COLUMNS 3

rawi has always believed that Pales­ met Ashrawi and others secretly in tinian writers and intellectuals have Tunis, and even during the con­ a special responsibility. ference itself they flew to Morocco for further consultations. It would also be a mistake to think that the Ashrawi's sophisticated use of the decision to choose Ashrawi as English language, the sharpness of spokesperson was made anywhere her intellect and her skill at handling but at the PLO headquarters in Tunis the media are clearly assets for the although, of course, she had to be Palestinian movement. It was she, acceptable to the Arab states, the for example, who wrote the well- USA and . received speech given—in English— by the leader of the Palestinian delegation at Madrid. Since Ashrawi happens to be a PROFILE woman, the question of her stand on feminist issues is inevitably raised. It was her achievements as writer, In Algeria, women fought side by Hanan Ashrawi critic and teacher on her own home side with men in the struggle against ground, however, which made her the French for independence; the rise Poet, academic, feminist, diplomat reputation throughout . of the Islamic movement now and, above all, nationalist—Hanan This is not to say that she has a his­ threatens their hard-won gains. In Ashrawi is all of these. But it was as tory of high profile activism. On the consequence, the position of Middle the articulate and impassioned campus of the American University Eastern women as a whole is once spokesperson for the Palestinians of Beirut—a hotbed of revolutionary again under the spotlight For Pales­ at the Madrid peace conference in politics in the 1970s—she was not tinian women, who have always November last year (and more particularly well known. Nor can it regarded their Algerian sisters as recently in Moscow and be said that she has suffered a great revolutionary role models, the Washington) that Ashrawi has deal in personal terms during the dilemma is even more acute. come to the attention of the world at Intifada. In the increasingly large. She is now widely admired in repressed Occupied Territories a Ashrawi notes that: "Of course there both East and West, in the Occupied spell in an Israeli prison is fast be­ is a danger that if women's work is Territories as much as in the Pales­ coming almost a prerequisite among primarily a reaction to an immediate tinian diaspora, in the those (especially the youths) seeking external challenge, and not part of a villages and in the corridors of in­ to be taken seriously as nationalists, long-term social and economic in­ ternational diplomacy. and Ashrawi has so far been spared this 'honour'. frastructure, that all the advances will recede once the threat is Together with the other members of removed." While regarding herself the Palestinian team, Ashrawi per­ One of the consequences of Israel first and foremost as a nationalist, formed so well at Madrid that the shutting down Palestinian institu­ she argues for a feminist agenda Israelis had considerable regrets at tions of learning in the Occupied Ter­ hand-in-hand with the Palestinian having excluded the familiar and ritories has been that Palestinian nationalist agenda. more easily-targeted figure of Yasser academics such as Ashrawi, Sari Arafat. When Yitzhak Shamir was Nusseibeh and others have been free interviewed in Israel soon after­ (if that is the right word) to enter the Elements of the Islamic movement in the Occupied Territories (HAMAS) wards he reacted to an unwelcome political process more committedly. question by snapping at the jour­ The leadership in the territories has are generally opposed both to the nalist: "You must have learned from thus taken on a new, more intellec­ peace process itself, and to the very Hanan Ashrawi." tual and more Westernised look. idea of a woman assuming the kind of high-profile public role Ashrawi Bom into a middle-class Christian carved out for herself. The fact that family in Jerusalem, Ashrawi now Yet it would be a mistake to deduce she has never been personally con­ lives in the West Bank town of from this—as the Israelis sometimes demned by such elements is but one . After graduating from the suggest—that the West Bank leader­ more proof of the general respect and American University of Beirut, she ship operates somehow admiration she has won by her received her doctorate in the US, but autonomously from the PLO. Ash­ achievements both inside and out­ returned to take up a teaching posi­ rawi and the others have taken con­ side Palestinian ranks. tion at Bir Zeit University on the West siderable personal risks in declaring Bank where she is now Dean of the their allegiance to and maintaining CHRISTINE ASMAR is researching the Faculty of Arts. Deploring the brain contact with the PLO. Before the history of the Palestine community in drain from occupied Palestine, Ash­ Madrid conference, Australia.

ALR; APRIL 1992