Red Rag

Red Rag - Dr Azmi Bishara

By Gideon Spiro

Friday, April 20, 2007

For the past couple of weeks the Israeli media have been full of stories about MK Dr Azmi Bishara. Everybody knows that the Shabak [Israel's internal security service] is stitching a case against Bishara, but there's a gag order on details of the investigation. The daily Haaretz and Bishara's party Balad have petitioned the Court to lift the gag order, but Judge Lia Lev-On - whom we remember well as a docile servant of the Shabak in the case of Tali Fahima - stayed true to herself and left the gag order in place. As a gesture to freedom of the press, she permitted the publication of what the whole country knew anyway - that an investigation was being conducted against MK Bishara... Thank you, your honor!

The gag order, however, doesn't prevent the Shabak from orchestrating a vicious campaign against Bishara, and there is no shortage of Shabak collaborators in the media. For example, Maariv's Dror Yemini, who relishes being the Shabak's rottweiler, inciting against Bishara like a racist hoodlum, and all in the name of looking after the interests of the Arabs. Reminds me of the antisemites who advised the Jews how to behave, so that they wouldn't be persecuted.

We've been around long enough to know what is meant by the coded message, "the Shabak is investigating" MK Bishara. The Shabak was permitted - probably by a Supreme Court judge - to listen to Bishara's telephones. The tap has been going on for over a year, and the intention couldn't be plainer - the Shabak sees Bishara as spearheading Israel's Arab citizens' awareness of their democratic and civil rights, their wish to exercise their rights on the personal and the national levels. The head of the Shabak stated publicly that his organisation would "take care" of the Arabs who challenge the concept of "a Jewish democratic state" - even if they don't break the law! - Meaning, that the Shabak is a political police, of the sort operated by totalitarian states.

Nothing is easier than making up charges of "endangering the security of the State", as we saw in the case of Tali Fahima. Azmi speaks on the phone with the whole Arab world - openly, politically. The Shabak can accuse him of "contact with a foreign agent" at any time. "On such-and-such date you talked with that Lebanese national, who is a Hizballah agent"... Now wait a minute - how is Bishara or anyone else to know this? Does he, or anyone else, have a way of checking it? Is it up to Bishara to interrogate every non-Israeli citizen to see if he or she is "a foreign agent"?

Such is the Israeli law, that a foreign agent is someone whom the Shabak decides to call a foreign agent, and it's up to you to prove otherwise. This way they can charge Bishara with whatever they like, and there's no shortage of dirty tricks. For instance (an actual case) - they patch a sentence from a telephone conversation made this morning with another sentence spoken last week, re-tape them, and there you have it - "aiding and abetting the enemy in wartime". Which is a capital offence.

The aim of the Shabak is obvious - to intimidate the Arab citizens and deter them from trying to exercise their civil and national rights. But even if the Shabak succeeds in harming Balad or Azmi Bishara, there is no going back to the days in the 1950s and half the 1960s, when the Arab population of Israel lived under martial law. The horses are out of the stable, and they're galloping towards a democratic society. A recent petition to the High Court of Justice by the Human Rights organisation Adala demonstrated it by calling for an investigation of the war crimes committed in Gaza in 2004, when hundreds of Palestinians were killed, including 44 children, and hundreds injured, hundreds of houses destroyed and thousands left homeless. Well done, Adala!

I don't agree with every word Azmi Bishara says, but overall we are allies in the struggle to lead Israel from being a Jewish state to being a democratic one. The Shabak investigation against Bishara is another proof that there is a fundamental contradiction between a Jewish state and a democratic one.

Even when you disagree with Bishara, it's a pleasure to dispute with him. He's a polymath, a thinker, a man of wide horizons and wide reading, and a good writer. In the Knesset he is a Gulliver amongst most members of Israel's parliament, who are narrow-minded Liliputians.

I don't know if Azmi Bishara will return to Israel or will find himself a niche elsewhere. If I were in his situation and with his health problems (a transplanted kidney), knowing that the Shabak is eager to put me in prison for the rest of my life, I'd certainly consider staying away. On the other hand, he is a political leader with a responsibility to his party and voters, so it's a difficult decision.

No Business Like Shoah Business

Every year the Shoah entrepreneurs come up with a new gimmick to mass-market it. This year they invented the "Witnesses in Uniform" - Israeli soldiers in uniform to visit Auschwitz. Great! Just the other day these same soldiers shelled civilian areas in Lebanon with thousands of cluster-bombs (a war crime), and only yesterday killed Palestinian children, road-blocked pregnant Palestinian women on their way to hospital, night-raided homes and wrecked them, forced at gunpoint two million Palestinians to live in walled ghettos assigned them by the occupation forces, held thousands of guerrilla fighters (including boys armed with catapults) in open-ended administrative detentions... Perhaps it was one of these "uniformed witnesses" who set a dog trained to kill Arabs in the Occupied Territories to attack a Palestinian woman (the photograph shocked some Holocaust survivors). What did these soldiers look for in Auschwitz? What lessons did they learn there? Studies made at Israeli universities have shown that the Auschwitz expeditions organised by the State of Israel intensify the racist outlook of the participants, strengthen their motivation to join the forces of the occupation, and provide them with a rationalization of their military crimes. In the present Israeli juncture, Auschwitz helps keep Israel vicious and racist.

Instead of sending uniformed soldiers to Auschwitz, and instead of holding numerous official ceremonies overflowing with self-righteousness and hypocrisy, it would be more appropriate to take better care of the thousands of remaining Holocaust survivors who live in squalid poverty, to increase their pensions, give them free medications - as is done in Germany - and allow them to end their lives in dignity. Yosef Lapid, the man who heads [the Holocaust memorial institution] "Yad Vashem", was Minister of Justice in Sharon's government, and could have pushed a law to protect the rights of the survivors, but he had little interest in those poor wretches, whose lives lie outside the sphere of the plutocratic elite which hands out grants and donations.

It's not as if money is unavaiable! - Just the other day the Government decided to add another billion shekels to the evacuated Gaza settlers, who had already received billions in over-generous compensation. But money can't be found for the Holocaust survivors, and the bureaucracy humiliates and abuses them. A survivor of Nazi persecution can't get money for dentures, because he can't prove to the satisfaction of the Treasury officials that he lost his teeth because of the Holocaust. The Israeli government makes these old and ailing survivors fill numerous questionnaires and produce various medical certificates to show that their illnesses and disabilities originate in the Holocaust. And these people in their seventies, eighties and nineties are crushed by the abusive pettiness and retreat into their misery. The admirers of the Nazis would no doubt grin with satisfaction at the bureaucratic nastiness of the Israeli government and its officials.

As the representative of the Jews who perished and the survivors, the State of Israel received vast sums in reparations from Germany, but instead of applying the funds generously to those who deserve them, the State spends them on settlements and on handouts to millionaires. Shoah business is rife with corruption. Billions have flowed and are still flowing through what is known as the Claims Conference - Jewish organisations (together with the Israeli Government and the Jewish Agency) who appointed themselves the heirs of the dead, and instead of providing the money primarily to the survivors, spend it on fat salaries, lawyers, grand offices, first-class travel... - anything but the needy survivors.

"Yad Vashem" is shockingly indifferent. Recently the grandson of a "Righteous Gentile" was thrown out of his apartment, because he failed to meet his mortgage payments. "Yad Vashem" said it was not their responsibility. Some cases are horrifying - one 85-year old survivor, living in a squalid one-room flat, subsisting on a 1,300 shekels monthly allowance, told the interviewer she was used to going hungry.

While case after case of corruption in the highest echelons of government and the dominant elite surface in the media, the Holocaust has become a highly profitable enterprise. Now we hear that an attorney named Gideon Fischer is about to present a class action in Germany for funds to pay for psychological assistance to the "second generation" of the Holocaust, the children of the survivors.

Prime Minister Olmert said at this year's ceremony at "Yad Vashem" that only a small minority in the world have comprehended and internalized the Holocaust. He's right, but he is not one of that minority. He is one of the great majority who have learned nothing. Instead of heading a global campaign against racism and fascism, Israel has become a hothouse for these evils. The State uses its awesome military might to protect fascistic racists in the occupied territories, and Israel's parliament passes laws reminiscent of the racist Nuremberg Laws passed by the Nazi regime - for example, the recent law barring Palestinians who are Israeli citizens from living with their Palestinian spouses from the occupied territories.

As a child, I witnessed the so-called Kristalnacht in Berlin in November 1938, and it fills me with shame to see what the State of Israel has become. So long as Israel continues being racist, continues to occupy neighbouring lands, violate human rights, commit war crimes and mistreat Holocaust survivors, I cannot stand up when the siren sounds on Holocaust Memorial Day.

Meacher: 'Blair's Britain makes me sick'

Melissa Kite, Deputy Political Editor, Sunday Telegraph

Last Updated: 11:41pm BST 21/04/2007

Tony Blair has created a "staggering degree of inequality" in Britain, perpetuated a culture of greed and undermined democracy, according to one of those vying to succeed him. Michael Meacher: 'We now have four classes' Michael Meacher, the former environment minister, now a Labour leadership candidate, said that society was more unequal now than at any time since the 1930s. A new class, the "mega rich", had been given unprecedented power and access to government by Mr Blair, who was himself obsessed by money, he claimed. Mr Meacher said that he was close to securing the 44 names necessary to mount a challenge to the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, the overwhelming favourite to succeed Mr Blair. "I'm getting very close to it," Mr Meacher said. "I have 25, [John] McDonnell has 15 and the overwhelming majority of those will switch to me if John realises that he can't make it and drops out." The MP for Oldham West said he believed passionately that Mr Brown should face a challenge. "People should have a choice. We should not have a coronation when there has been no debate on policy since Blair came in, in 1994. "It's crucial that Brown is made to answer as to what he's going to deliver to us. We are entitled to know." advertisement While Westminster was fixated on a Blairite challenger, Mr Meacher said, it would be wrong to underestimate the Left. "David Miliband, Charles Clarke, John Reid, it's a matter for them but it's quite interesting that there is a desperate thrashing around to find a candidate and they have not been able to do so. The tendency is to regard the Left as non-existent. That is a really serious misreading of the state of the Labour Party." Accusing Mr Blair of exacerbating inequality, he added: "We are now a more unequal society than at any time since the 1930s. The average package of the chief executive of a FTSE 100 company is £46,155 a week. The average wage is £400 a week. That is a staggering degree of inequality. "We now have four classes - an underclass who are so poor that they cannot participate in any meaningful way, a working class who are okay, a fairly well off middle class then a new category, the mega rich who are in a category of their own in terms of wealth, power and their influence on the Government through private meetings with ministers. "I feel very sick and angry about it. I didn't expect this to happen under a Labour Government. The reason it has happened is, if I can quote Peter Mandelson in 1997, New Labour is very relaxed about people getting filthy rich." Mr Blair, he said, had "far too little concern" for the people at the bottom. "Tony's natural mates are his big business friends. He feels comfortable with them, he admires and respects them and he gets a good response from them. They are only too glad to have someone in power whom they can do direct deals with." The Prime Minister, said Mr Meacher, had also ridden roughshod over Parliament. "It would be hard to say this is a genuine parliamentary democracy. The framework is there but the decisions are fixed at private meetings between the Prime Minister and the power brokers in society, the financial houses, industry and the media." Hitting out at the influence of Lord Sainsbury, the former science minister, with whom he sparred over the issue of genetically modified crops, Mr Meacher said: "People say that is why I was sacked. Lord Sainsbury was appointed by Blair. Blair himself is also pro-GM. Lord Sainsbury provided a lot of money to the Labour Party and he was clearly involved in a lot of GM research. This all mixed in with the Government's objectives." He said a "conscience of the nation" watchdog should be created to look at all decisions of national importance and prevent abuses of power. He claimed Mr Brown blocked a decision he took as environment minister to force the top 1,000 companies to publish their greenhouse gas emissions. "So if you ask if he's green - anything but. His feel for this agenda is very weak." Publishers wishing to reproduce photographs on this page should phone 44 (0) 207 931 2921 or email syndication@telegraph.co.uk

Shattered illusions: Azmi Bishara

If the fall of Baghdad exposed the dangers of identifying the state solely in its leader, Iraq's past four years show the folly of those -- especially Arabs -- who thought democracy could be imposed by foreign force, writes Azmi Bishara

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No amount of overstatement does justice to the significance of the fall of Baghdad. Yet stunned gasps at how easily the regime was toppled have little bearing on the subject. When you consider that the invasion was preceded by 10 years of war followed by 15 years of sanctions, the fall wasn't "easy" by any count. The importance of studying the fall of Baghdad resides in the insight it gives into how a regime that rested on a personality cult grew hollow. It sheds light on a type of regime that disengaged itself from the concerns, rights and interests of the people, that lumped its citizens into an amorphous body called "the masses", and that believed that slogans were enough to make this body move, as though it had a single head to process the information it was fed.

If the public can be spontaneously stirred to action by powerful emotions such as jubilation, pent up resentment or outrage, then the government's task would seem to be to create the agenda and institutions for channelling these energies. The kind of regime at hand, however, does not deal well with spontaneity. In fact, spontaneity is one of its greatest fears and it is very good at containing it and sapping it of its force. Such a regime cannot suddenly mobilise "the masses" behind a strategy for resistance, especially when those so-called masses realise that resistance is synonymous with defending the regime.

The people of the Soviet Union fought the Nazi occupation at a time when the Soviet order was at its most robust, in spite of Stalin's dictatorship. But even then, popular resistance alone could not have prevented the fall of Stalingrad and Leningrad. Those battles required the full and concerted strength of the entire army and the state. Contrary to the common impression, democracy doesn't come into it. Many dictatorships have emerged victorious from their wars, just as many democracies have lost theirs. What does come into it is an organised government, the loyalty of the army, current balances of power and the horizons of opportunity this offers. In the case of Iraq, the government and the army were in a disastrous condition.

Of course that regime appealed to the Arab people, who had spontaneously demonstrated their outrage at the invasion. However, as there was no alternative project to steer these energies towards the realisation of a political agenda, they quickly dissipated. In some instances, other regimes succeeded in co-opting these energies in the interest of reaping a quantity of popular kudos. In other cases, governments simply loosened the leash a bit to let their public vent itself in a direction that was not aimed at them.

In Iraq, the eruption of popular energies came after the collapse of the regime that had kept such a tight cap on them. The explosion took two trajectories: one directed inwards, as previously repressed conflicts between diverse social forces erupted; the other directed outwards, in the form of resistance against the occupation. Both trajectories influence and feed off each other, of course. Resistance under conditions of an intense and bloody domestic power struggle quickly descends to a conflict over the reading of the past and, hence, the definition of the future. This conflict, in turn, contributes to the deconstruction of existing identities and the reconstruction of new identities shaped by the current political struggle and by attendant images of the self as victim and the other as interloper or proxy of the interloper, all reinforced by the spiralling cycle of violence, vengeance and retribution. These volatile forces may inflict great moral and material damage on the occupation, as they are doing in Iraq, but they do not offer a viable national alternative to a united Iraq.

In like manner, today's sectarian conflict in Iraq has assumed the guise of a conflict between those with and those opposed to the occupation. Tomorrow, it may assume the shape of a race to oust the occupation and claim the laurels for liberating Iraq -- or for achieving the partition of Iraq, which appears to be the way the current dynamics are heading.

Perhaps the foregoing underscores why it is important to home in on the role and condition of the government and the army when studying the fall of Baghdad. After all, current social circumstances and the resistance have put paid to all studies and theories that preceded the war and that foresaw a victorious entrance of American troops, the clouds of dictatorship dispelled by the purifying forces of aerial and naval bombardment, and the rise of democracy from the devastation, like a phoenix from the ashes.

Democracy is not borne from chaos or from the destruction of a nation, that's for sure. Democracy in Germany and Japan did not emerge from the destruction of those countries, contrary to the ridiculous myth. Democracy is an expression of the sovereignty of a nation and a form of exercising this sovereignty -- the most ideal form of exercising sovereignty, according to advocates of democracy, because it reflects the will of the people. Democracy cannot come into effect by manacling the sovereignty of a nation and dismantling a country as is currently taking place in Iraq and as some mad theorists had envisioned.

It wasn't just Baghdad that fell, not even at first glance. What also came crashing to the ground was the fairytale that one could build democracy just by pointing some mighty barrels at a dictatorship. The commonly held impression is that society without government is civil society. The notion has become something of a fad. But it is an illusion and a dangerous one at that. Society without government is a society at war, a society in which everyone is at the throats of everyone else. With the collapse of the state in Iraq the fires from "society's hell" flared out of control. The dual collapse of the dictatorship of Baghdad and the myth of building democracy on the ruins gave rise to the current Iraqi nightmare.

The current situation in Iraq marks a historic juncture in the Arab world; a juncture that raises a big question mark over the future of the Arab nation state as it currently stands. Iraq has driven home as never before that if this collection of nation states does not develop a higher level of cooperation on the basis of their common Arab identity it will disintegrate into a morass of warring sectarian and tribal groupings and revert to the pre-state era. Globalisation, as opposed to Americanisation and marginalisation, is a process that the Arabs must not allow themselves or their common identity to abandon in its wake. The Arabic language and culture are inherent media of communication and Arab satellite networks, television stations, newspapers, books, coffeehouses and all other public venues offer easily accessible channels for drawing the Arabs together and unifying their agendas. Unless they take advantage of these instruments to develop closer political, economic, social and supranational bonds, globalisation will bring nothing but the fragmentation of each nation state into sectarian and tribal pawns in the political and economic agendas of others.

Iraq's isolation from the rest of the Arab world stemmed, firstly, from the nature of the decision- making process in Iraq, itself; secondly, from the ability of an American-led coalition to corner the country, subject it to a prolonged blockade and then to pound it militarily on pretexts that would not legitimise a war even if they were true; and, thirdly, from the mechanisms that elevated sectarian and tribal groupings into political blocs that recruit allegiance either to or against the occupation on the basis of their various organic affiliations. Building a nation ultimately rests on the creation of a sense of the overriding bonds of citizenship. Yet, prior to this, in both the pre- and post-independence phases, there must exist a sense of common cause -- generally referred to as the right of self-determination -- for it is this that affirms that overriding bond as the primary cornerstone for building the nation. The Arabs, however, have produced neither the type of national entities that can serve as a basis for generating a sense of identification with a common cause or a foundation of citizenship that may be smaller than the Arab world combined but larger than the Arabs within a single sub-regional national entity. What is left and what is now forcefully advancing itself as the intermediary between the individual and tyranny is political unity based on ethnic, religious and tribal affiliations.

Even in the non-civil national entities we have, these same organic bonds form the primary units of affiliation within the state and army, in view of the absence of democratic institutions and the government's distrust of the loyalty of the individual to it. For the individual, meanwhile, these same units serve as the shield between him and the state. The irony is that what protects the individual from the despotism of the state forms one of the primary underpinnings of that despotism. The despotic regime justifies its existence on the grounds that it preserves the unity of the state, but in fact it sustains itself through its perpetration of and juggling with a vast diversity of centrifugal forces. But when the state and its army are defeated, these disparate disintegrative forces pounce upon the inheritance, in the course of which they exercise their own brand of tyranny as they fight it out with one another. Perhaps for this reason, some yearn for just plain tyranny.

Clearly, then, the Arabs' task is to find the ways to forestall the emergence of a situation that opens the way to such phenomena as the blockade of Iraq and the military intervention in that country. Surely this is the lesson to be derived from that tragic experience. One hopes, therefore, to hear again the voices of those who had appealed for outside intervention in the name of slogans that quickly proved themselves hollow, if not extremist -- slogans, for example, that espoused bringing democracy on the back of American tanks. One might expect to hear some honest self-criticism instead of the pieties spouted by those who have shown themselves to have no real interest in democracy.

There are a good many neo-liberals who parade beneath the banner of democracy, in spite of their general disregard for democratic methods and civil liberties, and who trumpet the need to prevent dictatorship only to retroactively justify a war that was waged on patently false pretences. If we add this behaviour to the actual crime of the dismantlement of the Iraqi state, we know that there was nothing unwitting in their complicity. The innocent ones blanched, admitted their mistakes and, at the very least, recognised the folly of American policies. The others never say what they mean and never mean what they say, and may well resort to the same theoretical hocus-pocus somewhere else in the future. No Arab state, at present, is immune to the spectre of fragmentation if it is subjected to the type of pounding visited upon Iraq.

Proponents of privatisation are not necessarily economic neo-liberals. The system of patronage, sectarianism and tribalism, and the corruption that pervades it, does not form the foundation for neo- liberal capitalism. Nor are economic neo-liberals necessarily politically liberal. Under the shadow of American interventionism in the region there have emerged forces that have called for change, but in fact are thirsty for power and numb to the cause of civil rights and liberties. The current Arab condition breeds the type of people who propel themselves to the fore on liberal platforms and then quickly reveal themselves liberal only in the amount of economic and political influence they seek to lavish on themselves.

Baghdad has fallen, but so to have all the illusions that had been pinned upon its fall. Here precisely is where an intensive reassessment must begin.

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Defining the enemy

Arab-Palestinian Knesset member Azmi Bishara explains to Amira Howeid the motives behind the Israeli media's campaign against him and how it affects the Arab community

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Israel, it seems, is at war with one man. The Israeli media and politicians from across the political spectrum are up in arms against him, the Shabak (intelligence) is said to be preparing a file on him and his fate could have an impact on 1.3 million Arabs living in Israel.

This might be the kind of attention someone as high-profile as Azmi Bishara expects when faced with accusations of treason. Then again, it might not. Bishara is, after all, not just an outspoken Arab-Palestinian member of the Israeli parliament the Knesset but an embodiment of Israel's paradoxes and its complex relationship with itself and its Arab-Palestinian community.

Over the past 11 years this Christian Arab- Palestinian politician, intellectual, novelist, philosopher and citizen of Israel has struggled to redefine the status and identity of the Palestinians whose lands, towns and villages were occupied by the Jewish state between 1948 and 1949 and who later became Israeli citizens. While Israel sought to assimilate them and "Israelise" their collective identity, Bishara and his National Arab Alliance party begged to differ.

Their vision, which has gained momentum within the Arab community (known as the 1948 Arabs) insists that Israel should be a state for all its citizens and not -- as it now perceives itself -- a Jewish state. A Jewish state, they argue, defies the logics of democracy because it does not equate between its Jewish and non-Jewish populations. Even more alarming for Israeli nationalists is the fact that such a position could represent the nucleus of a bi-national secular state.

Three weeks ago Bishara left Israel for an Arab tour. Given recent developments it is now unclear when, or if, he will be returning. A week after his departure, the Israeli press began a campaign of incitement against him, the opening shot being the publication of news reports that he will resign from the Knesset while in Qatar. This was followed by leaks to the media concerning a criminal investigation against him. But with a court-imposed gag on the nature of the investigation it is not clear what is actually being investigated though the Israeli press has hinted at charges involving "contact with the enemy during wartime".

Although Bishara is no stranger to prosecution based on similar allegations -- in the past he has always been found innocent - he now believes that "the rules of the game have changed" and that the target is not just him but the entire Palestinian-Arab community living in Israel.

"There is a decision to end our political stream and the unprecedented challenge it represents for them," he told Al-Ahram Weekly in a telephone interview from Doha. "The message is: Palestinian-Arabs who support us will be regarded as people working against Israel. And to do that they are targeting the head of the movement. They cannot tolerate an Arab Knesset member who refutes their claims of democratic practice and argues that Zionism defeats the notion of democracy."

By presenting Bishara's case as one with security dimensions, "Israel will have more tools to fight us with," he said, "and it is evident that they've been preparing a huge file for over a year now which involved monitoring all my moves and recording all my telephone conversations without a court order. It makes me wonder what parliamentary immunity means in practice."

It is rumoured that the secret police have records of phone conversations Bishara conducted with "hostile" Arab figures, including Hizbullah members, during Israel's war against Lebanon last summer.

Such "security fabrications", in Bishara's words, could affect international solid5arity with him since the suggestion being propagated "translates into providing the enemy with information which ultimately transforms me from a political, cultural and intellectual figure to an agent for a hostile state or terrorist organisation as they call it".

"This changes the logic of things because I have my political views, I publish articles, I give interviews and I talk on the phone but I do not enjoy a security position or have access to security information in the first place in order to deliver it. In fact, it is clear that these hostile states or organisations like Hizbullah and Hamas are more informed about Israel's security than we are. We are men of thought, culture and literature."

Bishara denies all the rumoured charges against him and says they "disgust" him. And because he realises the rules of the game have changed he has yet to decide if he will play by the new rules.

"It is out of the question that someone like myself should sit with prosecutors and answer their questions about my phone calls, what I say to my friends, what did I mean by this word or in this article with all the humiliation it involves."

The active involvement of the Israeli left alongside the extreme right in teaming up against Bishara in the current media campaign against him comes as no surprise. "The Israeli left and right stood together during the first weeks of the war on Lebanon last summer and the same scenario is repeating itself with me. They're all united against the path that we chose which rejects Zionism and the Zionist nature [of Israel], our emphasis on Arab identity, extending our cultural and civilisational roots to the Arab world and our emphasis on the fact that there are two nations and that we are not merely a minority."

A leading Palestinian intellectual, Bishara's popularity extends across the Arab world. Not only did his movement contribute to breaking many of the political taboos imposed on the 1948 Palestinian community, his eloquence and staunch pan-Arab stands helped redefine the term "Israeli-Arab" which for decades was treated with suspicion across the Arab world.

This might be good news for the Arabs, but why would Israel tolerate a vocal Arab- Palestinian who supports resistance?

"Israel has a problem of course," says Bishara, "and [its leaders] are not trying to redefine the borders and prevent us from expressing such views. But we do not ask anything of Israel in this regard. We are against the Israeli aggression on Lebanon and we support people's right in resisting occupation. We do not support a specific form of resistance and we oppose the targeting of civilians in this context. But in the context of citizenship and activism within a political framework we have to distinguish between people like us, Palestinians and Arabs, whose lands were occupied, and our right to express ourselves about resisting occupation and actually being directly involved in resistance. There is a difference between our liaisons as democratic Palestinians and Arabs with the rest of the Arab world and making our position known and being part of the resistance... Of course Israel cannot tolerate resistance but then freedom [fighters] do not want Israel's tolerance in the first place."

Israel, says Bishara, suffers from an identity crisis. "But then I have one too," he admits. "I have a problem tolerating them just as they have a problem tolerating me. In the past five years I feel I have grown 50 years older as a result of the conflicts and having to go to the Knesset every day and actually sit with people I regard as war criminals. I did it out of responsibility for my people even though it exhausted and drained me. But I'm not talking about predicaments here, I'm talking about equilibrium. They now want to change that equilibrium so that we no longer take the stands that we do."

When Bishara took what he considered a democratic stand following Israel's war on Lebanon last year by visiting Beirut's southern suburb Al-Dahia -- Hizbullah's stronghold, Israelis went berserk. "It's ABC political work for a Palestinian democrat like myself who exists as part of the political entity that launched the aggression to show solidarity with the victims of this aggression... [The Israelis] in turn decided this is participating in resistance. I reject that completely."

During a war, he said, people talk to each other on the phone and they talk about the war. "But if we talk about the war this could be contact with the enemy. Turning every triviality between human beings who are Arabs -- and are naturally connected -- into transferring information to the enemy is simply an attempt to quash us. There is a big cultural misunderstanding here, a huge gap in understanding who we are."

Israel, says Bishara, perceives its Arabs as a minority who immigrated to Israel, requested an Israeli card and became Israelis. "And therefore when we communicate with other Arabs we are in contact with the enemy. We have a different perception. We are Arabs and our brothers and sisters in the Arab world are Arab, and we were Arab long before Israel was created [in 1948] and imposed its identity on us. Now it wants to impose its enemies as our enemies. They're not."

According to Bishara, his decision to resign from the Knesset was taken a year ago but his party wanted him to postpone it for a while. But now he has to decide whether or not he will resign and have his immunity lifted, "or if I should throw this immunity at them anyway". He will "eventually" return to Israel and the occupied territories, he says, but only after he has decided how to handle the campaign against him and the 1948 Arab-Palestinian community.

C a p t i o n : Azmi Bishara

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Amira Howeidy

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