Terrorist taint, USF questions tough to escape

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By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN

CLARIFICATION: An estimated 600,000 Palestinians left Israel in 1948. Palestinians seek the "right of return" for some 3-million, which includes descendants of the original refugees.

© St. Petersburg Times, published August 1, 2000

RAMALLAH, West Bank -- In a way, it all began with a soft-spoken, well-respected Palestinian intellectual named Khalil Shikaki.

In the early '90s, Shikaki was the first director of the World and Islam Studies Enterprise, or WISE, at the University of South Florida in Tampa. It was an academic institute, designed to increase understanding of the Arab world, that drew little attention until Shikaki's brother was murdered in Malta in 1995.

What did a murder halfway around the world have to do with USF?

Shikaki's brother was head of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a radical group responsible for suicide bombings in Israel. And the man who immediately replaced him was none other than a former USF professor, Ramadan Shallah, who had once directed WISE.

The news stunned USF and the Tampa Bay area. Had Florida's second-largest university been harboring Islamic terrorists? It seemed that way to many, what with WISE's first director related to a terrorist leader and its second director becoming head of a notorious terrorist group.

Now, after years of federal investigations, little has turned up to show any terrorist activity at USF. However, suspicions die hard, and that may explain why a Muslim who taught at USF has been incarcerated for three years on "secret evidence."

And it may explain why Khalil Shikaki, who first headed the Islamic think tank at USF, doesn't want to talk about it.

Has he followed what's happened at USF since he left long ago?

"No."

Was he aware that a former USF colleague had been jailed for three years?

"That's terrible," was all he would say.

Because his brother was a known terrorist, Shikaki has spent much of his own life fighting guilt by association. In 1992, after he got his Ph.D. at Columbia and taught in Wisconsin and Florida, Israel refused to let him return home to the West Bank although he had a valid permit.

The reason? "That I was "connected' to my brother," Shikaki said at the time. "The Israeli response did not define the connection between me and my brother, nor did it provide any evidence."

Shikaki, who said he did not belong to any groups and hadn't seen his brother in years, didn't get even this vague explanation until Israeli officials were pressured by reporters and academicians.

"I am fully convinced that this is an individual of very high moral character who poses absolutely no threat to the state of Israel," wrote Dr. Mark Tessler of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. "On the contrary, Dr. Shikaki is precisely the kind of independent-minded Palestinian scholar with whom, in my judgment, Israel should seek to establish good relations."

The permit dispute was finally resolved. Today, Shikaki, an expert on Arab-Israeli relations, is respected by both sides for his research and polling, funded in part by the Ford Foundation. In fact, when I interviewed him at his new office in Ramallah this weekend, he was working with Israel's Hebrew University on a survey of reaction to the recent Camp David peace talks.

Regretably, he says, the poll will likely show that the failure to reach an agreement has increased Palestinians' willingness to use violence against Israel.

But he quickly added, "I think the basic feeling is that this is not the end of the peace process."

Although not a big fan of Yasser Arafat, Shikaki thinks the Palestinian leader has been unfairly blamed for the breakdown in the talks. President Clinton and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak have said the negotiations stalled because Arafat would not bend on Jerusalem, claimed by both sides as their capital.

While Arafat still seeks sovereignty over East Jerusalem, which contains the holiest sites, "I think he made significant concessions on (other) things that thus far had been seen as totally unacceptable," Shikaki said. "Most important was the issue of borders -- the return to the 1967 borders has been completely disregarded."

Shikaki noted that Arafat now seems willing to accept some permanent Jewish settlements on land the Palestinians say has been illegally occupied by Israel since the 1967 Mideast war.

As to whether 3-million Palestinians who left their homes in Israel should be allowed to return, "that will still take some negotiations," Shikaki said.

"But Palestinians will not force Israel to accept the return of all refugees, which perhaps is the most dramatic issue in terms of Israel's own needs."

Moreover, the fact Arafat has agreed that a Palestinian state "will have no real army, no air force, no heavy weapons system at all is a major achievement."

The breakdown in the Camp David talks clearly strained the cordial relationship between Clinton and Arafat. Still, "the United States has a great deal of influence over Mr. Arafat," Shikaki said. "It will be very difficult for him to do things contrary to the wishes of the American president."

One sign of that: Arafat has reportedly agreed to hold off declaring Palestinian statehood until year's end -- not in September as he had threatened -- to give the peace process more time.

Despite his defense of Arafat's role at the talks, Shikaki has long been critical of the aging leader.

"He's very authoritarian. The nature of the political system he created is one that most Palestinians fully reject and are able to tolerate only because of their willingness to sacrifice the rule of law and democracy for a higher national interest, which is statehood."

Can a peace agreement ever be reached between Israelis and Palestinians, given so many decades of conflict and so many conflicting claims? Yes, Shikaki says, but only if Israel's moderate prime minister, Barak, retains his tenuous grip on power.

"A great deal of progress has been made in six months. If there's some stability in the political system in Israel, that could be the opportunity for a breakthrough.

But if Barak's government is replaced by a less flexible one, Israel is likely to stick to a "status quo that is not tenable" to Palestinians, Shikaki warns.

"The failure to find a solution in the next five years or so will be very, very dangerous."

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