Palestinian journalist discusses ‘Arab uprisings’
By Alan F.H. Wisdom, The Layman, July 11, 2012
PITTSBURGH, Pa. — In two speeches during last week’s General Assembly in Pittsburgh, Palestinian journalist Rami Khouri surveyed the changed situation across the Middle East in the wake of the “Arab Spring”—which Khouri preferred to call the “Arab Uprisings.” Khouri portrayed the Palestinian struggle against Israel as part of that larger movement.
Speaking at a July 4 luncheon sponsored by the Israel/Palestine Mission Network (IPMN), Khouri described the Arab Spring as “the first mass spontaneous process of citizen self-assertion among the Arab people.” He recalled the obscure individual who sparked the uprisings: Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian fruit and vegetable vendor who on December 17, 2010, burned himself to death in protest against abusive government officials who had confiscated his scale.
Khouri presented Bouazizi as “an iconic figure who in himself represented the sentiments of so many millions of his countrymen and people across the Arab world.” Bouazizi was fed up with a government that denied him the ability to make a living and trampled on his human dignity. He “would not acquiesce in his own dehumanization,” according to Khouri. And in so doing, the market vendor set in motion “a process by which a majority of citizens in these countries break that pattern of subjugation and denial of their rights by their own societies, their own governments, and they insist on reconfiguring the power structure of societies so that they have their rights, they have their dignity.”
While recognizing that “every country is different,” Khouri saw “three common denominators” in the uprisings: the demand for “citizenship rights, a democratic, pluralistic process of the exercise of power”; constitutional reform to “guarantee the enforcement of the rights”; and “social justice,” meaning “the feeling of ordinary people that they shouldn’t be mistreated by their own societies.” He also portrayed the uprisings as “the last anti-colonial battle of liberation, because the regimes that are being uprooted are remnants of the colonial period.”
The journalist counseled “patience because these processes take time.” Arab peoples “are trying to do in a period of one or two years a series of monumental exercises that most countries, including yours [the United States], took around two centuries,” he observed.
Not worried about Islamists
Khouri was optimistic about the future: “When we look down the road in a few years—maybe five to ten years—we’ll probably find that much of the Arab world will become more democratic, more stable … but not all of it.” He compared the situation to the outcome after the breakup of the Soviet Union: “You have some good democracies, you have some OK democracies, and you have some police states.”
Khouri downplayed fears about the Islamist groups that have won most elections in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. “These systems are going to be dominated for some time by Islamist groups,” he said, “most of whom so far are completely committed to pluralistic democracies.” He assured his IPMN audience that “there’s no way that any Muslim Brotherhood can take over the whole system and turn it into an Islamic state, which is some of the nonsense that you hear in the American press.”
The journalist claimed that the Egyptian Brotherhood had “never talked about an Islamic state. The Egyptian people don’t want an Islamic state. The Muslim Brotherhood supporters who voted for it don’t want an Islamic state.” He said “the overwhelming majority of people in the Arab world feel deeply about their Islamic values,” but “they’re secular in their governance” and “don’t want religious people to run society.”
Khouri predicted that most Arab countries would end up having several political blocs: “You’ll have one major Islamist party …, you’ll have one sort of mainstream conservative group that is allied with the old guard, and you’ll have one major left-wing secular group.” These blocs would “not [be] evenly matched, but no single group will be able to dominate society.”
Khouri also minimized concerns about Middle Eastern Christians. “The conditions of the Christians across the region vary quite a bit,” he said, but “in most of the Middle East except Saudi Arabia … they are not oppressed and they can ring their church bells and live as Christians.” Khouri maintained that “the political sentiments of Christians reflect quite accurately the sentiments of the society as a whole.”
Responding to reports that Syrian Christians are backing Bashar Assad’s government against the mostly Sunni Islamist rebels, Khouri countered, “The majority of Christians in Syria, which I know well, would like to get rid of the Assad regime.” He said Syrian Christians “are laying low because they don’t want to be seen to be taking sides, because they are a minority.” The journalist acknowledged, “You do have fears in Syria that if the Christians are perceived to be pro-Assad, that when the Assad regime is overthrown, that there may be revenge taken against them.” But he did not share those worries: “I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
‘Days are numbered’ for Syrian, Iranian regimes
Khouri forecast that “the Syrian government will be overthrown, I’m sure, in the next five to six months.” He also believed that “the days are numbered” for the Shi’ite Islamist regime in Iran. Khouri characterized Iran as “a country that has lost the legitimacy of the Islamic revolution of 1979.” Now it’s “just another Middle Eastern autocracy that’s run by a bunch of thugs.”
According to Khouri, “Iran is like the Soviet Union in 1980. It’s on the verge of a major transformation which should be left to its own people.” He was opposed to any military strike against Iran’s nuclear program: “The stupidest thing that could happen is for the United States or Israel to attack Iran.”
Even though the Arab Spring so far has brought little change in the Israeli-Palestinian dispute, the journalist felt that in the long run it would help the Palestinians. “If you get therefore Arab countries where government policies reflect citizen sentiments,” he proposed, “the implications are … that there will be greater support for the Palestinians in the Arab-Israeli conflict, there will be greater pushback against the Americans, there will be a more realistic relationship with the Iranians …, and there will be more rigorous, hard-nosed policies vis-à-vis the Israelis.”
Speaking at an IPMN dinner on July 2, Khouri suggested that it was Palestinians who started the first Arab uprising, in the intifadas of 1987-1993 and 2000-2005 against the Israeli presence in the West Bank and Gaza. He noted that the Palestinians are “now in the third generation of our exile” since the establishment of Israel in 1948. Comparing today’s Palestinians to ancient Jews exiled to Babylon, the journalist theorized that the third generation would be able to leave behind the dysfunctions of the first two generations and adopt a more constructive approach that might bring an end to the exile.
“The third generation of Palestinians is not going to just roll over and disappear from history,” Khouri said. “Nor is it going to try to use means that have been unsuccessful and have been condemned politically and morally by some people, such as the use of armed resistance.” Instead Palestinians are “consta
ntly thinking of new ways of nonviolent, peaceful resistance that can help us achieve our rights.” Examples cited by Khouri included: marches to the borders of Israel, the “Kairos Palestine” manifesto, flotillas bringing aid to Gaza, building the infrastructure of a Palestinian state, seeking United Nations recognition for that state, and the international boycott, divestment, and sanctions campaign.
Optimistic about Israeli-Palestinian peace
The journalist expressed confidence that “the Palestinians will walk that same journey” as Jews who returned from their diaspora. “They will achieve their statehood, they will end their refugeehood, and the injustices done against them will be redressed and acknowledged.” Khouri predicted that “they too, the Palestinians, will also acknowledge the injustices that they may have done to the Jewish people, the Israeli people, in an ultimate act of mutual reconciliation.” He added that this reconciliation “is not going to happen soon, but it’s going to happen.”
But Khouri thought it unlikely that the majority of Palestinians would return from exile. Just as the majority of the world’s Jews have not gone back to Israel, so “probably ¾ of the Palestinians will not live in Israel or a Palestinian state.” The journalist described the return of refugees as “the toughest” issues in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. Other issues—borders adjusted through land trades between the West Bank and Israel proper, withdrawal of Israeli troops, dismantlement of outlying Jewish settlements, and the disposition of Jerusalem—“are all practical issues that can be worked out,” according to Khouri.
Asked about the viability of a “two-state solution” with a Palestinian state living at peace alongside Israel, Khouri replied: “The two-state solution is the only workable solution now that is acceptable to the international community and to both sides. The Israelis absolutely will not accept the one state. They want a Jewish majority state.”
Khouri also took a question about attempts to reconcile the two main Palestinian political movements: Fatah, which rules the West Bank, and Hamas, which controls Gaza. He stated that “there can be no serious negotiations with the Israelis until you do have one unified national government in Palestine.”
But Khouri doubted whether leaders of the two factions had the will to fulfill the popular desire for unity. “My guess is that it will need a significant change in the leadership, especially [Palestinian Authority President] Mahmoud Abbas and the Fatah leadership,” he ventured. Khouri said Hamas would have to get beyond its focus on Gaza and “think in terms of the whole popular national rights of the Palestinians.”
Khouri, of Greek Orthodox background, currently serves as director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut. He is a columnist and editor at large for the Daily Star of Beirut.