Statesman
In 1977, he was elected to the Palestine National Council (PNC); he remained on the council until 1991. His work under the auspices of UNESCO to establish a Palestine national open university in Beirut was cut short by the 1982 Lebanon War (in which Israel invaded Lebanon); he returned to Northwestern. With Edward Said, he met in April 1988 with United States Secretary of State George Shultz. Said would write in his obituary for Abu-Lughod, "We told him that the Palestinian people were prepared to coexist with Israel if their self-determination was insured by a Middle East peace plan. What was needed was a mode of sharing and coexistence between two national communities in historic Palestine."
Read more about this topic: Ibrahim Abu-Lughod
Famous quotes containing the word statesman:
“What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.”
—Aristotle (384–22 B.C.)
“The man of large and conspicuous public service in civil life must be content without the Presidency. Still more, the availability of a popular man in a doubtful State will secure him the prize in a close contest against the first statesman of the country whose State is safe.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“A statesman is an easy man,
He tells his lies by rote;
A journalist makes up his lies
And takes you by the throat;
So stay at home and drink your beer
And let the neighbours vote.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)