Non-violent, Eh?

Sari Nusseibeh, who I once debated on Israeli TV, has a book out, ONCE UPON A COUNTRY A Palestinian Life. By Sari Nusseibeh with Anthony David Illustrated. 542 pages. Farrar, Straus & Giroux. $27.50.

It is praised by a Jewish critic writing in the New York Times.

Here's an excerpt:-

...He has always publicly spurned all forms of violence...

...Mr. Nusseibeh was pulled into politics through the university faculty union. When the first intifada started in late 1987 as acts of public civil disobedience, he became one of its intellectual chiefs as author of its demands and many of its key pamphlets. He wrote communiqués (which were often transported in swallowed capsules), moved across Europe and back and forth across the Jordan River, and carried cash in bags to and from the exiled leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

But by 1991, when the intifada turned endlessly violent, Mr. Nusseibeh wanted no more part in it.

What bull.

Ipso facto, the PLO was (and is still) a terrorist organisation It was founded in 1964, before the so-called "occupation". The intifadah was never an act of civil disobedience but its practicioners were violent, albeit low-level, from the beginning trying to maim, injure and kill with stones, molotov cocktails, etc.