Hanan Ashrawi and the prize protest: The value and limits of debating peace in the Australian diaspora1

Abstract

This paper analyses the events following the awarding of the Sydney Peace Foundation prize to Hanan Ashrawi in 2003. The argument first charts the political environment within which the debate took place. The dramatic focus on terrorism and the frame of perpetual violence given to the Palestinian–Israeli context immediately guaranteed an exceptional place for the decision to give Ashrawi, a long-term Palestinian activist, a peace prize. Importantly, the strategic framework of debate that had been established by the Australian government and public commentators made it impossible to see the peace prize as anything other than a ‘political’ act against one group in favour of another, a milieu which requires closer examination. The second feature of this debate involved tropes of victimization and terrorism as they applied to Israelis and Palestinians. The broader debate about Palestinian terrorism and the apparent inappropriateness of the award for Ashrawi can be understood within the political matrix framed by populist sentiments within the Australian community. This paper then considers the way cultural factors influenced the debate: how they ‘domesticated’ and localized the representation of the parties as minorities, hybridizing the peace debate as a result. Finally, the moral framework and its absolutist limits inherent in the debate are interrogated.