17 - 23 January 2002
Issue No.569
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 17 - 23 January 2002 Issue No.569 |
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Reflections
Ultimate sacrifice
Sharon, the butcher, did not kill the Intifada; it committed suicide -- thanks largely to the suicide operations of Hamas and Jihad, the seemingly incontrovertible foolishness that has increasingly characterised Arab political and intellectual life for over two decades, and a tenacious determination to block out experience, to learn nothing at all. To put it simply, the oppressor's practices (brutal, barbaric and inhuman as they doubtless are) cannot justify the failure of a rising against oppression. Attempting to use them to that end begs the very question the rising seeks to answer: how to win?
It used to be that the Palestinians' slogan of struggle was "Revolution until Victory." Revolution -- or, in today's terms, Intifada -- until death is not an attractive option. The Biblical Samson strikes a ridiculous, rather than heroic, figure -- not to mention that our attempts to bring down the temple over the heads of our enemies as well as our own invariably miss the enemy altogether. Not only do we manage to lose a great many more heads than does the enemy, but (and by now this should be starkly clear to the blindest of us) killing civilians (few or many, innocent or not) does nothing, absolutely nothing, to weaken the enemy. It makes him stronger and more voracious. Sharon, we all seem to agree, practically wills Palestinian suicide operations. Yet many of us continue to praise these operations, finding perverse virtue in insisting on the very tactics the enemy relentlessly attempts to corner us into. It is, to say the least, a peculiar mindset that may best be exemplified by the bewildering circumstance that those who welcomed and/or justified the 11 September outrage as a blow against major symbols of American economic and military hegemony were more often than not the very same people insisting that the Israeli Mossad had done it (on "who benefits the most" grounds).
But the alternative is there. In mid- December, a number of prominent Palestinian intellectual and political figures (including such luminaries as Haidar Abdel-Shafi, Edward Said, Mustafa Barghouthi and Mahmoud Darwish) issued a declaration outlining some of the salient features of an alternative strategy to the submission of Oslo and the abhorrent suicidal tactics of Hamas and Jihad. Soon after, Barghouthi organised a non- violent international solidarity action involving over 500 Europeans, who travelled to the occupied Palestinian territories at their own expense and joined Palestinian activists in a variety of highly creative forms of peaceful resistance. (Edward Said, "Emerging alternatives in Palestine" and Mustafa Barghouthi, "The amazing power of people," in Al-Ahram Weekly, 10-16 January; and Fayza Hassan, "Diary of an occupation," in this issue). Not surprisingly, the Israelis arrested Barghouthi twice in the course of the campaign and, with typical brutality, used rifle butts to smash his knee. The good doctor, who heads the Union of Palestinian Medical Relief Committees (a creation of the first Intifada that has resolutely and miraculously survived both Oslo and the Palestinian Authority) struggles on, however, fighting, with his comrades, against enormous odds (nearly 1,000 Palestinians have been killed and 26,000 injured -- a great many of them left with permanent disabilities -- since the beginning of the Intifada).
Yet here in "the mother of the world," it seems that only folly trudges along. Last week, about a thousand political and intellectual figures gathered in a Cairo five-star hotel under the dubious banner of the "independent" weekly newspaper, Al-Osbou', famous for its (partially successful) campaign to have democracy activist Saadeddin Ibrahim hanged in a public square (instead, a responsive state security apparatus sentenced him to a mere seven years in jail). The attendants valiantly braved hail and snow (well, a spell of inordinately cold weather and a little rain) to make it to the downtown hotel where they proclaimed their determination to fight to the death against US hegemony and Israeli occupation. I did not attend this particular function, but -- having taken part in dozens of similar exercises in futility -- could have easily scripted the event (see Amira Howeidy, "Five-star steam," in this issue). It was more of the same: the same heated speeches, the same ranting and raving, with each political and "intellectual" figure trying to outbid the others in ornamentation of language, fierceness of avowals and dearth of thought. As ever, there was the "close down the Israeli embassy in Cairo" nod -- a worthy goal, if only anyone bothered telling us how to go about it. And, just in case anyone was hoping that there might be something, anything, new under the sun, there was the inevitable, hysterical appeal to the attendants to "go out on the street," which invariably ends in everyone, not least the appellants, going home to a good night's sleep. (Street demonstrations and marches are banned under emergency law, in force in Egypt since practically forever).
The star of this particular show, however, seems to have been the suicide operation. "Painful operations and suicide attacks... this is the only road," declared one of the speechmakers, reportedly to resounding applause.
Last May, I described the then newly resurgent suicide operations as sordid, wasteful and futile, and warned that these operations were a recipe for destroying the Intifada. In response, a friend wrote me an e-mail harshly taking me to task for criticising, from the privileged comfort of a middle-class Cairo existence, an action taken by Palestinians suffering the ravages of a heartless occupation. Better that, I would suggest, than urge horribly suffering Palestinians to their death, the destruction of their homes and the defeat of their struggle for liberation -- from the privileged comfort of a downtown Cairo five-star hotel. We have had enough of the foolishness, the strutting and the preening. We've had enough of empty rhetoric, hypocrisy and wastefulness. We've had enough of defeat and, most of all, we've have had enough of this sordid attachment to death.
A word to other middle-class Cairo "armchair Intifadists" like myself: you want a suicide operation? Go do it yourself.
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