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On 17 November, Professor Edward Said held a special meeting with students at Birzeit University. In a wide ranging discussion, topics ranged from the current political situation in Palestine to the changing nature of society globally. Our Voice presents the entire text of the discussion, translated from Arabic by Birzeit student Kifah Fani. Questions posed to Dr. Said are in bold text followed by his answers. BIRZEIT STUDENTS MEET EDWARD SAID
There are 3 major functions of an intellectual and it is not necessary that one do all three, but some of them. The first role of the writer in the current situation is to witness what is happening. Our problem in the past is that we neglected our history. The history of Arab Palestine does not exist in a stable and documented form. This is particularly important now as changes are very quick. For example, yesterday there was a new settlement established on one of the hills. I think such changes that are taking place now are due to the power of Israel, and without any significant Palestinian resistance which can stand in the face of this Israeli invasion it will remain for the writer to witness and to write about this. For our memory and for our history there is another role which is equally important, that is the role of a conscience. We are in an unstable period in which the dynamics of time affect values and principles - changing and destroying them. The mission of the intellectual is to affirm these values and principles such as loyalty and moral ethics. The third thing the intellectual or the writer must do is strengthen or assert the identity which is under threat from many directions. Between all these interests and missions there is a great potential of the intellectual to play an establishing role in this society. How do you assess the relations of power within the world today and what is the role of students in the current situation? I want to talk about the network of power in an abstract manner. There is no doubt that we are in a time which is different from 10 years ago. We are in a technological and electronic revolution that now holds amazing possibilities for communication and thinking. Especially in the West, you notice that there is a revolution in knowledge and concepts because society is now post-industrial. It is not any more an industrial society, but is based on services and knowledge. It is an information age which has also brought changes in the nature of media and in politics. In the US for example, President Clinton has been under severe attack- I don’t want to speak in details about it- but he overcome it in a sort of "anti-campaign campaign". A campaign based on the idea of winning over mass opinion against the campaign being waged against him. Opinion can be changed easily. These are basic, important changes, especially in a world that is called the "world of Globalization". We are an oppressed people and a people dispossessed and I believe we need to deal with the world not in a negative way but in a positive way. We can’t let this situation then affect our internal psychological state in a negative fashion. What I am trying to say is that each student and all of the Palestinians in all the universities in the world should concentrate in achieving competence. You must conquer the field you are in regardless of what it may be in order to enter this world without fear and restrictions. For this reason I was interested in talking to you because you are the future, it is a difficult future and you have a very important mission in which you should not accept a marginal role. It is a difficult but adventurous future and you have a great responsibility not to be passive or accept what has been placed in front of you without being critical. I believe critical consciousness is more important than learning a subject by rote. I have been teaching for 40 years in universities and I am very careful that my students don’t become copies of me. They can take from me and challenge me at the same time. This critical process is provocative and very important for our future, especially since one of the goals of the Zionist movement is to make us forget our identity and our history and leave the country for them. The role of hope and will is one of the most important available weapons against the current sickness and the bad economic and political situation. The defeated state of our subjective self is the most important element that faces us today and I feel obliged to concentrate on that. What is your opinion on Jerusalem? Sadly I feel that we are too late. Anyone who has visited Jerusalem can witness the reality of settlements which Israel is constructing to affirm that it is the land of Israel. All these buildings and people they have settled, and the expanding borders, are a kind of affirmation from Israel that Jerusalem is theirs. Our existence in Jerusalem decreases daily, what I can’t understand - and this might be my question to you - how did we accept the implementation of this situation through 31 years of occupation? All Arab and Islamic countries could understand the targets and means of Israel in changing the identity, the places, even changing the features of houses inside East Jerusalem. Maybe it is a little late to start thinking about how we should start struggling around the Jerusalem issue. Maybe your generation will do this. Your generation has to think about what should be done but the current reality is all in Israel’s favor. Is it possible that we are going to accept an alternative capital? It is also one of the choices that is offered to the Palestinian leadership, to take part of Abu Dis and call it Jerusalem. It is all part of what is crystallizing now and we are paying for the delay. For the future we must find a collective plan - a plan that all can participate in. What is your opinion on the current Wye Memorandum? I don’t want to talk about Oslo, but I think if we consider Wye as a final step in the so-called peace process it will show quickly the aims of this process. The first of these goals was that even though Israel now recognizes the Palestinian existence inside Historical Palestine, neither Israel or the US will accept a Palestinian entity with sovereignty. So what is the compromise or mid-way solution that will give the Palestinians not a state but a semi-state as if they were children playing in a playground surrounded by Israel? I think this has always been their vision - even since the time of Rabin and Peres - and it continues to this very day. The second reason is to renew the division of the Palestinian people. Ibrahim Abu Lughod (Chair of the Landscape Conference Committee) said that one of the achievements of the PLO was the unification of all parts of the Palestinian people - those inside and those in the Diaspora. We all feel now that we belong to a people called the Arab Palestinian people. The result of this process and the severe attack against the Palestinians and their leadership is that the Palestinian people are once more totally isolated from one another. Not only between Palestinians living inside the Occupied Territories and those outside, but even you who are living inside the Occupied Territories are totally isolated from one another. You in Ramallah and Birzeit feel very far away and this kind of feeling is a subjective feeling. It’s unreal to feel that Palestine has been divided and there will be no connection between the North and the South. The third point concerns the American strategy. Israel still plays a basic role in this strategy as a stable and strong ally in the region but now there is an attempt to transfer concerns about the Arab-Israeli conflict to other issues. A new pole of Iran, Turkey and Israel aims at marginalizing us and the surrounding Gulf states and to decrease the importance of this conflict. All these poles are fully achieved, totally implemented, and unfortunately I can understand the indecisiveness of the Palestinian leadership - what is the alternative? All of this is imposed on us. And we have no strength to struggle against such an enterprise or to suggest results. But I think this is not enough for a leadership. If this leadership is defeated or has surrendered and cannot speak in a hopeful language then we as citizens have to demand the leadership to speak frankly. We want them now to express the Palestinian situation, not in an elusive form or by threatening to announce a state which is going to be invisible. How many times are you going to announce a state? Once. Not several times. The state should have sovereignty and land, and we don’t have those. And if we don’t have sovereignty or land then what is the use of an announcement about the state if we cannot access most of our land? So I think the first demand on the leadership is frankness due to the harsh and bitter experience we are living. When I visited Palestine in 1992 and 1993 I used to travel more easily than I can now. So first is frankness and the second demand is in regard to the negotiations which I don’t consider a negotiation but an imposition on the Palestinian leadership to accept whatever it is given. I suggest the freezing of negotiations in order to stop the bleeding that has been going on since the beginning. The issue of the refugees is semi-finished and Jerusalem also is a finished subject. If we want to stop this retreat or this collapse that materialized in the negotiations we should stop the negotiations until we find an alternative choice. We should stop negotiating until we build civil institutions inside the Palestinian communities outside, or in the Occupied Territories which can play the role of establishing a new Palestinian nationality. We are in a state of listlessness and this is not something new or which can be argued about. But the future is still in front of us. A final point - and I think this is something that can be argued - is that inside Israeli society there are some streams that we can deal with. These are cultural streams, not political in the official sense but I believe that we can deal with them. We should never ignore Israeli society but unfortunately it is virtually unknown to Arab society especially the Palestinian. I know for a fact that there is no single institution in Palestine that is dedicated to studying Israeli society. On the other hand, consider how many institutions there are in Israel devoted to studying the Arab society and Palestinian society. You will notice then the difference between us and them. We are a torn apart, divided and regressive society in comparison with the Israeli society which is a modern, dynamic and complex society. I’m not afraid of this, on the contrary, if we go back to subjectivity, will and visions of the future from there we are transferred to politics. I am not a politician and I cannot propose a political solution but what is offered to us cannot be accepted as a final end. We know from the histories of people that night will never last. Always there is questioning and opposition in order to change the situation for the better. Between us and Israel in regards to the ideology of Zionism there are great differences. We say as Palestinians that we are accepting the other, our history is a history of many cultures that came and dwelt here and lasted and changed, and accepted other cultures and new identities. We are constructed from a heterogeneous history but Israel on the other hand says that is constructing a state only for the Jews. This single identity is unnatural and unhistorical, how can you build a homogenous society that is the same from its beginning to its end. Only Jews? It is impossible and Israel has failed. There are one million Palestinians inside and they cannot deal with them. There is a contradiction between Zionism and the Palestinian existence inside, citizens either with no rights or minimal rights in comparison to the Jews. Historically speaking our struggle was based on co-existence. We have a precious and a diverse history and it has no aim of purifying itself from other races or identities. The entire philosophy of Israel is based on negating the ideas of the other. So we should practice dealing with Israel, "co-operating" with the full sense of the meaning specially with the streams that can accept our thinking and can be supported by us, and try to establish a common vision. I myself belong to the school of Antonio Gramsci, who founded the Italian communist party, fought against Italian fascism and was imprisoned in the later stages of his life. Inside the prison he wrote small booklets and there he suggested that the critical struggle for the modern world is to devote the struggle for the changing of the society to the basic element of opinion. The changing of the mind is the most important thing that can be done. Of course changing minds cannot take place without organization, or political parties and constructing establishments like universities. We’re talking about institutions of all kinds: religious, economic etc. He propounded a quite detailed and complex theory from which I try to take the importance of the cultural struggle and struggle to change opinion. I think we are in this stage, we cannot fight Israel in a traditional way, we don’t have planes, atomic bombs but we do have our relation with the Arab world and the Arabic culture and the international community. All these are considerable elements of the conflict over opinions which ultimately must be implemented on the ground. What we lack is a real campaign that can activate the whole of the Palestinians in this struggle. In Washington last year you expounded the idea of a democratic state for all its citizens. Do you think this can form the strategy for the future Palestinian struggle? I cannot see any other solution. Now there are two people living in the same land and there is an intermingling between these two people. There is no peace between us because we’re not going to give in our rights. When I say land I don’t mean just the West Bank and Gaza Strip, I mean all of Palestine. This still need research and planning but in the last analysis there is no escape from a sort of co-existence between these two people in one state which is democratic and secular and based on citizenship rather than religion, race, or nationalism. This is the most important possible strategy that can be offered right now. It is obvious to all that the current political process is based on separation which means one people will dominate the other. This can only end up in Apartheid and I’m against that. So now I think, contradictorily, that the Palestinian leadership is negotiating on the basis of Apartheid. The announcement of a Palestinian state on spots of land which lack continuity ultimately is the recognition that we accept this Apartheid. The real strategy we must implement is to establish a peace movement that goes against racism and oppressing the Palestinian people - Christian and Muslim. A new state in which the citizens with all rights will co-exist. Even the Palestinians of 1948. Back to top |  return to society |
