The Tribes Triumphant by Charles Glass

Author:Charles Glass [Charles Glass]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007369010
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2006-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Civil Society

One man in Gaza who knew the people taken in by the Israelis, released and then arrested by their Palestinian compatriots was a lawyer named Raji Sourani. Forty-seven years old, Sourani had received France’s Rights of Man Prize from President Jacques Chirac. On the wall of his office in Gaza’s Palestinian Centre for Human Rights hung a photograph of the impeccably dressed Sourani receiving recognition for his years of struggle from the taller Chirac, who had never struggled for anything more than money and high office. There were other photographs, other prizes, the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award, dignitaries from the West, commendations from Amnesty International. I knew about Sourani from friends, and I had read about him in Amira Hass’s book. A ferocious defender of the rule of law, he had challenged both the Israeli occupier and Yasser Arafat.

‘We don’t wait for victims to come,’ he said. ‘We initiate.’ The eight lawyers at the Centre sought out the tortured, who were often afraid to speak lest they disappear again. The idea was to make Palestine a state, if ever it became a state, of laws and open institutions rather than what the PA was: the arbitrary rule of one man.

The Israeli military authorities detained Sourani in 1979 on suspicion of belonging to an organization that Israel had declared illegal. His interrogation lasted nine months, and he was not released until 1982. He was never charged, never put on trial. He resumed his law practice, representing prisoners and detainees against whom the only evidence was a confession made under relentless torture. They took him in again in 1986. And again in 1988. Between periods of imprisonment, the Israeli military governor would not permit him to travel to international law conferences, the United Nations or human rights symposia. Soldiers searched his house, found nothing to incriminate him and banned him from practising law for a year. When the Palestinian Authority succeeded the Israelis in Gaza, Sourani and others formed the Gaza Centre for Rights and Law. ‘What I anticipated when the PA came was a marriage with the local culture,’ Sourani said. ‘But what happened was not marriage. It was adultery. Added to that, Israel and the Americans encouraged without limits to bring the devil out of the PLO. They made arbitrary arrests. They tortured like the Israelis. It was an American creation. The only thing about the PA that Al Gore praised was the State Security Court. At the end of the day, we were left with neither human rights nor security.’

The secret court that Vice President Gore admired came into being on 7 February 1995. Sourani declared in public that the court was illegal. On 15 February, the Palestinian police arrested him. There was an international outcry. Prominent Palestinian nationalists, including Feisal Husseini and Hanan Ashrawi, appealed to Arafat for Sourani. He was released, but the vilification began. ‘They accused me of being corrupt. They said we had a hidden agenda. They called us lovers of occupation. On 1 April, they pressured the board to sack me.

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