Ashrawi: Peace In Appearance But Never Substance

Ashrawi: Peace In Appearance But Never Substance

Barry Rubin
Australian Financial Review 31/10/03

Hanan Ashrawi hasn't earned her Sydney Peace Prize, writes Barry Rubin.

By giving Hanan Ashrawi a peace prize someone has made a bad mistake. The problem is not that she's a radical or relatively hardline. It is simply that she has done virtually nothing to promote Israeli-Palestinian peace.

But from this mistake we can learn a great deal about the problems of the Middle East conflict and why it is so often remarkably misperceived by outsiders. The simple truth is this: Ashrawi is a woman and a Christian. She speaks English well and knows how to talk to Westerners. She does not shout (though her tone is usually icily sarcastic) or voice slogans.

The assumption is, then, that she must be a moderate. Yet in fact it is these factors that make her an effective propagandist, whose status is semi-official (and at times completely official.) Like everything else about Ashrawi and this applies to other Palestinian leaders as well it is all a matter of appearance and never of substance. And that has been a major reason why there is no peace.

She does not analyse issues or make any contribution to understanding them but simply repeats the line of a leadership that is dictatorial and extremist. Occasionally, she has a criticism of what Palestinian ruler Yasser Arafat is doing but this never comes out in her speeches and appearances.

She formally condemns terrorism but then explains it away so that the listener concludes that it is all Israel's fault.

For Ashrawi to merit this award she would have had to urge her own people towards conciliation, trying to persuade them towards compromise, abandoning violence, and ending the demonisation of Israel and Israelis. She has done none of this.

Let us briefly examine some of her past activities in this regard. Ashrawi was one of those designated by Arafat to negotiate with Israel in talks held in Washington DC during the early 1990s. When, however, she discovered the existence of the secret back channel that led to the Oslo agreement she did not praise that breakthrough. Instead, she resigned her position.

Later, after the Palestinian Authority was formed, she was named by Arafat as minister of higher education. There is no sign that she used this post in any way to promote peace on Palestinian campuses, which were and remain hotbeds of support and recruitment for terrorism. Indeed, though she did later resign, there is also no evidence that she protested about the regime's crackdowns on students and lecturers who criticised it.

At the historic meeting of the Palestine National Council held in Gaza in 1996, the main item of business was the repeal of the PLO Charter that called for Israel's total destruction through armed struggle. This was in fulfilment of a major commitment undertaken by the Palestinian leadership as part of the peace process.

Ashrawi joined a small minority in voting against this resolution, despite the fact that many militants found it acceptable (Arafat had left ample loopholes). This action alone should deny her any peace prize.

If this behaviour were not enough to make ridiculous the bestowal of any such prize, let me add two other incidents. One of the most notoriously vicious acts during the recent violence was the cold-blooded murder of Israeli reserve soldiers who had taken a wrong turn into Ramallah while heading towards their base. They were taken prisoner by Palestinian police and then seized, unarmed and helpless, by a frenzied mob and torn to pieces.

At that time, Ashrawi was addressing a meeting in Washington DC. It would have been easy for her to make some strong statement against terrorism to this audience. No one back home would have heard about it. Instead, she told the Americans that the two unfortunate soldiers were probably members of a "death squad," thus justifying their murder.

Finally, awarded a Canadian government grant to promote peace, Ashrawi used a good deal of the money to publish a booklet to justify a Palestinian "right of return". This, of course, was a demand intended to destroy Israel and was a major factor torpedoing any successful conclusion of the conflict.

One could go on at great length. She did not endorse the Camp David proposals or the Clinton plan, she did not join Abu Mazen and Abu Ala (two Palestinians more deserving of a prize) in their recent efforts to implement a ceasefire.

This is a pattern, though, with wider implications. For in a real sense, Arafat himself and his colleagues have put their efforts into international public relations to gain the reputation of being moderates and victims while, at the same time, they have rejected peace and incited war. Ashrawi has devoted herself completely to public relations and made no effort to promote peace.

People are dying daily in the Middle East because of this emphasis on image-building rather than peace-making. It is a pity the well-intended donors of this peace prize did not bother to understand this fact.

Barry Rubin Is Director of The Global Research And Co-Author of Yasir Arafat: A political biography, published this month in australia by allen and unwin.