ESSAY
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A Liberal in Jerusalem: The Paradoxes of Sari Nusseibeh
Heart of a paradox: Arabs and Jews in east Jerusalem Photo: Jill Granberg
THE FIFTEEN MINUTE DRIVE between west Jerusalem and Sari Nusseibeh's office at Al-Quds University in east Jerusalem is a trip into the heart of a paradox, or rather a number of them. To begin with, there is the municipal paradox of a divided city where the obvious divisions can camouflage as strange forms of togetherness.
Nusseibeh's office is in largely middle class neighborhood of Beit Hanina. The neighborhood is unmistakably Arab, a stronghold of Fatah movement, and center to the Arab intelligentsia of Jerusalem. One thing you notice while driving to the edge of town is the construction of a new light rail line that will take the residents to the gates of the Old City in minutes. The locals will tell you that the only reason this expensive piece of modern mass transport is being built is to bind the Jewish settlements in the area to west Jerusalem, guaranteeing that east Jerusalem will forever be a part of the "Eternal Capital" of Israel.
Whatever the motives of the politicians, it is easily to imagine that one day the train will be packed on Friday mornings with Palestinian worshippers headed to the Dome of the Rock, the most poignant symbol of their national identity and of their struggle against Israeli control. Jewish and Arab nationalists will thus be riding the same train, each with their respective flags, heading to a city both claim for themselves. They will be together in their seemingly irreconcilable differences.
Meeting with Dr. Nusseibeh brings up paradoxes of the more human sort. He is the sort of man who always has a string of worry beads in his hands, and yet doesn't betray any worry. The beads seem to work.
When I arrived in early April Nusseibeh told me he had just canceled a scheduled trip to New York City. The rabbi who had invited him was backing out. Wasn't worth it. Got too many death threats. So who would want to target a rabbi? I asked him. "Other Jews," he said with a slight lilt to his voice, rubbing his beads. "The dear man got ten threats in as many days. Imagine that." I assumed the rabbi was left-wing, but I was wrong. It was a right-winger who got the death threats for inviting an Arab intellectual to his synagogue.
Nusseibeh, who was once Yasser Arafat's PLO's representative in Jerusalem, has become a celebrity among many Jewish intellectuals worldwide. Abe Foxman and Paul Wolfowitz have praised his courage and vision. The Forward has called him a "paragon of empathy and, by extension, of compromise." His Once Upon a Country was the most popular book at the Jewish book fair in London. The Hebrew translation of the book is imminent.
Nusseibeh accepts the moral right of the Jews to stay put - though without paying for his moderation by ignoring his people's plight
Not all Israelis or Jews are so flattering, of course. Morton Klein, the president of the Zionist Organization of America, once referred to him as a "wolf in sheep's clothing." There were many people in the Israeli security services that obviously had similar suspicions when they arrested him during the first Gulf War. And yet remarkably enough, the only time he has been physically attacked was by Palestinian militants, and for the crime of negotiating with Israelis. More recently, he got his own stack of death threats after he poured cold water on the notion of the right of return of the 1948 refugees to their former villages inside the Jewish state.
The Moral Basis for Israel's Existence
That a Palestinian should be feted by Jews and attacked by fellow Arabs is not in itself so anomalous. The paradox appears when you take a closer look at his position. Unlike other Palestinian or Arab intellectuals, Nusseibeh does not simply accept the political reality of Israel because the Arabs are too weak to snatch back from the Israelis what they lost in 1948. He accepts the moral right of the Jews to stay put - though without paying for his moderation by ignoring his people's plight. Better than most he is acutely aware of the steep price Palestinians paid in 1948 for the Jewish people to have their own independent state.
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