'Once Upon a Country': a path to Mideast peace?
Arab philosopher Nusseibeh insists on our ability to effect change – even in the Middle East.
By Carol Huangfrom the May 22, 2007 edition
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"Emotions ... can be transformed through an act of will. It's up to us to turn hatred into understanding."
In his recent memoir, Palestinian intellectual and public figure Sari Nusseibeh lays out his legacy – and his ideal – as a Palestinian nationalist: One who tried to foster a nonviolent, grass-roots movement for statehood, founded on the belief that the human will is powerful enough to realize freedom under oppression.
His optimism is buoyant and rare.
In more than a decade of a downward-spiraling conflict that's entering its second century, Nusseibeh reiterates his freedom-of-the-will mantra so frequently that readers might wonder whether he's trying to convince us, or himself.
Yet this Harvard-trained scholar seems to revel in radical ideas and fairy tales – such as peace and Palestine. Hence the title, Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life.
Part of Nusseibeh's challenge is convincing Palestinians that his peacenik ideas have been in their interest. With 13 generations of his family born in Jerusalem, many holding high office, Nusseibehs were committed public servants in the Holy Land long before Yasser Arafat donned his first kaffiyeh.
Nusseibeh's positions would certainly peg him as a Palestinian. To him there's no doubt his people belong on the land or that Israel is full of bad guys. "A more radical generation of settlers ... grew more and more brazen" and "Shin Bet agents ... beat them [Palestinians] to death," he writes, clearly fingering the Israeli perpetrators.
But through artful sentence constructions, Palestinian agency often vanishes: "Violence was taking root," and "Lebanese-like terror had reached Israel in the form of a bus-bombing." Still, Nusseibeh's loyalty doesn't lie squarely with Palestinians. He scorns extremist "Islamic loonies" and avoids Arafat's often-corrupt inner circle.
Ultimately, Nusseibeh identifies with humanism – the power of humans to effect change. He sees and appreciates it everywhere, even in the "enemy" he worked with briefly as a boy growing up in Jerusalem.
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