JEDDAH — US President George W. Bush said recently, “I mean what I say when I call upon the Arab world to strongly condemn and act against terrorist activity.”
We, the Arabs, have no problem with “strongly condemning and acting against terrorist activity.” In fact, we did not need a US president to “call upon” us to do that. We have always condemned terrorism, and condemned it “strongly”.
The president’s call was not for anything specific, say, for “condemning in Arabic” the actions of “suicide bombers” against civilians. If it were, there would be no problem. Arabs have condemned such actions unequivocally, and repeatedly. But, when Bush talks about terrorism, he means much more than that. Here is where we have a problem.
What he wants the Arab world to “condemn and act against” is resistance, in all its forms, to the Israeli occupation. For him, any response that indicates anything but total Palestinian surrender is terrorism. It doesn’t matter who is targeted by the movement — soldiers or civilians; so long as it is an Israeli, in Bush’s book, it is terrorism. So, the problem is our different views of the occupation. We Arabs look at it as an illegal and illegitimate military occupation. Americans and Israelis don’t.
In fact, “meaning what he says” would be a wonderful idea for Bush while dealing with the Middle East tragedy. All in this region will feel a great relief if the American administration does that when speaking of the conflict, as did Oklahoma Congressman James Inhofe, a conservative Republican, a month ago. In a floor statement in the Congress on March 4, he described the occupied Palestinian territories as “rightfully Israel’s land.” If President Bush and his administration had spoken with the same frankness and clarity, then we would have been able to understand the differences between our two sides very clearly.
It is obvious that the American administration’s views are not much different from Inhofe’s. Its actions conform to those views rather than to any UN resolution. In contrast, most other countries and we Arabs accept the UN position on the status of the occupied territories.
We also disagree with the Americans on other issues. When we in Saudi Arabia organize a telethon to collect donations for Palestinians or give financial assistance to the families of Palestinian martyrs, certain circles in Washington oppose it. They view these actions as support for, and incitement of, terrorism. Quite natural a view for a people who see no occupation in Palestine; for them, it is “rightfully Israel’s land.”
When we extend support to the Palestinian resistance, we do it as a noble duty. We provide assistance to those who have lost their breadwinners to Israeli gunfire. The Israeli Army punished those families and destroyed their houses because some of their members took part in the uprising. In the United States, medals are presented to honor the brave men and women who sacrifice their lives for their country. We are doing the same thing here. We support our Palestinian brethren; we want to see their land restored and their buildings, demolished by the Israelis, reconstructed. This would help the Palestinians regain their land without making the same mistakes they made in 1948 and 1967 when they left their land as refugees and were then unable to return. We Saudis are proud to offer this assistance as our duty and also as a strategic move.
When an Israeli discovers tunnels underground, the Americans join the Israeli chorus of outrage, claiming it as proof that the Palestinians were planning a war. We don’t see it that way. We see it as part of normal preparations by a people who have been under occupation for 35 years and are not ready to accept it. When the Americans see a Palestinian document signed by Yasser Arafat making financial allocations to his men, they cite it as another example of the Palestinian leader’s involvement in terrorism — because, Israel has called them terrorists. We see it differently. We see it as the duty of a leader toward his men who are struggling along with him to liberate their land.
On these and other matters, our views are contradictory. These contradictions and differences make it difficult for us to reach common understanding with the Americans on the Palestinian issue.
But one thing we have to admit: The Palestinian leadership contributed to making this situation so difficult when it accepted the Oslo Accord without the knowledge of the Arabs and even the Palestinian people. It signed a series of documents committing itself to halt its armed struggle before winning full freedom for the people it represented. What the leadership received was only an “autonomous authority”, a flag and a national anthem.
However, Ariel Sharon has swept aside all this ambiguity with his military offensive. The true nature of the occupation, in its horror and despicableness, is there for all to see in the debris of the Palestinian Authority headquarters in Ramallah.
