I’m struck by how old and tired Mahmoud Abbas and his companions at the UN look. These guys have been with us for decades. They are certainly an experienced lot but it is not likely that we will get much innovative (or quick) thinking from any of these individuals. They are encumbered by their long history of engagement in Palestinian political life, diplomacy, and to a great extent failure.
There is, however, innovation in Palestinian political discouse. Much of it is being developed by young Arab academics and intellectuals in the United States who are probably far more talented than anyone in Abbas’ entourage. I want to speak here about the article by Saree Makdisi in the LA Times and I’m writing this also as a partial response to Ali Abunimah’s article in Foreign Affairs.
Saree Makdisi’s article reiterates and to some extent reformulates Joseph Massad’s concerns that the Palestinian UN bid has the capacity to undermine the rights of Palestinians. Saree’s emphasis is on the PLO, which has since 1974 been recognized as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Should the UN recognize a Palestinian state most of the Palestinians presently represented by the PLO can potentially lose this representation. Essentially, the cause and rights of the unrepresented Palestinian refugees will likely return to the awful first two decades of our Nakba. Ali Abunimah’s article calls for refocusing Palestinian efforts towards the attainment of Palestinian rights and away from statehood. There are coherent common threads in both articles.
My focus here is on the nature of the diplomatic gains that the Palestinians achieved in the 1970s, the thinking of the Palestinians at the time and its relevance to today.
The recognition that accrued to the Palestinians in the 1970’s was wrangled from the international community at a time when the PLO was enjoying Arab recognition, the PLO was crafting sovereignty in the refugee camps out the chaos of Lebanon, and the PLO was developing a non-negligible capacity for vigorous self defense. We were able to wrestled these rights out of the miserly hands of the international community partly because of our emerging military presence in south Lebanon, partly because we were able to capture the imagination of the Arab world, from falah to fida’i, and perhaps because parts of the PLO had engaged to some extent in the leftist revolutions of the time (including in Europe).
The diplomatic prelude to all of this was the 1969 Cairo agreement between the PLO, chaired by Yasser Arafat, and Lebanon which afforded Palestinians a measure of self determination in their refugee camps and a right to enhance their capacity for self defense in south Lebanon. We achieved visible international recognition of many of our rights in 1974 when the late Yasser Arafat spoke before the UN General Assembly in his capacity as Chairman of the PLO. The PLO in the mid 1970s was no longer the ineffectual organization of Ahmad Shukeiri and Yahya Hammuda, it was now internationally recognized as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. The Palestinian cause was no longer simply an Arab cause, our struggle became a national liberation movement. An independent Palestinian liberation movement. That, was what international recognition afforded us.
Throughout that time there was explicit insistence within the PLO on the nature of the Palestinian cause and the direction of international diplomacy. Aside from a desire for the independence of the Palestinian struggle from Arab powers, in particular Syria (in the second half of the 70’s); there was also an insistence that the Palestinian cause was not simply a refugee problem. In our minds it was not simply a humanitarian issue. Nor was it an issue that is exclusively about individual rights. The aims in our international diplomacy were instead independence, sovereignty, and recognition. In addition, in the refugee camps we developed a capacity for vigorous self defense, which to my mind was a main reason for our diplomatic successes. We wanted recognition from the international community and emphasized that the Palestinian refugees had a right to national self determination, and not simply individual rights.
In 1988 when the PNC approved a Palestinian Declaration of Independence a number of Palestinians were concerned that the Declaration would undermine the gains we had acquired in 1974. Similar arguments to Makdisi’s were put forward. These were that the Declaration will undermine the standing of the PLO and related international recognition of our rights and our cause. Of course, in the late 1980’s our international standing, and recognition of our national rights, were almost entirely undermined by the very fact that PLO had lost its base in Lebanon and the Palestinians had lost all capacity for any form of self defense, even on the diplomatic and Arab fronts. The prudent priority, which was to an extent articulated by Yasser Arafat, was to reestablish a base for the Palestinian national movement and reformulate some degree of sovereignty somewhere with a significant Palestinian population. Our internationally recognized rights survived the Declaration of Independence because we were able to reestablish a base for national liberation in the West Bank and Gaza.
Even a third intifada now cannot protect the gains that we made in the 1970’s without a Palestinian diplomatic effort to emphasize our insistence on self determination, independence, sovereignty, and national rights. After all, that was the nature of the diplomatic gains and recognition associated with Yasser Arafat’s speech at the UN.
The only way to protect and realize our rights is to insist that the Palestinian cause remains a national liberation struggle and not simply a humanitarian crisis or a struggle for individual rights. I see no better way to do this at present than our move for the recognition of a Palestinian state by the UN. The individual rights of refugees to return to their homes in Haifa and Jaffa will be enhanced and not diminished by the recognition and establishment of an independent sovereign state of Palestine in Palestine.
But Mr Daud, there the rub: If you mean the correct goal is a fully independent, fully sovereign state such as like, say, the US or Israel, have not the last few decades suggested to you that Israel simply will not agree to anything but a rump state, a bantustan (sic?) state? Bibi made that very clear and Wikileaks evidences this as a pattern of the “peace process.” Not to mention Bibi is very clear regarding what Israel must have, and what Israel will never let any future Palestinian state have? Does the name Dennis Ross strike a bell?
This does not necessarily mean the single-state solution is the way to go since, unlike apartheid S Africa, who thinks one state of Israel will capitulate to world BDS for full =rights within such a state? Afrikaners never convinced anyone in the powerful western nations that they had an ancestral right to the land; rather the white world, especially Europe withs its colonial past, viewed them as colonial dinosaurs. And the Afrikaners could not point to their very own Shoah. Methinks we are between a rock and a hard place: 1 S = apartheid state, 2-S = fake Palestinian state, basically, at best, a small Pale of Settlement or volunteer Warsaw Ghetto.
Is there a third way/solution (other than ethnic cleansing; the current Dennis Ross solution de facto backed by full might of USA, “Israel’s lawyer in ‘honest broker’ mask.
Thank you, Simone.
The ongoing abuses of Palestinian life by Israel generated the human rights perspective on Israel-Palestine in the international community. We clearly need a structural response to a longstanding problem. The time has come to link the world’s growing consciousness of this systemic injustice to the cause of Palestinian statehood.
Today is an exciting day for those who stand with Palestine. I am hopeful that the UN bid will give voice to the silent supporters of justice for Palestinians.
On another note, I am curious about the how the timeline of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination on the world stage relates to the Israel-Arab wars. Yasser Arafat’s UN speech came just one year after the 1973 Yom Kippur/October War. Similarly, the 1969 Cairo summit was a short time after the 1967 Six Day War.
“The individual rights of refugees to return to their homes in Haifa and Jaffa will be enhanced and not diminished by the recognition and establishment of an independent sovereign state of Palestine in Palestine. ”
I think so too. The idea would be to get the state and sue their assess off.
Anyway Israel won’t let anything happen so the debate is theoretical.
I think its a long term play. The Zionists will lose.
Israel is an Apartheid State. The U.N. must stop legitimizing the Apartheid State of Israel and all U.N. members must walk out on Netanyahu’s speech in protest.
Interesting read, but I wish the author would give us his definition of “sovereignty,” because it is clear that the two-state paradigm, as it stands today, will leave Palestinians with a non-viable, non-contiguous state. How this will lead to greater rights for refugees is beyond me? If Palestinians achieve some type of pseudo-state, this will give Israel the loophole it needs to absolve itself from the refugee question. The position will be that these people can return to the state of Palestine.
I’m willing to bet that the average Palestinian would prefer shared patromony over all of his/her land then a state on about 10-15% of the occupied 22% of the 100% of their historical land. It is a no-brainer. They just have to be given this option!
The author is write; Abbas an his ilk are anacrhonisms, and must go. Why is it that most young Palestinian academics and activists seem to be calling for one-state? Do they seek the “destruction” of Israel? No. It is for the simple fact that in the 21st century, the world is a multi-cultural, mutli-ethic, multi-religious place, and universal human rights/values/equality is what drives movements for freedom.