Ashrawi at Yale

Palestinian negotiator, legislator, and spokesperson extraordinaire Hanan Ashrawi spoke at Yale Law School tonight to a nearly full auditorium. The crowd was about evenly split between Yale students and aging community members, most of whom appeared to be lefty activist types (socialist newspapers were in abundance). Ashrawi's talk was indeed well-tailored for left-wing, American activist audiences. Throughout it, Ashrawi, a feminist, secular-minded Christian, referenced many of the left's favourite (and questionable) themes: unilateralism never works; American foreign policy is overly simplistic and sees only good and evil; civil rights are being rapidly eroded in post-Sept. 11 America. On this last point, she said, only half-jokingly, that instead of the U.S. exporting democracy to the Middle East, the Arab regimes apparently exported their oppressive practices to the U.S. Whatever.

On more substantive matters, she railed against Israel for all the Palestinian grievances du jour, such as the plan to build in the "E-1 corridor" between Ma'aleh Adumim and Jerusalem, the route of the security barrier, and the extent of Sharon's disengagement plan.

I asked a question about whether the Palestinians could give up their demand for "right of return," which is as divisive an issue as borders. She answered, reasonably, that any Palestinian negotiator who gave up the right would lose legitmacy. She said that there were three "steps" in the process of solving the refugee issue: (1) Palestinians will ask for recognition of Israel's role in creating the refugee problem; (2) they will ask for recognition of the "right" to return; and (3) the actual resettlement of refugees will take place. This last step, she implied, can be manipulated so that only a limited number of refugees end up entering Israel. It was unclear in what sense she meant that these three points constituted "steps," but the only way this solution will be workable is if all three steps are arranged simultaneously--i.e., Israel recognizes the refugees' claims only within the context of an agreement that effectively limits the number of refugees that actually enter Israel; otherwise the potential for Israel to be flooded with Palestinian refugees will remain, a possibility that Israel won't accept.

Another person asked about the potential for a one-state, binational solution to the conflict, which some PLO figures have recently been touting to scare demography-obsessed Israelis. The idea also has a lot of currency in left-wing activist circles, so I was interested to hear her response in light of the crowd. Ashrawi was pretty honest about how infeasible--and bad for the Palestinians--the binational plan is, even making a point about how Israel and Palestine are "not like South Africa."

I believe an Israeli government could strike a viable peace deal with someone like Ashrawi. But the question is, how representative a Palestinian representative is she? Given the strength of the militant and Islamist groups, not very, I think.