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Are Palestinians standing up for an inclusive national identity?

Editor’s note: Clenchner, a commenter at this site, is an American Israeli living in New York. He was a founder of the Shministim group in 1987 and spent time in prison as a refusenik. And oh, we try and have some bandwidth on this site.

The New York Times has a story the other day about one of the difficulties emerging out of the Arab Spring. It turns out that secular citizenship and modern, state based nationhood are still very difficult concepts for many in the Arab world. In Egypt, conflict between Muslims and Copts still represents a major unresolved tension. In Lebanon, well, it’s Lebanon. Syria’s ruling structure is often expressed in sectarian terms as an Allawite regime. Jordan’s history is intertwined with the tensions between a Palestinian majority and the Hashemite monarchy that enjoys strongest support from Bedouin tribes. Bahrain? Sudan? Western Sahara? Berbers? Where exactly is the secular ‘state of all citizens’ in existence in the Arab world?

This isn’t to say that there isn’t strong support for the idea of the secular nation state or Arab nationalism. There is, and it has often come from the region’s Christians and other minorities. The Muslim religion, some would say, does a good job of articulating the need for a stronger, community wide sense of identity that trumps loyalty to a tribe or clan. The competition between religious, ethnic, tribal, linguistic, racial and geographic identities isn’t a historical blip in the Middle East. Some say it defines the region. The cultural emphasis on ‘unity’ has complex roots in religion and history. Among other things, it is a response to a legacy of divisions, internal and imposed from the outside. 

These kinds of observations shouldn’t translate easily into facile comments that encompass ‘Arab culture’ or ‘Muslim civilization.’ But it’s fair and useful to take these observations and connect them to the conversation around one or two states in Palestine. What I want to understand is – what is the current base of support for a redefinition of ‘Palestinian’ to refer to a secular, multi-ethnic and multi-national identity that includes Arabic, Hebrew and Russian speaking individuals? 

The narrative I observe among the one state and BDS community is that a) the Zionist state does not deserve to exist as an ethnocracy (or at all) and that b) a secular state of Palestine in which all ethnic and religious identities are equal represents a superior alternative. In South Africa, the explicit goal of the liberation movement was a multiracial democracy in which white, black, Indian and other groups would enjoy equal rights. For a time, this was the explicit goal of Fatah and the Palestinian national movement, between the phase of seeking to drive most Jews out of Palestine, and the current phase of seeking a state over part of Palestine. Are we able to say that there is a consensus among Palestinians for this vision right now? 

Most of words I’ve seen about the one state solution focus on the injustice of the status quo, and the attachment of various groups to the ideal of secular, equal citizenship. But very little seems to address the challenges of a citizenship-based secular state in the Arab world. Were I a defender of the status quo or a shill for an unequal Israeli state, I might drive my points further, and argue that a one state solution can’t possibly work. But that’s not my position.

Instead, I thought I’d just ask some questions and see what the community has to say about certain, largely unexplored points. Specifically:

1. Why have efforts to make the Palestinian liberation movement a joint enterprise of both Arabs and Jews largely failed? The only ideological tendency that has included Jews and Palestinians as equals is Communism, as reflected in the history of the Israeli Communist Party, Maki, and in the Trotskyist background of those who founded Matzpen and the Alternative Information Center. The South African experience is that the ANC was constituted as a multiracial movement from the very start. Affirming this wasn’t only a political position expressed pro forma, but a central element of the resistance culture itself. Compare the Freedom Charter to the Palestinian National Charter. (And no, I’m not making a statement about the Charter’s contemporary relevance.) 

2. What is the likelihood of a Palestinian political tendency that explicitly includes Israeli Jews as equal members/participants to become prominent in Palestinian political culture? Are we going to see resistance struggles in which Israeli Jews are not relegated to the role of ‘solidarity activists’ as though they were internationals, but instead to roles like that played by whites in the South African struggle, whites like Joe Slovo?

3. Is there a program or organization that is taking on the transformation of Palestinian society and politics to reflect the Arabic/Hebrew/Russian speaking parts of the future Palestinian state that may one day come about? Will it be standing for election? Accepting members on a mass basis, including Hebrew speaking Israelis?

4. When can we expect the Palestinian liberation movement – in the hearts and minds of Palestinians – to reflect the non-sectarian, non-nationalist mindset of a citizenship based state? Before or after the transformation of Israeli Jewish society? What are the formulations that will come to replace ethnic Arab Palestinian nationalism? 

These aren’t questions about ‘proving’ one thing or another. They aren’t presented as any kind of defense of the status quo. But if we are talking about the existence of an ideological tendency that strives to establish a certain kind of state in Palestine, we have a duty to ask: how is this being manifested today, in the Palestinian national movement? Where does it stand in relation to the genuine mass movements in Palestinian political culture, the one around Fatah and the one around Hamas?

This isn’t to deny the intellectual output of folks like Ali Abunimah or Uri Davis. I’m well aware of the One Democratic State Group. It’s only that these eminent personalities, for all the work they do, don’t have a mass base. The last Palestinian elections, the ones that brought Hamas into power, were widely seen as fair. Can we point to any elected Palestinian leaders that represent voters (in Israel, Gaza, or the West Bank) or members (trade unions, professional associations, etc.) who are on record articulating a vision of Palestinian national identity that includes Hebrew and Russsian speakers? 

My position is that I would like Israeli nationality to include Arabic speaking Israelis as full and equal citizens, which they are not. I support ongoing efforts to push Israel in the direction of a secular state. There are some political parties in the Knesset that support this, including Hadash and Balad. It feels quite wrong though, to impose this view on Palestinians living under occupation, who seem to prefer, by large margins, an ethnic, Arab-Palestinian identity that does not include Hebrew speakers like myself. But a Palestinian mass movement to redefine Palestinian identity would be very persuasive. How likely is that?

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