Bishara stresses right of return during AUB lecture

Source: Daily Star, 16-5-2009
By Karah Byrns

BEIRUT: Thunderous applause worthy of a celebrity welcomed Azmi Bishara to the American University of Beirut on Thursday evening for a talk on Palestine, which he said is not getting enough international attention, despite Western claims that the issue suffers from media saturation.

Speaking at Issam Fares Hall at a lecture organized by AUB's Palestinian Cultural Club, Bishara also warned that ignoring the Palestinian right of return for refugees would mean even more violence in the future.

Bishara, a Christian Palestinian and former Knesset member, was one of the founders of the National Democratic Assembly party (Balad). A leading Palestinian voice in the Arab media, Bishara frequently visited "enemy states" and was accused by "Israel" of assisting "the enemy" in the July 2006 war with Lebanon. He now lives in exile and continues to support a one-state solution for Palestine, and an end to institutional inequality between Jews and Palestinians.

As the noise settled down, Bishara opened his talk by discussing the 61st anniversary of the Nakba, or the "catastrophe" of "Israel"'s creation and the resulting exodus of the Palestinians, an event marked on May 15 of every year. Bishara then briefly review the history of the conflict, before commenting on the role of the Arab and Western world in relation to the problem facing Palestinians in "Israel".

"It is not a Palestinian issue, it is a world issue," he proclaimed, criticizing the Arab peace agreements with "Israel" after the June 1967 Arab-"Israeli" War and criticizing the attitude of Arab regimes that the Palestinian problem belongs to the Palestinians.

"It is not only a Palestinian problem, it is the problem of the Arab people as a whole," Bishara argued, stressing that the problem of the Palestinian people hinges not only on their separation from their land, but their separation from the Arab world.
Turning his attention to the role of the media, Bishara took issue with the terminology used when presenting the issue.

"The media casts Palestinians and "Israeli"s as two extremes, two separate sides instead of recognizing the actual power dynamic," he said, adding that the use of the word "conflict" in place of "occupation" also distorts the picture, which presents a struggle between Judaism and Islam, rather than a conflict between two ethnic-national groups over land rights.

Bishara also touched on the feeling expressed in the West that there is too much media attention paid to the Palestine issue, disagreeing forcefully: "I tell you, there isn't enough."

Zeroing in more closely on the West, Bishara then chastised Europe for the role it played in "the Zionist operation" because "they kicked the Jews out" and provided financial backing for the formation of "Israel". "The issue of Palestine is something that the world cannot allow to continue and that the world had a hand in," he stressed, hinting later that "it is not just an issue of Palestine there are other issues wrapped up in this."

Bishara also commented on continued "Israeli" settlement activity and racist policies against Palestinians, condemning the creation of the separation wall in the West Bank and the separation of people from their lands and personal property. "This racism did not begin in 1967; it began in 1948 with the dispossession of people from their homes," he insisted.

Bishara concluded his talk with a passionate discourse on the right of return, asking, "How are we going to solve this problem of refugees without the right of return?" This point has generated considerable unease in recent years, as "Israeli" politicians now regularly talk about the "Jewishness" of the "Israeli" state, meaning that they are unwilling to hear any mention of refugees returning to their homeland.

"There is no way" to arrive at a solution without acknowledging the right of return, Bishara said, predicting violence and death as the only possible result of any other proposed route to resolving the problem.

On the grounds that the right of return is a basic human right confirmed by international law and fully applicable to the Palestinians, Bishara pushed for a strong commitment from the Palestinian people not to give up this right and praised the resistance effort, advising the audience that "the most important thing for Palestinians is to believe in a future."