Articles: SFS-Q Must Remain Aware of Qatari Ties

I was on my way back to Jerusalem from the northern Israeli port of Haifa when my phone started buzzing. There had been an explosion in Tel Aviv. Was I okay?

Reports started trickling in on the radio. A 16-year-old West Bank boy was the terrorist responsible. Nine Israelis were dead, dozens were wounded, and Hamas — now at the helm of the Palestinian Authority — called the attack “self-defense.” After heavy traffic delays — police were checking every car on the highway back to Jerusalem — I made it back to my hotel and turned on CNN.

Once there, I discovered even more bad news. Qatar, the home of Georgetown’s newest campus, would join with Iran in funding Hamas, with each nation giving $50 million to the Palestinian Authority. The lump in my throat had become a throb in my head and in my heart.

If the last four months here in Israel have taught me anything, it is that the Middle East is inconceivably complicated. It is filled with pain and passion, blood and tears, hope and despair.

On Sunday, I ate falafel and hummus in a Lebanese restaurant in Abu Gosh, an Arab village in Israel, where for generations Israelis and Arabs have lived side-by-side in peace and mutual respect. But just one day later, as the explosion in Tel Aviv echoed throughout tiny Israel, it’s hard to believe that such a thing could be possible.

As the mothers of the slain Israelis mourn over their sons and daughters, a sorrow of a different sort worked its way into my consciousness. The latest attack does not just mean a loss of life, it also reminds us of the cruel way in which that elusive quiet seems to fade every time the people of the Middle East come close to grabbing hold of it.

Money from Qatar flowing into the hands of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority isn’t going to help the situation. Georgetown’s connection to that same money is troubling to me, especially on the eve of the tragedy in Tel Aviv. Ryan Maher wrote from Doha in AS THIS JESUIT SEES IT … that the “stuff of a Georgetown education” encompasses a demand to “know the practical implications — for individuals and for nations — of what we say and believe about the nature and destiny of human beings” (“An Out of Country Experience,” THE HOYA, December 6, 2005, A3).

But Maher left one part out: We must know the implications not only of what we say and believe, but also of what we do. What Georgetown is doing in Qatar is being a part of a way of looking at the world that rejects peace, that instigates violence and that denies Israel’s right to exist.

I try to gain comfort from Haya Al-Noaimi’s words in “Hoya Articles Portrayed SFS-Qatar Unfairly” (THE HOYA, April 11, 2006, A3). I hope that education is indeed “a way of life that we all undertake to make an impact for the better,” whether we are in Washington, D.C. or Doha.

I pray that Georgetown’s presence in Qatar will be a positive influence on Doha and the region, and that the graduates of SFS-Q will one day lead Qatar and its neighboring states to peaceful relations with Israel, the country I’ve begun calling home. Hopefully, they will learn that diplomacy is far better than terror so that swords will be exchanged for plowshares.

It may take many years for this prayer to be realized; indeed, we may never see that day. But as we wait, I join with the families of the nine Israelis in mourning their dead, and I turn to the Georgetown community to be ever mindful of the real effect of our presence in Doha and of where our money goes. If in that exploration we should discover some unhappy truths, we must not ignore them. Instead, we must engage them, ever guarding our souls against complacency in the face of terror.

Arielle Holland is a junior in the College. She is currently studying abroad at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Be’er Sheva, Israel.