Palestinians
The Exile Bourgeoisie of Palestine
‘Umar ‘Aqqad is planning to export bottled water from Saudi Arabia. Not the kind of project you might expect in a desert kingdom where water is scarce. But then, ‘Aqqad is one of the shrewdest and most successful businessmen in the region. Not coincidentally, he is also a Palestinian. For Palestinians, stateless and living by their wits, have been among the leading capitalists of the Middle East. Their number has included Beirut’s greatest banking genius, partners in the foremost contracting firms of the Gulf, Jordan’s top banker, and several of Saudi Arabia’s leading managers and industrialists.
Ekin, Enduring Witness
Larry Ekin, Enduring Witness: The Churches and the Palestinians (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1985).
Before Their Diaspora
Before Their Diaspora: A Photographic History of the Palestinians 1876-1948, introduction and commentary by Walid Khalidi, (Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1984).
Before Their Diaspora gathers some 400 photographs to present a portrait of Palestine, its people and their culture, from the late 19th century—he last years of Ottoman rule—until the end of the British Mandate in 1948.
No Going Back?
During the early stages of national political formation in the Middle East, when crises prevail and mass mobilization is a major organizing strategy, political movements often recruit women and the domestic sector into the political arena. Continuous crises, from which the domestic sector is not immune, compel women to participate. This was the case in the pre-1982 Palestinian community in Lebanon.
Hart, Arafat: Terrorist or Peacemaker?
Alan Hart, Arafat: Terrorist or Peacemaker? (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1984).
Graham-Brown, Education, Repression and Liberation
Sarah Graham-Brown, Education, Repression and Liberation: Palestinians (London: World University Service, 1984).
“Whenever I hear the word culture,” said an occupying officer during the Spanish conquest of South America, “I pull out my gun.” Foreign invaders are often quick on the trigger, and quick to assert their “superior” culture. Indigenous culture, after all, is a rallying point for popular resistance. What the invaders cannot suppress outright, they try to ignore, belittle, distort and dehumanize.
Ma’oz, Palestinian Leadership on the West Bank
Moshe Ma’oz, Palestinian Leadership on the West Bank: The Changing Role of the Mayors Under Jordan and Israel (London: Frank Cass, 1984).
Moshe Ma’oz is a current favorite in Israel and the US to guest lecture on the subject of Palestinian politics, and the Israeli media regularly defers to him as a respected Arabist. His assessment of West Bank political leadership gets more than its fair share of attention. What a shame.
Shadowplay
Alain Gresh, The PLO: The Struggle Within (London: Zed Press, 1985).
Over the past several years in the Occupied Territories, Palestinian intellectuals and activists close to the PLO mainstream have met with Israelis from a number of political factions represented in the Knesset. Their apparent aim has been to influence the elusive center of the Israeli Labor Party.
The Emerging Trade Union Movement in the West Bank
The last several months have witnessed an intensive Israeli crackdown against Palestinian political activists in the Occupied Territories. Since the summer, at least 21 Palestinians have been deported, and more than 80 arrested. Although the military authorities have attributed their renewed “iron fist” approach to the series of individual and apparently spontaneous assaults on Israeli troops and settlers, they have targeted key political and trade union leaders with valid residence permits and no criminal records. They have not been charged with any specific offense.
“Poverty Is Not the Issue”
Henry Selz was for the last nine years the Middle East representative of American Near East Refugee Aid, based in East Jerusalem. He spoke with Joe Stork and Tom Russell in Washington in late August 1985.
You worked in the West Bank for nine years. How has your assessment of the situation changed from when you first got involved?
When I came, I thought it was a transitional situation. It certainly seems to me that any resolution is farther off now than it was when I arrived nine years ago.
How does Israel’s economic crisis affect the situation for the people under occupation?
Gaza: Israel’s Soweto
Gaza is Israel’s Soweto. Each has its own lexicon but similar reference points. The “township” becomes here the refugee camp. Military occupation, like apartheid, means segregation in residence, employment, politics, education and law. In Gaza, the pass card is known as an identity card. Here “removal” becomes “deportation.” In other respects, the vocabulary is identical: labor reserve, arrest, detention, imprisonment, demolition.
Palestinians in Damascus
The assault on the Palestinian camps in Beirut ended in a truce signed in Damascus on June 17, which reflected the failure of Amal to defeat the Palestinian militias. The agreement also reflected Syria’s role in the battles by having the Palestinian side represented only by the Palestine National Salvation Front (PNSF). MERIP correspondent Mark Garfield visited Damascus in early July and spoke about the situation with Jamil Hilal, a member of the central committee of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) and with Taysir Qubba, deputy head of political relations for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP). The DFLP is not affiliated with the PNSF; the PFLP is.
The Palestinian Diaspora of the Gulf
Editor’s Note: A longer version of this article appeared as a three-part series in Le Monde, June 15-17, 1982. It appears here by permission of the author. Since the article was written, the economic cutbacks in the Gulf have reduced jobs available to the Palestinians and also affected the Palestinian bourgeoisie. Remittances to Palestinian institutions (including the PLO) are now less than they were. The crisis in the PLO since the Lebanon war has also deprived the Palestinian community of its main interlocutor and defender with the Gulf regimes. In spite of these changes, the Palestinians remain an important and influential community in the Gulf and in the Palestinian diaspora, as Eric Rouleau makes clear.
Hussein Hangover
Diplomatic activity on the future of the occupied West Bank and Gaza has again assumed a high profile. The luminaries traveling on this particular mission are jetting around the globe — King Fahd in Washington, Hussein in Algiers, and the US and the Soviet Union in Vienna.
The people at the heart of the discussion, the population of the occupied territories, still suffer from the lull that has gripped the West Bank and Gaza since the war in Lebanon. Initiatives, not to speak of solutions, seem far removed from the curfewed alleyways of Dheisheh refugee camp, the huckster-thronged streets of the Old City of Jerusalem or the solemn night streets of Ramallah and Nablus.
Peck, The Reagan Adminstration and the Palestine Question
Juliana S. Peck, The Reagan Administration and the Palestine Question: The First Thousand Days (Washington, DC: Institute of Palestine Studies, 1984).
Scholch, Palestinians Over the Green Line
Alexander Schölch, ed., Palestinians Over the Green Line (London: Ithaca Press, 1983).
Visualizing History
Sarah Graham-Brown, The Palestinians and Their Society, 1880-1946 (New York: Quartet Books, 1980).
Two Books on Jordan
Avi Plascov, The Palestinian Refugees in Jordan, 1948-1957 (London: Frank Cass, 1981).
Peter Gubser, Jordan: Crossroads of Middle Eastern Events (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1983).
Abu Iyad, My Home, My Land
Abu Iyad, My Home My Land: A Narrative of the Palestinian Struggle (with Eric Rouleau) (New York: New York Times Books, 1981).
My Home, My Land provides important information on the man who is second in command of Fatah and also presents the largely untold “internal” history of that organization. Abu Iyad and Eric Rouleau have collaborated on what is perhaps the most important work on the Palestinian resistance for quite some time. Finally a leader of the resistance is telling the story, not a political scientist in Washington, Tel Aviv or London.
“Abu ‘Ammar’s Biggest Mistake Was Gambling on the Americans”
‘Abd al-Jawad Salih was born in al-Bira, Palestine, in December 1931. He finished high school there and later attended the American University in Cairo, where he received a B.A. in political economy in 1955. He taught briefly in Jerusalem, and then at a teachers’ training college in Tripoli, Libya. After being expelled from al-Bira in 1973 during his second term as mayor there, he served as an independent on the Executive Committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization until 1981. He now lives and works in Amman, Jordan. Joe Stork spoke with him in Washington in October 1983.
When you were in Cairo, did you get involved in Palestinian political activity?
