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HANAN ASHRAWI & THE WASHINGTON ARABS:
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Upcoming later this week from MER:
"ISRAELI/JEWISH
LOBBY IN FIRM AND TOTAL CONTROL"
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HANAN ASHRAWI AND THE WASHINGTON ARABS
MER - Washington - 3/13/2000. Once again Hanan Ashrawi comes to Washington on Tuesday, abit in advance of Yasser Arafat and official entourage. This time she's the guest of Hisham Sharabi and company down near the Watergate, Sharabi constantly trying to justify his existence and all the millions he's collected from gullible Palestinians over the years...and mostly wasted. Indeed, the tragic plight of the Palestinians today as they are esconced on modern-day reservations is not just the result of the collapse of the PLO and the twisting of Yasser Arafat, it has also been substantially contributed to by the self-serving deceptions pursued by the Sharabis and Ashrawis of the Palestinian elite.
True, they oftentimes look good in front of the camera, articulating words and concepts that make sense to academics and peaceniks. But behind-the-scenes and when the situation calls for anything serious to be done, it nearly always turns out to be rhetorical smoke and mirrors...as those who know them best know only too well.
Back a year and a half ago Ashrawi came a calling much like this time.
Back then it was the so-called "National Association of Arab Americans"
(NAAA) that hosted her. Now NAAA is itself no more having collapsed
of its own ineptitude, just one more in a long string of failures for Arab
Americans who after a generation still have nothing but a discredited
and unimportant presence in this capital city. Now burdened with
the Maksouds -- the Hala and Clovis duo -- not to mention the much-despised
James Zogby, Arab Americans remain politically bankrupt and organizationally
impotent here in the American seat of government. True, the Maksouds,
the Zogbys, and the Sharabis have managed to feather their own nests while
constantly protecting the interests of their Arab client-regime patrons,
but doing so they've essentially made fools of so many well-meaning but
naive Arab Americans whom they've manipulated and burned.
Get this! Here's the confused invitation announcement from Sharabi's "Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine" with a headline: "Neither Peace; nor Process - Dealing with Diplomatic Indolence."
"By now," says the flyer, "the scene is a familiar one: chagrined diplomats and their retinue muscle their exits from the haggling chambers of Palestinian-Israeli peacemaking. For all the bustle captured on camera, there is no break through to report, no cause for optimism. Instead, the mock-heroic known as Oslo; writes itself into another headline, and observers are left to ponder their charge. What next? Join Hanan Ashrawi as she investigates answers to this perplexing question. In addition to being perhaps the most familiar face to a Western audience grappling with the idea of Palestinian rights, Ashrawi serves as Sectretary General of MIFTAH, The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy."
It's all such a laugh really -- something fit more for a Saturday Night Live skit than for another seriously hypocritical luncheon speech. For Ashrawi, Sharabi, Maksoud, and the couple of dozen retired folk, on-the-take "journalists", and free-loaders who usually attend these "briefings" are in most cases the same crowd that was rushing to the ceremonies and banquets a few years ago promoting the very "peace process" they now in their consistently opportunistic manner denounce. Ashrawi herself lost her political dignity serving as the articulate mouthpiece for the Arafat regime and more than once a "Minister" in it -- unlike Haider Abdul Shafi, the head of the Palestinian Delegation at Madrid and Washington, who instead refused to even attend the White House ceremonies and resigned from all Arafat-related bodies.
The following MER Flashback is to September 1998:
Washington Scene:
BLAMING EVERYONE BUT HERSELF...
HANAN ASHRAWI:
REALITY RATHER THAN IMAGE
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 feined "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 ability 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 Washington negotiating team when Arafat signed the Oslo Accords -- after all the damage had already been done and there was nothing left to do. 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 her colleague 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.
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