Nusabaya, Sari (Nuseibeh; 1949–)

views updated

NUSABAYA, SARI (Nuseibeh; 1949–)

Palestinian academic and activist, born in Jerusalem into an old and distinguished upper-class Palestinian family. From the epoch of Caliph Omar (638 C.E.), the Nusabayas, along with the Judeh family, were in charge of opening and closing of the gates of the Holy Sepulcher every day. The father of Sari, Anwar Nusabaya, was defense minister in the Jordanian government. With degrees from Oxford and Harvard, Sari Nusabaya became a professor of political science at Bir Zeit University in the West Bank. Close to al-Fatah and in favor of dialogue with Israel, from 1987 on he participated in many encounters with important Israeli figures, both intellectual and political. In September 1987 he was expelled from the teachers' committee of Bir Zeit for having suggested that since neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians could crush each other Palestinians should ask that the West Bank be annexed by Israel so that they could become Israeli citizens, forcing Israel to give them the rights it was currently denying them.

On 8 January 1988, when it became clear that the Intifada would not be a short-lived phenomenon, he helped organize the Unified National Leadership of the Uprising and participated in composing its first communiqué. Considered one of the main organizers of the Intifada by Israeli authorities, he was forced to close his office at the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs (on whose board he continues to sit). U.S. intervention saved him from being imprisoned. In January 1991, in the context of the Gulf War, he was imprisoned for three months, accused of having transmitted information meant for Iraq to the Palestine Liberation Organization. After he was freed, he laid the groundwork, along with Faysal al-Husayni and Hanan Ashrawi, for the negotiations that took place at the Madrid Conference on Middle East peace. In 1992, during the peace process that started at this conference, he was named head of the technical committees, setting up structures that would be charged with preparing for autonomy in the Palestinian territories.

In 1991, with Mark Heller, he published No Trumpets, No Drums: A Two-State Settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. In January 1994, while Palestinian autonomy was being established as provided for in the Oslo Accords, he was named assistant director of the governing committee of Palestinian Economic Council for Development and Reconstruction. He has been president of al-Quds University in Abu Dis in East Jerusalem since 1995. In October 2001 Yasir Arafat named him to replace Faysal al-Husayni, who had died in May, as minister of the Palestinian Authority responsible for Jerusalem. He proposed organizing a general assembly of representatives of East Jerusalem to uphold the interests of its Palestinian inhabitants. His position is usually referred to as the Palestinian Authority's diplomatic representative in Jerusalem; he dovotes himself to activities designed to create dialogue with Israelis of good will. In 2001 Nusabaya published an essay proposing that, if there were to be a two-state settlement of the Israel-Palestine issue, Palestinians would have to give up the right of return to anyplace within the boundaries of the State of Israel. This point of view was and continues to be extremely controversial among Palestinians, and it provoked outrage and condemnation, with many calling for Nusabaya to be dismissed from his post.