Speaking her nation's mind

Hanan Ashrawi is the Arab League's new Commissioner on Information and Public Policy. But she is not about "apologising, rationalising or doctoring" official Arab policies. Credibility, she says, is gained only "when you express your people's reality without distortion". Graham Usher spoke to her in Jerusalem
"I am not the new spokesperson of the Arab League," drills Hanan Ashrawi, as she pulls another cigarette from her purse in the neat surroundings of her offices in Jerusalem. She is the League's new "Commissioner for Information and Public Policy". And what is that? "Let's say it is a modest Palestinian contribution to help us work together with a collective Arab will and voice. And an attempt to bring the Arab League into the 21st Century," she adds, with a smile.
"I've taken on quite a challenge," she admits. She has, but Ashrawi is probably one of the few Arab politicians able, if not to meet the challenge, then at least appreciate its scale. Ever since her starring role as the articulate Palestinian spokeswoman at the 1991 Madrid Peace Conference, she has been beating the Israelis at their own game on such "home" venues as CNN and the BBC.
It is a skill the Arab League's new secretary-general, Amr Moussa, covets. He, too, wants the League to become a "young, modern and proactive" organisation and a player in a conflict where it is more often an observer.
Nowhere has this passivity been more felt than in the League's "major failure" to present the adequacy of the Palestinian case in the Western media, says Moussa. "The work is often done for us," he laments, citing the BBC's recent Panorama programme on Ariel Sharon's role in the massacre of Palestinian refugees in Sabra and Shatilla in 1982. Ashrawi's immediate job, therefore, will be "to reformulate Arab media policy," he says.
What does Ashrawi think is the cause of this failure? "There are many Arabs who understand the West," she says. "But the question is how to transform this understanding into mechanisms of engagement and a sustained effort to change Western public opinion." Part of the difficulty is because this transformation is part of another.
"The Arabs need to realise they can use their power collectively and not just individually to influence Western decision-making. Then they can make clear to the US that its policies have been extremely dangerous, since it is now perceived in the region as the blind ally of Israel and so in collusion with Israel's behaviour toward the Palestinians."
But how, realistically, can the Arabs affect influence? "I'm not talking about oil. Contracts," she muses. "Suppose the Arab states decided to shift their official defence contracts from one country to another on the basis of that country's policies on Palestine. It would show the US could no longer take its interests for granted in the Arab world. Look at Turkey. Turkey decided to withhold one or two quite minor contracts and the US suddenly became silent about the Armenian massacres."
But whatever the means "until we make the shift from lip-service to action the US and Europe will continue to treat the Arab world -- leaders and public opinion alike -- with disdain."
She cites as a case in point Ariel Sharon's recent trip to Europe. "I find it amazing Europe is still prepared to give Sharon the benefit of the doubt and allow him to wreak havoc in the region. This is unheard of and is happening before the eyes of the world: first you imprison a whole nation and then you shell, shoot and assassinate its people. Anyone with any moral fibre would stand up and say these acts are against international humanitarian law. These are things no civilised state can do."
The fact Europe does not do so is because there is no collective "countervailing Arab force" to pressure it to do otherwise, she says. "Europe still views Israel as above the law, worthy of preferential treatment, even to the extent of whitewashing Sharon. In any civilised country Sharon would be facing a tribunal."
Beyond the cause of Palestine, "which is also the Arab cause," Ashrawi views her new position as a bridgehead in another fundamental struggle. "The issue of distortion and racism against Arab culture."
"We are perhaps the only race, nation and identity against whom racism is still permissible," she says. And the cause is not simply the Arab-Israeli conflict but the wider "Huntington perception that there is a clash between 'Judeo-Christian' culture and 'others'. These 'others' are Islamic hordes that are threatening 'our' civilisation.
"This perception comes from ignorance, racism and stereotyping. I am not a Muslim. I am Christian. But for me Islam has always been an inclusive religion, built on the heritage of Christianity and Judaism, whereas Christianity denied Judaism and Judaism denied everything else. Of course we have our extremists and fundamentalists. But the danger I face -- and every Palestinian faces -- is Jewish fundamentalism in Israel in alliance with the Christian fundamentalists and evangelicals in the West."
Ashrawi has been fighting this "mythical, fictional creation of Arabs and Islam as 'the enemy'" all her life. It is "the major threat" to her cause, people and nation, she says, "because through such racism you can justify a priori everything that is done to and against the Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims."
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