Dr Hanan Ashrawi addressed a public forum at the Petersham Town Hall on Saturday November 8, 2003. Her message was of peace, reconciliation and a reassurance that ‘the Palestinian people do have friends and allies and there are people’in solidarity with them’. The overflowing crowd greeted Dr Ashrawi with a standing ovation, as she hit back at her critics: ‘Unlike many others, I don’t have any skeletons in my closet, despite what they say.’
In a wide-ranging opening speech, Dr Ashrawi outlined her vision for a future peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians with ‘people who recognise not just Palestinians suffering but also their dignity’. She discussed the role, historically, of all colonial powers, and the inevitable result of the Israeli occupation ‘ freedom for the Palestinian people. She talked of the continued victimisation of her people, the ‘deliberate cruelty’ of the current Sharon Government and her desire that the world ‘doesn’t wake up one day and act for the Palestinians out of guilt, because guilt is a negative emotion’. She then issued a challenge to the audience: ‘when governments fail, it is the job of individuals to take it upon themselves to provide protection, genuine recognition and real human solidarity.’
In numerous swipes at the Zionist lobby, Dr Ashrawi talked of legitimate ‘rights of resistance’ to occupation, and while not condemning Hamas – desired by many of her critics in Australia – she focused on the ‘perpetual injustice [of Palestinians], and where every type of freedom has been systemically negated and where you aren’t even safe in your home’. She argued that for many on the other side of the debate, ‘The only good Palestinian is a Palestinian who accepts victimisation and who accepts intimidation and blackmail”.
“The only good Palestinian is a broken Palestinian. They don’t believe that there are people who genuinely want peace.’
Speaking with a freer tongue than previous events in Sydney, due in part to the informal nature of the meeting, Dr Ashrawi gave a powerful reminder of the effect of 1948 on Palestinians:
‘It is now more than 55 years ago that the Palestinian people were slated for national obliteration and were denied their very existence and identity. We were cast outside the course of history. We had to spend decades proving to people that ours was not a land without a people to give to a people without a land. For all those who thought that the Palestinians would conveniently disappear from the stage of history, we did not, we persisted, and we remained on our land. For people who have been so horribly and systematically victimised, refused to lose their humanity, and refused to succumb to all those negative emotions, of revenge and hate, it was actually the Palestinians in the earlier Intifada who said we will transcend the hatred and the pain, and reach out even to our oppressor.’
She warmly embraced those Jews and Israelis who live with the daily reality of Occupation and those ‘brothers and sisters’ who fight on the side of justice and truth. ‘It is very difficult for those in the occupied country who disagree’, she said. She encouraged those supporters of Palestine to continue the struggle for ‘the integrity of the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian narrative”.
Before Dr Ashrawi entered the Town Hall, numerous groups gathered outside to welcome the Sydney Peace Prize winner. ‘Jews Against the Occupation’ read one sign, while another stated, ‘Sydney Welcomes Dr Hanan Ashrawi’. The positive welcome was in sharp contrast to the negative campaign run in past weeks by sections of the Zionist lobby in Australia. They were nowhere to be seen on Saturday.
A mixed crowd filled the hall – Jews, Palestinians, recent migrants, and Anthony Albanese MP, Labor Federal Member of Grayndler There was a woman who had arrived from Lebanon in the mid 1970s, wearing a white headscarf covering all her face. ‘Thank God Australia took me in then. I love this country’, she said while asking a question to Dr Ashrawi. Questions from the public ranged from the specific to the general. Dr Ashrawi was questioned about her belief in the Europeans ‘getting a backbone’ and becoming more involved in the peace movement in the Middle East. She responded by suggesting the Americans were always centre-stage in negotiations and the Europeans were only called if the US needed help, little more. She was asked about life under Occupation and responded that the daily struggle of Israeli military control hadn’t lessened her resolve to find peace with Israel. In relation to the Occupation, she was recently quoted as saying:
”despite all these things [the Occupation], despite my living under captivity and seeing the worst horrors of violence, being on the receiving end of the last remaining colonial situation in the world [Dr Ashrawi pointed out that the US Occupation of Iraq can now be added to this grim reality], I have never succumbed to hate. I have never allowed hate to take over, and I have never accepted any kind of revenge as a motivation.’
Dr Ashrawi finished the one and a half hour event with a powerful enunciation of optimism. Despite suggesting that the Sharon Government is ‘probably the most conservative and repressive the country has ever had in its history’, she knew the struggle must continue. Her message was that ‘Palestinians deserve freedom, democracy, our own state on our own land, integrity of our identity, as equals to everyone else’.