Ali Abunimah

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Ali Abunimah speaks at the Palestine Solidarity Conference in Stuttgart.

Ali Hasan Abunimah (Arabic: علي حسن ابو نعمة‎, Levantine Arabic: [ˈʕali ˈħasan abuˈnɪʕme]) (born December 29, 1971) is a Palestinian American journalist and co-founder of Electronic Intifada, a not-for-profit, independent^[1] online publication about the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. Born in Washington D.C., he spent his early years in the United Kingdom and Belgium before returning to the United States to attend college. His mother is originally from the village of Lifta, now part of Israel, but became a refugee in the 1948 Palestinian exodus. His father is from the village of Battir, now in the West Bank, and is a former Jordanian diplomat who served as ambassador to the United Nations.^[2]

Abunimah is a graduate of Princeton University and the University of Chicago and is a frequent speaker and commentator on the Middle East, contributing regularly to the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times among other publications. He lives in Chicago, Illinois. He has also served as the Vice-President on the Board of Directors of the Arab American Action Network.^[2]

He is a fellow at the Palestine Center.^[3]

Published work

Abunimah is author of the book One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, which proposes to revive the idea of one state shared by two peoples.

In response to the Gaza War he wrote an article in The Guardian headlined: "We have no words left".^[4] In the article, Abunimah commented about the end of the truce: "But what is Israel's idea of a truce? It is very simple: Palestinians have the right to remain silent while Israel starves them, kills them and continues to violently colonise their land" and "any act of resistance including the peaceful protests against the apartheid wall in the West Bank is always met by Israeli bullets and bombs. There are no rockets launched at Israel from the West Bank, and yet Israel's extrajudicial killings, land theft, settler progroms and kidnappings never stopped for a day during the truce."

Views on Israel and Palestine

In 2009, Abunimah wrote an article entitled, "Israeli Jews and the one-state solution," covering some of the same arguments as he raised in his book, One Country. Abunimah's position is that the two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict has "no chance of being implemented" and has been superseded by a "de facto binational state" under Israeli control. He supports the creation of a single democratic state, based on the equality of citizens and taking into account the legitimate concerns of Israel's Jewish population.

Abunimah opposes Zionism, which he describes as "a dying project, in retreat and failing to find new recruits." He argues that Zionism's promotion of Jewish self-determination in Israel and Palestine's "intermixed population" has the effect of maintaining "a status quo in which Israeli Jews exercise power in perpetuity." Abunimah's position is that Palestinians should pursue coercive measures against Israel such as the non-violent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, while also putting forward a positive vision of a single democratic state.^[5]

In January 2012, Abunimah tweeted "Isn't it time for a popular Palestinian revolution in the form of a third intifada?"^[6] quoting the headline of an article by Rana Baker which he posted on his EI website.^[7]

Gilad Shalit case

Abunimah believed that Gilad Shalit – an Israeli soldier captured in 2006 via cross-border Hamas raid into the Israeli town of Kerem Shalom, released in a prisoner exchange in 2011 – should not have been considered a captive but rather a prisoner of war. As such, he does not believe that Shalit would necessarily be entitled to an ICRC visit or contact with his family – both of which Hamas routinely denied.^[8]

Barack Obama connection

Abunimah wrote in 2007 that he had met Obama around half a dozen times before Obama held elective office. The events were often at Chicago-based Arab-American and Palestinian events, including a 1998 fundraiser at which Edward Saïd was the keynote speaker. Abunimah says that Obama was straightforward in his criticism of US policy and "his call for an even-handed approach to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict." He said that the last time they spoke was in the winter of 2004, while Obama was in the midst of a campaign to secure the Democratic Party's nomination for the Senatorial campaign. Obama told him "Hey, I’m sorry I haven’t said more about Palestine right now, but we are in a tough primary race. I’m hoping when things calm down I can be more up front." He also remembers Obama referring to his activism and his contributions to The Chicago Tribune critical of Israel and US policy, telling him to "keep up the good work!"^[9]

This notwithstanding, Abunimah has also written that Obama gradually shifted to a pro-Israel position during his rise to the presidency, a process he says began as early as 2002. He has strongly criticized Obama's approach to Mid-East affairs, writing that the president has "entrenched" the policies of his predecessor, George W. Bush, and has not contributed to "even the pretense of a serious peace effort."^[10]

In May 2012, Abunimah wrote that the United States under Obama is leading a campaign "to close every door to justice for Palestinians," and that his ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice is leading "a relentless anti-Palestinian crusade at the UN." He also wrote that "the Susan Rices and William Hagues of the world are not only silent about these crimes, but fully complicit in them," referring to the Palestinian hunger strikers in Israeli prisons.^[11]

References

• "One Country: A Bold Proposal to End the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict" ISBN 978-0-8050-8034-6

External links

• Electronic Intifada Official Website
• Abunimah.org Official Website
• Palestine Center
• Profile on Ali Abunimah at The Institute for Middle East Understanding
• Ali Abunimah on Opening of US-Brokered Mideast Peace Talks - video report by Democracy Now!

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