Pollster Khalil Shikaki Speaks at Princeton On “Palestinians in the Post-Arafat Era”

By Jane Adas


	Dr. Khalil Shikaki speaks at Princeton University (Staff photo J. Adas).

AS DIRECTOR of the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, Dr. Khalil Shikaki has conducted more than 100 surveys of Palestinian public opinion since 1995. Discussing “Palestinians in the Post-Arafat Era: What Direction?” at Princeton on April 7, he said that most recent polls, conducted in December and March, reveal significant positive changes: 70 percent of Palestinians support an end to the conflict, up from 42 percent a year and a half ago; two-thirds of the public are now opposed to violence; support for the Jewish nature of Israel has increased from 52 percent to 63 percent; and there is a new expectation that reconciliation will take place soon. In terms of governance, he said, Palestinians are readying for real democratic change.

Shikaki offered four reasons why such changes are occurring now. Two are culminations of earlier events. U.S. policy changed course with President George W. Bush’s speech of June 24, 2002. Prior to that, Shikaki’s efforts to encourage Washington to support Palestinian reforms met with a reluctance to push Arafat too much, he said. Europeans, he recalled, complained that the U.S. was actually blocking judicial reform. Shikaki described Bush’s new direction as clearly more pro-Israel and less even-handed, but said the effect was loss of any American support for Arafat and the Palestinian Authority. Secondly, he continued, by 2003 the Palestinian public was exhausted, with fully 80 percent supporting a mutual suspension of violence.

Shikaki cited two more immediate reasons for a shift in attitude as the Gaza disengagement plan and the smooth, violence-free transition following Arafat’s death. The former, he said, has led to hope that Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, the “Bulldozer” and “father of the settlement enterprise,” now is willing to make compromises. But when asked why Sharon is changing at this particular time, the majority of Palestinians said they believe Israel is being forced out of Gaza by violence, and that what is now driving policy is Israel’s obsession with demography.

In the year prior to Arafat’s death, the U.S. was opposed to Palestinian elections for fear they would legitimize either Hamas or Arafat. Shikaki views the fact that Washington has not objected to the participation of Hamas in the political process as a positive sign and suggested that experience with Muqtada al-Sadr in Iraq may have enabled the U.S. to distinguish among Islamists. Noting that Hamas won a majority of seats in the December and January municipal elections, Skikaki explained that, at the local level, the perception of corruption is the determining factor, and that the public is fed up with the old-guard nationalists. At the national level, however, he said, the peace process and improving the economy are the top priorities. Therefore Shikaki expects Fatah to win in the parliamentary elections scheduled for July 17. However, he added, if there is no progress in the peace process by then, Hamas may have a shot.

According to Shikaki, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas is supportive of the reform process because the “young guard” demands it. In late March, he noted, Abbas agreed to accept primary elections within Fatah. As a result, whereas 75 percent of positions within Fatah had been by appointment, now all of them will be through elections—which Shikaki described as a death warrant for the old guard and a model with which Hamas will have to compete. A further blow to the old guard is the April 4 Civil Service law, which requires security officers to retire at age 60, a move which he sees as empowering the younger generation.

Nevertheless, the tremendous optimism among Palestinians worries Shikaki, because it is based on perceptions that are contradicted by everyday reality, which, he said, is actually worsening. Israel’s closure regime, checkpoints, permit system, devastation of the Palestinian economy, home demolitions, expanding settlements, and barrier wall continue apace. Abbas can do little to improve the situation on the ground without help from the U.S. and Israel, but Shikaki said he was not optimistic about this. Washington is ecstatic about the Gaza withdrawal, he noted, but silent about settlement expansion and the barrier, saying “Sharon can’t deal with too much at one time.” Shikaki fears Palestinian optimism could crash if the peace process does not move forward quickly. It has happened before, he warned.

Prof. David Cole Speaks at CAIR-NY Annual Banquet


(L-r) Prof. David Cole and Capt. James Youssef Yee at the CAIR-NY annual banquet, and Ali Abunimah at Princeton University (Staff photos J. Adas).

David Cole, professor at Georgetown University Law Center, volunteer staff attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights, and author of Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on Terrorism, was keynote speaker at the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR)-New York’s seventh annual banquet in Queens on April 16. It is commonplace to hear “9/11 changed everything” but, as Cole pointed out, more so for some people than others. He reminded his audience of the summer of 1919, when eight bombs exploded in eight different American cities. The government’s response was the Palmer Raids. Using immigration law and guilt by association, federal officials rounded up foreigners and launched a “deportation crusade.” They never got to the bottom of the bombings, Cole noted, and nobody was ever charged.

The government goes after foreigners because they can, he maintained. The difficult choice between security and liberties need not concern white, mainstream Americans who, for the security of the greater public, are willing to sacrifice the liberties of Arabs, Muslims, foreign nationals and other minorities—in short, non-voters. In what Cole described as the “Ashcroft” raids following 9/11, more than 5,000 foreign nationals were rounded up and either placed in preventive detention with no charges or tried and deported in secret. Another 8,000 Arabs and Muslims were called in for FBI interviews. Cole wryly quoted the new director of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, as saying, “We do not engage in ethnic profiling. We target foreign nationals from certain countries.”

Domestic detainees, however, are lucky compared with those in prisons in Guantanamo, Iraq, and Afghanistan—the ones George Bush calls “bad guys.” The government has designated them “enemy combatants” for whom the prohibition against torture does not apply, Cole explained.

Describing the Abu Ghraib photos as “Osama’s dream propaganda campaign,” Cole asserted that such double standards are wrong in principle, because human rights are universal and not merely for citizens, and wrong for security, because they increase anti-Americanism. The antipathy of the world toward the U.S. has never been higher than it is today, he said, because the U.S. has failed to adhere to American principles such as due process, equal protection under the law, and freedom of association.

Yet, Cole said, he sees signs of hope. The courts have not deferred blindly to administration policies. Last summer, with only Justice Clarence Thomas dissenting, the Supreme Court determined that a state of war is not a blank check. One federal judge ruled that military tribunals are illegal, and another that Guantanamo detainees have the right to a lawyer and cannot be “rendered” to a country where they may be tortured. Even some conservative judges have stood against this administration’s extremism, Cole said. And there has been some success because of the work of organizations like CAIR, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), none of which existed during the Cold War era.

The evening’s special guest was Captain James Youssef Yee. A West Point graduate, Yee converted to Islam and was sent to Guantanamo as a Muslim army chaplain. He later was arrested and confined in a solitary brig for 76 days. Although the U.S. accused him of the potentially capital offense of treason, his case never went to trial and he was released without any explanation. Yee said he must give thanks, first to Allah, then to the fact that his honorable discharge became effective in January. He thanked his family—for whom, he said, the situation was more difficult than it was for him—and the Justice for James Yee ad hoc committee. Finally he thanked the CAIR family, his “brothers in humanity,” who came to his aid. Quoting Martin Luther King, Jr. that “Injustice is rooted out by persistent, strong, and determined action,” Yee said he is a personal witness that CAIR does exactly that.

Ali Abunimah Returns to Princeton

Ali Abunimah, co-founder of the Electronic Intifada, spoke about “Palestine/Israel: The Threshold of Peace or the End of the Two-state Solution?” at Princeton University, his alma mater, on May 1. He began by noting that the U.S. State Department’s 2004 Human Rights Report lists the population figures for Israel, the West Bank and Gaza as 5.3 million Palestinians and 5.2 million Israeli Jews. The reality today, he said, is that in Israel a Jewish minority is ruling over a disenfranchised Muslim and Christian majority. Therefore, Abunimah said, Israel’s options for maintaining a Jewish majority have narrowed to two choices: apartheid or ethnic cleansing.

Since 1967, he continued, Israel has done everything possible to make the option of a two-state solution unachievable. It continues to build settlements and a $3 billion religiously segregated highway system to serve them, he noted, and, most recently, the massive system of barriers, which the International Court of Justice ruled illegal last summer. Abunimah described Qalqilya, a city of 50,000, as now resembling a medieval city. The walls of a medieval city, however, were to keep invaders out, whereas this one is to imprison Palestinians. He quoted John Dugard, the special U.N. Human Rights Rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories, as saying, “Israel has created an apartheid regime worse than the one in South Africa.” Dugard, a leading South African anti-apartheid lawyer, is in a position to know, Abunimah pointed out.

Nothing Palestinians have done, he continued, neither peaceful nor armed resistance, has stopped the building of a single Israeli-settler apartment in the occupied territories—although such resistance has made the occupation less profitable for Israel. To supporters of Israeli policy who blame suicide bombers for being the obstacle to peace, Abunimah conceded that attacks on Israeli civilians are illegitimate, but argued that Palestinian violence occurs within the context of much greater Israeli violence. Indeed, he asserted, Israel could not have created and maintained its settlement project without the use of massive violence. While the U.S. media give the impression that Israeli civilians are the most numerous victims, Abunimah pointed out that, so far in 2005, Israelis have killed more than 70 Palestinians, 27 of them children, while a Palestinian suicide bomber killed 5 Israelis in a single incident on Feb. 25.

It has become fashionable to lecture Palestinians about following the path of Gandhi, Abunimah noted. Indeed, with USAID money, the movie has been dubbed into Arabic and is being shown throughout the occupied territories. Abunimah wondered if it had been dubbed into Hebrew as well. In fact, he said, Palestinians practice nonviolence every day: if the army has built a roadblock, they climb over it; if soldiers uproot trees, they replant them; if a neighbor’s home has been demolished, they take the family into their own home. The Arabic word for this is samoud—something, Abunimah said, Palestinians could teach the world.

The U.S. is the only country with the power to influence Israel on its own, he noted, but, for whatever reason, it fails to do so. In Abunimah’s opinion, Israel is not a strategic asset, but rather a massive liability to U.S. interests. On the international scene, Abunimah said, no coalition is in view that will take a stand against Israeli policies. Abunimah said he had some hope in the European Union, but it has preferred to concentrate on Palestinian reform and democracy rather than challenging Israel. Within Israel, he said, the left wants the privileges of a Jewish state without giving up anything—compared to the Palestinians’ willingness to recognize Israel on 78 percent of their homeland if they are allowed to live in dignity on the remaining 22 percent, which Abunimah described as a far-reaching concession. However, he noted, the 22 percent solution never has actually been on offer in any of the various phases of the peace process. It is sometimes accepted in theory, he said, but always sabotaged in fact. The Israeli right’s solution is to build more settlements and bring in more Jewish immigrants, he said—but that supply apparently has dried up. Moreover, according to Abunimah, 850,000 Israelis live outside the country, an enormous number for a small country.

As realization sets in that both a viable Palestinian state and a Jewish-majority greater Israel are impossible, and that apartheid and ethnic cleansing are repugnant, Abunimah predicted that discussion of a one-state solution is a taboo that will be broken in the next few years. He pointed out that Belgium and Canada experience ethnic conflict, but do not demand the world’s attention. It is time, he concluded, to stop pretending that Israel and Palestine are unique and different.

Jane Adas is a free-lance writer based in the New York City metropolitan area.