I CLOSE-UP
PEACE,
■
ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM
Assistant Editor
omen cover themselves from
top to bottom. -Even young
girls wear long sleeves and
scarves draped across their
hair. It's a question of
modesty.
"Ya'aleh, ya'aleh," ("Come on, come
on") men call one to another down the
halls of the Arab Community Center in
Dearborn. Displays there show contribu-
tions of the Arab people.
At the front of the building, on the
right, is a map of the Middle East. The
tiny strip of land between Egypt and Jor-
dan is marked both Palestine and Israel.
This little Arab oasis in the middle of
Michigan is headed by Ismael Ahmed.
The son of an Egyptian father and a
Lebanese mother, he was born in New
York City. He closely follows events
abroad, calling himself a "Middle East
watcher." As such, Mr. Ahmed says, "I'm
not sure the door is open to solutions."
Sid Shaheen disagrees. Born in Nablus
and now a resident of Dearborn, Mr.
Shaheen believes a Middle East solution
is as close as a Palestinian state.
Their views on possibilities for peace
are disparate, but both men —like other
Arabs and Arab-Americans — are united
by a common history, a common under-
standing of the Middle East. Their star-
ting points are Deir Yassin, Sabra and
Shatila — sites where hundreds of Pales-
tinians were murdered. Their thinking is
not shaped by the Holocaust or pogroms
in Russia.
They believe the land of Israel belongs
to the Arabs, and those among them who
recognize the Jewish state do so because
they have made peace with political real-
ity — not because they think Jews have a
claim to the land. They don't talk about
biblical promises and thousand-year-old
dreams; their reality is the house where
they grew up in Bethlehem, the home
from which they say they were expelled to
make room for Zionists.
Though Jews and Arabs are neighbors
both in the United States and in Israel,
the two seem to have little — except a
mutual loathing or distrust — in common.
"You don't negotiate with your friends.
You negotiate with your enemy," says
Osama Siblani, editor of Sada Alwatan,
The Arab.American News.
Most Jews believe the Arabs are the
enemy. This is what the enemy says
about making peace:
id Shaheen calls Palestine "the old
country." He was born in Ramallah
and came in the 1950s to Detroit.
One of the stories he remembers best
from the old country involves a Jewish
man who saved his life.
Young Sid was working at a bookstore
in Jaffa. He regularly brought copies of
The Palestine Post to a linguist who lived
in nearby Tel Aviv.
It was a Saturday when - Sid was riding
his bike, taking a delivery of papers to Tel
Aviv. Some of the residents, not realizing
the bicycle rider wasn't Jewish, began at-
tacking him. It wasn't proper to be riding
a bike on the Sabbath.
Someone came by, helped him up and
took him to his home. The man was Jew-
ish. "He put iodine on my face and
hands," Mr. Shaheen recalls. "Then he
fixed my bike and took me back to the
Jaffa border."
Mr. Shaheen, a Christian, has thought
about returning to visit Ramallah. He
wanted to go in the late 1960s, then the
'67 war started. He tried again in 1973;
that was just before a war, too. Today, he
says, Arab visitors are subject to exten-
sive searches whenever they visit Israel.
"That's not an atmosphere for a vaca-
S
Still, Mr. Shaheen says he bears no