MIDEAST
Professors Writing
Palestinian Dictionary
SHELDON KIRSHNER
T
oronto — The first bio-
graphical dictionary
on leading Palestinian
figures has been compiled by
a team of Israeli scholars at
the Hebrew University.
Scheduled for publication in
1988, the dictionary will con-
tain 189 entries on Palesti-
nians from the late Ottoman
period to the present.
The biographies will range
in length from several hun-
dred words to 5,000, depen-
ding on the importance of the
subject. According to co-editor
Alexander Bligh, the longest
ones will be on Yasir Arafat,
chairman of the Palestine
Liberation Organization, and
Haj Amin al-Husseini, the
late mufti of Jerusalem.
Bligh said no dictionary of
its kind exists today. The
closest such publications in
the Arab world list prominent
Arab personalities, but not
Palestinian Arabs exclusive-
ly. "For us, this is a vital ques-
tion, to get to know the
Palestinians better. It is a
must for us," he added.
Bligh said it would have
been "more difficult" for the
PLO-supported, Kuwait Uni-
versity-affiliated Institute of
Palestine Studies to have
published such a dictionary.
Given the fierce fac-
tionalism within the PLO,
Palestinian scholars would
probably have had to leave
out Palestinians no longer in
favor with the current PLO
leadership, he suggested.
And, he added, they might
have had to delete the names
of Palestinians opposed to
Arafat's leadership, such as
Abu Nidal, and pro-Jordan-
ian or pro-Israeli Palestinian
leaders as well.
Bligh said that the dic-
tionary he and co-editor,
Moshe Maoz have produced is
bias-free. Value judgements
have been banned and "col-
orless terminology" has been
employed. The 1948 War of
Independence is called the
"1948 war"; phrases like "oc-
cupied territories" or "ad-
ministered territories" are
conspicuously absent; and the
term "terrorist activities" is
used only to refer to acts
against civilians rather than
military personnel.
Moreover, unsubstantiated
information has been com-
pletely eliminated. "We list
the facts in a straight-forward
- way," Bligh said. "And, when
necessary, we make some
observations."
When he became involved
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Arafat: Just the facts.
in the project, two years ago,
there were 2,000 Palestinian
names on file. But financial
and publishing constraints
forced the editors to cut back
drastically. In the end, they
compromised. The collected
facts on 500 Palestinians and
prepared profiles on 180, with
the hope that the remainder
would be included in future
publications.
Each entry is based on in-
terviews and secondary
sources. Bligh said that about
100 Arabs consented to be in-
terviewed. PLO leaders did
not figure in any of the inter-
views. Asked why, he smiled
sardonically, saying, "I don't
know."
Twenty Hebrew University
students, some of them Arabs,
carried out the actual
research. The writers, besides
Bligh and Maoz, were Israeli
academics and retired
diplomats.
Bligh admits that, at the
outset, more than a few Arabs
greeted the project with a
measure of skepticism and
suspicion. "It may have look-
ed as if we were doing
something they could not
benefit from, something that
would reflect an Israeli bias,"
he said.
But Bligh expects Arab
criticism. "We are in a state
of conflict with the Palesti-
nians," he said. "But I should
tell you that several na-
tionalist leaders on the West
Bank who asked to see their
biographies were, in general,
satisfied. They wanted to
make some changes and,
when we could find corrobora-
tion for their statements, we
made them."
Bligh hopes that the dic-
tionary will stimulate the
growth of Palestinian studies.
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THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS 101