A Breath of Fresh Air: Ambassador Afif Safieh Comes to Washington

By Delinda C. Hanley


	Ambassador Afif Safieh at his office at the PLO Mission in Washington, DC (Staff photo D. Hanley).

FOR MANY years, pro-Israel activists in the nation’s capital have had it relatively easy, thanks to the failure of the Palestinians to organize an effective lobby or to station an effective spokesman in the United States.

But the fight just got tougher, with the recent appointment of Afif Safieh—one of the sharpest and most eloquent Palestinian representatives in the world—to head the Palestine Liberation Organization’s diplomatic mission in Washington.

—Ori Nir, Forward Dec. 30, 2005

Ambassador Afif Safieh and his wife, Christ’l Leclercq, hit the ground running after arriving in Washington, DC on Oct. 26, 2005. The Palestinian diplomat has held meetings with President George W. Bush’s administration officials, U.S. lawmakers, members of the clergy, Arab-American and Muslim-American groups, Jewish organizations, NGOs, think tanks, fellow diplomats and journalists. Christ’l Leclercq usually is at his side.

At his first public lecture, a Dec. 2 briefing at the Palestine Center, a standing-room-only crowd of Arab-Americans, community activists and reporters came to hear Ambassador Safieh on an unusually hot evening. No one moved a muscle during his impassioned speech as he discussed the history and challenges the PLO Mission Office now faces in Washington, DC.

The audience was charged up and energized. “He’s like a breath of fresh air,” one activist said. “I think Americans will listen to this man.” After answering questions from the audience, Safieh made a point to stay and listen to the concerns of members of the community. He’s a good listener and humbly seeks the opinions of others.

It’s hard to keep up with this gracious diplomat as he moves from one subject to the next, barely taking a breath in between. He’s a writer, an eloquent speaker, and an historian, as well as a political genius. Safieh’s boundless energy is very much needed at this time in the United States—from Capitol Hill to the White House, college campuses and places of worship. On Jan. 16 he spoke at a Dr. Martin Luther King Day commemoration held by Black Voices for Peace at Plymouth Congregational Church in Washington, DC. The next day he held a Capitol Hill briefing, sponsored by the Council for the National Interest, which was broadcast on C-SPAN. And he is willing to speak wherever he’s needed.

Afif Safieh was born in East Jerusalem in 1950. He says jokingly that, in his family’s narrative, his birth was his parents’ “consolation prize” for losing their West Jerusalem home in the Nakba, or catastrophe, of 1948. He turns serious again when he admits, “It is extremely painful to be a refugee in the same city.”

After attending Collège des Frères in Jerusalem, Safieh left home in 1966 to study in Belgium, where he earned a degree in political science and international relations from the Catholic University of Louvain. He and his brother were studying abroad when Jerusalem fell in the 1967 war.

Any Palestinian who was overseas during the census Israel conducted in October 1967 became “legally non-existent” and forfeited his right to return, explained Diana Safieh, the ambassador’s sister, who lives in Jerusalem. Their father lost his home in 1948 and his sons in 1967. “It was the second loss that hurt him most,” she said, recalling, “It’s the only time I saw him cry.”

Safieh made his first trip back to Palestine in 1993. Over the years he has tried unsuccessfully to return to his birthplace, where his family still lives. He applied for resident status under a family reunification program, but in 1995 the Israeli Interior Ministry denied permission. He had hoped to launch a weekly magazine he was to call Palestinians.

He met and married the delightful Christ’l Leclercq, a Belgian writer, and the couple has two extraordinary daughters, Diana and Randa, now both in college.

Safieh continued his education at the Paris Institute of Political Studies, graduating in 1974 with a master’s degree in political science. He was a staff member in President Yasser Arafat’s office in Beirut, in charge of European Affairs and U.N. institutions, from 1978 to 1981. Next he became a visiting scholar at the Catholic University of Louvain from 1981 to 1985, and then at Harvard University from 1985 to 1987.

Safieh represented the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in the Netherlands from 1987 to 1990, and in 1988 was involved in the Stockholm negotiations that led to the first official and direct American-Palestinian dialogue. In 1990 he became the Palestinian General Delegate to the UK, and in 1995 took on extra duties as PLO General Delegate to the Holy See.

The ambassador has expressed empathy for the suffering of others in his historical commentaries. “I never compare the Palestinian Nakba/Catastrophe to the Holocaust. Each tragedy stands on its own,” he explained. “I never indulge in comparative martyrology. If I were a Jew or a Gypsy, Nazi barbarity would be the most horrible event in history.

“If I were a Native American it would be the arrival of European settlers that resulted in almost total extermination. If I were a Black African, it would be slavery in previous centuries and apartheid during the last century. If I were an Armenian, it would be the Ottoman/Turkish massacres.

“If I were a Palestinian—and I happen to be one—it would be the Nakba. Humanity should condemn all the above,” he insisted. “I do not know of a way to measure suffering or how to quantify pain, but what I do know is that we are not children of a lesser God.”

Safieh often uses American history to make his point. In a letter to the International Herald Tribune, published on Sept. 18, 2002, he said: ”I believe that there are two Americas, two political cultures, two historical memories.

“There is the America of the early settlers who, on discovering the New World, clashed with the indigenous population and almost totally exterminated them. This is the America that established slavery and had an elastic conception of its frontiers, expanding shamelessly at the expense of Mexico. This is the America that Ariel Sharon always seeks an alliance with.

“But there is another America, the America of the War of Independence against the colonial power. This is the America which took the painful decision to undergo a civil war to abolish slavery, the America of Woodrow Wilson which came to the Versailles conference upholding the principle of self-determination, the America of the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King’s dream.

“It is this America that we Palestinians appeal to and seek an alliance with.”

This battle for the hearts and minds of America is winnable, Safieh has told peace activists. “America’s tireless support for Israel has put the U.S. on a collision course with the Arab/Islamic world,” he noted. If President Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice become more personally involved in peacemaking between the Arabs and the Israelis, Safieh said, it could be their “key to lovability around the world. Perhaps making peace in Palestine is the penitence needed for making war in Iraq.”

Noting that international law and oil both were invoked as reasons for external intervention in Iraq, Safieh said, “I have news for you. We, too, happen to have oil: olive oil. The Palestinians crave international intervention and have appealed for it on numerous occasions....We have a deadlock which can only be solved by bold diplomatic initiatives.”

Safieh has expressed his increasing disenchantment with the open-ended peace process. “We’re having a lasting peace process, but what is lasting is the process and not the peace that is so desirable.”

As a Christian (who is politely asked by American audiences when he converted), Safieh has proudly stated: “Jesus was born in my country. We exported Christianity.” He has described Palestinians as “the custodian of all the holy messages that were born in my country.“ He also has pointed out, with a twinkle on his eyes, “I probably have more Hebrew blood in my veins than many Jews.”

“Today there are many more Christian Palestinians in Chile than in Palestine,” Safieh observed. “In Sydney, Australia, you have many more Christians from Jerusalem than you have Christians in Jerusalem. That is the very tragic situation of the local Christian community.” If the Israeli occupation continues, he warned, “soon there could be no Christians living in the land of His birth.”

Safieh said he often wonders why it is taking so long to return the land captured by Israel in the 1967 war. “What was occupied in six days can be evacuated in six days, so we can rest on the seventh!” he promised. “Palestinian demands are unreasonably reasonable. We’re asking for 22 percent of what was legitimately ours in the beginning of the century. We offer 100 percent peace for 100 percent of the land occupied in 1967.”

He said he has great hopes for a Palestinian state: “One day Palestine will have a resurrection. We in Jerusalem have had previous experience with resurrections.”

Safia quoted playwright Bertolt Brecht who, in his play on Galileo, has a marvelous scene in which a disciple says, “Unhappy are the people who have no heroes”—to which Galileo answers, “No, unhappy are the people who still have a need for heroes.”

“Obviously,” Safieh said, “our people still have a need for heroes. However, I would like to say that I have profound respect for the collective Palestinian hero, which is the Palestinian people, for their steadfastness and capability to endure pain and suffering. I bow in respect to this collective hero. I would say that we are now in a juncture in our history where we need to define and refine the concept of heroism.”

Americans who care about a just resolution to the Arab-Israeli conflict and who have heard Ambassador Afif Safieh speak are beginning to hope. He may be the hero who can give a voice to his nation of heroes.

Delinda C. Hanley is news editor of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.