Back to the people
Hanan Ashrawi tells Dina Ezzat that for Palestinians to escape their current predicament the leadership and opposition should re-examine their priorities
Member of the Palestinian Legislative Council Hanan Ashrawi is very worried about the price the Palestinian people are paying for the on-going domestic political confusion and the international community's position on Palestinian rights. She sees a Palestinian Authority (PA), with all its divisions, and a Palestinian opposition, with all its factions, both of which fail to take into account "the way they should" the priorities of the Palestinian people, namely internal reform and a firm national position when it comes to managing negotiations with Israel.
Ashrawi's involvement in Palestinian-Israeli negotiations and the Palestinian struggle for internal political reform reflects a deep commitment to strengthening the national Palestinian front as a pre-requisite to negotiating with any Israeli government. Since her involvement in the Madrid peace talks in the early 1990s, Ashrawi has shown little appetite for compromise on representing what the Palestinian people want, and what she thinks they deserve.
Ashrawi is little impressed by the current Palestinian political scene. She finds the performance of the PA, whether the wing of elected Palestinian President Yasser Arafat or that of the Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), who took up his post with a mandate for reform, sorely lacking. The PA is not up to scratch with its handling of domestic affairs or the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. However, she is not any more enthusiastic about the performance of the Palestinian opposition.
Speaking to Al-Ahram Weekly while in Cairo to take part in a seminar hosted by the Arab League, Ashrawi summed up the situation when she said, "There is a lot of confusion."
"The current situation is very problematic. It lacks clarity. There are so many constants that are being questioned -- on the national and international levels. There has to be an internal understanding first," Ashrawi said.
The crux of the matter for Ashrawi is that neither the PA nor the opposition are on the right track. "On the one hand, the [Palestinian] Authority, be it the presidency or the recently [established] government, has not lived up to the expectations of the Palestinian people when it comes to establishing national institutions that pursue a national agenda. On the other, there is an opposition that did not quite get the rules of the democratic game," she said, adding that it seemed intent on continuing indefinitely as the opposition.
"The result was the Palestinian Authority, which is [highly] centralised in a manner that does not necessarily meet the expectations of the Palestinian people, alongside a Palestinian opposition that is working to serve a particular agenda that does not necessarily comply with the expectations of the people," she said. And the people, "are not necessarily part of any particular faction".
The result? "The people are paying the price," they are caught between "the inefficiency of the authority and the inflexibility of the opposition".
Ashrawi did not support the division of the head of the PA into a presidency and premiership. "They are both the [Palestinian] Authority," which obtains its legitimacy, she said, through honouring its commitments to the people.
"The president's legitimacy comes from being the elected leader and his history in the national struggle towards freedom. The president was elected to build a nation run by institutions and not monopolised by the presidency," she said. Her view with respect to the prime minister is similar. "The prime minister was appointed as part of an effort for political reform that led to the establishment of the post. The prime minister's legitimacy comes from his commitment to the programme for across-the-board reform that he was supposed to implement. Today, we do not see that happening."
But why aren't those commitments being upheld? In answer, Ashrawi pointed to the holders of the two top jobs. Yasser Arafat, the president, "is not used to sharing authority with anyone. He has simply never done it before", she said. As for Abu Mazen, "The prime minister was always seen as number two to Arafat" -- while in her view given that there is a power-sharing arrangement, it should be one between two equals.
At another level, Ashrawi attributes the PA's failure to uphold its commitment to the people to the existence of differing agendas. The people, she says, place a priority on domestic political reform towards strengthening the nation so as to be able to negotiate from a strong position with Israel. Such strength is particularly necessary in view of the current international scene and in light of the pressures being exerted by the US and, in certain instances, by some Arab countries on the PA, the opposition and people.
For Ashrawi, then, that Arafat and Abu Mazen disagreed about the outcome of the recent Aqaba summit is a side issue. Similarly, to focus on the gulf between the PA and the opposition over how best to push ahead the Palestinians' situation is to miss the point in her view. "The issue is what the people believe should be done. That's why any proposed national dialogue should include the [Palestinian] Authority, the opposition and the people."
The complexity of the Palestinian case makes it impractical to attempt to compartmentalise domestic Palestinian affairs and Palestinian-Israeli, Palestinian-American or Palestinian-Arab affairs. It's also very difficult, she believes, to argue for delaying Palestinian-Israeli/American talks on a possible settlement so as to allow the Palestinians to put their house in order.
"We are in a fix. The way out is for us to re-visit our priorities."
"The problem is that the [official] Palestinian discourse is becoming isolated from the priorities of the Palestinian people," she said. "That's why it has become so essential to have a dialogue so that we can all talk about where we are and where we have to go" in terms of managing the conflict with Israel, but also with respect to the domestic front.
The objective of such a dialogue, then, she implied, was to re- introduce legitimacy. "We did not go wrong with the theory but with the practice. We had the right ideas, but we failed to implement them the way they should be implemented".
Al-Ahram Weekly Online : 19 - 25 June 2003 (Issue No. 643)
Located at: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/643/re8.htm