When Hanan Ashrawi appeared on ABC Nightline's televised town meeting between Israelis and Palestinians in 1988, she seemed to many viewers an unlikely spokesperson for the Palestinian cause.
The broadcast took place only months after the intifada, the 1988 Palestinian uprising against Israel.
"People had all kinds of funny ideas about Middle Eastern women," said Elizabeth Barlow, outreach coordinator at the University Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies.
But with a strong voice demanding peace and justice for her people, Ashrawi broke the stereotype of the helpless, subordinate Arab woman, Barlow said.
"She's a very clear thinker and a lucid speaker," Barlow said. "Half of America fell in love with her - she really took the country by storm."
Tonight at 7, Ashrawi, a member of the Palestinian Parliament, is bringing her message to campus, speaking about "Requirements for a Lasting Peace in Palestine/Israel" in Rackham Auditorium.
Her talk at the University is just one stop in a visit to the United States packed with a series of appointments, including meetings with officials at the U.S. Department of State.
"In the eyes of the world, that there is a woman as one of the top negotiators for the Palestinians - that has made a big impression," said Near Eastern studies Prof. Michael Bonner, the director of CMENAS, which is sponsoring Ashrawi's visit to the University along with other University departments.
Ashrawi had been a key figure in the Palestinian movement for independence and civil rights long before the American public heard her on ABC's town meeting.
As the dean of the arts college at Birzeit University in the West Bank during the intifada, Ashrawi reasoned with soldiers who came banging at the university
sity gates to arrest student activists, Barlow said. Ashrawi soon became a human rights leader, setting up a program to find lawyers to defend arrested students.
"She really was interested in exploring legal means of action, so people were not left feeling helpless when their land was being taken, their houses demolished and their families tortured," Barlow said.
When former President George Bush and then Secretary of State James Baker jump started Middle East peace talks in 1991, after the Persian Gulf War, Ashrawi was an official Palestinian spokesperson.
"At the time, it really looked like there was a breakthrough in the peace process" Bonner said. "She was a very eloquent spokesperson."
The peace talks eventually fizzled, but Ashrawi remained at the forefront of the Palestinian movement.
She currently serves as an elected member of the Palestinian Parliament, but resigned as the governing body's minister of higher education in 1998 in protest of corruption and prison abuse by Palestinian authorities.
"Her view is that after working so hard for a state, it should be law-abiding," Barlow said.
10-15-99
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