Former Member of the Israeli Knesset, Azmi Bishara, of the Balad Party, is threatened with loss of his Israeli citizenship and a cessasation of his pension payments as a former member of parliament.

Long live Israeli democracy! Last week, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that “it is too early” (sic) to rule on the cancellation of former Member of Knesset (MK) Azmi Bishara’s Israeli citizenship and to stop paying him his pension as a former member of parliament. The non-honorable judges requested that the plaintiff, World Likud head Danny Danon, first address another juridical instance and return to the Supreme Court only if his demand is rejected.

Azmi Bishara is a Palestinian citizen of Israel, founder, and for many years chairman, of Balad—The National Democratic Alliance—Party, former member of the Knesset, political activist and a brilliant intellectual. In 2006, he went to Lebanon in order to meet Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, as he did many times before, together with other Arab political leaders and with the full knowledge and de facto green-light of the Israeli authorities. A rightwing (and at times certain leftwing elements played a dirty role too) hysterical campaign against “Bishara’s treason” made the Israeli prosecutor’s office reverse its policy towards these meetings, and decide to charge him retrospectively for “assisting the enemy in war-time.” 

Let us start with the pension issue: pension is the private property of the person concerned, for which s/he has paid cash money, every month throughout his or her working years. Taking back the pension is daylight robbery. One can assume that a court in a capitalist system, even if that system defines itself as a “Jewish-Democratic State,” will not allow such an attack against the holy value of private property. But who knows?

Sari Nusseibeh is a Palestinian professor of philosophy and president of the al-Quds University in Jerusalem.

In a recent interview to Akiva Eldar (Haaretz, August 16, 2008), Palestinian leader Sari Nusseibeh made several interesting remarks concerning the "one-state/two-states" discussion. Unlike many others, Nusseibeh puts at the core of the discussion the dimension of time. Politics is not a supermarket in which each one can choose what s/he likes, according to his/her personal taste, but is a struggle of the people over what they believe to be worthwhile to fight (and sometimes to die) for. Struggling people often change their political objectives according to changing relation of forces and what they believe to be or not be realistic. In that sense, there is no serious political strategic thought that does not include the dimension of time.

In the 1980s-1990s, the Palestinian national liberation movement decided that the regional and international context rendered possible, in the relatively short-term, the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, and fixed this perspective as a strategic objective. Like most of the Palestinian leaders, Nusseibeh endorsed the political perspective of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza: "The primary motivation (for a two-state solution) is to minimize human suffering. […] If there will be a one-state solution, it will not come today or tomorrow. It's a long, protracted thing." Moreover, unlike the others, Nusseibeh even expressed readiness to trade the right of return of the refugees in exchange for Palestinian statehood, a stand that was perceived by many as close to treason. In his interview to Akiva Eldar, Nusseibeh expresses concern about the readiness of the Israeli leadership to negotiate with good faith for the establishment of a Palestinian state: "I still favor a two-state solution and will continue to do so, but to the extent that you discover it's not practical anymore or that it's not going to happen, you start to think about what the alternatives are. […] There is the sense that we are running out of time, that if we want a two-state solution, we need to implement it quickly. But if we are looking at what is happening on the ground, in Israel and in the occupied territories, you see things happening in the opposite direction."

More than 5,000 mourners attended the funeral of Palestinian national poet Mahmoud Darwish, 1941-2008, which was held on 13 August 2008 in Ramallah.

Happy is the people for whom poetry is its God. Happy is the people for whom poets—and not generals, people with material wealth or these such oligarchic types—are the national symbol. This was my thought as I marched, together with a group of 20 Israeli activists, in the mass funeral procession of Mahmoud Darwish in Ramallah.  

And a memory from 25 years ago: only twenty people, most of them old neighbors, accompanied the coffin of the legendary Soviet spy and anti-Nazi fighter Leopold Trepper in a cemetery in Jerusalem. Not one representative of the government attended, nor did any speaker from the numerous groups representing the victims of the Holocaust and the anti-Nazi resistance fighters. I felt then that the representation of the Jewish people, its history and memory, was placed entirely on the shoulders of the weak. Woe to a people that does not honour its true heroes, respecting instead generals who send their soldiers to battle while they themselves run to sell stocks in the market, all the while forcing the young generation to identify with “successful” people, honest less or more, such as Arcadi Gaydamak and Lev Leviev. Woe to such a people.  

And if dealing with generals, mention must be made of the Israeli General Gal Hirsch, who failed in the last Israeli war against Lebanon, and now portends to provide consultancy to the Georgian army and teach it about war. And in Georgia, as in Lebanon: a total defeat. Sheikh Nasrallah is correct the second time in mocking Hirsch and his employers, along with Israel and the United States, who again are on the losing side.

Nasrallah's speech is characterized by a political and comprehensive world and strategic view.

Two years ago, during the second Israeli war against Lebanon, we published not a few texts of the Hizbullah, including speeches by Sheikh Nasrallah. This was necessary, in light of the crucial role played by the Hizbullah in thwarting the American-Israeli comprehensive war in West Asia, and in transforming the region into one of the most humiliating defeats of this American-Israeli strategy.

If Israeli politicians would take the time to read the words of Nasrallah and other Hizbullah leaders, it is possible they would better understand the meaning of the Israeli defeat; if peace activists took more of an interest in the political thought of the Lebanese organization, it is reasonable they would be less surprised by the results of the 2006 military adventure. However, both of these groups are stuck in stereotypes and prejudices and will therefore, time after time, be surprised.

For our part, we will not stop taking an interest in one of the most important political movements in the Arab world, and to translate some of what is written and said by its leaders so that the Israeli women and men activists, at least them, will understand what is occurring on the regional political stage. Below is a selection from a speech given by Nasrallah on the occasion of the prisoner exchange and freeing of Samir Kuntar. The speech is characterized by a political and comprehensive world and strategic view far removed from the image of “religious fanaticism” which is affixed to his words by the Israeli media, “commentators” and “experts in Arab matters”.