, will not deliver to Arab East Jerusalem; they subcontract out to others delaying packages by another day.
The problems of the nations of the region are mostly shared: religious and secular, modernization, poverty, the environment, water. None are seriously approachable without peace and justice. The sooner the region can cope with its problems in collaboration with each other, the sooner the younger generation has a chance to improve their lot.
Careful reading of the speech revealed the cleverness of the double messages within it. Clinton endorsed the right of Palestinians to aspire towards a state of their own. This is a restatement of conventional U.S. policy. While Clinton addressed the problems, he did not go on to say what political measures might be taken to create a difference; e.g a freeze on the settlement and the roads construction. Hopes were raised to the brink in a dramatic way that would be significant IF these words were followed up in some way. In fact, the Wye process ground to a halt when the further Israeli withdrawal required on Friday did not materialize.
Arafat and the Crown Prince in Jordan were each obliged to give faint support to the American strike but it is clear that their populace disagrees and they have had to expend scarce political capital to give a nod to the U.S. Now, days after the bombing, people are still scratching their heads and asking about the bombing, “Why? Whose lives were being saved?” Clinton’s speech has not been forgotten; nonetheless, its practical implications have been all but washed away by the Tomahawks.
Throughout the more than two months I have been in the Middle East I have constantly rewritten my thoughts: events change, new interpretations present themselves, and I feel (even after many years of this) that I am changing. Each day at meetings I hear "Did you read that article in Ha'aretz (or now and then the Jerusalem Post)?" Yet somehow, we often wind up discussing past elections, 1948, or even earlier. Beneath the imaginative variations, the "bottom lines" remain.These are the second and last round of notes before I return to San Francisco and work on my final report. I am filled with hesitations and caveats. And I fear that between regional diplomacy and the coming Israeli elections, anything I say will be superseded while I am in mid-air. Let me start by sharing some experiences that relate to some of the work our program has done.
In celebration of Ramadan, Salim invited several Israeli peace activists and myself to ifthar, the feast marking the end of the daily fasting during Ramadan. I was staying in Shuafat, an Arab community north of the old city and had not realized that Salim was living in Anata, an adjacent community a short trip to the east. It took us just a few minutes to travel past a refugee camp to the heart of Anata and then wend our way to the far edge where the house had been. We parked at the collapsed walls of still another home that had been demolished.
What none of us was ready for was where the houses were located. In front of us, past the flattened home, in the lingering light of sunset, was a breathtaking valley, without a home along the expanse of slopes. In the distant south, the road to Jericho was just visible as it gently sloped downwards towards the Jordan Valley and the Dead Sea. On the hills farther to the southwest were the slopes that mark the outer perimeter of historic Jerusalem, topped by the Mt. Scopus campus of Hebrew University.
We did not notice until our hosts pointed it out to us that there was a scar of a couple hundred yards long in the hill across the valley: the beginning of a road that will directly connect the large satellite community of Ma'ale Adumim with Jerusalem. This a part of a long-discussed Israeli government plan to strengthen Jewish areas around Jerusalem and begin filling the areas between to strengthen the Jewish presence and, conversely, diminish the role of the Palestinians.
In this context, the small story of Salim and his neighbors became part of a political fabric that would have been hard to comprehend had we not come. A goat had been slaughtered for the ifthar. Served on a huge bed of rice twenty of us, Palestinians and Israelis, consumed the goat while sitting on cushions lining the perimeter of the living room. As dinner came to an end, a political discussion accompanied the fresh fruit.
This was not a debate but a strategic discussion on how to proceed in opposing the continuing demolition of houses on this edge of Anata (the family whose home is shared with the Shawamrehs had also received a demolition order). Salim's dilemma is that the authority claims he is lacking two signatures on his deed and, thus, it is invalid and his house, being illegal, must be destroyed. However the authorities will not let him know whose signatures are lacking. And, to make matters worse, they have lost his file rendering it impossible for a lawyer to ascertain the facts, challenge them, and make any corrections. What is clear is that all required signatures are those of the residents of Anata. Hence the working tactic they propounded was to have all the members of the village march on the office to demonstrate that all of those whose signatures might be required are in total support of the Shawamrehs.
We left the banquet to find a breathtaking starry night. The rose glow in the distance, we were informed, was the lights of Ma'ale Adumim. Salim told me (graciously) that the "banquet" we gave him in San Francisco was every bit as nice and I told him that we would not forget him. I was brought back to Shuafat over a spur of the settler bypass.
Halhul has grown beyond imagination but the municipal services, scant even in "the old days" are barely holding now. A staff of about three dozen services a population of over 100,000 (compare that to Berkeley!). Once a check came from the Palestine Authority. Milhem pleads with international agencies to help provide a new sewage system. He worries that without better services and more jobs the youth will turn towards drugs. He showed us the graffiti that had just appeared on many walls in support of Jihad al-Islamiyya. But what was he truly proud of ?
The Mayor took us on a road headed west of downtown to a ridge that leveled into a crown of trees on a hilltop with an extraordinary 360-degree view. Here he had built a park, the only one in the West Bank, with a playground and places to picnic, a large fireplace, basketball space, restrooms, and open-air lecture areas. Milhem hopes to find funds to provide for lighting so the park can be completely ready come summer. Later I shared Milhem's greetings when I met with Bar-On in Jerusalem.
Morris recently wrote an article based on newly opened documents from the official Zionist Archives. In them was an order sent to Carmel to
Do everything you can to quickly purify all the conquered areas from all hostile elements according to the orders that you were given. The residents should be helped (to) leave the conquered areasA few days later Carmel ordered that
"We must continue helping the people who wish to leave the areas we conquered. This is urgent and should be done quickly. A strip of five kilometers between the borderline with the Lebanon should be empty of residents."One can only wonder about the scope of information that has yet to be revealed and what its impact may eventually be.
Scholar Bernard Wasserstein, who was visiting Israel to deliver a series of lectures, aroused a furor at the end of the year with an op-ed piece in the Jerusalem Post challenging some of the myths around that status of Jerusalem:
"In successive partition plans for the country as a whole from 1936 to 1947, the Zionist Organization accepted, even itself proposed, maps that would have excluded Jerusalem from the Jewish state.""Prior to independence, the Zionists were by no means clear that Jerusalem must be the capitol."
"In early 1950, in secret negotiations with King Abdullah, the Israeli government. . . offered an exchange deal that involved ceding to Jordan parts of western Jerusalem, including Talbiyeh, the Greek colony and Baka."
"In spite of three readjustments of the municipal boundary, all carefully designed to exclude Arab-inhabited areas adjacent to the city, nearly one-third of the population is Moslem or Christian."
Wasserstein's arguments are certainly not the last word in this continuing debate over the legitimacy of Israel's claim to exclusive sovereignty in Jerusalem. In today's paper it was announced that the government is giving formal notice of its commitment to absorb three communities east of Jerusalem into the municipality. This will extend Jerusalem's borders towards Ma'ale Adumim, but it will require annexing some Arab areas as well. How it plays out will suggest how desperate the Netanyahu government has or has not become.
The issue had been put on the agenda a week earlier and it had been expected that the Minister of Justice, Frieh Abu Medein, would explain the PA's policy or perhaps its lack of policy, which may be why he did not come. The session (without Medein) noted that they had passed ten or eleven motions previously, none of which had elicited much of a response. Several members angrily observed that "the Chairman", Arafat, did not care about what they say. Alas, there is ample evidence of that; he has vetoed or failed to sign almost all of the bills the PLC has passed including a constitution and a set of laws to govern non-governmental organizations such as AFSC.
In effect this has made the Chairman a universal micromanager whose work-load would defy a much younger and healthier man. The most intimate aspects of Palestinian society are in the hands of Arafat's schedule. For instance, the question of intermarriage faces many young couples. Whether they can marry and how was determined not by the PLC or the judiciary but by an edict from Arafat.
All of this is frustrating for the legislators, nonetheless the PLC has made some meaningful strides. There is a semblance of parliamentary procedure; the two sessions I attended were comparable to the Knesset and the women (there are four) who were there participated actively. Many of the members of the PLC are participating in a program to learn how to prepare, garner support for and implement legislation. They are working more and more with constituencies, public forums and information-sharing.
There were some familiar faces - and names at he PLC: Mahmoud Labadi, who used to be chief contact when the PLO was in Beirut; Jamil Hilal, who was a regular contact in Tunis; and Abdul Jawad Saleh who was exiled to Lebanon while one of our tours was there. Nadia Sartawi, the daughter of Isam Sartawi, the Palestinian leader who was assasssinated for advocating a Palestinian State, is now Spokesperson for the PLC!
Bat Shalom which works with Palestinian women through Jerusalem Link has also been willing to confront "untouchable issues" in Palestinian and Israeli society. They have been a clear voice on Jerusalem and they are about to begin a project on the confiscation (from Palestinians) of Jerusalem Ids, a critical day-to-day matter for many Palestinians. A new project is being planned that will study and address the brutality that women face at the hands of military authorities and other non-military officials.
The human rights organization B'Tselem has been expanding its program. It has just published the first issue of a quarterly magazine to raise Israeli consciousness on the idea of human rights and their relevance to Israeli society. It begins with the hard-hitting revelation that Israelis have killed far more Palestinians than Palestinians have killed Israelis. I will share much more of peace groups on my return.
First, campaign slogans of the major parties help give some sense of the tone.
The Labor party's are:
"Netanyahu: Too many lies for too long."The Likud's slogans are:
"Netanyahu has no red lines."
"Barak is for everyone; Netanyahu is for the extremists."
"Barak gives (away)"**This slogan is hard to share with non-Hebrew speakers; the implication is that Barak will give away land, which is bad enough in many Israeli eyes, but even more that "he will give land to the enemy of the Jewish people", a justification of the Right-Orthodox for the assassination of Rabin (or anyone who follows his policies).
"We will not compromise on Jerusalem."
"We will not compromise on Israel's security."
"Barak flees the truth. ' I don't express dovish views because I want to win elections.'"
The Likud slogans are nasty and McCarthyist, throwing a shadow over Barak's honesty and loyalty. It does not seem to make a difference (to many) that Barak is a former Chief of Staff in the Israeli Defense Force under whom Netanyahu served with minor distinction, nor that most of Netanyahu's own security advisors are overruled routinely by him for political reasons. Any hint of softness on the issue of security seems to stick as though Israel were in imminent peril.
Barak is now being urged to strike back in kind as witnessed by his thrust that Sheik Yassin, (leader of Hamas) would prefer Netanyahu be re-elected. Given the intensity of the campaign at this point, it is widely felt that Barak made a mistake in not supporting earlier elections.
The fracturing of Israeli political parties confirms the sentiment of many analysts that the major parties are loosing their strength with an electorate which is moving towards greater self-interest organized around "tribal" foci: the Sephardim, the Russians, etc. Even if Barak is elected, there is widespread fear of an inability to piece together a coherent coalition, leaving a government of "national unity" (Likud and Labor with their closest allies) as the only option. A different example of the growing political fractures is Moshe Arens running against Netanyahu, his protege leadership of Likud - and being backed by Ehud Olmert, who directed Netanyahu's campaign in 1996.
The economy is also a major issue in the elections. It is doing poorly despite a recent surge in exports. Unemployment is up, inflation is predicted to be higher, and there is worry over further devaluation of the shekel. The Likud coalition has not brought peace or the economic benefits it might bring. Most of the business community tends to support Labor for this reason. The Finance Ministry portfolio has been taken up by the PM resulting in a number of resignations from the staff. Oddly many Likud supporters who are not doing well economically remain tenacious supporters of Netanyahu.
The 1999 budget has yet to be approved because the chair of the budget committee has so far refused to let it go through. An orthodox Jew, he is seeking to amend the budget (in the best American style) to include a provision that will permit the orthodox to get around a Supreme Court ruling requiring local religious councils to include conservative and reform Jews. Today's paper quotes one orthodox leader, "As a rabbi, I cannot in any way accept a court ruling that requires me to sit with Reform rabbis."
The religious question is heading towards a number of showdowns. Beside the religious councils, the liberals are suing to secure the same special rates many (low income) orthodox receive for apartments. There are demands that some or all of the orthodox serve in the armed forces. And there is a scandal over orthodox ministers diverting certain unallocated funds entirely to the religious community. On the other end of things, liberal rabbis are beginning to move into the political arena running for seats, for instance, with the Meretz party, a traditionally liberal, secular bastion.
I look forward to sharing much more with you on my return to the Bay Area.