Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 2000, pages 86-91

Arab-American Activism

Arab-American Writers' Conference Held in Chicago

Arab-American writers from around the country gathered in Chicago the weekend of Oct. 8-10 for the first annual National Professional Literary Conference on Arab-American and Ethnic Writing. The conference, organized by Chicago writer and activist Ray Hanania, generated a great deal of enthusiasm, energy and exchange of ideas among the 145 participants.

The conference opened with an open mike session Friday night at which some 20 writers read from their works, ranging from poetry and fiction to non-fiction prose. While the weekend's events dealt with problems, issues and strategies for exposure and publication, the readings reinforced the artistic basis behind these considerations and set the tone for the following two days of panels and discussions.

Poet Sam Hamoud moderated the first panel on "Challenges Facing the Arab-American Writer." Former Congressman Paul Findley, author of the groundbreaking They Dare to Speak Out and Deliberate Deceptions, and who currently is working on a book about Islam, sounded one of the conference's major themes—the difficulty in finding publishers for books which challenge the predominant Zionist ideology. Fellow panelists Lisa Suhair Majaj and Nathalie Handal discussed the conflict they face in balancing their artistic impetus toward self-expression with their role as "cultural tour guides" in correcting stereotypes and misunderstandings about Arab Americans, and the resulting danger of self-censorship. Kathryn Haddad, co-editor of the newly launched Arab-American literary journal Mizna, spoke of the struggles the Minneapolis-based publication faces and of the importance of tangible support from the Arab-American community.

The day's second panel, on "Writing the Arab American Novel," was moderated by Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, managing editor Janet McMahon. Journalist Andrea Brunais, author of Night of the Litani, a novel set in Lebanon "with no Arab villains," shared successful writing tips with the audience and, elaborating on Paul Findley's experiences, her frustration at the refusal of many bookstores to feature, much less carry, her book despite its literary merits. Shaw Dallal, who began writing his novel Scattered Like Seeds for his family and friends, had publishers tell him that, though his was an important book, they could not publish it. Fortunately for author and readers alike, Syracuse University, in New York, where Dallal is a professor, published the novel under its own imprint. Ibtisam S. Barakat, who is writing a book on growing up Palestinian under Israeli occupation, spoke about writing as a way of thinking and moving forward. "As we connect with each other," she said, "our story will become universal."

A panel on "Writing Opportunities in the American Media" was moderated by Arab-American journalist Mufid Deak, who currently is a writer/editor with the USIA Washington File. Rolling Stone music critic Lorraine Mahia Ali talked about her article "Do I Look Like Public Enemy Number One?" about "the human side of the Arab experience." Bob Kolasky, managing editor of IntellectualCapital.com, provided information and tips on writing for profit on the Internet. Dr. Rosina Hassoun, vice president of the Association of Arab American University Graduates and editor of the AAUG Monitor, discussed the "triple identity" of Arab-American writers as Muslim (or Eastern Christian), Arab and American.

Eman Rasheed, moderating a panel on "Addressing the Controversial Issues," generated a lively debate on the subject of dealing with anti-Arab bias in the media. An associate producer with the nationally broadcast Judge Mills Lane TV show, Rasheed told of the prejudice she encountered as an Arab-American breaking into the field of television news at CBS and MSNBC and of her decision to use her nickname, Manny, and downplay, but not deny, her ethnicity. The impassioned response of conference participants reflected the intensity and relevance of the issue. Rasheed, who emphasized that she was not recommending this as a strategy but felt she needed it at the time in order to survive in the industry, was clearly touched by the support she received from a group of young Chicago writing students attending the conference, several in hijab, who stood up to tell her they respected her decision.

In addition to the student visitors, a group of Arab journalists on a USIA tour attended the conference as part of their visit to the United States. Representing Jordan, Morocco, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Syria, their presence, particularly in the context of the underlying theme of cultural identity, added an international dimension to the gathering.

The Saturday evening awards dinner, emceed by Ray Hanania, was an occasion for recognizing previous achievements as well as laying the groundwork for future accomplishments. Emphasizing that no promising student should have to forego an education for financial reasons, Arab Star publisher Aziz Shihab announced the establishment of The Scholarship Program for Writers of Arab-American Heritage, for which he was planning to seek funding nationwide, beginning the following day in Chicago. Lisa Suhair Majaj then presented the QALAM Awards, sponsored by MIZNA, Jusoor and Al-Jadid magazines, to the winners of the poetry, fiction and non-fiction awards

Keynote speaker Salim Muwakkil, senior editor of In These Times and a Chicago Tribune columnist and editorial board member, addressed "Challenges Facing Race and Ethnic Writing in America." The African-American journalist's work was recognized with the M.T. Mehdi Courage in Writing Award, presented by broadcast journalist Anisa Mehdi, daughter of the pioneering Iraqi-American publisher and activist. Other recipients so honored were the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs staff, Chicago Tribune journalist Stephen Franklin, Orlando Sentinel columnist Charley Reese, the Beirut Times newspaper staff, the Arab-American writers organization RAWI, founded by Barbara Nimri Aziz and attorney Joseph Zogby, the former assistant to National Security adviser Martin Indyk who was attacked by Zionist Morton Klein for articles he wrote on his experiences in Palestine.

At a breakfast forum the next morning on the topic of "Challenges in Arab-American Publishing," Prof. Michael W. Suleiman of Kansas State University presented a history of early Arab-American newspapers, often family-based, and their evolution. Aziz Shihab, former Dallas Morning News reporter, entertained the conferees with tales of his tribulations in launching The Arab Star, a national English-language newspaper. Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, managing editor Janet McMahon held up the first issue of the publication, then an eight-page newsletter, and compared it to the current four-color magazine. She talked about the always-tenuous finances, attempts to physically remove the magazine from library shelves, and the effect of such crises as the Gulf war on readership and circulation.

Other panels focused on "Ethnic Stereotypes in Writing" and "The Arab American Story in Drama and Film." Conference participants also voted to approve three resolutions: condemning Commentary magazine for its false and malicious attack on Edward Said; condemning the Palestinian National Authority for the censorship and recent arrests of journalists; and condemning the Lebanese government for the indictment and trial of musician and singer Marcel Khalifa.

Energized by the sharing of experiences, ideas and strategies, conference participants enthusiastically thanked organizer Ray Hanania for his hard work, and predicted an equally if not more successful sequel.

—Janet McMahon

Helena Cobban Discusses Syrian-Israeli Negotiations

At the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine author Helena Cobban discussed on Oct. 15 her book Israeli-Syrian Peace Talks: 1991-1996 and Beyond, soon to be released by the United States Institute for Peace. Amid renewed hopes for the resumption of negotiations between the two countries, Cobban described how close Israel and Syria had come to achieving a final settlement in 1996.

In August 1993, U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher was passing messages between Syrian President Hafez al-Assad and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin regarding Israel's plans for a full withdrawal from the Golan Heights. Cobban said Christopher kept careful notes of his meetings with each leader. The countries had reached the hypothetical stage, "if we give you what you want, will you give us what we want?"

There was what Cobban called a "conditional assumption that Israel would withdraw to its pre-June 4, 1967 borders." In May 1995, Rabin's government agreed to the text of a document that was called "Aims and Principles of a Security Arrangement" which was leaked by his political rival Binyamin Netanyahu to derail negotiations. Rabin then decided to put the negotiations on the back burner "until after he had gotten what he hoped would be a firmer mandate from the electorate."

In his last Israeli TV interview before his assassination on Nov. 4, 1995, Rabin described negotiations between Syria and Israel as "reciprocal," unlike negotiations with the Palestinians. Succeeding Rabin as prime minister, Shimon Peres decided to take the "high and fast flight to peace," not waiting for Israeli elections scheduled for October 1996. Peres was even prepared to "give up the atom," referring to Israel's nuclear capabilities for the first time in public, in a bold approach to peace. That approach didn't last long.

Syria was prepared to offer, in exchange for land, a high degree of normalization with Israel, including economic exchanges, generous access to water for Israelis, and acceptance of "some degree of asymmetry on security arrangements," Cobban said. "But Peres got sandbagged by colleagues in his own party and in his own government. Unlike Rabin, who told his generals to take a hike, Peres couldn't stand up to the military."

Ehud Barak and the other generals moved up the election date and got the peace process moving on the slow track pending the election outcome. But Peres' left-leaning supporters lost confidence in him after his brutal "Operation Grapes of Wrath" attacks on Lebanon, and then Arab-Israeli voters wouldn't help him win the elections. When the Likud party won, there was no interest in continuing the negotiations with either Syria or the Palestinians.

Cobban called for a tougher U.S. negotiating stance, and recalled that President George Bush and Secretary of State James Baker brought the parties to the negotiating table in 1991 "kicking and screaming." By contrast, the Clinton administration deployed Secretary of State Christopher as "a dedicated and assiduous carrier of messages" between Israel and Syria, while Secretary of State Madeline Albright only acts the part of a "handmaiden."

All Golan negotiations were suspended until Assad sent his political bouquet via Patrick Seale after the election of Barak, who, Cobban said, "remains a cipher." If he wanted to resume negotiations where they left off on March 4, 1996, he could do so tomorrow, she said, adding that Dennis Ross should now blow the dust off the records of all the meetings to negotiate the return of the Golan, and continue where they left off.

The removal of all 16,000 Israeli settlers from the Golan, always understood to be part of a peace agreement, would set an important precedent for similar negotiations with the Palestinians, as would the return of the 167,000 Syrians displaced in 1967, who now have grown to 500,000, Cobban said. Golanis who stayed after 1967 and mostly rejected Israeli citizenship number about 16,000.

"Israel should look 20 or 30 years down the pike and figure out what kind of region they want to live in," Cobban concluded. "Will Israel be a high-tech, developed land with economic opportunities? You can't have that while you occupy someone's land. Imagine what could happen if the state of war did end and the military burdens were lifted from both sides."

—Delinda C. Hanley

Montreal Students Commend Washington Report on Middle East Affairs,

In what Montreal human rights activist Samia Costandi called a "model program," Arab student groups from Montreal's Concordia University and McGill University combined forces to turn out an audience of 450 students and faculty members for a Dec. 1 talk entitled, "The Israeli Lobby's Role in U.S. Middle East Policy" by executive editor Richard Curtiss of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.

The program, on the downtown Concordia campus and heavily publicized both with paid advertisements and advance articles in the campus newspapers of both universities, culminated in presentation of separate commendations to the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and to Mr. Curtiss for "outstanding contributions to world awareness of the plight of the Palestinian people" by both student human rights groups.

The two campus groups, which previously have sponsored highly successful talks by British journalist Robert Fisk and Dr. Norman Finkelstein of New York University, have an interesting history. After operating separately under different names over the years, officers of the McGill and Concordia campus groups decided to adopt identical names, "Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights" (SPHR), and combine funds, committees and volunteers to bring speakers for combined programs which not only would attract large audiences, but also increase mainstream and campus media coverage of the speakers and their opinions. In thanking Basil Kilani and Shady Maa'rouf of SPHR Concordia and Rabia Masri of SPHR McGill for the awards, Mr. Curtiss, who has spoken at many campus programs over the years, added his praise to Ms. Costandi's for the extremely well-organized and well-publicized SPHR event.

—Nathan Jones

Palestinian Observer Outlines U.N. Resolutions at CPAP

At the end of the Second World War in Europe, no one could discern what would happen in Palestine. The British government wanted to retain control of strategic areas, the United States wanted increased access to oil resources, Palestinian Arabs wanted an end to Jewish immigration and Jewish residents of Palestinian desired a Jewish state.

In January of 1947, after multiple committees of inquiry, the British decided that if no agreement could be achieved, the United Nations would have to determine the matter of Palestine. Since the fighting of 1947 to 1949, the organization has passed numerous resolutions regarding the repatriation or restitution of Palestinian refugees, the status of Jerusalem, illegal Israeli settlements, and the Palestinian right to self-determination.

Marwan Jilani, deputy permanent observer for the Palestinian Mission to the United Nations, discussed these resolutions Oct. 12 at the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine in Washington, DC.

"Israel's persistence to discredit and reject the United Nations and the international legitimacy that is represented by the relevant resolutions of the U.N. is a clear indication of Israel's real intentions," Jilani said. "Israel wants to leave the Palestinian side vulnerable to the imbalance of power, and to deprive the Palestinians of their only strength, which is international legitimacy and law."

Faced with such Israeli intransigence, Jilani said that Palestinians must maintain a firm position based on the following elements: the permanent responsibility of the United Nations toward the question of Palestine, the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, and the legitimacy in all circumstances of international law.

According to Jilani, U.N. resolutions should play an essential role in resolving the questions surrounding Palestine. As for the issue of refugees, Jilani said, General Assembly Resolution 194 (III), calls for the repatriation or compensation of Palestinian refugees, Security Council Resolution 237 calls upon Israel to facilitate the return of the refugees, and Security Council Resolution 799 condemns Israeli expulsion of Palestinians.

As far as Jerusalem is concerned, Jilani said, Resolution 181, calling for the partition of Palestine between its Arab and Jewish inhabitants, designated Jerusalem as a corpus separatum,and General Assembly Resolution 194 (III) reaffirmed free access to religious sites. However, Israel moved to absorb into its jurisdiction areas of Jerusalem under its military control. In September of 1948 the Israeli Supreme Court was established there, and in February 1949 the Israeli Knesset assembled and the president took the oath of office within the city.

In fact, Jilani said, Israel's assurances regarding the implementation of resolutions 181 and 194 were mentioned in the General Assembly's resolution admitting Israel into the United Nations. Nevertheless, the Knesset proclaimed Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in 1950, and by 1951, moved its ministries into the city.

Israel's occupation of East Jerusalem, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip in 1967 brought new repercussions for the status of Jerusalem. With West Jerusalem already declared by Israel as its capital, Israeli actions in East Jerusalem following Israel's military success were a clear indication, Jilani maintained, of Israeli intention to dominate the entire city.

In light of Israeli actions to annex Jerusalem, the Security Council adopted a series of resolutions declaring Israeli actions and legislation in respect to Jerusalem as totally invalid. These include Resolutions 250, 252, 267, 271, 298, 476, 478 and 672. As Jilani explained, these resolutions simultaneously condemned Israel's attempts to hold the entire city and Israel's refusal to accept the Security Council's resolution that the Geneva Conventions of 1949 were applicable in areas under military occupation, including Jerusalem.

Under international law, Israeli settlements are also illegal, Jilani explained. "The Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War of 1949, of which Israel is a signatory party, prohibits in all cases the transfer of parts of the civilian population of the occupying power into the territory it occupies and the destruction, seizure, and confiscation of properties, private and public, in occupied territories." The Security Council has also passed resolutions 446, 452 and 465, declaring all measures taken by Israel to alter the demographic composition and physical structure of occupied territories as illegal, Jilani said.

Also on the side of the Palestinian people, Jilani concluded, is the international recognition of the Palestinian people as formally expressed and recognized by the United Nations and individual states. Israel cannot continue indefinitely to violate the rights and self-determination of the Palestinian people inasmuch as these are crucial elements in the establishment of a just and lasting peace.

—Sadia Razaq

After Madrid: Four Perspectives on U.S.-Palestinian Relations

The Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine in Washington, DC was the site of a panel discussion Oct. 29 regarding the state of U.S. and Palestinian relations eight years after the 1991 Madrid Conference.

Of the four speakers, three concurred with the view that the U.S. is not truly an "honest broker" in the peace process between the Palestinians and Israelis, while a dissenting view was offered by Aaron Miller, deputy special Middle East coordinator for Arab-Israeli negotiations at the U.S. State Department, whose absence during the first half of the program prompted Phyllis Bennis, a speaker on the panel, to remark that Mr. Miller's absence was "less about a scheduling conflict than symbolically about the U.S. relationship with the Palestinians."

Ali Jarbawi, the first speaker, noted the inequities of the Palestinian-Israeli negotiations, pointing out that the meetings often involve "Palestinian amateur negotiators dealing with Israeli lawyers." Jarbawi, a professor of political science at Birzeit University, said, "Limitations imposed by a stronger group often must be accepted by the weaker group...the Palestinians have no choice but to swallow Israeli dictates." He noted that since the Israeli elections in May, 43 new settlement outposts have been established on the West Bank.

Nadim Rouhanna, an associate professor at the Graduate Program on Conflict Studies at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, said that although the dismantling of some settlement outposts indicates the presence of a center position in Israeli politics, "the left and right in Israel do not differ on the right to settle any land they want. They differ on the political expediency of doing so."

"'When all else fails, lower your standards.' This has become the Palestinian way of dealing with the Israelis as well as the U.S.," said Phyllis Bennis, a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington.

Bennis, who is responsible for IPS United Nations and Middle East programs, cited National Security Adviser Samuel Berger's statement that U.S. interests in the Middle East are oil, protection of Israel, and stability in the region. "Where is the justice in that?" Bennis asked. "What about peace? It seems that for the U.S., the Palestinians have become an obstacle in the U.S. attempt to create a Middle East NAFTA."

Bennis strongly rejected the view that the U.S. is an honest broker in the peace process, noting the overwhelming amount of economic and military aid given to Israel by the U.S. every year. Bennis pointed to the Wye agreements as a particularly egregious example of U.S. funding to Israel: $800 million of the Wye accord funds will go toward Israeli strategic military uses, including the continuing development of a theater missile defense system. The Wye funds were allocated to ease economic burdens involved with Israel handing land back over to the Palestinians. To this, Bennis asked, "What does this [theater missile defense system] have to do with the Palestinians? They [Palestinians] have stones, not missiles."

However, Aaron Miller sees the U.S. role as being mostly that of an unbiased partner in the conflict and responded to Ms. Bennis's assertions that the U.S. does not take an even-handed approach in the conflict. "If U.S. policy was as flawed as Ms. Bennis says, why would Arab leaders look solely to the U.S. for leadership?" Miller asked.

Miller hedged, however, when he said, "I would be the first to admit that there are inconsistencies in the Israeli-Palestinian policy. But the question is, how do you get to what you want the world to be?"

For Bennis, the U.S. bias toward Israel goes beyond Palestinian policy. She noted that the U.S. is a signatory to U.N. Resolution 647, which brought about sanctions against Iraq, but which also contains a solution (Article 14) for ending nuclear arsenals and biological weapons throughout the Middle East, where Israel is the only country possessing nuclear weapons. "Now that the U.S. has signed this, it's law, but the U.S. picks and chooses what it wants to focus on in the resolution, and continues to give military aid to Israel," Bennis said.

—Rob Swanson

Azmi Bishara Speaks at CPAP

Azmi Bishara, a Palestinian Arab member of the Israeli Knesset, spoke Oct. 26 at the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine in an effort, in his own words, "to demystify the image of [Ehud] Barak as the peace camp representative in the Middle East." Noting that although some good has come out of the election of Barak as Israeli prime minister in May 1999, nonetheless those who pin their hopes on Barak will be disappointed.

"The left did not win the election," Bishara said. He argued that part of Barak's support came from right-wing secular Israelis—part of the "Westernized middle class"—who no longer can tolerate the power of the religious parties in Israel. The "secularization of Israeli society" therefore played a significant role in the elections, Bishara explained.

According to Bishara, the Israeli right wing does not see a large difference between Barak and his Likud party predecessor, former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. In addition, the "intifada [already had] convinced the Israeli right-wing that [annexing the West Bank and Gaza] is not viable," said Bishara. At that point the right wing became more amenable to the idea of "demographic separation," or what Bishara and others have called "apartheid."

Bishara said that Arab leaders in the Middle East have put too much hope on Barak because they suffer from a "lack of strategy." He continued, "the only strategy remaining was to wait for Barak." This is why, Bishara said, the Arab leadership played up the importance of a non-Likud leadership in Israel "without doing anything" themselves for three years.

Yet, Bishara added, the Arab political elites "were right to say that Barak is better than Netanyahu in one thing"—the current transitional period. Barak and his voters, Bishara continued, are more likely to implement what they agree to during the transition period.

When it comes to the final status negotiations, now scheduled to begin in February 2000, the situation will not improve, according to Bishara. "Do not wait for revolutions in the peace process," he warned, "because this won't happen." In fact, said Bishara, "in certain security and military issues [Barak is] more intransigent than Netanyahu." In addition, said Bishara, "Barak can do things the right-wing can't do" because he can get away with more.

Bishara fears that when it comes time to discuss final status issues, the U.S. will put more pressure on the Palestinians than on Israel to compromise because by then—at least in theory—Israel will have implemented some of the transition agreements. Bishara challenged the audience to start now in defining the issues not in the "instrumental" way of Oslo—i.e., in bits and pieces—but rather with an "element of fairness and justice."

This can be done, Bishara concluded, through convincing both Israeli and U.S. public opinion that fairness and justice are needed for any lasting peace to be achieved.

—Wendy Lehman

Kathleen Christison Discusses "Perceptions of Palestine"

It won't be much consolation to the displaced Palestinians, but former CIA Analyst Kathleen Christison blames many more than the usual suspects for the persistent unwillingness of 12 American presidents and their advisers to view the Palestinian-Israeli dispute objectively, and act accordingly. In a Nov. 18 talk at the Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine (CPAP) in Washington, DC, Christison, author of a newly published book, Perceptions of Palestine: Their Influence on U.S. Middle East Policy* did not minimize the influence of a pro-Israel U.S. media bias and effective use by the Israel lobby of the influential U.S. Jewish community.

But, she said, the anti-Arab bias predates them all, going back at least to disparaging depictions by Western travelers to the Holy Land, including the beloved 19th century American humorist and satirist Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), who returned from his only trip to Palestine calling it a "hopeless, dreary, heartbroken land" populated by "abject beggars by nature, instinct and education."

"These are the impressions that the policymakers of the early 20th century grew up on," Christison said. "Woodrow Wilson's entire store of knowledge about Palestine consisted of three things: these images of stupid Arabs, a lifetime of biblical teachings that peopled the Holy Land with Jews and Christians but not Muslims or Arabs, and the advice of his Zionist friends and political colleagues. So it's no surprise and no coincidence that after a century of this kind of thing, Wilson listened only to Zionist arguments and thought nothing of the consequences when Britain presented him with the Balfour Declaration for his endorsement.

"Nor is it a surprise that Wilson's successors followed suit," Christison continued. "Franklin Roosevelt had taken in the same anti-Arab impressions throughout his lifetime, felt the same biblical romance about the return of Jews to the Holy Land, and even had some of the same Zionist activists as advisers and political colleagues [and] by this time the press had also taken up the Zionist cause."

"By the time Harry Truman came along, the mindset had been cast in concrete," according to Christison. "The immense sympathy throughout the U.S. for the Jews and their plight after the Holocaust, on top of everything that had gone before, made the establishment of Israel a virtual inevitability."

Christison took strong issue however, with statements by Truman biographer David McCullough that Truman ignored the advice of then-Secretary of State Gen. George Marshall not to recognize Israel before it defined its borders because Truman decided he "had to do the right thing."

Truman "did indeed 'do the right thing' by helping distraught Jews traumatized by the Holocaust," Christison said, "but he did not 'do it the right way.' The right way would not have involved displacing another entire population. Yet there is no evidence in the record that Truman ever showed concern for this aspect of his moral project on behalf of Israel."

Christison prefaced her summary of the opinions of Truman's successors in the White House with a 1980 quotation from Arabist academic Malcolm Kerr, who, after he was appointed president of the American University of Beirut, was assassinated in Lebanon. Kerr "wrote in 1980 that the conventional wisdom on the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was based on a fundamental misperception that tended to skew all policymaking," Christison said.

"The assumption was that Palestinian national claims were 'artificially and mischievously inspired' and thus could be ignored. Everyone—ordinary citizens and policymakers alike—had come to assume, Kerr said, that Arabs simply hated Jews and unreasonably refused to accept Israel's existence, and that this was the ultimate cause of the conflict. Virtually no one any longer remembered that the Palestinians had been dispossessed in 1948 and that this not-unreasoned hatred for Jews lay at the heart of the conflict. The Palestinians' dispersal had become what Kerr called an 'unrecognizable episode.' Even policymakers had forgotten it and forgotten that this was where the root of Palestinian grievances lay."

Christison said that "after the 1948 war, the Palestinians disappeared from the political radar screen altogether and remained off for two decades. When they were thought of at all in Washington, it was as pitiful refugees—a humanitarian but not a political problem, and an issue to which each administration from Eisenhower to Kennedy to Johnson paid less and less attention."

Lyndon Johnson, Christison said, "already despised Gamal Abdul Nasser and 'felt a special affinity for Israel.' He had a whole passel of friends, both inside and outside government, who were fervent supporters of Israel—people like Arthur Goldberg, Abe Fortas, the Rostow brothers, prominent movie producers, and even Israeli diplomats—who vacationed with him at his ranch and had constant access to him to talk in an informal and emotional way about their concerns for Israel.

"What this all meant—this cumulative build-up of a frame of reference that saw only Israel and its perspective—is that: in the late '60s Lyndon Johnson failed altogether to see the emergence of the PLO; that in the 1970s Henry Kissinger, non-plussed at the notion of having to legitimize the Palestinians by talking to them, ignored several overtures from Yasser Arafat that might have been productive had they been probed and explored; that in the later '70s Jimmy Carter was completely hamstrung by political pressures and lobby pressures and media criticism in his attempt to pursue an opening to the Palestinians and bring them into the peace process; [and] that in the 1980s Ronald Reagan created a policy so unquestioningly pro-Israeli and anti-Palestinian that he followed Israel's lead virtually everywhere."

Christison said that "George Bush and James Baker did a great deal to bring the Palestinians into the peace process, however inadequate they were in following through on the process once they'd begun. But by the time they came to office, the so-called frame of reference had become even more entrenched—more or less institutionalized. What has happened over the years—and this has particularly characterized policymaking in the Clinton administration—is that, even though the U.S. does now deal with the Palestinians, does at least to some extent take the Palestinian point of view into account, and does recognize the Palestinians as legitimated participants in the peace process, the United States essentially lets Israel set the pace and the agenda of peace talks.

"As to the way in which the U.S. tends to follow Israel's pace in peace talks, this has been true from the beginning," Christison said, "but it has been particularly noticeable during the Clinton years."

In her CPAP talk, Christison also blamed the Palestinians themselves for at least a portion of the injustices they have suffered at the hands of American presidents and negotiators alike. "Yasser Arafat, I'm sorry to say, does not project a good image for the Palestinians, and the demise or retreat of Hanan Ashrawi has been a great loss," Christison said. "I can't tell you how many Americans out in the hinterland who know essentially nothing about the Palestinians or the issues have said to me, and still say, that Hanan Ashrawi was a wonderful spokesman, a 'really neat' lady, as some of them put it. She's the kind of personality that Americans relate to—even if they can't pronounce her name—and this kind of personal empathy and rapport is extremely important in getting through to Americans."

Concluding, Christison asked rhetorically, "from a purely pragmatic U.S. standpoint, what difference does it make? I would answer that the United States' failure to take the Palestinian perspective into account has perpetuated the entire Arab-Israeli conflict."

Suggesting "that even the 1948 war could have been avoided if someone had thought to treat the Palestinians as equal partners in the partitioning of Palestine," Christison charged that "in virtually every subsequent war, you can point to a U.S. failure to anticipate, or to probe openings that might have prevented conflict. And this has generally always been because we looked at the problem with one eye closed."

—Richard Curtiss

*Perceptions of Palestine , published in 1999 by the University of California Press, is available at a steeply discounted $27 from the AET Book Club catalog.