From Oslo to Iraq and the Road Map, Edward Said, New York: Pantheon Books, 2004. pp323 In reading this collection of the last of my father's political essays, I am moved by the passion and commitment of his message, which is rooted firmly in the secular humanism he tirelessly espoused. His analyses leave the reader with the deep impression that he/she is dealing with a massive moral force who cannot simply have left us, just like that. Amazingly, my father would ask for my opinion upon the publication of each essay that makes up this volume, and I would be honoured and flattered each time that he did. Of course, his work involved soliciting many opinions, which more often than not he valued greatly, but he never wavered in his core beliefs, one of which is the key theme in this book: that Palestinians are entitled to the same rights as any other people, and that nothing in the historical record could negate such a self-evident position. The principle of equality that he championed also applies uniformly in the rest of the Arab world, where autocracy, stagnation, and corruption disempower and disenfranchise its people day after day. These works stand as a testament to an individual dedicated to documenting what was happening to the people of the world from which he came with a kind of eloquence and style rarely matched by the modern political commentator. My father brought to his writing a lifetime of erudition on topics as varied as literary criticism, opera, history, and, of course, politics. I felt sufficiently intimidated by the strength and power of his political writing not to consider making my own contribution to documenting the plight of the Palestinians, at least with the same rigor and consistency. He would not have been happy to hear me express such reservations, given that these pages are filled with exhortations to speak out and regain the moral high ground from the vast propaganda machines that have distorted the true picture of life in Palestine and the rest of the Arab world. It was perhaps this sentiment that held me back from writing about the experience of my wife and I being denied entry to the West Bank by Israeli border control officers in June 2003. Upon arrival at the border crossing terminal, we were separated and searched thoroughly, with me being subjected to the singular indignity of a four-hour interrogation and detention by a Shin Bet officer, who, as per the routine, photocopied and reviewed the contents of my wallet and passport, all in the name of "security." This treatment came behind locked doors with armed guards hovering around me, all the while my wife waited in a separate area of the border terminal without any information on my plight or well-being forthcoming. While our treatment was nothing compared to what many Palestinians endure, my father considered it to be of significance and urged me to document it in a public a manner as possible. While I pledged to my father that I would write about this experience, it is only after his death that I am able to fulfill my promise to him. My father was, I think, the one prominent Palestinian who did not believe, as David Hirst writes, that the Palestinians are "doomed, through their own shortcomings as well as their enemy's superiority, always to lose, and subconsciously seem to know it." He constantly strove to underscore that as a people, we were capable of much more than our leaders and the rest of the world supposed, and took heart from the tremendous courage the Palestinians themselves displayed and continue to display. As is evident from these pages, my father's two trips to South Africa, in 1991 and 2001, had a profound effect on how he felt the struggle should proceed. A serious public information campaign in the United States, Europe, Asia, Africa and, crucially, Israel, coupled with a program of mass civil disobedience in Palestine itself, were the only real methods to end the Israeli occupation and bring about a just solution to the conflict. The South African model, daring and unique as it was in the history of anti-colonialism movements, provided the way forward for Palestinians. Not that the leadership or the elite wanted to hear it, preferring instead to engage in secret negotiations and bandy about even the most basic and sacred of rights as bargaining chips. It therefore struck me as odd, even somewhat improper, that so many members of Palestinian and Arab officialdom came to pay their respects to our family upon my father's passing. Perhaps they did not hear what he had to say about them, or just refused to listen and merely celebrated the fact that he was a "great figure." But while the Palestinian and Arab leadership and intelligentsia have always been afflicted with the sense that they are fated to lose, and behaved accordingly, the people themselves do not suffer from such infirmities. It was that belief that impelled my father to write and speak as he did. I must confess that I was not always convinced in the viability of the South African model and did not think that we could really address and engage the Israeli people, who seemed to rely on impenetrable notions of both victimhood and superiority in dealing with us on all levels. "But Wadie," he would say, "has it ever been done before? Have we ever made an attempt to engage them and let them know that our dispossession was a result of their conquest?" His vision was one of two peoples living in one state, as there could be no military solution. In my father's view, however, the conflict could never be resolved through secret negotiations and backroom deals that depended solely on the generosity and goodwill of the stronger party, to wit, the Israelis. that is why I have no hesitation in saying that he would have denounced the so-called Geneva Accords, the Ayalon-Nusseibeh plan, or whatever type of secret and slapdash agreement that Palestinian elites reached with an Israeli counterpart without consulting the people beforehand. It was not as if my father reveled in being a great sage and predicting the failure of the Oslo Accords and the self- styled "peace process." He was as brokenhearted as the rest of us that the Palestinians' lot continued to deteriorate. While many people remarked to me that they enjoyed his writing, they did not see in it much of a blueprint for the future in what he said. Of course they were simply incorrect. My father did have an idea for resolving the conflict, but both the Palestinians and Israelis did not want to submit to the reality that such a solution would require a great deal of time and effort, and ultimately demand of all parties involved that they reconcile themselves to the presence of the other. I often wanted to ask him why he did not attempt to lead the movement he envisioned, since he struck me as the one person who was capable of engendering the requisite support in many diverse circles the world over. The reason for my hesitation was that his illness, which ultimately did him in, did not allow him physically to play the role of the full-time political activist and leader, and I knew that to ask was to risk bringing him down, though momentarily. While he only writes about his illness intermittently and sparingly in this book, the sense of urgency that it generated clearly informed and instructed his message. While the loss of my father's voice and presence is still too much to bear, even now, his writings remain as a testament to the historic victory that an oppressed people might achieve. The amazing memory that I am left with is his dedication to the idea of speaking out and staying informed, no matter how sick or infirm he was. During our innumerable trips to the hospital in his last few days, when he was too weak and tired to do it himself, he would sometimes ask me to read him the paper, patiently listening to my hasty and unsolicited editorialising. Indeed, it still pains me to remember that in his last full day of consciousness and alertness, prior to succumbing to his illness, my father was overcome by emotion because he felt that he had not done enough for the Palestinians. All present at this extraordinary scene were dumfounded: if Edward Said had not done enough for Palestine, then what have we done? That will have to be answered by the present and coming generations, but our overwhelming sense of loss is matched by our immense affection and gratitude for his trailblazing example. The death of the distinguished Palestinian intellectual Edward Said on September 2003 left the Arab world devastated at the loss of a sober and independent Arab and international voice who championed the causes of national liberation and of Palestinian rights. We at Al-Ahram Weekly sorely miss his contribution, since we have had the privilege of publishing his political articles from the first day that he began writing regularly for newspapers on September 1993 until his very last article on August 2003. From Oslo to Iraq, published posthumously, is a collection of 46 articles written between December 2000 and August 2003, bringing to a close Said's essays on current political affairs which began with the announcement of the agreement reached in Oslo during the summer of 1993. Together they are some 150 articles, posted on Al-Ahram Weekly's site, and by now collected in 3 books, the other two being Peace and its Discontents and The End of the Peace Process. In the last article collected in this book, entitled Israel, Iraq, and the United States, Said writes "Isn't it time we caught up with our own status and made certain that our representatives here and elsewhere realise, as a first step, that they are fighting for a just and noble cause and that they have nothing to apologize for or be embarrassed about? On the contrary, they should be proud of what their people have done and proud also to represent them." Words that should be heeded by the representatives of the Palestinian people now more than ever. The article above, by Wadie Said, Edward's son, appeared as an afterword to From Oslo to Iraq, and we are indeed honoured and proud to host Wadie on the pages of Al-Ahram Weekly, a paper that had always enjoyed the kind support of his father since its inception. Wadie Said's article is reproduced here by special permission of the Estate of Edward W. Said. By Wadie Said
