After outcry, plans for Arafat center in Israeli-Arab town shelved
Abu Ghosh business man says ‘vigorous’ opposition led to initiative’s demise; mayor says the project was only an idea
Dov Lieber is a former Times of Israel Arab affairs correspondent.
Plans to establish a cultural center in honor of late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the Arab Israeli town of Abu Ghosh have been cancelled due to popular opposition, a local source told The Times of Israel on Monday, while a town official claimed the project was never more than an idea.
The plans to establish a cultural center to pay tribute to the late PLO chief and Nobel peace prize laureate were immediately dropped once the town’s residents heard about it, Jawdat Ibrahim, the millionaire owner of the town’s famous Abu Ghosh restaurant, said by phone Monday.
Located 10 kilometers (6 miles) west of Jerusalem and with a population of around 7,000 people, Abu Ghosh is known for maintaining friendly relations with the majority Jewish towns surrounding it.
Arafat, who died in 2004, remains a venerated figure among Palestinians, but is seen by many in Israel as an unreformed terrorist who doomed the 2000 Camp David peace talks, orchestrated the suicide bombing onslaught of the Second Intifada that followed, and disseminated a still-prevailing narrative among Palestinians that denies Jews’ history and legitimacy in the Holy Land.
“Even during the most difficult times, during times of war, during Operation Protective Edge, they didn’t think about something like this. Why would they do something like this in Abu Ghosh. Why would they want to damage relations?” Ibrahim asked, referring to the 2014 two-month summer war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
But the mayor of Abu Ghosh, Issa Abu Ghosh, denied there were ever plans to establish a center in the name of the controversial PLO leader.
“I promise you there is no such project. They won’t establish such a thing; we don’t have room for this thing,” he said.
Yet in an interview that aired on Channel 10 on Sunday, Abu Ghosh’s mayor had indicated there was a plan to establish an Arafat center within the complex of the town’s recently built megalith mosque, though it would be limited to spiritual affairs, he said.
“The intention was to fix up a hall within the mosque for religious matters,” he said in the TV interview. “Arafat was a Palestinian leader and a well-known Arab, with whom Israel made agreements,” continued the mayor.
Ibrahim said he and others in the town “vigorously” opposed the plan. “It’s just not appropriate for us,” he said.
Ibrahim, who has parlayed millions in US lottery winnings into turning the town into a hotspot and model for coexistence, accused the mayor and other city officials of trying to shirk responsibility by saying it was “only an idea.”
The plans to establish the center were first published by the Times of Israel, which learned of the initiative via a press release sent out on April 27 by the Jerusalem Endowment Fund, an organization that says it works to strengthen the economic and educational fields of Palestinians in Jerusalem and bolster the city’s Arab identity.
The Arafat center was apparently the initiative of Palestinian billionaire and energy mogul Munib al-Masri, who is the chairman of the Jerusalem Endowment Fund. Masri visited the grand Mosque of Abu Ghosh on April 22, local news reports said. According to Channel 10, in its report on May 1, the center was intended to serve as “an Arafat cultural heritage center.”
Additionally, the Channel 10 report said town councilmen had earlier visited a “similar center” built by Masri in Nablus, ahead of making their own decision.
The press release from Masri’s organization made no mention of a “hall for religious matters.” Rather the statement said that Abu Ghosh had been chosen to commemorate the legacy of Arafat due to its perseverance against the Israeli “occupation.”
“Abu Ghosh is a town that survived the Nakba [Catastrophe],” says the release, referring to the defeat and displacement of hundreds of thousands of Arabs in the 1948 war in which Israel gained its independence.
Abu Ghosh, which chose to stay neutral during the war in 1948 and therefore remained untouched by Israel’s army, is cast in the press release as a symbol of unity and steadfastness for the Palestinian national movement and its desired future capital, Jerusalem.
Masri has been a strong advocate of a two-state solution, denounced violence and has taken much heat from the Palestinian boycott movement for trying to improve relations between the two sides, including meeting with Israeli businessman Rami Levy at one of Levy’s supermarkets in the West Bank to discuss the Arab Peace Initiative in August 2012. Yet Masri, also known as the Duke of Nablus, remains a steadfast admirer of Arafat, for whom he served as a minister and close confidant.
In an op-ed published in The Times of Israel in 2014, entitled “Like Arafat, I recognize the Jewish tie to Israel,” he described the former PLO chief’s relationship to Israelis and the Jewish people as “complex,” but said he “wholeheartedly” agreed with Arafat’s approach.
When Masri was asked about the cultural center by The Times of Israel last week, he said it was “none of your business where I build,” and refused to answer questions about the matter over the phone.
A meeting inexplicably canceled; a foundation stone unlaid
A ceremony scheduled to take place at Abu Ghosh’s massive and ornate mosque on April 27 to celebrate the laying of a foundation stone for the center was suddenly cancelled with no reason given.
An open invitation to the meeting was included in the Jerusalem Endowment Fund’s press release. When this journalist arrived for the meeting, only around 20 men were praying in the massive mosque.
After the men finished praying, the Imam said the meeting about the Arafat center had been canceled but he did not know why. None of the men at the mosque that day had heard about the upcoming center except for the Imam, who called it the “Yasser Arafat center for peace.”
Soon two people arrived for the canceled ceremony. They were French monks from Abu Ghosh’s Benedictine monastery.
A middle-aged man dressed in a black suit and black tie also arrived for the meeting. He said he had come all the way from Nablus. He was accompanied by a child and an elderly chauffeur, who drove the man around in a slick black vehicle.
The official-looking man refused to say who he was. While later giving this journalist a ride out of the village, he said he was not aware of plans for a cultural center, but thought the meeting was about a new soccer field for Abu Ghosh.
The mayor of Abu Ghosh also told the Times of Israel that one thought had been for Masri to donate millions of shekels for building the playing field, which would be named after the energy mogul.
A young, lanky man around 24-years-old, who stayed around the mosque after prayers that day, said it would not matter whether the center was built or not.
“it’s just a name. It won’t have any influence. We have a strong connection with the Jews,” he said.
