George S. Hishmeh: Breaking new ground

About 30 years ago, Arab-Americans broke away from their tradition in the diaspora of forming social clubs and took a major step forward in getting involved in the American political system by establishing their first self-professed political action group called the National Association of Arab-Americans (NAAA).

NAAA, which in effect threatened to attract the membership of these various social and religious clubs, nowadays numbering about 220 in the country, has had a phenomenal success in its early years because it filled the need for self-expression in the halls of government in Washington.

The unprecedented move, which some Arab-American clubs mistakenly decried for fear that NAAA will fall prey to U.S. governmental designs, was short-lived because of the absence of broad-based financial support group.

Another blow came in the wake of the Lebanese civil war, which primarily pitted Palestinians against Lebanese and Christians against Muslims underlining the country's shaky sectarian structure. The NAAA has folded and is now an arm of the popular American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC).

Another prominent organisation, the Association of Arab American University Graduates (AAUG) which was formed in reaction to the devastating Arab defeat in the June 1967 War, was met with great appeal when Arab-American university professors and other professionals in the community successfully rose to affirm Palestinian rights and aspiration on university campuses and elsewhere.

But AAUG's loud and respected voice hardly amounts to a whimper nowadays. Its earlier appeal has been stunted by its limited focus - only university graduates were members - and poor funding. Its message of supporting the Palestinian struggle for liberation and other prominent Arab issues was too narrow to continuously attract the three million strong community.

More importantly, it failed to acclimatise to the American milieu. Nevertheless, the AAUG legacy lies in its spawning of other respectable organisations such as the ADC, the Arab American Institute, the Palestine Centre and various American Muslim organisations. More importantly it reared countless young leaders more attuned to the American body politic.

The continued and blatant U.S. support of Israel at any price since its founding in 1948 has reached its apex in the first two years of the Bush administration, which has shunned any involvement because the previous Clinton administration had failed to work out an acceptable solution that would satisfy both Palestinians and Israelis. But the tide has changed with the announcement of a roadmap that promises a viable Palestinian state by the year 2005 alongside Israel.

Palestinian Americans within the nascent American Committee on Jerusalem (ACJ) were intrigued by this development. Which promised a long-cherished Palestinian goal - a Palestinian state on Palestinian land in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

Dr. Ziad Asali, a prominent Palestinian-American leader, noted that "everybody else is talking about the Palestinian situation now except the Palestinians" whose leadership, he noted, was confined to a two-bedroom apartment" in Ramallah. "Now we have the beginning of a Palestinian National Authority that is an interlocutor while in the United States there is no Palestinian American presence."

What's more, the retired 61-year-old physician told me, Palestinians now see the "possibility that a Palestinian state is acceptable - nationally, internationally, even by the president of the United States." More to the point, "We, Palestinians, essentially Americans, believe that it is absolutely in the national interest of the United States to establish a State of Palestine. It is good for America, in other words."

The ACJ was thus transformed into an American Task Force on Palestine (ATFP) with Dr. Asali elected as chairman. Dr. Rashid Khalidi, who will be moving next fall to Columbia University from the University of Chicago, is the president of the group which will officially announce its founding next week.

In a letter to the ACJ supporters, Dr. Khalidi acknowledged that "while today's political environment in the United States is deeply worrisome, we believe that with the establishment of a Palestinian state now an official goal of U.S. policy, our mission must be to secure that such a state be a viable and democratic one with East Jerusalem as its capital."

He continued: "The establishment of an independent, democratic and viable Palestinian state is very much in the legitimate national interest of the United States, is crucial for the stabilisation of the Middle East, is a prerequisite for the economic and the political development of the region, and is the only practical and just way to achieve the legitimate and historic rights of the Palestinian people."

In other words, this focus group will be able, henceforth, through its interaction with U.S. officialdom to take them to task should they fail to live up to the presidential commitment which has the support as well of the United Nations, the European community as well as the Arab governments and, as Dr. Khalidi noted, "the majorities of the Palestinian and Israeli peoples."

Their first encounter will be on June 6 when they will be meeting, upon the suggestion of Secretary of State Colin Powell, with Assistant secretary of State William Burns. Palestinian Americans are now in a new ball game in Washington.