when I really felt I had to tell him[Baker] what it meant to live under oc-cupation," she says now from her homein Ramallah, 14 kilometres north ofJerusalem in the heart of the Israeli-occupied West Bank. "I really felt peoplewere too detached. They were dealingwith this as a political abstraction.

"And I said:'To you this may be a

political re-ordering and re-organisationof the region and it may be a feather inyour political cap, but to us it is ourlives.'I felt compelled to tell him whatit means to be under occupation; whatit means to be a mother raising kidsunder occupation; what it means not totake anything for granted; and what oc-cupation does to human beings.

"And I said: 'This is the human di-mension. It is not a political exercise forus.'I think I spoke for 15,20 minutes inJerusalem at the American Consulate,and when I stopped, I looked, andeveryone was absolutely quiet. Somehad tears in their eyes. He [Baker]looked very compassionate and I couldsee the sort of cold intellectual veneerwas gone. He was more a human beingdealing with human substance.

"That's why when in Madrid hetalked about the human dimension,everybody said, 'That's Hanan's ex-pression'- because I kept saying, 'Youmust never lose sight of the humandimension. That's the most importantaspect of all."'

And, yet, in the end, Hanan Ashrawiand the other members of the Pales-tinian delegation were sold down theriver by Yasser Arafat. For most of 7993,they had been conducting negotiationswith the Israelis, believing their positionhad the backing of their leader in Tirnis.

They were wrong. As Ashrawi woulddiscover later, Arafat had gone behindtheir bacls to negotiate secretly withhis most implacable foes.

he Palestinians owe a lot totheir women, not just DrHanan Ashrawi. There arewomen, for example, like

Um Jihad, who is arguably morepowerful behind the scenes - notto mention more respected withinher patriarchal sociery - than HananAshrawi will ever be. Um Jihad is thewidow of Abu Jihad, formerly Yasser

Arafat's right-hand man, who was killedin his sleep in Tunis in 1988 by an Is-

58

raeli hit-squad. Um Jihad was sleepingnext to him when the assassins pumped75 bullets into his body. Following his

death, she became responsible for pro-viding PLO welfare to all the familiesof those killed or jailed by the Israelis.

Unlike Hanan Ashrawi, she is an electedmember of Arafat's Fatah faction in thePLO, she doesnt speak in public and,like the great majoriry of Palestinians,she is Muslim.

And there are thousands of otherwomen who will never bask in themedia spotlight as Hanan Ashrawi has.

They remain the unsung heroines ofthe intfada, or uprising, which began onDecember 9,1987, in protest over con-ditions in the occupied territories and

Thaf handshake, between lsraeli PrimeMinister Yitzhak Rabin and PLOchairman Yasser Arafat, marking thesigning of the PlO-lsrael Accord.

the brutdiry of the occupation itselfwith all the summary arrests, deporta-tions, demolition of homes and curfewsthat have accompanied it.

'With thousands of men being killed,jailed or deported, the level of par-ticipation by women in political ac-tiviries tripled.

Ignoring, often, the wishes of theirfamilies to shun public activiry manytook to the streets, staged sit-ins, or-ganised demonstrations and carriedstones in baskets above their heads fortheir children to throw at the Israelis.They clashed with soldiers or prisonguards. They took on the burdens ofraising and supporting their familiesalone. They organised popular commit-tees throughout the occupied territ-

ories which, dthough banned in 1988,continued to try to provide adult lit-erary classes, child-care facilities, home-economics training and politicallectures on women's issues. They pol-iricised themselves like no other wo-men in the Arab world had ever done,with the possible exception of Algeriansduring their country's revolution.

"Every girl threw stones or flew a

ftanned Palestinian] flag," says LeahTsemel, the radical left-wing Israelilawyer who, for the past 21 years, has

represented thousands of Palesrinians inthe Israeli military courts. She also hap-pens to be Hanan Ashrawi's lawyer andclose friend. "If you were to go to anyvillage, every girl over 72 would tell

al

you what she did during the occupa-tion. It was out of her fathert control.

"There are many Palestinian womenwho, during the occupation, becamefree themselves. I think the whole ofPalestinian society, particularly forwomen, went through an incrediblechange," she says.

"'Women resisters firlfilled a very im-portant and untraditional role and manyof them will not return to a nice careerin the family. No way."

For Hanan Ashrawi, there has alwaysbeen an air ofprivilege surrounding herthat set her apart, a sense that therewere no barriers a sharp mind and a

smooth way with words could notovercome. The Palestinian intellecgualEdward Said once wrote that his peoplehad always lacked a "witness", someonewho could present the case of the Pdes-tinians to the world. In many ways,Ashrawi became that witness.

=ooUzoFooUJJciFotL

HQ f ANtFES t991

"I felt for a long time," she says,

"that we were barred from public dis-course - that people generally found iteasier to deal with the stereotypes:whether it was that we were non-exis-tent or that we were terrorists.

"To really ... present ourselves andour humaniry ... was something wecould not do. And we felt, I felt, that itwas time we challenged these stereo-rypes and perceptions.

'Jewish culture and Judaism and,therefore, the Israelis by extension, are

familiar to the 'West. They are part of'Western mentality and intellectual andcultural life. We are not. We are theoutsiders."

Ashrawi agrees the Palestinians didthemselves a huge disservice throughtheir long-standing blanket rejection ofa compromise and their charter callingfor the destruction of the Jewish state.

"'We were reacting to denial and thereactive stance is not always the positivestance," she says. "But I still maintain

Jordan), he found it difficult to believe.It's not that he was a bloodthirstyhuman being or wanted to destroyIsrael, but he asked,'Does this mean youare denying my birthright?'I said: 'No,it's because I want a future for mychildren. -We have to deal with therealities. We have to deal with the futureand not the past."'

HANAN Ashrawi was born Hanan Mik-hail on October 8, 1946, in Nablus, a

town then occupied by British Mandateforces in Palestine. Less than rwo years

later, the state of Israel would come intoexistence and her family would leave

for Amman. Two years after that, thefamily would return again, this time toRamallah, the largely Christian townon the West Bank of the Jordan River,known for an intellectual life secondonly to Jerusalem's.

Ashrawi remembers demonstratingas a child against Sir John Glubb, com-mander of Transjordan's Arab legion

Hanan's mother, Wadi'a, was from anold feudal family. She rebelled against itsfrozen value system by going to theAmerican Universiry of Beirut (A[JB)in the 1930s to study surgical nursing.

They met in a hospital and marriedsoon afterwards, despite the fact that hewas four years younger than she

- an

unacceptable union in traditional Arabsociery. The fruits of this union werealso to set tongues wagging, because ina world where sons were

- and still are

- prized, Daoud and Wadi'a Mikhail

managed to produce five daughters."He [my father] always said, Just be-

cause you are a woman doesn't meanyou are barred from doing the thingsthat other people can do. Dont let any-one convince you that you are at a dis-advantage because you are a woman,"'Ashrawi recalls.

"He deGnded our rights as daugh-ters to do things that other daughtersdidn't do

- like we used to go cycling;

my sister used to go hunting with him.We had an unending credit with thebookshops. He said,'You can do what-ever you set your mind to.'

"He was definitely way ahead of hislipe

- and he fought for us, even

when many parents of our friends usedto come and tell him, 'They're a badin{luence, you let them go out, you letthem do things that other parents don'tdo.'And he said, 'I raise my daughterson trust."'

His faith in them was rewardedhandsomely. All five daughters havegone on to distinguish themselves ineither the arts or economics.

fter excelling at her Quaker-run school, it was inevitablethat Ashrawi would go touniversity. At that time, in the

1960s, the bastion of liberal intellec-tualism in the Arab world was theAmerican University of Beirut (AUB).This is where she eventually receivedher masters degree in renaissance Eng-lish literature, and where she first be-came actively involved in politics.

In 1968, in the wake of the Arab-Israeli Six Day War, Ashrawi had joinedthe General Union of Palestinian Stu-.

dents (GpPS), the successor body tothe Palestinian Students' Associationwhich Yasser Arafat had set up in Cairoin the 1950s. She was the only womanamong 200 men and soon became the )

which, in 1950, had annexed the WestBank, land set aside under the 1947

United Narions partition plan for thePalestinians. (The Arabs' outrage overand rejection ofthis plan and the 1948

Arab-Israeli war that followed effective-ly rendered the plan null and void.)

"I didn't know what it was allabout," Ashrawi says. "All I knew was

that my father said we are all going outto demonstrate, so my mother hadcombed our hair and put ribbons inour hair and we all went to demon-strate wearing ribbons."

Ashrawi's father, Daoud Mikhail,was the son of Greek Orthodox parents

and a prominent doctor, socialist andfounding member of the PLO. He wasjailed by Jordan's King Hussein for hisrole in the Palestinian nationalist or-ganisation, the National Socialist Party,which the Hashemite kingdom hadcome to regard as a threat. The jail was

direcdy opposite the family home so littleHanan was able to visit him regularly.

"There wasn't a land without a people for a

people without a land. We were there.(lur land, our birthright, was given away and

it is not an easy thing to accept"

that the crearion of the state of Israelwas done at a great cost to the Pales-tinians. There wasnt a land without a

people for a people without a land. Wewere there. Our land, our birthright,was given away and it is not an easy

thing to accept."For the only rime during our 90-

minute interview Hanan Ashrawi cries.The tears are restrained, like she is, butthey well at the corners of her eyes

nevertheless, because this conversationreminds her of the argument she hadwith her father before he died.

"My father was one of the gendestsouls. He was a doctor who felt that oneof life's callings was [to be humanit-arian] ... He treatedJewish war prison-ers, and, actually, after the 1967

[Arab-Israeli] war, many of them cameto thank him for the way he treatedthem," Ashrawi says. "But when I ac-cepted the two-state solution (a Jewishstate and a Palestinian state co-existingbetween the Mediterranean and the

HQ TANtFEA 1991 59

spokesperson for the organisation's Leb-anese branch. It was in her capaciry as a

radical student leader that, the followingyear in Amman, she first met the risingstar of the Palestinian resistance himself,Yasser Arafat.

The Six Day War inJune 1967 was a

disastrous loss for the Arab world and a

pivotd moment in Palestinian historynot least because it made the Pales-tinians realise they could no longer relyon their Arab brothers for help in re-trieving their homeland.

Within a week, Israel had capturedthe Golan Heights from Syria, the Gaza

Strip and Sinai desert from Egypt, andEast Jerusalem and the West Bank from

Jordan (formerly Tiansj ordan).Hundreds of thousands of new refu-

gees swelled the ranks of the estimated700,000 Palestinians who had fled theirhomes following the 1948 war. ThePalestinians now found themselves scat-tered throughout the Middle East,although many later went to Europe,

States for further study, and by the endof 7973, had gained her doctorate inEnglish mediev-al literahrre. She returnedto the Israeli-occupied West Bank on a

re-unification permit which her fatherhad spent nearly seven years trying toobtain. She was arrested soon after,charged with incitement, breaking theterms of her family reunion, disturbingthe public order and being a threat tothe security of the state of Israel. She

was released on bail the same day.

"I was fond of demonstratioru," she

says. "'When they asked me if I actuallyparticipated in demonstrations, I said,

'Yes.' I said, '-We have the right to. Weare protesting the occupation and wehave the right to protest and defendourselves.' So, of coune, that made me

Cuilty."The jail across the road from her

family home is a place that Ashrawi has

become increasingly familiar with overthe years. Apart from still living in thesame house and having a view of the

tocracy comes in ... I think she is thearistocrat of the Palestinian people."

In 7975, Hanan Mikhail marriedEmile Ashrawi inJerusalem. They nowhave two daughters, Amal, 15, andZeina, 12. Her husband, who is fouryears younger than Ashrawi, is a music-ian. With one of her sisters, he foundedthe Palestinian theatre movement, thefirst contemporary theatre in the oc-cupied territories. He is now a full-timehousehusband.

"When I came back from the Unit-ed States, I had no intention ofgetringmarried, because I didnt like the in-stitution as a sense of possession andownership and dictates," says Ashrawi."And I didn't think that I would meet a

man who was confident enough andliberated enough to deal with a womanon an equal basis and who would lookat marriage as a complementary re-lationship of partnership rather thancompetition.

"pmile] does have his career and hedoes have his interests. At the same time,when the time came for me to chooseto press ahead with my work ... heknew that being spokesperson [for thePalestinian delegation] ... is very taxingand demands a lot of dme and energyWe talked about it. We take decisionscollectively, democratically. And [thefamily] decided they would, as mydaughter Zeina sid,'lend me to thepeace process'."

he tragic encounter betweenArabs and Jews, and moreparticularly between Pales-tinians and Israelis, over the

past 100 years, has been one of the mostcomplex, passionately fought out, andheartbreaking conflicts in the world. Itwas a conflict that bred desperate posi-tions, like that of an Israeli taxi driverwho said: "We should just beat themand beat them and beat them until theystop hating us." It was a conllict that,once you had come to understand andempathise with it, never left you done.

Perhaps this was because it was a

blood feud of truly Biblical proportions,one between cousins, between the des-cendants of Abraham, and it was beingwaged in a place that had been the rockand ruin of so many civilisations. In theforeground were two peoples with so

much in colnmon, but with competingclaims of almost mystical attachment to

compound from several rooms, it is

where Ashrawi has found herself on a

number of occasions under what theIsraelis call "pre-emptive detention".

"They detain you for a day on [say]a national occasion, to prevent any kindof disruption. So I was one of thosewho was generally detained. I used totake with me all the time a book,cigarettes and chocolate. In my hand-bag, I always used to have things likethat." Ashrawi laughs a character-istically deep and mellifluous laughwhile another plume of smoke coilsslowly from her nose and mouth. She isproud ofher record.

"You usually feel the power gamebetween the occupier and the personunder occupation," her friend LeahTsemel explains. "But I don't thinkHanan ever bent. She didnt have an in-ferioriry complex at all. In fact, it wasalways the other way around. She al-ways gave the Israelis a feeling of sup-erioriry and this is where her aris-

She has the steeliness of some0ne who's been

under interrogation s0 often she knows trhen

to remain cool (often when her interrogators

are becoming apoplectic with rage)

the United States and South America.An estimated 1.6 million lived under

Israeli control in the West Bank, mosdyas Jordanian citizens, and in the GazaStrip, as stateless people; about 710,000chose to remain inside Israel and be-come Israeli citizens; another 1.3 mil-lion lived in Jordan with Jordanianpassports; 700,000 had gone to SaudiArabia and the Gulf states while ap-proximately 750,000 lived as refugees inSyria and Lebanon. And it was in therefugee camps in Lebanon that Ashrawifirst came face to face with the horrorthat had befallen her people.

"I couldnt believe the misery thatsuch misery could be allowed," she says.

"And I couldnt believe the commit-ment and sense of hope that peoplehad. In 7967 therc was a sense ofdespair and defeat, but at the same time,there was a sense of commitment to a

Palestinian question as a whole - a

sense that we could make a difference."ln 797l,Ashrawi left for the United

60 HQ JAN/FEB I994

the same land, and in the background,the threat of nuclear catastrophe.

Both sides have always seen them-selves as victims, which they were, and

are. They have both been prey to theoutside world, and each other. The Is-raelis are the heirs of historical anti-semitism and genocide, and the sur-vivors of six wars in 45 years with hos-tile Arab neighbours who, with the ex-ception of Egypt in 7977, refused toaccept their existence. The Palestinians

are the victims of colonial dupliciryArab treachery, Jewish nationalism(Zionism), and, for the past 26 years,

Israeli occupation, with all of the gross

violarion of human rights that has en-tailed. Two victims colliding on thefault-line.

Through their own filtered versions

ofhistory and after nearly a century ofdemonising each other, neither side had

ing of bells and the haunting call toprayer ftom the muezzin.

This ancient, mournfirl ciry whichhas been fought over for thousands ofyears, and been revered by three greatreligions, is now, astonishingly, in thethroes of becoming possibly the capitdof rwo states, Israel and Palestine. TheIsraeli public hasn't digested this yet, butit seems almost impossible that old war-rion like Arafat and Rabin would ever

have clasped hands on the south lawn ofthe White House unless the most vexedissue of all, the starus of Jerusalem, had

been worked out in advance, privately.For the past six years, during the in-

tfada, the streets of Jerusalem's Arabquarter had been unnaturally quiet, thepeople smouldering in their resentment,their main weapon of protest a com-mercial strike or the more ingeniousone of hanging washing from clothes-

home, given her constant shutding be-rween Jerusalem, Tunis, Washington and

London. "I might be home," she said

when I was still in Sydney. "But you cannever be sure."

She r.uas there, but only just. Twohoun after our interview, Arafat sum-moned her to PLO headquarters inTunis. All further appointmens thatweek and the next were cancelled.

The woman I'found was a womanunder siege. Her house is guarded byPalestinians and under surveillance byIsraelis. Day and night, journalists fromaround the world pour through theliving room. The phone rings non-stopand there are reams offaxes and messages.

Then there are the death threats.

Over the years, she has had a number ofthem from Israeli extremists, and onmore than one occasion, actual attemptson her life, the most chilling being a

Above left, Jews and lsraeli soldiers inthe embattled old city of Jerusalem.Above right, a market in its Arab quarter.

been able to see that they were all, Israelis

and Palestinians, wounded spirits in thePromised Land. Until now. Perhaps.

The signing of the PLO-Israel Ac-cord on September 13, symbolised bythat handshake between Israeli PrimeMinisterYitzhak Rabin and PLO chair-man Yasser Arfat, marked the openingof what promises to be one of the mostextraordinary chapters in Middle Easthistory.

iu rhe old city ofJerusalem, you cansee the shift already. Here, beyond theDamascus Gate, in the eerie half-lightof the Arab souk, with its creamy, crum-bling dolomite houses, gawdy souvenirshops, fruit stalls and felafel stands; itshawkers and husders and holy men; theever-present smell of black coffee andbaklava hanging in the breeze; the clang-

HQ JANIFEg 1994

lines in accordance with the colours ofthe oudawed nationd flag.

Today, Palestinian flags fly every-where from the rooftops; PLO signs are

daubed over the walls of the ciry and

T:shirts emblazoned with Yasser Arafat'sgrinning face are on sale. Less than sixmonths ago, engaging in any of these

activities could have resulted in a prisonsentence.

And not far from this internationalflashpoint, in the 'W'est Bank town ofRamallah, was Ashrawi, the womanwho had helped give her people thesort of victory that had always eludedthem on the battlefield; the womanwho, to use former Middle East cor-respondent Thomas Friedman's phrase,

had taken her people "from the desert

of obscurity to the land of prime time".Our interview had been arranged at

short notice. Even en route to Tel AvivI was uncertain if she would still be at

few years ago when a man walked intoa maximum security centre where she

and other Palesrinians were being ques-

tioned and fired his machine gun at her.

The machine gun jammed, otherwiseshe and possibly as many as 20 otherswould have been killed.

More recently, she has been inform-ed by her security guards that an assas-

sination team has been sent fromanother country (she wont say which,although it is likely to be Iran) toeliminate her and two others. She says

she is not afraid - at least "not in theparalytic sense".

The only sign that she is feeling thepressure is that she is never without a

cigarette. Otherwise, her equanimiry is

remarkable. She has the temperance ofa teacher, but also the steeliness ofsomeone who has been under inter-rogation so many times she knows justwhen and how to remain cool (often

6l

when her interrogators are becomingapoplectic with rage).

Her austere demeanour alarmsmany Israelis, because they feel it re-flects a lack of humanity. Her reluctanceto specifically condemn violenceagainst Jews is further evidence, theyargue, ofa hardness ofheart.

I ask her about this and her reply is

as polished -

and convincing -

as thediamonds that encircle her pearl ear-rings. "The Palestinians are alwaysbeing tested to prove their humaniry. Idon't see people calling the IsraeliGovernment every day and asking themto condemn the killings of Palestinians.

"But let me tell you something. Ihave always maintained, and I continueto maintain, that the responsibiliry ofany genuine leadership is to save lives,

not to waste lives and destroy lives. Andthat every life lost is one life that shouldnot have been.

"Nobody takes the place of anybodyelse ... and I dont distinguish berweenthe lives of people on the basis of re-ligion or national origin or whatever.Thats why I say I condemn all loss oflife; all acts of violence that seek todestroy innocent lives. But I will not bedragged into allocating to Israeli livesmore value than to Palestinian lives. Orvice versa. I just want to deal with thecauses that make people kill eachother," she says.

And what about the psychology offear that has dominated so much of Is-raeli life. Does she understand that?

"l do. I can't personalise it, but I un-derstand it. I understand many of theirmotivations. I dont generalise, but I dounderstand that there is a collective

Jewish trauma. And there is a collectivePalestinian trauma. Theirs, in a sense,

came to us from the West, but it is veryreal to them and it influences what theydo. And it is used to justi$r many things.

"Ours came as a result of theirtrauma and it is rwofold

- either exile

or occupation. And both states of beingare abnormal and painful and un-desirable ... So, in a sense, we were lock-ed in this embrace of historical de-legitimisation. Each one wanted to de-legitimise the other. The clash, not justof cultures and histories and politicalrealities, but a concept of legitimacy.

"And it was only recently that werealised that each side's legitimacy de-pended on the other. As long as the

62

Israelis were de-legitimising the Pales-tinians, they couldn't have any legit-imacy. And we understood that theworld would not legitimise the Pales-

tinians unless we legitimised the Israelis."

ike war, peace packs its ownpunch, and in October 7991,

James Baker pulled off whatwas then seen as a miraculous

achievement -

getting all the partiesinvolved in the Arab-lsraeli conflict toattend the Madrid peace conference.Except, of course, thePLO. At Israeli insis-tence, the Palestiniandelegates to the con-ference were prohibitedfrom membership in an

organisation which Is-rael still refused to re-cognise. Instead, theyallowed leading non-PLO figures from theoccupied territories,many of them, like Ash-rawi, prominent acad-emics from Bir Zeituniversiry to representPalestinian interests,although as everyoneknew, these peoplecould never have actedwithout the blessing ofYasser Arafat.

The Madrid con-ference turned out tobe one of Hanan Ash-rawi's finest hours. Thekeynote Palestinianspeech, while deliveredby chief Palestiniannegotiator Haidar Ab-dul Shafi was written byAshrawi: "We have seen you," Shafisaid, speaking directly to the Israelis,"look back in deepest sorrow at thetragedy of your past and look on inhorror at the disfigurement of the vic-tim turned oppressor. Not for thishave you nurtured your hopes, dreamsand o{fspring."

Such an impression did Ashrawimake at the conference, not only onmembers of the international media,but also on members of the US Ad-ministration, that when it seemed as ifIsraeli police were going to arrest heron her return home, President Bushand Secretary of State James Baker in-

tervened. Baker praised her and Faisal

Husseini, the head of the Palestiniandelegation, for their personal couragewhich, he said, had "created the pos-sibiliry of a better life for Palestinians".

At this time, Yasser Arafat and therest of the PLO leadership based inTi:nis - the "outsiders" as they wereknown in political circles - were stillsuffering the ignominy of having sup-ported Saddam Hussein in the GulfWar. Negotiations with the Israelis werein the hands of the "insiders", the Pales-

Jericho's would-be mayor and generalmanager ol the Hirsham Palace Hotel,Rajai Abdo. The hotel is to be home tothe interim Palestinian Government.

tinians from the occupied territories.For months, the talks had dragged

on in Washington without any sign ofprogress. Deep-seated mistrust and in-transigence had attended every stage.

The Palestinians wanted Israel to returnthe more than 400 people they haddeported to Lebanon. The Israelis want-ed rhe intfada called off. The Palestin-ians wanted an agreement which didn'tfragment Palestinian authoriry on theWest Bank, didn't avoid the issue of

HQ JAN/FEB I994

Jewish settlements and didn't side-stepthe explosive question ofJerusalem. TheIsraelis wanted these issues delayed.

For these reasons and others, IsraeliPrime Minister Rabin decided at last tosup with the devil himself,YasserArafat,a man whom Israel's feared securiry ser-vice, Mossad, had sought to assassinate

on numerous occasions, most creativelyin the early 1970s when an Israeli "con-tact" inside the PLO had tried to slippoison into his rice.

The push for peace largely cameabout for reasons of realpolirik. FromIsraelt perspective, the collapse of theSoviet LJnion meant the Jewish state

was no longer the strategic Western allyin the Middle East that it had beenduring the Cold War. The country'sageing leadership was also becomingmore afraid of Islamic fundamentalismthan Palestinian nationalism. And Rabinknew Arafat was prepared to settle forfar less than his negotiaring team inWashington was demanding.

not the time to resign." Ashrawi's ver-sion of the conversation is that she said

to Arafat: "You look like you have

something up your sleeve; you're hidingsomething." And he said: "Yes, I am."

'What Arafat was concealing werethe details of 14 secret meetings heldthis year in Norway. The meerings, ar-ranged by Norwegian facilitators, werebetween representatives of the PLO and

the Israeli Government, the first timethese two sworn enemies had ever ofE-cially sat down face-to-face.

Hanan Ashrawi had actually helpedset up the initial breakfast meeting inLondon in December 1992, but whatshe

- and practically everybody else,

including the American administration

- was unaware of was how far the talkshad progressed and how close the rwosides were to signing an accord.

She and the other members of thedelegation were furious. Their negotiat-ing position had been undermined andthey were now in the position of being

duped by Arafat. "No, I have always said

that the only way to achieve results is tonegotiate discreetly, away from thepublic eye. Otherwise you would have a

public debate."The secret Norway channel proved

what many involved in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have long known

-that if individuals can come to know,trust and like each other, as the PLO'schief negotiator Abu Ala and hiscounterpart from Israel Uriel Savir didduring nine months of intimate talks,the earth can move.

This is what had been happeningover the past five or six years, for ex-ample, behind the massive facade of theVatican's Notre Dame cathedral in east

Jerusalem. Coming together in secret,

and in the knowledge that as one of theonly neutral places in the ciry it was safe

from Israeli military police raids, leaders

of the Palestinian uprising and prom-inent Israelis from the foreign ministryand the military and intelligence estab-Iishments had met to discuss e!'erythingfrom water, education, and securiry is-sues to disengagement from the oc-cupied territories and the future ofJerusalem. Hanan Ashrawi was privy tothese talks, and more.

"I was among the first to start thePalestinian-Israeli dialogue here," she

says. She pauses for a long time, beforemaking a most remarkable confession:"Now I can say it, but it was illegal formany years ... We formed the first Pales-tinian-Israeli parry. I joined 1t in'74.\twas illegal. Nobody knows about it. [Atleast] very Gw people. It is for the his-tory books. It had different cells. It was

called the League of Communist Work-ers.'We were neither a league or com-munists or workers."

At the same time, Ashrawi was also

developing a dialogue with leading left-wing Israeli academics who had formedthe Solidarity Committee at Bir Zeituniversiry the most nationalistic Pales-tinian campus on the West Bank andone which was to be closed 14 timesduring rhe intfada. This is where Ash-rawi, apart from teaching English, was

also in charge of the human rights com-mittee. It is also how she came to meetthe Israeli laywer, Leah Tsemel. '

"She was one of the lawyers we usedin defence of our students," says Ash-rawi ... "and I used to call her up at alltimes of day and night. She is a marvel- )

forced to defend something that at firstglance looked like a selling out of thePalestinian cause. Ashrawi lost no timein making it known to Arafat what she

thought. But just as quickly she was

pulled back into line.Ashrawi still maintains that she

would have been more hardline thanArafat in extracting concessions fromthe Israelis. It was fine for the Israelis towithdraw from Gaza andJericho first, as

they had pledged, but she wanted a firmcommitment from them on the muchmore fraught issues ofJerusalem, Jewishsettlements in the occupied territories,security arrangements, the return ofrefugees, and borders.

Ashrawi insists, however, that herfears have been eased by the com-prehensive nature of the Israel-PLOAccord and the fact that, among otherthings, there is a timetable for Israeliwithdrawal and future negotiations onthe permanent status of the land. She

rejects, therefore, any claim that she was

Ashrawi's yersion of the conyersation

is that she said to Arafat "You look like you

have something up your sleeve; you're hiding

something" and he said: "Yes, I am"

After nearly a lifetime of dedicatinghimself to the armed struggle, Arafatwas ready to cut the deal he d beenhinting at since 1988 when he firstpublicly acknowledged Israel's right toexist. The Gulf War had left him out offavour with many Arab leaders, and hisorganisation, cut off from funds bySaudi Arabia and the other Gulf States,

was almost bankrupt. He'd also beenmarginalised by the Palestinian delega-tion and was eager to regain a toeholdin the occupied territories. He decided,therefore, to do what he had denouncedEgypt's Anwar Sadat for doing 16 years

earlier -

negotiate directly.So alarmed were Hanan Ashrawi and

other members of the delegarion thatArafat was preparing to accept a dealfavouring the Israelis, that, in August,she and two others actually flew toTunis to resign. It is rumoured thatArafat said to Ashrawi: "You must dowhatever you think is right", beforeturning to the men and saying: "This is

HQ IAN IFEg 1994 63

lous woman... I used to call her for allsorts of emergencies when the armywould raid the campus; when studentswere beaten and people were arrested.

One night they had arrested 35 of ourstudents and I called her and said, 'Youhave to come immediately."' Tsemelreplied that she would gladly come, ex-cept that her baby, Talila, was only a fewmonths old and still being breastfed.Ashrawi told her it didnt matter. She

was feeding her own daughter, Zeina,and she would feed Talila as well.

The Israeli lawyer was to spend dlday in an Israeli military court defend-ing the Palestinian lecturer's studentswhile the Palestinian lecturer breasrfedtheir daughters.

n the hot, sleepy town of Jerichoon the West Bank, preparations are

underway for what only a fewmonths ago would have been un-

thinkable - the arrival of the greatHoudini of Middle East politics, Yasser

Arafat. If all goes well - a big f in theMiddle f,25i - Arafat will be flowninto Jericho in January to take up hisposition as head of the first PalestinianGovernment (known as the PalestinianInterim Self-Government Authoriry).This governing council is due to beelected no later than July, for a transi-tional period of no more than five years,

at which time a permanent seftlementbased on UN Security Council resolu-tions242 and 338 will be implemented.(To the Palestinians, this, of course,means a Palesrinian state on the WestBank and Gaza Strip, withJericho serv-ing as the capital until they are able tosecure east Jerusalem.)

The new headquarten for the interimPalestinian Government has alreadybeen leased for around $3 million. Itwill be the Hirsham Palace Hotel, thedelightfu[y dilapidated former surunerresidence of King Hussein.

Summoned from prayer at the mos-que because of the presence of jour-nalists at his hotel, the general manager,Rajai Abdo, told HQ that he hopedArafat would live on his premises forthe first year - until he had foundhimself a suitable home. A man with a

political science degree from Americaand no shortage of ambition - hewants to be the first democraticallyelected mayor ofJericho and he wants

Jericho to be "the next Mecca" of the

64

world -

Abdo says he is delighted bythe peace accord. On the other hand,his views on the role Ashrawi played

during the negotiations reflect the stillwidespread traditiond view of womenin Arab polirics. "I have to say the truth.The majority of Palestinians are Muslimand whether [the religion] is Islam,

Judaism or Christianiry it does not ap-prove of a woman conducting its affairs.

"'We are a conservative society. Welook to women as figures of pampering.We like to spoil our women, comfortthem. That is the tradition of Islamicsociety, and to see women taking hardpositions and having haircuts like a

man, that is not taken kindly."But the people right now are so

excited, so tickled with the peace thather position does not threaten them.There is a place for every individual inan elected government, and if she was

elected, who I am to stand against her?"But whether or not Ashrawi has a

consfifuency remains to be seen. Thereare many who believe that the onlypower base she has ever had is the oneshe has forged so consummately withthe'Western media. They believe that ifshe were to ever go out on the hustings,

she would discover how embarrassinglysmall her support really was.

Even within the Palestinian delega-tion itself, Hanan Ashrawi was never themost popular figure. Apart from the un-ease prompted by her being a womanand a Christian, there has long been thefeeling that she is too eager to holdcourt with the media and far too ar-rogant about her command of English,considerable though that is. Accordingto one insider, she would insist that she

be closely consulted at every stage ofthe negotiations in Washington, eventhough she was the delegation's spokes-person and not a member of the neg-otiating team. She believed FaisalHusseini, the leader of the delegationand a man very close to Arafat, didn'tspeak English well enough. (He d pick-ed his up in an Israeli prison, mainly byreading War and Peace.)

Husseini was not impressed withwhat he saw as Ashrawit arrogance. Ona more trivial note, he didn't thinkmuch of her constant smoking either,given the fact that he is asthmatic. Allthis is said to have caused a lot ofback-biting inside the delegarion.

Now that Arafat and the "outsiders"

are back in charge, her star has beeneclipsed, and the best example of this isArafaCs refusal to read the lyrical speechshe wrote for him at the historic signingceremony in Washington. Instead, he

chose a rather prosaic one drafted by a

close aide. The reason for this snub toAshrawi is simple. She has fulfilled hercommunications role and, for the mo-ment anyway, her views are of little in-terest to the PLO chairman. Her jobnow is to be the good foot soldier.

But what does Ashrawi want forherself? "You have caught me in themiddle of my trying to decide what Iwant to do," she replies. "I think mydaughters' lending me to the peaceprocess has run its course. We have

brought them to mutual recognirionand talking to each other. We have es-

tablished a certain discourse and ap-proach. I would like to see myself goback to something academic.

"This is the end of a phase and thebeginning of another. I am willing tohelp set up the new phase - if there isa new phase. If not, I really would liketo be able to be myself, rather than have

things imposed on me by necessity."In terms of constituency or not, I

think that can be tested. I think if Iwanted to run [for election], I wouldntbe intimidated by those who say I donthave it - because I talk to people a lotand I know what people think. Andthere is a certain amount of respect tonot being bought or sold; to not havingsold one's voice or conscience."

Anything can happen, of course.Ashrawi could again find herself inArafaCs favour, perhaps the minister forCulture, Education or the Media in a

new Palestinian government. Perhaps inWashington as the PLO's representative,a position she denied to HQ she want-ed, but one others believe she has

coveted for a long time. Or the peacecould be wrecked, Arafat assassinated,

and the region plunged once more intochaos. There are extremists on bothsides who would like nothing better.

That's why this is not a euphoricmoment for Hanan Ashrawi. "It is a

mixture ofjoy and apprehension," she

says. "Now we are starting a very dif-ficult phase. Now is the acid test. It'smake or break."

Dauid I-eser ri HQt feature uniter and a

former Middle Earl eonespondent.

I

HQ JAN IFEB 1994