Passion obscures a politicised, misguided award

Colin Rubenstein

The Weekend Australian, November 8, 2003

The Jewish community doesn't want to silence visiting Palestinian advocate Hanan Ashrawi but she should renounce terrorism, says Colin Rubenstein

HANAN Ashrawi has come and gone, and it is now possible to evaluate fully the appropriateness of her being given the Sydney Peace Prize.

Ashrawi has always been an official or semi-official for Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organisation, and on her visit she did what she always does well. She plausibly and passionately represented the Palestinian cause, without deviating from Arafat's official line, in language that appeals to Western liberals.

But if you look closely at her words, including what she did not say, she also supported the case of critics, including all the mainstream Jewish community organisations, that this prize was a politicised award that distorted the objectives of the Sydney Peace Foundation. Foundation head Stuart Rees all but admitted this -- he told TripleJ radio and the ABC's 7.30 Report that the main reason Ashrawi deserved the prize was because her advocacy of the Palestinian cause gave the Palestinians back their dignity.

Ashrawi confirmed the same when she thanked those who supported the prize, for having "courageously chosen to take sides in the struggle against injustice as opposed to the refuge of so-called neutrality", in her oration on Wednesday. These remarks indicated she viewed the prize as a prize for the Palestinian cause.

Further, a close look at the statements Ashrawi made while here shows that, beneath all her rhetoric about a "two-state solution" and "a human and humanistic strategic approach to peace", she continues to excuse Palestinian terrorism, to oppose all Palestinian compromise in the interests of peace, to oppose in practice the road map peace plan, and to present the conflict as one in which the Palestinians are completely innocent victims of murderous and colonialist Israeli aggression, with no responsibility to control terrorist extremists.

On the very day when the Australian parliament agreed, on a bipartisan basis, to ban the military wing of the Palestinian terror group Hamas, Ashrawi refused to condemn clearly Hamas terrorism. Asked about Hamas, Ashrawi's response was weasel words that made it clear she did not condemn them: "If the discourse is always being hijacked by placing the Palestinians on the defensive and saying the only legitimacy you have is by adopting my language, my approach, condemning the side I condemn, then I would lose my integrity and honesty of my own speech [if I did condemn]". She also completely ignored extensive terrorism by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, a group affiliated with the mainstream Fatah organisation to which she belongs.

As usual, Ashrawi did issue pro forma condemnations of violence against civilians on both sides, but then argued that Palestinian terrorism was an inevitable and understandable reaction to Israeli violence and policies. She said, for instance: "You can't make the Palestinians suddenly, as I said, become perfect Christians and turn the other cheek and say: 'OK, we'll lie down and die quietly."' She rejected the main demand of the road map peace plan for the Palestinians, namely stopping terror and dismantling terrorist infrastructure, with remarks about how the Palestinians could not have a civil war, and a convoluted and untrue claim that this requirement was not part of the road map text but was imposed by "Israeli amendments" to it.

Most bizarre was Ashrawi's insistence the Palestinians needed democracy as a prerequisite to fighting terror. Neglecting the fact that the Palestinians have had nearly a decade to develop democratic institutions for their nascent state, this was essentially a demand that Israel tolerate Palestinian terror attacks, without responding, until such time, perhaps many years in the future, that a true functioning democracy existed in the Palestinian areas.

It is also clear from her words in Australia that Ashrawi, as she told former Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission head Marcus Einfeld on her last visit here in 1999, still demands, as part of any two-state solution, that there be a so-called "right of return" to Israel for all descendants of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war. She said: "The Palestinian refugees must be granted historical, legal, moral and human recognition and redress in accordance with international law and the requirements of justice." Her past statements have made it more than clear that she insists, albeit incorrectly, that both international law and justice mandate an absolute right of return. Since implementing such a return would likely result in the demographic transformation of Israel into a second Palestinian state, this demand makes a mockery of her claim to support a genuine two-state solution.

She also avoided making any reference to the Camp David and Bill Clinton peace offers of 2000, supported by Israel's Barak government, which she rejected as a sham, even though it would have led to precisely the two-state solution she said she favoured.

As always, she followed the PLO line in demanding third-party intervention to impose a solution to the conflict according to Palestinian demands. Arafat has long sought such a solution because he hopes it will give him a state but, by not signing a peace agreement, still allow the Palestinians to continue the conflict into the indefinite future.

However, the most disturbing aspect of Ashrawi's visit was that, instead of focusing on her consistent apologies for terrorism and the appropriateness of the award, so much coverage concentrated on the supposedly sinister opposition of the Jewish community to the presentation of the Sydney Peace Prize.

But no one in Australia wants peace in the Middle East more than the Australian Jewish community and all mainstream organisations, including the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, support a secure two-state solution. Several Jewish organisations, including AIJAC, met Ashrawi on her 1999 visit to Melbourne. Despite the image presented, that the Jewish community was somehow trying to censor her, no mainstream Jewish organisation or representative in Australia called for the silencing of Ashrawi, nor would any do so. As a visiting dignitary she of course had a right to be heard, as the Jewish community has a right to peacefully register our displeasure with her message and with giving her a peace prize.

Unfortunately, Ashrawi's visit proved exactly what her critics charged. She is neither a genuine moderate nor has she done anything of note to promote reconciliation and conflict resolution. The well-meaning sponsors of the Sydney Peace Prize have seen their good intentions hijacked for partisan purposes to give an award that is more likely to harm prospects for Middle East peace than improve them.

Colin Rubenstein is executive director of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council and taught Middle Eastern politics at Monash University.