The Palestinian Dilemma Part One (original) (raw)
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This paper examines at the most complicated and intractable dilemmas for the century from 1914-2014, made by the hand of its people. The researcher debates the Palestinian dilemma which has shaped and created in the Arab-Palestinian mentalities, before its formation on the ground, as well as three chronic and fatal defects in their attitudes: Palestinianization of the (Muslim/Arab) mentality, Islamization of the (Palestinian) Cause, and Cantonization (fragmentation and shorthand the meaning of) the Land. In short, this study plans to explore the Arab-Palestinian dilemma, the “Piece” of “Land” of “Southern Syria” in 1948, the two peoples, the backwardness and modernization of Palestine from Ottoman Empire to Jewish settlement, and the Great Powers and "Refashioning" of “Greater Syria” from 1917-48. However, this work has entirely framed the main aspects and manifestations of the “Palestinian Dilemma” through the three endless imperfections of Arab culture and their attitudes; Palestinianization, Islamization and Cantonization; in the same context, the Palestinians (or even Arabs) have no single answer for the very simple question: “Which Piece of land they mean and want alike?” or which Palestine precisely in "Southern Syria": Greek "Philistia", Roman "Syria Palaestina", Byzantine "Palaestina", Ottoman-Mamluk province, Jordan, Israel, West Bank or Gaza? Along with the real blame that the Palestinians have dual standards in dealing with their (past) enemy “the Israelis”, they have a stereotype for Jews in terms of their creative energies, perhaps due to religion. The Palestinians in reality rely on Israeli services and products, which appears to onlookers in the Palestinian-Israeli clash as a form of "Mental Schizophrenia".
2019
See ResearchGate if this doesn't upload here. The volume traces the evolution of Palestine-Israel conflict through several historically-informed and roughly chronological, yet overlapping, investigations examining, inter alia: the effects of the First World War and the efforts of the Zionist movement culminating in the establishment of the State of Israel and the expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinians from the territories therein in 1947-48; missed opportunities for peace from 1967 to 1990 by reference to official policy documents; the revitalisation of Palestinian nationalism through the PLO after the 1967 war and the establishment of the Palestinian Authority in 1994; the competing rise and evolution of Islamic nationalism in Palestine, predominantly embodied by the Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas; attempts at Palestinian institution-building contextualised by the profound influence of international donors and Israel; and the ongoing evolution of the relationship between Hamas and Israel. The final chapter canvases some of the rapidly evolving issues that have arisen over the last few years, including upheavals caused by the election of the Trump administration in the United States, and the periodic and ongoing conflicts between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. The volume will be of interest to both scholars and the general public wishing to understand the historical and present drivers of the conflict in the Holy Land.
T^estinians have done to Zionists. The almost constant Israeli assault on Palestinian civilian refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan for the last twenty years is only one index of these completely asymmetrical records of destruction. What is much worse, in. my opinion, is the hypocrisy of Western (and certainly liberal Zionist) journalism and intellectual discourse, which have barely had anything to say about Zionist terror. ' Could anything be less honest than the rhetoric of outrage used in reporting "Arab" terror against "Israeli civilians" or "towns" and "villages" or "schoolchildren," and the rhetoric of neutrality employed to describe "Israeli" attacks against "Palestinian positions," by which no one could know that Palestinian refugee camps in South Lebanon are being named? mitigate the tragedies of waste and unhappiness, it would at least present what has long been missing before such a reader, the reality of a collective national trauma contained for every Palestinian in the question of Palestine. One of the features of a small non-European people is that it is not wealthy in documents, nor in histories, autobiographies, Palestinians, with lives being led, small histories endured, aspirations felt, has only recently been conceded an existence. Yet all of a sudden, the Palestinian question now seeks an answer: World opinion has demanded that this hitherto xiv INTRODUCTION slighted crux of the Near East impasse be given its due. But, alas, the possibility of an adequate debate now, much less a cogent solution, is dim. The terms of debate are impoverished, for (as I said above) Palestinians hajv^_be£aJuia\vn_onlj^jisr efugees, or as extremists, or as terrorists. A sizeable corps of Middle East "experts'* has tended to rhbnopolize discussion, principally by using social science jargon and ideological chiches masked as knowledge. Most of all, I think, there is the entrenched cultural attitude toward Palestinians deriving from age-old Western prejudices about Islam, the Arabs, and the Orient. This attitude, from which in its t urn Zionism drew for MTTT'iew of the Palestinians, dehumanized lis^re duced us to thê b'arely tolerated status of a nuisance. It would perhaps be too sweeping a statement to say that most academic political science studies of the Middle East and of the Palestinians continue this tradition. But it is true, I think, that they tend to. Insofar as most of them derive from and in most important ways unquestionably accept the framework that has legitimized Zionism as against Palestinian rights, they have very little to contribute to an understanding of the real situation in the Middle East. For it is a fact that almost every serious study of the modern Middle East produced in this country since World War II cannot prepare anyone for what has been taking place in the region: This is as patently true of the recent events in Iran as it is of the Lebanese civil war, of the Palestinian resistance, of the Arab performance during the 1973 war. I certainly do not intend this book as a polemic against what has rightly been called the ideological bent of social science work that pretends to scientific objectivity, particularly since the advent of the Cold War. But I do intend consciously to avoid its "value-free" pitfalls. Those include accounts of political reality that focus on superpower rivalry, that claim as desirable anything associated with the West and its modernizing mission in the Third World, that ignore popular movements while praising and valorizing a battery of undistinguished and oppressive client regimes, that dismiss as ahistorical anything that cannot be easily made to fit a particular telos or a particular methodology whose goals are I mention what is perhaps an obvious thing in order to underline the existential bedrock on which, I think, our experience as a people depends. We were on the land called Palestine; were our dispossession and our effacement, by indicating the peculiar loneliness of my undertaking in this book. I am grateful to Debbie Rogers, Asma Khauwly, and Paul Lipari for their help in preparing the manuscript. Over the years I have benefited from many discussions with fellow Palestinians who, like myself, have struggled to understand our situation as a people. Good friends in this country, in Israel, CHAPTER NOTES 253 29. The most cogent single analysis of U.S. policy during this period is to be found in Eqbal Ahmad, "What Washington Wants," in Middle East Crucible: Studies on the Arab-Israeli War of October 1973, ed. Naseer H. Aruri (Wilmette, III.: Medina Press, 1975), pp. 227-64. See also my study for the preceding period, "The United States and the Conflict of Powers in the
Originally, the “Israeli experience” was born from the womb of the Holy Land, even when the “children of Israel” lived in diaspora; the “Land” is everything for all Israelis, as it represents the homeland, religion and history, the Promise of the Lord, the people’s dream, Jerusalem, the Wailing Wall, and other holy sites. Therefore, to the Jews, there is nothing comparable to the “Holy Land or Eretz Ysrael”. Similarly, as history supports, several peoples have populated the land of Palestine, not just Arabs and Jews. Moreover, they used to live together, intermix, intermarry, and merge, and so on. Geo-politically the land of “Palestine/Eretz Israel” was known as “Greater Syria” before being divided by the then “Great Powers” into four countries, two small cantons, and five nationalities. On today’s world map, these are known as Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, and the Palestinian territories. However, this study aims to argue the development of this land from a historical and geopolitical point of view up until 1947; the names and borders, the holiness of the land to the Palestinians and Israelis, the land without a state that was waiting for the Lord’s promise for the people without a homeland. Moreover, this study concludes that on the modern map, one would have great difficulty finding a country labeled “Palestine.” It is not until 1922 that the name Palestine emerged with any “official” status, so what is all this talk about Palestine? Furthermore, whereas the Israelis could easily prove their historical and religious right to the holy or sacred land, it would be very hard for the Palestinians to do so. Finally, there are reasonable doubts about certain facts, and, so far, nobody has been able to provide a logical answer to such questions as, who is fighting who exactly? These facts are discussed from a historical and geopolitical perspective in the “Israeli Experience”.
The Palestinian Dilemma: A Critical Analysis
M.A. - International Relations Thesis (Extract), 2009
Palestine’s quest for peace and a sovereign state is one of the most intriguing challenges of international relations in the 21st century. The challenge owes to the protracted Arab-Israel conflict that has hitherto lasted for over half a century, over and above an unobstructed rise of Islamism in the Arab world. It is unfortunate that, despite vigorous efforts at establishing peace and building a viable and independent Palestinian state, a stalemate has always been the inevitable eventuality. Besides a critical assessment of the impediments to peace and statebuilding in Palestine, this research endeavours to analyze the repercussions of the rise of Islamism in the Arab world on the Palestinian dilemma. The study examines developments since the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993 to the current state of affairs. Moreover, the study relies mainly on secondary data and, consequently, a qualitative analysis. As a final point, this research challenges some of the articulated and most distinguished solutions as areas that need further demystification to ascertain their achievability.