2014 Hisham Sharabi Memorial Lecture

Yousef Munayyer: Today’s event is one of our main events of the year, our Hisham Sharabi Memorial Lecture. Of course, Hisham Sharabi was Chairman of the Board of The Jerusalem Fund from 1977 to 2005 and the founding member of The Fund. At his passing he was Professor Meritus of European Intellectual History and was the Omar al-Mukhtar Professor of Arab Culture at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. We are very happy to have with us today this year’s Hisham Sharabi Memorial Lecturer, Ambassador Clovis Maksoud.

The title of the talk is, “Hisham Sharabi: Addicted to Precision.” Ambassador Maksoud will discuss the life and work of Hisham Sharabi, his dedication to precision and how he believes Sharabi would view the current state of the question of Palestine in the broader Middle East today. Ambassador Maksoud is former ambassador and permanent observer of the League of Arab States at the United Nations and its Chief Representative in the United States for more than ten years. Maksoud served as the League of Arab States’ Ambassador to India and Southeast Asia from 1961 to 1966 as well as the League of Arab States’ special envoy to the United States in 1974. He was also a member of the United Nations Development Program Advisory Board on the Arab Human Development Reports.

Ambassador Maksoud’s biography is something that I could go on reading for the rest of this hour. He has been a prolific writer, commentator and analyst on Arab issues consistently and I frequently enjoy reading his contributions on a regular basis. So if you would join me in welcoming Ambassador Clovis Maksoud to deliver our Hisham Sharabi Memorial Lecture.

Clovis Maksoud: Good afternoon your Excellency, Ambassador of the Arab League and friends. We are here today to remember a great professor, a wonderful man and an intellectual whose outstanding contributions have raised the level of culture in the Arab world. An intellectual who articulated many aspirations of people, particularly of the Palestinian people, he was also the founder of this Institution. I also want to pay tribute to Yousef Munayyer, who has managed the legacy of the founder, Hisham Sharabi, and has enhanced its presence in the capital of the United States.

When asked, I said Hisham Sharabi was addicted to precision, which makes him less political than I am. But, as much, I am not always precise. So this is a comparison of two Arabs: one is addicted to precision and one who is, unfortunately, a generalist like I am. However, what is common between us is the commitment to the deliberation of Palestine. That commitment takes the form of intellectual contribution, legal proficiency and a realization that this is not a conflict between Muslims, Christians, Arabs or Jews. We recognize that there is a constituency of conscience in Israel and throughout the Arab World. And therefore this is not an inter-religious [struggle] as some people think. This is a struggle by the Palestinian people, which we support and are committed to because it would liberate the Palestinians from the yoke of occupation and it would also liberate the Jews from the constraints, irrationality and dethronement of reason that Zionism represents. I say this because we have learned from Hisham Sharabi a great deal in our attempt to articulate to the American people and to the world community a narrative that is persuasive because it is precise.

Precision in our rhetoric is necessary to prove that we are unrevealing a conquest that the Zionist project has undertaken in the Palestinian homeland. Let me therefore begin with the overall global context in which we are confronted in this matter at this juncture of history. The world is confronted today [with] a situation which is in many ways paradoxical, and that is globalization on the one hand, where revolution, communication, transportation and Twitter has brought us together [with] instant information about each other. Yet on the other hand globalization is also confronting its negation, namely fragmentation. We are experiencing in many societies, especially in the Arab countries, fragmentation, as well as the fragmentation that took place in Yugoslavia and in the Soviet Union, the divisions between religious sects and ethnic groups. So while we are converging together we are diverging in conflicts. This is the paradox of our time. It needs the perception of people like Hisham Sharabi to provide us an insight into the reasons of this contradiction between globalization and fragmentation and to explain the paradox that this constitutes. Therefore, at this moment we are in a situation of quest – where do we go from here? Both on the global level and secondly on the Palestinian and Arab level.

I would like to reflect on this subject, on the occasion of the Hisham Sharabi lecture, because if we can come to grips with a potential resolution, especially amidst the fermentation that is taking place throughout the Arab world, the so-called Arab Spring, we have experienced in the Arab Spring the awareness, consciousness and unity of the Arab people. No sooner than the Tunis revolt against the authoritarians took place that it became instantly infectious in Libya, in Egypt, in Sudan, in Syria, in Iraq, et cetera. Yet, this was the dynamism of the Arab world; an expression of Arab unity on a popular level, but a fragmentation in an absence of sense of direction and a coherent leadership.

It is this contradiction between what the people wanted; to be in power against authoritarian and dictatorial regimes on the one hand, and a dispersal of leadership in many parts of the Arab Spring on the other. We have found that more and more sectarianism is taking place, especially in Iraq between Sunnis, Shias, and Kurds. We’re witnessing a bloodbath that has taken place for the last [three] years in Syria and its implication of having so many refugees throughout the Arab countries, especially in Lebanon and Jordan. It is this dilemma that puts into question the rationality of leadership, the need for precise solutions and the need to precede the solutions with precise thinking with the usage of words, because words in the final analysis are the implements of mobilization and self-expression.

It is in this context that we find that what is taking place today in Egypt in its elections: a reluctance to elect [resulting in] a certain depression that is taking place. Extending the election for a third day [is] in violation of the rule that in one day, maximum in two days, elections should take place. What does this indicate? It indicates that Egypt, which is the cross-fertilizer between the experiences of the North African countries and the West Asian countries of the Arab world, is the one which familiarizes into a sense of community of Arabs throughout the Arab world. It is Egypt which has introduced Arabs to Arabs and we found that as a result of the treaty that it has connected with Israel that is has lost its deterrent capacity [against] the aggression and expansionism of Israel. It has provided Israel a space to act in the arrogant manner that it is doing today.

So it is important for us to get Egypt back into the framework. That is a challenge which is going to be very difficult because what is necessary is not only to bring back Egypt to its deterrent factor and its contributing factor to the Palestinian liberation movement in the few months of the next years that are coming, but it is necessary also that in order to provide an impetus for it we need a sustainable human development taking place and a recovery of our empowerment and our commitment to empower our people. We are the Arabs: a rich nation of poor people. This dichotomy itself has to be rectified as soon as possible and that is why I can recommend that what is taking place in ESCWA (Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia) headquarters in Beirut; the forthcoming report is how the integration of the Arab countries can take place.

It is in this context that to resolve the problems of the Arab world the Arabs have to regain their commitment to Palestinian liberation. It is here that we have a crisis of management of the Palestinian question and rights. This crisis is that the leadership of the Palestinian people has abandoned the framework where justice and acknowledgement of the human and natural rights of the Palestinians is available. And the management has been exclusively the management of the Palestinian question by the United States.

It is important that the United States partake in any resolution, but that should not be the exclusive management of it. It is in this exclusivity that we see, in the context of today, a redundancy since the Oslo Agreement: more settlements have been established, more defiance of the human rights of the Palestinians has been exercised, more hopelessness has been introduced and more arrogance has been established. We have seen settlements proliferating in a manner unprecedented even after 1948. And therefore, what is the question of prerequisite? What has happened that made the United Nations bring a formula, a resolution, that in November 2012 as a cumulative effect of all the resolutions, whether in the Security Council or in the General Assembly, that Palestine is a state under occupation? That definition is the only legal base by which we can bring about a mini-state for Palestine at this moment, but not recovery of Palestine as a homeland for both countries and people. Namely, what Hisham Sharabi and Edward Said and Fayiz al-Sayigh and others have advocated; a secular democratic state of Palestine, which I share and I believe in.

However, if we want to be so called “realistic,” unfortunately that term has been corrupted by the term “realism,” namely the legacy in this respect of former president Sadat who said, “Ninety-nine percent of the cards, on Palestine and others, is in the hands of the United States.” That mental framework is what caused the recklessness and the ruthlessness since the Oslo Agreement, where a Palestinian leader has not insisted on defining [their] role. It has not been able with the dependency on the United States’ management of the case. It has not been able to extract from Israel what it is, an occupational power. There is no hint, no word, no sentence where Israel states that it is an occupying power in the West Bank and Gaza. Then what is it? What does it mean that the proliferation of settlements in the West Bank? It means a claim, a claim of the West Bank as part of Israel. It is a claim, they will not say it publicly, but they say it functionally by establishing and proliferating settlements day in and day out. Even in East Jerusalem they’re beginning to cut it out and reduce East Jerusalem almost to a village. It is in the context that unless the United States extracts from Israel that it is an occupying power in West Bank and Gaza and in East Jerusalem, this whole peace process, as Secretary Kerry has hopefully discovered, is an exercise in futility.

Therefore, what can we do at this moment? I suggest that the Palestinian Authority should transform itself into realizing and [implementing] a resolution that has taken place. Namely what the United Nations has stated; that Palestine is a state under occupation. Clear. Categorical. And that is the basis upon which this state needs a governing authority. Not the authority that exists at this moment but a governing authority, which can negotiate equally with a state. It’s a state under occupation, the world community has so decided. If we don’t act upon this resolution, we are losing our compass and ultimately losing our territory. And when Israel states that it has withdrew from Gaza, which is not true, it has declared Gaza sui generis belligerent. It is a belligerent entity which enables it to say that, “I am in a state of a war, I can enter whenever I want, as it did in 2008 and 2009. I can create a cordon sanitaire to prevent any kind of access to it. I can make, sometimes, concessions, but I can never allow it to be [anything] except a sui generis belligerent.” So with the Gaza as a sui generis belligerent and West Bank and East Jerusalem not occupied in the Israeli lexicon, then what do we do? What should be done?

Well, at this moment, the ideal would be a convergence of the constituency of conscience in Israel as they have proven especially when they spoke about the double standard of Netanyahu and Peres during the funeral of Mandela and exposed what Peres did in terms of relationship between Israel and apartheid. I think at that moment we realize there is a constituency of conscience that is marginal, perhaps growing, questioning. It is imperative that no discussions with Israel should take place until they acknowledge that they are an occupying power under the Fourth Geneva Convention. Otherwise, questioning Israel and the settlements is an indication that they exist in the occupied territories. They exist as a claim. And therefore, what Israel is in the occupied territory is a conqueror, not an occupier. It is wrong, false and not a precise term that Israel is an occupier of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem. The proof of it today is we are finding people in Israel trying to show that both the Jewish settlements and the peace talks are going to continue.

I received a letter commenting on my blog when I said the settlements are illegal. An ambassador of Israel sent me a note to the Al-Monitor blog and told me, “Learn the law.” The “law” according to this ambassador, which I can send you copies of it if you like, is that there is no Palestine. He went back to the eighteenth century: there is no Palestine.

So, we are faced with two dilemmas: the intransigence of Zionism as a conqueror of Palestine and not as an occupier, because of the settlements [which are] an indication and manifestation of conquest. And on the other hand, the fact that there is no prospect for an Israeli withdrawing from Jerusalem as a whole. We say that knowing full well that within Israel there is an Israeli constituency of conscience that we must nurse, nourish and empower. But that is a long term strategy. On the other hand, what has been said and should be acted upon is that Pope Francis the other day went from Amman, not going on the airspace of Israel, to the state of Palestine. That recognition, a moral win for the Palestinian people [combined with] the UN General Assembly Resolution a legal win, [questions] why should the PA continue in this repetitive discussions that is undertaken and not use the implements that verify its claim as a state under occupation defined by the United Nations and by the moral authority of the Vatican?

It is our responsibility, everywhere, to re-mobilize public opinion in the United States and throughout the world. That while a two-state system is temporarily pragmatic, in the ultimate historical process what Hisham Sharabi, Fayiz al-Sayigh, Edward Said, and many, many, many, others [believed]; a secular, democratic state of Palestine should become in the realm of realism and not of idealism.

Clovis Maksoud is a former ambassador and permanent observer of the League of Arab States at the United Nations and its chief representative in the United States for more than 10 years. Maksoud served as the League of Arab States’ ambassador to India and Southeast Asia from 1961 to 1966 as well as the League of Arab States’ special envoy to the United States in 1974. He also was a member of the United Nations Development Program advisory board on Arab Human Development reports.

As a journalist, Maksoud was senior editor of the daily Al-Ahram in Cairo and editor-in-chief of Al-Nahar, an Arabic-language weekly published in Beirut. He is the author of several books on the Middle East and developing countries, including The Meaning of Nonalignment, The Crisis of the Arab Left, Reflections on Afro-Asianism and The Arab Image.

From 1991 until 2011 he taught classes on the Middle East, Global South issues, international organizations and preventive diplomacy at American University’s School of International Service and the Washington College of Law. He also served as the director of American University’s Center for the Global South. The center examines issues affecting the developing countries of the world, characterized as the Global South, and has hosted forums at the UN conferences in Beijing, Copenhagen, Cairo and Istanbul. Maksoud is fluent in French and Arabic.