Hanan Ashrawi Interview
JON ELMER
The Progressive vol 70 no 4 (April 2006): p. 31-34
Hanan Ashrawi is a Palestinian legislator, academic, and intellectual who was reelected to the Palestinian Legislative Council in January's national elections. Ashrawi's party is the Third Way, a newly created political faction that won two seats in the 132-seat council.
A frequently cited spokesperson for the Palestinian national movement, Ashrawi was a prominent member of the 1991 Madrid peace talks and was Palestinian National Authority minister of higher education and research in Yasser Arafat's cabinet from 1996 until 1998, when she resigned citing corruption and the mismanagement of peace negotiations.
In 1998, she became the general secretary of MIFTAH, the Palestinian Initiative for the Promotion of Global Dialogue and Democracy. In 2003, Ashrawi was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize.
Ashrawi has a doctorate in medieval and comparative literature from the University of Virginia. She is the author or editor of numerous works of literature and poetry, and a memoir, This Side of Peace: A Personal Account. She was the first chair of the English Department at Birzeit University, where she later became the dean of arts. She was born in Ramallah during the British Mandate in Palestine; she lives there today.
I spoke with her by phone from Ramallah on February 15.
Question: Were January's Palestinian Legislative Council elections fair?
Hanan Ashrawi: The elections, technically, were free and fair, yes. But if you look at the substance they were not. They took place under occupation, so the results were tainted by the practices and measures of the occupation.
When you have a nation that is suffering collectively from a situation of injustice