Palestinian-Americans take to
streets
By KATHRYN CASA
Special to the National Catholic Reporter
Hundreds in Hartford, Conn., thousands in Washington, tens of
thousands in New York.
Palestinian-Americans have been taking to the streets in record
numbers to protest what they see as Israels most recent excessive use of
force against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. But there is a subtext to
this new movement. It resonates among them like the low buzz from a distant
beehive: al-awda, Arabic for The Return.
Palestinians once more are calling for full equality and justice,
including the right to go home -- not just home to the West Bank and Gaza, but
home to Israel itself. Israelis say those demands could change everything in
the efforts to achieve peace.
I have never seen, in the United States and worldwide, such
a heavy concentration of Palestinian activism in such a short period of
time, said longtime Palestinian activist Elias Rashmawi of Davis,
Calif.
When several thousand Muslims turned out Oct. 28 in Washington to
protest the killing of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers, The Washington Post
reported, The rally, one of the largest in the United States since the
Middle East peace process disintegrated, was organized in less than two weeks,
an unusually short time, organizers said.
Though efforts to end the violence continue, renewed fighting in
their homeland in recent weeks has galvanized Palestinians in diaspora,
bridging deep rifts that developed as a result of both the Gulf War and the
Oslo accords. The vague 1993 document was named for the capital of Norway,
where it was secretly hammered out between Palestinian and Israeli
negotiators.
Though Oslo established the framework for the now-faltered peace
talks, Palestinians now say the 1993 documents impediments to their right
to return home and to receive restitution were never fully understood.
When Oslo was signed and people still did not know the
contents, I would say people in our community in the U.S. were 2-to-1 in
support. Now its the other way around, and Im being generous by
saying that, noted Khalil Jahshan, a Palestinian from Nazareth, who is
vice president of the American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in
Washington.
Rashmawi helps stage a protest every Friday in downtown
Sacramento, Calif., that has drawn, in some weeks, as many as 300 demonstrators
-- secularists standing shoulder to shoulder with Muslims and Christian
Palestinians.
Rashmawi, who supports establishment of a democratic Palestinian
state, said, The awakening of today is really coming to correct the
errors and confusions we talked about seven or eight years ago.
In Connecticut, self-professed cyber-activist Mazin
Qumsiyeh chairs the media committee of the Palestine Right to Return Coalition
whose prolific e-groups messages are exchanged among some 1,500
recipients. People got dispirited and didnt do very much in the
90s, but this is changing, he said, noting that an estimated 20,000
people turned out to rally for Palestinian rights in New York Oct. 13, and
hundreds converged on Washington in September for a march supporting the
Palestinians right to return. These demonstrations show that there
is quite a bit of renewed interest in politics among diaspora
Palestinians, Qumsiyeh said.
Of about 8 million Palestinians worldwide, about half of them, 4.4
million, are in diaspora. The first wave of refugees fled their homes in 1948
when the war broke out after the United Nations created the state of Israel by
partitioning Palestine. The second wave was the result of the Six Day War of
1967, in which Israel occupied adjacent territories, including Gaza and the
West Bank.
Columbia University Prof. Edward Said, a Palestinian and an
outspoken critic of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and the Oslo accords,
writes in the Oct. 30 issue of The Nation, An alternative peace plan and
leadership is slowly emerging among leading Israeli, West Bank, Gaza and
diaspora Palestinians, a thousand of whom have signed a set of declarations
that have great popular support: no to the Oslo framework; no compromise on the
original U.N. Resolutions (242, 338 and 194), removal of all settlements and
military roads; evacuation of all territories annexed or occupied in 1967;
boycott of Israeli goods and services. A new sense may actually be dawning that
only a mass movement against Israeli apartheid
will work.
U.N. Resolution 194, adopted in 1948, calls for the return or
compensation for all Palestinian refugees. It is the basis of a petition
circulated in print and in Internet versions by the non-profit Council on
Palestinian Restitution and Reparation in Washington. That group said more than
81,000 people have signed a short document that states, in part, that
every Palestinian has a legitimate, individual right to return to his or
her original home and to absolute restitution of his or her property.
An Israeli source in Washington said that position is impossible
for Israel to accept. A lot of the refugee groups are very opposed to
compromise. But no one who seriously deals with the Middle East peace process
really believes there can be a wholesale return of refugees because it would
eradicate Israeli society. The intake of millions of Palestinian refugees
who dont exactly like us would create another Bosnia or
Kosovo, the source said. It would be for us to agree to put our head on
the chopping block.
Under Oslo, the emotional issue of refugees was among several
difficult hurdles that, because of their explosive potential to derail the
talks, were left for the end of the peace process. Last summer, during
ill-fated negotiations at Camp David, Palestinians and Israelis did tackle the
refugee question. Israel would go only this far: some Palestinian refugees
would be permitted to settle in a Palestinian state, but, with the exception of
a minimal number allowed in under family reunification, no
Palestinians would be allowed to return to Israel proper. Israel would not
agree to culpability for the plight of the refugees or to return of refugees to
Israel.
With emotions running high on all sides, its difficult to
predict the starting point for any future negotiations. Violence within Israel
over the past month already has caused many Israelis to rethink the family
reunification offer, the Israeli source said.
Nor can Israel ignore statements like the one last summer, issued
by refugees housed in the camps of south Palestine around Hebron and Gaza. It
reminded Palestinian negotiators at Camp David of their U.N.-endorsed right to
return to their homes, not in the West Bank and Gaza, but to Haifa and Akko in
what is now Israel. Our olive trees and oranges await us, the
statement read in part. We will not accept anything less, no matter who
signs the next of the infinite agreements.
Phillip Mattar, executive director of the Institute for Palestine
Studies in Washington, does not dispute that there is a new consensus emerging
among diaspora Palestinians. The majority of Palestinian and Arab
intellectuals seem to have sided with [Edward] Said, Mattar said,
but I must say, with all due respect, they really dont matter very
much with Arafat. He doesnt listen to them. What really matters are the
people on the ground in the West Bank and Gaza.
But many young activists dont make such distinctions. Mary
Nazzal, a 21-year-old Palestinian studying in the United States, said, I
speak to my close friends in the West Bank every day, and they respond very
positively when I speak of the activities we have organized here. It is very
important for the Palestinian people, who have been dispersed all over the
world, to remain united.
National Catholic Reporter, November 10,
2000
|