There are several aspects of the history of the Palestinian people that are unique. Their refugee crisis is the longest running refugee displacement in modern history, largely because of the unwillingness of other nations to truly absorb their Palestinian populations because they do not want the urgency of a Palestinian state to lessen, because the Palestinians represent a powerful weapon against Israel. Another interesting aspect of Palestinian nationalism that is unique is that it is the only current nationalist movement whose primary goal is to destroy another nation and prevent another people from having any self determination.
Before going further, I must admit that do not believe that the goal of Palestinian nationalism is a state in the West Bank and Gaza. All historical indications point to the Palestinian goal of national liberation "from the river to the sea." Hamas makes this pronouncement quite clear, and the history of Fatah/PLO is full of their internal pronouncements of dissatisfaction with a Palestinian state in anything but all the land west of the Jordan river. Indeed, the PLO's spiritual leader, Yasser Arafat, was a protege of Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who starting in the 1920s spearheaded anti-Jewish attacks in Mandatory Palestine and began the path of "no negotiations, no peace." I do not believe that Fatah has moved away from this position despite their lip service pronouncements otherwise. Their unwillingness to waiver on the right of return issue is strong evidence of Fatah's intentions for the Jewish state of Israel.
So let us look at the elements of Palestinian nationalism. The achievement of Palestinian nationalistic aims requires the destruction of another state. This situation can be viewed in comparison to most other nationalist movements of the last 50 years. While many national liberation movements involved liberation from European colonialism, there are a few examples of national liberation struggles that provide better analogies to the Palestinian struggle. The best example, in my opinion, is the 30 year nationalist conflict between Sinhalese and Tamils in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka's national liberation struggle was driven by its Sinhalese population, and the subsequent independent state empowered the Sinhalese at the expense of the Tamil minority. The Tamil insurgency, even at its most violent and anti-Sinhalese, never professed its intention to destroy Sinhalese nationalism completely, the vision for Tamil Eelam foresaw a contiguous Tamil state coming into existence in northern and eastern Sri Lanka. The idea of the Tamil insurgency was not the same kind of "Phased Plan" that the PLO adopted in 1974 because all indications were that the LTTE was satisfied to control Tamil majority-territory and leave the Sinhalese their state. Indeed, the entire point of the Tamil insurgency was to separate themselves from Sinhalese Sri Lanka, not to create a Tamil state in addition to imposing a Tamil "right of return" for those displaced during the civil war.
Other nationalist movements are generally similar to Sri Lanka. The 30 year insurgency in Timor-Leste (East Timor) was characterized by the East Timorese desire to take control of Christian majority parts of the island of Timor and leave Muslim majority Western Timor as part of Indonesia. Perhaps the most interesting is the story of Cyprus, an island in the Mediterranean that is quite close to Israel. Long divided into Turkish and Greek populations. When Cyprus sought to free itself from Britain, the Greek Cypriot community sought to unify the island with mainland Greece, much to the consternation of Cyprus' Turkish population. Even the invasion and reinvasion of Cyprus by Greek then Turkish forces sought to partition the island into two instead of creating a binational Turkish or Greek state (the latter being the goal of the 1974 Greek coup that attempted to unify Cyprus and then unify the island with Greece). While the Republic of Cyprus claims sovereignty over the whole island, the partition has become de facto accepted and the right of return issue has been shelved in a way that has promoted the national aspirations of both Greek and Turkish Cypriots. Right of return is out of the question despite large scale displacements of both groups.
Palestinian nationalism is different because its realization would require Jews to either leave Israel or be subject to second class status in a Palestinian state as dhimmi. There is no place for Jewish self determination in the Palestinian state, and there never has been. The best analogy would be for indigenous peoples of the United States, Canada or Australia demanding not only their own state within those countries, but the destruction of those countries as part of the realization of indigenous native ambitions. As much as the founding of the U.S., Canada, Australia and most countries in the Americas involved terrible tragedies for natives living in those places and the loss of their national sovereignty, no one in modern society calls for the upheaval and return of nations to their "original" owners (whoever they may be). Indeed, the history of the world is so rife with ongoing changes of land and sovereignty, that it would be a fool's errand to try to piece it all together again. Indeed, the only realistic way to move forward is to accept what has come to be and move on from that with some semblance of compromise.
We live in a world where Europeans moved to the American and the Australian continents and a world where Jews returned to their ancient homeland after a 2000 year Diaspora. The existence of these facts necessarily tempers the nationalist aspirations of those already living there, or risk all out war as happened in Cyprus. Indeed, if modern history has taught us anything it is that sometimes separation is the best medicine to resolve internecine conflicts between ethnic or religious groups who cannot live together. The recent independence of Southern Sudan from its Muslim oppressors can be seen as the South Sudanese Christians and Animists realizing the dream of not being ruled over by Muslims who sought for years to slaughter them and destroy their way of life. The South Sudanese did not want to, in turn, expel or rule over the Muslims of the North, they simply wanted to make their own path and control their national destiny. The history of the Palestinian liberation movement is marked by the unwillingness of the Palestinians, or indeed any Arabs, to accommodate the nationalist aspirations of the Jews in the Jews' ancestral lands. Even before 1948, Arab nationalists tried hard to dispel any alleged connection between the Jews and Israel, claiming variously that modern Jews are "frauds" who killed off the real Jews and took their place or that archeological and historical evidence linking Jews to key places in Jerusalem, Hebron and Jericho were simply fabricated. From the beginning, accommodating the Jewish homeland was simply out of the question, and in many ways, it still is today.
Palestinians view the creation of Israel as a nakba (catastrophe) and have spent so much time and energy plotting how to destroy the Jewish state that they have spent little time considering how to build their own. Arab nations have spent so much energy keeping Palestinians in refugee camps as a demographic weapon to be unleashed against Israel and its Jewish majority that they have stifled the advancement of Palestinian society in any form. The stubborn unwillingness of Palestinian leadership to give up demands for their side that would require the end of Jewish self determination in Israel. Meanwhile, the Israeli government has on several occasions offered solutions for the Palestinians to have self-determination in certain territories, offers that have been continuously rejected because they do not allow the Palestinian leadership to fulfill their true goal: the destruction of Israel and Jewish self determination. So long as that is the goal, it is difficult to imagine how Israel can consider ceding land to Palestinians when all prior land grants have led to those territories being used as bases of operation to attack Israel and Jewish civilians.
Before going further, I must admit that do not believe that the goal of Palestinian nationalism is a state in the West Bank and Gaza. All historical indications point to the Palestinian goal of national liberation "from the river to the sea." Hamas makes this pronouncement quite clear, and the history of Fatah/PLO is full of their internal pronouncements of dissatisfaction with a Palestinian state in anything but all the land west of the Jordan river. Indeed, the PLO's spiritual leader, Yasser Arafat, was a protege of Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who starting in the 1920s spearheaded anti-Jewish attacks in Mandatory Palestine and began the path of "no negotiations, no peace." I do not believe that Fatah has moved away from this position despite their lip service pronouncements otherwise. Their unwillingness to waiver on the right of return issue is strong evidence of Fatah's intentions for the Jewish state of Israel.
So let us look at the elements of Palestinian nationalism. The achievement of Palestinian nationalistic aims requires the destruction of another state. This situation can be viewed in comparison to most other nationalist movements of the last 50 years. While many national liberation movements involved liberation from European colonialism, there are a few examples of national liberation struggles that provide better analogies to the Palestinian struggle. The best example, in my opinion, is the 30 year nationalist conflict between Sinhalese and Tamils in Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka's national liberation struggle was driven by its Sinhalese population, and the subsequent independent state empowered the Sinhalese at the expense of the Tamil minority. The Tamil insurgency, even at its most violent and anti-Sinhalese, never professed its intention to destroy Sinhalese nationalism completely, the vision for Tamil Eelam foresaw a contiguous Tamil state coming into existence in northern and eastern Sri Lanka. The idea of the Tamil insurgency was not the same kind of "Phased Plan" that the PLO adopted in 1974 because all indications were that the LTTE was satisfied to control Tamil majority-territory and leave the Sinhalese their state. Indeed, the entire point of the Tamil insurgency was to separate themselves from Sinhalese Sri Lanka, not to create a Tamil state in addition to imposing a Tamil "right of return" for those displaced during the civil war.
Other nationalist movements are generally similar to Sri Lanka. The 30 year insurgency in Timor-Leste (East Timor) was characterized by the East Timorese desire to take control of Christian majority parts of the island of Timor and leave Muslim majority Western Timor as part of Indonesia. Perhaps the most interesting is the story of Cyprus, an island in the Mediterranean that is quite close to Israel. Long divided into Turkish and Greek populations. When Cyprus sought to free itself from Britain, the Greek Cypriot community sought to unify the island with mainland Greece, much to the consternation of Cyprus' Turkish population. Even the invasion and reinvasion of Cyprus by Greek then Turkish forces sought to partition the island into two instead of creating a binational Turkish or Greek state (the latter being the goal of the 1974 Greek coup that attempted to unify Cyprus and then unify the island with Greece). While the Republic of Cyprus claims sovereignty over the whole island, the partition has become de facto accepted and the right of return issue has been shelved in a way that has promoted the national aspirations of both Greek and Turkish Cypriots. Right of return is out of the question despite large scale displacements of both groups.
Palestinian nationalism is different because its realization would require Jews to either leave Israel or be subject to second class status in a Palestinian state as dhimmi. There is no place for Jewish self determination in the Palestinian state, and there never has been. The best analogy would be for indigenous peoples of the United States, Canada or Australia demanding not only their own state within those countries, but the destruction of those countries as part of the realization of indigenous native ambitions. As much as the founding of the U.S., Canada, Australia and most countries in the Americas involved terrible tragedies for natives living in those places and the loss of their national sovereignty, no one in modern society calls for the upheaval and return of nations to their "original" owners (whoever they may be). Indeed, the history of the world is so rife with ongoing changes of land and sovereignty, that it would be a fool's errand to try to piece it all together again. Indeed, the only realistic way to move forward is to accept what has come to be and move on from that with some semblance of compromise.
We live in a world where Europeans moved to the American and the Australian continents and a world where Jews returned to their ancient homeland after a 2000 year Diaspora. The existence of these facts necessarily tempers the nationalist aspirations of those already living there, or risk all out war as happened in Cyprus. Indeed, if modern history has taught us anything it is that sometimes separation is the best medicine to resolve internecine conflicts between ethnic or religious groups who cannot live together. The recent independence of Southern Sudan from its Muslim oppressors can be seen as the South Sudanese Christians and Animists realizing the dream of not being ruled over by Muslims who sought for years to slaughter them and destroy their way of life. The South Sudanese did not want to, in turn, expel or rule over the Muslims of the North, they simply wanted to make their own path and control their national destiny. The history of the Palestinian liberation movement is marked by the unwillingness of the Palestinians, or indeed any Arabs, to accommodate the nationalist aspirations of the Jews in the Jews' ancestral lands. Even before 1948, Arab nationalists tried hard to dispel any alleged connection between the Jews and Israel, claiming variously that modern Jews are "frauds" who killed off the real Jews and took their place or that archeological and historical evidence linking Jews to key places in Jerusalem, Hebron and Jericho were simply fabricated. From the beginning, accommodating the Jewish homeland was simply out of the question, and in many ways, it still is today.
Palestinians view the creation of Israel as a nakba (catastrophe) and have spent so much time and energy plotting how to destroy the Jewish state that they have spent little time considering how to build their own. Arab nations have spent so much energy keeping Palestinians in refugee camps as a demographic weapon to be unleashed against Israel and its Jewish majority that they have stifled the advancement of Palestinian society in any form. The stubborn unwillingness of Palestinian leadership to give up demands for their side that would require the end of Jewish self determination in Israel. Meanwhile, the Israeli government has on several occasions offered solutions for the Palestinians to have self-determination in certain territories, offers that have been continuously rejected because they do not allow the Palestinian leadership to fulfill their true goal: the destruction of Israel and Jewish self determination. So long as that is the goal, it is difficult to imagine how Israel can consider ceding land to Palestinians when all prior land grants have led to those territories being used as bases of operation to attack Israel and Jewish civilians.
5 comments:
In the future, I think the biggest challenge of Israel is the ‘democratic West’ is not to explain the problems with Palestinian nationalism but to justify Israel’s own ethnic-based nationalism.
The scenario I'm most frightened of is the marriage of the Israeli right and left with the Palestinian right and left. Each of these favor a 'one-state solution.' The left hates nationalism based on ethnicity and wants a single, democratic, secular state. The right wants the ability for each (Arabs and Jews) to be able to live on any part of the land. Although there is a far-right part of each (Israeli and Palestinian) that favors expulsion of the other in a one-state solution. The idea that these four groups of extremists could result in a 'solution' that ignores the larger (but less vocal) moderate part of the population is scary...but perhaps I’m over estimating the persuasiveness of these arguments?
I'm most weary of the growing democratic, secular movement growing that spawned the BDS project. The idea of it is very alluring and attractive - particularly for liberals and Americans. I say Americans because 'officially' most of the USA's nationalism has been expressed through values and ideals. (Clearly there are exceptions to this and the US has a long history of xenophobia and racism.) It is something I looked into pretty extensively - before ultimately concluding that the Jews already tried that in Europe (assimilation) and it led to an existential threat to the entire Jewish community. But, I did A LOT of reading to come to the point where I decided that while, overall, I think ethnic-based nationalism is bad, it is a) inevitable and b) sometimes a necessary evil.
David always says that supporting Israel is the ultimate liberal position because if you believe in affirmative action then you must believe that Israel should exist as a Jewish state. Once I saw it in that context, all of the arguments about the importance and value of an explicitly Jewish perspective in international affairs made so much more sense to me. I also think it is hard to argue with the fact that Israel’s existence has made Jews in the diaspora much safer. The idea that Israel’s existence is the cause of anti-Semitism, or the ‘recent surge’ of anti-Semitism is pretty silly to me. Anti-Semitism existed before Israel was established and hasn’t receded in the recent past. There has been a more aggressive fight against anti-Semitism and Israel has been at the helm of that fight. A really good tangible example of how Israel has made the world safer for Jews was given by Tony Karon (ironically, an anti-Zionist). The whole story can be viewed here: http://health.newamerica.net/events/2010/the_unspoken_alliance starting at the 20 minute mark. But, the gist of the story is that while Karon was growing up in apartheid South Africa, he was exposed to anti-Semitism from Afrikaans (who had literally been members of the Nazi party) and that Israel was able to temper those attitudes and protect the South African Jewish community through collaboration and cooperation with the South African government.
My hope is that when nationalism is expressed explicitly based on ethnic-lines, there will be greater awareness and scrutiny of the rights of minorities. At times, I think this scrutiny is lost in ‘color blind’ societies because it avoids discussions related to discrimination, race, ethnicity, etc. If Israel is explicitly a Jewish state, then the topic of minority rights for non-Jews cannot be avoided.
You mention this as though Israel is somehow unique in its ethnic based nationalism. Indeed, most nationalist movements of the last few decades were ethnically based. A good example would be the independence movements of former Soviet nations, many of whom (a) defined themselves based on their ethnic difference from Russians and (b) took direct and deliberate actions to stamp out Russian influence within their territories. Since my family left Ukraine, the Ukrainian government has taken dramatic steps to redefine itself based on expunging as much of its Russian heritage as possible. Many Russians have lived in countries like Ukraine long before the Soviet era, but found themselves to be the target of nationalist expression in the former Soviet states. Of course, no one finds it appropriate to criticize them in the same way.
Ethnic based nationalism is inevitable, but I don't think it is as problematic as you believe. In any case, the criticisms of Israel's existence as a Jewish state come from countries that DEFINE themselves based on their ethnic/religious identity. Do not be fooled by the very recent, and unsuccessful attempts, to secular Palestinian nationalism. The first 60 years of anti-Zionist Palestinian action was based on the teachings of Hajj Amin al Husseini, a man who sought an ethno/religious Palestinian Islamic state with Jews either killed, evicted or subjugated (with Husseini preferring the first option). Indeed, many of the same countries that criticize Western and Israeli attempts to impose an ethno-nationalist state on Muslim minorities are places like Iran, Saudi Arabia or the UAE, which categorically define themselves as Islamic states for Islamic peoples.
The history of non-Islamic minorities in Islamic countries is a sad one indeed. One need look no further than the fate of the Bahai in Iran, Jews in Yemen or Coptic Christians in Egypt and Lebanon. Of course, none of this excuses unjustified animosity toward by Israel its minorities. Yet, the fact that Israel's Arab minority represents a very real danger to Israel's continued existence requires that Israel's actions toward the Arabs be viewed in context. Consider that the Bahai and the Druze of Israel live far better than they do in Arab states. Consider how Sudanese immigrants have flooded into Israel to escape. My father always said "people vote with their feet," when describing the exodus from the paradise of the Soviet Union, which touted itself as the freest and most egalitarian state. The point is that non-Muslims from surrounding countries flee from Muslim ruled countries (like Southern Sudan) and come to Israel precisely because they are treated far more humanely there than in any surrounding nation.
Obviously, Israel is not perfect, and I wish Israel could treat its Arabs better. But honestly, having been there many times, most of them have it pretty good compared to others. Their women can drive and are not subject to honor killings. They have a far higher standard of living, can vote and can become police chiefs and justices on Israel's Supreme Court. Israel's Arabs who ally themselves with groups seeking to destroy Israel justify Israeli society's suspicion because the history of Arab nationalism has seen significant radicalization since the Arab Revolt of 1916. They choose to resent Israel's existence and are justifiably resented by Israel as a result.
No, I'm definitely not suggesting that ethnic-based nationalism is unique. What I'm suggesting is that there is a unique need for an explicitly Jewish state due to the pervasive discrimination against the Jewish people on every continent throughout most of history.
RE: Israel treatment of Arabs. Perhaps somewhat ironically, Avigdor Lieberman, the politician that is most vilified in the press as being racist against Arabs is the one who is most vocal about promoting Druze causes. The Druze have the second highest IDF enlistment rates (almost 80%, behind religious nationalists and more than secular jews). Most of them have fought for Israel since the 1948 war. I generally agree with you that Israel provides its arab citizens with more rights and better governance than the rest of the region. I think that's a low bar, but it is a relevant point. That said, I wish more of the Israeli establishment recognized those Arabs that fight in the IDF and are invested in Israel as a Jewish state. And when I say 'recognize' - I don't just mean mentioning these factoids when giving speeches to Congress. I mean addressing the community's material needs (housing, education, economic development, etc).
BTW - is it just me or is the immigrant population from (former) Soviet Union/Russia getting a lot of bad press lately?
I guess what I'm saying - though I've never said this out loud and I'm not completely comfortable with it - is that if a two-state solution West of the Jordan River isn't possible, then I think it is more important for the one-state to be a Jewish state than a secular, democratic state.
This may seem obvious to you, but it took a long time for me to consider this. This is not intuitive reasoning for a liberal (nationalism good). I'm from the South, every time white people have gotten clannish...it has just been bad, bad, bad (pun intended).
Though, Palestinians are discriminated against throughout the region (forced to live in refugee camps, can't work, viewed a 'national security threats'/terrorists), so I still think there is a need for a Palestinian state.
Israel treats the Druze well because the Druze are not trying to destroy the Israeli government. The issue has nothing to do with Arabs, as the Christian Arabs of Israel, who similarly have no designs for destroying Israel, hold many prominent positions in Israeli society (one is a justice of the Israeli Supreme Court). This is not to say there are no Arab Muslims who support Israel. The problem is that it behooves such people to keep a very low profile because the climate in the Arab Muslim community is very toxic when it comes to "moderates" who want to work with, not against, Israel. This is not a new development, Hajj Amin al-Husseini orchestrated the murder of many moderates who wanted to work with, not against the Zionists, during the 1920s and against during the 1936-39 Arab Revolt.
The point is that Israel is asking for something very basic: fundamental recognition and respect, and the powers that be will not give it to them. It's a sad state of affairs because the Palestinian Arabs have been repressed for the sake of governments pushing an anti-Israel program with no regard for those Palestinians' national ambitions.
The problem, as I see it, is that there is no way for the current two state solution to be stable given the likely leaders of such a state and their supporters in Iran and Syria. Those "borders" led to 3 wars in a 19 year span between 1948 and 1967. Indeed, the great injustice is that the British installed foreign Hashemites from Hejaz as the leaders of Jordan, and the Hashemite dynasty has shown no interest in letting a Palestinian government be in control. Yet, the fact that the Hashemites run Jordan does not negate the fact that the territory of the British Mandate east of the Jordan river was designed to be the homeland of the Arabs of the British Mandate. Their dissatisfaction with their government has nothing to do with the intended purpose of that state. The idea of a second partition of Palestine only came about because the Hashemites were unwilling to represent the needs of the Arabs in their midst, but that doesn't mean that Jordan is not Palestine. Jordan is already between 55-75% Palestinian Arab, the Queen is a Palestinian Arab.
The reason Jordan won't be acknowledged as Palestine has everything to do with politics and nothing to do with rightness. The day "Palestine" is established anywhere but Israel is the day that Israel's neighbors will have lost their greatest weapon against Israel. It's not in their interest to create a Palestinian state or resolve the refugee crisi.
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