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Among Arab Reformers

(Commentary/American Enterprise Institute) Joshua Muravchik - Skeptics ask whether there are really any native democrats to be found in the Middle East who could be the backbone of a new political order. In March I attended a conference in the West Bank city of Ramallah at Riad Malki's Center for the Dissemination of Democracy and Community Development - a large, well-equipped facility built with foreign donations - on "Ten Years of the Palestinian Authority: Evaluation, Assessment, Prospects for the Future." Some 450 Palestinians turned up, together with five to ten Europeans but only one other American. Near the entrance, a life-size cardboard cutout of Arafat smiled broadly at us as we passed; inside, the criticisms of his legacy were intense. If there was much to warm a democrat's heart in the spirited talk about Palestinian governance, there was, alas, no comfort at all to be had in the discourse about peace with Israel. Hani al-Hassan, a long-time Arafat confidant and former minister of the interior, explained that "Zionist forces assassinated Kennedy," Israel stirred up civil war in Lebanon, and former Israeli Prime Minister Shamir had told President George H.W. Bush in 1989 that "Israel would not make peace until Iraq is destroyed" - which is what "we are witnessing before our eyes." An Israeli Arab, Muhammad Ali Taha, said: "They call us the 'Arabs of Israel,' but we are not the Arabs of Israel. We are the Palestinian Arab nationality in Israel. We are the Arabs in Israel, not the Arabs of Israel."
2005-09-05 00:00:00
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