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Al-Ahram Weekly 2 - 8 March 2000 Issue No. 471 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 2 - 8 March 2000 Issue No. 471
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Interview Features Focus Heritage Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters The gulf between them
By Graham Usher
It is not clear what prompted French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin to declare during his trip to Israel last week that "France condemns Hizbullah attacks, and all types of terrorist attacks carried out against soldiers and [Israel's] civilian population". Some commentators saw it as Jospin's opening shot for France's 2002 presidential elections against the present incumbent and political rival, Jacques Chirac. Others interpreted it as a way of assuaging Israel (which has long taken the view that France's foreign policy in the Middle East is incorrigibly "Arabist") the better to gain a French "peacekeeping" role in any post-withdrawal South Lebanon.
Jospin briefly fell into the breach on 26 February when he visited Birzeit University, recipient of much European Commission (including French) largess in recent years but also a bastion of Palestinian students' militancy, some of whom had taken to the streets four days before in support of Hizbullah.
Nor did the French premier do himself any favours when he spoke at the campus. While condemning "Israeli attacks on civilians in Lebanon", he refused to retract his description of Hizbullah as "terrorist" and pooh-poohed any comparison between Israel's occupation of Lebanon and Germany's Second World War occupation of France. One student in attendance replied with "We consider you a traitor". He was swiftly bundled out of the meeting by a Palestinian Authority security official for this momentary lapse of protocol.
Jospin was less well guarded when he emerged from the insulated halls of academia into the cold air of the occupied West Bank. Faced by a thousand or so students beneath a banner that read "From Birzeit to Beirut, we are one people", he and his entourage was pelted with stones and assailed with abuse. Captured by every global TV network, the debacle caused uproar in France, glee in Israel (whose government was at pains to remind all that, with France's blessing, it had not been responsible for security on campus) and deep embarrassment to Yasser Arafat.
Palestinian students hurl stones at French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin at Birzeit University after he publicly labelled the Hizbullah resistance as "terrorist"
Profusely apologising three times to the French premier, the Palestinian leader said the protestors (many of whom were members of his Fatah movement) "do not represent the Palestinian people they represent forces of darkness". Birzeit's University Council took the cue, denouncing the protest as "in contradiction to [Birzeit's] spirit of tolerance, democracy and dialogue" and closing the campus down for three days, a collective punishment many Palestinians saw as "in contradiction" to their right to education.
It is easy to understand Arafat's discomfort. Faced with stasis and American inaction on the Palestinian lane of the peace process, he is looking to the European Union both for support in the negotiations with Israel and, should these fail, for any unilateral declaration of Palestinian statehood later this year.
Yet if Arafat's pique is understandable, the reaction of his security forces to the incident suggests a leader who is now so attuned to European diplomatic sensibilities as to be utterly detached from those of his own people. Over the next three days -- according to the Palestinian Human Rights organisation, LAW -- agents from the PA's General Intelligence and Preventive Security forces rounded up 39 Birzeit students, all without warrant and some who had not been on campus at the time of Jospin's visit.
Across Lebanon, the premier's remarks sparked similar demonstrations
(photos:AFP&AP)
On 27 February, Palestinian students took to the streets in Hebron, Nablus and Ramallah to denounce Jospin and protest the arrests on and closure of Birzeit. On 28 February, students from Bethlehem University clashed with Israeli soldiers at the Rachel Tomb salient, leaving six wounded from rubber bullets and tear gas inhalation. The demonstration carried two slogans. The first was that the PA immediately free all students detained after the Jospin debacle. The second -- directed at Europe as much as at Israel -- was that "all of us are with Hizbullah".
