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In the Gaza Strip, there are a vast number of inspiring individuals prepared to put their personal reputation (and even their own physical well-being) on the line for matters of conviction. Dr. Eyad Sarraj is one of the more prominent of these figures and I was fortunate enough to speak with him on several occasions during my time in the Gaza Strip.

Dr. Sarraj, a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, is the founder of the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme—a groundbreaking NGO in Gaza catering to the masses of Palestinians suffering from emotional trauma, especially victims of torture. Sarraj is well known for his outspoken criticism of the Israeli occupation and of corruption in the Palestinian Authority.

In the excerpts that follow, I discuss the state of Palestinian democracy with Dr. Sarraj.

Kris Petersen: Before we begin, will you please explain a bit about yourself and your background working in Gaza?

Eyad Sarraj: Well, I was born in 1943 in Be’er Sheva, in what is now Israel but my family was from Gaza. My father was working at that time with the British police in Be’er Sheva. And after what happened in 1948, he came back home… He had already built this house in Gaza. It was not exactly this house. The whole area here was his and he built a smaller house. Then he built this house for me and for my brothers… each of us has a floor. But since then, we went to school in Gaza. I went to school in Gaza, the University in Alexandria and Harvard to study medicine. Then I did some residency in Bethlehem at the hospital after I graduated. I studied psychiatry and worked in England for some time and when I finished my training in psychiatry, after five years I came back to Gaza Started to work here.

I established the first Gaza psychiatric hospital and community center in 1980. Then in 1986, I left Gaza once again. My English wife at the time became so depressed living here and I decided to sacrifice being in Gaza to save the family. I went back to England. When the Intifada started in 1987, I felt so weak being there. I had been the only psychiatrist in Gaza at the time and people were suffering so much while I was enjoying my time in England – so I came back.

I came back and after one year, the Israelis fired me from my job because during the Intifada I was training Israeli peace activists, human rights activists and doctors in Gaza and the Israeli occupation authority did not like it at all. The Physicians For Human Rights group was established in my house. When the Palestinian Authority came in, it was divided into two: Israel and Palestine. But to begin with, it was a group of Israeli doctors who came to Gaza and when they saw what they saw—breaking bones and so on—they were so shocked… and everybody was so depressed. Then one of them asked “What can we do?” So we started to think about what we could do and founded Physicians for Human Rights.

Then I was fired… So I went for a trip to Europe and in Sweden and I met a good friend of mine—a Jewish American—and in his kitchen we started to think of the Gaza Community Mental Health Program (GCMHP). But the question was: should I accept that I am fired or should I return to Gaza and do something even better? And this is how we came up with the idea for the GCMHP and in 1990, I came back to Gaza and founded the GCMHP.

In 1994, the Palestinian Authority came and at that time I joined the Palestinian Commission for Citizens’ Rights. This was a group of people including myself, Hanan Ashrawi, Haidar Abdel-Shafi and Mahmoud Darwish; together we went to Tunisia, where we got the signature of Yassir Arafat and he gave a Presidential decree to establish the Commission. And that is how it started. The first Commissioner General was Hanan Ashrawi. The rule was that ever Commissioner General should stay for two year maximum so after two years, I became the second Commissioner General. Because of my work in human rights, I started to expose human rights violations committed by the Palestinian Authority. And that landed me in prison.

KP: With Raji Sourani?

ES: No, Raji was arrested when I was on my way to Ramallah one day. I came back to Gaza immediately with Hanan Ashrawi and some others and Raji was released the same day. I was arrested again two more times; the last time was in 1996 for 17 days in solitary confinement.

Then the people on the Commission decided that I should be elected for a second term against the regulations and I accepted. Then the question of human rights became a very big issue, after they arrested Raji and myself—and the torture. The exposure of all these violations of human rights and corruption became a big issue.

Later, I joined the Palestinian delegation to the Washington peace talks, when Haidar Abdel-Shafi was there. I joined them for two of three sessions, which was quite an experience. You know, I saw the Israelis taking us for ride, basically. For them it was just a waste of time, but for us it was a very serious time. We thought that it was going to be very serious—in particular, Haidar was very serious. But when he realized that the Israelis were not serious at all, he was very depressed like all of us.

I believe strongly that only through education can people and nations become powerful. Education is very important. I believe that the Palestinian situation, in terms of our defeat, is because of our poor education for centuries—because we, in the 20th century, had to face European Jews who were so sophisticated compared to our peasants and farmers.

My father used to work as a Chief Clerk for the British police in Be’er Sheva during the Mandate period. They wanted volunteers. His commander said that they needed volunteers to be aware of the policing of Be’er Sheva, and so on and so forth. They wanted to get helpful ideas from these volunteers—from these civilians. So they advertised the need and my father received the responses. He was amazed at the number of Jews applying to become volunteers. And not only that their numbers were so high, but that they were so sophisticated—PhDs, masters, doctors, engineers, and lawyers wanted to be volunteers for the police. So he took this information, which he could not explain, to his commanders and at the time there was an underground national leadership for the Palestinians in Jaffa. He took that information to them at one of their meetings and said to them, “Look, this is what I have found. These Jews are applying to become volunteers, which means they will be paid only one pound a month.” After some time, the leader of the group said, “This is very good news! It means that the Jews are starving!” But this was not the case.

The idea was that immigrant Jews should be trained to use arms, so that one day they would be able to use them. That was the idea. So ultimately it was a confrontation between sophisticated, educated Europeans Jews and uneducated, divided peasants.

At the time, there were only two or three doctors in Gaza and one of them was Haidar Abdel-Shafi. That’s all. If somebody had the chance to send their child to be educated at a university at that time, it was a big deal—a very big deal. To be educated! Fortunately, education was very important for my father and we were all educated at a time when very few people graduated from secondary school.

My greatest commitment is to human rights, to justice and to peace. I don’t believe in nationalism and I don’t believe in religion. I believe that people should be treated as equals and I hope one day the world will realize this.

KP: What role do you think NGOs play in promoting democratic social change?

ES: Well in theory, they play a positive role but I think it is very challenging. To begin with, Palestinian culture is not democratic. Our culture itself is not rooted in democracy. Democracy is a Western concept and very new to us. Only the elite, intellectuals and politicians perhaps understand democracy. I’m not saying they practice it, but they understand what it means. The practice of democracy is a different story. You can read about it in books, but to practice democracy is something else.

Arab culture has historically been dominated by foreign rulers. And after that, it was dominated by corrupt and oppressive indigenous rulers, using a gun and a prison to control people. So people are generally frightened in our culture. They don’t take initiative. They are frightened and they do not dare to express themselves freely. You cannot be democratic if you cannot express yourself freely.

The only time we started to know about democracy was when the Israelis occupied Gaza and the West Bank in 1967 and we started to see their system. We said, “Oh my God. Israelis talk to each other in such a way and they expose themselves in such a way. And they are not punished. They can say whatever they like and they are not punished.” This was very strange to us, but the people in Gaza working within civil society are from this culture. They are not trained in democracy. They read about it in books, like myself, but we are not trained in democracy. The general population is eager, definitely eager, for a state of citizenship. People want to belong to a state and they thought that the path to statehood was through democratic elections, which is a good sign. However, the experience is nuanced and the role of Palestinian NGOs and civil society in the process has been weakened, unfortunately, by the Palestinian Authority.

At the beginning of the Israeli occupation, the rising NGO sector of the time was at the forefront of building human rights and support for international law. But under the Palestinian Authority the NGOs were marginalized at best—controlled in many ways or dismissed and even arrested or harassed by the Palestinian Authority. So the question of democracy is not really rooted in our culture at all.

And I’ll tell you also that people who are in the political parties or the NGOs generally are not democratic people. Yassir Arafat was a one-man show. Haidar Abdel-Shafi was a one-man how. Raji Sourani is a one-man show. You can’t deny their energy and their commitment and their ideals. You cannot. But they are not democratic people. They are not doing anything to really enrich democracy in our society. Politicians also have the same handicap. Politicians… and this is something very interesting. Politicians are not democratic at all in any Palestinian political organization. Not at all. PFLP, Fatah, Hamas… You name it. They are not democratic.

Palestinian NGOs and political parties operate like tribal affiliations. They are a replacement for tribal affiliations. If I belong to a good family, a big family, then this is my most important circle of security. In this society, you cannot be an individual; you will be crushed. If you don’t have a family behind you, then you must have a political party or an NGO, otherwise you will be crushed. Or you will just become, for instance, a business man. But even then you have some people around you and you have your own “tribe”. It’s a tribal mentality.

Nepotism and, to some extent, corruption are very pervasive in the NGO sector. I can ask Raji [Sourani] to help my son and he can ask me to help his daughter. I can ask Sami [Abdel-Shafi] to help my cousin. He will ask me to help… But we consider this to be done in good faith.

If I have a neighbor now coming to me and saying, “Look, I have a family of ten people living next door to you and we cannot eat” then I have the obligation to give money or food. I have the obligation, not because I want to show people that I am doing it. No. I cannot sleep if I do not do it. These are clear examples from real life. Secondly, I will begin looking for a job tomorrow for one of his children to work—in my own institution sometimes, in the GCMHP or in the school or wherever. This is how tribalism is working sometimes… in good faith. Because there is no state structure. People only have themselves to rely on, as well as their families and friends, etc. We have not progressed to the level of democracy you think.

KP: There is an argument reasoning that any kind of civil society organization, from cultural clubs and other non-political organizations to NGOs, aid democracy. That as long as people are forming associations and as long as they are operating in some kind of non-state environment, it cultivates a democratic culture. Would you agree with this analysis?

ES: Well, it can. But that is not what is happening today in Gaza. No. Our problem is that our energy has been invested, always in the question of politics for our entire lives. I do not remember… I’m 64 now. I cannot remember one single day in which I really lived like a normal human being, without being concerned about the political situation in Palestine or in the Arab world. Not a single day. I do not remember. Since I was a child. You know? The first experience was when I was 12, when the Israelis occupied Gaza at that time, I became aware of what was going on. Really. Because the Israelis put a rifle to the back of my head and asked me go downstairs. We had a bunker underneath the house. We went down into the bunker and it was so dark. I was so frightened because I was only 12 and the Israeli soldiers were threatening to shoot me if I didn’t go down. I did, but I was so terrified I actually pissed myself.

After that, I became involved in politics. I think many Palestinians have had similar experiences, at even younger ages. So all our energy was possessed with the political situation. I remember a feast during the first year I was at the university. Some people came to say hello. I was still unshaven and in my pajamas but they said to me, “Kull sana w’inte salem” (Happy feast!). And I said to them, “What happy feast? What are you talking about? We are not living in our country! We are refugees and our country has been taken away from us! And you are talking about a happy feast? Who should be happy?” I was having a kind of awareness of what was going on and then I joined the Palestinian Student Union. I spent most of my university life there, not really studying, but doing work for the Student Union in Egypt and elsewhere. I became a member of a secret organization, like Fatah and PFLP and the others. But it was dismantled after some time. Anyway, I used to be heavily involved in this. Many Palestinians were.

Then I came back to Gaza and started to practice medicine. Every night I was a casualty officer at Shifa Hospital here in Gaza. There were only 14 doctors in Gaza at the time. Every night I would receive the bodies of resistance fighters killed by the Israelis. Every night! Wounded or killed. What can you think of then? As a doctor? Or as a Palestinian? Or as human being? Nothing, except what is going on in this country. The political situation and the injustice.

Even as a medical doctor, I was in such confrontations all the time with the Israeli Occupation Forces to the extent that they fired me. They fired me twice! The first time was only six months after I began working! Six months! Because the Israeli intelligence insisted that I cooperate with them and I refused. So they said “you are dismissed for security reasons.” Then I made a big, a big fuss. The United Nations Secretary General, the World Health Organization, the Knesset, the Israeli Defense Minister… Haidar Abdel-Shafi was involved. Other doctors in Gaza were involved and there was a strike at Shifa Hospital. So I was reinstated two weeks later. And since then, the Israeli intelligence has not touched me! And the second time, as I told you, was when I brought Israeli colleagues to Gaza to come and see the situation here.

If I were a normal human being, not overburdened by the political situation, I would definitely go to a salon with intellectuals. We would discuss ideas—everything from God to [Sigmund] Freud. This is the free exchange of ideas which you say can promote democratization and so on. But you cannot do it today under Hamas because Hamas does not support freedom of expression. You cannot do it under Fatah. You cannot do it under the Israeli occupation. Of course, you can establish a salon and invite people, but everybody will be very careful.

The first thing I remember when I returned to Gaza in 1970, everyone was warning me, “Be careful who you mix with, who you talk with, be careful what you say.” The place was full of spies and people were so paranoid. Today, it’s the same as the Fatah time. Back then, the spies were my family. I used to keep drafts of op-eds I would write for al-Quds or any other newspaper in Gaza. My sisters would come to the house in my absence to clean or to prepare food and they would spy on my writings. Then at night they would say to me, “Oh, are you writing a new article? Oh please, we don’t want you to be in trouble. You should not criticize Arafat or Dahlan. You should be careful.” Every night! And even today you cannot have a free intellectual debate.

KP: What do you see as the greatest obstacle to democracy in Palestine?

ES: The Israeli occupation is a major obstacle and then there are the Palestinian political parties with their old-fashioned leaders who do not allow the younger generation to take over. I cannot understand why old people continue to be in control of everything! I cannot understand it!

KP: But do you think there has been any democratic progress at all since 1967?

ES: Definitely yes. There has definitely been progress. Look there is an awareness that we Palestinians have lost to the Israelis for a reason. You ask them, “Why did you lose?” and they tell you “We lost because the Israelis are democratic and sophisticated.” I think there is an awareness of what is going on and there is a great deal of disappointment in ourselves. It is so serious to the extent that we have a process of national self-hatred. One hears a common sentiment now in Gaza particularly but in Palestine generally, “We don’t deserve to rule ourselves. We don’t deserve a good life. Jews deserve a good life. We deserve the whip.”

I know a man who spent 23 years in an Israeli jail for fighting with the PFLP. When he came out of prison after the Israelis withdrew from Gaza, he wanted to see what had become of the old settlements. He remembered that when he was a little boy, he used to carry a jug of water to the tree his father had planted in the area. So he went to see the tree and it had been well looked-after, to the extent that the Israelis had placed some seats underneath so that you could sit with your family and friends. It was a nice big tree. But one day he went there and some Palestinian boys were setting the tree alight. When he demanded to know why they were doing this, they said that the tree was “leftover” from the Israeli settlements and “we don’t want it”. He said to them, “Look, I watered this myself when I was a little boy. It was here long before the settlements.” He was so beaten and depressed after that that he would things like “This land is not for us. This land is for the Jews. We are just passersby.” When I asked him why he would say this, he replied “Because Jews build and we destroy.” You know, this a very serious kind of self-criticism and it is very common in different forms and in different ways.

We are all shocked that Palestinians are killing each other in such a brutal way. Many people say the Israelis are merciful in comparison—that they are kinder to us than ourselves. People are so brutal, I mean Fatah and Hamas. The Israelis have never killed a wounded man in the hospital. We did it. The Israelis have never thrown men off of tall buildings… People in Gaza are honestly shocked at this.

KP: How do you view the Islamic movement in the context of democratic change?

ES: Well it should aid democracy in theory, but today there is significant amount of polarization—political polarization. This is dividing society, not only NGOs and other organizations but also in the universities. You have al-Azhar University and the Islamic University; some go to a particular grocery store instead of another just because the owner is aligned with Fatah or Hamas. This kind of division within Palestinian society is damaging. It means that you don’t accept the other, you don’t accept the differences between each other and you don’t accept any different political identity. So Fatah people don’t accept Hamas at all and Hamas people don’t accept Fatah at all. It has reduced every aspect of society to political divisions, down to individual families. It’s just not conducive to a free dialog when you cannot accept the other.

I remember the late Abdel Aziz al-Rantisi. He was a Hamas leader who was killed by the Israelis in 2004 and I remember him talking to me about the need to pray. He was telling me, “You are such a good man. All you need to do is to pray.”

I said, “I’m not going to pray, because if you pray you have to believe.”

“You don’t believe?” he asked.

“Look,” I said. “Are you going to discuss this with me because I’m ready for the conversation but I will begin with this point: I don’t believe in God. So are you ready?”

“I am ready,” he said.

So we started a very serious discussion, al-Rantisi and myself. I believe that is democratic. That is democracy, when you start from the bottom—from point zero. Now, I challenge any civil society in Palestine, whether secular or religious, a salon or NGO to sit down and ask, “Who doesn’t believe in God?” Just to pose the question… Or, at one time in the past, “Who doesn’t believe in Yassir Arafat?” At one point, that was like treason.

So, free thought is the most important. You cannot have democracy via a parachute—from Madeleine Albright or George W. Bush. Never! It must come from the grassroots, from society. And I tell you, with the current situation as it is today and with the situation in Israel and the Arab states, it doesn’t look good.

KP: What about the election of Hamas and the subsequent rejection of the Palestinian elections by the United States and the West generally?

ES: Well, it is clear that American is the worst enemy of democracy, when it has always claimed that it will go to war for democracy. George W. Bush, this stupid man, is now saying he went into Iraq for democracy—after all his lies. Now, when democracy really happened in Palestine, he did not recognize it. It was very democratic, verified by Jimmy Carter and everybody else. But the American fundamentalist regime and the Zionists did not like it—not because they like Arafat or they like Fatah. No, they didn’t like it because the neoconservatives believe that Islam is a threat and 9/11 ignited this kind of ideology.

So now Islam is a threat and we don’t want Islamic people to be in control. We want secular people in control. But the thing is, America apparently decides who the best leaders are for the world. This is what Elliot Abrams told me and other Palestinian representatives when we met them in Washington D.C. after the Palestinian elections. America decides; America orders the world to be custom-made as it likes. He did not exactly say those words, but almost. Don’t rely on anybody else. Don’t mention Europe; America orders Europe as well.

KP: Do you see any hope in the long term, given the present political environment in the United States?

ES: We must have democracy in America before there can be democracy in Palestine; we must have democracy in Britain and in Israel. Real democracy. Democracy is not just people going to work—it is a responsibility. Look, is it democratic that a minority of the American population decides who will be the next President at the end of the day? Is it democratic that many American citizens do not know anything about the rest of the world they control? It is not democratic in my view. In our part of the world, it is not democratic when you are poor and manipulated and then you go to vote. It is not democracy. When you are not free of hunger, when you are not free of oppression, you cannot be democratic. And when you are not free of ignorance as is the case with America, you cannot be democratic.

KP: Knowing how bleak the situation is, where do you find inspiration to continue your work?

ES: I love my country. I love Gaza. I love my home. I love the sea. I love the people. I want to be productive in any way. This for me is very important. I love this place; I want to be part of it and I want to know that I am doing as much as possible.

My motto when I returned to Gaza from England, was: if I make a child smile every day, then I have achieved something. And this is still my motto. If I can help to promote democratization, the free intellectual exchange of ideas, peace, justice, and human rights, it is a noble achievement. I think I am doing a very, very modest amount, but at least it is gratifying. That is why I am here.