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Christianity Today, Week of January 30

Calvin College's January Series
The Palestinian Cause and the "War Against Terrorism"
by Robin King

Each year in January, Calvin College, with the support of civic-minded individuals and institutions, hosts an extraordinarily rich series of lectures and musical events. This year's January Series brings to Grand Rapids a typically wide-ranging array of speakers, beginning on the 3rd with Robert Hughes, the iconoclastic art critic and cultural commentator, and concluding on the 23rd with Hanan Ashrawi, commissioner of information and public policy for the Arab League and a member of the Palestine Legislative Council. In between, audiences at Calvin will hear from figures as varied as the Wilberforce Forum's Chuck Colson, New Testament scholar N.T. Wright, and Harvard University's Henry Louis Gates, Jr., the preeminent African American scholar. Books & Culture is pleased to offer reports on selected lectures in the series.

"It is precisely in this darkest hour that we need to try to re-legitimize the peace agenda," said Hanan Ashrawi, speaking to an audience of over 1,200 people at Calvin College.

As Commissioner of Information and Public Policy for the Arab League, elected member of the Palestinian Legislative Council, and former cabinet member for Yasir Arafat, Ashrawi is a prominent leader in the Middle East peace process. As a Christian Palestinian, she represents perhaps the oldest continuous Christian community in the world, and thus her words carried extra weight at this Christian Reformed institution.

Ashrawi criticized the Israeli government, past and present, for victimizing the Palestinians. She said that the Palestinians face a society-wide version of the Battered Wife Syndrome, in which the victim is made to feel responsible for her victimization.

The Palestinian economy has virtually been destroyed, with 53 percent of the population unemployed and 57 percent living in poverty, Ashrawi said. The Palestinians are being daily driven out of their homes, denied basic human rights, and killed. Yet, the Israeli "spin machines" continue to blame the Palestinians for the ongoing violence, according to Ashrawi.

Ashrawi said that the situation has gotten worse since Ariel Sharon's government came to power in February 2001. She accused Sharon's government of "taking us back to a time warp, way back to the 1940s, with a language that is based on extreme ideology and the exclusion of the other." She maintained that Sharon seems bent on "completing Israel's war of independence" and on "normalizing the occupation." Calling this new stage of violence a turning point and "the dark night of the soul," she said that, "we all know this is not a peace government."

Even in these desperate circumstances, Ashrawi insisted, the Palestinians will not be silenced. Although a majority of Palestinians are still committed to a peaceful settlement, she said they will not accept "a peace that is imposed by the strong on the weak" or a "peace that would violate the most basic tenets of international law and course morality and humanity." The only true way to achieve a just peace, according to Ashrawi, is the creation of two separate, independent states.

Justice and peace can be achieved only through negotiation, not violence and the use of military force, said Ashrawi. She added that third-party intervention is absolutely necessary as a "global investment in peace." Such brokered peace negotiations, however, must not "incorporate the asymmetry of power" that has historically and continually stalled the peace process but instead must be evenhanded.

"The root cause [of the violence]," said Ashrawi, "is the occupation and the enslavement of Palestinians, and once we deal with that. … then you end the causes of instability and extremism and violence." Occupation must end in order for true peace to occur, with Israel lifting their siege on Palestine, along with ending their policies of assassination and house demolitions, she said.

Ashrawi argued that because of their power, the Israelis have been able to continue occupation, disregard international law, and define peace in terms of their own security. The Israelis have created a double standard for security, ignoring Palestinian lives. Ashrawi said that security, redefined along human terms, "comes as a result of a just peace."

The United States has contributed for years to this asymmetry of power, Ashrawi charged, adding that Sharon has exploited the events of September 11 to further "hijack" U.S. foreign policy. She raised many concerns regarding the current global war on terrorism, pointing to the regressive tendency to "divide the world into the simplistic polarization of angels and devils," as happened during the Cold War. The rhetoric of the "war on terrorism" is being echoed by Sharon in a "false and forced analogy" to justify Israel's oppressive tactics.

The Palestinian cause, Ashrawi concluded, "has become a real test case for global justice and the rule of law. If the Palestinians get justice and humanity, then this is a signal to all those who feel aggrieved and all those who resort to extreme measures that, no, there are just and legal solutions."

Robin King is a political science major at Calvin College.