Extinguishing the campfire

By Khaled Diab

The violence in the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon between the Lebanese Army and Fatah al-Islam fighters raises serious worries about the short-term stability of Lebanon and has been yet another sad episode in the desperation and violence engulfing Palestinians. The fighting also resonates with worrying echoes of 1982.

I will not engage in the speculation and finger-pointing as to who is behind the violece - plenty of others have done that. My question is: why have these refugee camps, breeding grounds for frustration and extremism, been allowed to exist for so long? Would it not be to the advantage of both the Palestinians refugees and Lebanon that these ugly and depressing camps are dismantled and the Palestinians living there given Lebanese residencies?

I know Lebanon is sensitive to maintaining a balance in its delicate and fragile sectarian mix, but concentrating so many poor Palestinians for so many generations in one place and marginalising them is, in my view, far more destabilising than allowing them to integrate better into Lebanese society.

Some will raise the issue of keeping the memory of the Palestinian national struggle alive. But allowing Palestinians to live in dignity will not erase memories of their struggle. Some will argue Israel has to take responsibility for the refugees. Well, until it does, Palestinians deserve a better life and it is in Lebanons interest to help them gain it.

©Khaled Diab

A better weapon

Palestinians are beginning to discover the value of non-violent resistance.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/khaled_diab/2007/05/a_better_weapon.html

Final shaloms, debriefings and debates for the road

By Khaled Diab

After an all-night writing spree, in Jerusalem cafes and then in my hotel room, I woke up with a serious intellectual hangover on Sunday morning, so I decided to treat myself to a nice brunch. Before I left, I said goodbye to the incredibly earnest brother of the owner of the hotel, who turned out to be Palestinian.

I then caught one of the private minibuses to Tel Aviv. After engaging me in conversation in English, the guy sitting next to me switched to Arabic when he discovered that I was an Egyptian. It turned out that he was a Palestinian, but I'd kind of supsected that from how he was dressed.

Although nowhere near as overbearing, he came across vaguely as the Palestinian version of Ricky Gervais' character in The Office or one of the pretentious wannabes in the BBC's The Apprentice! He was an apprentice yuppie. Within about 10 minutes, he'd told me that he was a marble and granite subcontractor, how much he earned, and his future business aspirations. Thankfully, a long telephone call in Hebrew with a business contact kept him busy until he had to get off.

A taste of Jaffa

Having heard and read so much about Jaffa, I decided to stay there and checked into a small hotel which was housed inside a beautiful old Ottoman building. The establishment was the kind of Bohemian place where smeared and torn clothing is worn as a badge of pride and the women aren't too bothered if their moustaches are longer than the men's.

Despite the rather low ceilings, my room was cosy, with wooden floors, Bedouin embroideries and a divan. Lying on my bed, I could look out of the low-slung window at the antique market. With my intellectual hangover to nurse, I decided to take it easy for the rest of my penultimate day - except, that is, for my encounter with Uri Avnery in the early evening.

I explored Jaffa's markets and walked around the atmospheric streets of the Old Town and wandered a little in the newer parts, too. Large sections of the market looked like a typical souq or bazaar from anywhere in the Middle East, except for the kippas.

From the Jaffa clocktower and beach, you can see the encroaching Tel Aviv skyline advancing towards s this old Palestinian town and threatening to subsume it. I decided that I would take a leisurely stroll along the beachfront to the centre of town.

Although it did not take more than an hour and a half to reach, Tel Aviv is a world away from the solemn piety of Jerusalem and the heavy chains of history and conflicting ideologies it bears. With its carefree ways, one would almost be forgiven in thinking there was no conflict, except for the odd soldier walking around. Tel Aviv's liberal ways and beautiful people puts me in mind a lot of Beirut, which is only 220km or so further up the beach - an impossible distance in this troubled spot. Although it is not all gleaming, modern and liberal, and I witnessed quite a few cracks and run down areas on the bus in, particularly the Yemeni quarter.

After meeting Uri Avnery (an encounter which made Alex very jealous), I had some time on my hands before my evening appointment, so I sat at a streetside cafe with a too-large coffee, watching the city groove by.

Alex and Max had suggested we meet at a place called Fish and Chips. "Typical Londoners," I'd thought to myself, "arranging to meet at a chippy's!" I'd also suggested to a couple of American students of Arabic at Tel Aviv University who'd wanted to hook up that they meet us there. The road on which this 'chippy' was located reminded me a lot of Gamet el-Dewal el-Arabiya or Abbas el-Aqqad in Cairo, the busy roads where young people hang out and cruise.

Over completely un-English chips and beers, we chatted about Egypt, Arabic, building bridges, Middle Eastern politics, and more. Afterwards, Alex, Max, Hagay and I went to a Tel Aviv bar which was designed to look like someone's front room, where we were joined by another friend from Haaretz. There, we talked more politics, music, culture, and they wanted to know my impressions of Israel.

Familial debriefing

On the morning of my final day, Monday, I had breakfast in Jaffa and then decided to buy a gift for Katleen (well, the both of us, actually!). I bought a beautiful, cobalt-blue Bedouin embroidered hanging. The merchant was a little surprised by my haggling skills - he'd assumed I was just a naive tourist - and appeared somewhat peeved by the final price we reached after I refused to budge from my offer. It's not only Israelis who can be intransigent, you know!

I took the train to Pardes Hana but got off at one station and Tzachi was waiting for me at another! After much consulting of maps and colleagues, a taxi-driver found the address and took me there.

Anat and Tzachi were keen to hear about my journey and 'debrief' me, particularly my trip through the Palestinian territories. Zipora was in Tenerife and Amos had hoped I'd get there earlier so I could join him. He'd gone to see a Samaritan ceremony on the holy Mount Gerizim. As there are only 700 or so of them, and they claim to be the only true Jews, having lived uninterrupted and unconverted in Palestine since ancient times, I was disappointed to have missed the opportunity to see them in action and hear their liturgical Aramaic.

There was some excitement about a snake Tzachi's brother had seen and the family called in a local 'snake catcher' to find it, but to no avail. Anat told me that Dan, her son, had asked whether I would be returning, which really touched her, especially since he couldn't understand any of my 'gibberish' as he called it, until she discovered that he wanted more Belgian chocolate!

In the evening, we had one last political debate for the road. One of Tzachi's friends, an IT consultant and semi-professional computer game player, towed a pretty hardline and the discussion with him got pretty animated, particularly when it reverted to history. But I was pleased to see that my visit and the months of communicating beforehand had helped converge the views of Anat, Tzachi, Debby and myself. There are still a lot of differences in perception, but the gap is much narrower now.

Amos returned from the Samaritans all excited and full of stories to tell. Apparently, he'd grown bored of the ceremony but was fenced in by the railings on one side and the crowd on the other. So, being 80, he thought it would be clever to fake a heart attack or a fainting spell! However, he got more than he bargained for, as the person who came to attend to him shouted out that he couldn't find his pulse and began to push down on his chest to resuscitate him.

"He almost killed me!" the eccentric and fit old man complained.

Amos told me that I should weigh up carefully what I advocate. He warned me that promoting the idea of a binational state, instead of two states, could have dangerous consequences and may actually lead to more conflict. I wasn't entirely convinced by his line of argument - he sounded more like a man who had spent most of his long life committed to a Zionist vision and saw a federal state as a threat to the ideals he had grown up with. But times move on and identities evolve.

Besides, I do not advocate a federal state here and now. I believe that it will probably be a consequence of peace, as the two sides discover the impracticalities of trying to maintain two separate states on such a small plot of land, and the synergy closer ties would create. Alternatively, I fear that the hardliners who have built settlements left, right and centre and sabotage every attempt to reach a final settlement may have made a single state, without the interim two-state period I envision, all but inevitable, particularly if no courageous and visionary leadership emerges soon to reach peace.

With time, as this reality dawns on everyone, the Palestinian struggle may evolve away from demands for nationhoood and become a civil rights movement, demanding equal rights and opportunities and autonomy.

And the future, historic and contemporary discussions - 1967, 1948, etc; - continued on late into the night, until we realised the time and had to dash so that I could catch the last train to the airport. Debby gave me a lift and, at the station, I had to run and leap over a fence to get to the platform in time.

Next, 'Please open your political baggage'.

©Khaled Diab. Text and images.

Blessed are the peacemongers

By Khaled Diab

Ever since I was introduced to the term ‘peacemonger’ in an article from September last year written by Uri Avnery, Israel’s most famous peacenik, I have quite fancied myself as one of those troublemakers beating courageously on my peace drum.

“A terrible enemy is conspiring to impose peace on us. He is advancing against us from two sides, in a giant pincer movement,” he wrote. “Against this danger of the Arab peacemongers, the Olmert government is calling up all its forces.”

But this official peace cavalry has been cut off at the pass and lacking the ability to win ‘hearts and minds’, it has retreated in silent defeat. That is why individual ‘peacemongers’ and dedicated bands of peace worriers must take up the fight. Lightly armed with compassion, empathy, wit, guile and a willingness to compromise and coexist, they must launch their own stealthy guerrilla offensives against the massed forces of hatred and distrust mobilised by the extremists.

Given my powerful desire to declare peace on the enemy, I decided that it was a good idea to visit Uri Avnery, Israel’s best-known and most controversial ‘peacelord’ to exchange strategies and debate ideas. Having read so much of his writing over the years, the idea of meeting him did fill me with a certain amount of trepidation. This wise old man was once a teenage member of the extremist Jewish militia, the Irgun – branded the ‘terrorists’ of their time.

His colourful career has seen him reinvent himself to become Israel’s leading alternative media publisher in the 1950s and 1960s, one of its most radical politicians and eventual founder of Gush Shalom, the left-wing peace movement. He was the first Israeli to meet Yasser Arafat, during the Battle of Beirut in 1982, and faced accusations of being a ‘traitor’ from fellow Knesset members.

Over the years, Avnery has been Israel’s loud and unrelenting public conscience. Although never part of the Israeli mainstream, the veteran peacenik has had a massive magnifying effect over the years, often occupying a pioneering position that the mainstream would later flow towards – what he calls, the ‘small wheel effect’. As I also suffer from the urge to roam uncharted yet fertile political and social terrain, I thought it would be useful to meet a veteran ‘pioneer’.

Given his visionary’s ability to look beyond the here and, I wanted to hear from him what kind of wheels are currently being set in motion and what the future holds.

Prophet of peace
On my last Sunday in Israel, Uri Avnery ushered me into his Tel Aviv apartment which boasted one incredible view. His brilliant white beard and hair had a faint suggestion of the Biblical prophet about it. He sat me on armchair where I could admire the setting sun as it descended into the Mediterranean. Behind my shoulder was the sky-fawning Tel Aviv skyline.

In his no nonsense and slightly intimidating manner, he got straight down to business: “What is it exactly you wish to talk to me about?”

I asked him what settlement he expected. “The solution is that there will be a Palestinian state in the Occupied Territories along the Green Line, with some small exchanges of territory. And Jerusalem will be under joint control,” he predicted.

I asked him how this would come about, given that the Israeli government had turned down the Arab League’s peace overtures – and the other sticking points, such as the status of Jerusalem and the right of Palestinian return.

“There must be push and there must be pull. It is good that the Arab League is offering clearly and unequivocally a fair peace offer. The push must come internally from the peace movement and from the international community.”

I wondered to myself how likely it would be that the peace movement would be able to mobilise enough support in time to salvage this latest bid and whether the international community would be able to take a robust stand, given America’s own stridently militaristic approach in the region and Europe’s inability to agree on a common Middle Eastern policy.

I asked him about the prospect of moving the 400,000 settlers living in the West Bank – or at least most of them – given how difficult it was to pull only 8,000 settlers out of Gaza. “It’s difficult,” he admitted. “But it won’t get any easier. An exchange of territory may partly solve this, but there’s no way to avoid it.”

He went on to explain that: “The Israeli government does not want peace because of the political price of dismantling the settlements. In general, Israeli society does not like the settlers. But they are Israelis, so it is a difficult challenge to face up to.”

“If you want peace, you must remove settlements,” he stressed.

I told him about the remarks I’d heard from numerous Israelis who expressed a fear that if they abandoned the West Bank, the Palestinians would just see it as an opportunity to launch more rocket attacks. “Either you have peace or you don’t have peace. You can’t say ‘I don’t want peace because I’m afraid of war’.” He warned that if no peaceful settlement was reached soon, “the West Bank would be like Gaza in a couple of years.”

When I asked what he thought of Israel’s so-called ‘deterrent posture’, he said he believed it was counterproductive and had to be abandoned but explained that it was a product of the hostility Israel has historically faced in the region, as well as the collective trauma of the Holocaust, after which Jews vowed they would never be so weak again.

Reaching across the divide
I asked Avnery what the Palestinians could do to better manage their cause. He recommended that Palestinian activists should work on creating real co-operation with the peace movement in Israel. “After the death of Arafat, all connections were cut. Now, the need to reach out to Israeli society,” he said.

They also need to work on constructing a unified Palestinian voice and highly organised social structures. “They need social organisations that allow Palestinian resistance to become general and non-violent… Mass action in the spirit of Martin Luther King is very effective, but need strong organisation.”

“Violent resistance has proved ineffective… Non-violence for me is not a question of principle; it is a question of usefulness,” he added.

He then turned his attention to the wider region. “In all this, the Arab World has not played a very glorious role. They have done very little to help the Palestinians. Even today, it is ridiculous that the West can impose an embargo on the PA and the Arabs, like Saudi Arabia, cannot keep the Palestinian struggle alive with their oil wealth.”

I asked him about the prospects of a bi-national federation emerging sometime in the future. “Any independent Israel and Palestine would have very close ties. There can be no truly separate states because the country is too small and their economies are interdependent.”

Whether they simply coordinated everything closely or formalised their relationship in the form of a federal arrangement would depend on the political climate of the time. “Our two peoples are much closer to each other than would appear in the clouds of conflict. What prevents closer co-operation and ties is the occupation.”

He used Belgium as a useful analogy for Israel-Palestine, with two communities, Flanders and Wallonia, and Brussels like Jerusalem. He said that Arafat often spoke of BeNeLux between Israel, Palestine and Jordan. He also said that King Hassan of Morocco had told him that he had proposed in the 1950s that Israel be invited to join the Arab League.

“At least for the foreseeable future, I see the two states as the only sensible solution,” he noted.

I asked him how optimistic he was about the future. He told me that he expected peace in his lifetime. The man is a robust and healthy 83.

©Khaled Diab. All rights reserved.

A peaceful oasis in the desert of war

By Khaled Diab

Jerusalem is the most potent symbol of the chasm dividing the Israeli and Palestinian peoples. Just outside the holy city with its unholy politics, a group of dedicated Israel Jews and Palestinians decided they did not need to wait for their leaders to deliver peace for them to live side by side peacefully in a three-decade-old joint community.

When I learnt about the village before I came, through a friend, Tom, I decided it was a 'must see' on my tour. Debby, an American Jew living here who was also part of the METalks forum, has also been meaning to go there, so she tagged along (I should say, gave me a lift). En route, the topic drifted towards co-existence and the separation wall.

Wahat al-Salam/Neve Shalom (Peace Oasis) is perched on a beautiful hilltop overlooking lush green valleys. It was set up by a colourful Dominican monk called Bruno. This monk started life as an Egyptian Jew in Cairo. In Europe, he not only decided to convert to Christianity but also took a vow of chastity and poverty. He moved to the Holy Land and joined the Latruin monastery. Today, it is home to 50 families, half Jewish and half Palestinian, most of whom are successful professionals working outside the community. The oasis has its own school, hotel, conference facilities, and even a meditation dome overlooking a stunning valley.

Convinced that one of the biggest obstacles to peace was the lack of contact between the two peoples, he persuaded his brethren to give over some land for a village where Israelis and Palestinians could live together as an experiment in co-existence and a model for the future.

Avoid Utopian visions

Rita Bolos, the village's visits director, talks me through the oasis's reality and mission, as well as the situation of the Palestinian citizens of Israel, in between the chirping phone and the traffic of staff passing through her office as they finalise preparations for a big conference.

"The residents of the oasis came here believing that we are all humans and need to live side by side. We, Arabs and Jews, know it isn't going to be easy living here with this conflict blazing around us," she told me. "We live in equality and respect. We didn't come here to change Jews or for Jews to change Arabs, but to show we can live co-habit and empathise."

The community is not without its tensions, but all issues are debated and resolved democratically. At first, the oasis was under a lot of pressure from sceptics to deliver some sort of harmonious, ideal republic. "Because we were under a lot of pressure from outside, we were in a hurry to create a utopia - to show the outside world that life could be harmonious. But today we are more realistic and taking it one step at a time," said Rayeq (whose manner is as tranquil as his name suggests, despite the suggestion of inner turmoil), the village's ex-mayor, as he painted on the terrace of the only cafe in town.

"Most of us came here convinced that our narratives were the right ones. Now we've learnt to empathise with the other side," he added. "All the difficulties we, the founding generation, had are not visible among the new generation. They get along very well."

State of pragmatism v states of mind

For Rita, their community is living proof that a confederated binational state is not only feasible but desirable. "I think a single state would be richer and more attractive for all its citizens," she explains. "Because I believe in a single state, I see the oasis as a model for this. Other residents who believe in a two-state solution live here to build the bridges necessary to reach peace."

"For it to work, it has to be a completely secular state in which religion is an issue in the private domain," she noted.

Rayeq, who also supports the idea of a bi-national state, explains his vision. "Israel confronts the same multi-ethnic challenge facing a number of other countries," he says, giving Lebanon and Iraq as examples. "We need a system in which all the ethnicities are represented proportionally and justly. Minorities should also have their rights protected by law. The constitution should protect all groups and provide them with fair political representation."

He advocates the idea of separate Israeli and Palestinian parliaments where each group will be able to vote regardless of where they actually live in Israel-Palestine, rather like in Belgium. The Israeli government would run affairs in the Jewish majority areas and the Palestinian government would run things in the Palestinian majority areas and they would manage Jerusalem jointly.

Put down your weapons now

Rita is a dedicated advocate of non-violent Palestinian resistance. "The only losers in violent resistance are the Palestinians themselves. My resistance is to raise my family and give them the best education I can," she said. "If I were a Palestinian leader, I would collect all the weapons and melt them into a massive statue dedicated to peace."

Rayeq agrees. "The Palestinians have been calling for armed struggle for 60 years. This has got them nowhere. This attitude needs to be changed."

Rita also talked at some length about the situation of the Palestinian citizens of Israel and their Palestinian brethren in the Occupied Territories, the refugee camps there and in other Arab countries. She told me that Israeli Arabs definitely have a better life than the Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza, and they have more freedom than the citizens of many Arab countries. Nevertheless, they are not full citizens and the system piles many subtle and not-so-subtle obstacles in their path, particularly when it comes to education, employment and buying land.

She had harsh words for Israels treatment of Palestinians in the refugee camps and cities of the West Bank and Gaza, but she had equally tough words for the Arab worlds treatment of Palestinians. "Palestinians are oppressed generally throughout the Arab world and not just in Israel," she described, although she acknowledged that other Arabs had also shown generosity - but not enough considering the close emotional ties every Arab feels for the Palestinian cause.

She criticised the refusal of some Arab countries to integrate their Palestinian population with the excuse that this was keeping the Palestinian cause alive. "If they want to keep the Palestinian cause alive, then the Arab League could've created a special status Palestinian passport or write 'of Palestinian origin' on their new local passports," she suggested. "Even if you keep them in refugee camps, keep them there humanely."

She expressed frustration that Lebanon, for instance, often refuses even to let Palestinian refugees out of their camps which have turned into towns in their own rights. She also found it unacceptable that most Palestinian Christians had, she said, received Lebanese citizenship, but not the Muslims.

©Khaled Diab. Text and images.