The best thing that happened at Netroots 2 weeks ago (which I’ve held off writing about because I knew no one was going to beat me) was when J.B. Leedy, a tall blonde who works for the State Department’s Foreign Press Center, ran up to the dais after an Arab Spring event and said, “Ziad, you’re a rock star.” She was talking to a young Palestinian blogger named Ziad Khalil Abu Zayyad, who was visiting the States on a State Department tour along with a bunch of other bloggers.
We can talk some other time about the corruption of American aid in the Palestinian territories or the grave lapses in Obama foreign policy– here was a State Department staffer acknowledging a young Palestinian’s eloquence, apparently including Abu Zayyad’s statement, “My people have been under occupation for more than 63 years.” And it was a reminder that inside the American government there are many staffers who understand the importance of the Arab Spring and are cheering on the Palestinians, and that supporters of Palestinian freedom have gotten a foothold even in the Democratic Party base.
But what did Abu Zayyad say?
Abu Zayyad, whose work appears here, is a 28-year-old who spent months in Israeli prisons for leading a protest against the separation wall. He began with a frank description of the rights that Palestinians seek, and his own status as a “permanent resident” of East Jerusalem, without nationality or citizenship.
“My people have been under occupation for more than 63 years, living with injustice. We want to get our rights under U.N. international law. We want to celebrate our nationality without being hunted and stopped. We want to express our opinion, we want to get 10,000 people out of prison. We want to get the basic human rights that you get every day in this country.
“I know there is pressure, I know there are 1000 reasons for everything the US government does…
“But we are not in the conflict for the sake of a conflict. And there is nothing left for us to negotiate. The two state solution is out of our hands.
“Something more important than that is your involvement with the political conflict. Forget about the emotions, forget about the [political] traditions. This is the way that I see it and most Arabs see it. There is a tradition in the American community to support Israel no matter what. It is the orphan, the only child in the Middle East… it has to face all these Arabs who only want to kill and shoot. But by doing so [Americans] cover their eyes from everything that Israel does to the Palestinians, that they occupy the Palestinian lands.”
Then Abu Zayyad spoke of the convulsive change brought by the Arab spring, and the risk to the United States of its blind support for Israel as our Arab allies are transformed, Egypt, Jordan, and Gulf states.
“There is a new regime coming, brought by the new generation, and sooner or later they will discuss the American relations between themselves and the Palestinians, which is the first point on their agenda. Arafat said the Palestinian issue is the root of the Arab unity, and it can explode Arab unity or bring them together.
“Support the democratic norms. Be completely democratic toward other countries. Be realistic and liberal, fine, but you need to think about things in a democratic way. You need to talk about international law, which explains this conflict clearly. UN 242 and 194 explain how to end it.
“And now you have more than 129 countries in the U.N. General Assembly saying these people must have a state of their own, and sooner or later they will get that recognition…. 129 countries, with all their points of disagreement, they still support the Palestinian state– while the mother of democratic norms, the leader of the democratic world, the country that Condoleezza Rice said was the defender of democracy– it denies the Palestinian right to have a state. Instead of that, they want the Palestinians to waste time with Netanyahu while he directs the conflict. But Netanyahu is just wasting time to get what he wants while he gives nothing to the other side.”
Abu Zayyad described the endless colonization of the West Bank, and he said, “The Israeli government will soon have explain to its people why the two state solution is not valid.”
“You must think about what other people want too. Things are changing dramatically in the Middle East. The countries are not the same as they were in 70s and 80s. There is now a serious exploration by Palestinian youth to get their rights back.
“And the thing is not to support a movement after it starts, or only when your guy is gone. You must consider that when you’re talking about the Palestinian conflict, there are millions of lives involved. And in Gaza, they have no place to go, and we are talking about human beings there.”
I offer Abu Zayyad’s comments as a snapshot of what the progressive community in the United States is beginning to hear. As I said before, Netroots has circumscribed its panels on this issue. It doesn’t want to touch the Israel/Palestine question. Still the question is being forced by young people in the grassroots. I expect that in Providence next June, its next conference, Netroots will do more to embrace this movement.
