Tony’s Price A disturbing characteristic of much of US liberal commentary on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is the frequency with which, even when its prescriptions are on target, its framework of interpretation and premises are flawed, if not racist. A good example is Anthony Lewis’ column in the New York Times of February 12, 1989. He begins by detailing the heavy human costs which Palestinians in the Occupied Territories have paid for sustaining their uprising: the dead, the wounded, the imprisoned, the deported, the homeless, the repressed. “But,” he goes on to say, “Israel has paid a higher price for its policy [of repression] than have the Palestinians.” In what coin is this “higher price” measured?
On February 16, 1989, the leaders of Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and North Yemen signed an agreement forming the Arab Cooperation Council (ACC), a four-country economic trading bloc, and expressed the hope that it would lead to an Arab common market. On the same day, the leaders of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Mauritania agreed to form a Maghrib Union, the first step toward a Maghrib common market.
The last Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan have gone home, clearing the stage around Kabul and other cities for a major showdown between Soviet-supported government forces and their American-supported guerrilla rivals, the mujahideen. Conventional wisdom has it that the mujahideen are now in position to finally topple the Kabul regime. Former President Ronald Reagan based his policy on this premise — that peace in Afghanistan lay beyond a Soviet withdrawal and the overthrow of the Najibullah government. President George Bush, hoping to put his own imprint on what conservatives view as the one solid victory of the Reagan Doctrine, has decided to continue arming the rebels as long as the ruling People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) remains in power.
Once again, world attention is caught by the specter of villainous Arabs, brandishing weapons. In the mid-1970s it was the oil weapon. Today it is chemical weapons. In both cases the weapon is wielded discreetly by the United States itself. In both cases, the main threat is to the people of the Third World.
Ordinary children, women and men, a million and a half of them, have confounded the state of Israel, Washington’s major military ally in the Middle East, with their incredible courage and resourcefulness. Their resounding demand for political independence then prompted the Palestine Liberation Organization to declare unequivocally for a Palestinian state alongside Israel — a resolution based on “possible rather than absolute justice,” as Yasser Arafat put it. [1] More than a hundred governments have officially recognized the new state. Others, such as the major European states, upgraded their relations with the PLO. The combined force of these developments finally led Washington to open formal talks with the PLO.
For all of us in MERIP — the staff, the editorial committee, the board of directors — the past few months have been a poignant and exciting time, a mix of fond regrets and great anticipation. With this page, in this issue, we make it official: Jim Paul, who has worked with us on staff for more than 13 years, is leaving MERIP to pursue other interests.
The Palestinian intifada is proving a headache to Israel’s image managers on American campuses. “Recent events in the territories in Israel have spilled over on to the US university campuses [and] our work has been made harder,” complains a recent book — let from the University Service Department of the American Zionist Youth Foundation. [1] Pro-Israel groups on campus have lost “the initiative,” the booklet warns. Instead of promoting “positive Israel activities” such as Israel fairs and Israel cafe nights, campus groups now find themselves “in the position of defending Israel.”
Sister cities has become one of Berkeley’s most popular means of expressing support for particular communities and opposition to US foreign policy. Berkeley has six sister cities, including Leon in Nicaragua, San Antonio de los Ranchos in El Salvador and the South African Black township of Oukassie. Supporters of Measure J hoped its success would provide some measure of protection to the people of Jabalya. Concern was heightened in the last two days of the campaign when Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir announced that Jabalya would be the first camp to be “dispersed” after Likud formed its new government.
The Bay Area’s “progressive” reputation was somewhat tarnished November 8 when voters in San Francisco and Berkeley overwhelmingly rejected pro-Palestinian initiatives on their respective ballots. San Francisco’s Proposition W, which called for the US to recognize a Palestinian state “side by side” with Israel “with guarantees of security for both states” was defeated by 68 to 32 percent. In Berkeley, Measure J would have established the Gaza town and refugee camp of Jabalya as a sister city; it was defeated by a 70-30 margin.
ahmad had those
wildly intense
eyes that
would stare through you
as he spoke and
would light up
every now and then
as he listened and
would drive me crazy
what
does he want from me?
i remember ahmad
when
he returned from prison
to ya‘bad
and his grandmother
ululated in jubilation
danced in happiness
served coffee to share
her happiness
and it was ahmad
who took me around the village
when i came on
mundane visit
to see all houses
demolished or sealed
in town
recording a history
of occupation
Jesse’s Gyrations on Palestine
The Palestinian human rights monitoring organization, Al-Haq/Law in the Service of Man, the West Bank affiliate of the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists, marked the first anniversary of the intifada with a comprehensive report on Israel’s violations of human rights in its effort to quell the Palestinian uprising. Punishing a Nation: Human Rights Violations During the Palestinian Uprising, December 1987-December 1988 (Ramallah, PO Box 1413, West Bank, via Israel: Al-Haq, 1988; 355 pages) is a meticulously documented compendium based mostly on sworn affidavits collected by al-Haq’s field workers, five of whom were under administrative detention at the time of publication.
Paul Cossali and Clive Robson, Stateless in Gaza (London: Zed Press, 1986).
Stateless in Gaza comprises interviews with 60 Gazans — from women activists to housewives, from resistance writers to laborers in Israel — who talk about life in the occupied strip. Cossali, a teacher and solidarity activist, and Robson, a development worker, allow Gazans to tell their stories directly, bringing into focus the major issues that confront those who live in this “forgotten corner of Palestine.”
Huri Islamoglu-Inan, ed., The Ottoman Empire and the World Economy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, and Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme, 1987).
Şevket Pamuk, The Ottoman Empire and European Capitalism, 1820-1913: Trade, Investment and Production (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
These books, one a collection of 17 articles and the other a monograph, offer a significant new interpretation of Middle Eastern history and, more broadly, contribute to the discussion of the origins of capitalism in the Third World.
Maher Al-Sharif, Al-Shuyu‘iyun wa Qadaya al-Nidal al-Watani al-Rahin [The Communists and Issues in the Current National Struggle] (Damascus: Center for Socialist Research and Study in the Arab World, 1988).
The role of the Palestinian Communist Party (PCP) is one of the most important and least understood aspects of the intifada. When a member of the PCP Political Bureau was elected to a seat on the PLO Executive Committee at the 18th Palestine National Council (PNC) in April 1987, many interpreted it as a sign of Moscow’s role in the process of reuniting the Palestinian factions. But that is an insufficient explanation for the double “cultural revolution” this opening represents.
We were greatly saddened to learn of the death of Ahmad Sadiq Sa‘d — a comrade, collaborator and friend of several members of Middle East Report’s editorial family — in Cairo late last year. Sadiq was one of the intellectuals who stimulated the revival of the Egyptian communist movement in the late 1930s and a leader of the New Dawn/Workers’ Vanguard/Workers’ and Peasants’ Communist Party tendency before the formation of the united Communist Party in 1958. He spent 1959-65 in prison with the other Egyptian communist cadres. But his spirit was not broken, and he continued to struggle and to serve the Egyptian people, guided by a consistent internationalist vision, until the last day of his life.
Voters achieved an historic victory in Cambridge and a section of Somerville, Massachusetts, on November 8, 1988. By a margin of 53 to 47 percent they endorsed Question 5, a non-binding public policy question that called on elected officials to work towards a just settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. (See below.)
Given the same materials and the same opportunities, young chiliren all over the world paint in a similar way. They don’ necessarily paint the jame things. (Eskimo children will saint different animals from the chilIren in the Sudan.) What is similar is :he way young children make intuitive narks on the paper — a question of space, gestures, proportion, even color.
Driving to Salfit through the villages of Yasuf and Iskaka on a sunny fall day is an exhilarating experience. The asphalt road winds like a snake through hill after hill dotted by olive trees whose clusters of tiny, pastel green leaves shimmer in the light breeze. Rich brown earth, freshly turned, is strewn with stones and contoured by terraces. Closer to the road, thorny shrubs, grasses and the lazy, bleached branches of fig trees leisurely soak in the sun, anticipating the impending winter.
One key to understanding how the Israeli economy (malfunctions is that the Histadrut (The General Federation of Workers in Israel; up to 1965 the “Jewish Workers in Israel”) was never simply a trade union.
