Letter from Jerusalem: Will the Real Sari Nussibeh Please Stand Up?
By Arlynn Nellhaus

Bernard Lewis with Sari Nussibeh in April 2002 (Hebrew University photo)

So who is Sari Nusseibeh?

He landed in international attention more than ever when Israel recently closed his office -- where he serves as president of Al-Quds University in eastern Jerusalem.

Nusseibeh, 55, totes an Oxford degree. He wears neatly tailored suits. He speaks in measured tones. With his salt-and-pepper, thick, unruly hair and his out-sized glasses, he is disarmingly attractive. He looks like Harry Potter as a grandfather.

The top representative in Jerusalem of the Palestinian Authority (that means, Yasser Arafat chose him), Nusseibeh made headlines last winter when he said that Israel shouldn't be forced to accept Palestinian "refugees."

Speaking as "the good guy," he said they should be absorbed in Palestinian territory.

The "refugees" are the some 700,000 Arabs (they didn't call themselves "Palestinians" then), who fled the area after seven Arab armies invaded Israel the day after it declared independence.

Confined to poverty-stricken camps by their Arab "brothers" for the past 54 years, their numbers have swelled to the millions.

Nusseibeh's statement wasn't all that generous, when he tied with it that Israel should return to its 1949 borders - "the Auschwitz line," Israel's Abba Eban called them.

Arafat's representative also said that Israel was financially responsible for these now millions of "refugees," even though Arabs caused the fighting.

Then, several weeks ago, Nusseibeh made headlines again. He and other Palestinian notables issued a statement that Palestinians should stop killing Israeli civilians.

Another prominent signatory was Hanan Ashrawi. That's bad news right there. Every manipulative word she says is suspect.

The statement didn't say there was anything immoral about killing Israeli civilians - only that killing them was bad for the Palestinian cause.

And it implied that killing Israeli soldiers and Israelis who live over the Green Line may continue unabated.

The website of Middle East Media Research Institute of Washington, D.C., carried Nusseibeh's interview with the Arab-Israeli daily Al-Ittihad, in which he explained the reasons behind the much-publicized statement.

Now Nusseibeh is speaking in Arabic to Arabs.

"We must turn to means that serve our goal - which is to remove the occupation and get rid of its barbaric acts of repression," he said. "We do not think that murdering Israeli civilians serves our just, human goals.

"It turns the well-known murderer who destroys villages, murders children, usurps lands, and banishes people, into a victim who markets himself to the world, seeks support, and justifies his barbaric acts against us.

"Whatever the cruelty of the enemy, who has not a trace of human characteristics, Palestinians must not sacrifice their moral values in addition to their body. We must cling to human, moral values and standards, because our strength lies in our adherence to values and morality."

Here's more: On the Arab TV channel Al-Jazeera, Nusseibeh appeared with Khaled Mash'al, a Hamas leader, and Umm Nidal. She is the woman who appeared in a video proudly sending her son to become a "martyr" in a suicide attack

At that time, Nusseibeh made it plain that the statement expressed objections only to military operations against civilians within Israel.

He said, "There is no life under occupation, and most of the Palestinian people is very much prepared to martyr itself to achieve liberty and independence and to restore its honor. I agree to this."

He called "martyrdom operations" a form of resistance and emphasized that the statement didn't condemn them.

Referring to Umm Nidal's pride in and justification of her son's suicide bombing, in which he killed 10 Israelis, Nusseibeh said, "All respect is due to this mother.

"It is due to every Palestinian mother and every female Palestinian who is a jihad fighter on this land."

On another Arab news site, Nusseibeh noted that the statement "did not address our brothers in the various resistance factions to chastise them, or to condemn them, or depict the resistance as terror, or to de-legitimize it."

He pointed out that none of these words appeared in the statement. "[Our] aim was to convey a message that there is a need to re-examine the benefit of the [martyrdom] operations within Israel in the context of the goals we seek to accomplish."

Do these read like statements of someone who is conciliatory and reasonable? Or perhaps someone who has an agenda that is hidden from Westerners?

Nusseibeh recently told the Israeli newspaper Ha-Aretz that the outbreak of the current intifada resulted from Ariel Sharon's visit to the Temple Mount, which is the holiest site in Judaism.

It came out long ago that this intifada was being planned long before that, indeed at the time of the aborted Bill Clinton-sponsored peace talks at Camp David. Sharon's visit was the excuse, not the cause.

Nusseibeh also told Ha-Aretz that Israel "was born in sin."

Never mind that the United Nations Assembly divided the land in 1947 into Jewish and Arab areas for two countries to develop side-by-side.

Never mind that some seven Arab countries invaded the new Israeli state in 1948, but had the bad fortune to be beaten.

Nusseibeh, from the Moslem-Arab family that keeps the keys to the Church of the Holly Sepulchre - believed by many to be Jesus' burial site, was a leader of the 1987-1992 intifada. He is a member of Arafat's "cabinet" and replaced the late-Faisal Husseini as PLO representative in Jerusalem.

Israel closed his Al-Quds office on charges that PLO activities go on there. Reason: PLO activities in Jerusalem are forbidden -- by Israeli and Palestinian agreement.

The Israel Defense Forces, police and all relevant Israel security and legal authorities approved the closure.

Two classified documents found in the office so far have been released.

One is an agreement to open criminal investigation courses to train members of the PA's Preventive Security organization.

The other shows a relationship between Al-Quds University and Iran.

Al-Quds students were invited to Teheran University. The Jerusalem university was asked to defray their expenses. The invitation was received via the PA Office of Higher Education.

The PA funded Al-Quds and appointed its board of directors and president. In other words, the PA, a foreign entity, has been operating inside Israel via the university, in blatant disregard for its signed agreement.

But why should this agreement be different to Arafat and his PLO and PA, than any other signed agreement that has been broken?

And now that Israel has closed Nusseibeh's office, he has become a non-self-explosive Moslem martyr.

True to form, the Yossis, Knesset members Yossi Beilin and Yossi Sarid, rushed to their Palestinian friend's aid. Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, of course, is wringing his hands over the closure. So is Israeli Defense Minister Benyamin Ben-Eliezar. But then he is running for the Labor Party's leadership, and he has to contend with the Yossi Beilins in his party.

Meanwhile, right now Nusseibeh is counted among the Great White Palestinian Hopes, as far as the West is concerned.

So was the late-Faisal Husseini, another soft-speaking man thought of as someone reasonable and who was much adored by the Israeli left and the West.

But another common thread ties Nusseibeh and Husseini - what they say in English isn't what they say in Arabic.

Shortly before his sudden death last year, the real Husseini came out.

He told other Arabs in Beirut and Egypt that the Oslo Accords were the Trojan horse with which the Palestinians would destroy Israel, that Palestinians' ultimate goal "is the liberation of all historic Palestine."

Arafat is their role model. He says in English that he decries the Palestinian genocide bombings. While in Arabic he calls for thousands of martyrs to march on Jerusalem.

So what is there to conclude, but that what Nusseibeh says in Arabic on Arabic news channels, despite his soft words and reasonable manner, is the real Sari Nusseibeh?

Fooled again.