Ali Abunimah: Hanan Ashrawi dispels claim she resigned over PA-Israel collusion Archived Message
Posted by sashimi on December 10, 2020, 8:40 am, in reply to ""Long Live the (Dead) Peace Process": Abbas Prioritizes US Ties over Palestinian National Unity"
9 December 2020 (quote) Hanan Ashrawi has put to rest reports that she has resigned from the Palestine Liberation Organization Executive Committee to protest the Palestinian Authority's open resumption last month of "security coordination" with Israel's occupation army. ... Her statement urges "reform" of the PLO and calls for "renewal and reinvigoration" of the Palestinian political system "with the inclusion of youth, women and additional qualified professionals." Yet it is unclear why Ashrawi chose this moment to resign given that the undemocratic exclusion of the Palestinian people from PLO decisionmaking has been its defining feature for decades. ... Previously a professor at Birzeit University, Ashrawi has retained a strong international reputation as a champion of the Palestinian cause - a role that sits uneasily with the reality that she has been part and parcel of the regime of permanent occupation and apartheid cemented by the Oslo accords signed by the PLO and Israel in the early 1990s. ... Ashrawi's latest move is bound to be viewed with some skepticism as it fits into a long pattern among senior PLO officials of what might be called revolving-door resignations. ... Columbia University professor Joseph Massad was an early observer of this trend. In a 1997 essay (republished in his 2006 book The Persistence of the Palestinian Question), Massad points to a number of Palestinian intellectuals including Ashrawi and Erekat who "before Oslo threatened to resign their positions in protest against PLO concessions," but later went on to hold ministerial positions in the PA. In the 1990s, Ashrawi repeatedly declared she would not accept any official post, insisting on one occasion that her refusal was "a question of conscience and conviction." "Her subsequent acceptance of a ministerial position, however," Massad observes bitingly, "demonstrates the changing trends that her conscience and conviction undergo continually." It remains to be seen if this will be Ashrawi's final resignation. (/quote) -- Cont'd at https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/hanan-ashrawi-dispels-claim-she-resigned-over-pa-israel-collusion
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