The *FREE ARAB VOICE*
June 21, 1997

This issue of the Free Arab Voice contains:

1) A Call to Join the International Campaign to End the Blockade on
   the People of Iraq , by Rania Masri of Iraq Action Coalition (IAC).

2) Excerpts from a Speech by Dr. Eyad Sarraj, a Prominent Palestinian
   Human Rights Activist, Justifying the Oslo Agreement.

3) A Follow-up on the Recent 14th National Convention of the
   American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) - A Comment
   on the Panel Titled '30 Years of Occupation'!@#$%^&*

4) The Israeli Government Coerces the Palestinian National Authority
   to Accept Back Thousands of Known Palestinian Informants and
   Collaborators in its Areas.

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1 - Join the International Campaign to End the Blockade on the
    People of Iraq:

From June 26th to July 1st, in 90 cities, in 16 countries,
actions and protests will be held to demand the immediate lifting of
the blockade on the people of Iraq.

On Tuesday July 1st, hundreds of children in New York City will
lead a march to the United Nations. Their young lives will say to the
Security Council: Let the Iraqi Children Live!

More than 4,500 children under the age of five are dying every month
in Iraq. One third of Iraq's surviving children have stunted growth
and serious nutritional deficiencies that will deform them and shorten
their lives. Yet the major media remain silent about this crime which
violates all standards of morality.

Each of the protests will break the silence. Together, our voices
demanding justice and humanity will overpower the sanctions on
truth and morality.

With one voice, in many languages, we will demand of the U.S.
government, and the U.N. Security Council to End the Blockade NOW !

To join the International Campaign to End the Blockade on the
People of Iraq, please contact Rania Masri, of Iraq Action Coalition:
Email: IAC@leb.net   Tel: (919) 848-4738  Fax: (919) 846 -7422
Also visit the website: http://leb.net/iac/

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2 - Excerpts from a Speech by Dr. Eyad Sarraj Justifying the
    Oslo Agreement- [But before that, let's be very clear right
    from the start:

We in the Free Arab Voice have always been opposed to the Oslo
Agreement and all its manifestations, including the Palestinian
National Authority of Mr. Arafat.

The purpose of the Agreement, as events have clearly revealed,
was to subcontract the oppression of Palestinians in the territories
to local clients who can do the job more cheaply than the Israelis.
 

However, the West, Israeli liberals, and Arab regimes kept
bombarding the Palestinian people with the idiotic message: "Forget
unrealistic slogans and demands, take your 'democracy' while you can!"

.. Well we neither got liberation, nor democracy, nor peace!!
Because that wasn't the plan to begin with, and those who knew how
Arafat functioned in Lebanon, knew that very well.

But if some Palestinian intellectuals had been true to their social
responsibility, if they had not engaged in justifications or
ambivalence, if they had exposed the Oslo Agreement for the
historical farce that it was early on, maybe some Palestinians
or Arabs would not have been so misled.

Maybe some of the confusion about that alleged 'peace process'
would have been lifted then, before Arafat and his henchmen could
have had the chance to use some of those intellectuals and patriots
as a smokescreen to set up an oppressive regime that is by definition
anti-intellectual, disavowing even its very smokescreen just like a
snake sheds its skin...

Now Dr. Eyad Sarraj is being persecuted by the PNA, along with many 
others, while he's being lionized in the West as an opposition, and
human rights, figure..

Below are excerpts from Dr. Eyad Sarraj's public speech, which we
provide in the hope that some of our readers can draw lessons from
the recent past, the first of which being perhaps that we should never
capitulate to the logic of power, because it is a logic aimed at us:
the oppressed.]
 

The following are the concluding remarks of the speech that Dr. Eyad
Sarraj made in defense of the Oslo Agreement in a forum held on the
Middle East in Wichita, Kansas, on November 13, 1993:

"..One of the things that made me...not accept this agreement..but it
is something that you have to live with..

The choice, between us, was to live under the Israeli occupation,
which would mean eventually that we're going to disappear..in Alaska..
because Canada and Australia right now refuse to take Palestinians..We
have to go perhaps to Alaska..

Or..to welcome a PLO presence in parts of Palestine that are left
over and try to build our life.

It is only from a very very pragmatic and realistic understanding
of this world, that is built on power, that I'm ready to live under
this agreement, with the hope that we're going to do something for 
our future.

I know it is unjust..I know that it is immoral. I know that the
whole world is built on immorality, and not morality. And I have to
live in this world and try to make it better.

And the way to make it better is to try and work together with other
Palestinians, and other Arabs, and Israelis, who are so enlightened,
and so..they make us so proud of being human beings, to  make a future
in which we can both live as equal human beings.

Now it's going to be very difficult.

But as I said, the choices are there: either to continue to live under
the Israeli occupation, and kill Israelis and be killed by Israelis,
and be tortured and etc... for the rest of our lives, and most of us
will leave.. Or to try to do something..!

Now some Palestinians will object to the agreement..and some Israelis
will object to the agreement..and many others.

I cannot afford the luxury, to be honest with you, to be...although
it's very important to be critical.

But as a Palestinian who lives in Gaza, **I cannot afford the luxury
of saying that I'm against the agreement**, because I have to live with
it. Whether I'm against it or not, I have to try to make it better.
 

This agreement is imposed on us, like the occupation was, and like
Israel itself was..and we have to live and try to work for a better
future for the Palestinians, and for the Israelis.." 

Incidentally that same speech began like this:
"I don't know I was expected to talk about the Peace..or the
Declaration of Principles, but to begin with I'd like to introduce
myself as a Palestinian with no nationalistic ideology, or even
a religious ideology...
 

For that reason, I consider all the Palestinians and the Israelis, are
both victims in this struggle.

Israelis descended from centuries of persecution, mainly in Europe,
culminating in the Holocaust...victimized also by the Zionist ideology."

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3 - A Follow-up on the ADC 14th National Convention- The Panel
Discussion Titled '30 Years of Occupation':

First we would like to thank and commend the ADC for a job well-done,
and wish them well in their upcoming, 15th national Convention, as we
endlessly try to stand, and fight for our rights.
 

But the panel discussion titled '30 years of occupation' was one
seriously disappointing, and totally unacceptable, aspect in an
otherwise marvelous spectacle.
 

The panel was composed ONLY of Arab ambassadors, which stands
diametrically opposed to the grass-roots nature of the ADC as
an organization.

The occupation issue is first and foremost a people's issue, and the
official Arab regime was partially responsible for its creation and
persistence! The ADC would do its membership justice with a more
balanced representation in the future of opposition groups and
individuals.

And unlike other forums, where the audience had ample time for
questions, this  particular one, didn't allow enough time for
questions and answers.

Yet more importantly than all of the above, there's the most serious
issue of all, that of HISTORICAL MANIPULATION:

For the record, once and for all, and to all those who like to follow
a customized version of history, PALESTINE HAS BEEN OCCUPIED IN 1948,
AND IS YET TO BE FREED.

The West Bank and Gaza, even with the land on which settlements are
built, comprise no more than one-fifth of Palestine.

To alter history by parroting the views of the governments of the
so-called democratic or civilized nations, under the banner of
liberalism, or a new version of modernity a la cart, can only
serve to reinforce the systematic and brutal attempts to annihilate
our nation from the bosom of existence, both culturally and physically.
 

But to those with a free conscience among us, these parroted
statements about '30 years of occupation', will never revoke
an innate right, nor will they feed into the currents of defeatism
promoted by those who have sold out.
 

Palestine will never be confined to documents signed by autocrats,
who were never authorized by the Palestinians to sell their land,
falsify their past, and confiscate their future.

It behooves the ADC to veer away from the imposed fallacy of '30
years of occupation'.

Ghasan Kanafany, a martyred Palestinian novelist and journalist,
once said: "Inah Al-Insani fe Nehayati Al-Matafi, Mouqef..", which
means that a human being is, at the end of the journey, but a stand.

And we hope that despite all the tyrants, and the control freaks,
That we will, once again, have the courage to take a decent one 

===============FOR A CHANGE=============

4 - The Israeli Government Coerces the Palestinian National Authority
to Take Back Thousands of Known Palestinian Informants and Collaborators
in its Areas:

The Arabic-speaking Al-Zeitounah, that comes out in the United States,
mentioned in its most recent issue (June 6, 1997), that the
Palestinian  National Authority of Mr. Arafat was forced to accept back
thousands of known informants and collaborators, with the concomitant
restriction that the PNA can neither prosecute nor arrest any of them. 

Hence thousands of collaborators have gone back to live in the Arab
towns and neighborhoods they came from.  And there are reports that
some of them are involved in extensive real-estate and land dealings,
buying from needy Palestinians who think they're selling land to fellow
Palestinians in Hebron, Betlehem, and Jerusalem, and selling to
Israelis...who use that land to start or expand settlement projects.

[This recent influx of informants and collaborators, preceded the law
passed by the PNA, to punish by death Palestinian dealers who sell
land to Israelis.]

Al-Zeitounah added that the reason the Israeli government wanted to get
rid of those now-useless informants and collaborators, was the great
hardship it faced integrating them into Jewish cities.  And that is
because Jewish residents oppose letting collaborators stay in their
neighborhoods, or welcoming their kids in Jewish schools. 

Furthermore, Hebrew newspapers relayed that one Jewish resident
expressed a common  sentiment saying: "WE DON'T WANT THE SCUM OF THE
PALESTINIANS IN OUR  MIDST!!".

The Free Arab Voice finds itself totally amazed for sharing the same
exact sentiment with some Israelis:
INFORMANTS AND COLLABORATORS ARE INDEED THE SCUM OF THE
PALESTINIAN PEOPLE...

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