Lebanonwire, March 31, 2003

The Daily Star

Palestinian-American scholar offers advice to student audience: ‘There are ways to bloc the Israeli plan, and the first step is to unite our lines’

Alia Ibrahim
Daily Star staff

The only problem with Edward Said, according to Rana Khoury, a 20-year old Political Science student at the American University of Beirut, is that he expects a high level of maturity in a crazy and illogical world.
Khoury, one of hundreds of students who for two consecutive days attended lectures given by the Palestinian-American scholar, world-renowned author and Columbia professor.
Last Thursday, Said met with students in AUB’s Assembly Hall, answering their questions on the Palestinian struggle, and telling them of their role as the next generation.
Calmly, Said answered the questions of passionate students on the Palestinian intifada and the legitimacy of suicide bombings.
“We have to propose a substitute vision,” Said said, adding that Palestinians can learn from the experience of successful liberation movements such as that of South Africa, though he admitted that the lack of figures of the caliber of Nelson Mandela “can probably be our tragedy.”
Over and over, Said called on students to open their minds and to reach out for others who can help.
“We’ve got to let the people hear our voice and follow us. We have a possibility to attract a large number of people, including Jewish people, who are willing to listen to us, provided we are willing to give them a role to play,” Said said.
“We have to have allies from the enemy,” he urged.
Said argued that a country’s population shouldn’t be considered as one group of people. “A country’s population includes different currents and that is a very important factor that needs to be analyzed,” he said.
He gave the example of the Vietnamese who targeted nonconforming groups in US society and made them their allies, and of Algerians who used to call France “the seventh state” because of their knowledge of French groups who could help them in their resistance.
“You can always use allies from the lines of the enemy,” Said said.
“I think the same about Israel, if I find an Israeli willing to fight by my side, I will accept him,” he said.
In response to a question on the Third Alternative Initiative, which he proposed with a number of other Palestinian figures last year, Said said the initiative was still in its early stages.
He said the idea was to provide a third alternative for representation, with alternative democratic and political policies, in addition to new styles of resistance, distinct from the PLO and Islamic movements and based on the rejection of the Oslo Accords.
Commenting on the creation of a new government and the undertaking of reforms under the present PLO, Said said that any action based on the Oslo Accords would be unacceptable.
“If we base our negotiations on the Oslo Accords, we would be negotiating how to improve the conditions of occupation and how to make it look better, and not how to eliminate it,” he said.
In response to another question dealing with suicide bombings, Said said there are different ways of struggle, adding that one of the questions that need to be answered at this stage is whether violence can be the solution for the Palestinian struggle.
“Have armed violence helped the common objective of all the people? Did it lead to a positive solution?” the scholar asked.
Said said there is a need for a stage of objective review and contemplation, adding that every liberation campaign that has won had a framework.
“We simply have not discussed our methods and important issues, including violence,” he said. “We have to think and to choose,” he said.
“The intifada has caused a fantastic polarization of the Israeli society and of world public opinion, and that is not really bad,” he said.
“But the basic idea now is that all the options are on the table. The important thing is to see whether they are helping our cause or not,” he said.
“Can suicide bombings liberate the majority of the Palestinian people or not? I would love to listen to an objective debate, and that has not yet taken place,” he said.
Answering a skeptic’s question on whether civil disobedience can work, Said said that civil disobedience can in fact be one strategy.
“We have to be creative in our struggle,” Said said.
He said one way to start civil disobedience is for Palestinians to stop working in Israeli settlements or stop the traffic, to and from the settlements.
“There are ways to block the Israeli plan, and the first step is to unite our lines,” Said said, adding that he found it “redundant” to have 20 factions.
Concerning the war in Iraq, Said said he can’t possibly accept Saddam Hussein’s regime, because he is “a Fascist, and an oppressor.”
“But I am also opposed to a liberation imposed from the outside. This is a form of imperialism that can never improve the conditions of the people. It would probably improve the US’s interests, but not that of the Iraqi people,” he said.

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