• ·      I belong to a tragic generation many of whom were stuck abroad.
• ·      We need a wonderful debate to be a platform of interaction between us.
• ·      Your generation should show intellectual curiosity.
• ·      Do not allow my generation to colonize the future of your generation.
• ·      We need to recreate all the components of Palestinian cohesion.
• ·      In politics we should value the battle of ideas and resort to the means of persuasion and not coercion.
• ·      We shouldn’t reinvent the wheel; this is why the study of history is important.

In an exclusive interview with the distinctive writer, former Palestinian ambassador in England, Russia and the Vatican and the veteran graduate of Collège des Frères School, Afif Safieh, we held a dialogue addressing several issues including his work as an ambassador and his contributions as an active diplomat who played an important role to gain sympathy for the justice of our cause. The dialogue also touched on the different stations of his long experience in dealing with one of the most important diplomatic files in the major Western capitals. The following is the full text of the interview:

The Best School in Jerusalem

Q. Let us start by thanking you for allocating your time to enable us to get to know you better and share your thoughts regarding the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

A. I believe that we have suffered historically from this questionable notion of Palestine; “the Promised Land”. I see through you that we can make Palestine the promising land.

Q. We would first like to ask you about your school days, we have been privileged to know that you have attended Collège des Frères and we would like to enquire about your school years and how they shaped your life as a diplomat later.

A. Well, I believe that one’s years in school are decisive in the formation of his personality, intellectual curiosity and outlook towards the world and its horizons etc.

I believe the Frères has been historically the best school in Jerusalem and we, all my generation, were privileged to be at the Frères. One of the assets of this school was that it taught 3 different languages: Arabic; our mother tongue, English and French. It was and still, as I guess, a French institution preparing the pupils for an English program, GCE. So, being brought up in a multilingual cultural environment was in my opinion an asset; we were also privileged to have fantastic professors and I had no great inclination towards physics, chemistry or mathematics, my aim was always to just succeed but I had a fascination with history and I still remember several of our professors in this subject, mainly professor “Awwad” who triggered my fascination in the trajectory of mankind, the evolution of society regionally and internationally. I remember my father at dinnertime would ask me and tell me something about Bismarck, then he would ask me just to animate the evening dinner, who contributed most to the unification of Italy Cavour , the prime minister of  Piedmont or Garibaldi, the leader of the mass popular movement. So we had a very challenging and fascinating environment, I remember our teachers in English language and English literature professor Sarkis and professor Dickranian and I remember graduating from school having read most of what is called the classics of the English literature, arriving in university at age 16 and I was mentioned in the works of the Vatican: The President of my university, the Catholic University of Louvain (Leuven), made an intervention saying “according to our comparative study, the youngest student, Afif Safieh, is from the Holy Land and arrived at the university at the age of 16”. I had no need to feel any inferiority complex because I was equipped with an intellectual luggage from school to cope with the level and the standards.

I would always invite your generation to look at things from a universal approach, the macro approach and not the micro one. Tomorrow you will be on the world’s stage competing with students of your age who have graduated from Scandinavia to California to Australia, you are not competing with St. George or Al-Ibrahimieh, all of your generation from all those schools, will be competing on the universal “world” stage and this school is supposed to give you the intellectual equipment and artillery to cope with the challenges and opportunities. So I have great memories of that era and I believe that my generation was tragic in a way, we were 36 graduating from school in 1966 and I believe that out of the 36 only 3 are still in Jerusalem and 33 are scattered in the four corners of the world, in a normal situation you would have found 33 in their hometown and 3 for personal or professional reasons abroad. Our pyramid also in that level is unique and specific; what has happened was the following: my generation of Palestinian students, those who graduated and went abroad for university because then except for Birzeit which had a sophomore and freshman program we went abroad mainly to Europe or some to the Arab countries and we were not here when the 1967 War occurred and the Israelis as you know immediately annexed and conducted a census and those who happened not to be there became legally none existent. My father then had a sentence which I think is painfully accurate, he said:“?? ??? 1948 ????? ?????? ??? ??? 1967 ????? ??????” which means “In 1948 we lost our land, and in 1967 we lost our children”. I happen to belong to a family of 3 children, luckily my sister had been to France and England for her university studies was back already but my brother and I got stuck abroad and became the wandering Palestinians, only capable of coming back as tourists with foreign passports in 1993 after what so called “the breakthrough of Oslo”.

So I belong to a tragic generation many of whom were stuck abroad and that was the Israeli policy of decapitating of potential future Palestinian intellectuals because, unfortunately, they were more aware than our society about the importance of the educated in the functioning of any society.

Painful Moment

Q. After your 27 years of involuntary exile, what did it feel like coming back to your hometown, Jerusalem?

A. To tell you frankly, we are a closely knit family of five; my father and mother and their 3 children- 3 were inside, in Jerusalem and 2 were abroad, the interaction was extremely intense and you might be surprised that when I came for my first visit back home 27 years later, everything was new and I was aware of every possible change that has occurred, my first visit was from the airport to the Notre dame Hotel where my family and all our friends had gathered to have a collective breakfast and  from there immediately I went to the cemetery to visit my father who had died in the meantime and that was another painful moment because the cemetery where my father is buried has been transformed into a wall with- like- drawers and I could see all the family names of Jerusalem, the names that I have grown up with.

 It’s painful because most of those families had almost evaporated form Jerusalem during the last 5 to 6 decades, so I was disconnected and I became a wandering Palestinian around the globe, but having kept my family ties here we come to the importance of the family cell unit, I was aware of the settlements that I will be struck with the arrival towards Jerusalem. I knew that Jerusalem would be mutilated in deliberate decline. Yet my dream was how to help reawaken the city and give it back its political, cultural, economic and intellectual centrality. I dreamt of abandoning politics, coming back to Jerusalem, starting an English Weekly which I wanted to title “The Palestinian”. I had worked on a feasibility study and how to make it viable independently because we need independent media vehicles. We need a wonderful debate to be a platform of interaction between us: the Palestinian insiders and outsiders but also between us and the Israelis, between us and the world because as you know Jerusalem is a city of great symbolism, it’s important to us because it’s our future capital, it’s the centre of our intellectual thinking but it is also of significance to the entire world so I wanted a magazine from Jerusalem, unfortunately the Israelis in two months’ time asked me to forget about it saying “you will not be authorized to come back to Jerusalem, if you are to come with your political colleagues, you can come to Ramallah, Jericho or  Gaza, but Jerusalem never”.

They were afraid of creating a precedent and unfortunately in two months’ time and  many friends, very prominent friends, from around the world wrote to protest or to enquire about the negative response and they had a standard letter that I still remember by heart where it said that they would send to people who have protested or inquired: “we process in priority cases of minors or spouses” obviously I was no more a minor and it was a “distant” relative who had asked for me, my mother, who in the meantime had died, so according to those who today set the rules of the game, I’m supposed not to have any connection to anymore Jerusalem or any legitimate claim even though my family goes back in Jerusalem as far as the archives exist and that’s not my unique case; it’s the case of an entire society that has been dislocated.

Q. Do you think that your political background could be a reason to prevent your coming back to Palestine?

A. I believe our tragedy is that we are undesirables in our homeland; the Israelis want the geography without the demography. To put it in one sentence, even if I wanted to come back to retire in Jerusalem, to just walk around strolling and enjoying the Old City and the new one, I would have been undesirable unfortunately and for me it would have meant four persons to return: my wife and my two children would have come back and that is the way society has been suffocated. It’s the way society is being decimated. My family today is proliferating in Europe and in Brazil and evaporating from Jerusalem and that’s the political purpose , history is always undecided and we should always behave in a way where we are the subjects of our own history and not the objects of history and we have through our activity to help history make the right choice. Tomorrow is ours, that’s the way we should believe and that’s the way we should operate.

Today the status quo is revolting, unacceptable nauseating and inadmissible.

We have to turn this country into the Promising Land and we should abandon the mentality of losers, the psychology of defeat and failure, we should abandon what I often perceive in our society that some of us have elevated pessimism as the criteria of measurement of one’s patriotism, only the optimists make history but not naïve optimism, realistic optimism, creative optimism.

And I believe on your generation, on your fragile shoulders so many burdens and expectations are being invested.

Sort of Equilibrium

Q. How can we, as youth, make our country the promising land?

A. By imagination, creativity, through a sense of responsibility and a spirit of initiative, we have to get rid of uncreative, uninspiring patterns of behavior; we have to unleash imagination but also responsibility creativity, all that together.

I believe we are in a moment in our history where our society should do a lot of soul searching, one should not be afraid of questioning accepted ideas, I believe that your generation should show intellectual curiosity, this is why I started by saying, for example, that we used to learn 3 languages and well, languages are an art opening your horizons, giving you access to the world, to other cultures, other societies, other civilizations, other patterns of thinking and today I’m not saying something new. Language is not only knowing it, it’s like an envelope and what’s important is the message or the letter that lives in; what was called the planetary village, today we live in a shrinking world; today we live in the era of the quickness of communication.

You are an important component of society, you should have a say what world you want to live in today and tomorrow. The future is yours but always bear in mind that in any collectivity in any society you need the optimist and the pessimist; you need the adventurous type and the prudent type.  Do not allow my generation to colonize the future of your generation.

Q. We would like to know about your early life, what triggered you to study political science and international relations at the university? And could you tell us about your educational journey?

A. As I told you I was fascinated with history, from ancient times, the rivalry between Persia and emerging Greece, the rivalry between Greek city-states, Sparta and Athens.  I was fascinated with Mesopotamia, Contemporary Iraq and Pharaonic Egypt. I was fascinated by how Palestine was located in the middle of three major continents: Asia, Africa and Europe, which were the three major continents of international interaction, the emergence of the Roman Empire and what it symbolized and meant then. So I liked history and international relations as a young pupil, now for my generation of Palestinians we also perceived politics as the necessary evil and one of our slogans then in the second half of the sixties was “if you don’t take care of politics, anyway politics will take care of you” and not necessarily in the way you would like it to take care of you, so you’d  better take care of it or else it would take care of you, so I had an inclination for political activity and it was a necessary evil because it shaped and determined our future.

I studied as I told you in the Catholic University of Louvain which was in Belgium and was the oldest catholic university in the world established in 1425 and for my postgraduate studies I went to Paris.

I think I’m the only Palestinian who was president of 2 different branches of the general union of Palestinian students; the Belgian at age 19 and the French at age 24 in 1974-75.

 I invite you to have that dynamic involvement in the student  movement, thus you learn the respect of yourself and the respect of the topic you discuss, the respect of your interlocutor and you learn that you might not necessarily be always right and that what the others are saying might have some truth in it and here you learn to be dialectical and dialectical does not mean necessarily a Marxist, it is rather the idea of thesis, antithesis and synthesis that you always have to absorb the ideas of others, integrate them in your own approach and come up with a better theoretical framework to understand realities.

So student life for me was fascinating, you make friends from around the world, you don’t live in your national ghetto, it’s then that we had networks of contacts with Latin American students, African students, European students, so you become familiar with realities that you have not physically visited, it was the golden era of the student movements then in that part of the second half of the sixties; the student movement was vibrant from Belgium to Berkley in California, from Paris to Prague, you might remember in reading, the spring of Prague; the student movement was bursting with energy. One of our favorite authors then was Marcuse, a German, and if you have a look at my book, there’s a lecture I gave at the London school of economics in 1995 on the occasion of their centenary and I titled my lecture as the song “those were the days” speaking of how it was 25 years earlier. Marcuse had a theory that the major factor and actor of change in any society is the student community.

 “Breakthrough to Breakdown”

Q. What can you tell us about your book “The Peace Process from Breakthrough to Breakdown”?

A. This book as you have seen is a selection of lectures I have given between 1981 of last century and till 2005 which was my farewell speech in London. I believe it’s a book that covers a lot of scope and it covers a Palestinian analysis of the unique nature of Zionism; it covers a Palestinian look at the domestic dynamics within the Israeli society; it has lectures that deal with the Palestinian internal situation; it has lectures that deal with Palestinian-Arab relations as there are lectures that deal with Israeli-American relations; it covers the itinerary of the Palestinian national movement and its evolution; it traces the evolution of the Palestinian national movement and I believe it covers the era when we were still negotiating pre-negotiations then pre-negotiating negotiations, then it covers the breakthrough of  93 and almost the immediate disenchantment that followed and up to the breakdown. So I believe that it’s a wonderful tool for many categories, I know the excitement it has aroused within the Palestinian Diaspora communities, many persons whom I know said that they are recommending it to the new generation of Palestinians born abroad, not living day to day Palestinian reality and if parents want to recommend to their children one book there has been a proliferation of production of  books, and if they want today to recommend one book to their new generation to read that would be the one. It’s provoking or arousing a lot of interest within the academic community, many professors are now having it on their list of recommended readings and it’s not by accident that two of the major professors of Oxford  University, Avi Shlaim and Eugene Rogan have recommended it and in America now the book would be distributed starting from April and the first initial indications are extremely encouraging, it’s arousing a lot of interest within Jewish communities in Europe and America and it’s not by accident that Haaretz and the Jewish Chronicle in London had excellent book reviews of the book. I m working on another book now but which would take probably two years to prepare titled “the Anatomy of Mission” where I will go into detail and analyze the function of a diplomat, a Palestinian diplomat, which by itself again is a unique experience and I for one happen to have had the privilege of having been the head of mission in London, Washington, Moscow in addition to the Holy See “the Vatican”.

In normal diplomatic services one doesn’t have time materially to be head of mission in those three major capitals of the international system, materially one is an ambassador in one of those capitals and probably number two in another of those, I had the privilege of being head of mission in those three capitals. I’ll try to translate my experience in the upcoming book, but it’s a two year plan and I m entering a phase in my life where I’m allowing myself some well deserved laziness, now when I speak of laziness I’m speaking of 14 hours a day of work.

 If I had one piece of advice to the next generation, discipline in the usage of one’s time is an extremely precious approach, to be disciplined, I remember Edward Said telling me that he woke up very early every day at around 5 in the morning, did most of his writing and productive intellectual work before 9.00 when others become operational and then he had a usual day.

I’m not inviting everybody to wake at five but discipline in one’s life is extremely important and one should always allocate time for reading; digesting new things or else you stagnate.

When I was a student my purpose was besides attending the courses and all the rest was to read a minimum of hundred pages a day, so I invite you to be voracious readers.

Q. How was the peace process different from self-determination?

A. Unfortunately, and this is why we are in a period of soul searching, we and everybody else around the world have had more process than peace the last 20 years, which is a shameful thing, and I believe diplomats around the world should be ashamed, for they have allowed that process not to come to any fruition; it became a meaningless tragic farce. In my lecture a few days ago in Bethlehem at Al-Sabil Conference where 220 internationals were there plus all the locals, I advocated a new idea, since at the negotiation table we have explored every possible scenario and every alternative and their opposite. May be we need today to have peace without negotiations, there is no more any need for them, because the world knows what is needed and I said in matters of war and peace in the international system, the international will should prevail on a national whim, and I said today since we have respected all our commitments to the international community, today it is the international community that has to respect its commitments to our Palestinian people, either by the quartet or the Security Council to tell both sides in the most unequivocal manner what the world expects of them; it’s not up to the Israelis to decide that if I vote for Barack I give them back 70%, if I vote for Netanyahu I give them 50%, and if I vote for Lieberman I can afford giving them a kick in the back.

History is Always Undecided

Q. But what is the international law doing?

A. That’s the battle and it has been an uphill battle, but we are on the verge of winning and we are born winners, we should create the mentality of winners. We should abstain from the mentality of losers, defeat and failure.

 I believe Israel is also in trouble, we are a suffering society but they are a society in crisis and trouble. Having lived in America and Europe I can see how Jewish Communities around the world see Israel’s behavior as a source of embarrassment for them, unlike the sixties where I could see the unanimous excitement and enthusiasm around Israel. Today to the contrary there is this feeling of shame and embarrassment. I believe in America a majority of public opinion is in favor of Palestinian aspirations, ending the occupation and the birth of a state. As I told you history is always undecided; we have to help it and this is why in the Palestinian society where I perceive some masochistic tendencies, and some suicidal propensities, we should overcome those wrong inclinations, recreate the national cohesion that is needed and never forget that there is the primacy of politics. If you take the experiences of South Africa and Algeria, the ANC in South Africa was defeated militarily by the apartheid regime, the Algerian FLN was defeated by the French army on the military level yet both peoples prevailed on the political arena, to give you an idea on the primacy of politics.

What we need is again to recreate all the components of Palestinian cohesion, Palestinian perseverance and marginalize all the negative elements that our society has suffered from without entering into details. So cohesion and perseverance and a sense of purpose and never to forget the primacy of politics and we should again send to the world an unambiguous unanimous message on what we all agree about, instead of always projecting the image of a dislocated society, cacophonic society, we have to be a harmonious orchestra rather than a cacophonic noise.

Q. Well, as you have said the mass hoarding of people in squares and streets, etc. But there hasn’t been such a serious progress in the wake of Mubarak’s departure. We have seen a new era beginning in Egypt but what are the next steps, what strides can be made in order to begin something new?

A. I wouldn’t be as gloomy as you suggest. If we look at Egypt, yes there were hundreds of casualties and fatalities that could have been spared had the regime not resorted to repression through its force at the beginning, but the army’s none usage of violence was a welcomed phenomena; what we have today is a promising future. There is a constitution committee of very prominent individuals, all competent in constitutional law working and maybe by now they have finalized their work; they are working on the amendments to the constitution in the right direction. Secondly, I believe that all the political parties that exist in Egypt would be legitimized and legalized and they all have the feeling that they have to introduce new blood and a fresh breath, because unfortunately the situation of fossilization and stagnation had not only infected regimes in the Arab World but has also infected oppositional parties, for years my friend I would say, and not thinking of particular situations in the Arab world we neither have the regimes we deserve nor do we have the oppositions we need. Today the political parties are trying to reinvent themselves which is another welcomed phenomena.

The youth that has emerged as a decisive player on the political stage, up to now we are not organized institutionally but they had their own flexible fluid network through Twitter and Facebook, which is superb, to mobilize technology at the service of ideas. But I believe today many of them would be entering into already existing parties or creating new ones, I personally have always consistently been in the favor of the following:

I’m in favor of constitutional pluralism and I believe democracy is not a western idea, it’s a universal achievement, the West has contributed to it but still it’s a universal idea.

We need to inculcate the respect of the idea of pluralism, the rule of the majority and the respect of the minority because today’s minority can be tomorrow’s majority and vice versa. In politics we should value the battle of ideas and resort to the means of persuasion and not coercion, let’s try to live up to those high standards.

Factors of Cohesion

Q. That isn’t the case of neither Libya nor Yemen, so what are your projections of the Middle East and what is your vision of Palestine in the near future?

A. first of all nothing is to be ruled out in those countries, as I told you, you can’t say that history should be made in a week and if by then it didn’t give a final verdict then you can’t say history has failed us, history is always in the making, politics is the confrontation of wills; sometimes it is done in a civilized manner through peaceful protests and absence of physical repression, and sometimes unfortunately the regime resorts to instruments of power and repression they have at their disposal.

A regional integration and economic cooperation are what we may need, we must learn from others, we shouldn’t reinvent the wheel, and this is why the study of history is important, therefore one can see how other regions have increased, enhanced, broadened and deepened their regional cooperation. We can’t copy but take advantage, let me tell you, when I was a student, Hegel the German philosopher, whom I liked a lot had a pessimistic yet very important sentence which goes like “the only thing we learn is that we learn nothing from history”.

I think we should hope to prove him wrong and I’m sure he wouldn’t have minded if we could do so.

Q. How do you see the recent development in North Africa and other countries in the Middle East will impact the peace process?

A. it’s too early to say, but a region where governments are more legitimate and more representative of their own public opinion will behave on the international arena with more national dignity, than we have seen in the past. I’m in favor of this concept of national dignity to be honest.

Hence, I believe that with having more legitimate representative accountable governments, those units in the international system will behave with more national dignity and their opinions will be taken more in consideration.

 Q. You were the representative of the PLO office delegate in Moscow, London and Washington. What are now the drawbacks in the Palestinian diplomacy?

A. I think that we are a small people numerically and statistically and we have a highly motivated society, but any small population needs to have a fantastic impeccable diplomatic instrument. The Palestinians are people with a cause, but also because our country and society are central to three continents, we are condemned or blessed with the need of having an impeccable and large diplomatic instrument. I have lived the period and the era when we were ostracized, ghettoized and marginalized by the international system because of the strength of the Israeli lobby and the Pro-Israeli lobby.  

I’ve lived from 1974, after the October War of 1973, all the successive breakthroughs from Yasser Arafat appearing on the international stage of the UN in New York with his fantastic speech saying “Today I have come bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter’s gun. Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand.”  Gradually we became mainstreamed and accepted.

Unfortunately, the world is very unfair; there is a security council with certain countries enjoying the questionable privilege of vetoes, but I believe that from total marginalization and the perception as us being a collection of terroristic subversive elements to the projection of an adorable society, history has maltreated and should render justice to all this tremendous sacrifice and great achievement. So there’s room for improvement. Helmut Schmidt, the former Prime Minister in Germany, used to say “The biggest room on earth is the room for improvement”.

Nostalgic Pilgrimage

Q. Can you share with us some memories or the way you feel when you visit the school you studied in and graduated from? What goes in your mind and heart?

A. For me, it’s a sort of nostalgic pilgrimage into my past and before we had this discussion I had a superb encounter with the director of the institution, Dr. Suleiman Rabadi, who informed me about the goals and targets of the future projects. Three days earlier he presided over the discussion I had with “Al-Sabil” conference and we also had another exchange and I explored with him an idea that I believe that he, the institution, and you as seniors of this institution would play an important role in its achievement. I believe the ‘Collège des Frères’ as I told you earlier, is the best school in Jerusalem and will be. I believe there is now a historical necessity for somebody taking the initiative of making a conference for the Jerusalem Diaspora around the world. Jerusalem suffered demographically a lot in 1948. People forget that West Jerusalem was also Palestinian and that there were eight residential neighborhoods from where people were kicked out; some moved like my family from West Jerusalem to East Jerusalem but others moved to Western California, American West Coast, Scandinavia and Australia. I believe that we should not lose this Jerusalem Diaspora and we should interact with them and somebody here, preferably an NGO, and maybe a partnership between Collège des Frères and Faisal al Husseini Foundation for an example could convene a conference soon and this could be done within the coming six months for the Jerusalem Diaspora. Can you imagine the potential of such an initiative of 400 to 500 people for the first conference coming to Jerusalem from all over the world, from Scandinavia to California to Pennsylvania to Australia, and buses taking them to visit (Al- atamon, Al-bak’a, Al-tambieh..Etc), then going to the Old City of Jerusalem to visit the mosques and the holy places? Can you imagine the interactions? I have seen in America the committees of Bethlehem, Ramallah, and Der Dibwan in action. Every such conference that takes place in America results in 4/5 marriages, which is beautiful, what is better than the intermarriages between Jerusalemites from Jerusalem and those who live abroad, we can make agreements with either Collège des Frères or the University of Jerusalem to have every year a one month summer project where Arabic and history are taught. We can have all the NGO’s coming and giving their brochures so that the children of our Diaspora can volunteer and I like voluntary work on which my generation was built. This is the beautiful gift you can give to any cause. Can you imagine the interactions that can happen when hundreds of the children of Diaspora come every summer to work in the NGO’s in Jerusalem and Ramallah donating their time?

We are a society, here again we come back to our multilingual nature; a lot of our successful Palestinian diaspora can subcontract and have partners from Palestine. We live in the media age; we can have companies established in Jerusalem for the dubbing, subtitling, and translation as we have people fluent in Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, etc. Can you imagine how much work can be created? Maybe 50 of our young actors can be involved in that, if you want to do the subtitling, so many of our translators can be involved and the sky is the limit. I believe we should unleash Palestinian creativity. Let’s put imagination in power. Unfortunately, we live in a very uninspiring moment. You can be the breath of fresh air for the future.

Ideas are Nobler than Institutions

Q. As a prolific writer, do you regard downloading your saved books and articles as a violation of your intellectual property or as an infringement of copyright?

A. As long as it’s always mentioned, on the contrary, a person who believes that he is at the service of an idea, he would like to have his intellectual production as democratically shared as possible. I take it as a tribute and a compliment. I have devoted all my life for the Palestinian cause on the framework of the PLO and I’ve always said the following: ‘I believe the PLO is in the same time an idea and an institution, if a few thousands work in the institution, then the eleven million other Palestinians are the vehicles of the idea, and ideas are nobler than institutions. In politics on the contrary, having one’s article or lecture distributed and circulated is a very positive thing as that was the purpose to begin.

Spiritual Desire
Noel: I come from a village called Ain Ebel, South of Lebanon where I was born on Christmas day of 1934. In my early childhood, I heard my father talking about a priest with a sacred character that he admired expressing his worry by saying: “If this priest dies who would come to our village to fill in his place?” At that moment I was sitting beside my father so I told him: “I am ready to become a priest and step into his shoes.” My father was so happy and started fumbling with my hair showing his cheerfulness and said: “May God Bless you my son, now you are a priest in my eyes. So I started to play the role of the priest at home; I started looking for any black clothes to wear and, of course, used to strap a Roman collar around my neck in order to live through the experience. I was even participating in the prayers that were held once or twice a week at the Salizian High School in Haifa, where I used to study, all in the hope of becoming a priest when I grow up.
In 1948, one of our school priests was killed; the event caused such a terror that the other priests gathered their belongings and fled to Bethlehem consequently. The school had to be closed and we were forced to leave Haifa back to our village in south Lebanon. My ties with my school were severed for there was no other Salizian school in Lebanon, thus I had to pursue my education in French; the official education language in Lebanon, but I was lucky and did find a school teaching in English and enrolled there. At the end of the year, the Brothers were searching for students to become Brothers but unfortunately I wasn’t chosen. In that year, Brother François was taken to France for tuberculosis treatment until he was completely cured. We warmly welcomed him when he returned in1948. I met him for the first time that day, by then I was only 13. I quite frankly told him: “I don’t speak French, but I want to be a Brother.” He said: “No problem, we will teach you French.”
Following our dialogue he spoke to the Head of seminary, then I officially began my life as a Brother in1948; since then and up till now I’ve never regretted my acceptance of the Brothers’ call. The boys nominated to become Brothers at the clerical school were aged between 13-18 years old and were supposed to live with Brothers, in order to become familiar with their life until the decision day comes, at which they must decide whether to continue in the path of God or go back to their homes. Everyone left except me, so I began to learn French in Beit Merry until the age of 18. Then I headed to Bethlehem wearing the Brother’s attire after living such a life and becoming completely familiar with it. Two years later, I made my first and second vows. And finally, I made my third vow after a clerical retreat that lasted 30 days. I then completed my studies in Beirut at the Jesuit University.
After I have completed my university studies I was assigned as inspector at Ras Beirut School for one year and then I became a principal from1965 until 1973.
I then went to study at the University of Sorbonne in France where I got my BA. Then I stayed for one year in Algeria after being asked to help in Arabization of the curriculum at Brothers schools and then I returned to Lebanon; afterwards I was appointed at Collège des Frères in Jerusalem.
At that time, Lebanon was in a state of turmoil and the Palestinian role became apparent in Lebanon’s political affairs. However, when I was appointed I said that I am neither a Lebanese nor a Christian but I am here to serve the Palestinian students who are in need for education more than anything else.
I was a Palestinian with the Palestinians and a Jerusalemite with the Jerusalemites and dedicated for my students. Consequently, nobody found out whether I was Maronite, or Kataebi or a Lebanese but a Brother who strived to serve them. I was able to work with students, teachers and families with simplicity and dedication to highlight the importance of the school and provide the best services for students.
The Palestinian-Lebanese conflict never influenced the quality of service which I was appointed to provide and lead. Later, I was appointed as a Brother coordinator in the Holy Land supervising the Brothers’ schools in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth and Jaffa. Thus everything related to these schools was my first priority. I thank God for giving me the power so as not to let my personal feelings mingle with my responsibilities and duties. I hope I was able to provide my students with the required services in Palestine especially in Jerusalem.

A Man with so Many Dreams
I always believed that Students should be linked with their mundane problems and their reality (good or bad). Thus, throughout my experience, I have always endeavored to deal with students’ problems and respond to their questions with convincing and reassuring answers.
I have been influenced by something in Baskanta when I was assigned to serve there, where I discovered the importance of preparation for the class; the importance of self-learning and the significance of self-training to apply principles of teaching. I realized the importance of training in which every teacher gets a chance to be trained and become qualified because even if one is an expert in his field he might have no idea how to deliver the information in proper ways. One of my dreams was to inaugurate a training center in Jerusalem.
Another experience that influenced my methodology was a one year training course which we called “The Pedagogic Month” which was organized in cooperation with Bethlehem University and the UNRWA. At the end of this course I noticed that teachers are in need of fundamental issues: the basics of training before they can be enrolled in any supplementary courses, otherwise such courses will be useless. I reached an agreement with the UNRWA, specifically with MS. Leila Tarazi, to organize a training course in which teachers can get an official certificate. At that time we requested some help from Rome and we were asked to associate such a project with a large foundation and not with a group of people. As a result, we presented the project to the University of Bethlehem and Leila worked there after taking one year leave without pay from the UNRWA. She offered to continue her work if the university wanted to make a contract with her, but things proceeded so slowly and Leila was forced to go back to the UNRWA.
That was the way my dream faded before it was born .Those with BA certificates and diplomas in pedagogy who worked with us weren’t probably able of applying what they had learned in their classrooms due to the fact that they were untrained. That was the end of our project. But I did my best to send young teachers to France to get trained at a French training center.

Problems and Development
There was a problem concerning the official programs brought by official supervisors from the ministry of education; such programs were limited and didn’t provide enough space for teachers to be creative, and forced teachers to cage educational materials in an irrational context, which resulted in enforcing memorization of Arabic, English, history, geography and science. This made the students hate these subjects because they are not interesting. Moreover, the supervisors used to impose traditional ways on the teachers. We found ourselves in trouble so we started expanding and varying our methods and connecting the school material with our students’ life. We always demanded changing the exam forms which were based on memorization which was time consuming for parents who used to teach their children. We also tried to free the teachers from unnecessary burdens imposed on them and their students in order to make learning and teaching more efficient and enjoyable.

Building a New School at Beit Hanina

The idea of building a new school at Beit Hanina brings us back to Brothers Eleanor and Franco who initiated the idea of expanding our school at the New Gate.
In our school at the New Gate learning was free at that time and there was a college and a boarding school where fees were covered for students who couldn’t pay. The surplus of school’s income was spent on needy students. Due to the limited areas the schools were built on, Brother Eleanor had tried to buy from the Patriarchate what was considered as a hotel but the Patriarchate declined to sell it. This led Brother Eleanor to construct a new building, next to the old one, which took a large part of the play grounds which had to be narrowed. Expanding was a must so a land was bought near Hebrew University. However, the Israeli occupation confiscated that land so Brother Felix sued the Israelis and could bring back only a part of its price which was used to buy a land in Beit Hanina. We had to expand as the number of Palestinian students increased after leaving the local Israeli schools. Bishop Helarion Capucci, Malekite Bishop of Jerusalem, used to encourage us to receive those students and urged them not to enter any Israeli school. So our school started to receive a new class every year to an extent that the director’s and accountant’s offices had to be turned into classes .We had no longer space to make new classes as even corridors were used .
This need to accommodate new students forced us to think about constructing a new building. So, I prepared plans and presented them to the Brothers’ Council in Beirut. Nevertheless, getting a license was necessary to build a new school with less than 200 thousand dollars as a reserve. However, that amount of money “melted” due to a continuous financial crisis and the long delays in getting a license. But before I left Jerusalem, we got a building license and received an agreement on the external borders of the school in 1986. Brother Rafael took my place and was responsible of proceeding with the mission. In 1996, I returned back to Jerusalem to complete the construction project in Beit Hanina which started the following year; a new approach to Jerusalem emerged due to the problems that stormed Lebanon. Brother Regis who was our Brother Visitor at that time showed great interest towards the construction project in Jerusalem, refusing the initiation of any project until our project is completed. Brother Rafael offered giving the old building in the Old City to the Latin Patriarchate and getting the school built. Thank God, this didn’t happen.
Having enough classrooms for more students, whose numbers are increasing, is a must in a country under occupation with an occupier that never refrains from declaring war against education and knowledge, which the Palestinians must hold as a weapon against Israel to reach their freedom.

Cooperation with Seculars
From my experience in Lebanon when I was responsible for teaching Arabic and religion, there were about ten teachers around me and we prepared lectures together. Those teachers asked me once: “What is the difference between you and us? We can be a part of the Brothers Association” I answered: “Yes, you represent another organization beside the Brothers.” That day, we were convinced that a secular teacher can cooperate with us.
After moving to Jerusalem and working with the teachers there and in Bethlehem I started to believe that working with secular teachers is at the core of the Christian message. I encouraged teachers to cooperate with me in educational projects and we used to discuss outstanding problems and take decisions together. At that moment I felt the importance of giving attention to the kind of teachers we employ at our schools, as our students are from well-educated families. However, the unstable Palestinian circumstance forced lots of those well-educated to go abroad, so we had to appoint teachers and fire them when we found that they didn’t match our school aspirations or were unable to enrich their experience in teaching students who belong to families who expected more from our schools.

Final Words
I feel that one of our big problems is the absence of a teachers’ training center, what we have is just training when required. Only 3% of the teachers benefit from training, these are the ones who pursue development. The rest complain and underestimate these courses. If this kind of centers are hard to establish then we have to seek the assistance of professionals who are capable in providing teachers with what methods they are in need of and accompanying them through in service training to combine the theoretical part with the practical one to achieve intellectual and creative teaching.
I think that Professional people are better than local university teachers because those with experience are better in delivering information. I considered imitation, violent punishment, absence of modern assessment tools and simulation as scourges of education. I think it is important to maintain a good relationship between teachers and the Director of a school and between the heads of departments and teachers because this reflects on their general performance.

Dr. Suleiman Rabadi

For the last 30 years, the Arab World has been going through an intrinsic crisis that has deformed the shape and outlook of our societies. This crisis had its internal and external causes. Internally, our societies have been ruled by a conglomerate of forces that had a stake in perpetuating the status quo and continue to rule and prevail. Our societies have been ruled by royal families with different titles; kingdoms, sheikhdoms, republics which have also adopted different kinds of ideologies from socialism, to capitalism, political Islam, nationalism and built their strength base on fear, corruption and naked power. They rallied forces around them that benefited from the system and bet on the docility and helplessness of the popular masses. Our rulers used the military and representative institutions; parliaments, political parties etc., to camouflage a flagrant lack of representation of the majority of the populace interests. The prevailing regimes used the powerful tools of the media, educational systems to perpetuate their vision and interests. The media and the educational systems produced docile citizens that had no choice but to obey and accept the faith of being allowed to live, which is a generosity the regimes have to be thanked for. These two instruments, which were the tools of indoctrination, shaped the minds, culture and hopes of millions of young Arabs. They were keen at producing individuals that feel powerless and loyal to the prevailing order because it is the best “that God created”. Externally, the interests of these regimes coincided with the interests of the prevailing international system, that has been bombarding us with beautifully crafted and packaged slogans like democracy, human rights, equal and balanced development, with a real agenda that was only interested in depleting these countries of their resources by controlling each and every aspect of their economies, political systems and agendas, to even their social and cultural development. Thousands of projects and tons of aid money were invested in shaping every aspect of life imaginable. International institutions starting from the UN and its agencies, to the world Bank, international governmental and non-governmental organizations and others orchestrated a symphony that played well to the interests of the big powers and their stooges in the region; all of which at the expense of the ordinary individuals and their humble hope of having a descent dignified life.
One might think that we are trying in our analysis to blame others for our misery and incompetency and resort to the old conspiracy theory that dissolves oneself of the responsibilities of the situation.
Conspiracy theories were shunned by regimes and the sultan’s intellectuals as the scarecrow of the powerless lazy Arab citizen, who saw in every act a conspiracy in order to blame someone for the unbearable vicious circle citizens were situated in. One shouldn’t be ashamed of naming things by their right names. There has been a big conspiracy against the ordinary citizen for the last 30 years that has been totally exposed with the last six month revolts. The youth carrying their faith in their hands alarmed and flabbergasted the tightly knit international system and its local comprador to its roots.
One should not underestimate the ascendancy of this system which has the power, money, international institutional tools and most importantly the internal forces and classes of each Arab society that stand to lose everything if the prevailing system collapses. Furthermore, one should not overestimate the power of the youth, who in their own right are not totally united, for they come from different backgrounds and have different agendas and are still carrying the heavy mantle of years of indoctrination that can’t be erased by will or wishful thinking, but through a long process of reproducing new social and political thought and formulating new strategies and agendas through a very painful caesarian rebirth of this new generation.
Any revolution has to have a clear cut with the past, not all the past, part of the past is who we are, our identity, history and culture, in addition to what was imposed on us and hammered in our minds and psyche that led to the prevalence of the status quo. We need to be aware of what to delete and what to retain from our past. Not everything that shines in the modern world is gold; we should just accept and internalize because we have this inferiority complex towards “modernity” in its marketed formulas in this insensitive consumerist world.
The youth’s role has to be crafted and rethought of meticulously. New political parties and unions have to be formed with tireless discussions about what we want and how we should go about changing the status quo. This process can take years and it has to be oriented towards empowering the different strata of the population that has been marginalized historically. We have to guarantee that the media system would gradually be the tool of change and not indoctrination, that we should rethink the whole purpose, content, vision of the educational system and work in the coming 5-10 years to reformulate our educational agenda and work on the ground to change practices, attitudes and ways of learning in order to achieve change and educate a new generation with knowledge and its tools rather than reproducing docile individuals.
Not only does the Palestinian society have to face the issues raised in this article but also have an extra burden of dealing with a heavy unprecedented in history occupation, that has been keen at distorting its memory and identity and has been creating facts on the ground to negate its existence. The Arab and Palestinian youth should remain realistically optimistic about change, because they can’t afford to be pessimistic. They have to work hard to achieve real meaningful and sustainable change. A special care should be given to what type of educational system we need to produce in the coming few years that would help us educate our kids and place them in the future rather than being entrapped in the past.

February 2012

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