When a Nation Is Homeless

Jonathan Kuttab was a prominent Palestinian attorney and activist who lived in Jerusalem when this article appeared. He worked with Al-Haq, an organization of lawyers who monitor human rights concerns of Palestinians living under Israeli military occupation, and the Mandela Institute for Political Prisoners. He was a well-known advocate for nonviolent resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and a frequent commentator and analyst for Western media. He was also working on a book about Palestinian liberation theology.

In early April 1991, both Kuttab and Jim Wallis of Sojourners were speakers in a lecture series on the Middle East at Furman University in South Carolina. Charles Kimball, associate professor of religion at Furman when this article appeared, and Jim Wallis conducted the following interview with Jonathan Kuttab.

--The Editors

Jim Wallis: What is the current situation back home, on the West Bank and Gaza?

Jonathan Kuttab: The situation, particularly the economic situation, is as bad as anybody ever thought it could be. Even during three years of intifada [Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation], when we thought we had experienced systematic efforts to punish Palestinians economically, we had seen nothing like the situation that has occurred since the Gulf war.

There are three features of this system. One of them is the long-term curfew. The population, sometimes the entire population, is kept basically under house arrest 24 hours a day for weeks at a time. You can't plan, you can't conduct social, religious, or economic activities, or education, because you never know when you are under curfew. And because it is sporadic and arbitrary, and in different places at different times, it is very difficult to make it visible.

The second feature is rules on movement between towns, and between the Occupied Territories and Israel -- including in Jerusalem, and this is crucial. East Jerusalem essentially cuts off the north from the south of the West Bank. People cannot travel through East Jerusalem without a special permit, which is given for a short period of time, is often not honored, and can be torn up or revoked at will. So even when there is no curfew, there is effectively no movement of goods, people, and services between the different towns of the West Bank. It's a ghetto-ization and isolation of each specific unit, which has wreaked tremendous havoc on the entire social and economic fabric of the region.

The third issue is the prevention of people from pursuing work, cultural, and other opportunities, both outside and inside Israel. Systematically, for more than 30 years, Palestinians have been prevented from setting up their own economic infrastructure, have been brought into an economic relationship with Israel in which they are the providers of unskilled labor, hewers of wood and drawers of water for the Israeli economy. Now, partially under security justifications, Palestinians are prevented from coming into Israel to work or for any other purpose unless they are carrying a pass, which is modeled after the South African pass system. These very restrictive regulations drastically cut down the number of workers in Israel, and permanent road blocks are now a basic feature of life.

All three elements are nearly invisible and very difficult to explain to the outside world -- which is not sympathetic to begin with, not interested in what tremendous suffering they cause in the lives of people. And even international efforts at helping the Palestinians, which were moving in a direction of development, now have to be shifted around to outside relief. So in a situation in which people are not really refugees, are not really indigent, are not really living in tents and waiting for a handout from the international community, people are forced into that position for mere survival.

Charles Kimball: On the eve of Secretary of State James Baker's second trip to the Middle East, Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Arens announced the release of a thousand Palestinian prisoners. This gesture was presumably to show Israeli movement and desire to make some concessions. How do you see such gestures?

Kuttab: The release-of-prisoners gesture has been tried once before. The last time they made this gesture, they kept people whose release time was due for the next two weeks, so they could be released as part of a bulk release, and the ones that they did release were people whose detention was about to finish anyway. More than a thousand detainees are serving six months in administrative detention, without charges or trial. One or two thousand people at any one time are detained awaiting a decision of whether to bring them to trial or not. There's a total of about 9,000 detainees at any one time who are awaiting trial, or administratively detained, or under preventive detention. So releasing a thousand people hardly touches the actual situation.

There are concrete "confidence-building" gestures that can be made. [The Israelis] can cancel administrative detention as a form of punishment; they can announce the end of house demolitions -- which are illegal -- and deportations -- which are so clearly a regional violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions as well as international law, and a war crime under the Nuremberg Principles. They can open the universities which have been closed for more than three years. They can eliminate restrictions on coming to East Jerusalem. But they haven't.

Kimball: Are these kinds of specifics spelled out by Palestinian representatives and offered so that the U.S. administration in fact knows the things from the Palestinian perspective that would be useful in the context of confidence-building measures?

Kuttab: I don't think that the administration has any problem finding out what is useful. The problem comes with finding the political will to urge or force the Israelis to do anything that they don't want to do. The United States has tremendous leverage over Israel, particularly now­ -- economic, political, moral, and diplomatic. There are on the record U.N. Security Council resolutions that Americans can very easily demand that Israelis abide by. But we have not seen any of that political will.

The perceived interest of the United States is to create a process and the appearance of movement. The Israeli interest at this point is to play tough, to avoid the appearance of making concessions, to put off the day of reckoning, hoping that a new dynamic will step in that will make it unnecessary to make those concessions. The two meet in that they're both working on appearances and on process, rather than on substance.

With regard to the Baker visit, Palestinians have no desire to meet with Baker, have no expectations that he would deliver anything; but there is equally a tremendous desire not to appear to be putting up any obstacles. Palestinians were totally outraged at the Gulf war. And yet they felt very strongly that we should not be the ones to say no. We should be willing to compromise even on solid issues of principle in order to show the genuineness of our desire to arrive at peace.

Wallis: There was a lot of media coverage of Palestinian support for Saddam Hussein. What was, in fact, the reality during the war and what is it now?

Kuttab: The Palestinian position both officially in the PLO [Palestine Liberation Organization] and on the street has always been consistent. We were opposed to the invasion of Kuwait; we always called for a withdrawal of Iraqi forces from Kuwait. We never really liked Saddam too much as a person -- he represented just another of those repressive Arab regimes.

And yet he made a number of statements that were very powerful for us. He talked about sharing the wealth. He talked about the need to stand up against the West. He talked about building the new Arab power and reality to become players on the international field instead of puppets. He critiqued the decadence of the Gulf sheikdoms and called into question the legitimacy of these regimes.

Of course his own regime was quite sorely lacking in legitimacy, but he seemed to be the one leader who was at least telling the truth, and was willing to stand up to the West. The Iraqi argument of linkage, the Iraqi statements that if there is going to peace, it has to be for everybody, that you can't forget the Palestinians, had struck a very sensitive and a very favorable and sympathetic note with us.

Wallis: But some would say that Saddam Hussein raised the Palestinian issues and all the Arab issues for transparently self-serving reasons.

Kuttab: That's possibly true, but words are all we have as Palestinians, and he was saying the right words. It's very interesting when Saddam dropped his demand of linkage, many journalists came to me and other Palestinians, saying, "Aren't you disappointed? He is now willing to withdraw without waiting for the Israelis to withdraw." And none of us were disappointed. We wanted that war to end, and if the price was dropping the issue of linkage, so be it. We were so full of grief and suffering for the tremendous bombardment of Iraq, we wanted it to end and to end quickly.

And now, when we look at the new world order, I think our concern is not just for Palestine and Palestinians. We feel so much a part of the global movement and the regional movement. We would like to be part of the new world, a different world, based on law, based on principles, based on morality, based on values, based on justice, rather than American hegemony and imperialism.

We have seen within our own context what it is like to wait for the crumbs of mercy and recognition from the Israeli system. Basically what the new world order is telling us is, at best you may be able to get some crumbs, if you play our game. The gut level response is, "We want justice."

Wallis: George Bush says that in the new world order, the weak can trust the strong to rule with mercy; the word justice is not a part of the conversation. He referred to the image of the American soldier comforting the Iraqi soldier when he was surrendering to him. He said that's what America is, and I think that was a metaphor for the new world order: when the enemy surrenders, the American soldier says, "Trust us, we'll be good to you."

Kuttab: The Palestinians have a similar metaphor, which is of the Israeli soldier helping the Palestinian woman with her child and possessions across the bridge and giving the kid some chocolate. This is a very vivid image for the Palestinians, with the message: "You can't have nationhood, you can't have dignity, you can't have justice, you can't even have your homeland or statehood, but we'll give you a bar of chocolate and help your wife or mother across the bridge as she leaves and makes room for us."

Kimball: Picking up on this image of the bridge, one of the frightening things in recent months has been to hear how many people now talk casually about what amounts to a "Jordanian option." You hear very respectable commentators say, "Well, Palestinians do have a state, it's called Jordan." There was a great fear during the war that if Israel had so desired, given any kind of justification, that a mass transfer of Palestinians could have taken place, and there would have been little outcry because of the need to keep the allied coalition together.

Kuttab: One of the things that the Gulf war did show was the ability of states to use raw, sheer power. And the utter failure of the international community to respond was a strong concern. They can talk about international law; they can talk about Security Council resolutions and international legalities if the issue is Iraq -- but they are unwilling to address those issues to Israel, much less to the United States. This created a tremendous sense of vulnerability; that when push comes to shove, power -- rather than morality, or law, or values, or international legitimacy -- is what determines.

The image that is coming across, certainly for people in the Third World, is a brutality of control, where the United States now uses its military power, its economic power, its political leverage, its control of communications systems worldwide, particularly the television, to impose its will. And the United Nations becomes just another instrument to be used within that system of control, rather than an independent force that comes into play.

In fact all the sympathies that the Palestinians obtained for three years of intifada meant nothing. They were totally wiped out in a couple of weeks. Whereas the sympathy that Israel obtained for refusing to mess up the coalition -- refusing to respond to the missile attacks -- was translated immediately into military support with Patriot missiles, into economic supports, into political support -- a promise not to push for an international conference [on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict] until the year 2000, a promise basically to turn a blind eye to human rights violations, a promise not to make life difficult for Israeli policy makers.

So all of a sudden we had to stop and say, Where does morality fit in, where does justice fit in? What is the meaning of international sympathy if it cannot be translated into concrete action? What does international law mean? What is the role of the United Nations? Is it just a tool in the hands of the United States, or does it have an independent value or significance? The answers we were getting were frightening and added to a sense of utter vulnerability. If you are weak you count for nothing, even if justice is on your side -- this is the message we were being told.

Many Palestinians were very supportive of Saddam Hussein precisely because he raised the issue of the double standard. The operative word for the Americans was linkage: "We reject linkage." I was one of those who said, "Yes, I reject linkage, too." You can't wait until everyone else withdraws first before you withdraw from Kuwait. But consistency should have been the operative word. That law means nothing if you are not willing to apply it to everyone.

U.N. resolutions for a long time have been stalemated by the veto game. With Iraq, that was no longer the case. Sanctions were becoming effective, even [then British Prime Minister Margaret] Thatcher and the United States, who have always resisted sanctions, were all of a sudden very enthusiastic about sanctions, even going beyond that to actual military power. So there was almost a ray of hope that maybe we are entering a new world where law and U.N. resolutions can become part of the scene. But that was shattered very quickly, because the U.S. certainly did not want international law to be applied to Israel, or to itself. And certainly not the same way it was applied to Iraq.

Wallis: In the domain of the superpowers, the United States is now supreme. So what we'll see is American hegemony, but under the guise and the rhetoric of the new rule of international legality. The U.N. authorization-of-force resolution is where the manipulation and control became complete.

Kuttab: And once that resolution was passed, and the U.N. gave its stamp of approval, the U.N. Security Council was prevented from even meeting to discuss the issue. As a feature of the new world order, I think we have to acknowledge that this is on the one hand extremely frightening, but on the other hand it carries the seeds of hope.

It's frightening because evil actions are most pernicious when they come cloaked with the apparel of righteousness, with the language of legality and morality. It's frightening in that we now have a world order that tries to baptize itself with a theology of morality, of goodness and benignity, of legality, of U.N. legitimacy.

On the other hand, that also carries the seeds of hope; because it is the nature of law, it is the nature of legality and legitimacy -- precisely because of the language that it uses -- that it can be open to challenge and questioning. Here is a cloak which can be removed. Here is a mask that can be ripped off. Here is a lie that can be exposed.

And to expose the lie, to rip off the mask, to remove the cloak, you don't need sheer power, all you need is spiritual power. All you need is the ability to analyze, and articulate, and communicate a truth. So people like us, who don't have material power, who don't have armies and battalions, who don't have tremendous monetary resources, nonetheless can speak prophetically and therefore can be effective, because we are not confronting armies with armies. We are confronting power with truth. That gives me, at least, a tremendous sense of hope, that this new world order is not as pervasive and as powerful as it appears.

Wallis: In their need to find legitimacy for the exercise of power, they inadvertently provide tools by which power can be challenged in return.

Kuttab: Which is why evil can never ultimately triumph, why good ultimately must triumph, because evil power cannot stand on its own. It must always find moral and legal justification, which can ultimately subvert and undermine it. At a global level, this is what is happening. This is why no oppression can survive for very long, this is why our faith in the ultimate sovereignty of God and in the ultimate victory of good over evil will be vindicated. It's not wishful thinking, and it's not other-worldly. It's in the very nature of things that raw power cannot stand on its own, that evil oppression cannot survive for very long, because it carries within it the seeds of its own destruction.

The rule of law and the concept of justice are always higher than the letter of the law. This is what St. Paul is talking about, how the Spirit brings life, but the letter kills. What the United States did with the United Nations during this crisis was take the letter of the law that says U.N. Security Council resolutions are binding, and then totally subvert the purpose of the United Nations, which is to maintain the peace. And subvert the concepts of international law, which have within them the concept of self-determination, the concept of democracy, the rule of law.

Kimball: What do the Gulf war and the new world order mean specifically for Palestinians?

Kuttab: It's very difficult to know right now, because people are still in a situation where we are stunned. But in a real way, the dynamics of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict have not changed. If anything, the basic long-term factors are now clearer than ever. This Gulf war has shown the utter vulnerability of an Israel that lacks legitimacy in the Arab and Muslim world. It was reinforced because of the Iraqi missiles, which showed that a relatively weak Third World country can in fact threaten Israeli security; that in the modern age, in the age of the missile, certainly there is no security in stockpiling military weapons. There is only the tremendous, horrible insecurity of apocalyptic measures.

The only real security comes from legitimacy and acceptance, and ultimately from justice, which only Palestinians can provide to Israelis. Even though they have no power militarily to threaten the Israelis, the Palestinians -- and not military power -- hold the only key to Israeli security. There is no safety except in legitimacy, except in peace with your neighbors, except in a situation where your neighbors no longer want war with you.

The Arab world -- while defeated through the defeat of Iraq and totally subjugated to the point that its oil resources, which never really served the Arab world, are now directly serving Pax Americana -- is not acquiescent. How forces will develop to challenge American hegemony remains to be seen, of course. But there's no question that they will; because Pax Americana does not offer Arab peoples what they need. It cannot by definition offer them that, and therefore there will be tension, there will be upheaval, and there will be serious challenge, even in the Middle East, to Pax Americana.

We can see that coming. For the short term, there is no question that what we will see is suffering, defeat, disunity, oppression. But in the medium and long term, I don't think that Palestinians, and Arabs generally, are in a desperate position.

If anything, I think Israelis are in a desperate position; even at the height of the victory of Pax Americana, I think they are extremely vulnerable, because of a lack of legitimacy in the Arab world, and also because the interests of power in the United States can shift. And when they do shift, there is enough genuine resentment as well as anti-Semitism within this country that will not hesitate to put the interests of American empire before the interests of Jews and Israelis.

I think we may see a major shift in American foreign policy toward Israel on very short notice. When those who are in power in this country decide that the interests of empire require leaning on Israel heavily, they will do so with a vengeance. And they will do so in a quick and dramatic shift, almost overnight. They will find popular support for such a push that has nothing to do with sympathy for Palestinians, that has nothing to do with morality, that has nothing to do with the requirements of justice, that has nothing to do with interest for the long-term security of the state of Israel or its legitimacy, but that has to do with sheer power. I'm afraid that Israel, and Jews, may once again be made victims.

Wallis: Some people wouldn't expect such sympathy from a Palestinian who has seen firsthand so much of the oppression of your people by the Israelis.

Kuttab: Tremendous suffering can be imposed on Israelis as well as Palestinians in the service of empire. Israeli leaders may resist such pressure militarily, causing tremendous havoc within the region. They have their arsenal of weapons, which no one is talking about. They have their missiles, and their poison gas, and their biological weapons, as well as nuclear weapons, which they will not hesitate to use when they are under tremendous pressure. I see that pressure coming.

I'm frightened, because ultimately my hopes and my dreams and my visions are of peace, not of apocalypse. While I'm scared, it's like the prophets of the Old Testament, who would prophesy massive destruction because of the evil of society, but who at the same time ultimately would rather see otherwise, would rather see repentance, would rather see justice.

In a certain sense, while I see the brutal, massive destruction of the state of Israel as a real possibility, maybe even as an inevitable result of the trends that are taking place now and its own policies, it gives me little comfort. I'd much rather see peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

For several years since the intifada, we have been struggling with Israel, largely in a nonviolent way. We have been saying all along that we are offering peace, we are desperate for peace, we want to make major compromises toward peace. But if peace doesn't come, there will be a disaster, there will be a war, there will be consequences. Nobody took us seriously of course, because Palestinians don't have military power.

So when the Iraqis did start shooting missiles at Tel Aviv, there was in a sense a vindication. People felt the Israeli arrogance and their military might, their ability to hit almost anywhere in the Arab world at will, while we were the ones who were suffering all the time.

I guess we had a naive hope that the Israelis, after being shut in their houses, would feel with us now what we've been suffering all these years being under curfew. To have the Israeli children stay home from school because of the war, maybe they will feel for us, with our children, who for the last three years have not been able to go to school. Our children were dying every day in the streets, while Israelis, particularly in Tel Aviv, could go on with their lives normally, as if we didn't exist, as if there was no suffering on the West Bank.

The missiles brought home the reality of war and suffering, and we were hoping that somehow now they can feel with us, they can realize that the situation cannot continue; that war is not only a consequence of suffering for us, but that they also suffer, they are also vulnerable; that in fact they -- not just us -- need peace.

I was in a [Palestinian] refugee camp when the television showed an Israeli woman who was injured by a Scud missile, and I saw the people in the refugee camp shaking their heads and saying, "How terrible." At a certain level, Palestinians were sorry for the civilian casualties the Israelis suffered.

Kimball: There's a lot of confusion, I think, in the United States, perhaps wider, about the issue of leadership in the Palestinian community. There was more clarity in the past few years when the U.S.-PLO dialogue was in a very early stage. How do Palestinians understand leadership questions at this particular juncture?

Kuttab: The issue is representativeness, or authenticity of leadership, apart from whether you like the leaders or their positions. This is where the confusion arises. When Americans and Israelis don't like Palestinian positions, they question their representativeness and they seek alternative leadership. Not because they are more genuine, or more representative, but because they are more to their liking.

Nobody questions the representativeness of the Saudi regime, or of the Kuwaiti sheiks. It's not an issue, because Americans like those regimes. They don't press for democracy there or for genuineness or authenticity. In fact quite the contrary. They are afraid of the street, of popular sentiments, of what people really believe and of what people really want.

So in a way it's really a "red herring." Israel has never really wanted alternative leadership to the PLO. It has never allowed any local leadership to arise in the Occupied Territories. Anybody with leadership potential gets deported or jailed or silenced. And they certainly don't want to allow elections or any democratic processes by which a more representative, or a more genuine, or a more authentic leadership arises.

Kimball: Could you say a few words about the dynamics between or among Palestinian and American Christians and Muslims in the context of this conflict?

Kuttab: There were very clear indications that the West had a Crusader mentality, that at a certain level there was some racism, some anti-Islamic elements that went into this. And it was absolutely essential that the church leadership took the position that it took in the United States. In a way it took the sting out of the Crusader appearance of the alliance's efforts. This was the West, yes, but it was not Christianity against Islam, because the Christian church has been the most vocal in opposition to the war.

For Palestinian and other Arab Christians this was a tremendous relief, and a tremendous opportunity to assert that this war had nothing to do with religion. Whatever the colonial aspects, whatever the domination aspects, it was certainly not Christianity or the Christian world. It may have been the West at play here, but it was not Christianity against Islam.