2008 Woodie Awards
Hanan Ashrawi and the human dimension of peace
By: Helen Warren
Issue date: 9/14/07 Section: Opinion
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In advance of the Middle East Summit that will convene next Monday afternoon, I sought to know more about Hanan Ashrawi, the woman who will engage in the summit on behalf of Palestinians. So I read This Side of Peace (1995), Ashrawi's personal account of her long career as a representative of Palestinian interests and a participant in a variety of efforts, often unfruitful, to make peace in the Middle East.
I share what I learned about Ashrawi so that others attending the summit might glimpse something in this woman beyond her considerable skills as a negotiator and advocate for the Palestinians.
By her own declaration, Hanan Ashrawi is not a diplomat; she does not dance en pointe. This fact is evident in her account of talks convened by James Baker, the former U.S. Secretary of State under the first President Bush. Impatient with the "sterile tone of diplomacy," Ashrawi sought to "change the nature of the discourse" (89).
Not afraid to offend, she questions the motives of the professional peacemakers across the table: "To you," she begins, "this may be an exercise in political virtuosity or intellectual abstractions. To us, it is the very substance of our lives."
Ashrawi continues: "We are discussing the lives and future of our children-of a whole people. We are presenting before you the raw and painful substance of our humanity-of human suffering experienced and expressed concretely and directly by us, by those who are negotiating here with you as though their lives are just as normal and just as safe as yours. It is time for you to hear and witness what the occupation is really like."
What followed was a litany of everyday occurrences in the Occupied Territories, the consequences of closed schools, demolished homes, interrogations and detainments.
Ashrawi succeeded in altering the discourse momentarily, but not the outcome of those particular talks. American pragmatics prevailed over what Ashrawi describes as "the assertion of authenticity, to make known the Palestinian narrative from within, and to gain it the legitimacy of human identification and recognition" (94).
I share what I learned about Ashrawi so that others attending the summit might glimpse something in this woman beyond her considerable skills as a negotiator and advocate for the Palestinians.
By her own declaration, Hanan Ashrawi is not a diplomat; she does not dance en pointe. This fact is evident in her account of talks convened by James Baker, the former U.S. Secretary of State under the first President Bush. Impatient with the "sterile tone of diplomacy," Ashrawi sought to "change the nature of the discourse" (89).
Not afraid to offend, she questions the motives of the professional peacemakers across the table: "To you," she begins, "this may be an exercise in political virtuosity or intellectual abstractions. To us, it is the very substance of our lives."
Ashrawi continues: "We are discussing the lives and future of our children-of a whole people. We are presenting before you the raw and painful substance of our humanity-of human suffering experienced and expressed concretely and directly by us, by those who are negotiating here with you as though their lives are just as normal and just as safe as yours. It is time for you to hear and witness what the occupation is really like."
What followed was a litany of everyday occurrences in the Occupied Territories, the consequences of closed schools, demolished homes, interrogations and detainments.
Ashrawi succeeded in altering the discourse momentarily, but not the outcome of those particular talks. American pragmatics prevailed over what Ashrawi describes as "the assertion of authenticity, to make known the Palestinian narrative from within, and to gain it the legitimacy of human identification and recognition" (94).
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