Washington
Scene:
B L A M I
N G E V E R Y O N E B U T H E R S E
L F...
.
H A N A N
A S H R A W I :
R E A L I
T Y R A T H E R T H A N I M A G E
MER - Washington
- 9/24/98:
Yesterday at the Willard Hotel in downtown
Washington the National Association of Arab Americans (NAAA -- a weak and
somewhat pathetic semi-organization for many years now) hosted a breakfast
meeting with Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, the Palestinian woman spokesperson from
Ramallah well-known for her good English diction, if not sound thinking
or political integrity. It was just one of several appearances Ashrawi
made in Washington to keep the troops, few and hagard as they are, on board
and in line.
It was a small crowd at the Willard,
about thirty persons, mostly the same old faces who have nowhere else to
go -- retired State Department folk like Gene Bird and his wife who masquerade
as friends of the Palestinians under cover of such deceptive organizations
as "Council on the National Interest" and "Partners for Peace". Their advice
to the Palestinians is always terribly self-serving and wrong-headed; but
their perpetual simple-minded optimism always goes a long way with this
group. Arab journalists and a few p.r. types filled out the "crowd".
It was all so predictable, all so incestuous,
all so politically misguided, all so typically Palestinian in Washington.
Most of all though, it's all so sad and tragic for the people of tortured
Palestine, and the refugee camps that still dot the region, who with each
"agreement" suffer even more than with the one before.
Overall Ashrawi lamented what she called
the "crisis" in the "peace process" and urged US intervention to "save"
it before it's too late. Ho hum. In 1947 the Palestinians begged the British
and the Arab regimes to save them, unable to help themselves having made
so many awful and ill-informed decisions in the previous decades. Now,
in this "50th anniversary year", the Palestinians are in worse shape then
ever, pleading and begging now with the U.S., with an American government
that is more in bed with the Israelis than ever before in history.
Ashrawi opened her remarks by saying
that a "candid assessment" of the "peace process" was very much needed.
But then she proceeded to do just the opposite, providing nothing candid
and nothing real; just alot more self-serving platitudes and weak-minded
ideas. Forgetting even the recent past, not to mention what should have
been learned throughout these 50 years, Ashrawi went on to conveniently
blame Bibi Netanyahu’s government for the derailment in the peace negotiations,
with abit left over for the Americans for failing to do what they never
intended to do, no matter what they occasionally say to the Ashrawis of
this world at polite Embassy receptions.
Poor Ashrawi, she seems to have forgotten
all that went on at Camp David, the Intifada, Madrid, Washington -- the
later of which (not the Intifada) she was herself so involved with, thus
implicating her personally in the disasters that have ensued.
Predictably of course, Ashrawi then
went on to express what everyone already knew, the growing frustration
Palestinians now have with the "closures" of the occupied territories and
the continuing deterioriation of every-day life for the great majority
of Palestinians -- forgetting once again that it was her now favored Israeli
Labor party that instigated the closure policies, not to mention the settlement
and demolition policies!
These formalities out of the way, Ashrawi
then went on to her main work, promoting the Palestinian Authority and
its "plan" to declare a Palestinian state in May 1999. Having participated
as spokesperson for the last major round of Palestinian blunders, Ashrawi
seems oblivious that she and her little clique of upper-crust Palestinian
"Leaders" are about to fall into another big trap set for them by the far
more astute and crafty Israelis. Indeed, Ashrawi and her friends are in
reality, rather than image, living proof that the Palestinians are worse
led, more divided, and more manipulated today then they were 50 years ago.
It was about a month ago that Dr. Ashrawi
pulled her latest personal p.r. ploy -- resigning from Arafat’s "cabinet"
to protest, so she said, his autocratic style of "rule" and the corruption
of his key ministers. But she didn't even mention any of this at the Willard
yesterday morning. And in fact one was hard-pressed to think of anything
she would have said differently if she were still an official member of
the Arafat "Authority".
When asked in fact about the more recent
"resignation" of another of her colleagues, Saeb Erekat , the chief "negotiator",
Ashrawi refused to comment other than rushing to say that that was an "internal"
Palestinian matter and shouldn't be of any concern. What a guillible lot
these Palestinians "friends" and hangers on.
So much for Hanan Ashrawi "on the record".
An eloquent representative of the Palestinians in many international arena
since the post-Gulf War, post-Intifada "peace process" began, Ashrawi is
certainly good with words -- no doubt about that. But the role that she
has played, and how badly she has allowed herself to be used and manipulated,
these matters are much more hidden and purposefully obscured.
In short when it comes to deeds Ashrawi
is very much one of those responsible for the disasters that have befallen
her people, even more so during her years as spokeswoman than before. Indeed,
Ashrawi -- along with Shaath, Erakat, and Abed-Rabbo to name just a few
of the others -- has helped lead the Palestinians to the apartheid fate
they now are being stuffed into on their "autonomous" Bantustans. Ashrawi
continually makes one excuse after another for the role she has played
in all this, unlike the much more dignified Haider Abdul Shafi, head of
the Palestinian delegation to Madrid and Washington, who has completely
resigned from anything involving Arafat and Oslo. Ashrawi simply refuses
to take responsibility for her past mistakes, and worse yet compounds them
with every misleading and disingenuous talk she gives.
Ashrawi, an academic by training, is
adored by many in the westernized Palestinian elite who themselves so self-servingly,
and mistakenly, consider her an excellent representative of the Palestinian
educated classes. Her abilities with manipulating words has helped her
escape the crucial questions about her real political role in the "peace
process", as well as her real political positions.
Ashrawi resigned from the negotiating
team when Arafat signed the Oslo Accords -- after all the damage had already
been done. But unlike Abdul Shafi, she participated in the White House
ceremony. And today she repeats the mantra -- like a trained parrot --
that the backtalk channels which led to Oslo were necessary for the legitimization
of the PLO and to get a "peace process" going. What a laugh! The Israelis
got the Palestinians to recognize the Israeli State and accept "autonomy";
while in return the Israelis recognized Yasser Arafat and got rid of direct
control of Palestinian "population centers", now being turned into the
equivalent of Indian reservations, complete with gambling casinos for foreigners
only!
After the Oslo accords, always seeking
a self-serving and politically correct way that her European and American
friends could help fund, Ashrawi started her very own human rights group.
But it wasn't too long before she felt the need to get back in the bigger
limelight; so she went back to work for the main human rights "violator"
himself, Yasser Arafat, as "minister" of higher education. Scandalously,
she accepted this new post even while Arafat's Gaza thugs were torturing
Dr. Iyad Sarraj -- a true human rights champion -- and threatening him
with death for courageously speaking out against the regime Ashrawi was
once again officially speaking for.
While the former head of the Palestinian
delegation, Dr. Haider Abdul Shafi, continued to plead with Ashrawi to
stop her involvements with Arafat, she instead prefered to have it both
ways. On the one hand she is able to say she opposes some things that are
going on, after all she "resigned". While on the other hand she continues
to say and do much as she did before; now as a kind of less than official
"autonomous" representative of the Arafat regime. Pressed about the hypocritical
role she is playing, Ashrawi insists that she now plans to "network" with
Arab and European governments, as well as organizations such as the NAAA,
to "build up momentum" for the coming "declaration" of Statehood.
Apparently no one has told Ashrawi
(not that she would listen anyway) what a tremendously demoralizing failure
all the Arab groups combined turned out to be this year, the "50th Anniversary"
year, with their major effort of "the quilt." They will be no more effective
in the year ahead; but they will of course claim just the opposite, trotting
out the old long-ago totally co-opted windbag Clovis Maksoud to proclaim
their successes far and wide.
More importantly -- for all the Arab
groups combined amount to practically nothing in the political world of
Washington -- apparently no one has explained to Ashrawi that she is about
to help lead her people into one more trap, into another disaster, this
one maybe fatal. Bibi can't wait for Arafat's "Declaration"...it will be
just the excuse he needs to crush the Palestinians further, fulfilling
Yitzhak Rabin's real pledge which was to "break their bones" and their
will.
Ashrawi really does love to have things
both ways, trying to pay lip service to as many constituencies that might
further invite her to this or that speaking event where she can continue
to advocade her cheap and easy slogans of "peace and reconciliation". Indeed
this role and approach is precisely why she is wined and dined by so many
so often in the West where she much prefers to spend her time rather than
with the destititute Palestinian masses.
Ashrawi talks all the time about the
need to get the peace process "back on track", yet inserts here and there
that the peace process is basically flawed (i.e., it never was really on
track to start with).
She always refrains from seriously
criticizing Arafat's duplicitous and corrupt regime, from naming names,
or from dealing consistently with the PA's miserable human rights record.
But then she mentions in a passing sentence or two a few specific human
rights violations by the "security forces"; as if these were aberrations
on the way to being corrected.
Actually the crowd that constantly
invites Ashrawi to Washington's fancy hotels and restaurants -- the "client
organizations" and the "client regimes" they interact with (this time only
the Egyptian Ambassador bothered to attend) -- is itself enough to explain
what Ashrawi really is all about: a snobbish Palestinian Arab aristocratic
personality who covets the limelight and will do anything and everything
to stay in it. In short, she is a client and captive personality used in
her familiar role precisely because she combines rhetorical gifts with
political cowardice.
Arafat’s much-despised "Ambassador"
in Washington, Hasan Abdul Rahman, was also at the breakfast, of course.
Rahman's only real job is to be the eyes and ears of Arafat, his personal
patron and without whom Rahman would long ago have gone into oblivion (which
would still be a small plus for the Palestinian cause if it could somehow
be arranged).
Rahman is a petty, corrupt, thuggish,
semi-literate character, and thus, in a sense, a fitting representative
of the Arafat regime. He acts as a kind of combined escort and enforcer,
in cases like this making sure Ashrawi and everyone else invited to such
affairs stays on assigned topic, saying nothing whatsoever "candidly",
and most important of all says nothing seriously critical of Arafat or
his regime. With Rahman always present and always reporting back to the
"Authority" through the good offices of the Arab League, none of the cliquish
Palestinians who are invited to speak in Washington these days, Ashrawi
foremost among them, will ever give a trully "candid assessment" of anything.
Instead they are simply paraded from one incestuous and deceitful gathering
to another, misleading and demoralizing the best and the brightest who
increasingly want nothing to do with any of them or the organizations that
host them. And all the while they work overtime to deflect blame from themselves
while pretending to champion what in reality they are actually undermining.
For additional insights into the role
Hanan Ashrawi and her circles have played since the forced end to the Intifada
and its replacement with the American/Israeli "peace process", a number
of articles written in earlier years will soon be republished by MER -
"The Selling of Hanan Ashrawi," and "Boring Diplomacy". Please let your
friends know by sending them this initial article -- there is still time
to get onto the MER Distribution List.
