Jonathan
Wittenberg applauds Sari Nusseibeh's sensitive look at the Middle East,
Once Upon a Country.
"Isn't this inability to imagine the lives of the 'other' at the
heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?" writes Sari Nusseibeh. It
is this capacity for imaginative insight, coupled with his dedication to
his own people's struggle, which makes Nusseibeh so remarkable a man and
Once Upon a Country such an important book. For me, as a Zionist Jew
committed to Israelis' existence and welfare, those others are the
Palestinians. For Nusseibeh, they are the Israelis.
Scion of an ancient and
aristocratic Palestinian family, philosopher and dreamer by temperament,
secular in spirit and academic by training, Nusseibeh is a visionary from
a land of visionaries. As a boy he looked out with curiosity across the no
man's land which divided the Jerusalem where his family had resided for
1,300 years. There is a tragic parallelism between Amos Oz's memories of
severed alleyways ending in brick walls and Nusseibeh's glimpses of
"a parallel city on the other side of the wall". It comes as no
surprise to learn that the two men are friends and, in a way, allies.After
the 1967 war Nusseibeh took "the most astounding trek of my
life", into Israeli Jerusalem. He even volunteered on Kibbutz Hazorea,
(founded by members of my own family fleeing Nazi Europe) where he admired
the ideological commitment of its members.
It is precisely this breadth of vision that gives Nusseibeh such stature
as a Palestinian leader. Head of the academic union at Birzeit University,
later president of Al-Quds University, he is, by his own admission, a
reluctant politician. Yet he bears forceful and implacable witness to the
immense injustice and outrage of occupation, from the confiscation of
lands that belonged to his family for generations, to the daily
degradations, imprisonments, deportations, threats and violence his people
have suffered, and still do.
Deeply opposed on moral and pragmatic grounds to violence and guerrilla
tactics, he suggested in the 1980s that Israel either annex the
territories and offer Palestinians equal rights within the Israeli
democratic system, or give them independence. This drew him into a series
of negotiations, covert and overt, with Israeli politicians: "It was
worth the risk if I could help avert the brewing war between our
peoples," he writes. Attacked outside his Birzeit classroom by local
Tanzim - militants aligned with Yassar Arafat's Fatah - he declared, still
in his cast and bandages, to a rally of Israeli peace activists:
"They can't beat that out of me."
During the first intifada Nusseibeh was responsible for drafting the
leaflets which guided the uprising and gave it its moral and political
objectives. He helped people evade arrest, distributed money, and learned
to be so astute in his movements that he managed to elude not only the
Israelis but even his own bodyguards. That did not prevent him, however,
from spending three months in jail, a period of reflection which he,
surprisingly, rather enjoyed. But then he was not subject to the tortures
practised on others.
Nusseibeh's insights into Palestinian and Israeli leaders are sharp.
Arafat likes plain talking but has "an actively mistrustful
mind"; he is not personally corrupt, but fails to act to prevent the
Palestinian Authority descending into a sleazy kleptocracy. His embrace of
Saddam Hussein is a moral and political disaster. Yitzhak Shamir may
really desire negotiations, but he undermines them: his true intent is to
waste 10 years talking, by which time half a million settlers will render
the notion of a Palestinian state impossible. Abu Jihad is in Nusseibeh's
view the man most responsible for keeping the first intifada relatively
free of violence; his assassination in Tunis by Israel is both criminal
and stupid. Sheikh Yassin commits "terrorist outrages against
Israel".
To me, certain key issues are still missing. The conflict is not properly
contextualised within the pan-Arab and later Islamist narrative of wanting
to wipe Israel off the map. It may be impossible for a non-Jew to estimate
fully the impact of this existentialist threat, repeated in words and
bombs, on the psyche and politics of a people who have survived genocide
within living memory.
But for anyone interested in a just and enduring solution which recognises
the tragic histories of two peoples, this book is essential reading. At
Birzeit Nusseibeh wanted his students "to think for themselves,
without kowtowing to the opinions of their fathers or Muslim clerics or
priests or professors like me. I wanted them to deconstruct their
inherited mental horizons." He forces his readers to do likewise.
Has Nusseibeh lost hope after Hamas' election victories and their violent
control of Gaza? Certainly not. He reminds us of one of his father's
sayings: "Rubble, he used to tell me, often makes the best building
materials." Has he a political constituency? He's a good man, it's
said, but who does he represent? Once Upon a Country shows that his true
constituency is ordinary people, both Palestinians and Israelis, two
nations which, he insists, are not enemies but "natural allies".
Jonathan
Wittenberg
Jonathan
Wittenberg is rabbi of the New North London Synagogue. His books include
The Three Pillars of Judaism: A Search for Faith and Values (SCM Press)
