My signature, Hanthala: The Symbol of the Child by Naji al-Ali

I had friends with whom I shared my work, protests, and prison days until one day they became "tanabel" running businesses and buying stocks. I was worried about myself from turning to a "tanabal" too and being consumed. In the Gulf I gave birth to this child and offered him to the people. He is committed to the people that will cherish him. I drew him as an ugly child, with hedgehock-like hair because the hedgehock uses its hair as a weapon.

Hanthala is not a fat spoilt comfortable child, he is bare footed like the other bare feet from the refugee camps. He is an icon that protects me from wrong and disarray and despite his looks he has a pure heart with a conscience that smells like musk and unbar and for his sake I am ready to kill anyone who intends to harm him. His hands are clasped behind his back as a sign of rejection during a phase that this region is undergoing with "solutions" offered by the US and "the system". I made the shape of his hands after the October war when I smelt the scent of developments in Kissinger's briefcase.

Hanthala was born at the age of ten and will always remain ten. At that age I left my country and only when Hanthala returns to Palestine will he grow up and exceed the age of ten. The rules of nature do not apply on him. He is an exception and things will only be natural in his case when he returns to Palestine. The child is a symbolic representation of myself and the group who lives and endures the situation we are all in. I offered him to the readers and called him Hanthala as a symbol of bitterness. In the beginning I offered him as a Palestinian child and with the development of his awareness he had a patriotic and a human outlook.

What are the political duties of a caricature drawing? Incitement, preaching the birth of a new Arab human being. Incitement is a historically well-known operation and is it not right to say what is right in front of a Sultan? Caricatures set life bare in front of it, spreads life on strings in the open air, public street, capturing life wherever found and taking it to the surface for the world to see where there is no opportunity to hide the gaps and flaws of life. In my opinion, caricatures preach hope, revolution and the birth of a new person.

The picture is the element of the suppressed because they pay a high price for their lives carrying on their shoulder the burden of mistakes committed by authorities. Everything they have was difficult to get and everything that is tough and cruel is surrounding them. They struggle for their lifes and die young in graves without coffins, they are always on the defensive in order to continue living. I am with them in the dungeons observing and feeling the pulse of their hearts, the flow of blood in their veins and I look helpless with no power to stop their bleeding or to carry some of their burdens. My weapon, the expression of caricatures, is the most noble profession.

I derive my facts from the poor people. Their children died as martyrs and they still sacrifice for Palestine. I started drawing on the walls of the refugee camps and the clubs when political awareness started finding its way among the people of the refugee camps. Demonstrations took place which helped us by coinciding the protests with the Algerian revolution in the 50s and with the July revolution in Egypt.

I defined my duty by grasping the same people in the refugee camp, in the south and the Nile. That's how I express myself and I am one of the tools of this great nation. My drawings are not for exhibition they are an expressive language. I gamble with my spirit to utilise them for the sake of my country and my cause. I learnt to draw in prison when other prisoners learnt handcrafting, poetry et cetera, and there I drew on the walls of the prisons.

The martyr Ghassan Kanafani who visited us in the club and saw my drawings, took some of them and published them in the magazine "Freedom". This is when I felt the importance of caricature drawing. After prison I went to the Gulf. I worked as a farmer, mechanic, electrician, but drawing was my obsession. I approached the magazine "al Tali'a" in Kuwait and worked as a cleaner and editor (with all respect to the editors). We would print the words and sweep at the same time and I managed to obtain some space in the magazine.

A caricature that expresses the price of tomatoes is a political message in my opinion. I draw for Palestine. When I left Palestine and lived in the refugee camp Ein Al-Hilwe, me and my companions obsession was returning to Palestine. We were children and that did not prohibit us from thinking about our cause and think of the ways of which we would be able to return one day. Any artist will die, whenever he is placed out of his home. The artist that does not resume his work with the people will not reach his goal. I am a man who carries his tent on his back and my people are the poor.

In Kuwait I was pregnant with Hanthala and I gave birth to him. I was afraid that the waves would take him away from me, far away from Palestine. Hanthala is loyal to Palestine and will not allow me to be different. He keeps me from cowardice and taking steps back. When will the people be able to see his face ? When Arab dignity will be unthreatened, and regained its freedom and humanity. However, the greatest struggle is continuity in spite of all contradictions. He is witness to a generation that did not die and he will not leave life ever. He is eternal.

Hanthala, who I created, will not end after my end. I hope that this is not an exaggeration when I say that I will continue to live with Hanthala, even after I die.

From : "Naji al-Ali al-hadiye lam tasal ba'd" (1997, Dar al-Karmel Lilnasher wal tawzieh, Amman).

Naji al-Ali was one of the most prominent cartoonists in the Arab world. Sarcastic, poignant and perhaps too bold, al-Ali's cartoons were drawn from his experience as a Palestinian refugee since childhood and clearly reflected his political stance, which was often critical of the Arab regimes.

The following extracts are drawn from an interview with Radwa Ashour, novelist and professor of English literature at Ain Shams University, during the summer of 1984 in Budapest.. It was published in the periodical Al Muwagaha in 1985, only two years before al-Ali was assassinated in London in 1987 at the age of 50.

Where do I begin? Perhaps from the day we left Palestine on our way to the Ain Al-Helwa camp in southern Lebanon. And from those looks in the eyes of our mothers and fathers that did not speak of facts, but expressed a sorrow which was the language in which we learned about the world, a language of anger that finds its outlet sometimes in speech, sometimes in deeds. Most of the boys and girls of the fifties generation, to which I belonged, suffered a profound dejection. We would cast our eyes beyond our small prison in Ain Al-Helwa, searching for some force of good that might come to our rescue. When the July 1952 revolution broke out, we poured out into the streets of the camp shouting, "Long live the revolution!" and writing slogans on the walls. We were unable to do more than that, although we had dedicated ourselves and our lives to the revolution.

As I recall these scenes of my youth, I think how much we miss that spirit now, at a time when the Arab World has, for all practical purposes, become an American ocean, and the Palestinian revolution itself has been struck down. One should try not to seek consolation, but to come to terms with one's experience. Yet I feel that no one is doing this. We are being bombarded from all directions. This is not a random strike, but a thoroughly planned and targeted assault.

I was born in 1937 in the village of Al-Shajara, located between Tiberias and Nazereth in Galilee. In 1948, I emigrated to one of the refugee camps in southern Lebanon -- Ain Al Helwa, located near Saida [Sidon]. Like others in the camp, I felt a need to express myself, to take part in protest demonstrations, to participate in national events, to subject myself like others to mistreatment and prison.

At that point in my life, I developed a strong desire to draw. I began to try to express my political attitudes, my anxiety and my grief through paintings on the walls. I always made sure I had my pen with me when I was taken to prison.

Incidentally, the first person to give me encouragement was the late Ghassan Kanafani who had visited the camp in order to attend a seminar we held in a small club that we had built out of sheets of zinc. When Ghassan saw the cartoons I had drawn on the wall, he introduced himself to me and took two or three of them to publish in the Arab nationalist magazine, Al-Huriyya, where he was working at the time.

Although I had obtained a diploma in mechanics and electrical engineering, I worked as a seasonal farm labourer, picking oranges and lemons. There were no other available jobs. Palestinians were not permitted to have municipal jobs. I tried to continue my studies in drawing and enrolled in the Academy of Arts for a year. But during that time, I was arrested and imprisoned six or seven items. I worked as a drawing instructor for a short period of time in Al-Jaafriya College in Sur [Tyre]. Then I was given the opportunity to travel to Kuwait to work on Al-Tali'a al-Kuwaitiya, published by the Kuwaiti Progressive Party.

That was when the character Hanthala was born. I introduced Hanthala to the readers at some length: "I am Hanthala from the Ain Al-Helwa camp. I give my word of honour that I'll remain loyal to the cause..." That was the promise I had made myself. The young, barefoot Hanthala was a symbol of my childhood. He was the age I was when I had left Palestine and, in a sense, I am still that age today. Even though this all happened 35 years ago, the details of that phase in my life are still fully present to my mind. I feel that I can recall and sense every bush, every stone, every house and every tree I passed when I was a child in Palestine. The character of Hanthala was a sort of icon that protected my soul from falling whenever I felt sluggish or I was ignoring my duty. That child was like a splash of fresh water on my forehead, bringing me to attention and keeping me from error and loss. He was the arrow of the compass, pointing steadily towards Palestine. Not just Palestine in geographical terms, but Palestine in its humanitarian sense -- the symbol of a just cause, whether it is located in Egypt, Vietnam or South Africa.

I am from Ain Al-Helwa, a camp like any other camp. The people of the camps were the people of the land in Palestine. They were not merchants or landowners. They were farmers. When they lost their land, they lost their lives. The bourgeoisie never had to live in the camps, whose inhabitants were exposed to hunger, to every degradation and to every form of oppression. Entire families died in our camps. Those are the Palestinians who remain in my mind, even when my work takes me away from the camp.

I was working in Kuwait when Al-Safir began publication in Beirut. [Editor-in-chief] Talal Salman called me up and asked me to come back to Lebanon to work for the newspaper. I thought I would find some salvation in the move. However, when I returned I was pained by what I saw. I felt that Al-Helwa had been more revolutionary before the revolution, that it had a clearer political vision, that it knew its enemies from its friends. It had a specific goal: Palestine, the full return of the land of Palestine.

When I returned, the camp was an armed jungle, but it lacked political clarity. It had been divided into tribes. Various Arab regimes had invaded it and Arab oil dollars had corrupted many of its young. The camp was a womb that generated true freedom fighters, but the outsiders were trying to stop that process. Many people are to blame for this. Although one can draw a line between negligence and treachery, no one is exempt from guilt. The Arab regimes committed crimes against us and against the Palestinian revolution itself. These circumstances explain much of what happened during the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.

When the 1982 invasion began I was in Saida [Sidon]. The Palestinians in the camps felt that they had no one to lead them. Israel pounced upon us with all its military might in an attempt to make us forget that there was something called Palestine. The Israelis knew that the overall situation was in their favor. They had nothing to fear from the Arab World, the international powers or the Palestinian revolution. The Arab regimes had effectively neutralised themselves after Camp David.

In the past, the Palestinian revolution prophesied an all-out war of liberation. In 1982, however, all our military leaders had anticipated the invasion. Although I am not a military man and I have never used a gun in my life, I believe that it would have been possible to inflict far greater losses on the invading Israeli forces. That is why one begins to sense that the Arab regimes and other parties were part of a conspiracy to cleanse the south of Lebanon, to destroy Palestinian military power and to impose "peaceful" solutions. That was the "carrot" to make us run after the American solution.

I believe that we could have inflicted some severe damage on Israeli, but our camps had no leaders. How could the people of the camps have countered the Israeli military machine and the daily bombardment from land, air and sea? In addition, the situation in the camps was decrepit, with houses built of zinc and mud. The Israeli forces flattened them like a football field. Still, even as the Israeli forces continued their invasion as far as Beirut and the edge of Dawfar, the resistance inside the camps did not let up, as both Israeli military personnel and I personally can testify. My family and I along with all the other people of Saida were taken prisoner, and spent four or five days on the coast.

After the occupation, my first concern was to inspect the camp to learn of the state of the resistance and its leaders. I took my son with me. He was 15-years-old at the time. We travelled by day. The corpses of the victims still lay in the streets. The burnt-out hulks of Israeli tanks still stood at the entrances to the camps. The Israelis had not removed them yet. From my inquiries into the circumstances of the resistance, I learned that it consisted of a group of no more than 40 or 50 youths. The Israeli had burned the camp while the women and children were still inside their shelters. Israeli missiles had penetrated deep inside the camp, claiming the lives of hundreds of children in the camp in Saida. The young men in the resistance group had spontaneously taken an oath to one another that they would die before they ever surrendered. And, in fact, the Israelis never captured a single one of them. In daylight, the Israeli forces would attack. At night, the resistors would strike.

This is what happened in Ain Al-Helwa, as I saw for myself. But I also know that there were other forms of resistance in the camps of Sur, Al-Burj Al-Shamal, Al-Bass and Al-Rashidi. People in the streets and shelters prayed to God to curse the regimes and their leaders. They exonerated no one. They felt as though no one but God would help them endure their fate.

The people of the south of Lebanon, including our destitute Palestinian masses, they are the people who fought and bore arms. In dedication to that great people which gave us more than any other party and suffered the destruction of their homes, I must record here that the resistance fighters of the Lebanese national movement have embodied the spirit of resistance in virtually legendary proportions. In my opinion, the Arab media has not done them justice by stressing their true spirit of resistance.

As families were dispersed amidst the debris in Ain Al-Helwa, the Israelis rounded up all the young men (I myself, for example, was put through a screening process four or five times). They arrested most of them and transferred them to the Ansar prison camp. This is when the women began to play an active role. I think it is impossible for any artist to convey these circumstances. Immediately, while the corpses still littered the streets, the women returned to their homes and set to work alongside their children to rebuild their homes with any wood or stone they could find in order to provide shelter for their children. They worked like ants in order to rebuild their hovels which had been demolished. One reason the Israelis and the Lebanese authorities struck so hard at the camps is because they are the true breeding ground of the revolution. While the men were detained in prison camps or hiding out from Israeli patrols, the women and the children rebuilt Ain Al-Helwa.

I saw for myself how afraid the Israeli soldiers were of the children. A child of ten or eleven had sufficient training to carry and use an RBG rifle. The situation was simple enough. The Israeli tanks were in front of them and the weapon was in their hands. The Israelis were afraid to go into the camps, and if they did, they would only do so in daylight.

When I left Lebanon over a year ago, Ain Al-Helwa had been restored. The walls which had been demolished have been rebuilt and once again carried the slogans, "Long live the Palestinian revolution," and "Glory to martyrs". This feat was not accomplished under the directions of any specific person. It happened spontaneously, in a sort of collective harmony. It must have been the people's pride and sense of dignity that compelled them to persist. Otherwise, under such circumstances, despair would have driven many to prefer death. The Israelis brought us to this psychological state in which we have overcome our dread. The line dividing life and death has been effaced.

Our younger daughter, Judy, was struck during a random bombardment of the camp of the Saad Haddad group. That was in 1981, a year before the Israeli invasion. I was awakened from my sleep by the sound of her screams. I carried her screaming to the hospital where she was operated on. She is still being treated for her wounds.

This tragedy pales before the catastrophes that struck others. There were families that lost five or six of their children; homes that became desolate of life. I was always troubled by my inability to protect people. How were my drawings going to defend them? I used to wish that I could save the life of only one child. The Israeli invasion was so brutal that many took leave of their senses. One day, on my way home, I saw a man walking around naked. People were looking at him aghast. I called out to Widad, my wife, and asked her to fetch me a shirt and a pair of trousers. The man was larger than I, so I fetched one of my larger shirts and a pair of trousers from one of the neighbours and we put them on him. I asked him some questions, but he remained silent. After making some inquiries, I learned that he was from Saida. After several days of relentless bombardment, he had been forced to leave his home in order to find some bread -- any kind of food -- for his children. He hoped that he could find a store open, because many of the streets in old Saida were covered over and one could walk there in relative safety. The man's efforts had proved futile. There were no stores open. When he returned home, he found that his house had been destroyed, killing his wife and seven or eight children. When the Israelis were taking us to the coast, we passed in front of that house. I noticed a small sign written in charcoal: "Take care! Here lies the family of ..." The man had written the sign himself, because the corpses were still buried beneath the debris.

With his blood Naji al-Ali drew for Palestine

On Wednesday July 22nd, 1987 Naji al-Ali was shot in the head by a lone gunman as he left the Al-Qabas offices in Ives Street, Chelsea. After five weeks in a coma on a life support machine in a St Stephen's and Charing Cross hospitals in London, he died at 5am on Saturday 30th August at the age of 49. Apparently he had been warned by a telephone call from a friend, a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organisation in Tunisia, that his life was in danger. The call, about two weeks before his death, came after the publication of a cartoon attacking a female friend of a political leader. "The cartoon was famous in the Arab community".

Naji al-Ali was born in Al-Shajara village between Nazra and Tiberias in Galile. He left Palestine with his family in 1948 to live in-exile in the south of Lebanon on the Ein-Al-Helwe Pale stinian camp. In the late 1950's the late Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani discovered Naji's talent in drawing while on a visit to this camp. "I started to use drawing as a form of political expression while in Lebanese jails. I was detained by the Deuxime Bureau (the Lebanese intelligence service) as a result of the measures the Bureau were undertaking to contain political activities in th e Palestinian camps during the sixties. I drew on the prison walls and subsequently Ghassan Kanafani, a journalist and publisher of al-Huria magazine (assassinated in Beirut in 1971) saw some of those drawings and encouraged me to continue, and eventuall y published some of my cartoons." At the time of his death in 1987 he was living with his wife and five children in south London.

In the early 1960's he joined an Art Institute in Lebanon but discontinued his studies to work in Kuwait on Al-Tali'a Kuwaiti Magazine. "Later I fled to Kuwait. The margin of freedom and democracy that exists in Kuwait enabled me to grow. There my cartoons concentrated on the dangers surrounding us as people." In the early 1970's he returned to Beirut from Kuwait and was on the Editorial Board of the prominent Lebanese newspaper Al-Safir: "Working for al-Safir newspaper in Beirut in 1971 was the best part of my life, and the most productive. There, surrounded by the violence of many an army, and finally by the Israeli invasion, I stood facing it all with my pen every day. I never felt fear, failure or despair, and I didn't surrender. I faced armies with cartoons and drawings of flowers, hope and bullets. Yes, hope is essential, always. My work in Beirut made me once again closer to the refugees in the camps, the poor, and the haras sed."

During this period he also contributed drawings to Al-Khalij newspaper. The Israelis invaded Lebanon in 1982. Fearing Phalangist threats on his life Naji al-Ali returned to Kuwait in 1983 and worked in Al-Qabas (meaning 'The Light' in English) newspaper - the largest independent daily newspaper in the Middle East. In 1984 he began to publish his work in Al-Khalij. In October 1985 he was expelled from Kuwait by pressure from Saudi Arabia but continued to work for the same the Kuwaiti newspaper, Al-Qabas, in London and continued to contribute his work to Al-Khalij. His work was published daily in Cairo, Beirut, Kuwait, Tunis, Abu Dhabi, London and Paris in publications ranging from far Right to far Left. He is thought to have been the highest paid cartoonist in the Arab world.

Naji al-Ali had no political affiliations and the absence of slogans and dogma in his work brought both success and criticism. He was opposed to the absence of democracy and, not belonging to any political group, tried to be a true representative of Arab public opinion. "As soon as I was aware of what was going on, all the havoc in our region, I felt I had to do something, to contribute somehow. First I tried politics, to join a party, I marched in demonstrations, but that was not really me. The sharp cries I felt w ithin me needed a different medium to express what I was going through. It was some time in the fifties that I started drawing on the walls of our camp. During that period, the refugees had begun to develop some political awareness as a reaction to what had been taking place in the region: a revolution in Egypt, a war of independence in Algeria, things were brewing all around the Arab world. My job I felt was to speak up for those people, my people who are in the camps, in Egypt, in Algeria, the simple Arabs all over the region who have very few outlets to express their points of view. I felt my job was to incite them. For the function of a political cartoonist, as I see it, is to provide a new vision. He is a missionary, in a sense, because it is just a little bit harder to censor a cartoon than an article." Few regimes or political groups in the region escaped his satirical drawings. He condemned the absence of human rights in the region, the Gulf War, Palestinian excesses and religious fanaticism. He was said to have antagonised virtually everyone in the Middle East; Arab, Jew, conservative and radical alike. He believed his period of work in Beirut was the best part of his career and that his periods of exile in Kuwait and the UK restricted his creativeness in ways he could not understand and counter. He missed the inspiration of the reality of the refugee camps in southern Lebanon.

Naji al-Ali's philosophy can perhaps be best encapsulated in his explanation about Hanzala, the little boy who appears as a spectator in each of his cartoons: "This child, as you can see is neither beautiful, spoilt, nor even well-fed. He is barefoot like many children in refugee camps. He is actually ugly and no woman would wish to have a child like him. However, those who came to know 'Hanzala', as I discovered later adopted him and later adopted him because he is affectionate, honest, outspoken, and a bum. He is an icon that stands to watch me from slipping. And his hands behind his back are a symbol of rejection of all the present negative tides in our region." Hanzala is now the official logo of the Commission for Freedom and Justice Through Humour, a recently created arm of WATCH and an affiliate of UNESCO. Censorship Strict censorship and high illiteracy rates exist in many middle eastern countries. Between 1958 and 1963 Naji al-Ali was frequently detained by police and continually censored. He is said to have received over one hundred death threats during his life. Because of his work he was said to be one of the most wanted men in the Middle East and this forced him to leave Lebanon and work in Kuwait and London. He emphatically refused to speak about his oppressors and those who might censor his work; he drew them instead.

Naji al-Ali developed a stark and symbolic style during his thirty year campaign on behalf of Palestinians. Unaligned with any political party he strove to speak to and for ordinary Arab people. Naji al-Ali's life was seamlessly interwoven with the trials of exiled Palestinians. Due to invasion, censorship and threats he lived in exile most of his life, much of the time between Beirut and Kuwait. The last two years of his life he spent in London. In 1992 an International Cartoon Exhibition was held in the Kufa Gallery in London in commemoration of Naji al-Ali and his work.

Remembering the "conscience" of Palestine by Alessandra Antonelli

Death arrived in the back for Naji al-Ali. Probably the most famous caricaturist in the Arab world, he was shot on July 22, 1987 in London and died one moth later, on August 29 after being in a coma.

Shot from behind, exactly like Handala, his most famed character, who was portayed in one of his last cartoons, struck by an arrow. Handala was so close to Naji al-Ali that the borders between the artist and the character often blurred, merging and creating what was defined as the "conscience" of Palestine.

Naji al-Ali was not merely a famous artist. He represented what Naghib Maufuz represents in literature, or Mahmoud Darwish in poetry. Ali's pencil could sum up in a few lines, the most acute sarcasm of Arabs and Palestinians for their way of dealing " or not dealing " with the political situation around them. But he was also able to narrate, in a single sketch, the intense desperation, resignation, as well as the hopes and dreams of the Palestinians living in refugee camps who were pushed into a corner of the world by the indifference of the international community and the Arab world.

In few simple lines he could depict the drama of a whole population and launch messages sometimes so sharp and rich in symbols that the eyes and the mind are forced to stare at the lines for a while and patiently follow them to reach the vignette's hidden meaning.

Naji al-Ali was born in 1938 in Shajara, a village in the Galilee. He was 12 -years-old when he was forced to flee his home and settle in 'Ain al-Helwa Refugee Camp in Lebanon, a recurrent symbol of suffering in his cartoons.

Ali's dream was to study art in Italy, but financial problems forced him to enroll in a university in Kuwait. The pages of a Kuwaiti magazine al-Talee'ah, published his first caricatures. After he began publishing his work in al-Siyase newspaper, his fame spread to Lebanon and Egypt. And with the fame grew the number of caricatures produced, since the satire and the sharpness of some of them would not be allowed publication.Working on the Lebanese al-Safir and the Kuwaiti al-Qabas, his fame spread all over the Arab world. After the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and his expulsion from Kuwait in 1985, Ali moved to London. As his caricatures took on a more dramatic tone and he became less careful of the danger of conveying certain messages, he also started to sense the end of his life as he used to say ," I know I will die soon " either by assassination or by suicide." Indeed he was killed, but the mystery of his murderer is still lingering.

Despite his death, the legend arose around him, strengthening his figure even more, and consecrating Handala and his vast work " most of which is still amazingly befitting.

Palestine Report, vol. 5, No. 12, 4 September 1998

Frankly Speaking...: An interview with Ba'ha Bukhari

Ba'ha Bukhari, cartoonist for the daily newspaper al-Quds was Naji al-Ali's long-life friend. Palestine Report's Alessandra Antonelli met him amid the paints, colors and brushes in his studio where he shared some of his comments and memories of the artist with the Palestine Report.

PR:Mr. Bakhari, you and Naji al-Ali were friends for long time, weren't you?

Bukhari: Our friendship lasted more than 25 five years. We met in Kuwait in 1964 and we maintained our friendship until 1985 when Naji was deported for having supported a sort of small revolution in Mecca.

PR:Why did he support it?

Bukhari:Because it was against the Saudi regime and Naji was against any regime.

PR:He died only two years later?

Bukhari:Yes, and many believed that the PLO assassinated him.

PR:Why would there be such a suspicion?

Bukhari:Because Naji was particularly hard when it came to the PLO. He used to view the whole Arab world through a peep-hole called Palestine while I looked at Palestine, through the Arab world. Any matter happening between the Gulf and Morocco for Naji passed through a Palestinian filter. And he was vehemently critical of the PLO.

PR:What was so special in Naji Ali's art ?

Bukhari:Therichness of his creativity was extraordinary. It is very hard to maintain a subject every day, year after year. But he did. He was able to create more than one subject about Palestine on a daily basis.

PR:At the beginning Naj al-Ali's caricatures were sharply sarcastic whereas towards the end of his life they grew dramatic. Which feeling do you think would prevail in his sketches if he were still alive today?

Bukhari:Honestly, some times I have wish that I were in his place. Fortunately, God took him before the Gulf War and the current situation. I cannot imagine what he could have felt if Kuwait, the country where he spent so much of his life, where he worked for al-Qabas, would expel him in the way it did with other Palestinians, simply because they were Palestinian. Since that time I try to forget that I am an Arab. Thinking of the way he evaluated the Arab countries back then, it is easy to imagine the anger and disappointment he would have felt.

PR:The writer Ghassan Kanafani, the poet Mohadeen Bseiso, the arist Naji al-Ali -- all have been killed for their art.

Bukhari:The Palestinians, as a population, have always been an Israeli target. But the Israelis know how to select and eliminate exceptional people. Their assassinations have stopped the spreading of "dangerous "thoughts and seriously hurt a whole population.

PR:As far as I know, Naji al-Ali is the only caricaturist in history to have been assassinated. What was so powerful and dangerous in his vignettes?

Bukhari:His messages were incredibly clear.

PR: What is your favorite Naji al-Ali caricature?

Bukhari: In all of the books which collect his work, I have never found the one I love the most. It was a caricature he drew during the Lebanese civil war. It depicts a crowd of women in black mourning dresses and one, single woman dressed normally.

PR: Why has Handala, his most famous character, never shown his face?

Bukhari: Handala is Naji himself. He represents Naji, the boy, when he fled to Lebanon. He doesn't show his face because like Naji, he turns his back on the entire Arab world and the few times he did show it, it was an ugly face " ugly just like the Palestinian situation he was representing.

PR: On the 11th anniversary of his death, you organized exhibitions in his honor. How did the Palestinians, especially the younger generation, respond to the event?

Bukhari: Overall, people responded positively. I was surprised, however, at the media's attitude. Almost no press covered the event, and not much space in the media was dedicated to the anniversary of his death.

PR: Handala represents the conscience of Palestine. If Naji al-Ali were alive today, do you think he would still portray it so ugly?

Bukhari: Yes.

Palestine Report, vol. 5, No. 12, 4 September 1998

From - An Ongoing Crisis of Confidence: The British spy agency is refraining from warning Israel of planned attacks
(Ha'aretz, 15 June 1999)

"... On the morning of July 22, 1987, the Palestinian caracaturist Nagy el-Ali el-Adami was shot and fatally wounded by a special band of 14 assassins from Force 17, Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat's personal bodyguards. El-Ali was shot on the steps leading to the editorial offices of the Kuwaiti newspaper El-Kabas in Chelsea, where he had worked for many years. He later died from his wounds.

El-Ali published witty and often vicious cartoons against the Israeli occupation but also against the Palestinian leadership and Arafat. It seems that what sealed his fate as far as Arafat was concerned was the homosexual slant he added to his caracatures of the chairman, which led to coarse fun being made of Arafat in the Palestinian street.

El-Ali was a British citizen, and the local authorities invested great efforts in solving his murder. It quickly became apparent that Eved el-Rahman Mustafa, a senior commander of Force 17, had organized the attack. It also became clear that the weapons, grenades and some 145 kilos of Semtex plastic explosive had been hidden in an appartment belonging to a young Palestinian, Isma'il Sawan. Sawan was a double agent, and supplied the Mossad with ongoing information about PLO activities in London.

Israel had another agent active in this cell - Bashir Samara. Scotland Yard arrested both of them, and in their defense they said they were acting as Israeli agents. This led to what became known as the "mini-Pollard affair". Israel had not reported on the undercover activities it had undertaken to the Biritish authorities, and of course it did not mention the plot to murder El-Ali. Sawan and Samara explained to their investigators all aspects of their work for the Mossad, including the fact that they had informed the Mossad that Sawan's apartment was the cell's explosives warehouse.

Even the angry British could, in this case, understand the Mossad's hesitation. Transferring the information to the British and the resulting capture of the cell members brought Sawan's activities, which had provided unusually useful and important information on the PLO, to an end. Sawan had been directed in the beginning by Shin Bet andlater transferred to the Mossad, and had made contact with leading Palestinian figures. It would seem that someone in Israel had considered the bottom line and decided that it was worthwhile to sacrifice a Palestinian artist in order to continue receiving top quality intelligence in the future.

Nevertheless, the British found it difficult to forgive. Three Israeli diplomats, including an embassy attache known to the British Arieh Regev and identified by Sawan as his controller, were declared personae non gratae and expelled. Over an extended period the British froze all contacts with the Israeli secret services."

Naji Al Ali: Martyrdom for a patriotic artist

By Ghassan Joha

"We are all in need of him, to search into our bodies; to seek our survival and, for sure, to pursue our love." (Nadra Srour, Arab poet)

Today, people still consider the death of the Palestinian caricaturist Naji Al Ali as the greatest loss to the Arab art world. He is still widely remembered as one of the most influential commentators on the Palestinian issue.

Al Ali was assassinated in London on 29 August 1987. Many believe that his assassination was deliberate because of the way he portrayed the Arab political situation in his cartoons. His works influenced all kinds of people, who used to wait impatiently every morning, to see his drawings on the last page of many Arab dailies.

Every cartoon that Al Ali drew, featured his famous hand-made character-the bare-foot little boy 'Hanthalah'who turned his back to the world-became a trademark throughout his long career. The idea came to Al Ali when he was working in Kuwait during the early 1960s. "I created this character to symbolize my lost childhood," said Al Ali, to a reporter once. But Hanthalah was much more than that. Admirers of Ali say he drew the character to represent his frustration with the Arab world.

Born in 'Al Shajarah' village near Nazareth in 1937, he was a victim of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war; his family were forced to leave to the Ain Halwa refugee camp in south Lebanon, at the age of 10. His artistic career began in Lebanon during the late 1950s, when the late Palestinian novelist Ghassan Kanafani-who owned a magazine in Lebanon-published two of Al Ali's cartoons. The years spent in the refugee camp influenced him immensely, and it was there that he first witnessed the constraints imposed on the Palestinian people. He swore then to immerse himself in politics and serve the Palestinian revolution by all the means at his disposal.

Al Ali was originally trained as a mechanic, but his first love was always drawing, which led him to a one-year art course at the Lebanese Art Academy. It wasn't until later, when he worked as a journalist in Kuwait, that Al Ali entered the risky road of politics. He first worked as an editor, reporter, and even as a secretary, at Al Tale'ah weekly magazine. "I was able there to express my feelings and thoughts through the medium of cartoons." Al Ali said.

 

He often defined himself as a realist, one aligned to his social class-the poor and hardworking. This point of view was apparent in the majority of his cartoons. "The poor people are those who suffer, are sentenced to jail, and die without shedding tears," Al Ali once said. Later on, he returned to the old camp in south Lebanon, and found work with Al Safeer newspaper, but he was dismayed at the change in attitudes.

"When I left the camp, everyone held dearly to the idea of liberating the whole of Palestine, but on my return, I found that people were content with liberating less than half of it," Al Ali was once quoted. He thought that the pursuit of money was responsible for the change in principles.

During the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, Al Ali was forced to leave his home again, but this time on ships filled with hundreds of Palestinian fighters. After several years of displacement, Al Ali finally settled back in Kuwait, where he found work with the prominent Arab daily, Al Qabass. It was here that Al Ali dedicated all his energies into highlighting the Palestinian people's feelings and sufferings.

However, the cartoonist soon encountered resistance from certain political pressure groups, and was forced to move to Al Qabass' branch in London. It was his last move before his death in 1987. Many writers and poets have paid tributes to Al Ali and his works. Prominent Arab poet Mahmoud Darwish said, "The death of Al Ali was yet another classic crime-committed by a talented enemy-that mortally wounded our morals and sacred values, and those of the future generations as well."

Jalal Rifai, however, has a more personal tribute, after having met Al Ali in Dubai, in early 1983. "He used only simple lines and traces to depict his sarcastic ideas and thoughts onto paper. His works and thoughts were impressive, unusual and impossible to imitate," Rifai, a well-known Jordanian cartoonist, said.

Radwa Ashour, the prominent Egyptian female novelist, once said, "He was, and still is today, an idol for humanity. His works will always be reproduced in the Arab world, and I hope and pray that another person like him comes along."

In 1992, Al Ali's cult status reached its highest point following an Arabic motion picture about his life, entitled 'Naji Al Ali'. The movie-with Egyptian actor Noor El-Sharif characterizing Al Ali-gained widespread admiration and respect from around the Arab world. We all remember Naji Al Ali as a man who loved Palestine (his homeland), Lebanon (where he grew up), and finally Kuwait (where he gave birth to 'Hanthalah'). Yet, he was more than this; he was a man who loved the whole of the Arab World.

From JORDAN STAR, 24 September 1998

Naji Al-Ali’s charicatures historical witness

He was critical, scathingly critical, left nothing untouched. The United States, Israel, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) all had their share of Nagi Al-Ali’s uncompromising, and fateful candor. To treat your “enemy” and liberation organization on a level playing field, especially if you are a world-famous charicaturist, is more than autocracy can swallow. Al-Ali was silenced forever in London on 28 August, 1987, on the threshold of his world-platform, the Kuwaiti Al-Qabas newspaper.

The Threshold of Creativity

Perhaps suffering is the threshold that launches creativity. At least, this seems to be the case with many Palestinian poets and artists, including Mahmoud Darwish, Samih Al Qasem, Emile Habiby and others, who molded the suffering under occupation, deportation and dispossession, into creative models unprecedented in modern Arab history.

That basically spells the story of Nagi Al-Ali. He was born in Shajara, a northern Palestinian village that fought fiercely against Israeli occupation, until its inhabitants fled to Lebanon. Shajara saw the erection of the first Israeli settlement.

Al-Ali was born in 1936 in these oppressive surroundings when his family fled with the rest of the village to the Lebanese refugee camp of Ein El-Hilweh, which later figured frequently in his charicatures. In 1963, El-Ali had his first break when he started to work as a reporter for the Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Talee’ah. Al-Ali moved through several Kuwaiti newspapers before rewinding steps back to Beirut, Lebanon, to draw for Al-Safeer.

In 1982, Israel raided Lebanon to drive Palestinian Liberation Organization freedom fighters out. Al-Ali was on the run once more, heading back to Kuwait to work for the renowned Al-Qabas newspaper. In 1985, he was stationed to the paper’s international offices in London, where his fate was sealed.

An Enduring Figure

Among Ali-Ali’s most haunting figures is Hanthala, a witness to the atrocities that befell Palestinians and Arabs alike. Al-Ali usually represents him in the foreground, hands tied behind back, shabby clothing and a few spikes of hair. Hanthala is indeed a haunting figure, a constant reminder that political agendas often fly over the masses.

Ali-Ali is quoted as having said “My ideas are sometimes provocative, other times revolutionary. My main concern is for my charicatures to reach across all social strata.”

“…..like a multi-handed Indian deity…”

Name the strangest wish. Al-Ali had stranger: “I wish I was like a multi-handed Indian deity, in each a pen, to draw more and more.” In the after-fact, Al-Ali’s statement is indeed premonitory – he knew of his impending end. Nonetheless, he has completed more than 40,000 charicatures adamantly pronouncing his recalcitrance and uncompromising stance towards the Arab-Israeli conflict and the suffering of the Palestinian people. His icon, Hanthala and his drawings will be a rival witness to a history painted by the mass media.

ARABIA ONLINE 12 August 1997

A Day at the Checkpoint by Hanan Elmasu

It's probably about 40 degrees outside, 50 degrees in the bus I'm squashed in, waiting to inch forward another car at the checkpoint which will take me into Jerusalem. Tired, frustrated, angry, I'm listening to the women beside me talk about whether or not they will be able to get through today without permits. One of them has a paper which says that she has an appointment to go to the eye hospital in Jerusalem, which she thinks will make things easier for her. I look at her eye and it is completely covered with gauze, a bruise showing from underneath it.

The checkpoints have been especially difficult these past few days after the attempted 'suicide' bombing in West Jerusalem last week. I'm escaping Beit Jala after having to spend two days of making coffee and food for well-wishing relatives and friends after the funeral of my uncle, who died two days ago. Three days before that I found out that another uncle whom i was close to in California had died. It had been a bit of a frustrating week. I decided to take the bus to Jerusalem from Beit Jala, as buses have always been a good place for me to think and try to put all the thoughts in my head into one organized space.

As I was sitting there in the heat, my thoughts turned to the checkpoint. I was thinking in particular about a story my aunt told me yesterday that stunned me. My uncle was not feeling well for some time. About a week ago, he started choking at home and stopped breathing. They were able to get some air through him, but his body was reacting severely to what was happening. Another uncle managed to get him into his car to take him to a hospital in Jerusalem to try and relieve some of his pain. When they got to the Bethlehem checkpoint, my uncle hurriedly explained what was happening, his only thought getting to the hospital as quickly as possible. The soldier asked for my ill uncle's ID card. It was not with him. My uncle was struggling to breathe in the backseat, and this soldier was holding the car up for twenty minutes while they callously argued about whether or not they should let him into Jerusalem.

Finally my uncle gave them his Jerusalem ID card and his wallet as collateral, and the soldier grudgingly let them through. This man holding a gun was arguing over a piece of paper while my uncle was struggling to death with breath that would not come out of his chest. The story stunned me, and it was the first time I had had the opportunity to really think about what it meant. My grandmother faced a similar situation after a stroke six months ago. How many of these stories have we heard where the outcome wasn't the same?

As I was sitting and thinking about all of this, a blonde haired foreign looking woman got on the bus and stood next to our seat. She seemed to be either one of those 'political tourist' making a pilgrimage to find out what all the fuss is all about, but not really learning anything, or on a 'religious' pilgrimage, looking for God in a den of stone lies, prostrating before the things that she is told will bring her salvation. Either way, not a person whom understands the implications of waiting at a checkpoint.

We finally reach the checkpoint. The doors open...thank God...fresh air! I see the bus driver smiling at the invisible soldier standing outside the door of the bus, trying to reassure him that everything is in order on the bus, thinking that if he jokes and laughs with this soldier, he will make the procedure a bit easier. This is obviously not the case today. The soldier that walks up the steps does not reflect the fake, desperate smile of the bus driver. He turns his head to scan the bus with the perma-scowl often found on all the faces of the soldiers at this checkpoint. His eyes alight on the blonde foreign woman standing in the aisle. Suddenly, the scowl changes to a smile, the eyes brighten with the hopes of subsequent flirting.

"Where are you from," asks the soldier, in perfect English. Sounds like New York. "Holland" replies the young woman, probably about 21, 22 years old. Soldier: "Hey, I just came back from Holland! Amsterdam?" Foreign woman: "YES! How did you like it?" Soldier: "Lots of beautiful women...May I see your passport?" The girl pulls out her passport and shows it to him from a distance, he barely glances at it, smiles at her and says thank you. Then he starts with the rest of the bus.

The perma-scowl returns as he grunts "hawiyeh" (ID card). All posture and pull out their ID cards. I notice the women beside me don't so I don't as well, just in case this plan works for them. He comes to our seat, smiles at the Dutch woman and is starting to flirt with her again. The soldier asks the women beside me for the ID cards. One of them rummages in her bag as the other with the injured eye explains that they are going to the hospital and shows him her magic appointment paper. He ignores the paper and demands her ID card again. She shows him the orange West Bank ID card which prohibits her from entering anywhere beyond the green line. He tells both women to get off the bus and takes their ID cards from them. They are resigned to the fact that it didn't work, hoping they won't get fined, and are probably already thinking about the long walk which will take them around the checkpoint into Jerusalem in this heat. It is now my turn to be checked.

Although I am Palestinian by ethnicity, I was born in North America and carry a Canadian passport. Sometimes it is apparent that I am not a 'local', other times it is not. Today it was not. "Hawiyeh" grunts the soldier. I glare at him and intentionally take a long time to find my passport, looking for a fight today. I finally pull out my passport. He looks at me suspiciously. "Wen al visa" (where is your visa?). This is all I needed. "What makes me different from your blonde friend? Why are you asking me for my visa when you barely looked at her passport?" The Dutch woman is looking at me bewildered, a bit clueless, and the soldier just looks bored and walks away without asking for the visa again. Not getting a response angers me to no end. He makes his way slowly through each aisle of th e bus. Each person who doesn't have the right papers has their ID card taken from them and is told to get off the bus and wait at the side of the checkpost. One old man is physically pushed off.

After this, the soldier points to the now empty chair and says to the Dutch woman, "here, there is a seat here if you want to sit". I watch with amazement as she smiles at him and makes for the seat. This was too much for me. I got up and walked to the back of the bus and calmly asked the soldier: "Where are you from?"

Soldier: "Ma? ('What?' in hebrew...suddenly his hebrew was better than his english). Hanan: "Where were you born? New York? Brooklyn, maybe? You've got a funny accent". Soldier: "I was born in New Jersey..." he's looking at me suspiciously again. Hanan: "I was born in San Francisco. I was raised in Vancouver, Canada...I have a passport because my parents couldn't return to the place they were born. You know where my parents were born? Jerusalem."

I started walking through the bus, asking people in Arabic where they were born. Ramla, Jerusalem, Lod, Ashqelon, Beer Sheva, etc, all cities within the green line, were the answers I got back from people who were looking at me like I was crazy. I then jumped off the bus and asked the men who were kicked off the bus, lined up by the side of the checkpoint and being questioned by soldiers now, in the process of being fined and 'detained' for trying to enter Jerusalem 'illegally'. The men responded with similar answers. Three older men said that they used to live in West Jerusalem.

The soldiers are getting angry, and I am starting to shout. "I'm just trying to make a point! What gives you or me more right to enter Jerusalem? What gives this foreign woman more right to pass through this unnatural checkpoint than this Palestinian man who grew up in West Jerusalem? What gives you the right to deny these people access to the place of their birth? Why are these men being arrested? People pass this checkpoint everyday to visit the place of birth of someone who lived 2000 years ago, yet these people are denied their right to visit their own place of birth every day? I wonder if Jesus decided to return to earth, would he have an ID card which would prohibit him from visiting his birth place?" (At this point, I admit, I was starting to get hysterical, but it was hot and it is something that I have thought about for sometime.)

An obviously well educated, soft spoken soldier tried to calm me down. "These men are doing something illegal. They know they are doing something illegal. This is why we have laws. We are only following the laws. You must understand this. A country without laws is not a country..." Me: "Which country in particular are you speaking of? Which laws are you speaking of? I don't believe that this man who grew up in West Jerusalem ever had a say in the laws that govern the place of his birth??? I am a Canadian citizen. We have laws in Canada, but the laws are created to protect the people of the land. Are these not the people of the land? How are you protecting them by arresting them for doing something completely normal?" The first soldier from the bus started getting angry and saying something in Hebrew. I got angrier. He told me to get back on the bus and shutup, pushing me towards the bus. This made me furious and I shouted back at him, "I have less right to enter Jerusalem than these men! I should be the one you are arresting. If these men are considered to be breaking the law and being arrested for it, then I am much more a criminal than they are. I should be the one you are arresting if you want to 'protect the people of the land'. God knows what I will do with my passport!!!"

The rest of the scene degenerated from that point onwards. In the end, I was not arrested and they let the men who were to be arrested go back to Bethlehem (I'm convinced just to get rid of me!), with the thought that there would be other opportunities to deal with them. In my anger, I had just wanted to prove an obvious point. The most disturbing thing throughout the entire experience was the looks of confusion and frustration which I was receiving from the other Palestinians on the bus. This saddened me to no end. They were angry that I was holding up the bus and I assume thought I was just a crazed woman.

Not one person on the bus came up to me and said anything about what happened afterwards. What is happening? How can a population be so disheartened to not fight for what is right? For its own basic right to life? To deal with injustice by confronting it and not merely accepting it? Why do Palestinians daily accept the fact that they cannot travel where they want freely? Why do Palestinians restricted from entering the Green Line, rather than take arduous backroads to avoid checkpoints, refuse this type of collective punishment and flood the checkpoints daily to enter a place where they have every right to be? Where will this hopelessness lead? Where is the rage that should be confronting this injustice? Where is the indignance which should accompany human beings being treated like they are poisonous tarantulas that need to be caged?

Where are the voices to protest an entire population being caged, suppressed, tortured, humiliated, degraded, erased from history? What right does a human being have to judge whether or not another human being should live or die? What right does a soldier have to deny life-saving treatment to another human being because of the colour of his plastic ID card? What right does a leader have to sell away with the stroke of a pen the rights of a nation? What right does an artificial state have to banish people from the place of their birth, to cantonize them into suffocation, to delegate them a footnote in history, to give them a restricted, fictional identity, to be the root of 50 year old songs of dispossession and catastrophe?

What dignity do we have left when three quarters of a nation can be called 'refugees', when we allow, condone and fund, the torture and 'murder' of innocent people for the sake of something that will never be attained, when we remain silent in the face of injustice and abuse? I am angry, and am wondering if there is anyone else who is still able to feel anger at something so basic? I am wondering what the world has to say for itself today?

Posted on Freedom-list in 1998.

A letter to Edward Said
Partly published in al-Ahram Weekly, Issue 338, 30 July - 5 August 1998, as Maps in our minds

Dear Prof. Said,

After I read your article "After the Final Acre" (al-Ahram Weekly, no. 387) I felt the urge to comment. I don't have the habit to respond always directly on articles or columns, especially not after what happened to me with this Jerusalem-Post-extreme-rightwing-columnist Moshe Kohn (but that is another story, maybe something for later).

First of all, I want to tell you that I have enormous respect for you and whenever I get the chance to read your writings I take that opportunity.

When I read your "After the Final Acre" and you appealed your readers for help, I thought I need to comment and respond. Before I came to Palestine (for several years we just came for vacations in the summer) to live and work, I was full of ideals and hopes, eventhough I was very critical of the Oslo Accords, and think that these documents belong in the list of Sykes-Picot, Balfour Declaration, and the UN Partition Plan. Still with some kind of hope for the future, as young people always have, I thought perhaps we can change things. Maybe if we could change from within. This was an illusion.

I tell you this because I really got frustrated and depressed. Actually, until the clashes which erupted on the day of the Nakba commemoration, I thought that occupations always last depending on the costs. This is actually not the case, as Palestine is always the exception. The higher the cost of the occupation, the more the occupier will face problems keeping a hold on the territory. What the Intifada (especially in its first year) did and Oslo finished was dealing with the cost of occupation. Hizbollah in Lebanon is doing the trick. Increasing the cost of occupation, not only in military capacity but also in other terms, such as public support, makes it for the occupier more difficult to keep on occupying lands.

Let's turn back to Palestine. What made me so depressed and frustrated. On the Nakba commemoration, students were throwing stones and literally giving their lives (I was at the Ramallah-Jerusalem roadblock, for a complete description what happened you might want to read Nigel Parry's diary on the Birzeit's website) for what ? Why were they throwing stones ? Are stones going to liberate Palestine ? Do people really think that Arafat ordered these students to march to the roadblocks and confront Israeli soldiers ? While these students were falling on the ground each time we heard a shot, Arafat's so-called security forces did nothing, just standing there. Why would they risk their lives ? In an article in the Israeli Ha'aretz the day after, Amira Hass interviewed a Palestinian security officer on this matter. In his speech on the Nakba commemoration Arafat was lying. He said: "I promise you that the refugees will return". I was just thinking: 'Who signed Oslo in the first place?' and while these students were throwing stones, got wounded and in Ramallah one was killed, Arafat was already boarding a plane to go to talk with his Israeli partners about further redeployments (what happened to withdrawal ?

You asked why we cannot mobilize ourselves to stand in front of Israeli troops, etc. Well, I can tell you that people here in Palestine (and you've been here and talked with them) are tired. They are tired of all this political playing. They are tired of corruption, the mafia, the occupation, the economic deterioration, the moral decline, resistance, fighting, they are exhausted. They were mobilized during the first years of the Intifada, just until the PLO started to interfere, afraid of being out of control, just as the PLO did with the National Guidance Committee when it fought the Camp David Accords. The PLO effectively stopped the Intifada. Who are you going to fight ? Who is the enemy ? This is a very dangerous question, I know, and especially here. For example, if in September 1996, the Palestinian security forces did not respond to Israeli fire at demonstrators (against the opening of a tunnel underneath the Haram as-Sharif), they would have been the target (especially after months of frustation with the Palestinian Authority, I can mention the events, for example the Palestinian security forces entering An-Najah University, the arbitrary detention of Birzeit students, the murder of Mahmud Jumayel etc.). The Palestinian security forces shot back at the Israelis and Arafat's popularity increased.

People here tend to forget quickly. The tunnel is still open. Israel is still building on Jabel Abu Ghneim, settlers are still in Ras al-Amud and settlements surrounding Jerusalem are unchallenged annexed to the city. Every event, every provocation by the Israelis is reacted only very short, after that, the Palestinian Authority and its members are talking with their Israeli partners about an airport, VIP cards, and other business ventures. Then you can ask: Why did more than 60 people had to die in September 1996 ? The tunnel is still open. People don't see the point of demonstrating, resisting, or fighting while the Palestinian Authority is using this as a public relations' act, or card in so-called negotiations.

For whom are they going to demonstrate, for Palestine or for Arafat Ltd.? Why should they demonstrate, risking their lives, while the Palestinian Authority is using their lives as bargaining cards in their "fruitless, stupid negotiations that sap our strength and our will and leave us utterly impotent as we witness our land disappearing before us ?" You already gave the answer yourself.

Almost one month ago, I wrote an opinion article in an important Dutch newspaper. One comment was that I sounded more Palestinian than most Palestinians. The commentary asked me why I was critical of the Oslo Accords and the process, while the Palestinian leadership is still holding on to it. He did not know my background. I am not represented. The PLO is not existing, or yes, only to sign agreements with Israel. Even the Palestinian Authority is not a representative body. What is it representing ? The Palestinian people ? Who is it protecting ? The Palestinian people ? Who is it benefiting ? The Palestinian people ?

Lately, I am only concerned in human rights (not democracy or a certain kind of political system). Basic human rights. I feel that we as Palestinians have to fight not only the Zionist Jews (although you don't have to be Jew to be a Zionist, as you know there are even Arab Zionists) but also and most of all ourselves. Our ideas and practice, the latter the most. It is almost becoming a cultural strife. We have to figure out among ourselves what and who we are, and where we belong. That is easy, you might think, Palestine. I mean that some might say the West Bank and Gaza Strips (or as the Palestinian Authority accepts parts of the WB&G), some might say from the river to the sea. We are the Palestinian people, not the Palestinian residents of area A and B. We are the Palestinians in West-Palestine and East-Palestine, in the camps of Lebanon, Syria and Jordan, living in exile in Europe, the US, and the rest of the Arab World, as refugees or displaced without identity.

All of us know what and where is Palestine. If I close my eyes I can see the map and nobody and nothing can take this image out of my mind. This map will always be in my imagination, call it the dream or desire. We must have one ideal, that is freedom. After that comes everything else: religion, social-economic system, ideology, ethnicity, etc. We are not fighting occupation because we want a state (as the Palestinian Authority wants to make the international community believe). We want to get rid of the occupation because we want to be free. That is, free from oppression, free from torture and killing, free from stealing our lands, etc., it includes self-determination, and perhaps statehood, but only if this state can guarantee that its citizens will have political rights and civil freedoms. That is freedom of oppression by anyone. I have no reason to believe that a Palestinian state will guarantee these freedoms, not a Palestinian state ruled by this generation or the next one.

With Palestinians oppressing Palestinians were not even at the beginning of something. This is not new. The Palestinian Authority is not much different from the mini-PLO state in Lebanon, and look what happened in the Intifada. Young activists were police, judge and executor in the same person, killing suspected collaborators. A thing which is difficult for me to deal with, but at least a lot of mistakes have been made. It is known that a number of well-known collaborators are working now with the security forces of the Palestinian Authority. Somebody who build settlements can even be a minister.

I am not saying that I am a better-informed reader who can give you assistance. I am just telling you what I feel and sense in the Palestinian street. Among my family and friends. Workers and students, men and women. As a good friend told me: "you have to leave Palestine in order to miss it", that sounds strange, but for a lot of Palestinians living inside, they never had the chance to live a 'normal' life. I know what it is to live in a democratic country, with everything arranged from the day you are born to the day you die, without any major uncertainty, in which you can plan and work on your future. Although that is rather boring, I think that a lot of Palestinians living inside just want to have that. In Palestine, everyday is a different day, anything can happen at any time. Usually not for the better.

I hope I did not upset you by this letter, or that I offend you or even made you as frustrated and depressed as I am. I never could have thought that I would be able to think like I do now about Palestine. Living in a dream is better than watching reality unfold. Then I just close my eyes and look at the map,...

Yours Sincerely,

Arjan El Fassed