From: Franklin Wayne Poley 
Subject: SNET: Ashrawi & the Washington Arabs (fwd)
Date: 13 Mar 2000 23:54:33 -0500
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Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 20:31:32 -0500
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Subject: Ashrawi & the Washington Arabs

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                HANAN ASHRAWI AND THE WASHINGTON ARABS

MER - Washington - 3/13/2000.   Once again Hanan Ashrawi comes to Washington 
on Tuesday, abit in advance of Yasser Arafat and official entourage.  This time 
she's the guest of Hisham Sharabi and company down near the Watergate, Sharabi 
constantly trying to justify his existence and all the millions he's collected 
from gullible Palestinians over the years...and mostly wasted.  Indeed, the tragic 
plight of the Palestinians today as they are esconced on modern-day reservations 
is not just the result of the collapse of the PLO and the twisting of Yasser 
Arafat, it has also been substantially contributed to by the self-serving deceptions 
pursued by the Sharabis and Ashrawis of the Palestinian elite.

True, they oftentimes look good in front of the camera, articulating words and 
concepts that make sense to academics and peaceniks.  But behind-the-scenes and 
when the situation calls for anything serious to be done, it nearly always turns 
out to be rhetorical smoke and mirrors...as those who know them best know only 
too well.

Back a year and a half ago Ashrawi came a calling much like this time.  Back 
then it was the  so-called "National Association of Arab Americans" (NAAA) that 
hosted her.  Now NAAA is itself no more having collapsed of its own ineptitude, 
just one more in a long string of failures for Arab
Americans who after a generation still have nothing but a discredited and unimportant 
presence in this capital city.  Now burdened with the Maksouds -- the Hala and 
Clovis duo -- not to mention the much-despised James Zogby, Arab Americans remain 
politically bankrupt and organizationally impotent here in the American seat 
of government.  True, the Maksouds, the Zogbys, and the Sharabis have managed 
to feather their own nests while constantly protecting the interests of their 
Arab client-regime patrons, but doing so they've essentially made fools of so 
many well-meaning but naive Arab Americans whom they've manipulated and burned.

Get this!  Here's the confused invitation announcement from Sharabi's "Center 
for Policy Analysis on Palestine" with a headline: "Neither Peace; nor Process 
- Dealing with Diplomatic Indolence."  

"By now," says the flyer, "the scene is a familiar one: chagrined diplomats and 
their retinue muscle their exits from the haggling chambers of Palestinian-Israeli 
peacemaking.  For all the bustle captured on camera, there is no break through 
to report, no cause for optimism.  Instead, the mock-heroic known as Oslo; writes 
itself into another headline, and observers are left to ponder their charge. 
 What next?  Join Hanan Ashrawi as she investigates answers to this perplexing 
question.  In addition to being perhaps the most familiar face to a Western audience 
grappling with the idea of Palestinian rights, Ashrawi serves as Sectretary General 
of MIFTAH, The Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and 
Democracy."

It's all such a laugh really -- something fit more for a Saturday Night Live 
skit than for another seriously hypocritical luncheon speech.  For Ashrawi, Sharabi, 
Maksoud, and the couple of dozen retired folk, on-the-take "journalists", and 
free-loaders who usually attend these "briefings" are in most cases the same 
crowd that was rushing to the ceremonies and banquets a few years ago promoting 
the very "peace process" they now in their consistently opportunistic manner 
denounce.  Ashrawi herself lost her political dignity serving as the articulate 
mouthpiece for the Arafat regime and more than once a "Minister" in it -- unlike 
Haider Abdul Shafi, the head of the Palestinian Delegation at Madrid and Washington, 
who instead refused to even attend the White House ceremonies and resigned from 
all Arafat-related bodies.

The following MER Flashback is to September 1998:


Washington Scene:

		BLAMING  EVERYONE  BUT  HERSELF...

	               HANAN  ASHRAWI:
		REALITY  RATHER  THAN  IMAGE

MER - Washington - 9/24/98:
Yesterday at the Willard Hotel in downtown Washington the National Association 
of Arab Americans (NAAA -- a weak and somewhat pathetic semi-organization for 
many years now) hosted a breakfast meeting with Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, the Palestinian 
woman spokesperson from Ramallah well-known for her good English diction, if 
not sound thinking or political integrity. It was just one of several appearances 
Ashrawi made in Washington to keep the troops, few and hagard as they are, on 
board and in line.

It was a small crowd at the Willard, about thirty persons, mostly the same old 
faces who have nowhere else to go -- retired State Department folk like Gene 
Bird and his wife who masquerade as friends of the Palestinians under cover of 
such deceptive organizations as "Council on the National Interest" and "Partners 
for Peace".  Their advice to the Palestinians is always terribly self-serving 
and wrong-headed; but their perpetual simple-minded optimism always goes a long 
way with this group.  Arab journalists and a few p.r. types filled out the "crowd".

It was all so predictable, all so incestuous, all so politically misguided, all 
so typically Palestinian in Washington.  Most of all though, it's all so sad 
and tragic for the people of tortured Palestine, and the refugee camps that still 
dot the region, who with each "agreement" suffer even more than with the one 
before.

Overall Ashrawi lamented what she called the "crisis" in the "peace process" 
and urged US intervention to "save" it before it's too late. Ho hum. In 1947 
the Palestinians begged the British and the Arab regimes to save them, unable 
to help themselves having made so many awful and
ill-informed decisions in the previous decades.  Now, in this "50th anniversary 
year", the Palestinians are in worse shape then ever, pleading and begging now 
with the U.S., with an American government that is more in bed with the Israelis 
than ever before in history.

Ashrawi opened her remarks by saying that a "candid assessment" of the "peace 
process" was very much needed. But then she proceeded to do just the opposite, 
providing nothing candid and nothing real; just alot more self-serving platitudes 
and weak-minded ideas. Forgetting even the recent past, not to mention what should 
have been learned throughout these 50 years, Ashrawi went on to conveniently 
blame Bibi Netanyahu’s government for the derailment in the peace negotiations, 
with abit left over for the Americans for failing to do what they never intended 
to do, no matter what they occasionally say to the Ashrawis of this world at 
polite Embassy receptions.

Poor Ashrawi, she seems to have forgotten all that went on at Camp David, the 
Intifada, Madrid, Washington -- the later of which (not the Intifada) she was 
herself so involved with, thus implicating her personally in the disasters that 
have ensued.

Predictably of course, Ashrawi then went on to express what everyone already 
knew, the growing frustration Palestinians now have with the "closures" of the 
occupied territories and the continuing deterioriation of every-day life for 
the great majority of Palestinians -- forgetting
once again that it was her now favored Israeli Labor party that instigated the 
closure policies, not to mention the settlement and demolition policies!

These formalities out of the way, Ashrawi then went on to her main work, promoting 
the Palestinian Authority and its "plan" to declare a Palestinian state in May 
1999.  Having participated as spokesperson for the last major round of Palestinian 
blunders, Ashrawi seems oblivious that she and her little clique of upper-crust 
Palestinian "Leaders" are about to fall into another big trap set for them by 
the far more astute and crafty Israelis.

Indeed, Ashrawi and her friends are in reality, rather than image, living proof 
that the Palestinians are worse led, more divided, and more manipulated today 
then they were 50 years ago.

It was about a month ago that Dr. Ashrawi pulled her latest personal p.r. ploy 
-- resigning from Arafat’s "cabinet" to protest, so she said, his autocratic 
style of "rule" and the corruption of his key ministers.  But she didn't even 
mention any of this at the Willard yesterday morning. And
in fact one was hard-pressed to think of anything she would have said differently 
if she were still an official member of the Arafat "Authority".

When asked in fact about the more recent feined "resignation" of another of her 
colleagues, Saeb Erekat, the chief "negotiator", Ashrawi refused to comment other 
than rushing to say that that was an "internal" Palestinian matter and shouldn't 
be of any concern.  What a guillible lot these
Palestinians "friends" and hangers on.

So much for Hanan Ashrawi "on the record".  An eloquent representative of the 
Palestinians in many international arena since the post-Gulf War, post-Intifada 
"peace process" began, Ashrawi is certainly good with words -- no doubt about 
that.  But the role that she has played, and how badly she has allowed herself 
to be used and manipulated, these matters are much more hidden and purposefully 
obscured.

In short when it comes to deeds Ashrawi is very much one of those responsible 
for the disasters that have befallen her people, even more so during her years 
as spokeswoman than before. Indeed, Ashrawi -- along with Shaath, Erakat, and 
Abed-Rabbo to name just a few of the others -- has helped lead the Palestinians 
to the apartheid fate they now are being stuffed into on their "autonomous" Bantustans. 
 Ashrawi continually makes one excuse after another for the role she has played 
in all this, unlike the much more dignified Haider Abdul Shafi, head of the Palestinian 
delegation to Madrid and Washington, who has completely resigned from anything 
involving Arafat and Oslo. Ashrawi simply refuses to take responsibility for 
her past mistakes, and worse yet compounds them with every misleading and disingenuous 
talk she gives.

Ashrawi, an academic by training, is adored by many in the westernized Palestinian 
elite who themselves so self-servingly, and mistakenly, consider her an excellent 
representative of the Palestinian educated classes. Her ability with manipulating 
words has helped her escape the crucial questions about her real political role 
in the "peace process", as well as her real political positions.

Ashrawi resigned from the Washington negotiating team when Arafat signed the 
Oslo Accords -- after all the damage had already been done and there was nothing 
left to do.  But unlike Abdul Shafi, she participated in the White House ceremony. 
 And today she repeats the mantra -- like a trained parrot -- that the backtalk 
channels which led to Oslo were necessary for the legitimization of the PLO and 
to get a "peace process" going.  What a laugh!  The Israelis got the Palestinians 
to recognize the Israeli State and accept "autonomy"; while in return the Israelis 
recognized Yasser Arafat and got rid of direct control of Palestinian "population 
centers", now being turned into the equivalent of Indian reservations, complete 
with gambling casinos for foreigners only!

After the Oslo accords, always seeking a self-serving and politically correct 
way that her European and American friends could help fund, Ashrawi started her 
very own human rights group. But it wasn't too long before she felt the need 
to get back in the bigger limelight; so she went back to work for the main human 
rights "violator" himself, Yasser Arafat, as "minister" of higher education. 
 Scandalously, she accepted this new post even while Arafat's Gaza thugs were 
torturing her colleague Dr. Iyad Sarraj -- a true human rights champion -- and 
threatening him with death for courageously speaking out against the regime Ashrawi 
was once again officially speaking for.

While the former head of the Palestinian delegation, Dr. Haider Abdul Shafi, 
continued to plead with Ashrawi to stop her involvements with Arafat, she instead 
prefered to have it both ways. On the one hand she is able to say she opposes 
some things that are going on, after all she "resigned".  While on the other 
hand she continues to say and do much as she did before; now as a kind of less 
than official "autonomous" representative of the Arafat regime. Pressed about 
the hypocritical role she is playing, Ashrawi insists that she now plans to "network" 
with Arab and European governments, as well as organizations such as the NAAA, 
to "build up momentum" for the coming "declaration" of Statehood.

Apparently no one has told Ashrawi (not that she would listen anyway) what a 
tremendously demoralizing failure all the Arab groups combined turned out to 
be this year, the "50th Anniversary" year, with their major effort of "the quilt." 
 They will be no more effective in the year ahead; but they will of course claim 
just the opposite, trotting out the old long-ago totally co-opted windbag Clovis 
Maksoud to proclaim their successes far and wide.

More importantly -- for all the Arab groups combined amount to practically nothing 
in the political world of Washington -- apparently no one has explained to Ashrawi 
that she is about to help lead her people into one more trap, into another disaster, 
this one maybe fatal. Bibi can't
wait for Arafat's "Declaration"...it will be just the excuse he needs to crush 
the Palestinians further, fulfilling Yitzhak Rabin's real pledge which was to 
"break their bones" and their will.

Ashrawi really does love to have things both ways, trying to pay lip service 
to as many constituencies that might further invite her to this or that speaking 
event where she can continue to advocade her cheap and easy slogans of "peace 
and reconciliation".  Indeed this role and
approach is precisely why she is wined and dined by so many so often in the West 
where she much prefers to spend her time rather than with the destititute Palestinian 
masses.

Ashrawi talks all the time about the need to get the peace process "back on track", 
yet inserts here and there that the peace process is basically flawed (i.e., 
it never was really on track to start with).

She always refrains from seriously criticizing Arafat's duplicitous and corrupt 
regime, from naming names, or from dealing consistently with the PA's miserable 
human rights record.  But then she mentions in a passing sentence or two a few 
specific human rights violations by the
"security forces"; as if these were aberrations on the way to being corrected.

Actually the crowd that constantly invites Ashrawi to Washington's fancy hotels 
and restaurants -- the "client organizations" and the "client regimes" they interact 
with (this time only the Egyptian Ambassador bothered to attend) -- is itself 
enough to explain what Ashrawi really
is all about: a snobbish Palestinian Arab aristocratic personality who covets 
the limelight and will do anything and everything to stay in it.  In short, she 
is a client and captive personality used in her familiar role precisely because 
she combines rhetorical gifts with political cowardice.

Arafat’s much-despised "Ambassador" in Washington, Hasan Abdul Rahman, was also 
at the breakfast, of course.  Rahman's only real job is to be the eyes and ears 
of Arafat, his personal patron and without whom Rahman would long ago have gone 
into oblivion (which would still be a small plus for the Palestinian cause if 
it could somehow be arranged).

Rahman is a petty, corrupt, thuggish, semi-literate character, and thus, in a 
sense, a fitting representative of the Arafat regime. He acts as a kind of combined 
escort and enforcer, in cases like this making sure Ashrawi and everyone else 
invited to such affairs stays on assigned topic,
saying nothing whatsoever "candidly", and most important of all says nothing 
seriously critical of Arafat or his regime. With Rahman always present and always 
reporting back to the "Authority" through the good offices of the Arab League, 
none of the cliquish Palestinians who are invited to
speak in Washington these days, Ashrawi foremost among them, will ever give a 
trully "candid assessment" of anything. Instead they are simply paraded from 
one incestuous and deceitful gathering to another, misleading and demoralizing 
the best and the brightest who increasingly
want nothing to do with any of them or the organizations that host them.  And 
all the while they work overtime to deflect blame from themselves while pretending 
to champion what in reality they are actually undermining.

For additional insights into the role Hanan Ashrawi and her circles have played 
since the forced end to the Intifada and its replacement with the American/Israeli 
"peace process", a number of articles written in earlier years will soon be republished 
by MER - "The Selling of Hanan Ashrawi," and "Boring Diplomacy". Please let your 
friends know by sending them this initial article -- there is still time to get 
onto the MER Distribution List.
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