Bookless in Gaza
Three weeks ago I learned through a friend that two of my books were being picked up and confiscated from West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem bookstores by Yasir Arafat's security men. My first reaction was incredulity, so I asked my friend Ibrahim Abu-Lughod to try to get me more information. Three days later, he rang me back to say that a bookseller in Ramallah had told him ten copies had been removed by order of the Ministry of Information. I have known the Minister, Yasir Abed Rabbo, for about fifteen years, so I asked Ibrahim to call him directly about the matter. Ibrahim told me that Abed Rabbo professed complete ignorance on the matter. To date, no one has accepted responsibility for the ban and confiscations, which continue.
Over the days since those first calls, I have heard from other friends and sources that the two books being confiscated -- both in Arabic and both compilations of my biweekly pieces in al-Hayat that include three Nation articles as well -- had in fact made some impression on my readers in the West Bank and Gaza. I had already been a nonperson to the Palestinian media, although in March, while visiting my son in Ramallah, I was surprised that a twenty-minute radio broadcast on the Voice of Palestine was dedicated to attacking me.
Arafat, I know, has been greatly angered by my persistent critique not only of the Oslo accords and what I believe to have been a fraudulent (so far as Palestinians are concerned) peace process, but also of his increasingly dictatorial, profoundly corrupt and visionless attempt to rule his people. I always point out that he is not president but, in effect, the Israeli enforcer of the military occupation by other means. I regard him, therefore, as a Pétain figure who has taken advantage of his people's exhaustion and kept himself in power by conceding virtually everything significant about our political and human rights. What he did after he came to Gaza in July 1994 has worsened the effects of the twenty-nine-year occupation (which still continues), and over the months I have reminded my readers, of whom he seems to have been one, that cronyism, a huge security apparatus, kowtowing to the Israelis, buying people off and torturing, imprisoning or killing dissidents at will, are not the ways to establish a new polity for our people.
Like every dictator and petty despot before him, Arafat thinks that by confiscating books, banning articles and imprisoning or murdering people who seem too independent, he can blot out dissent and dissatisfaction. I have always tried to act on the principle that intellectuals must try to change reality and be critical of power, not accommodate it. Yet so far -- and I am not speaking here about the banning of my books -- there has been an extraordinary Palestinian trahison des clercs, and I simply cannot understand why. Why does nationalism, and a primitive nationalism at that, suddenly shut off all the appeals to universal values that we had used so bravely in the past? The problem for Palestinian intellectuals is that too few of us have had the courage to speak up.
That is a widespread problem in the Arab world, where I believe the press and the media generally are uniquely compromised. In most Arab countries, it is legally impossible to criticize the ruler or a member of his family. In Jordan a few months ago, a courageous and outspoken man, Layth Shubeilat -- who comes from a distinguished Jordanian (not Palestinian) family and is the head of the engineers' syndicate and a former Member of Parliament -- was sentenced to three years in prison for giving a public lecture in which he criticized King Hussein and the history of the Hashemite family in its dealings with the Zionists. This lecture was delivered shortly after the King was seen on television publicly mourning his "old and dear friend, Yitzhak Rabin." To my knowledge, none of the charges against Shubeilat refuted anything that he said in his lecture.
This is not so uncommon an occurrence in the Arab world; what is truly startling is the uniform obduracy of these regimes embodied in their aging, largely minority kings, presidents, dictators for life. They have so far succeeded in maintaining a cowed silence among otherwise outspoken activists, writers and intellectuals. So there is a two-way relationship here that must be broken, I believe. And if it means doing it -- opening up a debate -- from the outside, then so be it.
A debate is exactly what Arafat does not want. In the Legislative Assembly recently he petulantly refused to allow further discussion of the proposed Constitution (which already gives him an egregious amount of power) and said that the Constitution was an "executive" -- not parliamentary -- issue.
In late August, a brave deputy, Ziad Abu Amr, raised in the Parliament the matter of the book-banning, and it is slated for discussion soon. That is an important development. But Arafat's view at present is, I believe, to rule without question and to try either to efface, humiliate or circumvent any challenge to his tattered authority. I say "tattered" because, despite flying around in two ancient Egyptian helicopters, he must always be monitored by his Israeli masters in a third.
The situation very much resembles the one portrayed by Gabriel Garcia Marquez in The Autumn of the Patriarch. The man scarcely knows the difference between reality and illusion, and were it not for the cruelty with which he treats his dependent cronies and hangers-on, the situation would be comic.
I hope that, as a result of this censorship, there will be more candid and accurate discussion of the peace process. Mostly, the Western media have behaved scandalously, accepting the hyperbole and cant of the Americans and the Israelis and their Arab clients; they have neither read the texts of the Oslo agreements nor looked at the situation on the ground, in which Palestinians are now oppressed by Israelis and by a sort of Israeli-imposed enforcer -- a situation that Benjamin Netanyahu will make a good deal worse. But my larger hope is that more Palestinian writers and intellectuals will begin to engage in the kind of questioning and challenge that our situation so desperately requires.
EDWARD W. SAID
Edward W. Said's latest book is Peace and Its Discontents: Essays on Palestine and the Middle East Peace Process (Vintage).
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