As you can see from the sidebar, I am putting together online biographies for some leading Palestinian personalities, as there seems to be a dearth of such information on the Web. It’s a slow process: this morning, I completed my third biography, and at this rate I should be finished shortly before our sun turns supernova. This morning's addition was Sari Nusseibeh, co-author of the Ayalon-Nusseibeh People’s Voice peace initiative.
I enjoy biographies: apart from the fact that people are inherently interesting, it is also fascinating to see how researching the life of one person who has lived through historic events can be a more manageable way of understanding that history than looking at the broad sweep of things. For example, Nusseibeh was born in Jerusalem in 1949, and grew up just a few blocks from the Green Line. You cannot help but notice how the experience of growing up in divided and later occupied Jerusalem manifests itself in his political initiatives. He remembers as a child walking down the street to the Green Line, stopping at the gate leading to West Jerusalem through which he could not pass, and wondering what it would be like to pass through the gate like Alice in Wonderland into another world. It is no coincidence that when he grows up and articulates how the two state solution might work, he has a vision of porous, permeable borders, and Jerusalem as an open city, where nobody has to stop at the gate and wonder about the strangers who live on the other side.
Similarly, he remembers the 1967 War and the beginning of the Israeli occupation with mixed feelings: sadness, that Arab East Jerusalem is under foreign military occupation, but also relief that the city which has been home to the Nusseibeh’s in a unbroken line for at least thirteen centuries is again whole, even if Israelis and Palestinians have yet to find a way to share the city as equals. I am sure that from this experience of reunification comes his early and persistent interest in the possibility of making peace through the establishment of a single, binational state in which Israelis and Palestinians alike enjoy full citizenship.
As early as 1987, Nusseibeh courted controversy by suggesting that Israel should annex the Palestinian Territories, reunify Mandate Palestine as a single state, and grant citizenship to all its residents. In an interview with Gideon Levy of Ha’aretz – which bears quoting at length - Nusseibeh revisited his 1987 suggestion, and commented on whether he still felt the same way:
When I was looking at processes that were taking place in the West Bank and Gaza during the first twenty years of occupation, I saw a process of integration into Israeli society, which was contrary to the stated aims of the Palestinian strategy that called for disintegration. I believed that this schizophrenic situation cannot continue for a long time. In order to bridge the gap, there was a need to change one of the two components: either to disconnect from the Israeli system – something that has already happened in the intifada - or to change the declared strategy, and to make an effort to integrate into the Israeli system, consciously. I think that is still applicable. In other words, I believe that if the strategy of disintegration will fail, then maybe the Palestinians will change direction and say: We couldn’t do it, therefore let us make the best out of integrating into the Israeli system.” He was asked whether that would inevitably lead to a binational state. “By definition”, Sari replied, “if we don’t reach agreement on a two-state partition in five to six years, then what happens in fact – no matter what you call it – is a nondemocratic binational state.”
… And, he warns, the psychological clock is ticking. “The entire populace is becoming radicalized as a result of the continued Israeli occupation”, he explains. “The symptom of this [shift] is that more and more people are turning to Muslim fundamentalism. One shouldn’t overestimate its importance” he cautions, but one should draw the appropriate conclusion.
The message is that while an independent Palestinian state is still attractive to most Palestinians, both inside and outside the territories, it may not be for very much longer. “Today you could sell this to the people, not that they would fall in love with the idea,” says Sari. He cautions: “The national psychological readiness for a two-state solution is not a permanent fixture of the Palestinian psychology. It’s in the Palestinian heart now, but it can quickly fade if there is no response to this feeling of opening up. It’s like a star or a comet that comes close by and then goes away. One has to catch it when it is close to your quarters.”
Now, Nusseibeh is not saying anything new here about the window that is closing on the two-state solution; indeed it is the widespread realisation that the chance for the two-state solution is passing that has led to the current flurry of articles about the possibilities (or dangers, depending on your viewpoint) of the binational state. What is interesting is that this Ha'aretz interview is not a product of the current debate, but was in fact published in the fall of 1989, at the height of the first intifada. This highlights not only how prescient was Nusseibeh's thinking, but also how, no matter how many people are killed, or settlements built or speeches given, the underlying issue always remains the same: how will Palestinians and Israelis live together, in one state or in two?
As a Fateh activist and political organizer during the first intifada, Nusseibeh is well qualified to describe the motivation behind that uprising, and he describes it in terms of a choice between the one-state or two-state path. The Palestinian experience of the Occupation was one of being torn between, on the one hand, ever-increasing immersion in Israeli society (with the implicit hope that this would lead to equality in a single state), and on the other the nationalistic hope of independence in a separate Palestine. It was the frustration of living twenty years in the limbo of occupation, with no positive move toward either outcome, that was the spark for the first intifada.
Instead of waiting to for Israel to decide upon one state or two, Palestinians made their own decision in 1987, and it was a decisive no to a binational state. The first intifada was a cutting of the strings that tied Palestinians into Israeli society, breaking the economic links (through strikes and boycotts), and the political links, by building grassroots political structures to run their own lives and lay the foundation of their own state. Most importantly, for Nusseibeh, occupied Palestinians did this without waiting for the approval of the external PLO or, above all, the permission of the Israelis. In this respect, the 1987–93 intifada was a no to occupation, and a yes to independence in a two-state setting. It was the Oslo agreement, with its promise of an end to occupation and a Palestinian state based on the Occupied Territories, that ended the first intifada.
In practice of course, Oslo did not bring an end to occupation, at least not of the land. While the inhabitants of the main Palestinian urban centers were granted autonomy, the Israeli grip on the land itself intensified, leaving Palestinians confined to isolated, self-governing islands in an Israeli sea. From a Palestinian perspective, it was the realization that Oslo was leading them to a self-governing Indian reservation that sparked the second (al-Aqsa) intifada.
For all the disillusionment with Oslo, the al-Aqsa intifada is, like its predecessor, an intifada for a two-state solution. These days, Nusseibeh himself does not advocate the unification of historic Palestine but, through his People’s Voice initiative, campaigns for two states on the basis of the 1967 borders. It is ironic that he is a vocal champion of the two-state solution today, when it is apparent that we are reaching the point at which the comet that came close to us is now moving away, and there is a growing movement towards the views that he so controversially expressed in 1987.
The second intifada will certainly be the last Palestinian uprising for a state alongside Israel. If there is a third, it will be the intifada for civil rights, and Israelis will be wishing they had bitten the bullet and made the “land or peace” decision that has been crying out for an answer since 1967. By the time Palestinians are asking not for independence but for “one person, one vote”, Israel as a Jewish state will be facing limited choices, and none of them very appealing.
Today I am adding a bio for Ahmad Sa’adat, Secretary General of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the second largest faction in the PLO and the leading Palestinian party of the left. Sa’adat has been held without trial in Jericho jail under U.S./U.K. monitoring since May 2002, accused by Israel of ordering the assassination of former Israeli Minister of Tourism Rehavam Zeevi. He was nominated by the PFLP to run as a Parliamentary candidate in the PLC elections scheduled for January 2006, as a means of publicizing his continued detention and bringing pressure to bear for his release.
Right - Goodbye peace talks, hello intifada: Dahlan and Erekat part company for the last time with Clinton Mid East envoys Aaron Miller and Dennis Ross, during the final days of the Clinton Presidency; Jan 2001. 
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