The Essential Palestinian
by Michael S. Kochin
Now that a whole host of “middle powers,” including Britain, France, and Canada, have announced their intention of recognizing the State of Palestine, we should recall the essential story of the Palestinian national movement.
The essence of Palestinism, the understanding of what it is to be a Palestinian incorporated in the two largest elements of the Palestinian national movement, Fatah and Hamas, is the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews. Every institution, every political action, every bit of propaganda, every element of Hamas- or Fatah-controlled education is subordinate to those essential goals.
One could quote on this the genocidal language of Article 7 of the 1988 Hamas Charter, still in force, or the Fatah Constitution, which aims at “[c]omplete liberation of Palestine, and eradication of Zionist economic, political, military and cultural existence” (Article 12). Yet regarding Fatah, actual policy is more comprehensible and relevant: The Fatah-controlled Palestinian Authority, despite promises, has continued to fund Palestinians of all parties through the Palestine Martyrs Fund for killing Jews or attempting to do so, and Fatah, like Hamas, teaches even young children to aspire to the liberation of Palestine “from the river [to the sea].”
The Palestinian national movement, as led by Fatah and Hamas, has never, despite occasional if occasionally prolonged dissimulation, worked toward building a Palestinian state alongside Israel, except as a base for furthering the destruction of Israel and the murder of Jews.
Individual Palestinians want many things: to determine the fundamental aspects of their lives, to raise their families, to practice their religion, and to further their culture. But politically active Palestinians, at least in the West Bank and Gaza, overwhelmingly support one of those two essentializing parties.
Palestinians who act on other aspirations than those of Hamas and Fatah, for example the “48ers,” that is to say Palestinians of Israeli citizenship, who behave loyally toward Israel or even decently toward Jews, are called “dhimmis,” traitors, or worse by those who demand that all Palestinians live up to their ideal of the essential Palestinian.
Nor would the destruction of Israel by itself be sufficient to satisfy the Palestinian national movement as led by Fatah and Hamas. It is impossible to be or remain a practicing Jew without paying at least lip service to the goal of the return to Zion. Even if every Jew between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea was exterminated or enslaved, adherents and supporters of essential Palestinism would be caught up in the reasonable fear that somehow, someday, Diaspora Jews, however few, scattered, or weak, would band together and reconquer Palestine. To that end, supporters of essential Palestinism carry out violence against Jews and Jewish institutions throughout the world, in what they call “globalizing the Intifada.”
The leaders of Britain, France, and Canada, along with many in America and throughout the world, believe that the only possible mode of peace between Jews and Palestinians is a “two-state solution” of a Palestinian state alongside a Jewish one. The Jews agreed to a two-state solution in 1947 when they accepted the UN partition of Palestine, and the dominant Israeli political parties accept it to this day. But any two-state solution would require an organized Palestinian national movement built around the aspiration to a permanent settlement that consisted in a Palestinian state alongside a Jewish state. Israel and the world have to deal with the Palestinian national movement that actually exists, not the one we wish existed. Israeli military force has reduced Palestinian violence. Yet to move beyond war and occupation requires an effective Palestinian national movement, and an effective Palestinian national movement can only be built by the Palestinians themselves.
Despite the fearful destruction in Israel and in Gaza, the ceasefire with Hamas seems to perceptive observers but a temporary pause while Hamas remobilizes, rebuilds, and rearms. To go from war to peace requires that the actually existing Palestinian national movement be dissolved or destroyed in its essence and replaced by a movement and parties essentially devoted to Palestinian nation-building rather than Jewish-nation-destroying. This would require Palestinians and their supporters to abandon the dominant understandings of Palestinian peoplehood and adopt a nationalism essentially new.
Topics: Israel Initiative
Michael S. Kochin is Associate Professor in the School of Political Science, Government, and International Relations at Tel Aviv University, and Visiting Scholar in the School of Philosophy at The Catholic University of America and the Van Andel Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale College in Washington, DC.