CAIRO: While most students at the American University in Cairo (AUC) relaxed at home over their winter break, MA candidate Sahra Gemeinder was sitting in a ramshackle hovel on the border between the infamous Lebanese refugee camp Sabra and Shatila, site of the 1982 massacre that left thousands of Palestinians dead.
“We were there in the house of a man named Youssef, who lived in these two rooms with his wife, mother and children, says Gemeinder. “It was quite late at night and this man’s children were sleeping on the floor. He only had one eye, so he was looking at me out of his one eye, and the other eye had pieces of metal sticking out of it. It was a strange experience.
She was a member of a fact-finding delegation to Lebanon, Jordan and Israel-Palestine led by sociology professor and once-jailed democracy activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim.
One night after the group’s scheduled activities were completed, Gemeinder and a few friends snuck off to explore the destitute camps that house thousands of Palestinians on the edge of Lebanon’s chic capital.
Ibrahim, Gemeinder and other student members of the delegation related these stories and others to members of the AUC community at a panel held Wednesday night. Among the highlights of their trip, the group met with civil society leaders, journalists, and government officials such as President Emile Lahoud and Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri.
In addition Ibrahim met privately with Hassan Nasrallah the fiery head of Hezbollah.
But behind all the glamour and intrigue of a field trip into the heart of Lebanese politics, Ibrahim reassured Wednesday’s audience that the trip had relaxing moments of its own peculiar sort.
“I want to assure you all that despite all the destruction in Lebanon, life for the AUC students who went on this trip was very pleasant, he smiled. “They stayed up late and went to the Martyr’s Square to sit and play backgammon and smoke nargileh with the demonstrators in the sit-in. They ate homos and tehina with them. It was very festive, almost like Woodstock. It was a lot of fun. It was not as dreary and depressing as many people who stayed behind here in Cairo thought it would be.
But the main focus of the night was Ibrahim’s private meeting with Nasrallah. What is the man like? What is he planning for the future?
“Hassan Nasrallah kept assuring me almost to the point of being repetitive that he has no agenda outside Lebanon, that Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shia-based party that’s seeking to restore Shia rights in Lebanon and to defend the Shia communities on the border with Palestine and Israel, said Ibrahim.
“Nasrallah says that they have no agenda beyond Lebanon and no agenda to help anyone outside the country. He says he is not seeking to be a leader, and he really took issue with an article I wrote after the war comparing him to Nasser. He said ‘I am not Nasser, I have never tried to be Nasser.’
“He said: ‘Who am I? Nasser was a great leader of a great country, Egypt’ – I said thank you for that – but he said ‘who am I?’
Ibrahim says that during the meeting, Nasrallah stressed that his primary goal was to help “the poor, downtrodden Shia of southern Lebanon, who, he argues, have been historically neglected and disrespected by wealthier Christians and Sunnis.
When asked about charges that he seeks to create a state within a state, Nasrallah argued that this history of Shia neglect feeds directly into the conflicts within Lebanon today.
“He said ‘if you mean the provision of services, then we are the last state within this state,’ recalled Ibrahim. “‘There are already 17 such states because every major sect in Lebanon has already created these institutions – charitable, educational, medical. We are providing our community with these basic services that they have been deprived of.’
Ibrahim also reflected on Nasrallah’s personality, a topic of great interest to many in the audience.
“The interesting thing that struck me was his citations. He is clearly very well educated and very well read. He knew all about Franz Fanon. He knew all about Mao Zedong. He knew about all the leaders of social movements that people like me teach to students in classes about social movements.
Ibrahim and his students addressed doubts within the audience, and the global public at large, about Hezbollah’s real motives. What is the truth behind the militia leader’s claims?
“Many people doubt that this is his agenda alone, acknowledged Ibrahim, “and they cite one of the beliefs of the Shia sect, the principal of taqeyya where you can claim to espouse certain beliefs just to protect yourself without necessarily meaning them. People say that he as a senior Shia cleric who knows this art, so therefore whatever he says should not be taken on face value.
“People say there may be another agenda that he may not want to talk about. But I am not in the business of inquisition, I can only report to you what he said and that he sounded credible.
“There is no truth with a capital ‘T,’ said Ibrahim. “But there are many truths with a lower case ‘T.’ In Lebanon there are 17 officials sects and each sect has written its own history of the country. It’s important for you to check them against each other and piece together your own truth.
