Annual Nakba Commemoration Dinner Speech
When I arrived in Tunis to find out why he was “very, very angry” with me, he was having a meeting with his headquarters staff. When they left his office, a bodyguard who knew me well gestured for me to enter and closed the door behind me. As usual it was just the two of us. Arafat was sitting at his desk, head down, rapidly reading and signing papers. For five very long minutes he didn’t look up or in any way acknowledge my presence. He was ignoring me completely. That was most unusual because Arafat by nature was a most courteous man. (If you were his guest for a meal, he would insist that you sat next to him and would personally serve you from the dishes on the table).
I refused to be intimidated and sat myself down in a chair opposite him. I noticed that my book was open on his desk.
Eventually, Arafat looked up and jabbed an accusing finger at me. With real anger in his voice and flashing in his eyes, he said: “You have made very big troubles for me!” I asked him how. He picked up my open book and read aloud a sentence of what I had quoted him as saying to me: The sentence was:
“Being the Chairman of the PLO is like being the only male customer in a brothel of 22 whores“.
Arafat pronounced the word “hoarez”, but whichever way you pronounced it, there was no getting away from the implication. When he first spoke those words, Arafat was telling me that he and his people were being screwed by each and all of the leaders and governments of the 22 states of the Arab League.
I said: “But Abu Amar, you DID say that to me and it IS true!” If he was going to deny saying it, I was going to remind him of where and when he said it. Something, perhaps it was my response, caused his anger to vanish. He relaxed and then said: “Yes, yes, yes, I DID say it. And yes, yes, yes, it IS true.” Pause. “But you shouldn’t have quoted me. You should have said it was your understanding of my thinking. Then I could have denied it. Now I can’t.”
And that was that. We were still friends.
Still today I think there is no better way of pointing to a truth of history than with the words I quoted Arafat as saying and which he did not deny. That truth can be summarised as follows.
More by default than design, the divided and impotent regimes of a mainly corrupt and oppressive Arab Order betrayed the Palestinians. After the first Zionist fait accompli in 1948, the Arab regimes secretly shared the same hope as all the major powers and Zionism. It was that the Palestine file would remain closed forever. (It had been closed not only by Israel’s victory on the battlefield, but also Jordan’s annexation of the West Bank including East Jerusalem to prevent Zionism grabbing it, and Eygpt’s taking of the Gaza Strip). There was not supposed to be a re-generation of Palestinian nationalism. In the script written by Zionism, and endorsed by all the major powers and the Arab regimes, the Palestinians were supposed to accept their lot as the sacrificial lamb on the altar of political expediency.
In that context it can be said that Arafat’s real crime in the eyes of all who demonized him was causing the Palestine file to be re-opened. After that it was what I have already described as the incredible, almost superhuman steadfastness of the occupied and oppressed Palestinians that guaranteed it could never be closed again – unless Zionism’s in-Israel leaders resort to a final round of ethnic cleansing and are allowed to get away with it.
By now even those of you who are not familiar with my books and other writings will be aware that I am a fierce critic of Zionism, the governments of all the major powers and the regimes of an impotent Arab Order. But that is not a complete list of my crimes. I am also a critic of diaspora Palestinian and almost all other Arab (and non-Arab) activist groups everywhere. At the risk of offending some and perhaps many in this audience, and even further afield, I’m going to tell you why.
As I see it, almost all activist groups are doing their own little things in splendid isolation, and in doing them they demonstrate to me that they have little or no understanding of the strategic essence of what must be done if Zionism is to be successfully confronted and defeated. (If you asked what I would regard as defeat for Zionism, my answer would be the de-Zionisation of Palestine).
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