Book notes
The itinerary of a dispossessed Palestinian
Salah Jaber discusses two books by
Edward W. Said:
• The Politics of Dispossession: The
Self-
Struggle for
Palestinian
Determination 1969-1994, Vintage,
London 1995, £9.99 (first published by
Chatto & Windus, London 1994).
• Peace & its Discontents: Gaza-Jericho
1993-1995, with a Foreword by
Christopher Hitchens, Vintage, London
1995, $6.99.
Edward W.
Said, the prestigious Palestinian-American
Professor at Columbia University, is the author of such famous books as Orientalism and Culture and
Imperialism. He is best known for his thorough treatment of the particularly biased relationship that intelligentsia
Western the maintained with the Orient, the
Middle East in the first place. The reader will find echoes of this major aspect of Said's already classic contribution in some of the articles collected in The Politics of
Dispossession, the first of the two collections under review. On the other hand, this first book could serve as an introduction to issues of Middle Eastern politics and the conflict,
Israeli-Palestinian although it will not bring much to any reader with a basic knowledge of the literature dealing with the
Arab world from a standpoint of
Zionism and critical imperialism.
The fact is that most of the articles collected in The Politics of
Dispossession, ranging from 1969 to 1993, only convey in a more brilliant and incisive style what is common to many recriminations formulated by Arab intellectuals against the Western view of their part of the world: that highly disturbing and irritating experience whereby they notice powerlessly that the dominant world culture refuses to apply its own standards of justice and democracy to the
Arabs, wherever and whenever they are confronting Zionism, whether directly or indirectly. For modern ('westernized) Arab intellectuals, this leads to a feeling bordering on schizophrenia: since the double standard is applied by the Western world to the Arab world, to both of which they belong culturally, they are torn between their participation in a set of values originating in the West and their rejection of the very specific way in which that same West commonly uses these values in relation to the Arabs. And the same 'disease' is shared, in an even more acute way, by those very few Israelis who dare to
HAMAS challenge the Zionist consensus from within, the likes of Professor Israel Shahak to whom Edward Said dedicated the second volume here reviewed.
One way for an Arab to avoid that disturbing feeling without betraying their sentiment of justice is to reject wholesale
•Western values' in the name of some brand of Arabic or Islamic fundamentalism.
Rationally minded Arab intellectuals like
Edward Said have consistently fought against this basically escapist alternative, while nevertheless defending its adepts against the outrages of double standard hypocrisy. Such a two-edged approach of the Fundamentalists-who, had they not existed, would have been invented by their western loatherscan be found in Said's articles. The defensive edge gained in strength after he met some of them in
Palestine, in 1992, and became even more determined after 1993, when Said found himself for the first time in opposition to the official leadership of the
Palestine
Liberation
Organization (PLO), joining a broad 'rejectionist camp whose most prominent (or mediatized) component are the Fundamentalists. This experience proved crucial for him to understand that, above all, this section of the
Palestinian masses and youth expresses a reaction, distorted and misleading as it is, to the sentiment of rank injustice that the
'dispossessed' and oppressed feel so deeply.!
Said's view of the
Palestinian scene as a whole got sharply more radical after the conclusion of the
Israeli-Palestinian agreement signed
Washington, with Clinton's blessing, in September
1993. It is after that date that his articles start belonging to a much rarer species than those collected in The
Politics of Dispossession.
PLANTe former
Whereas the belonged to the general category of official 'Palestinianism' as Said called it himself,2 the subsequent articles collected in Peace & its Discontents definitely belong to the radical school of anti-Zionist struggle, critical of the PLO leadership. And whereas Said was irritated, in 1975, by Noam Chomsky's reservations about the PLO',3 he ended up finding himself in the company of the most famous of all radical mavericks, fustigating Arafat
International Viewpoint n°275 29
* Book notes and the Pax Zionista on which he has embarked.4
That is why the second volume, Peace & its Discontents, is more important and original than the first. There one finds the brilliant analytical and polemical talent of the author of Orientalism devoted to a task utterly in tune with the most specific aspect of Julien Benda's model of the intellectual as an uncompromising truth teller, which Said likes very much to quote and which he follows here for the first time against his fellow Palestinian intellectuals.5 There will the reader find an analysis all the more precious that it is quite rare indeed nowadays. Not hesitating to disturb the very large chorus singing the praise of the Washington Israeli-Palestinian accords, Said plays a sour note, calling things by their rightful name. He does so, galvanised by his deep distaste for the shameless spectacle of the Palestinian sycophants joining their traditional Israeli and American haters, now congratulating them with the contempt of slaveholders praising the servility of their slaves.
It is impossible within the space limitation of this book review even to summarize adequately all the arguments that Edward Said developed with the sharpness of a scimitar's edge. He has no lack of formulas or analogies to describe Arafat's 'autonomous' enclaves in the West Bank and Gaza: a Bantustan, a 'Vichy government', a 'municipal self-rule under foreign tutelage', an "Israeli protectorate', etc. All point to what Said considers to be the true nature of Arafat's Palestinian Authority: essentially, a continuation of the Israeli occupation by other means, with the PLO's much-vaunted and ridiculously overblown police force doing Israel's enforcement'6
Said submits both the text of the September 1993 Washington agreement and its ongoing implementation to his critical appraisal. Of the former, he asserts that it amounts to a legitimation of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza, as embodied in the Zionist settlements and the presence of the Israeli army, which the agreement does not even put into question. He stresses that, seen from the angle of Palestinian national interests which the PLO was supposed to uphold, the agreement is a sellout, betraying the cause of the majority of the Palestinian people driven out of their ancestral land to the status of 'refugees' in other territories. Above all, the agreement consecrates a relationship wherewith the Israeli occupier 30 International Viewpoint March 1996 remains in full control of the fate, means of living (water included) and access to the territories put under PLO governorship.
The implementation of the 1993 agreement, as defined by subsequent agreements and achieved on the ground, amounts to a carve-up of the West Bank into several zones of Palestinian density separated by areas of Zionist settlement and roads designed to connect between these areas and link them to the pre-1967 Israeli border. The end result will be a patchwork resembling anything but the independent state' that the Palestinians aspire to. In so doing, Israel will have killed two birds with one stone: getting rid of the embarrassing task of exerting direct control on an increasingly unman-
HAMAS ageable population, and removing the main impediment to the establishment of 'normal' relations between the Zionist state and its Arab environment. Normal designates here an obvious drive to open the Arab hinterland to Israeli economic exploitation.
The initial joyful reaction of the population in the areas from where the Israeli army has withdrawn did not puzzle Edward Said. "True, residents of the West Bank and Gaza are rightfully glad to see that some Israeli troops will withdraw, and that large amounts of money might start to come in. But it is rank dishonesty not to be alert to what the agreement entails in further occupation, economic control and profound insecurity. ' He even expected that the scheduled Palestinian elections would take place according to Arafat's wishes, helping the reader to understand the unfolding events. "Thus an unfortunately resilient political system is taking shape in the autonomous zones under Arafat and his men. (There are disappointingly few women in government.) Tired out by years of resistance, especially during the intifada, most Palestinians seem to accept what is before them as inevitable, although most are disgusted with what is going on. 8
There lies the most powerful part of Said's analyses: in his assessment of what he calls Arafat's "Vichy government'. Knowing intimately the collaborators and their ways of operating, he submits their Palestinian Authority to a devastating portrayal. He thus gives the reader a clue to Arafat's social base: 'He has now established a formidable network of hangers-on, sycophants, commission agents, spies and informers through Fateh, his non-ideological and tribal organization.' ...'his employees plus their dependents give him an impressive network of about 350,000 dependents throughout the territories. If you add to that the number of prospective seekers of employment, businessmen and unscrupulous speculators who must go through Arafat to get projects approved, the number almost doubles'.9 The overall picture of Arafat's government that comes out of Said's virtuosic criticism stands somewhere between an operetta dictatorship and a ruthless megalomaniac tyranny in Saddam Hussein's fashion. At times, Edward Said sounds even as if he were settling personal accounts with the autocratic leader of the PLO, putting much of the blame on his personality and his backward authoritarianism. Having been reproached for that, the distinguished Palestinian-American Professor justified himself by pointing to the most traditional pattern of "Third World' dictatorships to which Arafat's rule belong There is no constituted process of accountability' in the Palestinian movement. 'What we do have instead is an all-powerful ruler who survives despite a seemingly unending record of failure. 10 If the only problem were indeed the fact of pouring contempt on Arafat himself, it could have been perfectly legitimate, in the same vein as the devastating irony that the tragi-farcical character of Louis Bonaparte inspired a pamphleteer like Karl Marx.
However, there is another problem with Said's criticism of Arafat's autocracy, and the comparison with Marx's historical masterpiece is revealing in that respect. Marx described the 'uncle's nephew' as the right man in the right place at the helm of the huge French bureaucracy and army, explaining Louis Bonaparte by history instead of the reverse, Said seems at times to stick to a very crude explanation of such a major historic process as the collusion between Arafat and the Zionist colonial project. It is as if the crux of the matter were Arafat's 'technical incompetence' and poor command of the English language, his 'misreadings and miscalculations', 'ignorance', 'poor education' , 'flawed linguistic and political understanding', etc. Peace & its Discontents is riddled with such analytical short cuts.
Whereupon, when Said laments time and again that the Palestinian side had no legal consultants to help it conclude a binding international agreement', that they did not seek 'any expert legal opinions', nor did they seek advice about the language, and that although 'the Palestinian people have talented human resources, Arafat and his aides never used these resources during the Oslo negotiations', 12 one cannot help getting the unpleasant feeling that the distinguished Professor experienced a further dimension of the 'dispossession' he described so well. It is as if he felt personally dispossessed of his legitimate role as a learned adviser to the Palestinian leader. It is as if he were insinuating that had he been consulted, the OsloWashington deal would not have been
Since we are not discussing here some conceited shallow author, but an intellectual of the highest calibre, we ought then to presume that there is an interesting clue to that explanatory inhibition, which prevented Edward Said from describing the unfolding events properly as a natural outcome of the long degenerative and backtracking trajectory of the PLO's bureaucracy under Arafat's 'chairmanship'. The very fact that Said was so surprised and disappointed by the deal concluded between Arafat and the Israeli rulers reveals that his perception of the PLO's bureaucracy was affected by some blind spots. In that respect, Said's The Politics of Dispossession is most useful: for studying the evolution of his own attitude towards the PLO, this collection of articles written over 25 years is a key instrument.
It is well known that Edward Said was, between 1977 and 1991, one of the most prestigious members of the Palestine National Council (PNC), often described as the PLO's 'Parliament'. 13 During that period, however, he was not entirely illusioned about the PLO and its leadership: it turns out from what he wrote since then, that he deliberately hid his own true feelings and thoughts, conforming more thus with the self-restraint of a public servant or a "disciplined militant' than with his own model of the intellectual. So that when Said wonders in his introduction to Peace & its Discontents 'Why do PLO representatives say one thing in private (for example, that
Arafat is a megalomaniac) and its exact opposite on television?', 14 one cannot help thinking that he himself did the same for quite a long time.
One very telling article in that regard is the one Said devoted in 1994 to the memory of Hanna Mikhail, a Palestinian friend of his who disappeared tragically in 1976.15
There Said confesses that as early as 1970, he felt that Arafat was a great actor and a supreme political animal with only a provisional relationship to the truth' (he listened to a speech by the Chairman' where the truth was obviously twisted).
As a matter of fact, any person with the slightest critical mind, having ever dealt with the
PLO's bureaucracy, knows for sure that the dictatorial method of governement and the deep bureaucratic corruption prevailing under the new
Palestinian Authority, that Said describes so well, could perfectly be seen and foreseen since 1970. They existed already and got worse over the years up to the present rump police state, which is but the terminal stage of a protracted degenerative process.
This is the only explanation of the state of affairs that Said correctly, and surprisingly, summarizes today as follows:
'What we have now on the Palestinian side is a situation that can best be described as
"business as usual", with the same faces, the same slogans, the same ideas that produced the débâcles of Jordan (1970-1) and Beirut
(1982). There has been no change in the cast of characters who with no record of anything but failure and defeat continue to command Palestinian political destiny: 16
One obvious task of critical and independent intellectuals dedicated to the
Palestinian struggle should have been to denounce uncompromisingly that situation from the start, and to fight for a thorough democratisation of the movement. Instead,
Edward Said covered for years Arafat's behaviour with his high moral authority, to the point of sounding laudatory at times.
This was most blatantly (and regrettably)
the case when, in the aftermath of the
PLO's departure from Beirut besieged by Israeli troops in 1982,
Arafat chose to get rid of his own hard-line followers and to severe his links with the Syrian regime, in order to throw himself in the arms of the Arab right wing'," i.e.
Mubarak's Egypt and Hussein's
Jordan. The Fateh dissidents, backed by Damascus, rebelled
Book notes * against Arafat's dictatorial leadership, his corruptive methods and his obvious inclination towards a reconciliation with the pro-Us Arab governments, having already decided since his last weeks in Beirut to stake his all on Washington. 18
It is at this point that Edward Said wrote for The New York Times a piece entitled "Solidly behind Arafat' which is included in The Politics of Dispossession. 19 Acknowledging that Arafat's leadership was endlessly problematic', he added nevertheless that 'he was always open and personally incorruptible and that 'his commitment to his people and cause had no limits, thus fostering the myth of the great leader embodying the will of his people. Later, in 1984, Said took part in the PNC meeting convened by Arafat, in the most undemocratic fashion, in Amman (to make it impossible for the left-wing PLO groups to attend),20 a meeting which was designed to cover Arafat's next move: his agreement with the King of Jordan, in February 1985, for joint participation in negotiations with Israel. Another blatant failure of Arafat's: Hussein discarded single-handedly the agreement, one year later, to try his own way with his Zionist Labourite cronies who were back in government, led by Shimon Peres.
The subsequent reunification' of the PLO in 1987 did not save it from reaching the lowest ebb in its existence. It was rescued by the sudden outburst of the intifada by the end of the same year, a powerful movement stemming from the depths of Palestinian society under Israeli occupation. The PLO leadership in exile did it utmost, however, to impose its control over the movement, nipping in the bud the dynamics of autonomous self-organisation that the intifada had unleashed.21 It channeled the full steam of the mass struggle into its politics of subservience to the US governement. Betraying the positions proclaimed by expressions of the intifada, it convened a PNC meeting in the fall of 1988 in order to to abide by Washington's conditions, recognizing Israel's right to exist within secure borders (UN Security Council resolution 242/1967) without any quid pro quo.
International Viewpoint n° 275 31
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* Book notes
Edward Said nevertheless commended this 1988 PNC meeting highly, stressing in particular the fact that its resolutions *clearly intend willingness to negotiate directly', since they "flatly contradicted' the Palestinian National Charter of 1964.22 How could he oppose Arafat's statement, shortly after, that the same Charter had become obsolete ('caduque'), one wonders.23 The evolution of the subsequent US-PLO dealings disappointed Said (he complained already about the lack of 'expertise' of the Palestinian negotiators). And there upon he was deeply inspired by Nelson Mandela's compelling example: the comparison with Arafat and his men was unavoidable, and very much to their disadvantage. One does not need to read between the lines to see that Said's article on Mandela, in 1990, is a critique of the PLO leadership, confirming Christopher Hitchens reports. 24
In 1991, Said now reveals, he was alarmed at how anxious the PLO seemed to be about accepting American (and, in effect, Shamir's Likud) terms', shortly after the US onslaught in thẹ Gulf and before the USsponsored Madrid conference for "peace' in the Middle East. The prestigious Professor
Notes 1 'No matter how much secular people like myself lament their methods and their vision (such as it is), there is no doubting the truth that for many Palestinians these people express a courageous protest against the humiliations and demeaning denials of identity imposed on all Palestinians as a people.' Peace & its Discontents, p. 159. 2 Except for the Introduction and Epilogue written in 1994, using articles reproduced in Peace & its Discontents. 3 The Politics of Dispossession, p. 328. 4 'All of a sudden the major Palestinian leader, Yasir Arafat, signed an agreement with Israel (under US sponsorship) and I found myself criticizing the so-called peace, as well as the PLO and its titular head. (Peace & its Discontents, pp. xxXXI). 5 'Most of the Palestinian intellectuals who are capable of understanding the reality have been, I believe, too anxious to bolster their self-esteem by actively seeking to cooperate with Arafat, Israel, and the US, with results for their compatriots in the Occupied Territories that are deeply dispiriting. In this they too closely follow Arafat and his lieutenants, who have abandoned their principles and history just to be recognized by the White Man, to be invited to Brookings, and to appear on US TV: (lbid., p. 172). 6 Ibid., p. 43. 7 Ibid., p. 13. 8 Ibid., p. 171. 9 Ibid., pp. 168-171. 10 Ibid., p. xxvii. 11 lbid., p. xxv. 12 lbid., p. 182. 13 Actually, the PNC was not elected through any democratic process. The majority of its members were appointed by Arafat's group who used it and convened it when it suited their convenience, to confer some kind of legitimacy to their political moves. After the 1993 deal, Arafat, knowing that a sizeable portion of the PNC members did not agree with his capitulatory course, decided to let it sink into oblivion. 14 On p. xxvi.
15 lbid., pp. 73-83. The following quotation is from p. 79. 16 lbid., p. 71-72. 17 See The Arab Right Wing' (1979) in The Politics of Dispossession, pp. 224-230. 18 The fact that the Fateh dissidents turned into Syrian stooges does not in the least disprove their assessment of Arafat and his men. When leaving Beirut, Arafat had praised US president Reagan's so-called plan for a solution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. He has since then built all his moves on winning Washington's favour (except his stand during the Gulf crisis and war where he bet on Saddam Hussein, after having been dropped inconsiderately by the US administration). Said's two collections contain a strong criticism of this strategy. At one point in one of his recent articles, he recognizes 'the underlying capitulation of the PLO, which after 1982 gradually came to see itself not as a liberation movement but as an independence party willing in the end to settle for municipal, as opposed to national. authority: (Peace & its Discontents, p. 36, my emphasis). 19 On pp. 101-103. 20 See ibid., pp. xxv-xxvi. 21 The left-wing fractions of the PLO helped in that process, confirming a long self-defeating tradition of tail-ending Arafat while barking at him. Their historic failure can be measured by the growth of the Fundamentalists influence. 22 Ibid., p. 150. 23 This is what Edward Said told an Egyptian journalist in early 1995, after the latter pointed to the contradiction between his past and present positions. He declared honestly however. Perhaps I should have abstained from voting on the decisions of the 1988 PNC in Algiers'. (Peace & its Discontents, p. 187). 24 Ibid., Foreword, p. xv. Said's article is in The Politics of Dispossession, pp. 366-371. He laments about PLO representatives visiting the US and 'desperately seeking meetings with the State Department", while stating that they would be willing to discuss modifications of boundaries with Israel, that the 1967 lines are negotiable, that even the principle of a Palestinian state is negotiable' (p. 370). 25 lbid., p. xxxi-xxxii.
Mutation and regroupment then resigned from the PNC. 'I said only that I was leaving for reasons of health. I said not one word more, and because
(against hope) I wanted our efforts to
The collapse of Stalinism and the continuing succeed I didn't criticize what I felt was a capitalist crisis has contradictory effects. Myths tragically mistaken policy. 25 Whoever and illusions connected to the restoration of reads this statement will note the very capitalism in the post-Stalinist societies have peculiar logic by which a sharp-minded aissipated, faced with the actually existing market intellectual could delude himself into economy. But reactions to the socio-economic believing that by refraining from criticising crisis all too often take the form of reactionary a 'tragically mistaken policy', he might help tendencies of an ethnic, nationalist, racial or it succeed!
religious character. Hence the urgent need to rebuild a world-wide movement of anti-
In a sense, the story of capitalist struggle, within the socialist
Edward Said is hardly original. It bears an account of the recomposition of the workers' movement obvious resemblance to which is underway as a result of the double the self-deceptive relationship that so many brilliant
The political disorder in the ranks of the antiintellectuals fostered with
PLANTA capitalist left has resulted in many political, even stalinism in its heyday.
Like only a minority of them however, the ideological capitulations. But it has also led to a spectacular author of Orientalism did not betray his overcoming of the sectarian traditions generated by the existence of Stalinism which have taken root in the anti-capitalist left over the decades. Regroupments of own principles of justice when he finally forces determined to learn the lessons of the historical abomination that was decided to get rid of an unwarranted
Stalinism and to continue, against the winds and the tides, to fight against conception of loyalty.
capitalism are being realised in a number of countries.
His commitment to his people prevailed
In all the countries where such possibilities exist, the organisations of the Fourth against his commitment to the PLO's
International are ready to be part of the re-groupment process. We consider this as bureaucratic institution. He thus contributed an important step towards the recomposition of the anti-capitalist left on a world the weight of his own prestigious example to the further confirmation of one of the crucial lessons of this century: no just cause can be adequately served by disguising the truth.*
32 International Viewpoint March perspective, failure of social democracy and Stalinism.
capitalism and Stalinism.
Resist demonstration in San Francisco on April 14. The "Fight the Right"
March will demand that there is no retreat on affirmative action, and address a broad range of feminist and progressive issues
Demands for economic justice include an end for the "war on poor women"; opposition to
California, the National Org-
For more information call San Francisco anization for Women (N.O.W.)
has initiated a call for a national
Cuba Si!
Every major union central in Quebec and English Canada and a number of large NGOs have sponsored the March 15-16 International Conference in Solidarity with Cuba which