During the 17th December 1993 study day on the Declaration of Principles, Dr. Ahmed Harb, Head of the Department of English, addressed the "Cultural Implications of the Declaration of Principles."

Harb, a literary scholar and teacher, is also a novelist currently working on the third novel in a trilogy. The Newsletter asked Dr. Harb to explain his view that the new era contains the seeds of cultural crisis:

"One of the first reactions to the Principles is that it does not deal with the Palestinian issue in its totality. By focusing on Gaza and Jericho, it deals with a fragment of a fragment Palestinian national culture was historically based on the idea of the totality of the Palestinian cause in opposition to the Zionist challenge. The idea of wholeness keeps Palestinians together, although geographically although fragmented in Lebanon, Jordan, the Occupied Territories and elsewhere.

"The danger imbedded in the Declaration of Principles is a fragmentation of this identity. With the passage of tirne political fragmentation can lead to cultural disunity and fragmentation. What will bring will bring Palestinians together after the implementation of the Declaration af Principles? Regional geographic identifications are also fostered by Israeli policy, whether in tha notion of Gaza-Jericho, or in more specific policies, such as the closure of Jerusalem. Today, the yellow license plates of Jerusalem distinguish a Palestinian in Jerusalem from a Palestinian in nearby Ramallah.

"The aesthetics of Palestinian literature have been largely derived from the Palestinian causes; other issues have been neglected. This is easy to understand when the challenge has been our own survival. Now, we face a problem, as if we are waking up from a dream to a new reality. Perhaps every Palestinian writer is schizophrenic, split between his polltical and creative commitments. I feel this in my own writing. I can't remain isolated frorn the world around me. At the same time, there is a divide between the political and the artistic truth about my subject: Palestinians and Palestine. How shall I speak about Palestine, in the old terms or the new?"