Sari Nusseibeh’s Persistent Empathy

From Forward.com

Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life
By Sari Nusseibeh, with Anthony David
Farrar, Straus and Giroux

For the past 25 years — from the moment he unwittingly entered Palestinian politics as a teacher’s union leader, to his position as Yasser Arafat’s personal representative in Jerusalem during the second intifada — [Sari] Nusseibeh has been a paragon of empathy and, by extension, of compromise. More than any other Palestinian leader, he has tried to understand the psychology of Israelis, their fears and neuroses, and address them. It’s no mystery that he’s become a darling of the Israeli left, friend to Amos Oz and Yossi Beilin. He’s also never been afraid to speak bitter truths to his own people (and risk getting his bones broken for it). In September 2001, as the rocks in Palestinians’ hands had turned into explosive belts around their waists, he wrote an article about the need for Palestinians to abandon the delusion that they would one day return to their pre-1948 homes. “We have two rights,” he wrote in Arabic. “We have the right of return, in my opinion. But we also have the right to live in freedom and independence. And very often in life, one has to forgo the implementation of one right in order to implement the other rights.” In Palestine, you don’t get more heretical than this.