[This is a roundup of news articles and other materials circulating on Syria and reflects a wide variety of opinions. It does not reflect the views of the Syria Page Editors or of Jadaliyya. You may send your own recommendations for inclusion in each week's roundup to syria@jadaliyya.com by Monday night of every week.]

Regional and International Perspectives 

The Islamic Front Aron Lund’s useful collection of articles and reports on its emergence in Syria, written for various outlets including the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, Syria Comment, Foreign Policy, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace of International Affairs. 

The Everyday Experience of Humanitarianism in Akkar VillagesEstella Carpi’s report on the implosion of humanitarian assistance in Akkar and the “ethnicization” of the needs and services provided to the Syrian refugees.

Understanding racism against Syrian refugees in LebanonMohamad Ali-Nayel and Bassem Chit advise civil society organizations to “be mindful of the prevailing discourses that shape people’s opinions about refugees”.

A Late-Night Phone Call Between One of Syria’s Top Extremists and His Sworn Enemy Mike Giglio reports on a phone conversation between a leader from ISIS and a rebel who is fighting this jihadi group, providing an insight into the fragmentation of the armed opposition.

What Do Syria’s Rebels Want From the West?Vera Mironova, Loubna Mrie and Sam Whitt reiterate the major findings of their survey with “nearly 200 interviews completed, which include over 60 active combatants in the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) as well as 80 civilians within FSA-controlled territory and 50 refugees from a border camp in Kilis, Turkey.”

Thaw in Iranian-Saudi relations pacifies Lebanon, but what about Syria?Sami Kleib reports: “According to information obtained by Al-Akhbar, the tension between Iran and the Saudi Kingdom are expected to thaw in the event that preliminary contacts lead to an agreement on some common points.”

Kuwait Minister Nayef al-Ajmi Resigns in Syria Terror Funding Row“Kuwait's justice and Islamic affairs minister Nayef al-Ajmi, accused of fundraising for terrorist groups in Syria, has resigned citing health reasons.”

John Kerry, U.S. Military Clash on Approach to Syria's RebelsAdam Entous and Julien Barnes write: “The newest fault line is over a menu of options backed by the State Department that range from military strikes to a revamped plan to use special-operations forces to covertly train moderate Syrian rebels in Jordan and possibly another country in the region. That would supplement a limited program run by the Central Intelligence Agency.”

Warily, Jordan Assists Rebels in Syrian War“When rebels want to return to Syria to fight, Jordan’s intelligence services give them specific times to cross its border. When the rebels need weapons, they make their request at an “operations room” in Amman staffed by agents from Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United States”, reports Ben Hubbard.

Bashar al-Assad: a costly card for Iran? Majid Rafizadeh claims that “while Iranian leaders continue to support Assad’s government economically, Iran’s domestic economy has inflicted itself with high levels of inflation”

PLO Official: Al-Qaeda To Target Lebanese Christians Jamie Dettmer reports that “Mahmoud Abdul-Hamid Issa, the former top security official for the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) in Lebanon, says the camps are at “boiling point”, including Ain el-Hilweh” 

The Refugee Crisis

Assessment of the Impact of Syrian Refugees in Lebanon and their Employment Profile A report by the International Labor Organization “finds that low wages, high unemployment and lack of labour market regulation pose serious challenges to livelihoods for both residents and refugees in host communities”

The Refugee Children Forced to WorkMuhannad Nader for The Syrian Observer explains how children are used to help support their family financially.

Syria’s Lost Generation Khaled Hosseini writes a passionate account of his encounter with Syrians in an Erbil refugee camp.

Iraqi refugees in Syria: Between a rock and a hard placeYazan al-Saadi writes a useful piece on the lives of the Iraqi refugees who arrived during the war in Iraq.

The bullying of Mohammed Kharouki: Lebanese racism in its crudest form Firas Abou-Mosleh on the bullying of Syrians in Lebanese schools. 

Fears that Regime Sleeper Cells Return to Zaatari After Riot According to Al-Hayat, “there are fears the camp has been infiltrated by agents working for the Syrian regime” (translation by the Syrian Observer). 

Syria Narratives 

The Assad Regime: Winning on PointsYezid Sayigh concludes: “The Assad regime has survived through brutal resilience in wartime. But it will prove fatally brittle in the aftermath.”

A Melancholy Perspective on SyriaYazid Sayigh argues that “the democratic revolution remains a reality for which many Syrians continue to struggle. Yet, any new potential might not be able to materialize until the existing political opposition and armed rebellion have lost the battle. This is a melancholy perspective indeed. But the time when Assad might have been defeated by a truly inept opposition leadership and fragmented rebel movement has passed.”

The Strands of the Military Opposition in Syria: An Interview with Yasser Munif (Part 2) In Part II, Yasser addresses the remaining divisions of the military opposition, with focus on Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS and the battles between them. He also addresses the implications of these battles and the deleterious effects of both “jihadism” and internal conflicts within the opposition.

Seeing the women in revolutionary Syria Razan Ghazzawi narrows in on the role of women since the beginning of the uprising.

Alternative Left Perspectives on Syria“Here, collected in one place, are some of the key texts of this dissident left camp. Emphasis on some of the key texts – this list is by no means exhaustive. It’s limited to English-language sources.”

The Fighting in Abu Kamal (Albukamal): Background and Analysis“Maps put out in mainstream media outlets (e.g. the BBC) have frequently color-coded Abu Kamal as an ISIS stronghold. As demonstrated previously, this characterization is highly inaccurate. One need not repeat at length what has already written, but to recap for convenience: the town itself is controlled by six different factions,” explain Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi and Cedric Labrousse.

The one certainty about Syria's looming election – Assad will winMartin Chulov explains how “Bashar al-Assad's real opponents won't be able to stand as candidates, and more than half the population won't be eligible to vote”

Syria's political opposition urges U.S. action after Aleppo 'genocide'“The assault on the city intensified in December with the Syrian military hitting civilian areas with scores of barrel bombs - oil drums packed with explosives and shrapnel - drawing international condemnation but no decisive action.”

The roots and grassroots of the Syrian revolution (Part 2 of 4)Joseph Daher “dispels the myths used by the Syrian regime to legitimise itself. Is anything left of the regime's rhetoric of socialism, secularism and anti-imperialism?”

Containing the security threat Tony Badran examines Hezbollah’s agenda in Syria and its impacts on Lebanon.

All Quiet on the Western Front?“Assad's advances in Qalamoun could improve Lebanon's security situation,” according to Asharq al-Awsat (translated by the Syrian Observer).

Yarmouk Camp: Another Home Lost for Palestinians Yahya Alous explains why it was “impossible for the Palestinian factions to remain neutral in the Syrian conflict”

Opinion: The Battle for the Coast Michel Kilo writes: “victory cannot and should not be in the coastal region. The struggle against the regime should also go through two stages. First, the battle should spread to the rest of Syria in order to undermine the regime’s ability to continue fighting. Doing so would protect the coastal region from the regime’s evil policies. Second, the people of the coastal regions should have a role in the struggle against the regime, and when signs of its collapse appear, they will be enough to convince its supporters to abandon it.”

Seyda: Opposition Lacks Political Vision, Favoritism Rife“In an interview, Abdul Basset Seyda, a member of the political committee of the Syrian National Coalition criticizes the opposition for not being able to draw a political vision for the revolution”

“Who Was Hilal al-Assad?” By Mohammad D., who profiles a member of the Assad family killed in battle last month.

The Desert Falcons: An Elite Pro-Assad ForceAymenn Al-Tamimi comments on the emergence of this new force on the Assad side (on Joshua Landis’ Syria Comment blog)

Chemical Attacks

Poison Gas Claims Complicate Syrian Civil War“Both sides in Syria's bloody civil war said Saturday that a rural village fell victim to a poison gas attack, an assault that reportedly injured scores of people amid an ongoing international effort to rid the country of chemical weapons.”

The Red Line and the Rat LineSeymour Hersh accuses Turkey of helping the Syrian rebels in conducting the sarin attacks last August. 

Syria Special: There is No Chemical Weapons Conspiracy — Dissecting Hersh’s “Exclusive” on Insurgents Once More Scott Lucas from EA Worldview responds to those allegations.

Seymour Hersh's Volcano Problem Eliott Higgins, on his Brown Moses blog, writes: “Seymour Hersh fails to address how eight to twelve 2 meter long perfect copies of Volcano rockets were produced and transported from Turkey to Damascus, along with hundreds of litres of Sarin precursors, and the required equipment to mix it and pour it into the warheads.  When accusing the Turkish government of participating in a horrific chemical attack as the pretext to invading Syria, these sort of details aren't something that can just be hand-waved with "well, they could do anything if they put their mind to it", as some commentators have attempted.”

Armenians 

Syria: Kessab's battle and Armenians' history Vicken Cheterian explains how “the takeover by anti-Damascus rebels of an Armenian village in northern Syria, near the border with Turkey, has triggered a propaganda war which focuses on the position of Syria's Armenians. This highlights core aspects of Armenians' experience since the 1915 genocide.”

Kasab vs. #Kessab, and propaganda on Syria’s coast Marlin Dick addresses the misinformed social media campaigns surrounding the events in Kessab. 

Jihadi conversation

Jihadist infighting in Syria is 'sedition': Zawahiri“Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri has told rival jihadists in Syria to accept independent Islamic arbitration to end three months of infighting, saying in an audio message Friday the violence is ‘sedition’.”

One Year of Jihadi Civil War Aron Lund suggests a brief  overview

The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria: a ‘centrist’ jihad? Raphael Lefevre “provides an overview of the group's history, before moving on to analyze its military influence in the current Syrian crisis”

The Mujahidden Army of AleppoAron Lund provides an overview of the group and its various forces.

Inside Syria

Syria army launches assault in besieged Homs “Syrian army troops backed by pro-regime militiamen entered rebel-held neighborhoods of the central city of Homs on Tuesday after laying siege to the districts for nearly two years.”

Syrian forces retake Maaloula: official“Syrian forces retook the ancient Christian hamlet of Maaloula in Damascus province on Monday, four months after mainly Islamist rebels overran it, a security official told AFP.” 

On the Syrian Revolution and the Kurdish Issue Joseph Daher interviews Kurdish-Syrian activist Shiar Nayo (the interview was translated into English by Saroujah Sakran) 

In A Syrian Neighbourhood, Rocket Fire Becomes The New Normal Marcell Shehwaro’s account of daily life in Aleppo: “For us, it was just a normal day of living with explosives. My friend corrects me: this time it wasn't explosives, but rockets. Please accept my apology for the error: it was just a normal day with rockets.”

Long a Survivor in Syria, a Dutch Priest Is Slain Anne Barnard profiles Rev. Frans van der Lugt and the circumstances surrounding his murder last week.

A journey through Syria’s Daraa Firas Choufi drives through the Syrian province and reports that “although most of the Daraa governorate is under the control of various armed groups, the army controls around 60 percent of the city of Daraa. Out of 135 cities, villages, and towns in the governorate, the army controls 30 directly and 10 indirectly, meaning that the army can stop militants from seizing them.”

Regime Missiles Cause Massacre in Crowded Market in Douma“The strikes hit a crowded market packed with mostly women and children,” reports the Syrian Observer.

Tartus in the Present Crisis: A Mirror of the Syrian Regime Kheder  Khaddour asks: “How much has the city evolved and in what ways during the current crisis? Why is the image of a quiet and unified city important for the regime of President Bashar al-Asad and how should this be interpreted? What is particular about the outlook and attitude of residents of Tartus?”

Abu Mariam Activist Wael Ibrahim was allegedly killed in an ISIS prison last week.

Islamic law comes to rebel-held Syria For more about Ibrahim, Liz Sly wrote about him last year, while reporting about the growing influence Islam had amongst rebel ranks

The Latakia Front: An Interview on the Rebel Side Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi translates an interview from “Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, a division of the Moroccan muhajireen group Harakat Sham al-Islam, which has played an important role in the ongoing rebel offensive on Latakia”

Opposition and Regime Forces Split Idlib Province after ISIS Withdrawal According to the Damascus Bureau “Currently, anti-ISIS armed opposition factions are spread out around Idlib, while regime forces still control important cities and strategic locations”

Jihadi Group ISIS Publicly Torched Cigarettes and Booze in Syriareports Vice  

Activist: ‘Quneitra’s Revolutionaries Have Met the Call of Latakia’ 

In Barzeh, ‘Siege Left Rebels With No Choice But to Accept Reconciliation’ Syria Direct speaks with “Waseem Mahmoud, a 25-year-old opposition activist based in Barzeh. He tells Syria Direct’s Firas Abd that Barzeh’s truce has held ‘because of the long planning that went into it.’”

An Interview with the Head of the Elected Local Council in Douma Soua Khibyeh says “the election of a local council in Douma, in the Ghouta suburb of Damascus, is a pioneering experience, although it follows previous failures”

Relative Calm in Parts of Syria Is Deceptivesays Anne Barnard, reporting from Damascus.

In Damascus, Everyone Comes to the Zeriab Cafe Joshua Hersh meets with Bernar Jomaa, whose coffee shop offers a sheltering environment away from the war.

Syrian government blocking aid to millions of refugees Lama Fakih reports from Bab al Salam camp in Syria.

Arts and Social Media

1915 Bidayyat releases a new short film by Gerard Agabashia, in which he “tells the story of the Syrian-Armenian opera singer Kevork who fled to Lebanon to find a safe place in this difficult and painful time, trying to smile in spite of all the sadness. “From Armenia to Syria to Lebanon, the road is full of obstacles, but we’re going to continue our journey until everything becomes the way it should be" says the young film director. 

Khalid Khalifa: Staying in Syria Gives me CourageAliaa al-Atassi speaks with this Syrian author who shares his views about the revolution. 

Fighting in Syria sparks new cultural scene in Damascus according to Syrian scriptwriter Rami Kousa 

Syrian Artists Set Guinness Record By Building World's Largest Mural Out Of Recycled Goods (PHOTOS)

Syria: Stupid management of state-run media and censoring of useful media A piece by Ibrahim al Amin -translated from Arabic- in which he strongly critizes Syria state media.

The Syrian filmmakers aiming to change your view of the war A profile of Charif Kiwan and the collective of Syrian filmmakers called Abounaddara. 

Abounaddara’s page

Adunis, Mistranslated (Part One) Sinan Antoon reviews Khaled Mattawa’s translation of Adunis’ poetry writing “a serious conversation about the criteria and methods by which literary translations from Arabic are evaluated in the Anglophone world is long overdue.”

Syria Bans al-Manar, Al-Mayadeen“Within opposition circles, the ban on the pro-regime channels is more about them promoting Iran and Hezbollah’s victories at the expense of the regime.”

Surviving Syria's Civil War With Heavy Metal Daniel J. Gerstle profiles Monzer Darwish, who spent the last year filming a rockumentary in Syria.

A call for autonomous media Lara Bitar writes: “Through Syria, the Arab media landscape finally dropped what remained of its façade of engagement in ethical journalism.”

The People Want to Bring Down the Regime An online issue from Rote Fabrik about Art in the Revolution, Women in Syria, Watching Syria’s War and O.T. 

Health

Drastic Shortage of Psychiatrists Amid Substantial Surge in Number of Patients“Dr. Mohammad Ramadan Mahfouri, the director of the psychological health program at the Health Ministry, says that the number of psychiatrists in public and private sectors in Syria has dropped from 70 before the crisis to around 35 psychiatrists today, only 20 of whom work in the public sector, while the rest work in private clinics.”

The Risks of Pathologizing Syrian Refugees: Towards a Collective Social Suffering Approach Hala Kerbage writes: “The health conditions of displaced Syrians in Lebanon seem to be deteriorating and to pose risks to the health of the host community, while threatening to overwhelm the host country’s national health system.” 

800 dead from hunger, illness inside besieged Aleppo prison“At least 800 prisoners, trapped in a Syrian jail for more than a year as army officers inside and surrounding rebels battle, have died as a result of starvation and illness, according to a former prisoner, a current prisoner and an organization documenting the prison’s conditions,” reports Dania Akkad

Report: Syria’s Disabled Refugees Find Themselves Doubly Victimized 

Policy and Reports

Hezbollah in Syria The Institute for the Study of War published a report on Hezbollah’s involvement in Syria since the beginning of the war. 

Month-by-Month Summary of Developments in Syria (Updated) International Crisis Group’s April update. 

Patrick Seale, Syria specialist and former Observer correspondent, dies aged 83

Open Wounds: Torture and Ill-Treatment in the Syrian Arab Republic A report by OHCHR published on 14 April, 2014. 

Economy and Agriculture

Syria's Drought and the Rise of a War Economy Omar Dahi says “these changes imply a bleak future for the Syrian countryside and suggest that the millions who have been displaced from the rural areas may never return there.

Syria’s War Economy In this policy brief, Jihad Yazigi “argues that against the backdrop of armed conflict we see the spread of a war economy, which both feeds directly off the violence and incentivises continued fighting.” 

Will Drought Worsen the Impact of Conflict on Food Insecurity? A report by the World Food Programme 

The economic consequences of the conflict in Syria Ella Wind and Omar Dahi argue that “a lack of political liberalization and accountability contributed to the Syrian uprising, which has been followed by a dramatic decline in the country’s economy as violence has intensified. Syria’s fragmentation has also given rise to warlordism and local economies based on theft and smuggling”

PM Says Economic, Trade Ties With China to be Bolstered

Expert Explains Regime Economic Survival Strategies Samir “Seifan said that regime has used many methods to achieve this, including observation and control of exchange offices to prevent manipulation of exchange prices. This has extended to arresting people working in currency exchange and closing the non-abiding offices.”

Climate Change-Fueled Droughts Are About to Make Syria Even More Hellish“The tragic thing is, the drought season is likely to be worse, not better, by the time the conflict is finally resolved” writes Brian Merchant.

Resources

Syrian Refugees Information System (SRIS)“The Syrian Refugees Information System is information and data hub concerning the conditions and interventions related to Syrian refugees in Lebanon.”

Events

LA Event--The Political Economy of the Syrian Uprising: Whither the Business Class? (2pm, 8 April, UCLA)A lecture by Bassam Haddad 

Arabic

النساءوالثورةالسورية
Razab Ghazzawi provides a glimpse on the role of women in the Syrian revolution. 

أوقفواإرهابكمعنالجامعاتالسورية
Maataz Hisso criticizes the targeting of educational institutions by the “terrorist jihadist takfiris”... while forgetting to mention the regime’s attacks on the university campuses in Damascus and Aleppo.

حروبالآخرينفيسوريا
Sleiman Taqi Addin on what he decribes as a pseudo-civil war which intersects with proxy wars that have “destroyed the Syrian social fabric.”

سياسةأميركاوروسيابينكييفودمشق
Mohammad Sayyed Rasas on Russian politics and its politicies in Kiev and Damascus.   

الوقتالضائع؟
Samir al-Aitah argues that Syria today faces a phase of “time wasted” since, according to his views, no military or political solution is in the horizons for Syria.

الفيلمالوثائقي: حكاياتمنشرقالعاصمة
Al-Arabiya features a documentary entitled “Stories from the East of the Capital” which recounts the stories of the families living and working in “Al-Mash-ham”, the place where bodies are prepared for burial in Joubar, East of the capital.    

سورياتحتاج 30 سنةلاستعادةاقتصادها.. بعدوقفالحرب
Al-Arabiya discusses a UN report that says that Syria would need 30 years after the end of the war to restore it economy.

النقدوالتنويرفيالفضاءالعربيالمقهور
Al-Quds al-Arabi on the importance of criticism and critical thinking on events and situations.  

مآلاتالنزفالبطيء: وداعاً سوريةدولةمركزية
Ibrahim Hmeidi is pessimistic about the development of events regarding Syria and the Western and international politics towards the issue.

الغوطةالشرقيةبينهجومالجيشوخياراتالمسلحين
Tareq al-Abed on the fighting in Eastern Ghouta. 

!أنتَمعروسياأممعأميريكا , و ... للنّاسفيما"يثورون" مذاهِب
Someone from inside Syria critically assesses the current situation and the “opposition” strategies for Syria.

(2) الثورةالسوريةوالنساء
Joseph Daher interviews a female Syrian activist and rescue worker to discuss her role in the Syrian revolution.  

سورياوالقرم... وحدةالصراعوالمصير
Ahmad Fakher on events in Crimea and Syria and the connection between them.  

الإسلاميونومفهومالدولة
Hussein al-Awdat on Islamists and their idea of the “state.”

سورياالىأين؟
Ali Abdallah wonders where Syria is headed.  

"خدعة"أصدقاءسوريا
Omar Qaddour on the illusion of “friends of Syria.” 

السوريون.. أكثرالشعوبحزناً
Haifa Bitar recounts the sad stories from Kassab and the Latakia region and says that “Syrians are the saddest people.” 

الأبفرانسس.. السلاملروحك
Video tribute to Father Frans who was shot dead in Homs.

[This is a roundup of news articles and other materials circulating on Occupation, Intervention and Law and reflects a wide variety of opinions. It does not reflect the views of the O.I.L. Page Editors or of Jadaliyya. You may send your own recommendations for inclusion in each biweekly roundup to OIL@jadaliyya.com by Monday night of every other week.] 

Israel-Palestine Peace Talks

Israel Appropriates Land in West Bank, Jeffrey Heller
Israeli newspaper Haaretz reports the Israeli Defence Ministry has declared 250 acres of land south of Jerusalem "state land."

Israeli Coalition Partner Threatens to Quit over Peace Talks, Ari Rabinovitch
Israeli Economy Minister Naftali has threatened to leave the government if Israel releases more Palestinian prisoners in hopes of salvaging peace talks with the Palestinian Authority.

Can We Trust What Israeli Leaders Say on Iran?, Ali Gharib
Gharib questions remarks made by Israeli President Shimon Peres accusing Iran of refusing to cooperate with agreements to curb its nuclear activities.

"Not a Single Person in This Rom Would Accept Living as Palestinians Do, Generation after Generation," Philip Weiss
Weiss reports on a debate over Israeli-Palestinian peace efforts between Peter Beinart and Hussein Ibish, held at Columbia University.

Armed Conflict

Warily, Lebanon Tackles Violent Spillover from Syria, Alexander Dziadosz
Reuters reports on the spread of Syrian armed and political conflict into Lebanon.

Car Bombs in Baghdad, Iraqi Town Kill 34 People, Qassim Abdul-Zahra
Car bombs in mostly Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad have killed thirty-four in an attack bearing a resemblance to those carried out by Sunni insurgents,The Miami Herald reports.

A Summary of Friday's Decision in al-Aulaqi v. Panetta, Matt Danzer
Danzer summarizes the US District Court for the District of Columbia decision to dismiss a lawsuit against a number of US government officials brought by the family of Anwar al-Aulaqi and his son Abdulrahman, both killed by US drone strikes in 2011.

Artists Install Massive Poster of Child's Face in Pakistan Field to Shame Drone Operators, Tom Boggioni
Responding to a drone operator description of strike victims as resembling "bug splats," an artist collective in Pakistan has installed a large poster of a child orphaned by a drone strike in a field of a heavily bombed area.

Timeline: Al-Aqsa Mosque, Dalia Hatuqa, Mohsin Ali
Al Jazeera English provides an overview of the history of the al-Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem in light of an Israeli police raid of the mosque on 13 April.

Law

UN Rights Chief Blames Most Crimes on Syrian Government, Associated Press
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay has advocated bringing the abuses of both Syrian President Bashar Assad and opposition groups in Syria before the International Criminal Court while noting that the former outweighs the latter in cruelty and magnitude.

Israel Places Journalist in Incommunicado Detention, Ali Abunimah
Israel has arrested and detained Palestinian citizen of Israel and journalist Majd Kayyal for "unlawful travel to Arab countries" and "contact with a foreign agent," reports Abunimah.

When Will We Put a Stop to Shaker Aamer's Horrific Guantanamo Deal?, Clive Stafford Smith
Writing for The Guardian's "Comment is Free," Smith advocates for securing the release of Guantanamo detainee Shaker Aamer, noting the PTSD of Aamer as a result of the conditions of his detainment.

Can the US Legally Deny Iran's New UN Ambassador a Visa to New York? Nope, Julian Ku
Ku, writing for Opinio Juris, argues the United States has no legal basis to deny the Iranian ambassador to the UN a visa.

Partial Afghan Results Portend a Runoff as Fraud is Cited, Rod Nordland, Matthew Rosenberg
The New York Times covers the earliest reports of results from the presidential election in Afghanistan and a number of emerging legal disputes over election irregularities.

Iran

Iran's Oil Exports Surge Above West's Sanctions Cap: IEA, Ron Bousso, Timothy Gardner
The International Energy Agency estimates Iranian oil exports have surged past a cap of 1 million barrels per day agreed to by Iran and the P5+1 countries.

Iran Rejects Naming a New UN Diplomat after US Bars Islamic Republic's Choice a Visa, Associated Press
The United States has elected not to grant a visa to Hamid Aboutalebi, a diplomat chosen to represent Iran at the United Nations, despite a refusal on the part of Iran to withdraw the choice of Aboutalebi.

Conferences

International and Comparative Quarterly Annual Lecture 2014; 20 May 2014; British Institute of International and Comparative Law, Charles Clore House, 17 Russell Square, London WC1B 5JP; Register here. 
 

On Jadaliyya

Video -- US: Send Detainees Home to Yemen, Jadaliyya Reports

Good Faith or Good Tactics? How Some Anti-Divestment Groups Manipulate Public Discourse and Smear SJP, Omar Zahzah and Rahim Kurwa

The Sadness of Post-Militance: Some Reflections on Brown University’s 'New Directions in Palestine Studies' Conference, Faris Giacaman

ACRI Petitions High Court: Restore Water to East Jerusalem, Jadaliyya Reports

Journalists Under Fire in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory, Jadaliyya Reports

Press Release: University of Michigan Activists Respond to Divestment Resolution Vote, Jadaliyya Reports

Return Unifies Us: Global Day Of Action For And By Palestinian Refugees, Coordinators for the March 22 Day of Action on Return

The Next Round in Gaza, Jadaliyya Reports

غزة في أعمال الفنانة الفلسطينية رنا بشارة, Abdullah AlBayyari

Confronting the Human Rights Crises Left in the Wake of the Iraq War, Jadaliyya Reports

Lebanese Lawyers and the State: Dispute, Collusion, Cooperation?, Jadaliyya Reports

Structural Violence on Trial: BDS and the Movement to Resist Erasure, Noura Erakat

Call for Papers: Understanding Israeli Practices of Forced Displacement and Settler Colonialism in the OPT (Deadline: 1 May), Jadaliyya Reports

الحركة النسوية الفلسطينية بعد أوسلو: حصادٌ مرّ في تمكين الذات وفي تحرير الوطن, Islah Jad

Joint Statement: Palestinian NGOs in Israel Reject the "Sectarian Representation Law", Jadaliyya Reports

هل ما زال قطاع غزة محتلا؟ وما جدوى السؤال, Lisa Hajjar

Between Convenient Misreading and Mythology: The Iran Sanctions Regime and the Institutionalization of War, Sajjad Safaei

Valeska Huber, Channelling Mobilities: Migration and Globalisation in the Suez Canal Region and Beyond.Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013.

Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?

Valeska Huber (VH): The origins of this book lie in my general interest in the history of mobility, particularly as it connects to justice and equality. Does globalization—in the present day or historically—mean that everyone can move at an ever-quicker pace? I wanted to unpack this story for the period around 1900 by showing that of course not everyone travels with the same speed; instead, there are very different mobilities and many issues of regulation and “channeling“ at stake.

The Suez Canal is perfectly suited to study this abstract question. As an iconic location of the fastening networks of steamship transportation around 1900, it came to signify acceleration as well as slowdown—perhaps best visualized when the century-old caravan route between Cairo and Damascus was stopped short by the Canal and the steamships using it. Studying a location where different empires (the British, French, and Ottoman) interconnected with private companies and international organizations leads us to understand not only the perceptions and experiences of globalization, but also the attempts to regulate it.

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures does the book address?                

VH: This is a contribution to a new history of the Middle East in a global perspective. It addresses two important gaps in the history of globalization. As outlined above, we need to think of globalization as acceleration as well as deceleration, and how increasing mobility is perceived but also regulated. Second, Channelling Mobilities contributes to a social history of globalization that includes people and their experiences. Using Egyptian, British, and French archives, it thus contains the tales of numerous people on the move, ranging from high officials, troops, and tourists, to canal workers, coal heavers, and seamen, from camel riders and dhow skippers to Mecca pilgrims, stowaways, criminals, and many others.  

The chapters of the book follow different groups of people on the move and trace their experiences of this space, as well as the regulations they encounter. The first section explores the Canal as imperial infrastructure. Colonial officials and tourists turned the Canal into a boundary between Europe and Asia, where they reflected on their own passage between their countries of origin and the colonial world and undertook specific rites of passage, as well as frequently complaining about the slowness of transit. In travel narratives, letters, and postcards, they described the Suez Canal and the harbor town of Port Said as global localities par excellence. Soon named the Highway of Empire, the Canal also became a main military artery. Troops on their way to India or Indochina, for example, changed uniform, and empires tried to survey the global troop movements of their rivals.

As the third chapter of the book shows, the Suez Canal area was furthermore a magnet drawing workers of different kinds, and is thus perfectly suited to contribute to the thriving field of global labor history. Canal workers, coal heavers, and seamen looked for employment here and frequently went on strike.

The second section of the book looks at those forms of mobility branded “traditional” by contemporary observers, with three chapters focusing in turn on camel caravans and nomads, dhow skippers (particularly their connection with smuggling and slave trading), and Mecca pilgrims. When I researched these chapters, I discovered an interesting twist: as “traditional” and “modern” forms of mobility were juxtaposed, camel riders, dhow skippers, and Mecca pilgrims had to undergo new regulations and were often subject to international agreements and conventions. But these very mobilities also proved essential for the new control regimes, when camels were employed to patrol the Canal and dhows were used to look for possible slave traders in the Red Sea.

The final section investigates the Canal as a checkpoint: on the level of disease control, but also regarding the identification of fugitive criminals, prostitutes, and others. The Canal became a sluice gate in attempts to keep contagious diseases outside Europe, with elaborate mechanisms of passage in quarantine in order not to slow down those forms of mobility necessary for empires and their enterprises. Another form of mobility control was connected to information politics, with new international institutions created to pool intelligence on suspicious migrants. The last chapter explores these new forms of surveillance when looking at passport controls, “white slavery,” or the global hunt for fugitive criminals.

J: How does this book connect to and/or depart from your previous research?       

VH: This is my first book. It originated from my interest in the global history of disease and epidemics in the second half of the nineteenth century, which connected with mobility control in salient ways. The book still contains a chapter on the Suez Canal as a barrier in disease control aiming to contain contagious disease in Asia through quarantine and other measures, thus highlighting the role of the Suez Canal as a boundary between the continents.

J:Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

VH: By addressing broader questions regarding migration regimes and globalization and a more experiential history of speed and acceleration, I hope this book will be of interest to Middle Eastern historians, but also to global historians, as well as experts and policy makers from related fields who are intrigued by issues related to space, migration, and globalization. Those interested in the making of international rules and the intersection of different empires, which entered relationships of collaboration and competition, might benefit from learning about the Suez Canal case. As an empirical study in global history, I would like to see it widely used in courses on global history and the history of globalization.

J: What other projects are you working on now?

VH: I am still interested in acceleration and the multilayered consequences of technological change, and am continuing to write on Mecca pilgrims and international health organizations. In my larger work, I have moved from steamships and transport technologies to mass media, particularly film and radio, in the context of mass education.

J: The social scientific boundaries around "Middle East," "South Asia," and "Sub-Saharan Africa" are increasingly being challenged, with journals explicitly transgressing those boundaries and scholars reviving sub-regional conceptions such as the "Sahel" or "Indian Ocean." How does your book call upon us to think about the shifting borders and to problematize these social science categories?  

VH: The question of the construction of boundaries is at the heart of this book. How did the Canal function both as a connection and as a boundary or choke point, thus  structuring global space linking and separating Europe, Asia, and Africa? This boundary function could carry different meanings, ranging from an imperial relay station to a frontier of the “civilizing mission” or a checkpoint to trace criminals and microbes. Colonial officials and troops celebrated it through rites of passage, marking the entrance into the colonial realm; for stowaways or travelers without funds, it was often a terminus from which they were sent back. Workers knew of their bargaining power, threatening to block the Canal connection when they went on strike. The Canal became fashioned as a boundary between different forms of mobility, meaning those passing rapidly, such as troops, and those deemed as dangerous and submitted to increasing controls, such as Mecca pilgrims, for example. Imperial and international actors invested in disease control attempted to keep the Canal open while turning it into a barrier against microbes by controlling some forms of mobility much more tightly than others.

These different conceptualizations of the Suez Canal as connection and boundary help us to explore boundaries not only empirically, but also on a more theoretical level that transcends the spatial domain. Channelling Mobilities shows how global history projects allow us to connect different sub-disciplines of history, such as international, imperial, and social history.

Excerpts from Channelling Mobilities: Migration and Globalisation in the Suez Canal Region and Beyond

From Introduction: Mobility and its Limits

At a time of global connections, localities matter. On several occasions in 2008 and 2010, when deep-sea cables running through the Suez Canal were damaged, the internet connections of about seventy-five million people were disrupted: these cables carry most of the data traffic between Europe and the Middle and Far East. Even in an age of digital information transfers, physical spaces of transmission play a decisive part. In an interconnected and interdependent world, hubs and chokepoints are also crucial to understanding the ebbs and flows of natural resources. One might look at the example of those large shipping companies, for instance, who have decided to redirect their oil tankers from the Suez Canal to the much longer Cape of Good Hope route because of the fear of pirate attacks near the Horn of Africa or at commentators calling attention to the Suez Canal as a weak point in the West’s oil supply, which was under threat during the upheavals of early 2011 in Egypt.

The aim of this book is to study the Suez Canal as a nodal point and lynchpin of various forms of mobility during an earlier wave of global interconnection, showing that the history of globalization can best be understood by analyzing one specific—and specifically global—locality. After its opening in 1869, the Canal developed into a thoroughfare carrying not only information and goods but also individuals and their ideas. Rapidly, the desert strip of the isthmus became an important crossroads between Europe, Asia, and Africa, where the growing passenger traffic shuttling between, for example, Great Britain and India intersected with caravan routes and the circuits of dhows in the Red Sea.

Tensions between different forms of mobility became particularly tangible where the caravan route connecting Cairo and Damascus crossed the Suez Canal: at a location where camels had for centuries been the only mode of conveyance, they now had to wait for steamers to pass before they could be shuttled across the new Canal with the help of a float—a powerful symbol of the simultaneous acceleration and deceleration that was characteristic of this global junction. Travellers admired the image of gigantic steamships crossing the desert while associating the caravans with a bygone age. The supposed “backwardness” of caravans and other traditional forms of desert mobility, however, could not be judged so easily when it came to the emerging international control regimes: during epidemics, for instance, camel guards patrolling the Canal were essential in securing the strict prohibition of contact between the Canal and the surrounding desert. In countering the dangers connected with an acceleration that was otherwise so desirable, recourse to practices deemed traditional or “backward” was thus inevitable.

The simultaneity of steamship and camel in a single location encapsulates the gap in the scholarship that the present study sets out to fill. Mobility and acceleration are conventionally seen as central processes in shaping the history of globalization. The Suez Canal appears in the literature on global history and the history of globalization as soon as the “time-space compression” starting in the second half of the nineteenth century is mentioned. In works on imperial expansion, the Suez Canal is equally present. Yet the increasingly rapid mobility which the Suez Canal came to symbolize had two sides: on the one hand a modernizing force in the eyes of western observers, on the other a force that was difficult to control and which was connected with problems such as the worldwide propagation of disease or the movement of unruly individuals or groups. The period around 1900 was neither—as often implied—an era of unhampered acceleration, nor one of hardening borders and increasing controls. Rather it was characterized by the channeling of mobility, or to be more precise, the differentiation, regulation, and bureaucratization of different kinds of movement.

The maritime shortcut of the Suez Canal is perfectly suited to this revision of global history. It has become a symbol of the “shortening” of distances around 1900 and of the triumphant version of acceleration that stressed the transformation of a desert by means of modern technology. Yet it also highlighted the dangers and anxieties connected with this same acceleration. At this very location colonial traffic and troop transportation crossed the circuits of tourists, the journeys of pilgrims to Mecca, the trajectories of nomads and caravans, the work-related movements of seamen and coal heavers and the illicit passages of stowaways, smugglers, and microbes. This kaleidoscope of movement shows how, in the context of the technological innovations of the second half of the nineteenth century, mobility became a marker of Western modernity. But it also makes clear how certain forms of mobility were increasingly regulated and stigmatized. While acceleration is often taken for granted, multiple processes of exclusion and deceleration were in fact in play.

[…]

From Chapter One: Rites de passage and Perceptions of Global Space        

Whereas, as indicated, the Canal’s opening was widely celebrated for its unification of the globe, prompting wonder at the new ease and speed of European-Asian travel, getting between the two continents remained a considerable undertaking and brought the tension between acceleration and deceleration that the Canal came to represent to the fore. Contrary to all expectations, the passage through the Canal—a symbol for the speeding up of global traffic—was often resented as being terribly slow. Prince Friedrich Wilhelm had already found it rather boring and the painter Rodier, who had written so favorably about Port Said, considered it “not very picturesque.” Most travellers, in fact, experienced disillusion and weariness during the monotonous passage, despite the striking image they were offered of ships traversing the desert. Journalist Paul Bourde placed such feelings in a direct relationship with the experience of modernity, again denying any sense of the picturesque or colossal in relation to the Suez Canal. He felt that this grandeur became apparent when reading the statistics but not when physically experiencing the Canal journey, which was contrary to all expectation mediocre and disappointing. Bourde concluded that such deception was frequent with “large modern enterprises.”

Travelling in the other direction, Bhagvat Sinh Jee, the eighteen-year-old ruler of Gondal, one of the princely states of the Bombay Presidency, was happy to arrive at Aden and the Red Sea after a long Indian Ocean crossing during which—despite all comforts and luxuries—he and his company had felt like “prisoners confined within the wooden walls of the steamer.” In line with Bourde’s observation, he was himself disappointed with the Canal: although, he admitted, it was “one of the greatest monuments of modern engineering skill” he wished he had followed some of his co-passengers and taken the overland route from Suez for some sightseeing in Cairo and Giza and then the steamer from Alexandria to Brindisi to avoid the Canal, which “awfully disgusted” him. Despite this assessment, Sinh Jee did purchase some photographs for his album while in Port Said, which, he duly noted, as many had before him, “seems to be a sort of meeting place for all nations.”

Maintaining their admiration for the Canal as a technological achievement, Indian travellers however were frequently disappointed with it as a symbol of Western civilization. The newspaper editor and social reformer, Behramji Malabari, expressed his ambivalence in an especially vivid manner:

The Suez Canal is a splendid piece of work; but the passage through it is dreadfully slow. It becomes too monotonous as we drag our way painfully along. The wild and weird-looking country beyond, on both sides, interests me more than the immense feat of engineering before me. Whilst the steamer is crawling, you more than once realize the force of the expression—“Dull as ditch water.” It is seldom, indeed, one finds that phrase so vividly illustrated as in the Suez Canal.

Implicitly, Malabari underscored the Canal’s function as not only a connection between Asia and Europe but also a new boundary between Asia and Africa—a function that many Europeans neglected. He also stressed the slowness of the passage through what was one of the major accelerators of world traffic. In his preference for the Asian and African coasts of the European Canal, Malabari furthermore appeared to view not only its technological achievement but also its uniformity as somehow symbolic of Europe and European modes of controlling both nature and large parts of the world’s population.

If the portrayals of the opening ceremony often revealed an eagerness to distinguish the “modern” Canal from “oriental” or orientalized Egypt, in the travel literature of the following decades, the Canal was not so clearly separable from images associated with Egypt. The trip from Europe to Asia, and more specifically to India, evoked adventures reaching back to Columbus and Vasco da Gama. Often, however, both the Canal, symbol of progress, and the “encounter with the Orient” were disappointing to eastward travellers.

For those who undertook the journey more than once, the Suez Canal passage quickly became a routine associated with certain standard behaviors. The Canal represented the place where people and crews changed clothing to prepare for the Red Sea’s heat: in the language of British colonials, the tweed of the homicide gave way to the light linen of the Suez-cide and the hot broth served at eleven o’clock was replaced by ice and lemons. To relieve the boredom of the Canal passage, travellers often organized fancy dress parties with accessories purchased at Port Said’s Simon Arzt department store, mentioned above.

Eventually the steamer would of course reach either the Mediterranean or the Red Sea. Only very few assessed the Canal as positively as the missionary Pyjanmohana Chaudhuri, who travelled to Britain in 1881. In contrast to the usual complaints about the Canal’s monotony, Chaudhuri revealed himself to be highly impressed by the “sight of small but beautiful telegraph- stations surrounded by romantic gardens on the sandy coast...which separates Africa from Arabia”; as a Christian missionary, he was extremely interested in the biblical heritage of the land he was viewing. Strikingly, he noted not only the heat of the Red Sea—as many European travellers did—but also the “severe cold” of the Mediterranean, which he found difficult to endure. The Mediterranean marked the arrival in a new climate zone and in a new world, as Lala Baijnath briefiy noted, referring to the roughness of the passage between Port Said and Crete: “Leaving Port Said, you leave Asia behind; you are in European waters when you enter the Mediterranean.”

Eastward travellers now complemented the depiction of the disorderliness of Port Said, despite its straight streets, and the tediousness of the Canal passage with mention of the heat in the Red Sea. With its rough landscape and the rising temperatures, the Red Sea area—besides marking the arrival in a new world and a distancing from Europe—signaled, perhaps, that nature had not quite been overcome by technology. The steamer’s European passengers and crew changed into white suits, tropical helmets and the like, and sociabilities were reconfigured. By now, acquaintance with other Europeans on board would have become easier and “sports during the day & dances at night” commenced relieving the stiffness and monotony of European etiquette. Travellers started to lose their inhibitions and sleep on deck wearing pyjamas and covering themselves only with a sheet, as some descriptions noted in detail, and a general apathy took hold. At the same time, hierarchies between European and non-European passengers remained very tangible. The Bengali Hindu reformer, P. C. Mozoomdar, travelling to Britain in 1884, was given a very bad cabin and was avoided by everyone, “like a ghost let loose from another world.” He was left to listen to conversations of the colonial officials returning home, which all too often seemed to him to be absurd distortions of the realities in his country.

The changed atmosphere in the Red Sea is reflected in the account of John Russell Young, a travelling companion of Ulysses S. Grant (the former American president had embarked on a two-year trip around the world after the end of his second term), describing at length how both the ladies and the men changed dress once past the Canal and particularly pointing out the Indian-style helmets they bought in Suez. In order to “kill time,” the men wagered on not shaving until reaching home with anyone touching a razor having to pay the others a penalty. Young also described an intense fatigue that seemed to take over in the Red Sea: he tried to read some of the large amount of literature he had brought with him (including guidebooks but also encyclopaedias, almanacs and old newspapers) and follow the study plan he had laid out for himself between the different ports of call, yet he confessed that all his “useful books” had stayed in the cabin.

The passage from east to west also came to mark a personal transition for many travellers. Once past Suez, only a few passengers actually managed to work on board, with the companions of another politician, Paul Bert, who was on his way to take up the position of general resident of the French Republic in Annam and Tonkin in 1886, definitely represented an exception, with him and his entourage working during the entire passage. However, in line with the transformative aspect of the rite de passage, some colonial travellers found the passage especially conducive to reflecting upon their lives: the British officer Sir Francis Edward Younghusband used the passage between Port Said and Bombay to write about his “purpose in life,” deciding to reform himself and to quit the Indian administration.

A plethora of travelogues illustrate the Canal as a moment of personal reflection and of transition. What is more, voyagers in both directions also voiced a view of the Canal, not as a meeting point standing for global connections, but rather as an east–west border where differences between the worlds were in fact highlighted and not overcome. As the above-cited voices make clear, the concept of the Suez Canal as a global in-between space had two principal facets: first, the harbor town of Port Said especially brought differences between its variegated and transient population to the fore; secondly, the passage through the Canal and through the Red Sea served, as suggested, as a personal rite de passage between Europe and Asia and vice versa, often coupled with experiences of deceleration markedly contrasted with (and perhaps only created by) the expectations of acceleration that came with global travel.

[…]

From Chapter Seven: Contagious Mobility and the Filtering of Disease

In 1940 the French sociologist, geographer and political scientist André Siegfried expanded on the thoughts of Joseph Arthur de Gobineau and iterated the metaphor of Suez as the border between Europe and Asia. Yet he went beyond this familiar trope by referring to the Suez Canal as Europe’s sanitary boundary and as a bulwark against the intrusion of unwanted elements, identifying a new line of defense by recalibrating the scale of globally active dangerous migrants to the dimension of microbes:

When one arrives at Suez, writes Gobineau, the domain of the strange and peculiar is no longer far distant; it is right here that the Asian atmosphere begins. Asia is the continent of mystery, but also of contamination; it is a hearth of dirt and corruption. The occident has to defend itself incessantly against this contagion, which, in the form of the great epidemic diseases, will spread quickly all over Europe unless surveillance is constant and the guards are perfectly organized.

Three factors of this “European bulwark” are particularly noteworthy and will lead us through this chapter: the development of new institutions and new scientific methods and techniques (accompanying a growing belief in science); spatial arrangements such as the passage in quarantine, lazarettos, and cordons sanitaires, which established the Canal’s central position in the surveillance system referred to by Siegfried; and the division of travellers into distinct groups that received differential treatment.

The turn of the century witnessed a growing urge among empires to collect information about travellers. One major concern was to identify disease carriers, another to identify individuals on the move, which will form the main theme of Chapter Eight. The standardization of mobility and the increasing necessity to “know about” mobile subjects also raised the question of how far (geographically speaking) a state or an empire was responsible for its citizens and subjects. Disease as a global issue par excellence serves very well to clarify further the argument regarding acceleration and deceleration. From certain areas that were traditionally labelled as disease-ridden, the emphasis was shifted to specific groups and categories. In this chapter, the three analytic threads outlined in the introduction—acceleration and deceleration, rulemaking and rulebreaking, and the classification and categorization of mobilities—are thus woven together.

As seen in the preceding chapter, pilgrims were often held responsible for wider-ranging problems. In the specific case of the pilgrimage to Mecca, but also in other contexts, the region of the Suez Canal had a particular role as a sluice gate permitting individuals, but also potentially dangerous ideas and microbes, to be filtered and identified. In line with Siegfried’s perception, the Suez Canal after 1900 became not only a space of increasingly standardized transition, but also an area where—in contrast to the wide-open oceans and seas—it was possible to install specific inspection arrangements. In the narrow waterway, one could not only passively watch ships pass by, but also actively interfere with them. Apart from being a point of connection and comparison between different mobilities, the Canal came to function as a filter or semi-permeable membrane, simultaneously serving to keep traffic flowing and controlled.

Already in the 1870s and in connection with the danger that cholera epidemics posed to Europe, the Suez Canal became not only a symbol for the growing interconnectedness but also a point which had to be controlled to keep Europe free from the cholera. The question of how to make this global crossroads secure while keeping the “lifeline of Empire” open to commercially and politically significant modes of travel was essential. The case of the Mecca pilgrims thus highlights the new speed of mass movement, which created the perception that control was crucially needed but not easily achieved.

[Excerpted from Channelling Mobilities: Migration and Globalisation in the Suez Canal Region and Beyond, by Valeska Huber, by permission of the author. © 2013 Valeska Huber. For more information, or to purchase this book, click here.]

On the Road

An exhibition by Paul Ayoub Geday

January - February 2014

Mashrabia Gallery, Cairo

Paul Ayoub Geday is an Egyptian artist, filmmaker, and curator. In this recent solo exhibition, Geday completes a photography project he started eight years ago. The project, which documents his travels across Egypt, will culminate in a book to be published soon. While on the road, Geday has been stopping to photograph landscapes and architectural sites using techniques and styles inspired by the history of painting and cinema. In the interview below, he explains the development of the project and his selection of specific sites, as well as the different styles that have informed his work. 

- جنان
- نعم
- اتصلوا فيكي من السجن؟
- لأ ليش؟
- اتصلوا فينا وبلغونا أنه الزيارة بكرا ملغية
- مين اتصل؟ وينتا؟!
- من شوي حوالي الساعة 9:30 المسا اتصل واحد خبرني بكرا فش زيارة
- مين اللي اتصل سألته عن اسمه ووظيفته؟
- لأ حكى عربي وقالي بحكي باسم الإدارة
- طيب وشو قال كمان
- طوارىء!

محادثة كان من الممكن أن تكون عادية بين ناس عاديين لكنها لم تكن محادثة عادية، لناس غيير عاديين. ناس عاديون جعلهم واقع الأسر ناساً غير عاديين، يمرون في تجارب حياتية غريبة، الثابت فيها هو اللا ثابت. كل شيء ممكن أن يحدث. كل شيء غير متوقع ممكن أن يصبح متوقعاً، تماماً كأن يصلك اتصال الساعة التاسعة مساء من السجن يقول لك إن زيارة الغد ملغاة. هكذا دون مقدمات أو تفسير، محادثة قصيرة جداً لا تتعدى ثوان تحسم الأمر. محادثة كهذه تصدر حكماً أن الزيارة التي كان من المفروض أن تجري غداً بعد أسبوعين من الغياب ببساطة لن تتم، هذا معناه أسبوعان إضافيان دون لقاء، أي شهر من الزمن دون لقاء بين الأسير وعائلته.

كل شيء يتلخبط، المشاعر تتلخبط ، لا تعرف ماذا تشعر وما تحس. كل شيء ينقلب "فوقاني تحتاني"، لا أعرف ما أشعر وماذا يجب أن أشعر بهذه الحال. تجربتي مع الأسر ليست طويلة نسبياً، قرابة الأربع سنوات أمضاها زوجي خلف جدران السجن، مررنا خلالها بالعديد من الحوادث والأحداث، لكل شيء مرة أولى. وهذه هي المرة الأولى التي نجرب فيها معنى إلغاء الزيارة. أنا لا أعرف أصلاً ما يشعر هو به. أية مشاعر تراوده الآن؟ بماذا يفكر؟ كيف ممكن أن تمر عليه هذه التجربة وكيف من الممكن أن يكون رد فعله. الإلغاء ليس شخصياً بل جماعي. معنى هذا أن أمراً حدث جعل إدارة السجن تقرر أن تلغي زيارات الأهل. بالغالب هو إجراء عقابي على شيء قام به الأسرى واعتبرته الإدارة تمرداً أو خطراً أمنياً. لكن ماذا عسى الأمر أن يكون؟! 

مرت ببالي بعض التوقعات فأنا أعرف أن أخ أحد شهداء مخيم جنين، هو سجين في ذات السجن. هل ممكن أن يكون الأمر مرتبطاً برد فعل تضامني واحتجاجي قام به الأسرى؟ هل هو أمر آخر؟ عدم المعرفة قاتل. الشعور بالعجز بأنك غير قادر على التواصل مع داخل السجن. لماذا؟! لأن الأسرى السياسيين، من تسميهم إسرائيل لحاجاتها "أمنيين" ممنوعون من أية وسيلة اتصال مع العالم الخارجي، ليس فقط أن الزيارت محدودة لأقارب درجة أولى مرة كل أسبوعين، ليس فقط أن الزيارات تجرب من خلال زجاج حاجز يمنع كل إمكانية تواصل أو لمس جسدي، وأن المحادثة تتم من خلال سماعة هاتف مراقبة. اضف إلى ذلك، فإن الاتصال مع العالم الخارجي ممنوع. ليس كما هو الحال مع السجين الجنائي.

أفكار ومشاعر عديدة تراودني، تضطرني أن أترك أوراقي جانباً. كنت أجلس محاولة إنهاء بحث علي أن أسلمه بعد غد للكلية حيث أدرس المحاماة. وقد قاربت على إنهاء السنة الثانية من دراستي. والمحاماة لم تكن موضوعاً كنت قد فكرت به بالمرة قبل اعتقال أمير. إنه حاجة برزت بعد اعتقاله حيث بدأت أشعر بأهمية وحاجة لمعرفة القوانين والأنظمة ودراستها لتقوية المحاججات مع السجن في كل مرة نصل هناك ويكون نوعاً من أنواع المنع. كما في المرة التي رفضوا استلام الكتابين المسموح لنا كعائلة بإيصالهما وقالوا إنها الأوامر.

عندها وجدت نفسي أسأل الضابط المسؤول: 

- ما السبب؟

- لا أعرف. أوامر.

- من قرر؟

- الإدارة.

ووجدت نفسي أرد عليه بكل ثقة: هناك قرار وزاري يلزم بإعطاء كتب مرة بالشهر للأسير ومدير السجن لا يملك الصلاحية كي يلغي هذا الأمر. 

ارتبك الضابط ولم يعرف ماذا يرد وقال: أنا لا أعرف. فقلت وشعور الانتصار الأولي يرافقني : أرجو أن تنقل له أقوالي وإن احتاج أن أرسل له نسخة من ذلك، بإمكاني أن أفعل هذا.

في الزيارة التالية استلموا منا الكتب. 

أما الآن فمشاعر القلق تراودني. وضعت أوراقي جانباً ومعها وضعت مشاعري الملخبطة. هذه الزيارة أصلاً كانت غريبة من بدايتها حيث صادف أن لا أحد من أخوة أمير يستطيع مرافقتي بالزيارة وابنتي تدرس لامتحان وكان من المفروض أن أزور أمير لوحدي ولم أزره لوحدي من مدة طويلة لأنني دائماً أفضّل أن يزور معي باقي الأخوة كي يلتقي بهم. 

***

الزيارة التغت. لا زيارة يوم غد. هذا ما فهمته من المحادثة مع والد ميلاد. 

كان واضحاً من محادثتي مع والد ميلاد أنه لم ينتبه أن يسأل المتحدث عن وظيفته. أخذت منه رقم الهاتف. حاولت الاتصال، لا جواب.

أنا شخصياً لم أتلق أي اتصال فما معنى ذلك؟ هل الزيارات ممنوعة للجميع؟ وإن كان الأمر كذلك لماذا لم يتصلوا حتى الآن؟ ومن المتصل ولماذا الآن؟

كان غريباً هذا الاتصال عشية يوم السبت وهو يوم العطلة لدى اليهود. فما عسى أن يكون الأمر الذي جعلهم يكسرون "سبتهم" ويقومون بالاتصال وإلغاء الزيارة.

كان من الواضح لي أيضاً أن علي أن أترك مشاعري جانباً وأن اتصرف بسرعة ومسؤولية.

وتبدأ جولة اتصالات مني للعائلات محاولة استفسار إن تلقى أحدهم بلاغاً مشابهاً. 
حاولت الاتصال بالرقم المذكور. لم يكن هناك أي جواب. الهاتف يرن من الطرف الآخر لكن ما من جواب.
اتصلت بمحام صديق، تبين أنه خارج البلاد .
اتصلت بمحامي آخر فلم يرد. المحامي الثالث اتصل بالسجن فأكدوا له أن الأمر صحيح وأن زيارات الغد ملغاة.  لماذا؟ - طوارىء.
في هذا الوقت نجحت بنفسي بالاتصال بعائلتين سألتهما عن الأمر. إحدى العائلات من الجولان المحتل ويتم ترتيب زياراتهم عن طريق الصليب الأحمر. أخبرتني العائلة، أنهم لم يتلقوا أي اتصال لا من الصليب الأحمر ولا من السجن.

الثانية أنا نفسي نسيت أن أخاها نقل إلى سجن آخر من مدة، لكني كنت أريد أن أسألها من خبرتهم الطويلة الناجمة عن  سجن دام أكثر من 28 عاماً إن واجهوا شيئاً مشابهاً كأن يقوم عمال السجن بالاتصال بالعائلات وفي ساعة متأخر كهذه! اتصلت بعائلة من اللواتي يزرن السجن معنا وعادت وأكدت لي أنهم تلقوا اتصالات هم وعائلة أخرى، أي أن إدارة السجن تقوم بالاتصال بالعائلات. وأكدت لي أيضاً من تجربتها الطويلة مع أخيها أنه يحدث أحياناً إلغاء نتيجة أمور طارئة.  وسؤالي الذي لم نستطع كلتانا الإجابة عليه لماذا: ما عسى أن يكون الامر الطارىء؟!
خلال الاتصالات وصلتني رسالة على ”الواتس اب“ من سجين محرر من أسبوعين يطلب أن أوصل سلامي لأمير أثناء الزيارة غداً.
- بكرا ما في زيارة
- خير؟
- اتصلوا من السجن ولغوا، شو برايك ممكن يكون السبب؟
- انشا لله خير مع أنه الخبر مو خير

حاول أن يطمئنني برده لكنه أقلقني أكثر لأنه كان واضحاً أنه هو أيضا قلق.
مرت ساعة إضافية لم يصلني أي اتصال من السجن.عممت ملاحظة مني على الفيسبوك على صفحتي حول الأمر.

وبدأ حوار بين أسرى سابقين وعائلات على صفحتي. سألتني أخت أحد الأسرى التي من المفترض أن تزور أخاها يوم غد لكن مع أول مجموعة أي عليها أن تكون الساعة الثامنة هناك.

سألتني ماذا تفعل:

- هل في زيارة ولا لأ؟ يعني نروح بكرا ولا شو رأيك؟

- ما بقدر أقولك هذه المعلومات اللي عندي. لكن بالمحادثة مع المحامي أكدوا أنه ما في زيارات.

رغم أني كنت شبه متأكدة من إلغاء الزيارات كان صعباً علي أن اؤكد لها. من جهة أعرف معنى الصعوبة النفسية في الأمر وأيضاً لا أريد أن أقرر عنها. يعني كيف يكون الأمر لو قلت لها ما في زيارة وتبين لاحقاً أنها لم تذهب وكانت زيارة! 

لم يكن هناك الكثير كي أفعله ساعتها، كان واضحاً لي أني لن أجد إجابات ليلتها لتساؤلاتي ما عسى الامر أن يكون، ما وضع الشباب؟ هل هناك اقتحام ومواجهات؟ هل نقلوا أحداً من السجن؟ هل تعرض أحدهم للأذى؟! لم تكن عندي إجابات. تابعتُ الاتصال حتى ساعة متأخرة مع مؤسسات ومحامين لفحص إمكانيات التحرك السريع. ذهبت للنوم قرابة الثالثة والنصف صباحاً.

***

هذا اليوم كان يوماً مغايراً، بدأ مع خبر استشهاد 3 شباب من مخيم جنين وانتهى بإلغاء زيارة للسجن بسبب أمر طارئ غير معروف ما هو؟! ما هو أكيد، أن الغد سيكون أيضاً يوماً مغايراً، يوماً فلسطينياً بامتياز.

في الساعة الثامنة صباحاً رن جرس الهاتف في البيت، توقعت أنها مكالمة من السجن. المتحدثة في الطرف الآخر أكدت ما أعرفه: لا زيارات اليوم. وفقط عندما طلبت منها أن تعرف بنفسها ووظيفتها قالت: ضابطة الأسرى. وحول سؤالي عن السبب قالت: مشكلة بغرفة الزيارات. الأمر الذي عرفت لاحقاً من محامي الوزارة الذي زار السجن يوم الاثنين أنه غير صحيح وأن سبب إلغاء الزيارة كان إرجاع الأسرى وجبات طعام 3 أيام متتالية احتجاجاً على سياسات السجن وعدم تجاوب الإدارة مع جملة من مطالبهم. فقامت الإدارة عقاباً لهم بإلغاء الزيارات، وإلغاء ”الفورة“ – ساعة الخروج للساحة وجملة من الإجراءات الإضافية. 

وحين سألتها هل ستكون هناك زيارة بديلة أجابت: نعلمكم لاحقا. 

- متى؟

- خلال الأسبوع.

ولاحقاً علمتُ أيضاً أنه لن تكون زيارة بديلة وأن اللقاء القادم بعد أسبوعين.  شهر كامل من دون زيارات.  شهر من دون لقاء!!

Sitting in Engels—one among many of Neukölln's cosy, candlelit, hipster-friendly cafés—I read on a sticker the slogan: “Tah[r]ir, Taksim, Tempelhof: Das Feld gehört uns allen!” (Tahrir, Taksim, Tempelhof: The Field belongs to us all!). Tempelhof itself is a former airport located in former West Berlin, famous for its mythological role in the Berlin airlift during the Cold War. The airport was closed in 2008, but its vast runways and grass fields were re-opened to the public in 2010. People have adopted these as a space for outdoor sports, from kiting to cycling, while some skateboarders make best use of Tempelhof’s almost perfectly flat runways by attaching wind surf sails to their boards.

Indeed, the field provides the basis for re-workings of the relations between the material and the social, as exemplified by local urban ecological initiatives. The Stadtteilgarten Schillerkiez, for instance, consists of benches for humans, and beds for fruit and vegetables, each built predominantly from recycled materials. Tempelhof is also a site of further ecological significance, especially recognised as a significant home to a number of bee and bird species, including a local population of skylarks. Above all, Tempelhof provides a space for the city and its inhabitants to breathe.

[Die Linke sticker slogan, in poster form.  Used with permission from: http://turkish-posters-in-berlin.tumblr.com/]

Today, the future of Tempelhof is subject to uncertainty and contestation. “Tempelhofer Freiheit” (Tempelhof Freedom) consists of plans to develop the area around the runways into residential areas, with a grammar school planned to provide new schooling opportunities to Schillerkiez (an adjacent neighbourhood), and a new S-Bahn station on the southern edge expected to improve connections to other parts of the city. Plans have also evolved to develop the airport building into a cultural centre, intended to rival Paris' Centre Pompidou. Meanwhile, the “100% Tempelhofer Feld” initiative, a coalition of community-based networks of activists and supporters, leads the call for greater citizen participation in the planning process. Among their demands are the preservation of the field, and the withdrawal of current plans for redevelopment. A petition calling for a local municipal referendum on the plans, requiring 173,000 signatures (seven percent of the local electorate), was successful. The final vote will take place on 25 May 2014.

The “Tahrir, Taksim, Tempelhof” sticker itself was produced by the local Neukölln branch of Die Linke (The Left), a political party founded in 2007, as a merger of the successor to the former East German ruling party (the SED), and a breakaway from the Social Democratic Party (SPD). The sticker’s appeal to various currents, and sites of resistance to global capitalism resonates with a current strand in Marxist political thought, namely connecting urban struggles through their reference to apparently global processes, such as the commodification of social life, the privatisation of public space, and a lack of transparency or public participation at some level of the political or planning process. Slavoj Žižek, for instance, has drawn parallels between the political and economic emancipatory struggles in Greece and Turkey, and argued in favour of global networks of activists to tackle problems that were not, he argued, in their essence local. Noam Chomsky, meanwhile, has suggested that Gezi Park is “at the forefront of a worldwide struggle to reclaim the global commons.” “Tahrir, Taksim, Tempelhof” picks up where these analyses have left off.

“Tahrir, Taksim, Tempelhof” can be taken, therefore, as a provocation to rethink the similarities and differences as well as the connections between these sites, one located in Europe, another in the Middle East, and a third bridging the two. In Istanbul and Berlin, debates around gentrification, the cosmopolitan or “global” identity of the city, the built environment, urban ecology, and the future prospects of migrant or minority communities are among some of the obvious commonalities. But, what can we learn from this linkage, or from a closer comparison between these sites, and the emergent fields of contentious politics they have generated?

Tahrir: A Square Too Far?

In early 2011, diverse political currents assembled in Cairo's Tahrir Square, lead to the capitulation of Hosni Mubarak, after thirty years of ruling Egypt. Since then, during waves of upheaval against the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) and Mohammed Morsi regimes respectively, Tahrir has provided a locus for protesters to gather. Historically, the legacy of Anwar Sadat's infitah (opening up) has included the privatisation of space (for instance in the expansion of the number of gated communities), attempts to minimize trade union activism, and the heightening of security measures on the basis of Islamist threats. These were all factors that shaped the events of 2011 and since. The initial anti-government protests were connected to sustained governmental attempts to discipline the population, such as violent police interventions into the popular quarters of cities, the labelling of supposed non-conformists as baltagiyya (thugs), and the omnipresence of Mubarak's gaze from billboards. It is not surprising, then, that contesting public space has become central to a counter-politics in Egypt.[1]

As protests began in Istanbul’s Gezi Park in May 2013, comparisons were frequently drawn between Turkey and the earlier events in Egypt—some even labelled Gezi Park “Turkish Spring.” Yet, in making this connection, commentators failed to recognise the specificity of these sites. For many protesters in Istanbul, the significance of Gezi Park and Taksim Square themselves was central to their participation in the initial wave of protests and occupation. For example, environmentalist activists claimed that the Taksim Project threatened to destroy one of central Istanbul's last remaining green spaces. For Kemalists, the importance of Taksim Square to Atatürk's secularist legacy has not been lost over time. Trade unionists, socialists and even Anti-Capitalist Muslims can recall the importance of Taksim as a site of past struggles, for example at May Day demonstrations. Meanwhile, the Armenian group Nor Zartonk drew attention to the presence of an Armenian cemetery that had stood there for centuries before Gezi Park. Like Tempelhof, Taksim and Gezi were contested partly in reaction plans for their redevelopment. At least initially, the same cannot be said of Tahrir Square. What can we deduce from Die Linke’s linkage, then, beyond broad comparisons about widening economic inequality, and the place of public space within a counter-politics?

[Tempelhofer Park.  Image by author.]

Translating 'Das Feld'

The protests in Istanbul multiplied across other cities in Turkey, picking up on wider anger about police violence, corruption and a general lack of accountability, often attributed to Erdoğan’s majoritarian style of rule. Similarly, the message in Tahrir reverberated across Egypt, while the “Arab Spring” prompted further questions about the resonances between multiple sites of protest across the Middle East. The question of how political actions can spread both nationally and internationally, raised by the Arab Spring, and subsequently by protests across Turkey, returns us to the Die Linke sticker, which draws linkages between a number of struggles globally, perhaps intending for these to be seen as resistance to the same global forces.

But the caption “das Feld” (the field) could itself be interpreted, or indeed translated, differently: rather than refer to the actual physical spaces it mentions, it could refer to something more like the context, or political field, in which localized forms of political practice become possible and significant. This suggests the possibility of a comparative analysis of these complex and shifting political fields. For example, in Turkey, the history of Gezi Park generated the political field in which political action became meaningful to Kemalists, Anti-Capitalist Muslims, and Nor Zartonk, albeit in different ways. Moreover, each political grouping came with its own set of grievances, and memories of past struggles, but in turn learnt about and from one another. Football fans, subject to a history of police violence, used their experience to help other protesters deal with life on the front line, for example when faced with tear gas. LGBT and feminist activists made connections between Gezi and wider issues of discrimination and gender stereotyping in Turkey. Indeed, sociologist Zeynep Tufekci recorded how some football fans had initially chanted “Faggot Tayyip,” and LGBT activists challenged them to relieve their chants of homophobic language. Later, they chanted “Erdoğan is a sexist.”

Furthermore, the professional expertise of dissident lawyers, urban ecologists, archaeologists, engineers and architects was central to challenges to plans to redevelop Gezi and Taksim. For example, archaeologists drew attention to improper practice during the planning process, noting that there had been a lack of excavation. Archaeologist Sam Hardy has suggested that the absence of archaeologists employed by the municipal government on this occasion may have had something to do with the embarrassment that would have been caused to the government had the presence of the Armenian cemetery been made public. The Chamber of Architects and Engineers (TMMOB), meanwhile, were a central force in bringing a court injunction against the Ministry of Culture and Tourism in June 2013, in order to halt the Taksim Project.

Returning to Cairo, the film “Al-Midan” (The Square, 2013) has illustrated how over the course of numerous occupations of and struggles over Tahrir during the past three years, the square itself has both engendered various forms of contentious practice, and itself been contested by a range of actors. Egypt’s secular youth and Muslims Brothers were each able to channel their political marginalisation, and feelings of disempowerment through their occupation of the square, sometimes in conflict with one another. Ultras football fans, secular activists, artists and musicians filled the square with their banners, graffiti, songs and chants. Muslim Brothers, meanwhile, conducted mass prayers in the square. As such, the square emerged for each as central to a politics of spectacle, and of challenging established power. Recognizing the politicisation of Tahrir as at once an arena for specific demands, and a symbol of broader political frustration with the status quo, SCAF attempted to restrict the presence of potentially subversive political actors in the square. The military beautified the square following in one such crude attempt to depoliticize it, re-growing grass that had died, while telling protesters to go home.

One of the most moving and striking aspects of “Al-Midan” is how it captures the complex relationship between secular activists, and Muslim Brothers. On several occasions, for instance during attempts by Muslim Brothers to assemble their own critical mass in the square, the close friendships made during previous occupations are put into question by political differences or past affiliations. As such, the recent history of Tahrir has transformed the way in which it is relevant to politics for a range of actors, above all in complex negotiations around the variegated politics of difference in Egypt.

In general, Taksim and Tahrir’s multi-textured histories, both recent and distant, as well as that of the Turkish and Egyptian states respectively, have come to shape the kinds of practice that are relevant to an emancipatory politics, and in turn give meaning to them. Returning to Berlin, the peculiar mix of skateboarders, community ecologists, local activists, migrant communities, Die Linke, trendy cafés, and even the species of flora and fauna inhabiting the meadows has emerged in relation to the specific histories of the German state, Berlin, and Tempelhof. Each has its part to play in Tempelhof’s future.

A Field of Comparative Politics

During the Cold War, areas close to the Wall in West Berlin such as Kreuzberg and Neukölln were unattractive to well-off residents, and were inhabited by an influx of migrants from Turkey and the Middle East. Since the Wall fell, low rents and cost-of-living, by comparison to other the major cities in western Europe and the United States, have attracted a young, artistic diaspora from these countries. This is the backdrop to the current debate around Tempelhof's future. Despite controls, rent prices and demand for housing are moving upwards. But who, ask the supporters of “100% Tempelhofer Feld,” will be the beneficiaries of new, high-class apartments around the old runways, and a cultural centre likely to attract the attention of the city, if not the world?

This aspect is reminiscent of the Taksim Project, which targeted Taksim and Gezi as sites for urban renewal. The former was to undergo a pedestrianization project, while the latter was to be replaced by a shopping mall in the design of Ottoman barracks, which had formerly stood on the same site. In recent times, Istanbul’s inner city areas have been targeted as “derelict” or “obsolete,” and subject to renewal projects. Their populations—often including ethnic, racial and religious minorities—are forcibly removed,[2] while in their place there has been a proliferation of hotels, malls, and tourist attractions.

[Part of Tempelhofer Feld with the Stadtteilgarten Schillerkeiz (left of frame). Image by author.]

However, the differences between Tempelhof and Taksim are also made apparent by a focus on history and practice. While Turkey still struggles to reconcile present disputes about the democratic process with its past—military rule and intervention into government, tensions between secularism and political Islam, and exclusionary politics with respect to ethno-religious minorities—the use of a petition demanding a referendum in Berlin illustrates residents’ faith in at least some of the instruments of “direct democracy.” These more conventional democratic methods are quite different from the techniques used to challenge established power in Egypt and Turkey, which revolved around openly occupying public space and, in the latter case, legal challenges to the planning process.

For those of us concerned with urban struggles across the Middle East, Europe and around the world, where people seek to reclaim public space, and to foster an emancipatory politics, we could do worse than to focus on these historically complex and localised fields of political practice. In cases such as Turkey and Egypt, this means recognising that the struggles in Taksim and Tahrir had wider national and even, as Die Linke’s slogan attests to, transnational resonances. However, it also requires us to recognize how these sites articulate specific types of demands, often relating to the urban settings in which they are situated. The artists of Tahrir, the archaeologists of Taksim, and the allotment growers of Tempelhof are historically situated, and we should refrain from imagining their politics as necessarily part of the same project. While Die Linke’s slogan directs us to some similarities between recent political events in Istanbul, Cairo and Berlin, we must avoid the kind of reductive message that constantly reminds us “this is happening everywhere.” Conversely, “Tahrir, Taksim, Templehof: Das Feld gehört uns allen!” can be usefully read as offering a comparative mode of analysis that draws attention to differences in the political fields that both constitute and emerge anew from these three spaces.

-----------------------------------------
[1] On the history of trade union activism, see for instance Joel Beinin, “A Workers’ Social Movement on the Margin of the Global Neoliberal Order, Egypt 2004-2009,” in Social Movements, Mobilization, and Contestation in the Middle East and North Africa, edited by Joel Beinin & Frédéric Vairel (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011): 181-201.  On the 1990s real estate market, see Timothy Mitchell, “Dreamland: The Neoliberalism of your Desires,” Middle East Report 29, no.1 (1991), 28-33.  On policing in popular quarters, see Salwa Ismail, ”The Egyptian Revolution against the Police,” Social Research: An International Quarterly 79, no. 2 (2012), 435-62.  On ‘baltagiyya’, see Farha Ghannam, “Meanings and Feelings: Local Interpretations of the Use of Violence in the Egyptian Revolution,” American Ethnologist 39, no.1 (2012) 32-36.  On image politics, see Lina el-Khatib, Image Politics in the Middle East: The Role of the Visual in Political Struggle (London: IB Tauris, 2012).

[2] See, for example, T. Kuyucu & Ö. Ünsal, “‘Urban Transformation’ as State-Led Property Transfer: An Analysis of Two Cases of Urban Renewal in Istanbul,” Urban Studies 47, no. 7 (2010), 1479-99.

A Brechtian maxim: “Don’t start from the good old things but the bad new ones.” — Walter Benjamin, “Conversations with Brecht”[1]

You have no right to despise the present. — Charles Baudelaire, quoted in Michel Foucault, “What Is Enlightenment?”[2]

I was quite moved by Faris Giacaman’s recent article “The Sadness of Post-Militance: Some Reflections on Brown University’s ‘New Directions in Palestine Studies’ Conference.” For a young scholar to call into question the direction of Palestine Studies, focusing on a conference featuring some of the most prominent names in the field, takes no little courage. Beyond that, Giacaman’s larger call to remember the relationship between scholarship and militance, and between knowledge production and revolution, resonated strongly with me, as it no doubt did with many other readers. If, in what follows, I pose a few challenges to some of Giacaman’s premises and conclusions, it is intended in the spirit of moving forward with the larger project that he names as “militant research.” So these comments are intended in the spirit of collaboration and solidarity.

Giacaman’s review of the work presented at the Brown conference stresses the historic nature of this gathering of scholars working on the political economy of Palestine. At the same time, the “sadness” that he evokes in his title (borrowed in part from David Graeber’s observations on what he calls “post-workerism”) has, he writes, “almost nothing to do with the scholarly work of the individuals involved, and much more to do with the political moment in which we currently live.” His overall impression, gathered from the work presented at the conference and from the state of Palestine Studies more generally, is that “the period we are in represents a shift in knowledge-production on Palestine to an age of post-militants.” Against what he sees as the de-politicizing intellectual trends of our time, Giacaman issues a call for a new form of “militant scholarship,” a term that he takes from the work of the Colectivo Situaciones group in Argentina. For him, this means a return to Marxist categories of analysis, and a move away from what he declares to be “the types of postmodern, post Marxist lenses that are a part of the retreat from political engagement”; his sadness stems from his sense that these latter frameworks underwrite much of the contemporary work on Palestine (including work published on Jadaliyya).

I am not certain whether I am necessarily one of Giacaman’s intended interlocutors. I was not present at the Brown conference. I do not work on political economy, as it is generally understood, and certainly would never be mistaken for a political economist. I have written on Palestinian culture and politics, broadly defined, but I would not necessarily fit within the academic field identified as “Palestine Studies.” I have worked occasionally with, alongside, and in the service of activist groups and organizations in Palestine and within the larger Palestine solidarity movement, but I would not be able to comfortably describe myself as an activist or a militant, although my work aims to be in dialogue with the work of activists.

Above all, I might be considered outside the realm of Giacaman’s call because my work draws upon intellectual influences that he sees as part of a supposed “retreat from political engagement,” those “intellectual trends” he names as “Foucauldian biopolitics, postmodern criticism…[and] subaltern and postcolonial studies.” Indeed, a few days before Giacaman’s article was published, I argued for the continuing relevance of post-structuralist analysts like Foucault in helping us to formulate intellectual responses and political contributions to the ongoing revolutions of our time. I would like to think—indeed, it is my purpose here to argue—that the militant research Giacaman calls for has room both for a renewed materialist analysis of the kind that he champions and a continuation of the important forms of analysis developed by those post-structuralist and post-colonial thinkers that he proposes “to lay…to rest.” To be true to the complexity of our present political situation, we need all of this, and more.

Just to be clear: I have no intention of defending post-structuralism, postcolonialism, or any other “post” for its own sake. In the face of the struggle for justice in Palestine (and elsewhere), such academic jockeying is a matter of relatively little importance (which is not the same as suggesting that academic knowledge production itself does not matter). What is important, however, and where I do want to be in dialogue with Giacaman’s important arguments, are the ways we ground ourselves as intellectuals. Another way of describing this is the problem of how we engage with the present, in the form of the struggles for justice that are always ongoing. In other words, how do we, as scholars working in the service of the struggle for social change, orient ourselves towards the present, with an eye towards both the radical past that inspires us and the better future that we are seeking to create? It is in this context, reading his article, that I found myself haunted by the two quotes I cited as epigraphs: Walter Benjamin’s Brechtian call to begin not with the good old things but with the bad new ones, and Baudelaire’s injunction, taken up by Foucault, not to despise the present.

Looking back at the generation of intellectuals aligned with Shu’un Filastiniyya, Giacaman finds scholarly work attached expressly to the Palestinian revolution. Articles “explored questions of political strategy, tactics, and practice.” The authors of such articles “were also revolutionaries” and “their allegiance to academic institutions was secondary to their political commitments.” The role of such research “was expressly political,” he concludes. By contrast, looking at the work of the generation that followed, Giacaman diagnoses several different strands, all of which, he argues, “shared a deep skepticism of any ideology emphasizing conscious collective action, especially Marxism as a normative political project.”

Giacaman suggests that he might be accused of “romanticizing” the earlier generation of revolutionary scholarship, but I think he is quite accurate in his assessment. What is missing, however, is an equally historically grounded assessment of the work that followed—or, to put it in materialist terms, a truly conjunctural understanding of this work. Giacaman sums up the “postmodern trend” that he accuses of moving research away from its earlier political commitments as follows: “Collective political action is no longer a viable way forward, reality is far more complex, power is diffused, and the only way to subvert it is at the individual level.” I want to suggest a different genealogy of what he describes as the “post-militant” generation, a different set of intentions, and most important, a different set of conclusions. My intention is to expand our list of our “good old things”—which, in my telling, includes both Giacaman’s militant generation and the “post-militant” generation—so that we can better draw upon these influences for the more important work of struggling against the circumstances of our “bad new ones.” This involves a recasting of the body of work that is often brought together under the phrase “the cultural turn” (sometimes interchangeably described as “the discursive turn”), seen by Giacaman and others as a turn away from politics.

Let me tell the story a bit differently, beginning with the importance of the work of Antonio Gramsci for what Giacaman sees as the “post-militant” generation of intellectuals. In a recent review of Vivek Chibber’s Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital (a book that is a point of reference for Giacaman), Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak reminds us of the specific conjuncture from which Gramsci produced those prison writings that constitute his primary intellectual and political legacy. Gramsci’s writing on the subaltern classes—written, she reminds us, not from within an academic milieu, but from within “the very thick of things”—was quite literally “the last piece of writing Gramsci was engaged in when he was nabbed by the fascists.” At the center of Gramsci’s subsequent writing, which followed upon the work he had done as a leader of the Communist Party of Italy, was the question of what had gone wrong during the preceding decade: “Acknowledging that the General Strike of 1920 had not worked, he was now looking at the possibility of making long-term change.”[3] Gramsci’s focus upon spheres not ordinarily considered “political” in the traditional sense, including the fields of culture and education, was precisely part of this larger process of theorizing an expanded notion of political action that could prove more effective in carrying forward the struggle amidst the dark times in which he found himself literally imprisoned.

Let us now extend this point to a more global level (and I promise this will help return us to the question of Palestine). In the imperial intellectual centers (from which Gramsci rightly saw Italy as slightly removed), during the time period that Giacaman marks as beginning the era of “post-militance,” a new conjuncture, a new set of political contexts, and a new set of struggles gave rise, certainly, to forms of post-structuralist thought. But it also gave rise to new intellectual and political work in cultural studies, embodied by figures such as Raymond Williams, Stuart Hall, Hazel Carby, and Paul Gilroy. Through collaborative volumes such as The Empire Strikes Back, and through slow and painful struggles, such work began to recognize the centrality of race as an analytic and political category that could not simply be subsumed by class (perhaps the most famous formulation is Hall’s description of race as “the modality in which class is 'lived,' the medium through which class relations are experienced, the form in which it is appropriated and 'fought through'.”[4]) This conjuncture gave rise to Edward Said’s monumental Orientalism—a book whose framework owes as much to the work of Gramsci and Williams as it does to Foucault—and to a new set of struggles against a category that had thus been named and identified as a field of political action. It gave rise to the work of too many feminist and queer thinkers to even name here, who threw open new areas of intellectual inquiry and political action, fields of thought and action that had always existed but could now be gotten at through new forms of political struggle.

Clearly, none of this was work born of despair, or of the desire to move away from “politics” and towards some form of neo-liberal self-cultivation. In the struggle to create viable forms of militant scholarship in the face of our political present, our job is to continue to value, as both Giacaman and I do, the unsparing commitment of an earlier generation of militant scholars working in the service of projects such as the Palestinian revolution, and at the same time understand the work of the generation that has followed as coming very precisely in the wake of this earlier work. It is work that, at its best, follows Gramsci’s lead in looking back at the previous generation and asking the question of why things didn’t work out as they should have. It thus opens up new avenues, not only of intellectual inquiry, but also of political struggle.

Missing this point about forms of intellectual and political work too easily dismissed as “postmodern,” for those of us dedicated to the struggle for justice, self-determination, and a different future in Palestine, is also to miss the opportunities for comparative work—not just on the intellectual level, but also on the political level (although even rhetorically separating these levels is ultimately false, since the goal would be precisely to unite them). This is a point raised in interesting ways by several of those who have already commented on Giacaman’s article. I will simply note that these political and intellectual connections are being made every day at the level of practice, in the global movement for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions that has become one of the major political forces of our time.

But addressing this point regarding global connections also means addressing another aspect of our political present: the context through which one might (or might not) continue to think about “national revolutions” such as the Palestinian revolution that is Giacaman’s focal point. This is one more crucial place where, I would argue, a closer look at the “post-militant” generation whose work Giacaman sees as a detour to be avoided is certainly in order. He provides a list of events that he sees as encapsulating the stages of the “decline of the Palestinian revolution”: “from the defeat in Beirut, to exile in Tunis, to the first intifada’s failure, and Oslo’s advent.” This makes a certain historical sense. But we might pause in the moment between what he describes as “the first intifada’s failure” and that of “Oslo’s advent.” Certainly, one way that the first intifada could be described as a “failure” is the fact that it was followed by Oslo, with all that came in its wake. But I would argue that “Oslo’s advent” was hardly an inevitable outcome of the first intifada. Rather, it represents the rise of a particular form of nationalist leadership (or better said, a group of elites that presumes to assume national leadership without successfully obtaining an actual state) that Giacaman rightly describes as unaccountable, hierarchical, and elitist.

This means that an understanding of the Palestinian revolution of today would need to be quite different from that which guided Giacaman’s earlier generation of militant scholars. As compared to a national liberation struggle aimed solely at a colonizing power (together, of course, with all the international forces allied with and undergirding the Israeli occupation), today’s struggle continues to be against these colonizing forces but should be seen simultaneously as a struggle against those national elites who have consolidated their power and position (such as it is) precisely through their willingness to assume the role of “partners” in the Israeli occupation. This is the slow sad story of the “peace process.”

It is also the story, I would contend, that runs throughout the work of those postcolonial theorists who are too often accused of turning away from “real” politics, and who form part of Giacaman’s group of apparently “post-militants.” But running through the work of so many thinkers whose work has come to be grouped together as “postcolonialism,” from Frantz Fanon to the Subaltern Studies historians to the dependency theorists of Latin America, is the problem of how to think about politics in the light of this particular outcome of national revolutions. It is a state of affairs that could rightly (if perversely) be called “postcolonial,” if by this one means simply the crude sense of technical political independence as compared to direct colonial rule. Even in Palestine, one could, post-Oslo, make such a technical claim regarding the post-colonial state of limited autonomy rather than direct occupation, however laughable such a claim might look in considering the violent reality of colonial rule that represents the actual experience of life in Palestine. Faced with the sight of Abu Mazen meeting John Kerry as an example of the “change” wrought by Oslo, it is instructive to remember Fanon’s words regarding the “change” that post-colonialism brought to “independent” Gabon: “In fact the only change is that Monsieur M’ba is president of the Republic of Gabon, and he is the guest of the president of the French Republic.”[5]

Diagnosing this state of affairs as an outcome of the national revolutions of an earlier generation (not the necessary outcome, but one that nevertheless too often followed such struggles) is not the same as “a retreat from political engagement.” It is simply a clear-eyed attempt to analyze the present, in order to contribute to new forms of struggle against this new political reality. Certainly, the “post-Oslo” present of Palestine (like the “post-colonial” present of Gabon) has nothing to do with the vision of true decolonization for which that earlier revolutionary generation fought. The best work of postcolonial studies has involved the attempt, not only to predict and diagnose what went wrong, but to imagine and theorize what comes after the post-colonial—or, in the case of Palestine, what comes after Oslo. To take inspiration from the militant generation of scholars that Giacaman invokes makes perfect sense in this context. But to confuse this with the assumption that the particular political context, and the subsequent political struggles, of our generation will take the same form as it did for this earlier generation is to risk misapprehending the present. Our political present is not a fallen version of that past in which the militant generation carried out their work. It is rather the context within which we have the responsibility to imagine new forms of militancy.

I will end with this point, regarding the importance of the work of the imagination, as a final moment of dialogue with Giacaman’s argument that I would love to carry forward at further length. He notes in his conclusion that he “do[es] not advocate returning to a carbon copy of the intellectual climate created by the Palestinian revolution.” I want to be certain to acknowledge this point, as well as his further point that what he takes as his main source of inspiration from this earlier militant generation is “the marriage of knowledge-production with political action.” I am in total agreement with this. The next question is: What might politically-engaged knowledge production look like in our political present? He suggests that “one of the roles of academics should be to explore questions of organizational structure: that is, questions having to do with revolutionary practice.” I certainly would not disagree with this.

But there is an absence in Giacaman’s piece that is incredibly striking, and it has to do with his invocation of Elias Khoury, following upon Khoury’s intervention at the Brown conference. Khoury is presented to us as the editor of Shu’un Filastiniyya, as a member of that militant generation that Giacaman honors, and as an inspiration for militant research yet to come. He is of course all of these things. But absent here is Elias Khoury in the role through which many of us know him best: as one of the most important novelists of our time. As any reader of his work knows, Khoury’s fiction is deeply inspired by and connected to his work as a political militant, specifically at the service of the Palestinian revolution. But at the same time, like all great imaginative writing, its direct relationship to political struggle—one might say, more crudely, its immediate applicability to the revolution—is highly complex and mediated. To suggest this is not to step away from “real” politics; it is simply to move towards expanding our political vision.

So an admiration for Khoury’s work is one more thing that Giacaman and I share in our mutual dedication to a renewed form of militant scholarship. But in pushing Giacaman’s vision and conclusions a bit further, I suggest that we begin by bringing Khoury’s work with Shu’un Filastiniyyaand his work as a novelist together, under the category of “politically-engaged knowledge production.” This is to say, in short, that imaginative work is also political (just as political work is also imaginative). If we are to take just one lesson from Giacaman’s “post-militant/postmodern” generation, it might be this one. To forget the work of imaginative writing in presenting a vision of militant scholarship is to impoverish ourselves, at a time when we need every single one of what Raymond Williams called our “resources of hope.”

NOTES

[1] Walter Benjamin, “Conversations with Brecht,” trans. Anya Bostock, in Aesthetics and Politics (New York: Verso, 1998), 99.

[2] Michel Foucault, “What Is Enlightenment?” trans. Catherine Porter, in The Essential Works of Michel Foucault, Volume I: Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth, ed. Paul Rabinow (New York: The New Press, 1997), 310.

[3] Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Review of Vivek Chibber, Postcolonial Theory and the Specter of Capital,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 27 (2014): 193.

[4] Stuart Hall, “Race, Articulation, and Societies Structured in Dominance,” in Sociological Theories: Race and Colonialism (Paris: UNESCO, 1980), 341.

[5] Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox (New York: Grove, 2004), 28.

Spring has just landed in Lebanon. Its warmth and colors soothing the dried winter skin of the vast majority of Syrian refugees who resisted icy temperatures and freezing to death underneath thin canvas tents. Lebanon is now home to approximately one million Syrians, displaced from their war-ravaged cities and towns in Syria. Amid unfettered exploitations, Syrian families, forced to seek refuge in Lebanon, have fought a hostile season in a hostile environment that they mistook as neighborly.

During the reign of Alexa, a polar storm that hit Lebanon at the start of December 2013, while walking between a maze of tents in Arsal,  Amira grabbed my arm and said, “Sir, I need to have a word with you. You have to see my daughter. Please follow me to our tent.” Inside a two-by-two beige tent, bearing the blue sponsorship logo of disaster management specialist UNHCR, sitting on her heels, was Khadija. It was the day after the polar storm had receded, the sun was shining again over Arsal, home to over seventy thousand Syrian refugees. Inside sat Khadija wearing a black wool head cap; restless and shy as she huddled around the stove. “My daughter is suffering in here, her mental health rapidly deteriorating. She is starting to lose her hearing.” Amira then spoke in a lower tone, “My daughter Khadija is an autistic child.” Amira’s pointy mouse-face features, the sunburned, dry skin cracking on her cheeks and forehead, the long, sleepless nights visible in black rings under her eyes failed to hide how her pre-war beautiful features shone when smiled in embarrassment. Hesitantly, Amira explained, “I know it is not the most important case, as I was told before by journalists and the nations (UNHCR), but she is a special case and needs special attention beyond the Panadol pills she was given by the clinic.” Amira explained that Khadija was doing well at a convent back in Qusir. Before the Migg fighterjets shelled their neighborhood and shattered her peaceful world, “she used to walk to every day and spend her day there with other mentally challenged children.” Routine was essential to Khadija, as it is for many autistic children, and when the thunderous explosions shattered this they destabilized her already fragile world. Her mother feels helpless and lamented, “In Arsal no one wants to pay attention to Khadija, children make fun of her, and it has been one week since she stepped outside our tent.” Khadija, thirteen, finally warmed up and spoke, making evident her unstable memory and her increasing deafness. When asked about her age several times, she insisted, “I am seven.” Her failure to make eye contact and unwillingness to speak to me testified to her fear and uncertainty.

According to Arsal’s municipality, over 74,000 Syrian refugees have fled Syria in the last three years and settled in the village. It was only at the end of last summer that the Lebanese government allowed Syrians to establish camp sites. The one in Arsal, where Khadija and her mother have taken refuge, held up to seventy tents back in December. The number of Syrians packed in each tent varies. Some house up to twelve people, but in reality the two-by-two canvas tent, on a normal camping trip, is best for three people. “We sleep like sardines in a tin,” joked Khadija’s father Mohammad, fifty-four.

The increasing numbers of Syrian refugees in Arsal has created tensions with local Lebanese residents of the border village. On 12 January  2014 Syrians sheltering in Arsal woke up to read a statement calling for their eviction. The eviction notice said Syrians have forty-eight hours to return to where they came from. The municipality of Arsal dismissed the eviction threat and called it the work of agents provocateurs.  Following the last wave of Syrian refugees fleeing Yabrud to Arsal the municipality issued a curfew for Syrians. They are now not allowed on the streets from seven in the evening until nine nine in the morning and again from one until three in the afternoon.

Beneath Arsal the plains of Beq‘a  Valley, just ten minutes away from the Masna‘ border crossing, tents sprout from the snow-covered red earth in the town known as the gate of western Beq‘a, Marj. Shabby, flimsy tents, forty of them housing over one hundred families, sit behind a trash dump hidden from the eyes of motorists driving towards Damascus. On the arrival of visitors, Syrians crawl out from their tents. They smile and gather. Mothers’ desperate eyes instantly spot a notebook, and yell for other mothers "he is registering, go grab the kids”. Their shouts of “we need milk, diapers … we need …” points to an absence of adequate relief work. At Marj’s municipality, its chief, Nazim Yousif, was evacuating refugees out of the municipal building. Syrians, young and old, sought the warmth of the building’s indoors, sheltering from the four-degree temperature, while they awaited the distribution of tents. Yousif’s fury was evident as he barked in an authoritarian voice, “We are overwhelmed by all those Syrians; the Lebanese government is absent, not helping.” Inside the suffocating warmth of his office, grim faces of men sipped on coffee as Fairouz’s morning music played in the background.  Outside, Syrian elders continued to plea extensively about conditions they were suffering from, again interrupted by the arrival of one municipal guard snarling, “Journalists are not allowed to go to any of the camps and must stop talking to refugees, orders of the chief.” The testosterone-hyped guard then turned to the Syrians and dismissed them in a shout, “Go away, leave, no tents today.”

Umm Ahmad Awad, forty-eight, fled Ghouta near Damascus at the start of December, that day she shuttled between the camp and Marj municipality in a quest for a tent. Umm Ahmad, followed by her youngest son, Ahmad, a young boy with Downs Syndrome who hid behind his mother's black ‘abaya in front of Marj municipality, presently shares a tent with another Syrian family also from Ghouta. Her three daughters are staying across the street from the camp in an apartment with a Lebanese family. Umm Ahmad was not happy about this arrangement, “One of my daughters is feeling uncomfortable in the presence of the father of their host family.” Umm Ahmad refused to elaborate and said, “We are grateful that they offered to host my daughters, teenagers might be misunderstood by their host.” Umm Ahmad, a single mother, has been in a two-week-long struggle to find a tent to unite her family in. Her husband was unable to flee Ghouta with his family. “The regime checkpoint only let women and children pass,” she explained. 

Umm Ahmad’s plight in Marj and Khadija’s bewilderment in Arsal resembles a pattern of the hard life that stretches with the Syrian refugees across the Beq‘a Valley. It is a cloud of injustice that overshadows Syrians, a specter cast upon them as they turn from citizens, fleeing barrel-bombs, to numbers in relief organizations’ books and finally to refugees as they cross into Lebanon.

In central Beq‘a sits the city of Zahle. Syrian refugees have setup a few camps down in its agricultural lands. Below the road al-Jura (pit) camp is located, next to the site of a previously torched refugee camp. Syrian refugees of al-Jura camp witnessed the arson with terror and worried they might be next. The camp is named after its landmark, a wide pit (jura) that sits in the middle of the camp where sewers directed in makeshift dug-up pathways drain from outdoors toilets and trickle down into the pit. Displaced from Idlib, Abu Said, fifty-five, manages the camp and tends to the needs of its three hundred Syrian refugees. To prevent unexpected brutal evictions in the absence of any legal or communal protection, Abu Said struck a deal with the Lebanese landowner: they provide the labor-force (from the camp) for a nearby agricultural plot and pay a rental fee of one hundred dollars per month per tent-area and they can keep their tents on the land. Al-Jura camp demonstrates the sheer negligence displaced Syrians suffer from. The corruption of NGOs as well as aid cuts by UNHCR was the main story that Syrians inhabiting al-Jura complained of. “Come look inside our tents and see how we live,” one mother shouted. The smell of damp in the tent mixed with plastic fumes emanating from the heating stove that burnt blue plastic bags and red nylon child-size flip-flops was noxious. “The nations [UNHCR] came and inspected our tent. After the inspection they said we are not a priority for aid. They told me we should look for jobs, that my husband and I are still young.”  Tents in al-Jura mushroom side-by-side and form a narrow maze filled with running sewers and toddlers. Fatima, thirteen, sat on a limestone rock giving a reading lesson to children from the camp. Ten-, eight-, and seven-year-old boys and girls encircled Fatima, their attention fixated onto her lap where a shabby notebook sat. Fatima ran her feeble pointer-finger through Arabic alphabets followed by her students who shouted them in unison and then took turns writing the alphabet on the back of Fatima’s ragged notebook.

[Inside al-Jura camp. Image by author.]

Down the road from al-Jura camp four more camps appear in the distance. In these four camps, Syrians from Aleppo, Idlib, Raqa, Homs, and Damascus coexist all the while defying the harsh circumstances imposed on them by their host. One early February morning at seven o’clock, while a thin crust of frozen dew melted on green shrubs and a lazy winter sun crawled out from behind the eastern mountain range of the Beq‘a Valley, the blue truck hummed as it awaited the arrival of women. Syrian women: mothers, sisters, and daughters left the warmth of their tents, their babies in their cribs, and trailed to the blue truck, snatched away to labor in the fields for a pitiful four dollars per day. “We have no choice. To keep our tent we have to work the land.” Displaced from Aleppo, Haytham, seventeen, remarked as he watched his mother and two sisters climb the blue truck, “He [the landlord] leaves us no choice. We cannot even bargain our wage. It is a fixed six thousand Lebanese liras [four dollars] per day. Take it or leave the campsite.” Behind Haytham in the distance a banner that reads the curfew hours for migrant workers (read Syrian refugees) waves. “Men are designated for construction sites and women plough the land,” Haytham lamented as he complained, “there are too many men for construction jobs, only few of us get a job opportunity.”

In those early hours, children hugged their books and energetically rolled into a tent that operates as a makeshift school as their mothers and sisters disappeared in the distance in the back of the blue truck. Inside one of these tents sat former Idlib resident Amina Hamzeh, fifty-seven. Amina’s tent is a built up structure, made from wood and plastic billboard sheets recycled from Zahle’s dumpsters. The makeshift tent supports two separate rooms: one functions as a living room in the day, at night it is the men’s bedroom, the second is a bedroom for women and their children. Amina’s tent hosts up to eighteen family members; they range between infants and elders. Amina suffers from numerous joints’ pain but her backache and an unpredictable menopause are her worst enemies united with all the refugees’ worst enemy: the ice-cold, bone stinging wind. Squatting down washing dishes in a blue plastic bucket, Amina was dressed in at least four layers topped by a purple Abaya, “I was forced to bend all day in the fields in spite of my protests that my back and legs cannot support me.” Amina’s second day of work was her last after she collapsed. “The landlord let us stay on his land as long we supply him with women to labor his crops.” Amina’s weary eyes water but refuse to surrender her tears, “I told my two boys that I will look after their infant children while their wives went to the field to cover for me, otherwise the landowner would not have let us keep our tent on his land. Where else can we go?” Whispering outside her tent to make sure no one is listening, Amina confides “we are forced to work for the landowner, we cannot say no. We are paid six thousand Lebanese liras [four dollars] per day to pluck potatoes from seven in the morning until four in the afternoon, and the ones who do not comply have their tents uprooted.” Amina’s family chose to flee to Lebanon instead of Turkey thinking Lebanon is “our second home” only to arrive in such an unwelcoming habitat. “We do not dare leave our camp site at night.” She frowned and continued, “I plead with my boys ‘do not even think about stepping out of this tent once it is dark.’ One night last month two of my boys were beaten up and verbally assaulted while walking back from Zahle.” The Syrians in these camps fear any police or military patrol that happen to be passing by “if they see us [Syrians] they stop to search us, we are guilty for being Syrian.” Amina’s predicament is an example visible throughout the experience of Syrians while they shelter in Lebanon. The lack of basic life necessities is only one aspect of the hardship, dignity and self-esteem are the most lacking; their subjugation by their host is tantamount to modern day slavery. If for one moment these refugees could forget their status a banner at the entrance to the camp reminds them brutally of their place “Foreign workers are not allowed movement and assembly in public places from seven in the evening until give in the morning. The municipality of Zahle also emphasizes adherence to the time of the curfew for the sake of public safety.”

[Banner reads, among other things: "Gatherings of foreign workers are forbidden in public spaces. Image by author.]

In the past three months of winter an increasing number of Syrians have fled to Lebanon to escape escalating violence in Syria. Coinciding with this growing number of refugees are harsh aid cuts by the UNHCR which left many baffled as to why they were denied aid all of a sudden as they continued to live in the same dire conditions. UNHCR provides the funds for many NGOs working in Lebanon. I spoke with many Lebanese, Syrian, and international NGO workers who confirmed “unjust arbitrary” cuts made by the UNHCR. None of the NGO workers I spoke to were willing to provide their names for this story for fear of losing their jobs. One NGO employee, a field officer in charge of distributing aid vouchers, said “seven months ago UNHCR made arbitrary aid cuts effecting over forty percent of beneficiaries”. The aid cuts struck the most basic form of aid: the food voucher program that provided twenty-seven dollars per month worth of food for an adult in each family. The NGO employee continued saying “we were told by the UNHCR that cuts were measures in order to shake off unwanted beneficiaries that did not fit the criteria. Many donor countries, mainly in the gulf, have not fulfilled their promises of financial aid.” Refugees denied aid protested at UNHCR’s conduct and as a result a form for appeal was granted with a forty-five day deadline. Those who were not able to organize their appeals within the forty-five day deadline were thrown out of the aid-system; only ten percent who managed to appeal were back to receiving aid. “The brutal aid cuts made many Syrian refugees victims of impoverished conditions and circumstances that made a target for exploitation; prostitution and organized beggary reaped their bodies” the NGO employee lamented. Recognizing the repercussions of their move, the UNHCR implemented an evaluation program. The program cost millions of dollars and employed an army of short contracted staff (for fifty dollars per-day plus three dollars for phone calls) and fleets of rental cars to conduct the survey. Inspection units surveyed and inspected the living conditions of Syrian refugees cut from aid in order for UNHCR to re-determine who would be included again in the aid system. The field officer, who is in direct contact with the distressed Syrians stressed that, “when UNHCR decided to cut aid they did it randomly and ended up harming the most vulnerable beneficiaries. The sudden cuts prompted refugees to think it is a conspiracy meant to drive them back to their war torn country. People complained to us that it was systematic conduct to make them leave Lebanon.”  Two weeks ago, I was speaking with a UNHCR employee who confided, off the record, that Lebanon is going to start taking “harsh” measures to close its borders in the face of incoming refugees from Syria and start the expulsion of those in the country. A week later Lebanon shut down eighteen “unofficial crossings” along the Lebanese Syrian borders.

Shortly after their curfew ends Syrian refugees start to assemble at 6:30 a.m. beneath the UNHCR’s building in the town of Zahle. Defying the cold temperature of the early morning hours, Syrian families wait to register, file a complaint for arbitrary aid cuts, and the sick seek medication, beyond the all-in-one Panadol pills handouts. At the registry center of UNHCR Syrian families are treated, or “managed,” like cattle. In Zahle, UNHCR’s building is fortified by at least forteen security guards; their job, obvious to any observer, is to bark through a megaphone at Syrian men, women, and children. To “control those Syrians” who came in the early hours seeking aid and registration, seeking mercy and recognition of their plight, begging for what is theirs. The security guards sport navy-blue combat uniforms bearing badges on their chest that read "Protection Security Company" (a company owned by Sa‘ad al-Hariri). The security men hound refugees from the streets to the enclosure of iron fence, a similar scene to the one Palestinians endure under Israeli occupation’s checkpoints. When the security guards were asked about their harsh practices one replied, “It is for the neighbors’ sake.” Another security guard chimed in, “It is a calm neighborhood, the residents are not happy with this sight [pointing at the group of Syrian refugees across the street]. Every day, we receive many complaints.”

Before Syrian refugees head to the UNHCR center they need to call a hotline to book an appointment. Sometimes it takes three to four days to get an appointment but at other times it can also take up to two weeks to book an appointment. Many Syrian refugees who have just arrived from Syria or live in dire, disconnected conditions do not know the drill so they go directly to the UNHCR registry office to be registered.  Such refugees fall victims to all sorts of manipulations; one of many, the most common, is when refugees are charged a fee by the security guards manning the registry center to “get them an appointment.” Many refugees have complained about this extortion; a UNHCR insider confirmed that it is not uncommon for security guards to cooperate and play intermediary between the Syrian refugees and the UNHCR registration desk.  Himself, one of many short-contracted but highly paid UNHCR registration officers said, “Those security guards are hustlers and they have contacts inside the building; they usually have one partner sitting on a registry desk. This is how the bargain starts: security guards see a Syrian family who has come to register without an appointment so they offer a “favor.” The “favor” is either a quick entry to bypass the long line and register or simply they give the guard their family info and then he passes it to his partner on the desk in exchange for a fee which ranges between thirty three and one hundred dollars. Later, at the end of the day, the security guard splits the extortion money with the registration employee.” Many Syrian families fall victims to this scheme because of the urgency to register, to get recognition, a status and aid while in Lebanon. Although extortion money is the only motivation for the security guard, his partner in this crime, the UNHCR employee, is looking to keep their lucrative job by increasing the number of people they register daily. It seems that the nature of this “humanitarian organization” is corporate-based; the registry employees are forced to compete on who can register the most refugees every day. The UNHCR insider explains, “At the UNHCR registering desk section there are thirty employees and twenty-seven desks. Those who arrive first score a desk, those who are late do not get a desk and instead they do photo copies for the day. Employees start to arrive one hour before work hours. At the office, a chart is set showing which employee registered the most and who came in last. Not a nice, humanitarian work environment. We are pressured by these tricks that keep us in a never-ending competition.” UNHCR’s employees compete to register more refugees as a way to keep their jobs “so in that environment competing coworkers at my office will sometimes settle on all kinds of unethical methods to increase their performance; one of many methods is the coordination with the security guards outside the UNHCR office building to bring in additional Syrian families for registration.”

[Banners in background read; "I have the right to learn." Image by author]

Three young sisters leaving the center in frustration are snarled at by the omnipresent security guards “put out your cigarettes, I do not want to see any one smoking. Stay in line. Stop talking. Keep your children in line, hold their hands, and do not let me see any of you on the street. Where you think you are going, come back to the line.” Their daily visits have not succeeded in getting their food vouchers renewed and they have had to borrow money to feed their children and pay rent.

Inside the centre, not far from where the girls are waiting, cake, croissants, aromatic tea, roasted coffee, juices and many other refreshments were made available to foreign correspondents, their drivers, and UNHCR employees. The UNHCR’s representative in Lebanon Ninette Kelley was touring, sightseeing, the registry center in Zahle. The second day of Geneva II peace talks made a perfect occasion for Kelley’s PR stunt. International journalists swarmed the scene, most trailing Kelley but scoring hefty quotes from Syrian refugees behind their iron fences. In the middle of the hustle and bustle, a white car drove into the crowd honking hysterically. The woman behind the wheel pushed through the throng in her oversized white Grand-Cherokee SUV. She stopped at the first security guard, rolling down her window, demanding in her superior tone, “they [Syrians] ruled us for thirty years, for thirty years! Why do we keep letting them into our country? Why they are ruining our street? Send them back to their country. I do not want to see any Syrians on the street and if I hear their voice from inside my house I am calling your company. Who is in charge here? Get me your manager; we need to clean this neighborhood from this daily nuisance.” 

“Back in Ghouta we owned our homes; we made an honorable living working our jobs and although bombing and destruction were all around us our dignity was unscathed. Since we fled to Lebanon our dignity had ceased to exist.” One of the three displaced sisters shrugged and decried as they left the UNHCR centre dragging their children behind them. The hostility of winter is slowly fading away now making room for the warmth of the Mediterranean sun, however the inhospitable environment of their neighboring country, now their home, remains.

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يتساوى فلسطينيو غزة أمام جرائم الاحتلال وسطوته على أرواحهم وممتلاكتهم ومكنونات هويتهم، إلا أنهم يختلفون في انتماءاتهم السياسية وخلفياتهم الاجتماعية وتباين أصولهم بين فلاحين وبدو ومدنيين-- يلبس جميعهم ثوب اللجوء أينما حلوا-- وبين مواطنين غزيين أصابهم سهم الاحتلال بلا تمييز. 

وفي ظل انحسار الاتصال مع العالم الخارجي ودخول القطاع البائس عامه السابع من الحصار الاسرائيلي المصري، ينفرد بحر غزة في قدرته على توحيد صفوف أهالي غزة المنقسمة على ذاتها.

بحر غزة الذي يبسط شواطئه على مصراعيها في وقت تلفظ فيه غزة أبناءها الذين أثقلت البطالة كاهلهم وأوجعهم الفقر في عيشهم وموتهم سواء. ذلك الفقر الذي ما عاد يتسع لموت ببخس عيشهم. فلم يعد بمقدور الغزيين، إن ماتوا، دفع ثمن قبورهم التي تصل قيمتها إلى أكثر من 300 دولار أمريكي! عجز يتمنى معه الغزي أن يبتلعه البحر ليوفر على محبيه تكلفة رحيل وطقوس صلاة.  

بجانب نصب تذكاري لشهداء قافلة مافي مرمرة التركية، وقف مطر ليدخن سيجارته قبل أن يسهب في حديثه عن اللعنة التي حلت بعائلته مذ أن ورثت مهنة الصيد أباً عن جد. 

"إحنا عيلة صيادين، أنا وإخوتي وأبوي وجدي. وكل العائلات اللي حوالينا صيادين، بس ممكن تحكي إنو عيلة بكر هي أكبر عيلة بتمارس المهنة". 

استمر مطر في إصلاح مركبه المعطوب فأضاف ابن عمه عاهد "في عيلتنا ما بنعرف غير هالمهنة، لا عنا متعلمين دكاترة ولا مهندسين." نظر في البحر بعيداً وأضاف "إحنا زي السمك، بنموت إذا طلعنا من البحر.. بنموت".

عاهد، وهو أب لثلاثة عشر من الأبناء والبنات، سبعة منهم متزوجون ويسكنون وأولادهم معه في نفس البيت.، قال لي وهو يضبط كوفيته حول رقبته "بدنا حوالي 100 - 150 لتر بنزين للمركب في اليوم. ابن عمي دفع من يومين 2000 شيكل في دخلته على البحر وباع السمك بـ700 شيكل. يعني دفع من جيبته ليخسر!" 

اصطفت مراكب الصيد في ركنها الخاص. بعضها متآكل وبعضها الآخر أصبح موطناً للطحالب في مياه راكدة أغفلتها الأمواج. وبدا وكأن رحلات الصيد لا تؤتي أكلها. قبل عام قرر مطر المخاطرة والدخول بضعة أميال إلى البحر. لم يمض الكثير من الوقت قبل مصادرة قوات البحرية الاسرائيلية لمركبه، وحمله على السباحة إلى ميناء إسدود ومن هناك أجبر مطر على العودة براً من معبر بيت حانون المعروف بايرز. رحلة عذاب وامتهان لم يخرج منها حتى بتعويض عن خسارة مصدر رزقه.

هذا هو حال الصيادين في غزة.  فبالرغم من تحديد سلطات الاحتلال مساحة الصيد بستة أميال بموجب اتفاق التهدئة الذي توصلت إليه مع الفصائل الفلسطينية عقب عدوان عامود السحاب في تشرين الثاني 2012 (من أصل عشرين ميل ضمنتها اتفاقية أوسلو)، إلا أن قواتها البحرية لا تتردد في اختراق حدود القطاع المائية لتنكل بالصيادين وبعيشهم وبقطاع الصيد الذي أصبح يعتمد على الأسماك المستوردة من الأنفاق ومن الجانب الإسرائيلي. ووفقاً للصيادين فإنهم لا يستطيعون تجاوز مسافة الميلين للصيد، وفي هذه الحدود التي لا تكثر فيها الأسماك فإن نسبة صيدهم لا تغطي 20% من احتياجات السوق المحلية. 

لا تقتصر انتهاكات الاحتلال على تضييق الخناق على حركة الصيد فحسب، بل يتعرض الصيادون أنفسهم لضروب أخرى منها إطلاق نار أوقع الكثير من القتلى والجرحى منهم، واعتقالات عشوائية والتعذيب الذي يطال الكبار والصغار سواء، وإهانتهم وتجريدهم من ملابسهم علانية، وابتزازهم لتجنيدهم كعملاء. بالإضافة إلى مصادرة وإتلاف أدواتهم ومعداتهم وفتح خراطيم المياه على مراكبهم فتغرق أو يصيبها التلف. رصدت تقارير مركز الميزان لحقوق الإنسان منذ بداية العام الجاري 149 حالة استهداف للصيادين شملت إصابة 10 صيادين واعتقال 22 آخرين (بينهم مطر وأفراد عائلته) والاستيلاء على 8 قوارب وتدمير عشرات المعدات.  

ووفقاً لعاهد فإن الزوارق الحربية الإسرائيلية عادة ما تطلق النار باتجاه قواربهم لإجبارهم على الفرار والتوقف عن الصيد. كما أنهم اعتقلوه واخوته وأبناء عمه لخمسة عشر يوماً قبل أن يطلقوا سراحهم، إلا أنهم صادروا قواربهم ومعداتهم! انتهاكات لا تهدد سلامتهم الجسدية والنفسية فقط، بل تهدد مصدر عيشهم وعائلاتهم التي تزداد فقراً على فقرها كل يوم. 

يسرد عاهد قصصه الكثيرة بشكل اعتيادي، فيبدو أن الاحتلال بات جزءأ لا يتجزأ من روتينه اليومي. قال: "ابن عمي محمد بكر استشهد في عرض البحر في 2010.. طخه الطرّاد.. في قلبه". ومضى "مات وإمه بتجهز لعرسه". لم يمكنني قراءة وجهه ولا نبرة صوته. أعرف أنه بدا مهموماً، وكدت أعتقد أنه استسلم لواقع أبى إلا أن يلتصق بعالم الصيادين، لكنه سارعني بالقول "إحنا بنخافش لا من بحر ولا من احتلال.. بنخافش إلا من ربنا".

يسلم عاهد ومطر وآخرون بواقع يفرضه الحصار عليهم، ولكنهم لا يستسلمون له. فعندما لا يستطيعون الصيد، يؤجرون مراكبهم للقيام بما وصفوه "بالطلعات السياحية" للترزق والترفيه. وقد تكون لكلمة "ترفيه" هنا دلالات غير دقيقة. فقد يرى الكثيرون ممن يترددون على البحر أنه متنفسهم الوحيد للتحرر من قيود حصار يقوضهم من الخارج والداخل، وأنه "لولا البحر عليهم" لما تمكنوا من الصمود والاستمرار. ويرى آخرون أن هذه مجرد "خزعبلات" يخلقها الباطن ليواسي نفسه على بؤس لا يستطيع أحد الامساك بتلاببيبه لفهمه. فالغزي محاط بجدران وسياج من كل ناحية. وحين تلجأ إلى البحر، تلوح في أفقه ساعة الغروب "طرادات" الحربية الاسرائيلية وتزين أضواؤها حدود بحرك، فيما تطرب أذناك لوقع زنانات الاستطلاع الإسرائيلية التي تحتل فضاء سمائك. فقل لي: كيف لك في بحرك إذاً أن تتحرر من الحصار؟ 

ينفرد أهالي غزة بكونهم يحاربون عدواً لا يرونه. عدو يحوطهم على رقعة شطرنج ولا يترجل للقتال. عدو من سراب، كلما اقتربوا منه فرد عليهم جدرانه أينما ولوا. سوريالية المشهد اليومي في غزة هي أشبه  بفيلم "ذا ترومان شو" الهوليودي. حيث تبث كاميرات برنامج واقعي حياة طفل منذ ولادته حتى بلوغه، دون علمه. يكبر الشخص الذي يمثل دوره جيم كاري معتقداً أنه كغيره من البشر يعيش وهم الحرية والاختيار، ليجد لاحقاً أنه في سجن كبير. . . رهينةً لعدو لا يعرفه. . . تحت سمع وبصر وصمت العالم أجمع. 

على استحياء وقف قارب كبير على حدود ميناء غزة. بدا مختلفاً عن باقي قوارب الصيد الصغيرة وعلى نحو يثير الانتباه. سألت بسذاجة: قارب صيد؟ فقال: "هادا قارب للأجانب. بدهم يطلعوا فيه من داخل غزة لكسر الحصار!" واستأنف "مش عارف هم المحاصرين ولا إحنا؟" ابتسمت وقلت: هذه جهود رمزية. فأجاب: لما إحنا بنموت كل يوم، شو رح تعملّي الرمزية؟ إذا بنحمل سلاح وبنحمي حالنا بتتهمنا حكوماتهم بالإرهاب"

وقد تبدو الحركات التضامنية مبعثاً للأمل لبعض الفلسطينيين ولكن تبقى هذه الحركات جهوداً فردية وغير منتظمة. جل ما تسعى إليه هو لفت الانظار إلى ما يحدث في غزة، ولا شيء أبعد من ذلك. أما الفلسطينيون، فيرون أن الاحتلال مستمر بفعل الدعم الدولي للمشروع  الاستعماري الاستيطاني والذي يدفع ثمنه دافعو الضرائب ومنتخبو الحكومات. وعليه، تقع على عاتق المتضامنين مسؤولية أخلاقية الضغط على حكوماتهم لاحترام ميثاق حقوق الانسان والقانون الدولي في الداخل والخارج. 

لم يبقَ من مصلحة سكك الحديد لا سكك حديدية ولا حتى الصدأ. كلُ ما تبقى هو ماضٍ نتحسر عليه بغرافيتي تملأ الجدران وبحلمٍ من الصعب ان يتحقق. فحتى أحفاد البيروتيين من الأرجح انهم لن يكحّلوا أعينهم برؤية "ترام" او باص عمومي محترم يتنقلون به في مدينتهم. وفيما تؤكد مختلف الأطراف المعنية ان الحل يتطلب قرارا موحدا وتنسيقاً فيما بينها، يبقى التنفيذُ رهناً بالقرار السياسي. كذلك، تبقى اي خطوة عملية تجلب الفائدة لسكان المدينة ومحيطها في عداد الموتى. كيف لا و250 "باصا" للقطاع العام - والتي لا تحل المشكلة من جذورها أصلا- تحتاج أكثر من عقدٍ كي تُشترى! ولكن ماذا اذا طالب سكان المدينة بإعادة ترام مدينتهم الذي جاب طرقاتها في الزمن الجميل؟ انه المشهد ذاته يتكرر مرة بعد أخرى: سكانٌ ينوؤن يوميا تحت ثقل تكاليف النقل ومشاكله، وسيارات عمومية وباصات مهترئة تمشي حسب هواها وهوى الأطراف السياسية المتنازعة ومصلحة لسكك الحديد والنقل المشترك تموت موتا بطئيا مع كل صباح.

ليست بيروت سويسرا الشرق ولن تكون. فقدت المدينة حدائقها وبيوتها الأثرية على حساب الطرقات. طرقات ليست الا سيارات وباصات عمومية مهملة في ظل غيابٍ مزمن لأي تنظيم مدني. كذلك، فقدت بيروت ترامها وصارت أشبه بموقف سيارات كبير. اذ لا يحق لسكان بيروت ان يحلموا بشبكة ترام مماثلة لشبكة جنيف. فترام جنيف (مساحة 16 كلم2 وعدد سكان 195,458) الذي يوصلك من قلب العاصمة السويسرية الى الحدود الفرنسية ب25 دقيقة و 4$ فقط ليس بمتناول أحلام سكان المدينة. أما بيروت التي باتت تقارب مساحتها 20 كلم2 وعدد سكانها المليونين، فقد اختارت ان تستغني عن خدمة ترامها سنة 1964 ولم تبقِ لسكانها سوى التحسر على ما فاتهم. فهمّ اللبنانيين يقتصر على شراء أكثر السيارات كلفة وحداثة فيما همّ السياسيين هو أبعد ما يكون عن وضع النقل المشترك او شبكة الترام في اولويات قراراتهم. انه النموذج الاميركي الاستهلاكي الذي يفرضُ على الأسر تكاليف نقلٍ مرهقة ويحرمُ الدولة ايرادات جمّة. ايراداتٌ لا تعبأ بها ما دامت غارقة في وحل السياسة. ولكن من هو المسؤول عن حلّ المشكلة وما هي قصة ترام بيروت وكيف تكون البداية لإعادة إحيائه؟

خطة النقل الشاملة رهنٌ بالقرار السياسي:  تتعدد الجهات المسؤولة عن النقل العام في لبنان من وزارة الأشغال العامة والنقل،الى وزارة المالية، فوزارة الداخلية والبلديات، بالاضافة الى مجلس الانماء والاعمار. تؤكد مختلف هذه الأطراف ان الحلّ يجب ان يكون جذريا وشاملا عبر خطة شاملة وتنسيق بين الجهات المعنية. هذا ما يؤكد عليه أيضا العضو في بلدية بيروت، المهندس رشيد أشقر. الا ان الحل الجذري ليس بالطبع في تعبيد طريق هنا او توسيع طريق هناك او في مد جسر هنا او  وضع اشارة سير هناك. هذا وتؤكد هذه الاطراف جميعا ان تنظيم هذا القطاع هو رهنٌ بالقرار السياسي. قرارٌ يصعب اتخاذه في ظل الظروف السياسية الراهنة. هو ايضا محالٌ مع شعب يعيش دون ان يحرك ساكنا لغياب حكومة فاعلة تشكلت ام لم تتشكل. هذا ولا تزال الهيئة الناظمة للنقل والتي تترأسها وزارة الأشغال والتي تقرر تشكيلها سنة 2004 بموجب خطة النقل الشاملة لبيروت الكبرى (اي بموجب قرار مجلس الوزراء رقم 28 تاريخ 19 آب 2004) منسية في الأدراج في وزارة الأشغال، يضيف المهندس أشقر.

بعد انتهاء الحرب الأهلية اللبنانية، وضعت العديد من الدراسات للنقل المشترك. ورغم "النوايا الحسنة"، لم يأخذ التنفيذ بالحسبان وسيلة نقل جماعية تحل المشكلة من جذورها. يعتبر الدكتور زياد النكت، المتخصص في النقل الجماعي في البنك الدولي، ضمن مشروع تطوير النقل الحضري في بيروت الكبرى أن الحلول السريعة لإعادة بناء الطرقات والبنى التحتية بعد الحرب اللبنانية لم تأخذ في الاعتبار وسائل النقل الجماعي الأنجع للمواطن والتي تخفف من زحمة السير. هي مشاريع ضخمة قامت بها الحكومة على عجل كرغبة منها في عرض عضلاتها، لكنها كلفت جيبة المواطن ملايين الدولارات. هذا وزحمة السير ما انفكت قاتلة. ومنذ التسعينات، والخطط ودراسات الجدوى تعدّ ويعاد اعدادها. وحتى يومنا هذا، ليس ثمة موافقة جماعية حول استراتيجية واضحة للنقل المشترك.

مصلحة السكك الحديد والنقل المشترك في البحث عن الوقت الضائع: يقول أحد محامي المصلحة السابقين فيكتور طبال "من الغرابة ان أيا من الدراسات أو الخطط التي سبق الصرف لها من الاعتمادات لم يُعمل بها وحظفت في الأدارج. اذ ثمة توجه حكومي متعمّد الى نحر مصلحة السكك الحديد التي لا زالت تملك قرابة 10 ملايين م2 من الأراضي من الناقورة وحتى الحدود السورية. أما عن التعديات على أملاك المصلحة، فيضيف المحامي طبال " تم تسجيل 550 ملف تعديات منذ الحرب الأهلية".  

أنشئت مصلحة السكك الحديد والنقل المشترك لبيروت وضواحيها في سنة 1961 بموجب القانون المنشور بالمرسوم رقم 6479 وصارت هي المسؤولة عن استثمار حافلات النقل المشترك.  وُسعت صلاحياتها الى كامل الأراضي اللبنانية سنة 1988 تحت اسم مصلحة السكك الحديد والنقل المشترك. في عام 1995 وبعد انتهاء حياة الترامواي وسكة الحديد، اصبحت مسؤوليتها محصورة بإدارة "الباصات". بحسب المهندس وليد واكيم، رئيس مصلحة الخط والتعميرات، ان مصلحة السكك الحديد والنقل المشترك هي مصلحة مستقلة مفوضة عبر مديرية النقل البري والبحري بتنظيم النقل المشترك بالتنسيق والتعاون مع الجهات المعنية بالنقل العام. برأي السيد واكيم فإن غياب التمويل للصيانة وشراء قطع الغيار فضلا عن الروتين الإداري هو ما أدى الى وأد المصلحة التي تقلّص عدد موظفيها من 1800 سنة 1975 الى 12 موظف حالياً. يضيف واكيم "أزيلت كل التعديات الحالية على مصلحة سكك الحديد ولا زالت ترفع الدعاوى من أجل ازالة التعديات القديمة المسجلة خلال الحرب الأهلية". 

مناقصة ال 250 باص عمومي ستعاد في ال2014 رغم فشلها المسبق:  تقرر في عام 2004 شراء 250 باص جديد للدولة ضمن خطة النقل الشاملة. قرارٌ ظل معلّقا بسبب غياب القرار السياسي. وفي ظل تدهور حالة "باصات الدولة" عن عمد او عن غير عمد والتي وصل عددها الى 4 سنة 2010، قامت المصلحة بإيعاز من وزارة الأشغال العامة والنقل باللجوء الى تركيبة الحل السريع. تم شراء باصات جديدة وصيانة المتبقي ليصير عدد الباصات حوالي 45 "باصا" أبيضا وأزرقا بحسب المهندس واكيم. هذه الحافلات التي لم تتمكن من منافسة القطاع الخاص راحت تسير على 7 خطوط داخل مدينة بيروت ومحيطها منذ سنة 2012. و"بسبب مشكلة التواتر البعيد فيما بينها مع قلة عددها، لم تستطع ان تكون وسيلة نقلِ معتمدة من قبل المواطن" بحسب المهندس واكيم. فجأة، وفي الفترة نفسها تقريبا، اُعيدت قصة ال 250 "باصا" من ملف الذاكرة. لكن بلدية بيروت لم تكن راضية ولا مرضية. فهي، المسؤولة عن طرقات بيروت، دخلت خفاء في خلاف مع مديرية النقل البري حول هذه مسير هذه الحافلات وصلاحيات تشغيلها. يقول المهندس أشقر "من المفترض التنسيق مع البلدية وليس اعلامها بمخططات مديرية النقل." ويضيف بأنه "لا يمكن شراء باصات تجوب طرقات بيروت بلا دراسة مسبقة وبلا معرفة لوقت مرورها وأمكنة توقفها". رغم هذا الخلاف، تحدّد موعد المناقصة في منتصف سنة 2013 ولكنها فشلت! بحسب المهندس واكيم، "قدمت 5 شركات على العرض، لكن ولا واحدة منها استوفت الشروط التقنية المطلوبة". ويؤكد بأن المناقصة ستعاد في سنة 2014. هكذا، تمرّ عشر سنوات ونحن بانتظار 250 حافلة لن تحل أزمة السير في لبنان.

خلال الحرب اللبنانية تحوّلت معظم الحافلات الى متاريس للمقاتلين بعد ان تدمّر أغلبها واحترق أرشيفها، يقول المحامي طبال. في منتصف التسعينات، سيّرت المصلحة حوالي 220 "باصا". ما لبثت هذه "الباصات" ان تهالكت على عجل بعد ان جابت طرقات بيروت وضواحيها. في هذه الأثناء، كانت شركات القطاع الخاص بحافلاتها الكبيرة او الصغيرة تزاداد عددا وانتشارا وسيطرة. حافلات تسير وتقف بعشوائية خلاقة وبحسب مبدأ البقاء للأقوى دون ان تدفع مليما للدولة لقاء استثمار أملاكها العامة. ففي بيروت لا محطات لوقوف "الباصات" اذ انها تتوقف أينما وجدت راكبا . هو نفسه لا يعرف مسبقا في اي وقت قد يصل "الباص" بل يعتمد على حدسه الشخصي! ومن منّا ليس في جعبته قصة او أكثر مع فان رقم 4 او باص الدورة مثلا؟  هذا ولا يخفى على أحد قصة مقاعد "الباصات" الممزقة والمكسّرة والمخلوعة وسرعة سائقها المرعبة حتى لتشعر أحيانا انك ستطير انت ومقعدك منفصلا عن باقي الراكبين!

ترام بيروت فكرةٌ لن تتحقق: عزيز الديك (78 سنة) ابن عين المريسة، كان يركب الترام من محطة الديك المجاورة لمنزله ليصل الى مكان عمله يوميا (في حاوز السعاتية) قرب البسطة. يقول عزيز ان تعرفة النقل في البدء كانت بقرش واحد لكنه شخصيا كان يتمسك بجانبي الترام دون أن يدفع قرشا. يضيف عزيز الديك "ان حفرت في الأرض فستجد سكة الحديد مكانها". كانت الحاجة أم سمير حرب (80 عاما) أيضا تركب الترام. تقول "كنت أفضل ان اركب درجة بريمو تجنباً لمشاكسة الرجال. أتفرج من النافذة على بيروت وبيوتها حتى أصل الى محطة النويري لأرتاد القهوة وآكل البوظة مع صديقتي". هو أيضا الشاعر محمود درويش ركب ترام بيروت وقال "جئت إلى بيروت في السادسة من عمري، ركبت الترام. نظرت من نافذته. رأيت بنايات كثيرة، فيها نوافذ كثيرة، تطل منها عيون كثيرة، الترام يسير، والبنايات تسير، والأشجار تسير. " لماذا يُحرم أبناء بيروت اليوم من هذه التجربة والذكريات؟

في عام 1909، نالت شركة بلجيكية امتيازاً بتسيير حافلات الترام في بيروت. كان لترام بيروت وضواحيها 5 خطوط ونقطة التقاء واحدة في وسط المدينة. هذا وكانت عرباته تركن ليلا في مركز الشركة في مار مخايل النهر. يقول احد محامي مصلحة السابق فكتور طبال "في عام 1961، أصبح ترام بيروت الذي كان تابعاً لشركة كهرباء لبنان تابعاً لمصلحة السكك الحديد والنقل (لبيروت وضواحيها)". في سنة 1964 بعد بداية مسيرة الباصات في بيروت، استغنت الحكومة عن خدمات الترام. قد يكون ذلك جزءا من غياب التخطيط المدني او عدم قدرة على صيانة متكررة لعرباته؛ قد تكون أيضا رغبة من الحكومة بالاعتماد على وسائل النقل الحديثة كالسيارة والأتوبيس، يضيف المحامي طبال. ورغم ان العديد من الخطط التي وضعت تضمنت اعادة إحياء ترامواي بيروت، لكن هذا الترام لم يبق حتى اليوم الا في ذاكرة البيروتيين. هو يخلّد أيضا في أغنية الفنان ابراهيم مرعشلي"رزق الله على ايامك يا ترامواي بيروت ".

"ان اعادة تشغيل الترام في بيروت بحاجة الى قرار سياسي"، يكرر أشقر، المهندس في بلدية بيروت. يضيف "حاليا ثمة تفكير ايجابي تجاه تشغيل ترام من مار مخايل الى شارع بليس؛ لكنها فكرة فقط حتى الآن." هي فكرة قد تتطلب سنوات عديدة وعديدة حتى تبصر النور. لكن الياس معلوف، رئيس جميعة Train-Train، يشير الى ان" انها ليست مسؤولية المواطن ان يدبّر وسيلة نقله بل إنها مسؤوليات وزارة الأشغال العامة والنقل المشترك". برأيه فترام بيروت هو ليس فقط نوستالجيا. بل انه حاجة ملحة يجب ان تكون ضمن مخطط شامل ومتكامل يبدأ ببناء أرصفة للمارة فطرق مخصصة للدراجات فباصات فترامواي! أما الدكتور زياد النكت فيشير الى " البدء بنشر التوعية حول أهمية وسائل النقل المشترك". من الممكن برأيه ان تتبنى خطة النقل باصات النقل الجماعي بالطرق السريعة (BRT) والتي تعتمد طريقا منفصلا عن طريق السيارات وتجمع بين فعالية سكك الحديد وبساطة الحافلة او عبر الاعتماد على الترامواي".

هي حال النقل المشترك في بيروت وهكذا ستكون. لن تأتي الحافلات في أوقات محددة. لن تتوقف في محطات مخصصة لها وعلى الأرجح لن تتحسن حالها. لن تصير بيروت بريمنغهام حيث تُمنع السيارات من السير في بعض أحيائها المخصصة للمشاة. ولن يصير شارع الحمراء كشارع الاستقلال التركي والذي يزوره 3 مليون سائح يوم الأحد سيرا على الأقدام او بواسطة الترام. فترامواي بيروت الذي قد يربط الطريق الجديدة بالضاحية الجنوبية والدورة يربط أيضا اواصر القربى بين أبناء المدينة الواحدة. لكن ما يسمح بتلاقي اللبنانيين والحد من التلوث وازدحام السير، ليس من أولويات زعماء السياسة في لبنان. والسؤال يبقى لماذا يرضى ابن بيروت بأن يكون الحلم او الذكرى خياره الأخير؟

في كل المعارك والمعادلات الصفرية، يصبح الصفر هو القيمة والنتيجة الوحيدة لكلِّ شيء فلا ثمن للدماء التي تسيل بغزارة على الإسفلت، ولا ثمن أو حتى حُرمة للموت نفسه ...

ففي جمعة ماضية (28 مارس)، بعد أن بادرتنا مواقع الإعلام الاجتماعي بصورة لفتاة في مقتبل عمرها كان نصيبها من يوم لها أنه كان آخر يوم لها حينما اخترقت رصاصة وجهها وخرجت فماتت، وجدنا بعدها هذا ينشر صورتها وهي غارقة في دمائها وذاك ينشر فيديو حصري لحظة خروج روحها ... وهؤلاء يشمتون في موتها لأنها (انقلابية) وأولئك يحشرون الإخوان في أي وقائع ليثبتوا أنهم (قتلتها)، ولا يهم أنها صارت جثة المهم أن يزايد بها طرف ويجعلها كُرة يركلها بقوته ليهُز بها شِباك الطرف الآخر لعله يلقي به مرة خارج الملعب ...

لم يهمني وقتها على الإطلاق من قتلها لأن الرؤية جلية رغم عتمة الأيام ولم يهمني لحظتها أيضاً كونها طبيبة أو طالبة أو صحفية أو حتى عاملة نظافة طالما صرنا أمام نتيجة يومية واحدة ‹‹الموت›› فأمامه الكل سواء. لكن هذا لا يعني إطلاقاً السكوت عن المسكوت أصلًا عنه، لأن ميادة ببساطة (حية كانت أو ميتة) جزء من قضية مهمة وهي وضع الصحفيين في مصر (تحديدًا الشباب منهم) ولأن كثيرين ممن امتطوا جثة ميادة للوصول إلى هدف ونكاية في طرف هم عنصر أصيل في قتل مستقبل الصحفيين ...

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لقضية الصحافة والصحفيين في مصر زوايا عدة مهمة وجديرة بالنقاش والحل، منها الموجود دائماً تحت الأضواء وفوق موائد المناقشات للتفعيل أو للتجميل من إطلاق سراح المعلومات والحريات مروراً بمجلس وطني للإعلام وإلغاء الوزارة وحتى تفعيل ميثاق الشرف الإعلامي، ومنها ما ظل كثيراً بمعزل عن أي اجتماع أو نقاش كمسألة وضع الصحفيين المصريين.

على أرض الصحفيين ما يستحق الحكي ...  وما يستحق أن نسمع عنه وعنهم منهم ...

‹‹هحكيلكم حكاية الصحفيين ... بنتبهدل ويتمسح بينا الأرض وكل من هبّ ودبّ بيتحكم فينا. بنستحمل الذل علشان سراب اسمه عضوية نقابة الصحفيين .. بنشتغل زى الحميير ومش بناخد فلوس .. أنا واحد من الناس كنت بمشي من المكان اللي كنت ساكن فيه فى أوضة تحت السلم فى منطقة لايسكنها الحيوانات وكنت بصوم مش علشان أنا مؤمن قوي بس علشان أوقات كتير مكنش بيبقى معايا فلوس ..بنضرب فى الشوارع .. بنتقتل ونترمى على الأرصفة .. بنتهان من الشرطة .. وبعد سنين طويلة ناس بتتعين فى مؤسساتها وتدخل النقابة .. وتفتكر أن الدنيا بدأت تضحكلها .. لكن هيهات .. يطلعلك واحد .. لو سألته عن جده التالت مش هيرد عليك يضربك طلقة وتموت ..يحصل إيه بقى الجرنال بتاعك يتاجر بدمك .. نقيب الصحفيين يطلع فى كل الفضائيات .. زمايلنا يفضلوا يعيطوا على صفحات الفيس .. أهلك ياخدوك يدفنوك .. وبعد يومين لو سألوا عليك محدش هيعرف اسمك.›› (من حساب عمرو الديب رئيس القسم الميداني بـvetogate على الفيسبوك)

على الرغم من أنهم أبناء ما كانت تُسمى بـ‹‹سلطة رابعة››، لكن لا مزية لهم على صعيد الأمن والتأمين. فكان حصادهم في السنوات الثلاث الأخيرة (28 يناير2011 – 28 مارس2014) مقتل عشرة صحفيين (أجنبي وتسعة مصريين) وعشرات المصابين والمعتقلين لتحتل مصر بذلك المرتبة الثالثة بين أخطر البلدان على الصحفيين في عام 2013 بعد سوريا والعراق وذلك وفقا للجنة حماية الصحفيين (!)

((Committee to Protect Journalists – Defending Journalists Worldwide 

ومن مشهد خارجي إلى مشهد داخلي يومي في أية مؤسسة صحفية أو أي موقع إخباري، ستجد عشرات الصحفيين الشبان، يشبهون كل الشباب المصري في كل مكان ومجال ... يبدأ كل منهم كمحرر تحت التدريب بلا أجر ... ربما يكون حديث التخرج قاهري أو وافد من محافظة وربما يكون طالباً ... أول ما تفعله المؤسسة أو جهة العمل هو الزج به لتغطية حدث في موقع قد يكون مشتعلًا ...

وبعد اجتياز فترة تدريبية يثبت فيها مستميتاً كفاءته وربما يموت قبل أن يثبتها، فلكل صحفي أو محرر حظ ونصيب، منهم من يعمل بعد التدريب بمبلغ لا يزيد عن 300 أو 400 جنيه شهرياً ومنهم من يعمل بالقطعة ومنهم سعيد الحظ الذي قد ينال عقد عمل شهرياً قيمته ألف جنيه أو يزيد قليلا ً...

وقد تجد رئيس تحرير يركن عقدك الذي قد يؤهلك للنقابة على جنب وكلما مرت المؤسسة بضائقة مادية يقص من راتبك الذي لا يساوي واحداً على مئة من راتبه ليسد بعضاً من العجز المادي الذي لا دخل لك فيه ...

وينتقل بعدها لحلم النقابة الذي لا ينقطع، لكنها محاولة مستمرة للوصال من طرف واحد، تحاول النقابة (عمداً وإهمالاً) القضاء عليه، بدءاً من عدم الاعتراف بمئات المحررين والصحفيين من المواقع الإلكترونية مروراً بإهمال تدريبهم وتأهيلهم وحتى التخاذل في الضغط أو السعي للتحقيق في حوادث قتلهم أو اعتقالهم أو إصابتهم.

لكن يبقى دائماً لكل قاعدة استثناء واستثناء النقابة هو إخلاص وكد وجد خالد البلشي وعبير السعدي.

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ورغماً مما يحمله واقع الصحفيين من صعوبات وآلام إلا أن هناك صورة نمطية خيالية عنهم تقول ‹‹إن الصحفيين هم أكثر المرتاحين مادياً ومهنياً في مصر، لأن منهم من يعمل بمؤسسات لكبار رجال الأعمال ومنهم بمؤسسات صحفية حكومية عريقة ومنهم أصحاب أجندات وممولين ومتآمرين. ويشترك في الرأي الأخير عموم المواطنين المناصرون دائماً للدولة وأجهزتها والمسؤولون وتحديداً قوات الأمن طالما أن أي خبر منشور لا يروق لهم أو سار عكس اتجاه قافلتهم.

وللرأي الأخير هذا رد فعل وتصرف شعبي/حكومي أو بالأحرى أمني معروف، ينال نصيبه منه كل مواطن صحفي يحمل كاميرا أو تليفوناً يصور في الشارع أو ربما دفعه التهور ليجري حواراً مع مواطن آخر، وقتها تجد التكاتف والتلاحم على كونشرتو تسلم الأيادي بين الشعب والأمن، لا يهم من يدخل أولاً أو من يشارك أكثر أو من يعزف منفرداً المهم النيل من الكاميرا وصاحبها وأحيانًا التحفظ عليهما.››

وأرشيف هذه الوقائع الملحمية حافل بعشرات القصص والحالات وكان آخرها ما حكاه أسلم مراسل MBC مصر في نوفمبر 2013 من تعذيب له في قسم شرطة المنيا بعد التحفظ عليه من مكان تغطيته لحادث هناك واقتياده لقسم المنيا ومن بعده بشهرين روتْ لنا آلاء سعد صحفية بجريدة الشروق حادثتها:

‹‹قررت الاقتراب من جرافيتي سور الجامعة الأمريكية والتقطت صورتين، لم تمض ثوانٍ معدودة لأجد إحدى أفراد الشرطة النسائية تمسك بملابسي وتحاول إحضاري لسيارة الشرطة وبدأت مرحلة جديدة من الضرب المُبرح خاصة بالوجه، الأمر الذي أدى إلى نزع حجاب الرأس الذي أرتديه، والإصابة بكدمة قوية بالفم وجرح سطحي أسفل العين اليمنى وآخر بجانب العين اليسرى. كان يقف على بعد مِتر ما لا يقل عن 15 فرداً من رجال الأمن، وكان تدخلهم الوحيد منع أي شخص من التدخل لفض التعدّي. ثوان معدودة أخرى مرّت لأدخل في مرحلة جديدة، انضمت فيها سيدات أتين للمشاركة في الضرب والسب بألفاظ تستدعي المحاسبة القانوينة ...››

***

وبعد ...

إن كانوا يقولون في المثل الشعبي المصري الضرب في الميت حرام فبالتأكيد الضرب في الحي حتى يموت أو ليموت ليس حلالًا ...

ليس الصحفيون بملائكة ولكنهم أيضاً ليسوا بأبالسة، هم بشر عاديون يخطئون ويصيبون ... ليس دورهم إراحة الزبون بل حمل الرسالة وتوصيلها مهما كانت الظروف وأينما كانت من صانعها ومصطنعها إلى مستقبلها أينما كان ...

لا يريدون تمجيداً أو تعظيماً بل يريدون حقاً وأمانا إن أردنا أن تصل الرسالة ...

***

روابط ذات صلة :

تقرير قتل حامل الرسالة (عن وضع الصحفيين بسوريا)

https://www.amnesty.org/ar/library/asset/MDE24/014/2013/fr/f1b3a400-5c38-4188-9200-1e3468060273/mde240142013ar.pdf

قصة آلاء سعد: كنت ماشية جنب الحيط.. فانهار علي رأسي– هكذا ضربتني الشرطة النسائية والمواطنون الشرفاء

http://www.shorouknews.com/news/view.aspx?cdate=30012014&id=4450722d-b246-4ba5-be29-a00312cb77ef

مراسل إم بي سي ضحية التعذيب لـ«الضابط»: «أبوس رجلك اتعلمت الدرس».. ولست صاحب فيديو رصد

http://www.shorouknews.com/news/view.aspx?cdate=05112013&id=bf2f724d-cc35-43ca-a271-755336ae6060

 (Committee to Protect Journalists – Defending Journalists Worldwide) لجنة حماية الصحفيين

https://www.cpj.org/ar/2014/02/022860.php

لا شك أن "إسرائيل" هي حالة استثنائية على جميع الأصعدة ففي الظروف الطبيعية المجتمع هو الذ أفرز المؤسسات وأنتجها، بينما في الحالة الإسرائيلية فالحركة الصهيونية هي التي أنتجت المؤسسات وأنتجت المجتمع والدولة معاً، وعليه فإن تجليات الإنتاج تظهر في البنى الاجتماعية والمؤسسات وفي شتى أنماط الحضور الهوياتي، بحيث يصير التعليم تعليماً أيدولوجياً محضاً موجهاً من المؤسسة الحاكمة وراعياً لانتاج العقول وتصنيعها كما تُصَّنع المنتجات الاستهلاكية الأخرى. احدى جوانب هذا التصنيع والذي لم يتم تسليط الضوء عليه سابقاً هو تدريس اللغات سواء العبرية منها أو العربية، فقراء نقدية مقارنة لتدريس اللغتين في الجامعة العبرية مثلاً قد تعطينا صورة جيداً عن آلية اشتغال المؤسسة الاكاديمية، التي لا يمكن أنت تكون سوى جزء لا يتجزء من سياسة الإنتاج الاجتماعي سواء درسها الطالب الفلسطيني أو الأجنبي، ففي حالة الطالب الفلسطيني الذي يدرس اللغة العبرية يكون التدريس بمثابة جبهة قتالية مشرعة ضده وضد وعيه، وفي حال كان الطالب تلميذاً أجنبياً فهي تعمل على تشكيل وعيه بصورة تتلائم ورؤية المؤسسة الصهيونية بحيث يصير التدريس محاولة لانتاج نسخ مكررة للخطاب الصهيوني.

في قراءة لكتب تدريس اللغة العبرية نلاحظ أنها بمجملها كتب معدة لبث المضامين المعززة للخطاب الصهيوني فعلى سبيل كتاب " بين الأسطر" لجلي هومينار وتسوكي شاي ( تدريس اللغة للمبتدئين) يبدأ بجرعات بسيطة فيخوض صراع زيت الزيتون والحمص كونهم جزء لا يتجزء من ميراث الشعب اليهودي بدء من علاقة الزيت بالتوراة ووصلاً إلى مقال "الحمص لنا" وفي مراحل متقدمة أكثر من تعليم اللغة العبرية تتكاثف المضامين فيصعب التمييز هل هو كتاب لتعليم اللغة العبرية أم كتاب لتعليم المدنيات وتاريخ إسرائيل والحركة الصهيونية؟ لننظر إلى عناوين كتاب وردة وردة يشاي وإيمتي بار كول: "علاقة الإسلام بالسياسة والدين والدولة" في "قصة يوسف وأخوته" "قضية الباص 300"، "جوهراليهودية والإنسانية؟" "رسائل من دافيد بن غوريون"، "من هو اليهودي؟"، "اليهودية الإسرائيلية"...

تسريب مضامين وعناوين كهذه التي أوردتها أعلاه كافية لأن تمنح طالب اللغة شهادة في المشروع الصهيوني مع المدخلات والمركبات الثقافية والدينية للشعب اليهودي. هي قد لا تصنع منه صهيونياً لكنها في غياب أمن ثقافي فلسطيني قد تكون ناسفاً لوعيه ومدمرة لهويته، كما أنها في حالة الطالب الأجنبي قد تكون تبشيراً بالمشروع الصهيوني الإنساني بحيث يتحول الطالب الغربي في الجامعة العبرية إلى امتداد لها ومروج لثقافتها لدى عودته لبلاده.

على النقيض تماماً نرى أن المضامين المدرجة في كتب تدريس اللغة العربية هي بمعظمها مضامين سطحية وموجهة بشكل سلبي، يكفي أن ننظر مثلاً لكتاب تكفا حسون، والذي يدرس فيه الطلبة الأجاب واليهود اللغة العربية في الجامعة العبرية، يغطي الكتاب مدخلاً للصحافة العربية، أسماء الصحف وشعاراتها، قصاصات صحف، إعلانات عمل، واخبار سطحية مضحكة عن عائلات فلسطينية وقضايا اجتماعية كرسائل الأبناء لاباءهم يشرحون فيه نشوة الحياة وجماليتها فحسن بركات من الخليل ، والده محافظ وأمه بدوية لا تعمل ومع ذلك فهو سعيد بحياته.

نقرأ مثلاً في الجزء الثاني من كتاب حسون عنوان "تمديد توقيف المشبوهين بقضية تزوير وثائق شراء الأراضي بالضفة" والغريب في الأمر أن المحكمة الإسرائيلية قامت بمحاكمة من حاول تزوير شراء أراضي بالضفة الغربية ونرى الشرطة الإسرائيلية تعين طاقم خاص لتقديم توصيات ومتابعة القضية، لكننا لا نقرأ أي شيء عن الاستيطان في الضفة، وعن العنف الذي يمارسه المستوطنون يومياً في الأراضي الفلسطينية المحتلة أو عن السارق والمحتل الحقيقي للأرض الفلسطينية في الضفة.

خبر آخر يقول " سكان رام الله أبلغوا رئيس الكنيست: نريد دولة فلسطينية كي نتمكن من العيش بسلام" ولا نعرف مصدر الخبر، ولا كيف أخبر سكان رام الله رئيس الكنيست ولا من هو رئيس الكنيست، كل ما نقرأه متفرقات وكلمات فارغة منزوعة السياق تظهر دوماً الطابع الإنساني للمؤسسة الإسرائيلية وعلاقتها الطيبة مع الفلسطينيين، متجاهلة تماماً الواقع الفلسطيني الذي يظهر أنه يعيش في رخاء: "تكريم الطلبة المتفوقين في بيت ساحور"، "التسجيل يبدأ اليوم في الجامعة الإسلامية" و "بحث التعاون بين جامعتي النجاح وديسكاونس ميلووكي".

ان هذا التسخيف للواقع الفلسطيني اظهاره كواقع حيوي وجميل يظهر جلياً فالمشكلة في الأمية التي لدى الفلسطينية وفي كثرة المحافظين والميول الدينية والواقع السياسي الذي هو حصيلة يديهم وما اختاروه في المقابل تظهر المؤسسة الاسرائيلية كمؤسسة تنويرية تبشر بالحضارة الإنسانية من خلال فتح الجامعات أمام الفلسطينيين فنقرأ عن الكثير من قصص الطلبة الفلسطينيين من راس العامود وغيرها يدرسون في العبرية وهداسا.

 تسكت كتب تدريس اللغة العربية عن الحضارة العربية ومضامين، فلا نرى أي تطرق للثقافة العربية وميراث الحضارة الإسلامية، اسهامات العرب في الترجمة في العلوم، أو واقعهم اليوم، مجريات عيشهم، الإشكاليات التي يواجهونها، أزمة الحضارة، كل ذلك لا يهم الواقفين من خلف الخطاب "العلمي" فهم لا يرون اللغة العربية إلا ضمن اطارها الأمني – السياسي لا أكثر.

قراءة مقارنة في الكتابين كافية لأن تعطي نظرة واضحة عن آلية اشتغال الأكاديميا الإسرائيلية، وعقلها المحرك فلن تكون الجامعات الاسرائيلية سوى مراكز أخرى للصراع، ومن يتحدث عن أمانة أكاديمية، فمن المحتم أنه لم يدرس بعد منتجات الجامعات الإسرائيلية، والتي ان أرادت بالفعل أن تصنع مشروعاً انسانياً فعليها أولاً أن تعيد قراءة آلياتها، وأن تعيد دراسة المضامين التي تدرسها.

اللغة هي ليس القضية الوحيدة التي تبرز فيها المضامين الاستعمارية وهيمنة السياسة على الأكاديمية وتزاوجهما، لكنها الموقع الأبرز الذي يظهر الصورة الواضحة لما يجري، ان كانت بالفعل الجامعات الإسرائيلية تريد أن تكون جامعات حقيقية فعليها أولاً وأخيراً أن تعيد قراءة مضامينها التي تدرسها لطلابها، وان لم تفعل فستبقى كما هي الآن جزء لا يتجزء من المشروع الصهيوني وبعيدة كل البعيد عن أن تكون أكاديمية، فالأكاديميا الحقيقية التي من المفروض أن تكون رسالتها إنسانية في المستوى الأول لا يمكن أن تتواقف جوهرياً والمشروع الصهيوني الذي ينقض أي رسالة انسانية وبالتالي يبقى السؤال كيف ستجيب الجامعات الإسرائيلية عمن يدعو لمقاطعتها إن كانت في أبسط القضايا ( قبل أن تحدث عن التصنيع التكنولوجي الذي يوفر القاعدة العلمية لشركات الأسلحة والبنى الأمنية ) تشن حرباً على وعي الطالب فأي ستبرير ستحمله لمقاطعيها؟

Lebanon is slated to hold presidential elections next week, despite the fact that the parliamentary elections have yet to be held and it is the Lebanese parliament that elects the Lebanese President. Last year elections were postponed for the first time in the state’s history, and parliament illegitimately extended its own term in the absence of elections. This further throws into doubt the legitimacy of the looming presidential contest.

Thus far, several potential presidential candidates have expressed their interest in running, all Maronite Christians as per Lebanon’s constitutional system of power sharing between sects. Three of the most prominent potential candidates are notorious for their involvement in the Lebanese civil war of 1975-1990: Samir Geagea, Michel Aoun, and Amin Gemeyyel.  Everyone and anyone who was residing in Lebanon during that war have stories and memories of these men and their wartime exploits/crimes.

However, civil war is also a war for memory, and while for many (myself included) these men are murderous criminals, for others they were and continue to be protectors and legitimate political leaders. There has never been a frank and popular discussion of the ways that the memoryscape of the Lebanese Civil War is as fractured and polarized as the war itself was. To use a cliché; during the war one child’s nightmares were populated by other children’s heroes. These patterns did not follow a narrow sectarian formula, as the civil war also featured Muslims killing Muslims and Christians killing Christians over ideology, turf, and the war-time economy. Furthermore, warlords and armed factions proliferated from and towards all sides during the civil war. In fact, it is another warlord and war criminal turned politician, Nabih Berri, who as speaker of Parliament has the duty to call Presidential elections. Three of his wartime fraternity; Geagea, Aoun and Gemeyyel, might be running for President. 

I was one of those children with nightmares, living in West Beirut with my family first in Tariq al-Jadidah, then in Wata al-Mseitbé, and finally in the Salim Salam area, where my family still lives. Memory is never scientific, and memories of childhood are always a jagged mosaic of the senses and the surreal. Perhaps they are more truthful that way. By the time I was eleven, all of the apartment buildings in which we had lived had been shelled and fired upon. The Lebanese army (under Gemeyyel) shelled Tariq al-Jadidah and with it our building, the façade of our building in Wata al-Mseitbé featured complex patterns of machine gun fire, and the apartment directly above ours in Salim Salam was shelled and burnt by the Lebanese army under Michel Aoun. These memories always seem to occur in candlelight, flickering experiences hardly uncommon for residents of Beirut at the time. In fact my (nuclear) family was exceedingly lucky: everyone survived. No one was permanently disabled. We never left Lebanon and we never lost our homes. 

Reading and watching Geagea give press statements on his candidacy, I remember the space of terror he used to occupy for myself and my friends in Tariq al-Jadidah. I remember watching mortars explode from a window with a view of the northern coast with my grade school classmates during the Aoun-Geagea war. I remember a year spent in a mountainous Beirut suburb, away from school and from an apartment untenably close to “the Green Line.” Today, I try to imagine what a Palestinian in Lebanon thinks when she sees Geagea on TV confidently lay out why he should be president. Does her heartbreak as one by one, journalists fail to ask Geagea about his involvement in war time massacres? Has her heart been broken too many times in Lebanon, and does she simply change the channel? No one asks Geagea, or his rival Gemeyyel, about their wartime alliances with Israel, or their complicity in the siege of West Beirut, or their wars with rival Maronite leaders that left thousands dead and maimed.

I remember listening to the news with my family on the way to school the day that Gemeyyel left Beirut for Paris—It was a happy day. Years earlier, my five-year-old self had found an unexploded ordinance on our balcony in Tariq al-Jadidah. Amin Gemeyyel was President and he had ordered the army to shell the area. Many refused the order and deserted. I like to think that the unexploded ordinance on our balcony was the result of a soldier consciously removing explosive materials from mortal shells, knowing that his act would save the lives of residents. In reality, however, we have no idea why that shell did not explode. We were just lucky.

We were lucky again when the Lebanese army shelled our neighborhood during Aoun’s “War of Liberation” against the Syrian army, a war which apparently required the Lebanese army to shell heavily congested civilian areas in West Beirut. One particularly terrifying night, as my family was clustered in our foyer where we had been sleeping for days, my mother spread her arms across a wall and kissed it. This is the first memory I have of my parents as ordinary people; fragile, afraid, vulnerable. I have never been as afraid in my life as I was in that moments, watching my mother hug a concrete wall during a night of heavy shelling.

The legacies of Aoun, Geagea and Gemeyyel are the hundreds of thousands of killed and wounded during the Lebanese civil war. Their legacies are massacres and sieges and mortars and snipers and kidnapping and millions of dollars stolen and embezzled from citizens and the treasury. They are not alone with this legacy: leaders of rival political units and “different sides” should also be defined by their wartime crimes.

In the absence of any formal reckoning with the legacies of the civil war, public memory and narration grow increasingly important. This is particularly true when there is no agreed upon narrative of the past, a condition of building a political community oriented towards a common future. Lebanon is a long way from this, but only when the fractured memoryscape is actually mapped out in all its registers will it be possible for these memories to inspire new futures. We should recognize the traumas that we experienced and inflicted upon each other during the war, and the traumas that we continue to experience through the imposed silence of the “post civil war” era. This seems particularly important given that Lebanon has been dancing, and stumbling, on a blade of violence since 2005.

Memory is a powerful political tool, and it belongs to each one of us.  Our memories of these infamous men are politically valid. Our memories are a tribute to those buried under rubble, shot in the street by snipers, exploded into pieces by a car bomb, massacred in a refugee camp or a mountain village. Their lives and deaths are not found in history books, there are no public and national memorials to them, and their killers and their killers’ allies continue to occupy all echelons of the government In many ways, our memories are the only tribute that the dead have left—a trace of their life and unnecessary death that remains.  To remember and dwell on the civil war, particularly when confronted by many of its macabre stars, now clothed in business suits and the language of elections, is not to be sectarian. To remember these men’s crimes does mean being mired in the past, or self-involved, or unfocused on the current political, economic, and social crises in Lebanon. To remember, and to insist on letting our memories speak, is to be human.

[”A Profile from the Archives“ is a new series published by Jadaliyya in both Arabic and English in cooperation with the Lebanese newspaper, Assafir. These profiles will feature iconic figures who left indelible marks in the politics and culture of the Middle East and North Africa.] 

First Name: Nasr

Last Name: Abu Zaid

Date of birth: 10 July 1943

Date of death: 5 July 2010

Nationality: Egyptian

Category: Intellectual and writer

Profession: Researcher and intellectual

Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid

• Born on 10 July 1943 in Tanta, Gharbia governorate.
• His father died when he was fourteen years old. He was preparing to be an Azharite sheikh had it not been for his father's illness, and later his death, which forced him to support his family.
• Memorized half the Koran by the age of ten, enabling him to become the youngest preacher at his village’s main mosque.
• Joined the Muslim Brotherhood in Tanta in 1954 and participated in its scouts program at the rank of “cub.” He soon gained prominence in the group.
• Obtained a diploma as an industrial technician in 1961. He worked as a radio technician in the General Egyptian Establishment for Communication and Radio between 1961 and 1972.
• Went to Cairo in 1967 and joined the Department of Arabic Language in the College of Arts. He graduated in 1972 with a rank of "very good." He was appointed a lecturer at the college.
• Obtained his master's degree in 1976. Then in 1978, he travelled to the United States to continue his studies.
• Obtained his doctorate's degree in 1981 with first honor rank for his thesis "The Philosophy of Interpretation: Mohi Eddin Ibn Arabi's Method of Interpreting the Koran; falsafit al-ta'weel: ta'weel al-Quran i'nda Mohi Eddin Ibn Arabi."

[Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid's lecture: Sufi interpretation and Ibn Arabi]

 

• Got married twice: first time in 1968; the marriage lasted for 22 years. His second wife was Dr. Ibtihal Younis whom he married in April 1992.
• Worked as a professor at Cairo University, Bani Sweif University, and the University of Khartoum universities between 1982 and 1985.
• During his stay in Sudan in 1985, he conducted an extensive research entitled "A Study in the Science of the Koran; dirasah fi o'loom al-Quran." After he returned to Egypt in 1990, he devoted himself to completing the research. He published this research in a book as one of the publications of the General Egyptian Establishment for Books.
• Worked as a visiting professor in Osaka University in Japan from 1985 to 1989.
• Applied for professorship position in the beginning of 1993. The matter was presented before a committee headed by Dr. Abdul Sabour Shahin who objected to giving him the position and filed a report against him accusing him of apostasy.
• Referred to court by Islamist lawyer Muhammad Hameda Abdul Samad, then the Vice President of the State Council, alongside others, on the charge of apostasy. They demanded he be separated from his wife.
• On 27 January 1994, the court of Giza refused the lawsuit. It based its refusal on the grounds that the matter was not in the "interest" of the court.
• On 14 June 1995, the head of the court of appeal in Cairo, Farouk Abul Aleem, decided to turn down the decision of the court of Giza and ruled in favor of the separation between him and his wife.  This decision triggered a huge wave of reaction in the Arab world denouncing the ruling and advocating the writer's freedom and right to express his views.
• Left Cairo with his wife for Spain. By October 1995, he had joined Leiden University in Holland.
• On 12 January 1996, the Court of Cassation refused his appeal to the separation ruling.
• On 19 January 1996, the Urgent Matters Court of Appeal upheld the cessation of executing the separation between him and his wife. However, he remained an apostate in eyes of the judiciary.
   

[The film "Waiting for Abu Zaid", directed by Muhammad Ali Al-Atasi -2010]
 

• In the fall of 2008, he made his longest visit to Egypt since his departure as a guest of Alexandria Library to talk about his research project "The Koran as a Text; al-Quran ka nas."). He gave a lecture in 2009 at the Egyptian Philosophical Society in Giza.
• Kuwaiti authorities prohibited him from entering the country on 15 October 2009, on the pretext that he may be assassinated.
• Was prohibited from entering the Egyptian Journalist's Syndicate building in Cairo on 22 December 2009, as per the request of the head of the Syndicate Makram Muhammad Ahmed.
• Recognized with the Ibn Rushd's Forum’s Award for Freedom of Thought on 25 November 2005.
• Died on 5 July 2010 in Cairo.
   

[Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid's lecture surrounding the Mu'tazila and the definition of the Koran]

Publications

• Rational Tendency in Interpretation, A Study in Metaphors in the Koran According to the Mu'tazila; al-itijah al-a'kli fi al-tafseer, dirasah fi qadiet al-majaz fi al-Quran i'nda al-mu'tazila. Al-Tanweer publishing house, Beirut, 1993. The fourth printing was published by the Arabic Cultural Center, Beirut and Casablanca, 1996.
• The Philosophy of Interpretation: Mohi Eddin Ibn Arabi's Method of Interpreting the Koran; falasafet al-ta'weel, dirasah fi ta'weel al-Quran i'nda Mohi Eddin Ibn Arabi. Al-Tanweer publishing house, Beirut, 1993. The third printing was published by the Arabic Cultural Center, 1996.
• The Systems of Signs in Language, Literature, and Culture; An Introduction to Semiotics; anzimet al-a'lamat fi allogha wa al-adab wa al-thaqafa; madkhal ila al-semotiqia.Co-supervised by Siza Qasem, Elias Modern Publishing House, Cairo, 1986; and O'yoon publishing house, Casablanca, 1987.
• The Concept of Text, A Study in the Science of the Koran; mafhoom al-nas, dirasah fi o'loom al-Quran. The General Egyptian Establishment for Books in Cairo, 1994; and the Arabic Cultural Center, Beirut and Casablanca, 1996.
• Paradoxes of Reading and Mechanisms of Interpretation; ishkaliyat al-qira'a wa aliyat al-ta'weel. The Arabic Cultural Center, Beirut and Casablanca, 1995.
• Imam Shafi'i and the Establishment of the Ideology of Moderation; al-imam al-shafi'i  wa ta'sees al-idyologia al-wasatiya. Sina publishing house, Cairo, 1992; Madbooli Library, Cairo 1996.
• Criticism of Religious Discourse; naqd al-khitab al-deeni. Sina publishing house, Cairo, 1994; Madbooli Library, Cairo 1995. (Translated to German under the title: Islam und Politik, Kritik des Religiosen Diskurses; translated by Shareefa Magdi and presented by Navid Karmani. Dipa publishing house, Frankfurt, 1996.
• Women in the Discourse of the Crisis; al-mar'a fi khitab al-azma. Nosoos publishing house, Cairo, 1995.
• Thinking During the Times of Expiation; al-tafkeer fi zaman al-takfeer. Sina publishing house, Cairo, 1995; and Madbooli Library, Cairo, 1995.
• Caliphate and the Authority of the Nation; al-khilafa wa soltat al-omah. Presented and researched by Nahr publishing house, Cairo, 1995.
• Useful Words in Abu Zaid's Story; al-qool al-mofeed fi qiset abu zaid. Madbooli Libraray, Cairo 1996.
• Text – Authority – Truth; al-nas, al-soltah, al-haqiqa. Arabic Cultural Center, Beirut and Casablanca, 1997.
• Circles of Fear: A Research in Women's Discourse; dawa'r al-khawf; dirasah fi khitab al-mar'a. Arabic Cultural Center, Beirut and Casablanca, 1999.
• Vernieuwing in het islamitisch denken; a Dutch translation for some collections: articles and chapters from "The Concept of Text" and "Criticism of Religious Discourse. Translated by Fred Ruby Limhouse, Boulak publishing house, Amsterdam, 1996.
• Critique du Discours Religieux; a collection of texts. Translated by Muhammad Charit, Sinbad publishing house, 1999.
• Ein Leben mit dem Islam, Self Translation; prepared by Navid Karmani, Hirdir publishing house, 1999.
• Discourse and Interpretation; al-khitab wa al-ta'weel. Arabic Cultural Center, Beirut and Casablanca, 2000.
• This is What Ibn Arabi Said; haktha takllam ibn arabi. General Egyptian Establishment for Books, Cairo 2002; Arabic Cultural Center, Beirut and Casablanca 2004.
• Islamic Left Wing: A General Overview; al-yassar al-islami: itlalah a'mmah. The Institute of Ibrahim Abu Laghad for International Research, Bir Zeit University 2004.

[List from the website of the Institution of Ibn Rushd; a full list of Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid's publications and works]

[Click here for a passage of his book Criticism of Religious Discourse; naqd al-khitab al-deeni]

Three Poems

Ahmad Shamlou (1925-2000)

Translated from he Persian by Sheida Dayani

The Secret

A secret was with me;

I told the mountain.

A secret was with me;

I told the well.

On the lengthy path,

Alone and lonesome,

I told the black horse

I told the stones…

With my old secret

At last I arrived.

I uttered no words

You uttered no words;

I was shedding tears

You were shedding tears.

Then I sealed my lips

You read from my eyes...

The Fish

Never has been my heart,

I think,

So crimson and warm:

At the worst seconds

Of this deadly night,

I feel,

Thousands of founts of sun

Spout with certitude

in my heart.

In every corner

Of this salt-desert of despair,

Thousands of vivacious woods,

I feel,

Grow sudden out of ground.

You! My lost certitude!

You runaway fish!

Slipping in and out

Of lakes of mirror!

A filtering pond am I;

Now with the sorcery of love,

Seek a way towards I

From the lakes of mirror!

Never has been my hand,

I think,

This gay and grand:

With a waterfall of crimson tear

in my eye

I feel,

Breathes a dusk-less sun of an anthem.

In every vein of mine

With every beat of my heart,

I feel,

Chimes now the awakening of a caravan.

She entered through the door one night

Nude as the water’s soul;

Her breasts: two fish,

Hands, holding a mirror,

Her hair: moss-smelling,

Twisted as moss.

At the threshold of despair,

Cried I:

“My found certitude!

Of you,

I will not let go of you.”

A Moon-Lit Night

(1973-74)

On a moon-lit night

Moon is in my dream

It takes me with it

Alley to alley,

Into the vineyards

Into the plum trees.

Valley to valley

Meadow to meadow

Behind the thickets

Where a night fairy

Fearing and trembling

Steps into the spring;

Her unruly hair

She begins combing…

On a moon-lit night

Moon is in my dream

It takes me to the

End of that valley

Where at night, the sole

Weeping willow tree

With her grace and charm

Stretches out her hand

So that drips a star

Like a raining drop,

Hanging from her branch

Instead of her crop…

On a moon-lit night

Moon is in my dream

It takes me with it

Out of the prison

Like a little moth

Into the dark night.

It takes me where the

Martyrs of the town

With lanterns of blood *

In the squares and streets

Cry until the dawn:

“Hey! Mr. Uncle!

Mr. vengeful man!

Are you drunk or dry?!

Wakened or asleep?!”

We are drunk and not

Martyrs of our town!

Asleep and awake

Martyrs of our town!

In the end one night

Moon will be rising

Over that mountain

Over the valley

And into the square,

Passing happily.

One night moon will come…

One night moon will come…

* In Persian literary and mystic traditions, butterflies and moths are in love with light, flames, and candles. They find their way to the source of light, and wander around it until they catch fire. Here, Shamlou indicates that the blood lanterns of the martyrs are the emancipating light that stimulate sacrifice.

[Translated from the Persian by Sheida Dayani]

This is a selection of what you might have missed on Jadaliyya last week. It also includes a list of the most read articles and roundups. Progressively, we will be featuring more content on our "Last Week on Jadaliyya" series.

• Let Us Now Praise Murderous Men; Lebanese Presidential Candidates, Considered
• Adunis, Mistranslated (Part One)
• Teaching Arabic in the US after 9/11
• Tartus in the Present Crisis: A Mirror of the Syrian Regime
• بيروت.. أول مرّة
• On the Struggle of Syrian Refugees in Lebanon
• الزمن الآخر\اتصال هاتفي في ساعة متأخرة من الليل
• Foucault, Fanon, Intellectuals, Revolutions
• On Not Despising the Present: Some Notes on Faris Giacaman’s 'The Sadness of Post-Militance'
• The Strands of the Military Opposition in Syria: An Interview with Yasser Munif (Part 2)

• Egypt Media Roundup (April 14)
• Last Week on Jadaliyya April (7-13)
• Turkey Media Roundup (April 15)
• Arabian Peninsula Media Roundup (April 15)
• Syria Media Roundup (April 16)
• O.I.L. Media Roundup (16 April)
• DARS Media Roundup (April 16)

• Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid: A Profile from the Archives
• Let Us Now Praise Murderous Men; Lebanese Presidential Candidates, Considered
• قراءة في مضامين تدريس اللغتين العربية والعبرية في الجامعة العبرية
• على أرض الصحفيين ما يستحق الحكي
• من قصة النقل المشترك لمدينة بيروت: باصاتٌ ومترو في محطة الأحلام
• غزة والبحر
• Stasis Shift: Guernica Interviews Jadaliyya Co-Founder Bassam Haddad
• On the Struggle of Syrian Refugees in Lebanon
• On Not Despising the Present: Some Notes on Faris Giacaman’s 'The Sadness of Post-Militance'
• Tahrir, Taksim, Tempelhof: Between Political Fields
• الزمن الآخر\اتصال هاتفي في ساعة متأخرة من الليل
• On the Road: An Exhibition by Paul Ayoub Geday
• Event: Angela Davis and Jadaliyya Co-Editor Noura Erakat on Mass Incarceration in the United States and Palestine (19 April, Evergreen State College)
• DARS Media Roundup (April 16)
• New Texts Out Now: Valeska Huber, Channelling Mobilities: Migration and Globalisation in the Suez Canal Region and Beyond
• O.I.L. Media Roundup (16 April)
• Syria Media Roundup (April 16)
• Arabian Peninsula Media Roundup (April 15)
• Turkey Media Roundup (April 15)
• The Strands of the Military Opposition in Syria: An Interview with Yasser Munif (Part 2)
• Adunis, Mistranslated (Part One)
• Last Week on Jadaliyya April (7-13)
• Egypt Media Roundup (April 14)

[This is a roundup of news articles and other materials circulating on Egypt and reflects a wide variety of opinions. It does not reflect the views of the Egypt Page Editors or of Jadaliyya. You may send your own recommendations for inclusion in each week's roundup to egypt@jadaliyya.com by Sunday night of every week.] 

Egyptian Copts Test Pilgrim Ban to Jerusalem
Tom Rollins  says, “Egypt's Coptic Orthodox Church has maintained a ban on Copts visiting holy sites in Israel and Palestine since 1978, but some are debating its merit.”

Sisi, Sabbahi, and the Future of Egypt’s Economy
Daniel Stoker offers a comparative analysis of the economic policies al-Sisi and Sabbahi to adapt and how they might impact Egyptians, if implemented.

'Good Muslim men': Coptic Christians and the Presidency
Dina Ezzat writes on Coptic Christians’ opinions on the upcoming presidential elections.

Does General Sisi Have a Plan for Egypt's Economy?
Mohamed El Dahshan analyzes al-Sisi speech on the economy.

International and Egyptian Street Artists Join Hands Against Sisi
Alice Speri reflects on street artists’ work in expressing their discontent with al-Sisi in Cairo, London, and New York City.  

Egypt’s Unmet Expectations                                  
Scott Williamson sheds light on the problematic of the government’s promotion of far-fetched promises to the people of Egypt.

Talking Finance: Will the Minister Reform Subsidies?
Mohamed Gad offers a retrospective analysis of the role of the financial ministry in impacting the socioeconomic status of the country.

Manifest Destiny
Omar Robert Hamilton says, "We too, are divided now, in Egypt. Along many axes. And while Israel moves with a plan that is blunt and unsparing, Egypt’s naked submission to capital and corruption breeds random catastrophes and a state of permanent regression."

Trust, but Prepare: A Civilian Sisi and an Empowered SCAF in a New Political Era
Gregg Carlstrom and Basil el-Dabh argue that al-Sisi’s looming presidency will not have a major impact on SCAF’s autonomy and authority should he fail as president of Egypt.

EU, Egypt Agree to Elections Observation Mission
H. A. Hellyer says, “The agreement for the EU to monitor Egypt’s coming elections will add to their legitimacy, but not everyone agrees the move is wise.”

Egyptians Divided Over Police Presence on University Campuses
Enas Hamed says, “Several Egyptian universities approved the entry and stationing of police forces on their campuses, in a bid to disperse student protests.”

Egypt’s Steep Learning Curve in National Housing Projects
Isabel Esterman highlights the government’s negligence of the socioeconomic status of the lower-class in Egypt through reflecting on forced evacuations and demolishing of informal houses, leaving residents without shelter or a roof over their heads.

Even if We can Cure AIDS, Do We Really Want to?
Amani Massoud says, “The more society rejects and marginalizes people living with HIV, the more reluctant the government is to address the real issues that are fueling the epidemic. The question is not whether or not we can cure AIDS, it’s whether or not we really want to.”

From Minya, After the Verdict
Jahd Khalil sheds light onto the lives of the several family members of the 529 Brotherhood supporters sentenced to death.  

In Arabic:

د.ابراهيم علوش: حرب الإمبريالية ضد الدول المستقلة
Dr. Ibrahim Aloush argues that violence becomes prominent in states that seek independence from imperialism. 

د. علي عبد العزيز: ما الذي تحقق من الثورة
Dr. Ali Abdelaziz argues that the ‘revolution’ did not achieve real change thus far.

!محمد عبد الحكم دياب: مصر وعقدة ‘شرعنة’ العنف المسلح بين عنف راهن وآخر متوقع
Mohamed Abdel Hakim Diyab offers an analysis on the rise of new movements, thus increasing social schisms and polarization in Egypt.

تامر هنداوي: رسائل الجنوب
Tamer Hindawy argues that establishing truce to stop violence in Aswan is not sufficient to solve the deep-rooted social injustices Noubians suffer from.

(أعياد الأقباط» بين قائدين عسكريين و«جماعة» (تقرير
Mohamed Kassab argues that Coptic Holidays have adapted a political stance since the 25 January uprising.

أفكار ومقولات مشوهة
Amr Hamzawy debunks normative notions on the correlation between poverty and illiteracy and lack of democracy in Egypt.   

التطهر من الفلول والإخوان
Emad El-Din Hussain argues that Egypt will not progress unless elements of feloul and the Brotherhood are purged from society.  

زياد بهاء الدين يكتب لـ«الشروق»: ما أهمية قانون التظاهر؟ ولماذا ينبغي تعديله؟ وما البدائل المتاحة؟
Ziad Baha’a El-Din reflects on the protest law, how it can be alternated and amended. 

البرد: القاتل الصامت
Reem Labib and Mika Minio-Paluello analyze the impact of climate change on the poor in Egypt.

شيوخ القبائل في سيناء.. أحجار شطرنج بيد من يحكم القاهرة
Al-Monitor reports on the alliance of Sinai’s tribal leaders with the government and how this alliance has resulted in tribal leaders “losing influence among their tribes.”

Recently on Jadaliyya Egypt:       

Nasr Hamid Abu Zaid: A Profile from the Archives
Jadaliyya’s A Profile from the Archives Page summarizes Nasr Abu Zaid’s biography.

على أرض الصحفيين ما يستحق الحكي
Nariman Naji reacts to the increase in killing and torturing of journalists in Egypt.

Event Report-Back -- Before the Modern, After the Medieval: Egypt and the Middle East in the Eighteenth Century
Daniel Woodward recaps a two-day event that took place at the Department of Arab and Islamic Civilizations at the American University in Cairo (AUC) titled “Before the Modern, After the Medieval: Egypt and the Middle East in the 18^th Century.”  

Tahrir, Taksim, Tempelhof: Between Political Fields
Theo Barry-Born draws linkage between urban spaces and their use to express political discontent by reflecting on Cairo, Istanbul, and Berlin.

On the Road: An Exhibition by Paul Ayoub Geday
Medrar TV reports on photography exhibition titled “On the Road” by Egyptian artist, and filmmaker Paul Ayoub Geday. 

New Texts Out Now: Valeska Huber, Channelling Mobilities: Migration and Globalisation in the Suez Canal Region and Beyond
Jadaliyya interviews Valeska Huber on her latest book “Channeling Motilities: Migration and Globalization in the Suez Canal Region and Beyond.”  

The following interview was conducted with Jadaliyya Co-Editor Mouin Rabbani by the Finland chapter of the Israeli Committee Against Home Demolitions on 2 February 2014. In the interview, Rabbani discusses a range of issues including the impact of the Arab uprisings on Palestine, the 2012 UN campaign, the current effects of the global boycott, diversment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, and the status Palestinian grassroots activism. He also touches on the role of the US, as well as the of the European Union.What is the impact of the Arab uprisings on the question of Palestine? 

[This is a roundup of news articles and other materials circulating on Turkey and reflects a wide variety of opinions. It does not reflect the views of the Turkey Page Editors or of Jadaliyya. You may send your own recommendations for inclusion in each week's roundup to turkey@jadaliyya.com by Sunday night of every week.]

English

Constitutional Court Decision and the National Intelligence Organization Law

Erdoğan vs Twitter (1)-(2) Yavuz Baydar points that the AKP government started to demonize the Constitutional Court after it issued a ruling stating that the Twitter ban was an unconstitutional restriction on free speech.

"The Court" and "The Agency" Nuray Mert writes that the AKP government seeks to curb the power of the Constitutional Court and judiciary and extend the power of intelligence.

The Unbearable Weight of Politics Taha Akyol argues that the attacks against the Constitutional Court are indeed against the independence of the judiciary.

Erdoğan Takes on Central Bank, Judiciary Cengiz Çandar comments on Erdoğan’s interference with the Constitutional Court on the Twitter decision and with the Central Bank on interest rates.

Is Turkey Reverting to a "Muhabera"' State? According to Fehim Taştekin, Erdoğan’s interference with the judiciary and the new bill could signal a return to the intelligence state.

Turkey’s Battle With Twitter“If the Turkish government tries to compel Twitter to reveal the users’ identities, the company should certainly strongly resist what is clearly a politically motivated action,” the Times writes.

New Constitutional Court, New Tutelage? Osman Can claims that since its establishment in 1962, the Constitutional Court had not produced a single juridical decision in favor of democracy or freedom.

The Last Castle Under Fire Orhan Kemal Cengiz comments on the Constitutional Court’s decision on the ban of Twitter and draft law about the National Intelligence Organization.

Why Conservatives Now Love the Leviathan Mustafa Akyol comments on the new law related to the National Intelligence Organization and criticizes pro-AKP religious conservatives' non-critical stance towards this law.

Turkey Is in A State of Crisis According to Lale Kemal, the new law, which gives extraordinary powers and legal immunity to the National Intelligence Organization, would turn Turkey into an intelligence state.

From Local Elections to Presidential Elections

A Most Weird New Polarization in Turkey (1)-(2)-(3) Murat Yetkin argues that the presidential elections will bring a polarization within the AKP—those in favor of Erdoğan versus those in favor of Gül.

Options for the Presidency Mustafa Akyol presents four possible scenarios for the presidential elections in August.

The Erdoğan/Gül Prisoner Dilemma Examining presidential elections from the perspective of game theory, Aaron Stein claims that Erdoğan and Gül will continue to cooperate.

Possible Presidential Scenarios and a Question Cafer Solgun argues that Erdoğan cannot be a fair and impartial candidate for presidential elections without  legally facing corruption allegations.

The December 17 Scandal is Far From Over Semih İdiz argues that election results have not cleaned the AKP, and that graft allegations continue to haunt Erdoğan.

De Facto Semi-Presidential System and Erdoğan Serdar Karagöz argues that results of local elections show Erdoğan as the next potential president.

New Turkey and Its Paradox (1)-(2)Ömer Taşpınar argues that New Turkey's paradox is that Erdoğan is the only hope for solving the Kurdish problem, though he is becoming increasingly authoritarian.

Turkey: Local Elections with Regional and International Implications The Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies’ assessment report on local elections and the AKP’s victory.

Mardin Elects Twenty-Five-Year Old Christian Woman as Mayor Susanne Güsten writes on Februniye Akyol, a twenty-five-year-old Syriac Christian, who was elected co-mayor of Mardin from the BDP as the first Christian woman mayor in a metropolitan municipality.

From Child Bride to Mayor, Berivan Kılıç Tells Her Story Tülin Daloğlu reports the story of Berivan Kılıç, who went through an abusive marriage and divorce, and became the first woman co-mayor of Kocakoy, Diyarbakir elected from the BDP.

The Structural Tendencies of Voting Behaviour According to Hatem Ete, voters have aligned themselves on the basis of status quo versus change.

Alarm Bells are Ringing for the CHP (1)-(2) Sedat Ergin analyzes the distribution of the CHP’s votes geographically and comments on the tactical alliance between the CHP and MHP in some cities.

Why Did the CHP Lose the Elections? Hilal Kaplan argues that the CHP is doomed to fail because it has an ambivalent character and statist reflexes, and it does not present a vision or reliable project.

The Turkish Political Landscape and the CHP Taha Özhan examines the obstacles for the CHP to expand its constituency geographically.

Authoritarian Fantasies According to İbrahim Kalın, to call Erdoğan authoritarian is a strategic move to render invisible coup attempts, illegal wiretappings, and parallel structures.

Turkey’s Municipal Elections: Setting the Stage for Upcoming Elections Soli Özel argues that the AKP’s victory in municipal elections will give rise to a war against the Gülen movement.

End of Hate Discourse Ekrem Dumanlı argues that raids against institutions and affiliations of the Gülen movement are based on false allegations and groundless reports.

Plot! According to Ali Bulaç, the government-Gülen struggle is just the tip of a huge iceberg.

Economy

Can Turkey Work a Miracle on Current Account Deficit? (1)-(2) Mehmet Çetingüleç examines Turkey’s dependence on foreign energy supplies and its credit ratings.

Dangerous Rumors Erdal Sağlam comments on the removal of bureaucrats under the name of waging war against a “parallel structure” and the extension of cleanup operation to the economy’s important institutions.

Almost Balanced Growth is Under Way Seyfettin Gürsel points that Turkey’s growth rate is likely to be under four percent.

Other Pertinent Pieces

Fourteen Days in Diyarbakır (1)-(2)-(3)-(4) A French-Armenian journalist’s two weeks in Diyarbakır “to meet with the past, present, and future of the thousands of Armenians who used to live in this city before the 1915 genocide.”

Who Supports Who in Syria Opposition? Fehim Taştekin argues that Turkey has not been selective when it comes to courting potential allies among hundreds of different groups fighting in Syria.

"Afghanization" of Syria and the Choice Between the Lesser of Evils Barçın Yinanç argues that Ankara and Washington are worried because Syria might become the land of radical Islamist groups.

Is Fate of Kurdish Issue Tied to Erdoğan's Future? According to Tülin Daloğlu, the PKK would not be satisfied simply with the recognition of Kurds' cultural and linguistic rights instead of democratic autonomy.

Interview with James M. Dorsey: Soccer, Politics, Society, and Protests An interview with James M. Dorsey about his new book The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer.

Book Review: Women and Civil Society in Turkey: Women’s Movements in a Muslim Society by Asuman Özgür KeysanÖmer Çaha reviews Women and Civil Society in Turkey, a book that “links civil society debates with women’s issues” in Turkey.

Turkish

Aftershocks of Elections 

AKP’nin sandık başarısının sırrı ne? Vedat Özdan answers the question, “What is the knack of the AKP’s poll success?” 

AKP’nin başarısı ve eksik demokrasi Erol Katırcıoğlu writes on “the AKP’s election success and a deficient democracy.”

Türkiye’de demokrasinin ideolojik ve sosyolojik düşmanları Ohannes Kılıçdağı points out the ideological and sociological enemies of the Turkish democracy.

Yerel seçim analizi—Eğrisi Doğrusu Tarhan Erdem, Bekir Ağırdır, and Taha Akyol analyse the local election results and speculate over the presidential elections. 

Beyaz Türklerin hüznü ve ufuktaki tehlikeİsmet Berkan writes on “the blues of White Turks and a cloud on the horizon.” 

Kim nerede? (1)-(2) Ali Bayramoğlu reads the local elections results from within a ten to fifteen year context. 

Milli muhafazakar güç kabarması Ahmet İnsel labels Erdoğan’s recent political attitude as “a nationalist and conservative surge of power.”

Kulak asmayın düşünce tacirlerine! Reflecting upon the local elections results, Nuray Mert blasts some so-called ex-leftists for their left hostility.

Devlet/ hükümet gerilimi In Turkey, the separation of powers has never been realized, Murat Belge argues.

Siyaset prizmasında kırılan din dili Akif Emre draws attention to the fragility of religious language used in Turkish politics today.

"Demokrasisiz millî hâkimiyet" ile çoğunlukçu "millî irade" yorumu arasındaŞükrü Hanioğlu compares “a national sovereignty without democracy” to “a majoritarian national will.”    

Kurdish Question and Democratic Autonomy 

Kışanak: Petrolden pay istiyoruz An interview with Gülten Kışanak, the newly elected mayor of Diyarbakır, on the Kurdish question and democratic autonomy. 

Gültan Kışanak 5N 1K'ya konuk oldu Gülten Kışanak explains what he means by democratic autonomy in a live stream.

Gülten Hanım'ın açtığı tartışma (1)-(2) Taha Erdem dwells upon Gülten Kışanak’s interview, which has become a hot topic in Turkey.

Özerklik üzerine (1)-(2) Doğu Ergil comments on the discussion over democratic autonomy.

İzmir demokratik özerklik istediğinde…(1)-(2) Aydın Engin argues for democratic autonomy.

Gültan Kışanak ne yapmaya çalışıyor? (1)-(2) Gülay Göktürk argues against democratic autonomy and holds Gülten Kışanak responsible undermining the peace process.

Erdoğan Kürtlere özerklik sözü vermiş olabilir mi? Could Erdoğan have promised Kurds autonomy, Ruşen Çakır asks.

Armenian Question 

99 yıldır yüzleşilemeyen acı: 24 Nisan 1915 Murat Aksoy argues that the Armenian genocide is a tragic event that has not been contended with for ninety-nine years.

1915-2015 The Armenian deportation was quite different from its antecedents employed in the Ottoman Empire before the World War I, Ümit Kardaş argues.

Ermeni Soykırımı’nı kabul etmeyen insanlardan ne bekliyoruz ki? An interview with Perihan Mağden on her newly published book Dangerous Dispositions (Tehlikeli Temayüller) and the Armenian genocide.   

Soykırım hafızasının korunması ve yayılması konusunda iki yaklaşım Khaçatur Kopelyan examines two different attitudes towards the preservation and propagandation of the memories of the Armenian genocide. 

Kolektif Suçluluk ve Ermeni Soykırımı Üzerine Sosyal Psikolojik Bir Analiz Roza Kamiloğlu provides a socio-psychological analysis of the Armenian genocide.

Ermeni Apo’dan Ermeni Gülen’e devlette devamlılık Mücahit Bilici writes on “the permanence in the state—from Armenian Öcalan to Armenian Gülen.”  

Other Pertinent Pieces

Post-Marksizm, küreselleşme, evrensellik ve etik Mesut Yeğen’s interview with Ernesto Laclau, a well-known political theorist who passed away on 14 April 2014.

İslamî gazetelerin Roboskî katliamına yaklaşımı nasıldı? Reha Ruhavioğlu examines Islamic newspapers' attitudes toward the Roboski (Uludere) massacre.  

Published on Jadaliyya

Tahrir, Taksim, Tempelhof: Between Political Fields

Devletleşen AKP, Değişmeyen Devlet? Türkiye’yi Anlama Uğraşında Devlet-Toplum İkiliğinin Ötesine Geçebilmek  

Digital Platforms, Analog Elections: How Civic Groups Are Trying to Bring Back Democracy in Turkey

Notes on Turkey's Local Elections

New Texts Out Now: Leila Piran, Institutional Change in Turkey: The Impact of European Union Reforms on Human Rights and Policy

Asylum and the Right to the City: Lessons from Turkey’s Syrian Guests and Other Urban Refugees

[What follows are some preliminary findings on the history of the electricity sector of Lebanon in general and that of Beirut in particular. Such research forms part of a broader project on the history of struggles over the political economy of Lebanon, within which the issue of electric public utilities was and continues to be central. In this first installment of a three-part series, the origins of the electricity sector will be laid out, as well as the popular and elite mobilizations that sector elicited. The second part will cover the consolidation of the electricity sector into Électricitédu Liban in 1964 and the effects of the 1975-1990 Civil War on electric production and distribution. The third and final installment will highlight the place of the electricity sector in the emerging post-war political economy.]

Electricity is a central feature of many public discussions in Lebanon. On the one hand, both scheduled and unscheduled power outages are a regular feature of everyday life (with the frequency and severity of such outages being almost directly proportional to how far one is from centers of privilege in Beirut and other urban areas). On the other hand, many Lebanese citizens cast the persistence of this problem as symptomatic of either factional competition at best or deep-rooted corruption at worst. Furthermore, for the past few years full-time and part-time workers in the electricity sector have mobilized for job security, adequate compensation as well as working conditions, and guaranteed retirement benefits—despite a variety of government, corporate, and sectarian forces opposing such claims.

Two themes dominate critical perspectives on the development of the electricity sector. One is that of post-war privatization schemes and their failure to ameliorate the problems of electricity production, transmission, and distribution for Beirut and the rest of the country. Another theme is the destructive effects of the civil war and repeated air raids and invasions of the Israeli military. Whether inadvertently or not, these two themes structure many narratives about electricity in Lebanon. Such narratives invariably take for granted two overlooked aspects of the history of electricity in Lebanon. Prior to 1964, the electricity sector in Lebanon was comprised of more than thirty private electricity companies, some devoted to both electric power generation and transmission/distribution and others to only transmission/distribution. In 1964 the Lebanese government restricted the generation, transmission, and distribution of electricity to a single state-owned enterprise called Électricité du Liban. It subsequently began incorporating the various private electricity companies through a variety of process that spanned nearly a decade. The second aspect that many critical perspectives of the contemporary electricity situation in Lebanon take for granted is the existence of a history of grievances against these electricity companies that long predates the civil war and encompasses issues of power outages, irregular voltage, high prices, and inadequate labor conditions. It is thus to these two aspects that this article will attend to in hopes of illuminating the early history of electricity in Lebanon.

The Origins of Electricity in the Republic of Lebanon

The first electricity-generating project in the area that comprises modern Lebanon was established in Beirut during the late Ottoman Empire. As part of a broader set of transformations being put into effect in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, both municipal authorities as well as local and foreign investors sought to establish an electric tramway system in Beirut. The founders of Société Anonyme Ottomane des Tramways et de l’Électricité de Beyrouth (est. 1906) opted to power the electric tramcars via combustion engine, while at the same time expanding their initial development project to include the provisioning of electricity for other uses. Thus in 1909, the company began operating the Beirut tramway system while at the same time providing electricity to a select number of individuals and enterprises.

Two specific aspects of such origins are worth noting. First, the tramway system consumed the majority of electricity generated. This was a reflection of the fact there was yet very limited commercial and industrial use of electricity in Beirut, and even less domestic demand and consumption. The second aspect worth noting is that the company had obtained a concession from the Ottoman government for the exclusive rights to establish, develop, and operate both the tramway and electricity systems in Beirut. This was in keeping with a common practice throughout the Ottoman Empire, the broader Middle East, and the rest of the world regarding the use of concessions to finance and operate infrastructural development projects.

A number of financial and political developments would transform the ownership structure for the provisioning of electricity and tramway services in Beirut. What had initially begun as a primarily locally-owned joint-stock company first became a primarily Belgian-owned business in 1911 and then a primarily French-owned business in 1923. The exact mechanisms of these transformations are beyond the scope of this article. However, it is worth noting that by 1925 the properties, rights, and responsibilities associated with the Beirut tramway system, the provisioning of electricity to the city, as well as the lighting of the city (the latter of which was previously held under a different gas lighting concession) were transferred to a new company, La Société des Tramways et de l’Éclairage de Beyrouth (rendered in Arabic as Sharikat al-Tramway wa-al-’Inara fi Bayrut).

The obviously significant transition in this part of the story is the collapse and dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire in the aftermath of World War I, and the establishment of Lebanon as one of the successor states under a League of Nations mandate and French colonial rule. A less obvious transition is the growth of industrial, commercial, and domestic electricity consumption during the mandate period, and a parallel increase in the availability and use of automobiles. It was thus during the latter half of the mandate period that the service taxi (i.e., shared taxi) and autobus first came into use in Lebanon. It was also then that the company changed its name to Électricité de Beyrouth (referred to as Sharikat Kahruba’ Bayrut in Arabic), reflecting the increasing share of electricity as regards to capital investments, customer base, profit generation, and public life.

Électricité de Beyrouth was one of several companies operating in Lebanon during the French colonial and early independence period. It was by far the largest electricity company with respect to infrastructural investments, power generation, and subscriber base. In addition to Beirut, it directly serviced areas or provided electricity to companies with transmission/distribution concessions in other parts of Lebanon—as far north as Jouineh, as far east as Rayak, and as far south as Dayr al-Qamar. Second to Électricité de Beyrouth was La Société Électricité du Liban Nord—also known as La Kadicha (the French rendering of Qadisha, the area where the company established its first electric power plant). This company provided electricity either directly or through transmission/distribution companies to many parts of the area enclosed between Tripoli, Bakhun, Diman, and Batrun. According to one estimate, in 1952 there were approximately thirty electricity companies that were evenly divided between those engaged in generation, transmission, and distribution and those engaged in transmission and distribution. A combination of local and foreign business interests established many of these companies during the mandate period.

The Shifting Terrain of Protests Against the Electricity Company

The population of Beirut and other areas regularly protested against ownership and policies of public utility companies throughout the colonial and early independence period. Due to the Beirut bias in much of the historiography of modern Lebanon, it is the mobilizations against Électricité de Beyrouth that we know most about. It is worth recalling that the company operated both the electric grid and the tramway system in Beirut. Sometimes, Électricité de Beyrouth would be targeted for specifically economic reasons such as high prices, low quality of service, or dismal working conditions. This was very much the case in 1922 and 1931. At other times, the company would be targeted as part of a broader mobilization for particular political demands such as independence or the evacuation of foreign troops. This was the case in 1936, 1943, and 1946. In either case, a central protest committee of sorts organized such mobilizations. The protests primarily took the form of Beirutis boycotting company services by refusing to consume electricity or ride the tramcars. Such collective action had at times the capacity to financially cripple the company as protest campaigns lasted for several weeks. Ad hoc committees would break the windows of homes and business that violated the electricity boycott, attack individuals who would ride the tramways, or vandalize the offices and installations of Électricité de Beyrouth. But such protests were not restricted to those that identified themselves as consumers. Many times, rival politicians and businessmen would also mobilize around the issue of electricity in hopes of further advancing their own political and corporate ambitions.

The tactic of boycotting the use of electricity, however, only made strategic sense in so far as the number of electricity subscribers remained relatively small in size and electricity consumption continued to be peripheral to everyday life. Thus by early independence, the idea of refraining from the use of electricity for an extended period of time was a much more difficult task to mobilize people around. Between the early 1930s and early 1950s, electricity production for Beirut increased by a factor slightly higher than six. During the same period, the number of electricity subscribers in Beirut increased by more than a factor of four. A cursory survey of newspapers from the first ten years of independence reveals a bombardment of advertisements for various electrical consumer goods. In addition, tourist guides from the period boast a critical mass of hotels, cafes, and cinemas. This is to say nothing of the industrial boom Lebanon featured during the depression era and World War II, which resulted in both increased production and an expansion in the number of industrial firms.

The proliferation of electricity in Beirut was certainly uneven, both in terms of class and geography. It nevertheless began to play an increasingly integral part in the life of the city, whether by means of lighting (for streets, other public spaces, and commercial establishments), domestic use of household electrical items (such as radios, refrigerators, and washing machines), or motive force (the power necessary for the operation of commercial and industrial equipment). However, beyond such unevenness, the provisioning of electricity was plagued by a host of problems that consumers took issue with. On the one hand, power outages in different parts of the city were a regular occurrence despite not being officially scheduled. On the other hand, voltage was frequently unstable when supplied—thus compromising the performance of domestic appliances and commercial/industrial machinery. Even more troubling was the perceived expensiveness of electricity, which was understood to be above the means of the average person or business, and in the interest of profit maximization rather than public good. Furthermore, electricity rates were priced via a complex matrix that was inaccessible to the non-specialist and privileged certain categories of subscribers (defined by the type and quantity of electricity consumed). Also important was the fact that there was only one office in all of Beirut, thus it making very difficult (in terms of time and cost) for potential subscribers to submit applications for service and existing subscribers to submit complaints. This is, of course, assuming that such applications and complaints were responded to when received. In short, the company was operating at a high rate of profit, while urban consumers were paying too much and getting too little.

These dynamics culminated in an eight-month protest campaign between December 1951 and July 1952 that demanded the company address such grievances and that the government intervene on behalf of public interest. In what was a remarkable display of strategic targeting and collective action, the protest campaign centered on a refusal to pay electricity bills rather a boycotting of the service itself. So successful was this campaign that it mobilized over fifty percent of Beirut electricity subscribers, thus rendering the option of discontinuing service for those unwilling to pay a futile strategy that would only incur further losses for the company. However, to prevent the threat or reality of service interruption from discouraging participation in the protest campaign, the central protest committee provided hotline numbers in newspaper and cinema advertisements for the campaign, promising to dispatch technical teams to reconnect electricity to those homes and business whose service was discontinued by Électricité de Beyrouth.

The company showed immense intransigence in the face of public mobilizations, repeating a litany of arguments about the fiscal integrity of Électricité de Beyrouth, the technical reasons for power outages, and the good intentions of shareholders and managers. For its part, the government initially publically distanced itself from the status quo, claiming to play the role of an arbitrator between the people and the company, all the while siding with the company through a variety of back-channel negotiations and stalling tactics that tests the discipline and commitment of the protesters. The government rejected calls for intervening in the pricing structure of Électricité de Beyrouth, let alone nationalizing the company altogether. Nevertheless, such reluctance on the part of the government—represented most clearly by the Council of Ministers, the Council of Deputies, and the Ministry of Public Works—eventually gave way to protester demands due to a host of factors that need not to be elaborated here. Consequently, between July and September 1952, the government intervened to implement a new electricity pricing system for Beirut subscribers—lowering prices by more than twenty percent for each of domestic, low-voltage motive force, and high-voltage motive force subscribers.

The Implications and Legacies of the 1951-52 Protest Campaign

The conclusion of the 1951-52 protest campaign by no means resolved the entirety of issues characterizing the problem of electricity in Beirut. In fact, despite the victory on the issue of prices there remained a number of unresolved problems—among them that of adequate supply, stable voltage, and responsive customer service. However, both the campaign and the eventual government response had important consequences for the future of the electricity sector.

Prior to September 1952, power outages were not publically scheduled and instead experienced as irregular service disruptions. In reaction to the government intervention in prices during the summer of 1952, Électricité de Beyrouth implemented the first official electricity-rationing program (i.e., regularly scheduled limits on electric power supply). This program stipulated that the street-lamp lighting on the “Khalda Boulevard” (which led to the Beirut airport) would be turned off throughout on-peak hours, and that during that same time the number of circulating electric tramcars would be reduced as needed. It also limited the use of electricity for irrigation purposes to a total of twelve hours a day, with specific time slots in which its use was permissible. The company claimed such rationing was necessary given that the decrease in prices had increased consumption levels and thus necessitated scheduled service disruptions. Electricity is a commodity that must be consumed as it is being produced. Thus Électricité de Beyrouth claimed firstly that its production capacity could not keep up with the new consumption levels, and secondly that lower prices meant less available revenue for capacity enhancement. It was at this juncture that regularly scheduled power outages became routinized as a fact of life in the electric public utility landscape of Lebanon. The government would build on this precedent after establishing provisional control over the company in 1953. It thus put in place a more elaborate rationing program. This time, electricity would be cut for three-hour intervals on a rotating basis throughout the suburbs of Beirut during on-peak hours. Electric power would also be cut for thirty-minute intervals in Beirut and two-hour intervals in the suburbs during the daytime, also on a rotating basis. This is not to say that company or government justifications for the scheduled outages were valid. However, like many other policies: once implemented, they began to take on a life of their own as they increasingly routinized the power relations they sought to maintain.

Another implication of the 1951-52 protest campaign has to do with rendering the targeting of Électricité de Beyrouth a legible nationalist and populist act. Not all political groups that participated in the protest campaign uniformly adopted calls for nationalization. However, the idea that a genuinely independent (read nationalist) government must attend to the problem of electricity (as part of an overall development strategy) and that such a government must safeguard public interest (against the infringements of corporate profit or international treatise) was given concrete expression through the targeting of Électricité de Beyrouth in a way it had not been before. This helps explain why, despite his own involvement in the protest campaign and his later shunning of the reformist coalition and populist allies that helped bring him to power, President Kamil Sham‘un turned to Électricité de Beyrouth as he sought to bolster his dwindling support base. In March-April 1953 the Lebanese government established provisional control over all production, transmission, and distribution facilities of Électricité de Beyrouth. Approximately one year later, in 1954, the government and Électricité de Beyrouth reached agreement for the reclamation by the government of all of company concessionary contracts and their associated facilities. The agreement included both electricity and tramway systems.

A final implication of this early history of electricity in Beirut has to do with the institutional origins of the present-day Électricité du Liban andMinistry of Power and Water. I will address the bulk of this history in subsequent parts of this series. For now, it is worth mentioning that the nationalization of Électricité de Beyrouth resulted in the creation of an Electricity and Public Transportation Authority within the Ministry of Public Works for the management of the former’s facilities and services. It is this authority that represented the institutional origins of what would later become a state-owned enterprise and independent ministry, currently known as Électricité du Liban and the Ministry of Power and Water, respectively. Much of the contemporary debates about the failure to adequately address the electricity problem highlight the overlapping and conflictual prerogatives of different government entities that entangle the ability to take decisive action regarding the electricity sector within bureaucratic and political webs of competing influence. A close analysis of the structure of the Electricity and Public Transportation Authority established in 1954 and its subsequent metamorphoses highlights some of the reasons behind such entanglement. But that institutional genealogy and the parallel reasons for the persistence of the electricity problem in Lebanon despite nationalization are the subject of future installments.

Bibliographic Note

This article is drawn from both primary and secondary sources as part of a broader research project. As such, primary sources have been excluded pending the completion of the project. Readers interested in the origins of tramway and electricity services in Beirut and the broader Ottoman context they were established within should consult relevant sections of Jens Hanssen’s Fin de Siècle Beirut: The Making of an Ottoman Provincial Capital (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). For a discussion of the place of electricity and tramway services in the political economy of French colonial rule in Lebanon, readers should consult relevant chapters in Simon M. W. Jackson’s “Mandatory Development: The Political Economy of the French Mandate in Syria and Lebanon, 1915-1939” (Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 2009). For a survey of major protests concerning electricity and tramways during the mandate period, see Carla Edde’s “La Mobilisation ‘Populaire’ à Beyrouth à l’époque du Mandat, le cas des boycotts des trams et de l’électricité,” published in Nadine Meouchy’s edited volume France Syrie et Liban 1918-1946: Les ambiguitiés et les dynamiques de la relation mandataire (Damascus: IFEAD, 2002). All facts concerning the 1946-1954 period are drawn from press coverage, development reports, and other primary sources found in various archives in addition to oral history interviews conducted by the author.