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Sari Nusseibeh explains how Palestinians remain hopeful (1:21).
 

Tavis: Sari Nusseibeh is the president of Al-Quds University in Jerusalem, the only Arab university in the Holy City. He also teaches philosophy at the university and is the former PLO representative to Jerusalem. His new book is called "Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life." Professor Nusseibeh, nice to have you on the program.

Sari Nusseibeh: Great to be here with you, Tavis.

Tavis: This title, "Once Upon a Country," suggests what?

Nusseibeh: Well, it suggests that the country may no longer exist in real life or the possibility for it as it exists in the dream world, so that's the suggestion that it might have become part of the past, no longer a possibility for the future.

Tavis: Why not a possibility for the future?

Nusseibeh: Because the changes that have taken place have been so radical, so difficult, that for us, for the Palestinians, it's a big question mark whether we can, in fact, once again build up a country, build up a state, build up new lives for ourselves and for our children the way that we heard those lives or similar lives used to be lived by our parents and grandparents in that country.

Tavis: If that possibility is absent from the equation, then what's the struggle all about?

Nusseibeh: Faith. Faith that, in fact, it can come about through an active will on our part. We have to retain the hope that it can come about. On the one hand, we're worried and I'm worried. One feels depressed very often about the situation. But on the other hand, you wake up the next morning and you think, well, you have to go on. There is no other alternative really.

Tavis: When you say if it is to happen, it will happen through an active will on the part of your people, what does that mean, an active will on the part of your people?

Nusseibeh: Well, I think a couple of things. First of all, politics is very often monopolized by political leaders and very often, when it's monopolized by political leaders, it need not go in the direction that is the best, that is, what is good for the people themselves.

Secondly, that the people can, in fact, exercise their will to have a people that can be empowered and I think they do have the power to make things happen. In our case, I think the Palestinians can make things happen. We often make things happen wrongly, but likewise because we can do that, we can make things happen in the right way and similarly, by the way, on the Israeli side.

Tavis: When you say that the Palestinian people are empowered, what is the source of that empowerment? Where does that power come from? There are some who look at this conflict and who feel quite the opposite, that the Palestinian people are not empowered at the level and in the way that they should be. So when you say that your people are empowered, that source comes from where?

Nusseibeh: It's an inner power, inner strength. Personally, I think it's wrong to measure power in terms of the military strength that you have or that the country has. Very often, even if you have military strength, it doesn't do very well for yourself or for your people.

If we look, for instance, at the latest incursion into Lebanon by Israel and take into account the fact that Israel was far more militarized and equipped than the Lebanese and we see what happened, we come to realize that, in fact, being militarily superior doesn't necessarily produce the right political results.

Now in our case, I think the power simply must be our ability to stay on the land, our ability to continue to ask for our rights. We have to seek the best ways to seek those rights, but I believe we have the power within us sooner or later to translate those rights into reality.

Tavis: Since you went there, let me follow you there. What is the best way to ask for those rights? And is asking for those rights the proper strategy?

Nusseibeh: That's a good question. I think I'll go deeper, okay? My position is the following. Of course, you look at the picture from afar and what you see is being an Israeli which is pitted against being a Palestinian. Being an Israeli is defined, it's preset. It's like something solid and rigid. And being a Palestinian is something solid and rigid. When you see things in that way, you can only see the one breaking into the other.

Now my position is that one should not look at identities as being rigid or pre-defined or preset, that one could work on changing or crafting an identity and one can do this for oneself in the same way that one can do it for the other. For instance, in the final analysis, what you have on the world stage are not necessarily entities that are constitutionally enemies of one another, but entities that can be transformed by human agency into becoming friends with one another.

In our case, I think the Palestinians can adopt a non-violent strategy to win over the Israelis to our side rather than adopt a strategy that's aimed at winning against the Israelis and, you know, likewise the Israelis can do something similar.

Now they will only do this on both sides if they can also see that, in the final analysis at the end of the day, there's no solution really through violence or through conflict and that the only way to reach a solution is to put our heads together, see what works out for both of us and then work together in order to bring it about.

Tavis: Is it, though, myopic, shortsighted, wrong, in fact, to make the assumption that people in that region have the capacity to do that, to lay down weaponry, to do away with violence, to believe - to paraphrase your words - that love can win in this situation?

Nusseibeh: Well, I think it's a power that has not been tried. We've tried violence and, in each stage of our history - by the way, I'm talking not only about the Palestinians here, you must understand. I'm also talking about Israelis because, look, if you look at what the Israelis have done with their superior military power, you will find that at every stage in the history of the presence in the region, they have not yet been able through the power they've exercised and the wars that they have "won" to achieve their objective, which is to legitimize their situation in the Middle East as a Jewish state.

This can really only come about through creating understanding for the need to have such a state by their new neighbors, namely the Arab states. So that shows also that, even if you're more powerful militarily, that does not guarantee for you a political product. So I don't think it's myopic or wrong. I think, on the contrary, it's not been tried and I think it's a simple matter to try.

Tavis: It begs the question, though, as to why it has not been tried. I mean, what you've just laid out, I mean, you're a brilliant and learned man, but anybody who watches this knows the same thing that you know.

Nusseibeh: Well, I'll tell you why it's not been tried. Because the natural reaction of people when violence has been used against them is to react violently. The natural reaction people have when, for instance, they feel that someone is out to dispossess them is to adopt force. Actually, most people actually think that force works. Most people don't think that non-violence -

Tavis: - but history is replete with examples, courageous examples of persons who have shown us that that theory doesn't work. Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Nelson Mandela. History is replete with those examples, so it's not like we don't have examples here.

Nusseibeh: Absolutely. And, in fact, there's a new book by Gene Sharp. I don't know if you've come across it. It lists the numbers of different ways in which you can wage struggle non-violently and achieve your political objectives. In the case of the Palestinians, at the end of the day, what is it that we're after? If you ask yourself that very important question, then you can determine that, in fact, non-violence is the only way to go forward because what we really want is to have our rights, to be respected, to live in dignity.

This we can do either in the context of one state, which is not something the Israelis want, or in the context of two states, which is something that's in the interest of the Israelis. It seems to stand to reason to therefore suppose the two sides can put their heads together and work out a two-state solution.

Tavis: The subtitle of your book is "A Palestinian Life," which leads me to ask whether or not throughout the course of your life you have always been this enlightened or whether or not you had to go through a journey to arrive at this particular place about the value of non-violence and the transformative power of love.

Nusseibeh: I think I had to go through a journey. Maybe the germ of being like this was always in me, but I had to go through a journey. I think the most definitive period in that journey was the 1967 war which suddenly brought the two sides of Palestine and Israel together back in one piece, thus enabling me for the first time to walk across what was called the No-Man's Land and to actually walk into an area which had been forbidden me for the previous eighteen or twenty years of my life.

Then I reached the other side and actually stood in the place of the people I saw throughout my upbringing staring back at me. I'm speaking metaphorically, of course, and not only actually to be able to make that journey to the other side.

In making that journey, discovering that it is far more important for me to retain my identity as a human being above all rather than my identity as a Palestinian or as a Muslim or as an Arab or as a Jerusalemite or as an Asabi, which is my family name. My human identity is far more important and this is now what I've come to learn to stick to and to see people through that lens.

Tavis: Let me close our conversation by asking - there's so much in the book that we just glossed over in this short time.

Nusseibeh: Well, I hope people will buy it.

Tavis: Yeah, we hope so. I hope people buy it as well, as does your publisher, I'm sure (laughter). That said, let me offer this as an exit question. I've been to the Middle East, been to Jerusalem and all over Israel I think two or three times in my lifetime now.

Every time I go there, I come away with the same question which is particularly fascinating, I think, to ask of a Palestinian, which is how, after the journey that you've been on, you remain hopeful? How do you live in that region of the world, particularly as a Palestinian, and remain hopeful?

Nusseibeh: Really by not having any alternative. You live in a situation like this, a life under occupation. If you use your reason, you can't be optimistic. There's a famous saying by this major Italian writer and activist which is that, "You may be rationally pessimistic, but you retain spiritually an optimism in life."

I think this applies to us that, because perhaps of the fact that as we look around ourselves and, objectively speaking, see everything working against us, we therefore see no other alternative but to hope. Further than that, also to have faith that we can actually eventually make it happen.

Tavis: His name is Sari Nusseibeh. The book is called "Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life." I recommend it to you. Professor Nusseibeh, nice to have you here in Los Angeles and on the program.

Nusseibeh: Thank you very much, Tavis.

Tavis: Glad to have you here.

Nusseibeh: My honor.