Caption	Tawfiq Canaan • Edward Said • Mahmoud Darwish • Leila Khaled Yassir Arafat • Mohammad Bakri • Hanan Ashrawi • Queen Rania of Jordan
Group	Palestinians(الفلسطينيون al-Filasṭiniyyun)
Population	c. 11,000,000
Region1	Palestinian territories
Pop1	3,760,000
Ref1
Region2	– West Bank
Pop2	2,345,000
Ref2
Region3	– Gaza Strip
Pop3	1,416,000
Ref3
Region4
Pop4	1,983,733
Ref4
Region5
Pop5	1,540,000
Region6
Pop6	573,000
Ref6
Region7
Pop7	500,000
Ref7
Region8
Pop8	405,425
Region9
Pop9	250,245
Region10
Pop10	70,245
Region11
Pop11	250,000
Ref11	}}

|region12 = |pop12 = 54,000 |ref12 = }} |region13 = |pop13 = 50,000 |region14 = |pop14 = 50,000 |ref14 = |region15 = |pop15 = 34,000 |ref15 = |region16 = |pop16 = 25,000 |ref16 = |region17 = |pop17 = 500 |region18 = |pop18 = 23,975 |ref18 = }} |region19 = |pop19 = 15,000 |region20 = |pop20 = 12,000 |ref20 = |languages = Palestinian territoriesPalestinian Arabic, English, Neo-Aramaic, and Greek.IsraelPalestinian Arabic and Modern Hebrew, English, Neo-Aramaic, and GreekDiaspora:Other varieties of Arabic, Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, and others |religions = Islam, Christian, Druze, Judaism, Samaritanism |related = Other Semitic and Mediterranean peoples }}

The Palestinian people, (, ash-sha`b al-filasTīni) also referred to as Palestinians or Palestinian Arabs (, al-filasTīnīyyūn; , al-`Arab al-filasTīnīyyūn), are an Arabic-speaking Mediterranean people with family origins in Palestine. Genetic analysis shows they are of mainly Levantine ancestry, similar to Jews, Turks (Anatolians), Lebanese, Egyptians, Armenians, and Iranians. In the areas of Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, as of 2004, Palestinian Arabs constitute 49% of all inhabitants, some of whom are internally displaced. The remainder, comprise what is known as the Palestinian diaspora, of whom more than half are stateless refugees, lacking citizenship in any country. Of the diaspora, about 2.6 million live in neighboring Jordan where they are approximately half the population, one and a half million between Syria and Lebanon, a quarter million in Saudi Arabia, while Chile's half a million are the largest concentration outside the Arab world.

By religious affiliation, most Palestinians are Muslim, particularly of the Sunni branch of Islam, and there is a significant Palestinian Christian minority of various Christian denominations in the Palestinian territories. However, the majority of Palestinian Christians are found outside of Palestine. Palestinian Christians have often experienced persecution by Palestinian Muslims. As the commonly applied "Palestinian Arab" ethnonym implies, the current traditional vernacular of Palestinians, irrespective of religion, is the Palestinian dialect of Arabic. For those who are Arab citizens of Israel, many are now also bilingual in Modern Hebrew. Recent genetic evidence has demonstrated that Palestinians as an ethnic group are closely related to Jews and represent modern "descendants of a core population that lived in the area since prehistoric times," largely predating the Arabian Muslim conquest that resulted in their acculturation, established Arabic as the predominant vernacular, and over time also Islamized many of them from various prior faiths.

Early use of "Palestinian" as an endonym to refer to the nationalist concept of a Palestinian people by the local Arabic-speaking population of Palestine began prior to the outbreak of World War I, and the first demand for an Arab state encompassing Palestine was issued by the Syrian-Palestinian Congress on 21 September 1921. After the creation of the State of Israel, the exodus of 1948, and more so after the exodus of 1967, the term came to signify not only a place of origin, but the sense of a shared past and future in the form of a Palestinian nation-state. The Palestinian National Authority, officially established as a result of the Oslo Accords, is an interim administrative body nominally responsible for governance in Palestinian population centers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Etymology

(meaning Division of Palestine) as was used by Umayad khilafat 7th century AD]] The Greek toponym Palestini (Παλαιστίνη), with which the Arabic Filastin (فلسطين) is cognate, first occurs in the work of the Greek historian Herodotus, active in the middle of the 5th century BCE, where it denotes generally the coastal land from Phoenicia down to Egypt. Herodotus also employs the term as an ethnonym, as when he speaks of the 'Syrians of Palestine' or 'Palestinian-Syrians', an ethnically amorphous group he distinguishes from the Phoenicians referring to the Aramaeic Samaritans led by Sanbalat and appointed by the Persian kings and the Arabs in Jerusalem referred to also by Ezra (the Bible). The word bears comparison to a congeries of ethnonyms in Semitic languages, Ancient Egyptian Plst or flst, Assyrian as Palastu, and the Hebraic as Plishtim, the latter term used in the Bible to signify the Philistines.

Syria Palestina continued to be used by historians and geographers and others to refer to the area between the Mediterranean sea and the Jordan river, as in the writings of Philo, Josephus and Pliny the Elder. After the Romans adopted the term as the official administrative name for the region in the 2nd century CE, "Palestine" as a stand alone term came into widespread use, printed on coins, in inscriptions and even in rabbinic texts. The Arabic word Filastin has been used to refer to the region since the time of the earliest medieval Arab geographers. It appears to have been used as an Arabic adjectival noun in the region since as early as the 7th century CE. During the British Mandate of Palestine, the term "Palestinian" was used to refer to all people residing there, regardless of religion or ethnicity, and those granted citizenship by the Mandatory authorities were granted "Palestinian citizenship". Other examples include the use of the term Palestine Regiment to refer to the Jewish Infantry Brigade Group of the British Army during World War II, and the Palestinian Talmud, a section of the Jewish oral tradition originating from the biblical Land of Israel.

Following the 1948 establishment of the State of Israel, the use and application of the terms "Palestine" and "Palestinian" by and to Palestinian Jews largely dropped from use. For example, the English-language newspaper The Palestine Post, founded by Jews in 1932, changed its name in 1950 to The Jerusalem Post. Jews in Israel and the West Bank today generally identify as Israelis. Arab citizens of Israel identify themselves as Israeli and/or Palestinian and/or Arab.

The Palestinian National Charter, as amended by the PLO's Palestine National Council in July 1968, defined "Palestinians" as "those Arab nationals who, until 1947, normally resided in Palestine regardless of whether they were evicted from it or stayed there. Anyone born, after that date, of a Palestinian father — whether in Palestine or outside it — is also a Palestinian." Note that "Arab nationals" is not religious-specific, and it implicitly includes not only the Arabic-speaking Muslims of Palestine, but also the Arabic-speaking Christians of Palestine and other religious communities of Palestine who were at that time Arabic-speakers, such as the Samaritans and Druze. Thus, the Jews of Palestine were/are also included, although limited only to "the [Arabic-speaking] Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the [pre-state] Zionist invasion." The Charter also states that "Palestine with the boundaries it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit."

History

Palestinian history and nationalism

's Falcon: Coat of Arms and Emblem of the Palestinian Authority]]

The timing and causes behind the emergence of a distinctively Palestinian national consciousness among the Arabs of Palestine are matters of scholarly disagreement.

In his 1997 book, Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness, historian Rashid Khalidi notes that the archaeological strata that denote the history of Palestine — encompassing the Biblical, Roman, Byzantine, Umayyad, Fatimid, Crusader, Ayyubid, Mamluk and Ottoman periods — form part of the identity of the modern-day Palestinian people, as they have come to understand it over the last century. Noting that Palestinian identity has never been an exclusive one, with "Arabism, religion, and local loyalties" playing an important role, Khalidi cautions against the efforts of some Palestinian nationalists to "anachronistically" read back into history a nationalist consciousness that is in fact "relatively modern".

Arabs first appeared in Palestine in the 7th century, during the Muslim conquest of Palestine. The Rashidun Caliphate annexed Greater Syria, and an Arab population took root in the region. Palestine was conquered by the Ottoman Empire in 1516, and the Ottomans subsequently conducted a census. Baruch Kimmerling and Joel S. Migdal consider the 1834 revolt of the Arabs in Palestine as constituting the first formative event of the Palestinian people. In the 1830, however, Palestine was occupied by the Egyptian vassal of the Ottomans – Muhammad Ali – and his son Ibrahim Pasha. The revolt was precipitated by popular resistance against heavy demands for conscripts, as peasants were well aware that conscription was little more than a death sentence. Starting in May 1834 the rebels took many cities, among them Jerusalem, Hebron and Nablus. In response, Ibrahim Pasha sent in an army, finally defeating the last rebels on 4 August in Hebron. Nevertheless, Benny Morris argues that the Arabs in Palestine remained part of a larger Pan-Islamist or Pan-Arab national movement. According to Walid Khalidi, Palestinians in Ottoman times were "[a]cutely aware of the distinctiveness of Palestinian history ..." and "[a]lthough proud of their Arab heritage and ancestry, the Palestinians considered themselves to be descended not only from Arab conquerors of the seventh century but also from indigenous peoples who had lived in the country since time immemorial, including the ancient Hebrews and the Canaanites before them."

Rashid Khalidi argues that the modern national identity of Palestinians has its roots in nationalist discourses that emerged among the peoples of the Ottoman empire in the late 19th century, and which sharpened following the demarcation of modern nation-state boundaries in the Middle East after World War I. Gelvin argues that this fact does not make the Palestinian identity any less legitimate:

"The fact that Palestinian nationalism developed later than Zionism and indeed in response to it does not in any way diminish the legitimacy of Palestinian nationalism or make it less valid than Zionism. All nationalisms arise in opposition to some "other." Why else would there be the need to specify who you are? And all nationalisms are defined by what they oppose."

Tamir Sorek, a sociologist, submits that, "Although a distinct Palestinian identity can be traced back at least to the middle of the nineteenth century (Kimmerling and Migdal 1993; Khalidi 1997b), or even to the seventeenth century (Gerber 1998), it was not until after World War I that a broad range of optional political affiliations became relevant for the Arabs of Palestine."

Israeli historian Efraim Karsh takes the view that the Palestinian identity did not develop until after the 1967 war because the Palestinian exodus had fractured society so greatly that it was impossible to piece together a national identity. Between 1948 and 1967, the Jordanians and other Arab countries hosting Arab refugees from Palestine/Israel silenced any expression of Palestinian identity and occupied their lands more brutally than the Israelis did after 1967. The formal annexation of the West Bank by Jordan in 1950, and the subsequent granting of its Palestinian Arab residents Jordanian citizenship, further stunted the growth of a Palestinian national identity by integrating them into Jordanian society.

Whatever the differing viewpoints over the timing, causal mechanisms, and orientation of Palestinian nationalism, by the early 20th century strong opposition to Zionism and evidence of a burgeoning nationalistic Palestinian identity is found in the content of Arabic-language newspapers in Palestinian Territories, such as Al-Karmil (est. 1908) and Filasteen (est. 1911). Filasteen, published in Jaffa by Issa and Yusef al-Issa, addressed its readers as "Palestinians", first focusing its critique of Zionism around the failure of the Ottoman administration to control Jewish immigration and the large influx of foreigners, later exploring the impact of Zionist land-purchases on Palestinian peasants (, fellahin), expressing growing concern over land dispossession and its implications for the society at large. Two political factions emerged. Al-Muntada al-Adabi, dominated by the Nashashibi family, militated for the promotion of the Arabic language and culture, for the defense of Islamic values and for an independent Syria and Palestine. In Damascus, al-Nadi al-Arabi , dominated by the Husayni family, defended the same values.

The historical record continued to reveal an interplay between "Arab" and "Palestinian" identities and nationalism. The idea of a unique Palestinian state separated out from its Arab neighbors was at first rejected by Palestinian representatives. The First Congress of Muslim-Christian Associations (in Jerusalem, February 1919), which met for the purpose of selecting a Palestinian Arab representative for the Paris Peace Conference, adopted the following resolution: "We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria, as it has never been separated from it at any time. We are connected with it by national, religious, linguistic, natural, economic and geographical bonds."

After the Nabi Musa riots, the San Remo conference and the failure of Faisal to establish the Kingdom of Greater Syria, a distinctive form of Palestinian Arab nationalism took root between April and July 1920. With the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the French conquest of Syria, the formerly pan-Syrianist mayor of Jerusalem, Musa Qasim Pasha al-Husayni, said "Now, after the recent events in Damascus, we have to effect a complete change in our plans here. Southern Syria no longer exists. We must defend Palestine".

Conflict between Palestinian nationalists and various types of pan-Arabists continued during the British Mandate, but the latter became increasingly marginalized. Two prominent leaders of the Palestinian nationalists were Mohammad Amin al-Husayni, Grand Mufti of Jerusalem,appointed by the British, and Izz ad-Din al-Qassam.

Struggle for self-determination

Palestinians have never exercised full sovereignty over the land in which they have lived. Palestine was administered by the Ottoman Empire until World War I, and then by the British Mandatory authorities. Israel was established in parts of Palestine in 1948, and in the wake of the 1948 Arab-Israeli war, the West Bank and East Jerusalem were occupied by Jordan, and the Gaza Strip by Egypt, with both countries continuing to administer these areas until Israel captured them in the Six-day war. Avi Shlaim explains that the argument that "you never had sovereignty over this land, and therefore you have no rights," has been used by Israelis to deny Palestinian rights and attachment to the land.

Only "peoples" are entitled to self-determination in contemporary international law. The International Court of Justice said that Israel had recognized the existence of a "Palestinian people" and referred a number of times to the Palestinian people and its "legitimate rights" in international agreements. The Court said those rights include the right to self-determination. Judge Koroma explained "The Court has also held that the right of self-determination as an established and recognized right under international law applies to the territory and to the Palestinian people. Accordingly, the exercise of such right entitles the Palestinian people to a State of their own as originally envisaged in resolution 181 (II) and subsequently confirmed." Judge Higgins also said "that the Palestinian people are entitled to their territory, to exercise self-determination, and to have their own State." Paul De Waart said that the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice in 2004 "ascertained the present responsibility of the United Nations to protect Palestine’s statehood. It affirmed the applicability of the prohibition of acquisition of Palestinian territory by Israel and confirmed the illegality of the Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. Moreover, the existence of the Palestinian people as the rightful claimant to the Occupied Palestinian Territory is no longer open to question.

In October 2007 the Japanese Justice Ministry recognized Palestinian nationality. The decision followed a recommendation by a ruling party panel on nationality that Palestinians should no longer be treated as stateless.

The right of the Palestinian people to self-determination has since been affirmed by the Security Council, the General Assembly, the International Court of Justice and by Israel itself. About 100 nations recognize Palestine as a state, with Costa Rica being the most recent country to do so, in February 2008. However, Palestinian sovereignty over the areas claimed as part of the Palestinian state remains limited, and the boundaries of the state remain a point of contestation between Palestinians and Israelis.

British Mandate 1917-1948

Article 22 of The Covenant of the League of Nations conferred an international legal status upon the territories and people which had ceased to be under the sovereignty of the Ottoman Empire as part of a 'sacred trust of civilization'. Article 7 of the League of Nations Mandate required the establishment of a new, separate, Palestinian nationality for the inhabitants. This meant that Palestinians did not become British citizens, and that Palestine was not annexed into the British dominions. After the British general, Louis Bols, read out the Balfour Declaration of 1917 in February 1920, some 1,500 Palestinians demonstrated in the streets of Jerusalem. The Arabs tried to get the British to offer an Arab legal establishment again roughly ten years later, but to no avail.

After the killing of Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam by the British in 1935, his followers initiated the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine, which began with a general strike in Jaffa and attacks on Jewish and British installations in Nablus. Religious and minority rights had been declared matters of international concern and placed under the guarantee of the League of Nations. The General Assembly incorporated a religious and minority rights protection system into the partition plan, and placed it under the guarantee of the United Nations.

The United Nations established a subsidiary organ, the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, to recommend a program of implementation to enable the Palestinian people to exercise their rights to self-determination without external interference, national independence and sovereignty, and to return to their homes and property.

After the 1948 Arab-Israeli war and the accompanying Palestinian exodus, known to Palestinians as Al Nakba (the "catastrophe"), there was a hiatus in Palestinian political activity which Khalidi partially attributes to "the fact that Palestinian society had been devastated between November 1947 and mid-May 1948 as a result of a series of overwhelming military defeats of the disorganized Palestinians by the armed forces of the Zionist movement." Those parts of British Mandate Palestine which did not become part of the newly declared Israeli state were occupied by Egypt and Jordan. During what Khalidi terms the "lost years" that followed, Palestinians lacked a center of gravity, divided as they were between these countries and others such as Syria, Lebanon, and elsewhere.

In the 1950s, a new generation of Palestinian nationalist groups and movements began to organize clandestinely, stepping out onto the public stage in the 1960s. The traditional Palestinian elite who had dominated negotiations with the British and the Zionists in the Mandate, and who were largely held responsible for the loss of Palestine, were replaced by these new movements whose recruits generally came from poor to middle class backgrounds and were often students or recent graduates of universities in Cairo, Beirut and Damascus.—tended to obscure the identities of the separate Arab nation-states it subsumed.

1967 to the present

Since 1967, pan-Arabism has diminished as an aspect of Palestinian identity. The Israeli capture of the Gaza Strip and West Bank prompted fractured Palestinian political and militant groups to give up any remaining hope in pan-Arabism. Instead, they rallied around the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), founded in 1964, and its nationalistic orientation under the leadership of Yasser Arafat. Mainstream secular Palestinian nationalism was grouped together under the umbrella of the PLO whose constituent organizations include Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, among others.

The Battle of Karameh and the events of Black September in Jordan contributed to growing Palestinian support for these groups, particularly among Palestinians in exile. Concurrently, among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a new ideological theme, known as sumud, represented the Palestinian political strategy popularly adopted from 1967 onward. As a concept closely related to the land, agriculture and indigenousness, the ideal image of the Palestinian put forward at this time was that of the peasant (in Arabic, fellah) who stayed put on his land, refusing to leave. A strategy more passive than that adopted by the Palestinian fedayeen, sumud provided an important subtext to the narrative of the fighters, "in symbolizing continuity and connections with the land, with peasantry and a rural way of life." , leader of the PLO, in a Palestinian refugee camp in Southern Lebanon, 1978]] In 1974, the PLO was recognized as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people by the Arab states and was granted observer status as a national liberation movement by the United Nations that same year. Israel rejected the resolution, calling it "shameful". In a speech to the Knesset, Deputy Premier and Foreign Minister Yigal Allon outlined the government's view that: 'No one can expect us to recognize the terrorist organization called the PLO as representing the Palestinians—because it does not. No one can expect us to negotiate with the heads of terror-gangs, who through their ideology and actions, endeavor to liquidate the State of Israel.'

From 1948 through until the 1980s, according to Eli Podeh, professor at Hebrew University, the textbooks used in Israeli schools tried to disavow a unique Palestinian identity, referring to 'the Arabs of the land of Israel' instead of 'Palestinians.' Israeli textbooks now widely use the term 'Palestinians.' Podeh believes that Palestinian textbooks of today resemble those from the early years of the Israeli state. The First Intifada (1987–1993) was the first popular uprising against the Israeli occupation of 1967. Followed by the PLO's 1988 proclamation of a State of Palestine, these developments served to further reinforce the Palestinian national identity. The Oslo Accords had a limited duration of five years, ending in June 1999 when the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip and the Jericho area began. The expiration of this term without the recognition by Israel of the Palestinian State and without the effective termination of the occupation was followed by the Second Intifada in 2000. The second intifada was more violent than the first. The International Court of Justice observed that since the government of Israel had decided to recognize the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people, their existence was no longer an issue. The court noted that the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement on the West Bank and the Gaza Strip of 28 September 1995 also referred a number of times to the Palestinian people and its "legitimate rights". The right of self-determination gives the Palestinians collectively an inalienable right to freely choose their political status, including the establishment of a sovereign and independent state. Israel, having recognized the Palestinians as a separate people, is obliged to promote and respect this right in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations.

Today, most Palestinian organizations conceive of their struggle as either Palestinian-nationalist or Islamic in nature, and these themes predominate even more today. Within Israel itself, there are political movements, such as Abnaa el-Balad that assert their Palestinian identity, to the exclusion of their Israeli one.

Palestinian ethnic identity is based primarily on two elements: the village of origin and family networks. The village of origin holds a privileged place in Palestinian memory because of its historically important role as a center for religious and political power throughout Palestine's administration by various empires. The village of origin also represents "the very expression of their Arabic Palestinian culture and identity," and is a site central to kinship and familial ties. The progressive deterritorialization experienced by Palestinians has rendered the village of origin a symbol of lost territory, and it forms a central part of a diasporic consciousness among Palestinians.

Ancestral origins

Like the Lebanese, Syrians, Egyptians, Moroccans, and most other people today commonly called Arabs, the Palestinians are an Arab people in linguistic and cultural affiliation — that is, in ethnic identity. However, like most other peoples today called Arabs, the Palestinians descend from the pre-existing ancient inhabitants of their respective region and those who have come to settle it throughout history; a matter on which genetic studies described below has begun to shed some light.

American historian Bernard Lewis writes:

"Clearly, in Palestine as elsewhere in the Middle East, the modern inhabitants include among their ancestors those who lived in the country in antiquity. Equally obviously, the demographic mix was greatly modified over the centuries by migration, deportation, immigration, and settlement. This was particularly true in Palestine..."

Ali Qleibo, a Palestinian anthropologist, explains:

"Throughout history a great diversity of peoples has moved into the region and made Palestine their homeland: Canaanites, Jebusites, Philistines from Crete, Anatolian and Lydian Greeks, Hebrews, Amorites, Edomites, Nabateans, Arameans, Romans, Arabs, and European crusaders, to name a few. Each of them appropriated different regions that overlapped in time and competed for sovereignty and land. Others, such as Ancient Egyptians, Hittites, Persians, Babylonians, and Mongols, were historical 'events' whose successive occupations were as ravaging as the effects of major earthquakes ... Like shooting stars, the various cultures shine for a brief moment before they fade out of official historical and cultural records of Palestine. The people, however, survive. In their customs and manners, fossils of these ancient civilizations survived until modernity—albeit modernity camouflaged under the veneer of Islam and Arabic culture." Even today, certain Nabulsi surnames including Muslimani, Yaish, and Shakshir among others, are associated with a Samaritan origin. believing them to be descendants of the ancient Hebrew and Canaanite residents 'together with a small admixture of Arab blood'". Tamari notes that "the ideological implications of this claim became very problematic and were soon withdrawn from circulation." Tsvi Misinai, an Israeli researcher, entrepreneur and proponent of a to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, asserts that nearly 90% of all Palestinians living within Israel and the occupied territories (including the Israeli Arabs and Negev Bedouin) are descended from the Jewish Israelite peasantry that remained on the land, after the others, mostly city dwellers, were exiled or left.

Claims emanating from certain circles within Palestinian society and their supporters, proposing that Palestinians have direct ancestral connections to the ancient Canaanites, without an intermediate Israelite link, has been an issue of contention within the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In discussing the root of the controversy to the claim of Canaanite lineage, many renowned scholars have hypothesised on the nature of the controversy itself, although not deliberating on the veracity of the claims, as this is a question that shall ultimately be resolved by geneticists, not by scholars in their capacity as historians.

Bernard Lewis explains that "the rewriting of the past is usually undertaken to achieve specific political aims...In bypassing the biblical Israelites and claiming kinship with the Canaanites, the pre-Israelite inhabitants of Palestine, it is possible to assert a historical claim antedating the biblical promise and possession put forward by the Jews."

Some Palestinian scholars, like Zakariyya Muhammad, have criticized pro-Palestinian arguments based on Canaanite lineage, or what he calls "Canaanite ideology". He states that it is an "intellectual fad, divorced from the concerns of ordinary people." By assigning its pursuit to the desire to predate Jewish national claims, he describes Canaanism as a "losing ideology", whether or not it is factual, "when used to manage our conflict with the Zionist movement" since Canaanism "concedes a priori the central thesis of Zionism. Namely that we have been engaged in a perennial conflict with Zionism—and hence with the Jewish presence in Palestine—since the Kingdom of Solomon and before ... thus in one stroke Canaanism cancels the assumption that Zionism is a European movement, propelled by modern European contingencies..." Semitic populations, including Jews, usually possess an excess of J1 Y chromosomes compared to other populations harboring Y-haplogroup J. The haplogroup J1, associated with marker M267, originates south of the Levant and was first disseminated from there into Ethiopia and Europe in Neolithic times. In Jewish populations J1 has a rate of around 15%, with haplogroup J2 (M172) (of eight sub-Haplogroups) being almost twice as common as J1 among Jews (<29%). J1 is most common in the southern Levant, as well as Syria, Iraq, Algeria, and Arabia, and drops sharply at the border of non-semitic areas like Turkey and Iran. A second diffusion of the J1 marker took place in the 7th century CE when Arabians brought it from Arabia to North Africa.

Haplogroup J1 (Y-DNA) includes the modal haplotype of the Galilee Arabs and of Moroccan Arabs and the sister Modal Haplotype of the Cohanim, the "Cohan Modale Haplotype", representing the descendents of the priestly caste Aaron. J2 is known to be related to the ancient Greek movements and is found mainly in Europe and the central Mediterranean (Italy, the Balkans, Greece).

A study found that the Palestinians, like Jordanians, Syrians, Iraqis, and Bedouins have what appears to be substantial gene flow from sub-Saharan Africa, amounting to 10-15% of lineages within the past three millennia.

According to a 2002 study by Nebel and colleagues the highest frequency of Eu10 (i.e. J1) (30%–62.5%) has been observed so far in various Muslim Arab populations in the Middle East. The term “Arab,” as well as the presence of Arabs in the Syrian desert and the Fertile Crescent, is first seen in the Assyrian sources from the 9th century BCE (Eph'al 1984).

One DNA study by geneticist Ariella Oppenheim concluded that genetic evidence coincides with historical accounts that at least part of the Arab Israeli and Palestinian population is mainly descended from local Christians and Jews "who had converted [to Islam] after the Islamic conquest in the seventh century A.D." These Christian and Jewish converts are believed to be descended from a "core population that had lived in the area for several centuries, some even since prehistorical times." The study also discovered significant genetic mixing between these converts and incoming Arab tribes during the first millennium AD, as well as parallel genetic mixing of the Jewish population with the local peoples throughout the Jewish diaspora. Given the influx of Arabs to the area that reached climax with the Muslim conquest of the Levant in the 7th century AD, the researchers concluded that this disparity was likely the result of genetic mixing between the Palestinian population's Christian and Jewish ancestors and these later Arab settlers.

Arabian origins of the local Bedouin Arabs

The local Bedouins of Palestine — which are a separately-identified and solely Muslim group, distinct from the non-Bedouin Arabic-speakers of Palestine which consists of members of the Muslim, Christian and other faiths — are said to be more securely known to be ancestrally descended from Arabians, and not just culturally and linguistically Arabized peoples. Their distinctively conservative dialects and pronunciation of qaaf as gaaf group them with other Bedouin across the Arab world and confirm their separate history. Arabic onomastic elements began to appear in Edomite inscriptions starting in the 6th century BC, and are nearly universal in the inscriptions of the Nabataeans, who arrived in today’s Jordan in the 4th-3rd centuries BC. It has thus been suggested that the present day Bedouins of the region may have their origins as early as this period.

A few Bedouin are found as far north as Galilee; however, these seem to be much later arrivals, rather than descendants of the Arabs that Sargon II settled in Samaria in 720 BC. The term “Arab,” as well as the presence of Arabs in the Syrian desert and the Fertile Crescent, is first seen in the Assyrian sources from the 9th century BCE (Eph'al 1984).

Following the Muslim conquest of Syria by Arabians, the formerly-introduced dominant languages of the area, Aramaic and Greek, were then replaced by the Arabic language introduced by the new conquering administrative minority. Among the cultural survivals from pre-Islamic times are the significant Palestinian Christian community, and smaller Jewish and Samaritan ones, as well as an Aramaic and possibly Hebrew sub-stratum in the local Palestinian Arabic dialect.

Demographics

{| class="wikitable" border="1" style="float:right; width:33%;" |- ! Country or region ! Population |- | West Bank and Gaza Strip || align="right" | 3,761,000 |- | Jordan || align="right" | 2,700,000 |- | Syria || align="right" | 434,896 |- |Lebanon || align="right" | 405,425 |- | The Americas || align="right" | 225,000 |- | Egypt || align="right" | 44,200

In 2005, a critical review of the PCBS figures and methodology was conducted by the American-Israel Demographic Research Group. In their report, they claimed that several errors in the PCBS methodology and assumptions artificially inflated the numbers by a total of 1.3 million. The PCBS numbers were cross-checked against a variety of other sources (e.g., asserted birth rates based on fertility rate assumptions for a given year were checked against Palestinian Ministry of Health figures as well as Ministry of Education school enrollment figures six years later; immigration numbers were checked against numbers collected at border crossings, etc.). The errors claimed in their analysis included: birth rate errors (308,000), immigration & emigration errors (310,000), failure to account for migration to Israel (105,000), double-counting Jerusalem Arabs (210,000), counting former residents now living abroad (325,000) and other discrepancies (82,000). The results of their research was also presented before the United States House of Representatives on 8 March 2006.

The study was criticised by Sergio DellaPergola, a demographer at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. DellaPergola accused the authors of misunderstanding basic principles of demography on account of their lack of expertise in the subject, but he also acknowledged that he did not take into account the emigration of Palestinians and thinks it has to be examined, as well as the birth and mortality statistics of the Palestinian Authority. He also accused them of selective use of data and multiple systematic errors in their analysis. For example, DellaPergola claimed that the authors assumed the Palestinian Electoral registry to be complete even though registration is voluntary and good evidence exists of incomplete registration, and similarly that they used an unrealistically low Total Fertility Ratio (a statistical abstraction of births per woman) incorrectly derived from data and then used to reanalyse that data in a "typical circular mistake".

DellaPergola himself estimated the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza at the end of 2005 as 3.33 million, or 3.57 million if East Jerusalem is included. These figures are only slightly lower than the official Palestinian figures. In 2009, at the request of the PLO, "Jordan revoked the citizenship of thousands of Palestinians to keep them from remaining permanently in the country."

Many Palestinians have settled in the United States, particularly in the Chicago area.

In total, an estimated 600,000 Palestinians are thought to reside in the Americas. Palestinian emigration to South America began for economic reasons that pre-dated the Arab-Israeli conflict, but continued to grow thereafter. Many emigrants were from the Bethlehem area. Those emigrating to Latin America were mainly Christian. Half of those of Palestinian origin in Latin America live in Chile. El Salvador and Honduras also have substantial Palestinian populations. These two countries have had presidents of Palestinian ancestry (in El Salvador Antonio Saca, currently serving; in Honduras Carlos Roberto Flores). Belize, which has a smaller Palestinian population, has a Palestinian minister — Said Musa. Schafik Jorge Handal, Salvadoran politician and former guerrilla leader, was the son of Palestinian immigrants.

Refugees

in Balata refugee camp, 2002]] There are 4,255,120 Palestinians registered as refugees with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). This number includes the descendants of refugees who fled or were expelled during the 1948 war, but excludes those who have since then emigrated to areas outside of UNRWA's remit.

UNRWA figures do not include some 274,000 people, or 1 in 4 of all Arab citizens of Israel, who are internally displaced Palestinian refugees.

Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and the West Bank are organized according to a refugee family's village or place of origin. Among the first things that children born in the camps learn is the name of their village of origin. David McDowall writes that, "[...] a yearning for Palestine permeates the whole refugee community and is most ardently espoused by the younger refugees, for whom home exists only in the imagination."

Religion

Background

in Jerusalem]]

Palestinians are predominantly Muslims, particularly of the Sunni branch of Islam. Palestinian Christians represent a significant minority, followed by much smaller religious communities, including Druze and Samaritans. Palestinian Jews — considered Palestinian by the Palestinian National Charter adopted by the PLO which defined them as those "Jews who had normally resided in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion" — today identify as Israelis (with the exception of a very few individuals). Palestinian Jews almost universally abandoned any such identity after the establishment of Israel and their incorporation into the Israeli Jewish population, largely composed of Jewish immigrants from around the world.

Until the end of the 19th century, most Palestinian Muslim villagers in the countryside did not have local mosques. Cross-cultural syncretism between Christian and Islamic symbols and figures in religious practice was common. Saints, taboo by the standards of orthodox Islam, mediated between man and Allah, and shrines to saints and holy men dotted the Palestinian landscape.

Today

Currently, no comprehensive data on religious affiliation among the worldwide Palestinian population is available. Bernard Sabella of Bethlehem University estimates that 6% of the Palestinian population worldwide is Christian and that 56% of them live outside of their country. According to the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, the Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip is 97% Muslim and 3% Christian.

The Druze became Israeli citizens and Druze males serve in the Israel Defense Forces, though some individuals identify as "Palestinian Druze". According to Salih al-Shaykh, most Druze do not consider themselves to be Palestinian: "their Arab identity emanates in the main from the common language and their socio-cultural background, but is detached from any national political conception. It is not directed at Arab countries or Arab nationality or the Palestinian people, and does not express sharing any fate with them. From this point of view, their identity is Israel, and this identity is stronger than their Arab identity".

There are also about 350 Samaritans who carry Palestinian identity cards and live in the West Bank while a roughly equal number live in Holon and carry Israeli citizenship. and Uri Davis, an Israeli citizen and self-described Palestinian Jew (who converted to Islam in 2008 in order to marry Miyassar Abu Ali) who serves as an observer member in the Palestine National Council. Bahá'u'lláh, founder of the Baha'i Faith, was on his way to imprisonment in `Akká after sveral banishments and it was his eventual 24-year confinement in the prison city of `Akka, Palestine (present day Israel), where he died. He had a growing amount of followers but because of a lack of census in Palestinian territories, it is hard to get exact figures of the amount of Palestinian Baha'is.

Language

in Jerusalem]]

Palestinian Arabic is a spoken Arabic dialect that is specific to Palestinians and is a subgroup of the broader Levantine Arabic dialect. Prior to the 7th century Arabization of the Levant, the primary language was Aramaic, but ancient Arab tribal groups in the Levant (such as the Qedarites and the Nabataeans) spoke Arabic and wrote in the Aramaic alphabet. Palestinian Arabic, like Syrian Arabic and Iraqi Arabic, exhibits substantial influences from Aramaic.

Palestinian Arabic has three primary sub-variations with the pronunciation of the qāf serving as a shibboleth to distinguish between the three main Palestinian sub-dialects: In most cities, it is a glottal stop; in smaller villages and the countryside, it is a pharyngealized k (a characteristic unique to Palestinian Arabic); and in the far south, it is a g, as among Bedouin speakers. In a number of villages in the Galilee (e.g. Maghār), and particularly, though not exclusively among the Druze, the qāf is actually pronounced qāf as in Classical Arabic.

Barbara McKean Parmenter has noted that the Arabs of Palestine have been credited with the preservation of the indigenous Semitic place names for many sites mentioned in the Bible that were documented by the American archaeologist Edward Robinson in the early 20th century.

Culture

Ali Qleibo, a Palestinian anthropologist, has critiqued Muslim historiography for assigning the beginning of Palestinian cultural identity to the advent of Islam in the 7th century. In describing the effect of such a historiography, he writes: "Pagan origins are disavowed. As such the peoples who populated Palestine throughout history have discursively rescinded their own history and religion as they adopted the religion, language, and culture of Islam". and this assumption was to influence later debates on Palestinian identity by local ethnographers.

The contributions of the 'nativist' ethnographies produced by Tawfiq Canaan and other Palestinian writers and published in The Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society (1920–1948) were driven by the concern that the "native culture of Palestine", and in particular peasant society, was being undermined by the forces of modernity.

Al-Quds Arab Capital of Culture (Arabic: القدس عاصمة الثقافة العربية‎) is an initiative undertaken by UNESCO under the Arab Capital of Culture programme,[1] under the Cultural Capitals Program to promote and celebrate Arab culture and encourage cooperation in the Arab region. Al-Quds is the Arab name for Jerusalem. However, many of the events were organised elsewhere in the Palestinian Territories. Those that were scheduled to take place in Jerusalem were actively discouraged by the Israeli authorities. The opening event was scheduled to be held on January 2009, but it was delayed until March due to the 2008-2009 Israel-Gaza Conflict and it was launched on 21 March 2009.

Art

near Jericho c. 735 CE]] Similar to the structure of Palestinian society, the Palestinian field of arts extends over four main geographic centers: 1) the West Bank and Gaza Strip 2) Israe 3) the Palestinian diaspora in the Arab world, and 4) the Palestinian diaspora in Europe, the United States and elsewhere.

Contemporary Palestinian art finds its roots in folk art and traditional Christian and Islamic painting. After the 1948 Palestinian exodus, nationalistic themes have predominated as Palestinian artists use diverse media to express and explore their connection to identity and land.In the 1990s Salam Dyab, Hisham Zreiq, Issa Dibe and others began to adopt modern styles and symbolism.

Cuisine

in Ramallah]] in a pan]] ; The Palestinian National dish]]

Palestine's history of rule by many different empires is reflected in Palestinian cuisine, which has benefited from various cultural contributions and exchanges. Generally-speaking, modern Syrian-Palestinian dishes have been influenced by the rule of three major Islamic groups: the Arabs, the Persian-influenced Arabs and the Turks. The Arabs who conquered Syria and Palestine had simple culinary traditions primarily based on the use of rice, lamb and yogurt, as well as dates. The already simple cuisine did not advance for centuries due to Islam's strict rules of parsimony and restraint, until the rise of the Abbasids, who established Baghdad as their capital. Baghdad was historically located on Persian soil and henceforth, Persian culture was integrated into Arab culture during the 9th-11th centuries and spread throughout central areas of the empire. Nonetheless, until around the 1950s-60s, the staple diet for many rural Palestinian families revolved around olive oil, oregano (za'atar) and bread, baked in a simple oven called a taboon.

Palestinian cuisine is divided into three regional groups: the Galilee, West Bank and Gaza area. Cuisine in the Galilee region shares much in common with Lebanese cuisine, due to extensive communication between the two regions before the establishment of Israel. Galilee inhabitants specialize in producing a number of meals based on the combination of bulgur, spices and meat, known as kibbee by Arabs. Kibbee has several variations including it being served raw, fried or baked. The Egyptian culinary influence is also seen by the frequent use of hot peppers, garlic and chard to flavor many of Gaza's meals.

Chick-pea based falafel, which substituted for the fava beans used in the original Egyptian recipe and added Indian peppers introduced after the Mongol invasions opened new trade routes, are a favorite staple in Mediterranean cuisine, since adopted as part of Israeli cuisine.

Mezze describes an assortment of dishes laid out on the table for a meal that takes place over several hours, a characteristic common to Mediterranean cultures. Some common mezze dishes are hummus, tabouleh, baba ghanoush, labaneh, and zate 'u zaatar, which is the pita bread dipping of olive oil and ground thyme and sesame seeds.

Entrées that are eaten throughout the Palestinian Territories, include waraq al-'inib — boiled grape leaves wrapped around cooked rice and ground lamb. Mahashi is an assortment of stuffed vegetables such as, zucchinis, potatoes, cabbage and in Gaza, chard.

Film

Palestinian cinema is relatively young compared to Arab cinema overall and many Palestinian movies are made with European and Israeli support. Palestinian films are not exclusively produced in Arabic; some are made in English, French or Hebrew. More than 800 films have been produced about Palestinians, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and other related topics, examples include Divine Intervention and Paradise Now.

Handicrafts

A wide variety of handicrafts, many of which have been produced by Palestinians for hundreds of years, continue to be produced today. Palestinian handicrafts include embroidery and weaving, pottery-making, soap-making, glass-making, and olive-wood and Mother of Pearl carvings, among others.

Intellectuals

In the late 19th century and early 20th century, Palestinian intellectuals were integral parts of wider Arab intellectual circles, as represented by individuals such as May Ziade and Khalil Beidas. Educational levels among Palestinians have traditionally been high. In the 1960s the West Bank had a higher percentage of its adolescent population enrolled in high school education than did Lebanon. Claude Cheysson, France’s Minister for Foreign Affairs under the first Mitterrand Presidency, held in the mid eighties that, ‘even thirty years ago, (Palestinians) probably already had the largest educated elite of all the Arab peoples.’

Diaspora figures like Edward Said and Ghada Karmi, Arab citizens of Israel like Emile Habibi, and Jordanians like Ibrahim Nasrallah have made contributions to a wide number of fields, exemplifying the diversity of experience and thought among Palestinians.

Literature

The long history of the Arabic language and its rich written and oral tradition form part of the Palestinian literary tradition as it has developed over the course of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Poetry

Poetry, using classical pre-Islamic forms, remains an extremely popular art form, often attracting Palestinian audiences in the thousands. Until 20 years ago, local folk bards reciting traditional verses were a feature of every Palestinian town.After the 1948 Palestinian exodus, poetry was transformed into a vehicle for political activism. From among those Palestinians who became Arab citizens of Israel after the passage of the Citizenship Law in 1952, a school of resistance poetry was born that included poets like Mahmoud Darwish, Samih al-Qasim, and Tawfiq Zayyad.Though such local and regional variations largely disappeared after the 1948 Palestinian exodus] Palestinian embroidery and costume continue to be produced in new forms and worn alongside Islamic and Western fashions.

Dance

The Dabke dance is marked by synchronized jumping, stamping, and movement, similar to tap dancing. One version is performed by men, another by women.

Folk tales

Traditional storytelling among Palestinians is prefaced with an invitation to the listeners to give blessings to God and the Prophet Mohammed or the Virgin Mary as the case may be, and includes the traditional opening: "There was, or there was not, in the oldness of time ..."Formulaic elements of the stories share much in common with the wider Arab world, though the rhyming scheme is distinct. There are a cast of supernatural characters: djinns who can cross the Seven Seas in an instant, giants, and ghouls with eyes of ember and teeth of brass. Stories invariably have a happy ending, and the storyteller will usually finish off with a rhyme like: "The bird has taken flight, God bless you tonight," or "Tutu, tutu, finished is my haduttu (story)."]] Palestinian music is well-known and respected throughout the Arab world. A new wave of performers emerged with distinctively Palestinian themes following the 1948 Palestinian exodus, relating to the dreams of statehood and the burgeoning nationalist sentiments. In addition to zajal and ataaba, traditional Palestinian songs include: Bein Al-dawai, Al-Rozana, Zarif - Al-Toul, and Al-Maijana, Dal'ona, Sahja/Saamir, Zaghareet. For over three decades, the Palestinian National Music and Dance Troupe (El Funoun) in Palestine has promoted and developed Palestinian traditional songs and dance. Examples include Mish'al (1986), Marj Ibn 'Amer(1989) and Zaghareed (1997) a collection of Palestinian traditional wedding songs reinterpreted and re-arranged by Mohsen Subhi. (See section on "External links"). The Ataaba is a form of folk singing that spread outwards from Palestine. It consists of 4 verses, following a specific form and meter. The main aspect of the ataaba is that the first three verses must end with the same word meaning three different things, and the fourth verse comes as a conclusion to the whole thing. It is usually followed by a dalouna.

See also

List of Palestinians

Palestinian casualties of war

Human rights in the Palestinian National Authority

Bibliography

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Boyle, Kevin and Sheen, Juliet (1997). Freedom of Religion and Belief: A World Report. London: Routledge. ISBN 0415159776

Cohen, Hillel, Army of Shadows, Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948

Cohen, Robin (1995). The Cambridge Survey of World Migration. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521444055

Cordesman, Anthony H (2005). The Israeli-Palestinian War: Escalating to Nowhere. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 0275987582

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Gelvin, James L (2005). The Israel-Palestine Conflict: One Hundred Years of War. Cambridge University Press, New York, NY. ISBN 0521852897

Guzmán, Roberto Marín (2000). A Century of Palestinian Immigration Into Central America. Editorial Universidad de C.R. ISBN 9977675872

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Hobsbawn, Eric (1990). Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, myth, reality. Cambridge University Press.

Howell, Mark (2007). What Did We Do to Deserve This? Palestinian Life under Occupation in the West Bank, Garnet Publishing. ISBN 1859641954

Kasher, Aryeh (1990). Jews and Hellenistic Cities in Eretz-Israel. Mohr Siebeck. ISBN 3161452410

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Beshara Doumani's "Rediscovering Ottoman Palestine: Writing Palestinians into History

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References

External links

Christians in Palestine antique prints collection

Sounds of Folksongs

Voice of Palestinian Folklore, Free Songs Download

Traditional Palestinian Clothes

The Art of Palestinian Embroidery

Sands of Sorrow - Film on refugees

United Nations Programme of Assistance to the Palestinian People

The Ottoman Palestine Download Palestinian Pictures in Ottoman Palestine.

Palestinians * * Category:Fertile Crescent

Name	George Galloway
Caption	Galloway at a Stop The War protest in London, 24 February 2007
Birth date	August 16, 1954
Birth place	Dundee, Scotland
Residence	London, England, UK
Office	Vice President of the Stop The War Coalition
Term start	21 September 2001
President	Tony Benn
Predecessor	Office created
Constituency mp1	Bethnal Green and Bow
Majority1	823 (1.9%)
Term start1	5 May 2005
Term end1	12 April 2010
Predecessor1	Oona King
Successor1	Rushanara Ali
Term start2	1 May 1997
Term end2	5 May 2005
Predecessor2	Constituency created
Successor2	Constituency abolished
Constituency mp2	Glasgow Kelvin
Majority2	7,260 (27.1%)
Term start3	11 June 1987
Term end3	1 May 1997
Predecessor3	Roy Jenkins
Successor3	Constituency abolished
Constituency mp3	Glasgow Hillhead
Majority3	4,826 (12.3%)
Party	Respect (2004–present)Labour (1967–2003)
Nationality	Scottish
Citizenship	British
Website	www.georgegalloway.com

George Galloway (born 16 August 1954) is a British politician, author, and broadcaster who was a Member of Parliament (MP) from 1987 to 2010. He was formerly an MP for the Labour Party, first for Glasgow Hillhead, and later for Glasgow Kelvin, before his expulsion from the party in October 2003, the same year that he came to public attention for his opposition to the American and British invasion of Iraq. He subsequently became a founding member of the left wing Respect Party, and through them represented Bethnal Green and Bow in the 2005 parliament. In the 2010 election, Galloway unsuccessfully contested the parliamentary seat of Poplar and Limehouse.

Galloway is also known for his vigorous campaigns in favour of the Palestinians in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He attempted to both overturn economic sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s and early 2000s, and to avert the 2003 invasion. He is also known for a visit to Iraq where he met Saddam Hussein and delivered a speech, which has proven contentious, although Galloway actively opposed the regime until the United States-led Gulf War in 1991 and has always stated that he was addressing the Iraqi people in the speech.

Early and personal life

Galloway was born in the Lochee area of Dundee, Scotland, to a Scottish trade unionist father and Irish republican mother. He grew up in Charleston and attended Charleston Primary and then Harris Academy, a non-denominational school.

From 1979 to 1999, he was married to Elaine Fyffe, with whom he has a daughter, Lucy. In 2000, he married Amineh Abu-Zayyad. Zayyad filed for divorce in 2005. He married Rima Husseini, a Lebanese woman and former researcher, who in May 2007 gave birth to a son, Zein.

Galloway was raised as a Roman Catholic. He turned away from the church as a young man, but returned in his mid-20s. By his own account he decided to never drink alcohol at the age of 18, disapproves of it, and describes it as having a "very deleterious effect on people".

Labour Party organiser

Galloway joined the Labour Party at 13 years old and, within five years, was secretary of the Dundee West constituency party. His enthusiasm led him to become vice-chairman of the Labour Party in the city of Dundee and a member of the Scottish Executive Committee in 1975. On 5 May 1977, he contested his first election campaign in the Scottish district elections, but failed to hold the safe Labour seat at Gillburn, Dundee. He was beaten by the Independent candidate Bunty Turley, who was a trade unionist running on the campaign slogan "enough is enough" after allegations were made about Galloway's personal and financial behaviour. Galloway became the secretary organiser of Dundee Labour Party—the youngest ever Scottish chairman—in March 1981 at 26 years old.

His support for the Palestinian cause began in 1974 when he met a Palestinian activist in Dundee; he supported the actions of Dundee City council which flew the Palestinian flag inside the City Chambers. He was involved in the twinning of Dundee with Nablus in 1980, although he did not take part in the visit of Lord Provost Gowans, Ernie Ross MP and three city councillors to Nablus and Kuwait in April 1981.

Parliamentary career and public profile

War On Want

From November 1983 to 1987, Galloway was General Secretary of War On Want, a British charity that campaigns against poverty worldwide. In this post he was much travelled, writing eye-witness accounts of the famine in Eritrea in 1985 which were published in The Sunday Times and The Spectator.

The Daily Mirror accused him of living luxuriously at the charity's expense. An independent auditor cleared him of misuse of funds, though he did repay £1,720 in contested expenses. He later reportedly won £155,000 from the Mirror in an unrelated libel lawsuit.

More than two years after Galloway stepped down to serve as a Labour MP, the UK government investigated War on Want. It found accounting irregularities from 1985 to 1989, but little evidence that money was used for non-charitable purposes. Galloway had been General Secretary for the first three of those years. The commission said responsibility lay largely with auditors, and did not single out individuals for blame. The statement put Galloway on the front pages of the tabloid press and in February 1988 the Executive Committee of his Constituency Labour Party passed a vote of no confidence in him.

In 1990, a classified advertisement appeared in the Labour left weekly Tribune headed "Lost: MP who answers to the name of George", "balding and has been nicknamed gorgeous", claiming that the lost MP had been seen in Romania but had not been to a constituency meeting for a year. A telephone number was given which turned out to be for the Groucho Club in London, from which Galloway had recently been excluded (he has since been readmitted). Galloway threatened legal action and pointed out that he had been to five constituency meetings. He eventually settled for an out-of-court payment by Tribune.

The leadership election of the Labour Party in 1992 saw Galloway voting for fellow Scot John Smith for Leader and Margaret Beckett as Deputy Leader. In 1994, after Smith's death, Galloway declined to cast a vote in the leadership election (one of only three MPs to do so). In a debate with the leader of the Scottish National Party Alex Salmond, Galloway responded to one of Salmond's jibes against the Labour Party by declaring "I don't give a fuck what Tony Blair thinks." He called the Labour government "Tony Blair's lie machine." His most controversial statement from the interview may have been "Iraq is fighting for all the Arabs. Where are the Arab armies?". The Observer reported in 2003 that the Director of Public Prosecutions was considering a request to pursue Galloway under the Incitement to Disaffection Act, 1934, though no prosecution occurred.

On 18 April, The Sun published an interview with Tony Blair who said: "His comments were disgraceful and wrong. The National Executive will deal with it." The General Secretary of the Labour Party, citing Galloway's outspoken opinion of Blair and Bush in their pursuit of the Iraq war, suspended him from holding office in the party on 6 May 2003, pending a hearing on charges that he had violated the party's constitution by "bringing the Labour Party into disrepute through behaviour that is prejudicial or grossly detrimental to the Party". The National Constitutional Committee held a hearing on 22 October 2003, to consider the charges, taking evidence from Galloway himself, from other party witnesses, viewing media interviews, and hearing character testimony from Tony Benn, among others. The following day, the committee found the charge of bringing the party into disrepute proved, and so expelled Galloway from the Labour Party. Galloway called the Committee's hearing "a show trial" and "a kangaroo court".

2005 election

In January 2004, Galloway announced he would be working with members of the Socialist Alliance in England and Wales, and others, under the name Respect - The Unity Coalition, generally referred to simply as Respect. This was despite Galloway having a track record of antipathy toward Trotskyists, and the largest component of Respect being the Socialist Workers Party, which broadly identifies itself as part of the Trotskyist political tradition.

Some former members of the Socialist Alliance, including the Workers Liberty and Workers Power groups, objected to forming a coalition with Galloway, citing his political record, and his refusal to accept an average worker's wage, with Galloway claiming "I couldn’t live on three workers’ wages."

He stood as the Respect candidate in London in the 2004 European Parliament elections, but failed to win a seat after receiving 91,175 of the 115,000 votes he needed.

After his expulsion, he had initially fuelled speculation that he might call a snap by-election before then, by resigning his parliamentary seat, saying:

Galloway later announced that he would not force a by-election and intended not to contest the next general election in Glasgow. Galloway's Glasgow Kelvin seat was split between three neighbouring constituencies for the May 2005 general election. One of these, the redrawn Glasgow Central constituency, might have been his best chance to win, but had his long-time friend Mohammad Sarwar, the first Muslim Labour MP and a strong opponent of the Iraq War in place; Galloway did not wish to challenge him. After the European election results became known, Galloway announced that he would stand in Bethnal Green and Bow, the area where Respect had its strongest election results and where the sitting Labour MP, Oona King, supported the Iraq War. On 2 December, despite speculation that he might stand in Newham, he confirmed that he would be the candidate for Bethnal Green and Bow.

The ensuing electoral campaign in the seat proved to be a difficult one with heated rhetoric. The BBC reported that Galloway had himself been threatened with death by extreme Islamists from the banned organisation al-Ghurabaa. All the major candidates united in condemning the threats and violence.

On 5 May, Galloway won the seat by 823 votes and made a fiery acceptance speech, saying that Tony Blair had the blood of 100,000 people on his hands and denouncing the returning officer over alleged discrepancies in the electoral process. When challenged in a subsequent televised interview by Jeremy Paxman as to whether he was happy to have removed one of the few black women in Parliament, Galloway replied "I don't believe that people get elected because of the colour of their skin. I believe people get elected because of their record and because of their policies."

Oona King later told the Today programme that she found Paxman's line of question inappropriate. "He shouldn't be barred from running against me because I'm a black woman ... I was not defined, or did not wish to be defined, by either my ethnicity or religious background."

Constitutional Affairs minister David Lammy later criticised Galloway for the "manner in which he won that seat, whipping up racial tensions, dividing some of the poorest people in this country, I think was obscene." Lammy further called him a "carpetbagger."

"It's good to be back", Galloway said on being sworn in as MP for Bethnal Green after the May election. He pledged to represent "the people that New Labour has abandoned" and to "speak for those who have nobody else to speak for them."

Parliamentary participation statistics

After he was suspended and later expelled from the Labour Party, Galloway's participation in Parliamentary activity fell to minimal levels. After speaking in a debate on Iraq on 25 March 2003, Galloway did not intervene in any way in Parliamentary debates or ask any oral questions for the remainder of the Parliament and his participation in House of Commons Divisions was among the lowest of any MP.

Following the 2005 election, his participation rate remained low, at the end of the year he had participated in only 15% of Divisions in the House of Commons since the general election, placing him 634th of 645 MPs - of the eleven MPs below him in the rankings, one is the former Prime Minister Tony Blair, five are Sinn Féin members who have an abstentionist policy toward taking their seats, three are the speaker and deputy speakers and therefore ineligible to vote, and two have died since the election. Galloway claims a record of unusual activity at a "grass roots" level. His own estimate is that he has made 1,100 public speeches between September 2001 and May 2005.

In November 2005, Galloway's commitment to Parliamentary activity was again called into question when he failed to attend the Report Stage of the Prevention of Terrorism Bill in the House of Commons, despite Respect having urged its members to put pressure on MPs to attend. It was later confirmed that Galloway had been carrying out a speaking engagement in Cork, Ireland on the night (Galloway's spokesman asserted the performance was "uncancellable").

Although that stage of the bill failed by two votes, it initially appeared that the government won by a majority of only one, in which Galloway's attendance would have tied the vote. However, even in the case of a tie the vote would not have resulted in defeat for the government, because the vote was on an amendment (tightening the standard on what constitutes incitement to terrorism) and the amendment would not have passed. It would have taken three more "aye" votes to pass the amendment. All the same, Respect later put out a statement stating that it regretted the vote had been missed. The statement further claimed that Galloway had cleared his diary for all the subsequent votes on the bill. Galloway did attend a subsequent debate on the Bill, and voted against the final reading of the bill, which passed.

Questioned about this in a Guardian interview, Galloway responded: "I am in the Commons every day, apart from when I was banned. What I don't do is vote in the Commons and the reason for that is really quite banal. Almost every vote there is a yes or no vote, for either the prime minister's motion or the opposition leader's amendment. I almost never wish to vote for either, and there is no provision for abstention."

Galloway voted in support of the government's original draft of the religious hatred bill in 2006, which many people had feared would restrict artistic freedom and free speech.

As of September 2009, he still had one of the lowest voting participation records in parliament at 8.4% as a total of 93 votes out of a possible 1113 divisions.

Suspension from the House of Commons

On 17 July 2007, following a four-year inquiry, the House of Commons Select Committee on Standards and Privileges published its sixth report. The committee concluded that there was "no evidence" that Galloway gained any personal benefit from either the former Iraqi regime, or from the Oil-for-Food Programme. It did not examine the bank account of Galloway's former wife or their joint account.

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However, it found that Galloway's use of parliamentary resources to support his work on the Mariam Appeal "went beyond what was reasonable" and recommended he be suspended from the House.

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In response, Galloway stated

At a press conference following publication of the report, Galloway stated "To be deprived of the company for 18 days of the honourable ladies and gentleman behind me [in parliament] will be painful ... but I'm intending to struggle on regardless... What really upset them [the committee] is that I always defend myself... I am not a punchbag. If you aim low blows at me, I'll fight back".

The 2010 general election

On 10 August 2007, Galloway confirmed he would stand in newly created constituency of Poplar and Limehouse where the Labour Party has a notional majority of 3,942. The Labour candidate was the current Poplar and Canning Town MP Jim Fitzpatrick. Galloway said he had planned to stand down from Parliament at the next election, but was prompted to stay on and fight to win the neighbouring east London constituency after he felt he was unfairly suspended from Parliament for 18 days.

In the election Galloway was defeated, coming third after the Labour and Conservative candidates. He received 8,460 votes.

Political views

Galloway advocates greater spending on welfare benefits, and some nationalisation of large industries. Galloway is opposed to abortion, although he supports Respect's pro-choice stance. He opposes Scottish independence but supports the right of the people to vote on the matter via a referendum. He also supports the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. In the 2007 Scottish Parliament election, George Galloway supported Solidarity, despite not supporting all their policies, such as Scottish independence. Galloway has attracted most attention for his comments on foreign policy, taking a special interest in Libya, Pakistan, Iraq, and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. According to the report "Preventing terrorism, where next for Britain?" from the both private and public funded counter-extremism think tank Quilliam, Galloway is "Islamist backed". Inayat Bunglawala, chair of Muslims4Uk and a former MCB spokesperson, said: "This is just like something straight out of a Stasi manual. The advice from Quilliam is frankly appalling and incredibly self-serving."

Iraq and Saddam Hussein

Galloway opposed the 1991 Gulf War and was critical of the effect the subsequent sanctions had on the people of Iraq. He visited Iraq twice and met senior government officials. His involvement caused some critics to deride him as the "member for Baghdad North". In 1994, Galloway faced some of his strongest criticism on his return from a Middle-Eastern visit during which he had met Saddam Hussein "to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war". At the meeting, he reported the support given to Saddam by the people of the Gaza Strip and ended his speech with the phrase "Sir, I salute your courage, your strength, your indefatigability," although Galloway maintains that he was misinterpreted. Galloway's most recent public statement on the matter was in a January 2007 edition of the BBC's Hardtalk in which he states that he was saluting the "Iraqi people". Galloway's speech was translated for Hussein. Anasal-Tikriti, a friend of Galloways and a Respect candidate, spokesman for the Muslim Association of Britain said: "I understand Arabic and it [Galloway's salutation] was taken completely out of context. When he said "you" he meant the Iraqi people, he was saluting their indefatigability, their resolve against sanctions. Even the interpreter got it right and, in Arabic, says salutes the stand of the Iraqi people'."

In 1999, Galloway was criticised for spending Christmas in Iraq with Tariq Aziz, then Iraq's Deputy Prime Minister. In the 17 May 2005, hearing of the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Galloway stated that he had had many meetings with Aziz, and characterised their relationship as friendly. After the fall of Saddam, he continued to praise Aziz, calling him "an eminent diplomatic and intellectual person". In 2006 a video surfaced showing Galloway enthusiastically greeting Uday Hussein, Saddam's eldest son, with the title of "Excellency" at Uday's palace in 1999. "The two men also made unflattering comments about the United States and joked about losing weight, going bald and how difficult it is to give up smoking cigars," according to The Scotsman.

In a House of Commons debate on 6 March 2002, Foreign Office Minister Ben Bradshaw said of Galloway that he was "not just an apologist, but a mouthpiece, for the Iraqi regime over many years." Galloway called the Minister a liar and refused to withdraw: "[Bradshaw's] imputation that I am a mouthpiece for a dictator is a clear imputation of dishonour" he said, and the sitting was suspended due to the dispute. Bradshaw later withdrew his allegation, and Galloway apologised for using unparliamentary language. In August 2002, Galloway returned to Iraq and met Saddam Hussein for a second time. According to Galloway, the intention of the trip was to persuade Saddam to re-admit Hans Blix, and the United Nations weapons inspectors into the country. s petition, sitting on the edge of the StWC stage at the 2005 Make Poverty History rally.]]

Giving evidence in his libel case against the Daily Telegraph newspaper in 2004, Galloway testified that he regarded Saddam as a "bestial dictator" and would have welcomed his removal from power, but not by means of a military attack on Iraq. Galloway also pointed that he was a prominent critic of Saddam Hussein's regime in the 1980s, as well as of the role of Margaret Thatcher's government in supporting arms sales to Iraq during the Iran/Iraq war. Labour MP Tam Dalyell said during the controversy over whether Galloway should be expelled from the Labour Party that "in the mid-1980s there was only one MP that I can recollect making speeches about human rights in Iraq and this was George Galloway." When the issue of Galloway's meetings with Saddam Hussein is raised, including before the U.S. Senate, Galloway has argued that he had met Saddam "exactly the same number of times as U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is Donald Rumsfeld met him to sell him guns and to give him maps the better to target those guns." He continued "I met him to try to bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war".

During a 9 March 2005 interview at the University of Dhaka campus Galloway called for a global alliance between Muslims and progressives: "Not only do I think it’s possible but I think it is vitally necessary and I think it is happening already. It is possible because the progressive movement around the world and the Muslims have the same enemies. Their enemies are the Zionist occupation, American occupation, British occupation of poor countries mainly Muslim countries."

Israel and Palestine

At a 22 July 2006 demonstration (and later in a Socialist Worker op-ed), Galloway stated "Hezbollah has never been a terrorist organisation!" The National Union of Students of the United Kingdom passed a motion condemning Galloway for this statement.

In an interview with the American radio host Alex Jones, Galloway blamed Israel for creating "conditions in the Arab countries and in some European countries to stampede Jewish people ... into the Zionist state". Jones then alleged that the "Zionists" funded Hitler, to which Galloway replied that Zionists used the Jewish people "to create this little settler state on the Mediterranean," whose purpose was "to act as an advance guard for their own interests in the Arab world..."

In a series of speeches broadcast on Arab television, Galloway described Jerusalem and Baghdad as being "raped" by "foreigners," referring to Israel's illegal annexation of East Jerusalem, and the war in Iraq.

Galloway was introduced as “a former member of the British Houses of Parliament” during a live interview with Qatari Al-Jazeera television, to which he responded: “I am still a member of parliament and was re-elected five times. On the last occasion I was re-elected despite all the efforts made by the British government, the Zionist movement and the newspapers and news media which are controlled by Zionism.”

Galloway expressed support for the Syrian presence in Lebanon five months before it ended, telling the Daily Star of Lebanon "Syrian troops in Lebanon maintain stability and protect the country from Israel". In the same article he expressed his opposition to UN resolution 1559 which urged the Lebanese Government to establish control over all its territory.

Blair and Bush

At the national conference of the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers, on 30 June 2003, Galloway apologised for describing George W. Bush as a "wolf", saying that to do so defamed wolves:

On 20 November 2004, George Galloway gave an interview on Abu Dhabi TV in which he said:

On 20 June 2005, he appeared on Al Jazeera English to lambast these two leaders and others.

In an interview with Piers Morgan for GQ Magazine in May 2006, Galloway was asked whether a suicide bomb attack on Tony Blair with "no other casualties" would be morally justifiable "as revenge for the war on Iraq?". He answered "Yes it would be morally justified. I am not calling for it, but if it happened it would be of a wholly different moral order to the events of 7/7. It would be entirely logical and explicable, and morally equivalent to ordering the deaths of thousands of innocent people in Iraq as Blair did." He further stated that if he knew about such a plan that he would inform the relevant authorities, saying: "I would [tell the police], because such an operation would be counterproductive because it would just generate a new wave of anti-Muslim, anti-Arab sentiment whipped up by the press. It would lead to new draconian anti-terror laws, and would probably strengthen the resolve of the British and American services in Iraq rather than weaken it. So yes, I would inform the authorities." Some news analysts, notably Christopher Hitchens, took this to be a call for an attack while appearing not to.

The July 2005 London bombings

In the House of Commons, on the day of the 7 July 2005 London bombings that killed 52 people and injured hundreds, and following a visit to the Royal London Hospital in his constituency where many of the victims had been taken, Galloway condemned the attacks strongly, but argued that they could not be separated from the hatred and bitterness felt among Muslims because of injustices in Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan, including injustices, he said, suffered as a result of British foreign policy: }}

Winding up the debate for the government in the last moments allotted, Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram described Galloway's remarks as "disgraceful" and accused Galloway of "dipping his poisonous tongue in a pool of blood." No time remained for Galloway to intervene and he ran afoul of the Deputy Speaker when trying to make a point of order about Ingram's attack. He later went on to describe Ingram as a "thug" who had committed a "foul-mouthed, deliberately timed, last-10-seconds smear." The men had previously clashed over claims in Galloway's autobiography (see below).

Pakistan coup of 1999

At the time of the 1999 Musharraf coup in Pakistan, he wrote, "In poor third world countries like Pakistan, politics is too important to be left to petty squabbling politicians. Pakistan is always on the brink of breaking apart into its widely disparate components. Only the armed forces can really be counted on to hold such a country together... Democracy is a means, not an end in itself and it has a bad name on the streets of Karachi and Lahore." Nonetheless, on his TalkSport talk radio show, Galloway has been outspoken in criticising the former Pakistani leader Pervez Musharraf.

Record on LGBT issues

In 1994, Galloway voted in support of the equalisation of the age of consent for homosexuality (which was then 21 years) with that for heterosexuality at 16 years. He also voted against a reduction of the homosexual age of consent to 18. He voted in favour of permitting unmarried and gay couples to adopt children. Critics have claimed that his involvement in the leadership of Respect - which made no explicit mention of gay rights in its 2005 election manifesto and accepted donations from Islamic Party members - raise questions about commitment to those issues, as does his rather poor voting record in parliamentary divisions, 80% of which he missed, during the 2001-5 parliament while still a Glasgow MP. However, Respect's 2005 conference, in which Galloway took part, resolved that explicit defence of equal rights and calls for the end to all discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people would be made in all of its manifestos and principal election materials.

Galloway's assertion on The Wright Stuff chat show (13 March 2008) that the executed boyfriend of homosexual Iranian asylum seeker Mehdi Kazemi was executed for sex crimes rather than for being homosexual received criticism from Peter Tatchell, among others. Galloway also stated on The Wright Stuff that the case of gay rights in Iran was being used by supporters of war with Iran.

2009 Iranian elections

Galloway has encouraged Western governments to accept the election of the conservative President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, contradicting the position of the exiled Iranian left.

Humanitarian work

Mariam Appeal

In 1998 Galloway founded the Mariam Appeal, intended "to campaign against sanctions on Iraq which are having disastrous effects on the ordinary people of Iraq". The campaign was named after Mariam Hamza, a child flown by the fund from Iraq to Britain to receive treatment for leukaemia. The intention was to raise awareness of the suffering and death of hundreds of thousands of other Iraqi children due to poor health conditions and lack of suitable medicines and facilities, and to campaign for the lifting of the Iraq sanctions that many maintained were responsible for that situation.

The fund received scrutiny during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, after a complaint that Galloway used some of the donation money to pay his travel expenses. Galloway said that the expenses were incurred in his capacity as the Appeal's chairman. Although the Mariam Appeal was never a registered charity and never intended to be such, it was investigated by the Charity Commission. The report of this year-long inquiry, published in June 2004, found that the Mariam Appeal was doing charitable work (and so ought to have registered with them), but did not substantiate allegations that any funds had been misused.

A further Charity Commission Report published on 7 June 2007 found that the Appeal had received funds from Fawaz Zureikat that originated from the Oil For Food programme, and concluded that: "Although Mr Galloway, Mr Halford and Mr Al-Mukhtar have confirmed that they were unaware of the source of Mr Zureikat’s donations, the Commission has concluded that the charity trustees should have made further enquiries when accepting such large single and cumulative donations to satisfy themselves as to their origin and legitimacy. The Commission’s conclusion is that the charity trustees did not properly discharge their duty of care as trustees to the Appeal in respect of these donations." They added: "The Commission is also concerned, having considered the totality of the evidence before it, that Mr Galloway may also have known of the connection between the Appeal and the Programme". Galloway responded: "I've always disputed the Commission's retrospective view that a campaign to win a change in national and international policy—a political campaign—was, in fact, a charity."

Viva Palestina aid convoy

In response to the 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict, in January 2009 Galloway instigated the Viva Palestina aid convoy to the Gaza Strip. On 14 February 2009, after raising over £1 million-worth of humanitarian aid in four weeks, Galloway and hundreds of volunteers launched the convoy comprising approximately 120 vehicles intended for use in the Strip, including a fire engine donated by the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), 12 ambulances, a boat and trucks full of medicines, tools, clothes, blankets and gifts for children. The 5,000-mile route passed through Belgium, France, Spain, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.

On 20 February, Galloway condemned Lancashire Police after they arrested nine of the volunteers under the Terrorism Act a day before the convoy's launch. Galloway said: "The arrests were clearly deliberately timed for the eve of the departure of the convoy. Photographs of the high-profile snatch on the M65 were immediately fed to the press to maximise the newsworthiness of the smear that was being perpetrated on the convoy." Viva Palestina reported an 80% drop in donations following the broadcast of the arrests and the police allegations on the BBC.

The convoy arrived in Gaza on 9 March, accompanied by approximately 180 extra trucks of aid donated by Libya's Gaddafi Foundation. All the British aid was delivered with the exception of the fire engine and boat which were blocked by the Egyptian government. The boat is to be delivered later in a flotilla of craft which Viva Palestina! intends to take into Gaza harbour. On 10 March 2009, Galloway announced at a press conference in Gaza City attended by several senior Hamas officials: "We are giving you now 100 vehicles and all of their contents, and we make no apology for what I am about to say. We are giving them to the elected government of Palestine," adding he would personally donate three cars and 25,000 pounds to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya.

The Charity Commission opened a statutory inquiry into Viva Palestinia! on 23 March 2009, citing concerns over the finances, use of funds for non-charitable purposes, and the lack of "substantive response" to their repeated requests. George Galloway admitted that the appeal had not responded to the requests, but argued that a substantive response was anyway due to be passed to the Charity Commission only hours after they launched the inquiry. He argued that the Charity Commission's actions were suspicious, hinting that they might be politically motivated.

A third Viva Palestina convoy began at the end of 2009. On 8 January 2010, Galloway and his colleague Ron McKay were deported from Egypt immediately upon entry from Gaza. They had been attempting to help take about 200 aid trucks into the Gaza Strip. They were driven by the police to the airport and put on a plane to London. The previous day an Egyptian soldier had been killed during a clash at the border with Hamas loyalists. Several Palestinians were also injured.

Corruption allegations and other controversies

Oil for Food

Daily Telegraph libel case

On 22 April 2003, the Daily Telegraph published an article describing documents found by its reporter David Blair in the ruins of the Iraqi Foreign Ministry. The documents purport to be records of meetings between Galloway and Iraqi intelligence agents, and state that he had received £375,000 per year from the proceeds of the Oil for Food programme. Galloway completely denied the story, and pointed to the nature of the discovery within an unguarded, bombed-out building as being questionable. He instigated legal action against the newspaper, which was heard in the High Court from 14 November 2004.

On 2 December, Justice David Eady ruled that the story had been "seriously defamatory", and that the Telegraph was "obliged to compensate Mr Galloway ... and to make an award for the purposes of restoring his reputation". Galloway was awarded £150,000 damages plus costs estimated to total £1.2 million. The court did not grant leave to appeal; in order to appeal in the absence of leave, the defendants would have to petition the House of Lords.

The libel case was regarded by both sides as an important test of the Reynolds qualified-privilege defence. The Daily Telegraph did not attempt to claim justification (a defence in which the defendant bears the onus of proving that the defamatory reports are true): "It has never been the Telegraph's case to suggest that the allegations contained in these documents are true". Instead, the paper sought to argue that it acted responsibly because the allegations it reported were of sufficient public interest to outweigh the damage caused to Galloway's reputation. However, the court ruled that, "It was the defendants' primary case that their coverage was no more than 'neutral reportage' ... but the nature, content and tone of their coverage cannot be so described."

The issue of whether the documents were genuine was likewise not at issue at the trial. However, it later transpired that the expert hired by Galloway's lawyers, a forensic expert named Oliver Thorne, said "In my opinion the evidence found fully supports that the vast majority of the submitted documents are authentic." He added "It should be noted that I am unable to comment on the veracity of the information within the disputed Telegraph documents, whether or not they are authentic."

The Telegraph lost their appeal on 25 January 2006, the same day as Galloway's Big Brother eviction, and on 15 February 2006, the newspaper announced it would not be seeking leave to appeal.

Others

The Christian Science Monitor also published a story on 25 April 2003, stating that they had documentary evidence that he had received "more than ten million dollars" from the Iraqi regime. However, on 20 June 2003, the Monitor reported that their own investigation had concluded the documents were sophisticated forgeries, and apologised. Galloway rejected the newspaper's apology, asserted that the affair was a conspiracy against him, and continued a libel claim against the paper.

The Christian Science Monitor settled the claim, paying him an undisclosed sum in damages, on 19 March 2004. It emerged that these documents had first been offered to the Daily Telegraph, but they had rejected them. The documents' origin remains obscure.

In January 2004, a further set of allegations were made in al-Mada, a newspaper in Iraq. The newspaper claimed to have found documents in the Iraqi national oil corporation showing that Galloway received (through an intermediary) some of the profits arising from the sale of 19.5 million barrels (3,100,000 m³) of oil. Galloway acknowledged that money had been paid into the Mariam Appeal by Iraqi businessmen who had profited from the UN-run programme, but denied benefiting personally, and maintained that, in any case, there was nothing illicit about this:

The report of the Iraq Survey Group published in October 2004 claimed that Galloway was one of the recipients of a fund used by Iraq to buy influence among foreign politicians. Galloway denied receiving any money from Saddam Hussein's regime. The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards had begun an investigation into George Galloway but suspended it when Galloway launched legal action. On 14 December, it was announced that this investigation would resume.

U.S. Senate

Allegations

In May 2005, a U.S. Senate committee report accused Galloway along with former French minister Charles Pasqua of receiving the right to buy oil under the UN's oil-for-food scheme. The report was issued by the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, chaired by Senator Norm Coleman, a Republican from Minnesota. The report cited further documents from the Iraqi oil ministry and interviews with Iraqi officials.

Coleman's committee said Pasqua had received allocations worth from 1999 to 2000, and Galloway received allocations worth from 2000 to 2003. The allegations against Pasqua and Galloway, both outspoken opponents of U.N. sanctions against Iraq in the 1990s, have been made before, including in an October report by U.S. arms inspector Charles Duelfer as well as in the various purported documents described earlier in this section. But Coleman's report provided several new details. It also included information from interrogations of former high-ranking officials in U.S. custody, including former Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz and former Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan. Among the claims is that there is new evidence to suggest that the Mariam Appeal, a children's leukaemia charity founded by Galloway, was in fact used to conceal oil payments. The report cites Ramadan as saying under interrogation that Galloway was allocated oil "because of his opinions about Iraq."

Socialist Worker reported what they say is evidence that the key Iraqi oil ministry documents regarding oil allocations, in which Galloway's name appears six times (contracts M/08/35, M/09/23, M/10/38, M/11/04, M/12/14, M/13/48) have been tampered with. They published a copy of contract M/09/23 and allege that George Galloway's name appears to have been added in a different font and at a different angle to the rest of the text on that line. In these documents (relating to oil allocations 8-13), Galloway is among just a few people whose nationality is never identified, whilst Zureikat is the only one whose nationality is identified in one instance but not in others. Galloway combatively countered the charges by accusing Coleman and other pro-war politicians of covering up the "theft of billions of dollars of Iraq's wealth... on your watch" that had occurred under a post-invasion Coalition Provisional Authority, committed by "Halliburton and other American corporations... with the connivance of your own government."

Galloway's response

On 17 May 2005, the committee held a hearing concerning specific allegations (of which Galloway was one part) relating to improprieties surrounding the Oil-for-Food programme. Attending Galloway's oral testimony and enquiring of him were two of the thirteen committee members: the chair (Coleman) and the ranking Democrat (Carl Levin).

Upon Galloway's arrival in the US, he told Reuters, "I have no expectation of justice from a group of Christian fundamentalist and Zionist activists under the chairmanship of a neo-con George Bush". Galloway described Coleman as a "pro-war, neo-con hawk and the lickspittle of George W. Bush", who, he said, sought revenge against anyone who did not support the invasion of Iraq.

In his testimony, Galloway made the following statements in response to the allegations against him:

He questioned the reliability of evidence given by former Iraqi Vice President Taha Yassin Ramadan, stating that the circumstances of his captivity by American forces call into question the authenticity of the remarks. Galloway also pointed out an error in the report, where documents by The Daily Telegraph were said to have covered an earlier period from those held by the Senate. In fact the report's documents referred to the same period as those used by The Daily Telegraph, though Galloway pointed out that the presumed forgeries pertaining to the Christian Science Monitor report did refer to an earlier period.

Galloway also denounced the invasion of Iraq as having been based on "a pack of lies" in his Senate testimony. The U.S. media, in reporting his appearance, emphasised his blunt remarks on the war. The British media gave generally more positive coverage; TV presenter Anne Robinson said Galloway "quite frankly put the pride back in British politics" when introducing him for a prime time talk show.

Alleged false or misleading testimony

A report by the then-majority Republican Party staff of the United States Senate Committee on Investigations published in October 2005 asserted that Galloway had given false "or misleading" testimony under oath when appearing before them. The report exhibits bank statements it claims show that £85,000 of proceeds from the Oil-for-Food Programme had been paid to Galloway's then-wife Amineh Abu-Zayyad. Galloway reiterated his denial of the charges and challenged the U.S. Senate committee to charge him with perjury. He claimed Coleman's motive was revenge over the embarrassment of his appearance before the committee in May.

Controversies at university debating societies

On 2 November 2006, The Times reported that Galloway was in a fracas at the Oxford Union. He was there to discuss his book. () In his speech to the Union, Galloway claimed "that democracy in Cuba is more “free” than in the UK", and when questioned on this, he mentioned "that Oxford students are too privileged to understand what he was talking about". Three former state school students who met him afterwards and disputed this description, allege that Galloway said: "I don’t represent anyone’s views. I represent me. I don’t give a fuck what anyone else thinks."

Sectarian attack at airport

On 10 June 2007, Galloway claimed that he was the victim of a sectarian attack at Glasgow Airport. He believes that his attackers were on the way home from attending an Orange Order parade in London and that they attacked him because he is a Celtic fan. However, no arrest was made in connection with this.

Support for the Soviet Union

Galloway once stated "I am on the anti-imperialist left... If you are asking did I support the Soviet Union, yes I did. Yes, I did support the Soviet Union, and I think the disappearance of the Soviet Union is the biggest catastrophe of my life. If there was a Soviet Union today, we would not be having this conversation about plunging into a new war in the Middle East, and the US would not be rampaging around the globe."

Forbidden to enter Canada

On 20 March 2009, Galloway was advised by the Canada Border Services Agency he was deemed inadmissible to Canada on "security grounds" due to his involvement in the Viva Palestina aid convoy to the Gaza Strip following the 2008–2009 Israel–Gaza conflict. The Gaza Strip is governed by Hamas, which is on Canada's list of terrorist organisations. This resulted from a personal donation of £25,000 made by Galloway ten days earlier. The Canadians ruled (and maintained on appeal) that this constituted explicit support for Hamas, although Galloway argued it was not the case as the money was intended to be used for aid purposes.

Galloway was on a lecture tour of North America, and was due to speak on war prevention and Gaza for a United Church congregation in Toronto, as well as for events in Mississauga, Ottawa and Montreal. Galloway was also described as an "infandous street-corner Cromwell" by Alykhan Velshi, a former lobbyist for the American Enterprise Institute who was then working as communications director for Jason Kenney, Canada's Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism. Galloway described the ban as "idiotic" and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney was accused by Jack Layton, leader of Canada's New Democratic Party (NDP), of being a "minister of censorship." Toronto Coalition to Stop the War, the group who invited Galloway to Canada, sought an emergency injunction to allow for his entry into Canada for the first speech in Toronto citing their rights to freedom of association and freedom of expression. Justice Luc Martineau cited non-citizens "do not have an unqualified right to enter in Canada. The admission of a foreign national to this country is a privilege determined by statute, regulation or otherwise, and not as a matter of right." The judge also noted "a proper factual record and the benefit of full legal argument...are lacking at the present time."

Galloway was allowed entry into Canada in October 2010, after a judge concluded that the original ban had been undertaken for political reasons. He continued to criticize Jason Kenney, saying that the minister had "damaged Canada's reputation" and had used "anti-terrorism" as a means of suppressing political debate. Galloway has also threatened to sue the Canadian government for the banning incident.

Forbidden to enter Egypt

On 8 January 2010, Galloway and his colleague Ron McKay were deported from Egypt immediately upon entry from Gaza. He had been attempting to help take 200 aid trucks into the blockaded Gaza Strip. They were driven by the police to the airport and put on a plane to London. The previous day an Egyptian soldier had been killed during clashes at the border with Hamas loyalists. Several Palestinians were also injured.

Publishing / media activities

Autobiography

His autobiography, I'm Not The Only One, was published on 28 April 2004. The book's title is a quotation from the song "Imagine" by John Lennon. Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram applied for an interim interdict to prevent the book's publication. Ingram asserted that Galloway's text, which stated that Ingram "played the flute in a sectarian, anti-Catholic, Protestant-supremacist Orange Order band", was in bad faith and defamatory, although Ingram's lawyers conceded that for a year as a teenager he had been a member of a junior Orange Lodge in Barlanark, Glasgow, and had attended three parades. The Judge, Lord Kingarth, decided to refuse an interim interdict, that the balance of the arguments favoured Galloway's publisher, and that the phrase "sectarian, anti-Catholic, Protestant-supremacist" was fair comment on that organisation. Although Ingram was not and never had been a flute-player, the defending advocate observed that "playing the flute carries no obvious defamatory imputation ... it is not to the discredit of anyone that he plays the flute." The judge ruled that Ingram should pay the full court costs of the hearing.

Fidel Castro Handbook

Galloway also published the Fidel Castro Handbook, a biography of the former Cuban President in 2006 (MQ Publications. ISBN 1-84072-688-1).

Friction Books

In 2005 Galloway established Friction Books, an imprint for fiction and non-fiction, with longstanding associate Ron McKay. Friction claimed its purpose was to publish "books that burn, books that cause controversy and get people talking". it has released at least two books: Paco Ignacio Taibo II novel An Easy Thing and Topple the Mighty by Leon Kuhn and Colin Gile.

Celebrity Big Brother

In January 2006 Galloway appeared on the fourth series of the reality show for three weeks.

Big Brother's Big Mouth

Galloway acted as the guest presenter for the E4 companion programme to the 2007 edition of Big Brother, Big Brother's Big Mouth, from 5 June to 8 June 2007.

talkSPORT

Show name	The Mother of All Talk Shows
Italic title	no
Format	Political discussion
Runtime	Friday 22:00-01:00Saturday 22:00-01:00
Country	UK
Language	English
Home station	talkSPORT
Syndicates	Talk 107
Presenter	George Galloway
Rec location	Central London
Opentheme	The theme from Top Cat

On 11 March 2006, Galloway started broadcasting on Britain's biggest commercial radio station, the UTV-owned talkSPORT, and two weeks later started a simultaneous broadcast on Talk 107, TalkSPORT's Edinburgh-based sister station.

Billed as "The Mother Of All Talk Shows", Galloway began every broadcast by playing the theme from the Top Cat cartoon series. UTV said that Galloway was pulling in record call numbers and the highest ever ratings for its weekend slots, even pulling in more than the station's Football First programme.

On 3 January 2009, after Galloway was manhandled by riot police in London at the demonstration in protest over the Israeli offensive in the Gaza strip, the director of programming replaced Galloway with Ian Collins, saying that this would allow for more balanced reporting of the situation.

Galloway halted presenting the show on March 27, 2010, due to campaign commitments in the 2010 UK General Election. During this time, he was replaced by Mike Graham.

In August 2010, Galloway returned to the radio station with a new show bearing a similar format to his original, but this time titled The Week with George Galloway, described by the station as a "No-holds barred review of the past seven days around the world". The show is broadcast during the 10pm-1am slot on Friday nights .

The Real Deal

On 21 May 2007, Galloway began presenting a programme titled The Real Deal on Raj TV, a satellite channel, broadcasting on Sky 171, primarily aimed at the British Asian community. Following a break, the show was resurrected on 10 February 2008 on Press TV, a Tehran-based news channel controlled by the government of Iran.

Comment

Galloway also hosts a 45-minute weekly current affairs show that invites the viewers to engage in lively debate on international political issues. The show is also filmed and broadcast from the London-bureau of Iranian state-controlled news channel Press TV. In 2009, the british telecommunications regulator Ofcom criticised Galloway "for breaking impartiality rules" regarding his coverage of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict and accused him of promoting "Iranian propaganda".

Mazher Mahmood

In March 2006 Galloway claimed in a statement that Mazher Mahmood, an undercover reporter for the News of the World who uses a disguise as a sheikh to frame celebrities, targeted him in an alleged sting operation. Galloway claims that Mahmood and an accomplice tried but failed to implicate him in illegal party funding, and to agree with anti-Semitic statements. Galloway wrote to the Metropolitan police commissioner and the Speaker of the House of Commons about the incident. He also released photographs of Mahmood and revealed other aspects of his activities. The News of the World lost a High Court action to prevent publication of photographs of Mahmood.

Asian Voice

Galloway has been involved in several publishing companies. He owned Asian Voice, which published a newspaper called East from 1996. It later transpired that the Pakistan Government was funding Galloway's company Asian Voice with several hundred-thousand-pounds. "Documents show that the Pakistan government agreed an initial budget for the weekly newspaper of £547,000. According to a memorandum dated 2 January 1996, the Pakistan government proposed to "covertly sponsor" the publication, with money allocated to "the Secret Fund of the High Commissioner for Pakistan in the UK as a special grant for the project". The Commons Committee cleared Galloway of any wrongdoing in this matter.

Daily Record column

As of 25 June 2007, Galloway has contributed a weekly column in the Daily Record giving his views on politics and popular culture. He used this column to reveal he is considering running for a seat in the Scottish Parliament in the May 2011 election.

The Guardian

Galloway is also a regular contributor to The Guardian, writing for both the newspaper and Comment Is Free, its sister political opinion forum at guardian.co.uk.

TV and film appearances

INN World Report (US) (2009) (TV)

Question Time (numerous appearances) - Panellist answering questions

As a policeman, in Ugly Rumours "War", 25 February 2007

Our Story Our Voice (2007)

The Friday Night Project (2007)

Offside (BBC Scotland football talk show) (2006-12-04)

30 Greatest Political Comedies (2006) (TV)

The Wright Stuff - Panellist

The Late Late Show (1 programmes, 2006)

Richard & Judy (2 programmes, 2006)

Tubridy Tonight (2006)

Celebrity Big Brother (23 episodes, 2006)

Have I Got News For You - Panellist (2003)

As an orator

According to the Boston Globe, Galloway is "known, even in the highly articulate world of British politics, for his memorable turns of phrase", whereas The Times finds that he has "the gift of the Glasgow gab, a love of the stage and an inexhaustible fund of self-belief." The Guardian finds him "renowned for his colourful rhetoric and combative debating style" and the Spectator once awarded him Debater of the Year.).

See also

Oil-for-Food Program Hearings

References

External links

Video

George Galloway interviews David Strahan author of “The Last Oil Shock – A Survival Gide to the Imminent Extinction of Petroleum Man”

Galloway speaks at Manchester Town Hall, UK, 29 February 2004 about launch of Respect. Video, Chris Edwards

Galloway speaks in Manchester, UK, 22 November 2003 on future of anti-war movement. Video, Chris Edwards

Galloway speaks in Manchester, UK, 8 November 2003 about next steps for the anti-war movement. Video, Chris Edwards

George Galloway speaks in Manchester, UK, 9 May 2003 about media witch hunt. Video, Chris Edwards

The Fruitceller - Huge Video archive for the Anti-War Movement

Galloway talking about war with Iran

Galloway speaks at Manchester University, UK, 26 November 2006 about British politics after Blair. Video, Chris Edwards

Galloway speaks in Manchester, UK, 21 February 2006 about local elections. Video, Chris Edwards

Galloways speaks in Manchester, UK, 6 October 2004 about European Social Forum. Video, Chris Edwards

INN World Report Interviews Galloway US, 16 February 2009

Documentary featuring George Galloway about the 2010 election in Poplar and Limehouse by Catch21

General

GeorgeGalloway.com Official website.

RESPECT RENEWAL Official party website

RESPECT - The Unity Coalition The previous Official party website.

Official George Galloway MySpace page

CouchTripper Unofficial forum, high quality downloads & large archive of Galloway on radio and TV, where other sites come to stock up.

George Galloway's talkSPORT page

Galloway downloads on SpideredNews.com. George Galloway media downloads (including talkSPORT shows).

Guardian Unlimited Politics - Ask Aristotle: George Galloway MP

TheyWorkForYou.com - George Galloway MP

The Public Whip - George Galloway MP voting record

George Galloway interviewed by eyebrow magazine September 2007

mp3s of Galloway speaking at London International Peace Conference, 10 December 2005

Galloway's participation at the International Peace Conference December 2005

IMDB Profile

Christopher Hitchens' attack leaflet of selected Galloway statements, including quotes admiring unelected dictators.

George Galloway Is Gruesome, Not Gorgeous by Christopher Hitchens, Slate.com, 13 September 2005.

: (Prequel to Galloway vs Hitchens debate held at CUNY)

Articles and news reports

George Galloway's interview with The Third Estate

Galloway, George Respect at the Crossroads

Channel 4 News - ''Galloway:"I'm no punchbag" - July 2007

FactCheck - ''"That's a fact." With all due respect, George... - April 2005

Al-Jiran. Iraqi author Fadhil Rashad: George Galloway, You Will Be Tried Just Like Your Friend and Benefactor Saddam Hussein. 30 November 2005.

The Independent George Galloway vs. Christopher Hitchens, 16 September 2005.

Zirin, Dave. Mr. Galloway Goes to Washington. Znet 13 September 2005

Sunday Herald George Galloway - personal interview 7 August 2005.

BBC. George Galloway interview on "What's the problem?". 10 June 2005.

McKay, Ron. Galloway Beats New Labour and the Ghost Voters. Sunday Herald. 8 May 2005.

Greenslade, Roy. No need for balance. The Guardian. 13 May 2005.

BBC. Galloway Wins Saddam Libel Case. 2 December 2004.

Abu Dhabi TV. ">British MP Galloway: US and British Governments Will Burn in "Hell-Fires". 20 November 2004.

The Scotsman. Galloway Iraq appeal cleared of impropriety over funds. 29 June 2004.

The Guardian. Special Report: George Galloway Expulsion from the Labour Party. 25 April 2004.

Al Jazeera. So what do I believe in? transcript of speech. 30 October 2003.

Watson, Richard. Why the MP went begging to Pakistan. The Daily Telegraph, 26 April 2003.

The Scotsman. Indefatigably yours. Personal interview, 19 May 2003.

New Worker. End the blockade on Iraq 1998 interview

Alliance for Workers Liberty. ">Would You Vote For This Man?: "Respect" and George Galloway. Solidarity 3/70. 31 March 2005.

Tatchell, Peter. Galloway's Iranian propaganda? The Guardian, 26 March 2008.

US Congressional testimony & related

mp3s of Galloway's speeches made during his tour of US, 13-24 December 2005

Unspinning the US’s web of lies against Galloway, Socialist Worker, 5 November 2005

mp3 of George Galloway vs. Christopher Hitchens, 14 September 2005

Galloway lied over Iraqi oil payments, says Congress report, Rupert Cornwell, The Independent, 25 October 2005

Christopher Hitchens' documentation of the Oil for Food issue, September 2005

Unmitigated Galloway, Christopher Hitchens, Weekly Standard, 30 May 2005

"Galloway and the mother of all invective", The Guardian newspaper, 18 May 2005

Link to full video recording of hearing in this BBC News report:Galloway takes on US oil accusers, BBC, 17 May 2005

UK's Galloway blisters US policy on Iraq on MSNBC Crooks & Liars: audio and video

Two Fox News reports: one short and sceptical; the other is a longer recording of Galloway's testimony, Fox News, 18 May 2005

Transcript of Galloway's comments, CNN

Full Text of Galloway's statements, Times online

Galloway's statements including senators questions

US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, 12 May 2005, "Report on oil allocations granted to Charles Pasqua & George Galloway"

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Category:Anti-Iraq War activists Category:Anti-poverty advocates Category:Anti-Zionism Category:Big Brother UK contestants Category:British anti-war activists Category:British radio personalities Category:British republicans Category:Labour Party (UK) politicians Category:Labour Party (UK) MPs Category:Members of the United Kingdom Parliament for English constituencies Category:Members of the United Kingdom Parliament for Scottish constituencies Category:People from Dundee Category:People from Glasgow Category:Personae non gratae Category:Respect Party politicians Category:Scottish Christian socialists Category:Scottish columnists Category:Scottish political writers Category:Scottish people of Irish descent Category:UK MPs 1987–1992 Category:UK MPs 1992–1997 Category:UK MPs 1997–2001 Category:UK MPs 2001–2005 Category:UK MPs 2005–2010 Category:United Nations Oil-for-Food scandal Category:1954 births Category:Living people Category:Deported people

Name	Arundhati Roy
Caption	Arundhati Roy speaking at Harvard University in April 2010.
Birthdate	November 24, 1961
Birthplace	Shillong, Meghalaya, India
Nationality	Indian
Religion	Atheist
Occupation	Novelist, essayist, activist
Period	1997–Present
Notableworks	The God of Small Things
Awards

Arundhati Roy (born 24 November 1961) is an Indian novelist. She won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her novel, The God of Small Things, and has also written two screenplays and several collections of essays. Her writings on various social, environmental and political issues have been a subject of major controversy in India.

Early life and background

Arundhati Roy was born in Shillong, Meghalaya, India, to a Keralite Syrian Christian mother, the women's rights activist Mary Roy, and a Bengali father, Ranjit Roy, a tea planter by profession.

She spent her childhood in Aymanam in Kerala, and went to school at Corpus Christi, Kottayam, followed by the Lawrence School, Lovedale, in Nilgiris, Tamil Nadu. She then studied architecture at the School of Planning and Architecture, New Delhi, where she met her first husband, architect Gerard da Cunha.

Roy met her second husband, filmmaker Pradip Krishen, in 1984, and played a village girl in his award-winning movie Massey Sahib. Until made financially stable by the success of her novel The God of Small Things, she worked various jobs, including running aerobics classes at five-star hotels in New Delhi. Roy is a cousin of prominent media personality Prannoy Roy, the head of the leading Indian TV media group NDTV,. She lives in New Delhi.

Career

Literary career

Early career: screenplays

Early in her career, Roy worked for television and movies. She wrote the screenplays for In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones (1989), a movie based on her experiences as a student of architecture, directed by her current husband, and Electric Moon (1992); she also appeared as a performer in the first. Roy attracted attention in 1994, when she criticised Shekhar Kapur's film Bandit Queen, based on the life of Phoolan Devi. In her film review titled, 'The Great Indian Rape Trick', she questioned the right to "restage the rape of a living woman without her permission," and charged Kapur with exploiting Devi and misrepresenting both her life and its meaning.

The God of Small Things

Roy began writing her first novel, The God of Small Things, in 1992, completing it in 1996. The book is semi-autobiographical and a major part captures her childhood experiences in Aymanam. It reached fourth position on the New York Times Bestsellers list for Independent Fiction. From the beginning, the book was also a commercial success: Roy received half a million pounds as an advance; "extraordinary," "at once so morally strenuous and so imaginatively supple") and the Los Angeles Times ("a novel of poignancy and considerable sweep"), and in Canadian publications such as the Toronto Star ("a lush, magical novel"). By the end of the year, it had become one of the five best books of 1997 by TIME. Critical response in the United Kingdom was less positive, and that the novel was awarded the Booker Prize caused controversy; Carmen Callil, a 1996 Booker Prize judge, called the novel "execrable," and The Guardian called the contest "profoundly depressing." In India, the book was criticized especially for its unrestrained description of sexuality by E. K. Nayanar, then Chief Minister of Roy's homestate Kerala, where she had to answer charges of obscenity.

Later career

Since the success of her novel, Roy has been working as a screenplay writer again, writing a television serial, The Banyan Tree, and the documentary DAM/AGE: A Film with Arundhati Roy (2002).

In early 2007, Roy announced that she would begin work on a second novel.

Arundhati Roy was one of the contributors on the book We Are One: A Celebration of Tribal Peoples, released in October 2009. The book explores the culture of peoples around the world, portraying their diversity and the threats to their existence. The royalties from the sale of this book go to the indigenous rights organization Survival International.

Advocacy and controversy

Since The God of Small Things Roy has devoted herself mainly to nonfiction and politics, publishing two more collections of essays, as well as working for social causes. She is a spokesperson of the anti-globalization/alter-globalization movement and a vehement critic of neo-imperialism and of the global policies of the United States. She also criticizes India's nuclear weapons policies and the approach to industrialization and rapid development as currently being practiced in India, including the Narmada Dam project and the power company Enron's activities in India.

Support for Kashmiri separatism

In an interview with Times of India published in August 2008, Arundhati Roy expressed her support for the independence of Kashmir from India after massive demonstrations in favor of independence took place—some 500,000 separatists rallied in Srinagar in the Kashmir part of Jammu and Kashmir state of India for independence on 18 August 2008, following the Amarnath land transfer controversy. According to her, the rallies were a sign that Kashmiris desire secession from India, and not union with India. She was criticized by Indian National Congress (INC) and Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for her remarks.

In October 2010, at a seminar in Delhi named "Azadi – The only way" ("azadi" meaning "freedom"

Her remarks attracted criticism from the BJP leader Arun Jaitley that she was promoting secession of the Union of India, and that the central government was not acting on the issue and prosecuting Roy and others. Although it was widely speculated that she could potentially face sedition charges from the center for her remarks in Delhi, Indian Home Minister P Chidambaram said no action would be taken "unless there is direct incitement to violence".

A few days after the October, 2010, seminar, Roy traveled to Srinigar and Shopian and then reported on her visits, noting at the outset, though, U.S. President Obama's then-fresh visit to India. Roy contrasted the president's having said, a "week before he was elected in 2008 ... [that] Kashmir’s struggle for self-determination — which has led to three wars between India and Pakistan since 1947 — would be among his 'critical tasks' ..., remarks [which] were greeted with consternation in India," with his having "said almost nothing about Kashmir since then." She further noted that during his India visit, Obama "pleased his hosts immensely by saying the United States would not intervene in Kashmir," among other things. As to her own trip to Kashmir, Roy wrote that with what she saw and heard even before reaching Shopian, where she heard more of the 2009 rape and murder case, "I could not bring myself to regret what I had said in Delhi" despite the "bit of trouble" those remarks had caused. When Roy returned home from Kashmir, she reported, "in what is becoming a common political strategy, officials outsourced their displeasure to the mob; ... the women’s wing of the [BJP] staged a demonstration outside my house, calling for my arrest. Television vans arrived in advance to broadcast the event live. The murderous Bajrang Dal ... have announced that they are going to 'fix' me with all the means at their disposal, including by filing criminal charges against me in different courts across the country." Ending on a broader note, Roy wrote "Indian nationalists and the government seem to believe that they can fortify their idea of a resurgent India with a combination of bullying and Boeing airplanes. But they don’t understand the subversive strength of warm, boiled eggs." The C-17 Globemaster III aircraft were on the Obama agenda in Delhi; the eggs were a gift to Roy from the father of one of the Shopian victims in appreciation for Roy's efforts.

Sardar Sarovar Project

Roy has campaigned along with activist Medha Patkar against the Narmada dam project, saying that the dam will displace half a million people, with little or no compensation, and will not provide the projected irrigation, drinking water and other benefits. Roy donated her Booker prize money as well as royalties from her books on the project to the Narmada Bachao Andolan. Roy also appears in Franny Armstrong's Drowned Out, a 2002 documentary about the project. Roy's opposition to the Narmada Dam project was criticised as "maligning Gujarat" by Congress and BJP leaders in Gujarat.

In 2002, Roy responded to a contempt notice issued against her by the Indian Supreme Court with an affidavit saying the court's decision to initiate the contempt proceedings based on an unsubstantiated and flawed petition, while refusing to inquire into allegations of corruption in military contracting deals pleading an overload of cases, indicated a "disquieting inclination" by the court to silence criticism and dissent using the power of contempt. The court found Roy's statement, which she refused to disavow or apologize for, constituted criminal contempt and sentenced her to a "symbolic" one day's imprisonment and fined Roy Rs. 2500. Roy served the jail sentence for a single day and opted to pay the fine rather than serve an additional three months' imprisonment for default.

Environmental historian Ramachandra Guha has been critical of Roy's Narmada dam activism. While acknowledging her "courage and commitment" to the cause, Guha writes that her advocacy is hyperbolic and self-indulgent, "Ms. Roy's tendency to exaggerate and simplify, her Manichean view of the world, and her shrill hectoring tone, have given a bad name to environmental analysis". He faults Roy's criticism of Supreme Court judges who were hearing a petition brought by the Narmada Bachao Andolan as careless and irresponsible.

Roy counters that her writing is intentional in its passionate, hysterical tone: "I am hysterical. I'm screaming from the bloody rooftops. And he and his smug little club are going 'Shhhh... you'll wake the neighbours!' I want to wake the neighbours, that's my whole point. I want everybody to open their eyes".

Gail Omvedt and Roy have had fierce discussions, in open letters, on Roy's strategy for the Narmada Dam movement. Though the activists disagree on whether to demand stopping the dam building altogether (Roy) or searching for intermediate alternatives (Omvedt), the exchange has mostly been, though critical, constructive.

United States foreign policy, the War in Afghanistan

In a 2001 opinion piece in the British newspaper The Guardian, Arundhati Roy responded to the US military invasion of Afghanistan, finding fault with the argument that this war would be a retaliation for the September 11 attacks: "The bombing of Afghanistan is not revenge for New York and Washington. It is yet another act of terror against the people of the world." According to her, U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair were guilty of a Big Brother-kind of doublethink: "When he announced the air strikes, President George Bush said: 'We're a peaceful nation.' America's favourite ambassador, Tony Blair, (who also holds the portfolio of prime minister of the UK), echoed him: 'We're a peaceful people.' So now we know. Pigs are horses. Girls are boys. War is peace."

She disputes U.S. claims of being a peaceful and freedom-loving nation, listing China and nineteen 3rd World "countries that America has been at war with – and bombed – since the second world war", as well as previous U.S. support for the Taliban movement and support for the Northern Alliance (whose "track record is not very different from the Taliban's"). She does not spare the Taliban: "Now, as adults and rulers, the Taliban beat, stone, rape and brutalise women, they don't seem to know what else to do with them."

In the final analysis, Roy sees American-style capitalism as the culprit: "In America, the arms industry, the oil industry, the major media networks, and, indeed, US foreign policy, are all controlled by the same business combines." She puts the attacks on the World Trade Center and on Afghanistan on the same moral level, that of terrorism, and mourns the impossibility of imagining beauty after 2001: "Will it be possible ever again to watch the slow, amazed blink of a newborn gecko in the sun, or whisper back to the marmot who has just whispered in your ear – without thinking of the World Trade Centre and Afghanistan?"

In May 2003 she delivered a speech entitled "Instant-Mix Imperial Democracy (Buy One, Get One Free)" at the Riverside Church in New York City. In it she described the United States as a global empire that reserves the right to bomb any of its subjects at any time, deriving its legitimacy directly from God. The speech was an indictment of the U.S. actions relating to the Iraq War. In June 2005 she took part in the World Tribunal on Iraq. In March 2006, Roy criticized US President George W. Bush's visit to India, calling him a "war criminal".

India's nuclear weaponisation

In response to India's testing of nuclear weapons in Pokhran, Rajasthan, Roy wrote The End of Imagination (1998), a critique of the Indian government's nuclear policies. It was published in her collection The Cost of Living (1999), in which she also crusaded against India's massive hydroelectric dam projects in the central and western states of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat.

Criticism of Israel

In August 2006, Roy, along with Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, and others, signed a letter in The Guardian called the 2006 Lebanon War a "war crime" and accused Israel of "state terror." In 2007, Roy was one of more than 100 artists and writers who signed an open letter initiated by Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism and the South West Asian, North African Bay Area Queers and calling on the San Francisco International LGBT Film Festival "to honor calls for an international boycott of Israeli political and cultural institutions, by discontinuing Israeli consulate sponsorship of the LGBT film festival and not cosponsoring events with the Israeli consulate."

2001 Indian Parliament attack

Roy has raised questions about the investigation into the 2001 Indian Parliament attack and the trial of the accused. She has called for the death sentence of Mohammad Afzal to be stayed while a parliamentary enquiry into these questions are conducted and denounced press coverage of the trial. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has criticized Roy for what it alleges is defence of a terrorist going against the national interest.

The Muthanga incident

In 2003, the Adivasi Gothra Maha Sabha, a social movement for adivasi land rights in Kerala, organized a major land occupation of a piece of land of a former Eucalyptus plantation in the Muthanga Wildlife Reserve, on the border of Kerala and Karnataka. After 48 days, a police force was sent into the area to evict the occupants—one participant of the movement and a policeman were killed, and the leaders of the movement were arrested. Arundhati Roy travelled to the area, visited the movement's leaders in jail, and wrote an open letter to the then Chief Minister of Kerala, A.K. Antony now India's Defence Minister, saying "You have blood on your hands."

Comments on 2008 Mumbai attacks

In an opinion piece for The Guardian (13 December 2008), Roy argued that the November 2008 Mumbai attacks cannot be seen in isolation, but must be understood in the context of wider issues in the region's history and society such as widespread poverty, the Partition of India (which Roy calls "Britain's final, parting kick to us"), the atrocities committed during the 2002 Gujarat violence, and the ongoing conflict in Kashmir. Despite this call for context, Roy states clearly in the article that she believes "nothing can justify terrorism" and calls terrorism "a heartless ideology." Roy warns against war with Pakistan, arguing that it is hard to "pin down the provenance of a terrorist strike and isolate it within the borders of a single nation state", and that war could lead to the "descent of the whole region into chaos". Her remarks were strongly criticized by Salman Rushdie and others, who condemned her for linking the Bombay attacks with Kashmir and economic injustice against Muslims in India; Rushdie specifically criticized Roy for attacking the iconic status of the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower. Indian writer Tavleen Singh called Roy's comments "he latest of her series of hysterical diatribes against India and all things Indian."

Criticism of Sri Lanka

In an opinion piece, once again in The Guardian (April 1, 2009), Roy made a plea for international attention to what she called a possible government-sponsored genocide of Tamils in Sri Lanka. She cited reports of camps into which Tamils were being herded as part of what she described as "a brazen, openly racist war." She also mentioned that the "Government of Sri Lanka is on the verge of committing what could end up being genocide" and described the Sri Lankan IDP camps where Tamil civilians are being held as concentration camps. Ruvani Freeman, a Sri Lankan writer called Roy's remarks "ill-informed and hypocritical" and criticized her for "whitewashing the atrocities of the LTTE." Roy has said of such accusations: "I cannot admire those whose vision can only accommodate justice for their own and not for everybody. However I do believe that the LTTE and its fetish for violence was cultured in the crucible of monstrous, racist, injustice that the Sri Lankan government and to a great extent Sinhala society visited on the Tamil people for decades."

Violation of forest law

In 2003, Arundhati and her husband, were according to The Telegraph informed by Panchmarhi district administration that "a hilltop bungalow her husband owns near Panchmarhi stands on notified forest land and has to be pulled down...on grounds of violation of forest law.". Also named in the case was the sister of Indian novelist Vikram Seth and two forest officials. Arundhati’s husband bought the plot in 1994. Their land in Madhya Pradesh encroaches on a Wildlife protection zone

Views on the Naxals

Roy has criticized Government's armed actions against the Naxalite-Maoist insurgents in India, calling it "war on the poorest people in the country". According to her, the Government has "abdicated its responsibility to the people" While she has received support from various quarters for her views, Roy's description of the Maoists as "Gandhians" raised a controversy. In other statements, she has described Naxalites as "patriot of a kind" who are "fighting to implement the Constitution, (while) the government is vandalising it". In an interview with Karan Thapar on CNN-IBN, Roy defined the "ultimate goal" of the Maoists as "overthrowing the Indian state and institution of the dictatorship of the proletariat", which she did not support because she does not believe that a solution to the problems of the world would come from either a capitalist or a communist imagination. She was repeatedly asked to clarify her views on the Maoists.

Karan Thapar: How do you perceive the Maoists? Arundhati Roy: I perceive them as a group of people who have at a most militant end in the bandwidth of resistance movements that exist Karan Thapar: but do you support any attempt to overthrow the Indian state? Arundhati Roy: ..If I say that I support the Maoists' desire to overthrow the Indian State, I would be saying that I am a Maoist. But I am not a Maoist. Karan Thapar: .. what about the tactics that the Maoists use?.. Arundhati Roy: There is already a civil war...when your village is surrounded by 800 CRPF men who are raping and burning and looting, you can't say I am going on a hunger strike. Then, I support people's right to resist that.

Awards

Arundhati Roy was awarded the 1997 Booker Prize for her novel The God of Small Things. The award carried a prize of about US $30,000 and a citation that noted, 'The book keeps all the promises that it makes.' Prior to this, she won the National Film Award for Best Screenplay in 1989, for the screenplay of In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones.

In 2002, she won the Lannan Foundation's Cultural Freedom Award for her work "about civil societies that are adversely affected by the world’s most powerful governments and corporations," in order "to celebrate her life and her ongoing work in the struggle for freedom, justice and cultural diversity."

Roy was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize in May 2004 for her work in social campaigns and her advocacy of non-violence.

In January 2006, she was awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award, a national award from India's Academy of Letters, for her collection of essays on contemporary issues, The Algebra of Infinite Justice, but she declined to accept it "in protest against the Indian Government toeing the US line by 'violently and ruthlessly pursuing policies of brutalisation of industrial workers, increasing militarisation and economic neo-liberalisation.'"

Works

Books

The God of Small Things. Flamingo, 1997. ISBN 0-00-655068-1.

The End of Imagination. Kottayam: D.C. Books, 1998. ISBN 81-7130-867-8.

The Cost of Living. Flamingo, 1999. ISBN 0-375-75614-0. Contains the essays "The Greater Common Good" and "The End of Imagination."

The Greater Common Good. Bombay: India Book Distributor, 1999. ISBN 81-7310-121-3.

The Algebra of Infinite Justice. Flamingo, 2002. ISBN 0-00-714949-2. Collection of essays: "The End of Imagination," "The Greater Common Good," "Power Politics", "The Ladies Have Feelings, So...," "The Algebra of Infinite Justice," "War is Peace," "Democracy," "War Talk", and "Come September."

Power Politics. Cambridge: South End Press, 2002. ISBN 0-89608-668-2.

War Talk. Cambridge: South End Press, 2003. ISBN 0-89608-724-7.

Foreword to Noam Chomsky, For Reasons of State. 2003. ISBN 1-56584-794-6.

An Ordinary Person's Guide To Empire. Consortium, 2004. ISBN 0-89608-727-1.

Public Power in the Age of Empire Seven Stories Press, 2004. ISBN 1-58322-682-6.

The Checkbook and the Cruise Missile: Conversations with Arundhati Roy. Interviews by David Barsamian. Cambridge: South End Press, 2004. ISBN 0-89608-710-7.

Introduction to 13 December, a Reader: The Strange Case of the Attack on the Indian Parliament. New Delhi, New York: Penguin, 2006. ISBN 0-14-310182-X.

The Shape of the Beast: Conversations with Arundhati Roy. New Delhi: Penguin, Viking, 2008. ISBN 978-0-670-08207-0.

Listening to Grasshoppers: Field Notes on Democracy. New Delhi: Penguin, Hamish Hamilton, 2009. ISBN 978-0-670-08379-4.

Speeches, Essays, Interviews

We 'We,' documentary featuring the works of Arundhati Roy

Come September Transcript of speech on 18 September 2002 and conversation with Howard Zinn

Arundhati Roy on India, Iraq, U.S. Empire and Dissent—interview on Democracy Now!

'We have to become the global resistance' (Abridged version of speech at the World Social Forum in Mumbai, 16 January 2004)

Tide? or Ivory Snow? Public Power in the Age of Empire (16 August 2004 speech in San Francisco)

ABC Radio National transcript of Sydney Peace Prize Lecture (with audio) or download the speech here

'The Most Cowardly War in History'; opening statement at the Iraq tribunal (Article dated 24 June 2005)

Podcast of Arundhati Roy and Pankaj Mishra discussing "India in the World" at the Shanghai International Literary Festival

Arundhati Roy on the Human Costs of India’s Economic Growth, the View of Obama in New Delhi, and Escalating US Attacks in Af-Pak

Audio: Arundhati Roy in conversation on the BBC World Service discussion programme The Forum

Arundhati Roy on Obama’s Wars, India and Why Democracy Is “The Biggest Scam in the World”

"In the Valley of the Tigers"; Interview with Ascent magazine on the Narmada Valley

Gandhi but with Guns – essay about the naxalites at guardian.co.uk (2010-03-27)

Fault Lines – Arundhati Roy (video) – Interview with Arundhati Roy on Al Jazeera English (retrieved 2010-05-06)

See also

Anti-globalization movement

Narmada Bachao Andolan

Indian English literature

References

Books and articles on Roy

"The Politics of Design," in

Other

We, a political documentary about Roy's words. Available online.

Arundhati Roy denounces Indian democracy by Atul Cowshish

Carreira, Shirley de S. G.A representação da mulher em Shame, de Salman Rushdie, e O deus das pequenas coisas, de Arundathi Roy. In: MONTEIRO, Conceição & LIMA, Tereza M. de O. ed. Rio de Janeiro: Caetés, 2005

Ch'ien, Evelyn Nien-Ming, "The Politics of Design" (Weird English. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2004; 154–199). Essay on Roy's language. Available online.

Literary Encyclopedia (in-progress)

SAWNET biography

Bibliography

Arundhati Roy – NNDB entry

Notes

External links

Arundhati Roy Faces Arrest for Questioning India’s Claim on Kashmir - video report by Democracy Now!

Arundhati Roy on Obama’s Wars, Poverty and India’s Maoist Rebels - video interview by Democracy Now!

Category:1961 births Category:Living people Category:People from Meghalaya Category:Anti-globalization writers Category:National Film Award winners Category:Booker Prize winners Category:Indian activists Category:Indian novelists Category:Indian women activists Category:Indian women writers Category:Indian writers Category:Malayali people Category:English-language writers from India Category:Bengali people Category:Indian atheists