Shafiq Al-Hut, journalist, one of the founders of the PLO, and long-time director of the PLO office in Lebanon, died in Beirut on Sunday. He was 77.
Al-Hut’s death will most likely get cursory mention at best in the U.S. and international press (as of this writing, the New York Times and BBC websites still don’t have anything up on him). This is not surprising, and I will tell you why.
I had the privilege of meeting him on a study abroad trip during my junior year in university, to research the role of the Palestinians in inter-Arab politics.
It was 1980, and the scene in Beirut was bustling and chaotic and full of contradictions. Militia checkpoints, no-go zones (the Green Line between East and West Beirut was still firmly entrenched), and great belts of poverty contrasting with ostentatious displays of wealth.
But there was also a feeling of freedom and a spirit of initiative, unlike the other Arab countries we had been too. We visited Sabra and Shatila refugee camps, and the impressive network of small factories, schools, research center (destroyed by the IDF in 1982), and hospital run by the PLO, the Palestinian exiles’ attempt at building a nascent socioeconomic infrastructure that could eventually be transplanted to their homeland. This infrastructure was one of the prime targets of the 1982 Israeli invasion, with the assassination attempt against the Israeli ambassador in London as the cover.
It was in the camps that I learned the concept of "Sumud", steadfastness, and no matter how dire their situation, or how long they had been refugees from Palestine, the people there were determined to see justice and return to their homeland. Palestinian Sumud is also found in the West Bank, Gaza, and among Palestinian Israelis. They will never abandon their homeland, physically or mentally, wherever they may live, and I truly believe it is this, Palestinian Sumud, that is ultimately the target of the uncompromising, unrelenting, and brutal politics of dispossession, obsessive propaganda, and hyper-militaristic policies of successive Israeli governments towards the Palestinians.
There was also a lot of in infighting between competing groups and security forces, and general thuggery and corruption by many of these groups, directly encouraged by Arafat or the Syrian patrons of some of them. Israeli warplanes were bombing the south of the country regularly, and buzzing Lebanese airspace on an almost daily basis.
We were led to a very small, modest office in the middle of the city (a walk-up, if I remember correctly), to meet a very jovial, welcoming man named Shafiq Al-Hut. Never heard of him, despite my misplaced pride in being able to rattle off most of the leadership of different Palestinian factions and major PLO personalities. My professor said he was the director of the PLO office in Lebanon. Okay. Little did I know he was one of the founding members of the PLO, one of Lebanon’s most distinguished journalists, and well-respected and well-known to reporters, politicians, and others around the world. He was also the go-to contact for comment by all journalists during the worst of the 1975-1976 civil war, when horrible massacres were perpetrated by all sides, but especially against the Palestinians. He escaped numerous assassination attempts. And he did not get along with Arafat at all.
I’ll be honest – I don’t remember a lot of what was said in that smoke-filled room (the man loved his cigarettes and drink), but what I do remember is meeting one of the most eloquent, moving raconteurs of the humanity and plight of the Palestinians.
Avowedly secular, independent, and with a solid reputation for being incorruptible, Al-Hut regaled in impeccable, endearingly slanged English our little group of undergraduate and graduate students for over an hour about his early life in Jaffa, where he was born in 1932, the 1948 war when they were forced to move to Beirut (his family is actually originally Lebanese, but more on that in a moment), and other anecdotes from his life.
But mostly he wanted to talk about the plight of the Palestinians in general, and not draw attention to his own life story. He was, impressively, very self-aware of his privilege. He waxed eloquently and passionately, but always with a self-effacing humor, about the right of return, but realized that Palestinians might have to settle for a fraction of their original homeland. The one phrase I remember him clearly exclaiming was "22 percent!! That is all we are asking! A lousy 22 percent!" Even this he said with a winning smile. I am by nature a very skeptical person, but I sincerely believed him, and still do, when he said, “Ahlan wa sahlan to our Jewish brothers and sisters to live in a state with equality for all of us.”
We met many Palestinian officials and activists during our trip to Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon, and I met many more when I went to Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, in 1988, and almost none (with the exceptions of Dr. Haidar Abdul-Shafi, Mary Khaas, and Samiha Khalil) made more of an impression on me. Although his family was originally from Beirut, he never felt anything except Palestinian, and devoted his life to the Palestinian people. This is not uncommon – I know Armenians from Palestine who are even more Sumud than some Arab Palestinians. The rapid Islamicization of the Palestinian cause is a recent phenomenon (although it would be wrong to claim that the PLO was a 100% secular organization; it wasn’t) – and Christians, Druze, and others always played a very active and prominent role in Palestinian peace and justice activism, politics, and intellectual life.
We don’t know more about him, because he always eschewed the limelight (even when it was given to him, he never made it about him), never attached himself to any one political or military faction, and avoided the lure of corruption and power that engulfed so many others. To him, Palestine was about none of that stuff. He resigned from the PLO after the Oslo Accords in 1993, not because he was against peace, but saw, rightly, that Oslo would not lead to even that 22% he talked about with us almost 30 years ago. As Malcolm X said, “No justice, no peace.” Al-Hut embodied the concept of Sumud. That, and his self-effacement and refusal to engage in self-aggrandizement at the expense of the Palestinian people, will result in him not getting the obituaries he deserves in our mainstream press.
In addition to his family, he leaves behind a corpus of writings, some collected into books. Somebody needs to translate these books now.
For another personal reflection on Shafiq Al-Hut, surf on over to The Angry Arab blog:
http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2009/08/shafiq-al-hut-lebanon-and-palestine.html
