ABSTRACT

With this rhetorical flourish the Palestinian Roman (Latin) Catholic priest, Manuel Musallam, began a speech on 8 September 1993 before an overwhelmingly Muslim and male crowd of thousands of Palestinians gathered in the outdoor courtyard of the United Nations-run school in the Jenin refugee camp. A long-time activist within Fatah, Musallam had been tapped by Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) leaders in the Jenin district to give the closing speech at a rally aimed to consolidate Palestinian support for the just-announced Declaration of Principles between the PLO and the State of Israel. Musallam was preceded by two speakers at the rally. First up was Sari Nusseibeh, an Oxford-trained philosopher from one of Jerusalem’s most prominent families; his dry, analytical discourse on the necessity of peace received scattered, polite applause. Next came a leader of the Jenin shabiba (Fatah youth), who gave a short, passionate defence of the Declaration of Principles, arguing that gaining a foothold in Gaza and Jericho would be but an initial step in an eventual reclamation of all of Mandate Palestine and the return of all refugees: the crowd received his speech more enthusiastically than Nusseibeh’s, but the mood in the audience was nevertheless somewhat restless. Finally, Musallam, dressed in the black overcoat he wore only on special occasions, ascended to the podium amid chants of ‘al-Ab Manuel, al-Ab Manuel!’ (Father Manuel, Father Manuel!). The audience, led by the shabiba, interrupted almost every other sentence of Musallam’s speech with loud and sustained applause, culminating in an ovation lasting several minutes at the end, as Musallam concluded his oration as dramatically as he had begun: ‘If I forget thee, O Palestinian Jerusalem, may my right hand lose its cunning’.