EDWARD SAID ON PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST.

BY ZUBEIDA JAFFER

 In the words of Nobel laureate Nadine Gordimer, Edward Said is  not “Out of Place” as the title of his autobiography suggests, but “in place amongst the truly important intellects of the 20th century.” Introducing him at the weekend conference on education, Gordimer also described the Columbia University professor as an independent spokesperson for the Palestianian people who had become a “target for many arrows.”

Both eminent intellectual and passionate advocate for a cause, Said  said he could understand the longing of the Jewish people for Israel but could not understand why that longing has to displace the Palestinians. “That is profoundly unjust,” he said.

Addressing a public meeting at the University of Cape Town this week(Monday), he said  historically Jewish communities in the Arab world had never been subjected to the kind of anti-semitism of Europe or the holocaust of Europe. “We are paying the bill for Hitler,” he said.

As a child, he lived through the uprooting of his family from their native land – a process which left thousands of Palestinians without homes. Today those in exile like himself number about 4 million none of whom enjoy rights of return or access to the land of their birth. In 1948, only 6.7 percent of the land belonged to Jews. After 1967, 93 percent of the land was transformed into Jewish land, held in trust. “No Arab can buy that land,’ he said. “Any Jew anywhere in the world has the right to go to Israel while no Palestinian has that right.”

For just over 30 minutes, Said spoke with passion about the Palestinian cause in a very different tone to his hour-long academic presentation at the weekend education conference.

Invited by Education Minister Kader Asmal, Said spoke at Kirstenbosch on  the importance of the book and reading. His address entitled “The Confluence of Civilisations: The Book, Performance Art and Music in the 21st Century, formed part of the conference Saamtrek: Values, Education and Democracy in the 21st century held in Cape Town.

There Said was the consummate academic, providing only a tiny glimpse into the mind of activism and passion for a cause.  “Reading connects us to the book, and to all the affiliations it bears within it, to its own time, to the world of the author, to the various structures of feeling, perspective and power that animate it, and to other books and other times,” he said. “The workings of the imagination, in sum, are what the book embodies from a whole gamut of perspectives that emerge only in the act of reading.”

The measured literary mind was transformed into a passionate campaigner for Palestinian rights calling on his UCT audience to understand and support his struggle.

Agitated, unable to easily find the right words to describe his outrage at conditions on the Gaza strip, he finally says it would make Soweto seem like Miami Beach. Not an apt description but an expression of his agitation. “The Gaza strip is surrounded by electronic wire. It is a vast cage,” he said.   

Said has been both an outspoken critic of the Israeli government and has recently not spared the Palestinian leadership. 

 ‘Long years of exile has turned it(the PLO), into a desperate body unable to do much except guarantee the rights of the inner circle, the mafia, I am sorry to say,” he said.

“We have a corrupt regime under Mr Arafat in which there is no public sector.”

But in the absence of real alternatives, Said continues to acknowledge Yasser Arafat as leader. “While he is a tragic and complex figure, he is still our leader,” he said. “He unified Palestinians during the darkest moments and kept hope alive.”

He is careful in describing the present leadership impasse as temporary.  “The years of isolation and the temptations of the role back in Palestine have corrupted the movement for the time-being,” he said.

But at the weekend conference, he does intimate that he hopes for the emergence of a younger layer of leaders with a commitment to inclusivity. What was also needed from such a leadership was something akin to the generosity of the South African black majority. Peace needed a recognition on the Israeli side that co-existence was possible.

He does not support the view that the Palestinian cause is an Islamic one. Palestinians were both Christian and Muslim.  Said himself a Christian, says it was a secular struggle. “It has religious components but not principally,” he said. “People react against injustice. On the Israeli side, there is a religious component – this is discrimination of non-Jews by Jews. They have brought this element in, not us.”

Back at UCT, he had harsh words both for the past involvement of the British government and the present role of the United States government.

“Britain bears a heavy responsibility here,” he said. He was referring to the starting point of the conflict in 1917 when the British Prime Minister Balfour promised Palestine to the Jewish people. The British at the time recognised a well-organised Zionist movement which had started in Euope at the end of the 19th century. The movement had conceived of returning Jews to a place where they could be free of anti-semitism – “first it was Uganda, then Argintinia, then it became Palestine.”

“What Balfour did was promise the territory of one people to another,” said Said.

Said is both exiled Palestinian and an American citizen and is “ashamed” of his adoptive countries role in the peace process. “It is very much on the Israeli side,” he said. “The U.S. subsidy to Israel is the highest paid by any power in the history of foreign aid – five billion dollars a year amounting roughly to 120 billion over several years.”

Financial support ran parallel to political and military support. “The U.S. protects Israel at the United Nations,” he said. “It has vetoed up to 60 resolutions condemning Israeli actions.”

During the present intifada(uprising), the largest single military transfer came from the U.S. ‘Fifty helicopters were transferred in October last year and used to attack civilian houses,” he said.

In response to a question from a student, he conceded that every story has two sides but said a distinction had to be drawn between what was just and what was unjust. “The Zionist movement was a movement of conquest and dispossession,’ he said. “It was an armed movement.” What one sees today is an uprising of mainly young people armed with rocks against  one of the most heavily armed powers in the world, he said.

Said, who has been diagnosed with leukaemia, and describes himself as a “sick man” sees no hope in an arrangement where peace proposals at Oslo  insist on dividing people into separate “Bantustans”. He calls for a system of one person, one vote for all and the co-existence of all people in the land of Palestine also known as Israel. “The only hope is that the two peoples will understand that the other will simply not go away.”

He sees no hope of a military solution. “Arab states have frequently betrayed us,” he said. What he  did see as hopeful was the efforts inside Israel at joint non-violent struggles which involved the beginnings of small scale cooperation between Israelis and Palestinians.

The peace process as it stood  with its insistence on division of people could not  go anywhere. “It is at an end,” he said. 

Ends.