Palestinianism is New: So What?

by Nouri Lumendifi (Algeria)

It’s always interesting to hear people deny that an ethnicity exists. Especially when that person has little or no credability when mouthing off on such matters. Ususally such statements are made with the aim of delegitimizing a national movement or the call for sovergeignity. Other times, they are made with blatantly and unrepentantly malicious intentions, simple bigotry. Many times they stem from ignorance, or a mixture of the three previously mentioned aims.

Such was the case with my fellow libertarian Bill Maher back on the 19th of July. In a post written for the leftist internet blogzine The Huffington Post, Maher contended that,

Lots of ethnic peoples, probably most, have at one time or another lost some territory; nobody’s ever completely happy with their borders; people move and get moved, which is why the 20th century saw the movement of tens if not hundreds of millions of refugees in countries around the world. There was no entity of Arabs called “Palestine” before Israel made the desert bloom. If those 600,000 original Palestinian refugees had been handled with maturity by their Arab brethren, who had nothing but space to put them, they could have moved on — the way Germans, Czechs, Poles, Chinese and everybody else has, including, of course, the Jews.

This is partially true, obviously. The point of the sentence I highlighted is (or should be) rather obvious; to debase the Palestinian national movement by stating that Palestinians essentially do not exist. However, what Maher, and many other pundits miss is that simply because there “was not” a Palestinian state or nationalist movement before the creation of Israel (which there was) does not mean that the Palestinians’ demands or claims are unfounded or inferior to those of the Jews, Israelis, or any other people.

First of all, most forms of nationalism are reactive. That is, they are the result of some kind of encroachment from another ethnic group or arose because of some event that effected the collective consciousness of the would-be group. This is the case with most continental European ethnic nationalisms. The national movements of Eastern Europe arose primarily as a reaction against Ottoman, Russian, German or Austrian imperialism. German and most other central European nationalisms are the result of the Napoleonic Wars and the arrival of foreign (i.e. French) troops, and French cultural and political influence. The fact that there were quite barefaced linguistic, cultural, philosophical and historical differences between Germans, the peoples of the low countries, Austrians, Spaniards and others led those peoples, who had for the most part previously never had their own ethnic identities (there had been kingdoms, states, and empires where these peoples lived, but they were not based on ethnic identities (they were not “nation-states”, they were merely collections of subjects for the most part), were led to have nationalist revolutions, throwing off foreign rule and rejecting foreign influence. This was, and still is, a very recent phenomenon. Nationalism in the sense that it is most often tolerated today did not arise until the 1600′s and even then the concept was not popular across the Western world until the 19th century.

In the 20th century, imperialism spread elsewhere into Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. Peoples who had never had their own states began to demand that they be given physical nations, free of the influence and manipulation of others with control of their own destinies (“self-sovereignity” and “self-determination”). People in Kenya, the Gold Coast (Ghana), Nigeria, Senegal, Mozambique, Madagascar, Algeria, India and other colonies began to fashion collective identities and determined that they were “nations” and should be treated as such, and after some reluctance and swallowing of their pride, the European powers eventually aquiesced. Today, very few people question the validity of these nations’ national claims and demands. Those who do are regarded, for the most part, in a negative light, as imperialists, reactionaries, bigots, irrational, and even foolish. If Mr. Maher were to write an article denouncing the legitimacy of Botswana by stating that “there was no entity of Africans called “Bostswana” before the British occupied it,” what would be the response? He would be ridiculed, because such a criticism is irrational and denies world wide historical trends and norms.

The second point that Maher’s statement ignores is that nations are the fruit of their constituent members. Nations only arise because peopels will them to. As Renan once put it, the nation is a daily plebiscite. They come into and fall out of existance as their members will them. There is no real demand for a State of the Chaouia because there is no movement among the Chaouia people for it. There was a demand for the Republic of Lebanon because a group of people from what would become Lebanon came together and lobbied for it to come into existance. The same is true of the State of Israel, and the very same aspiration is held among the Palestinian people. This holds true for Germany (whose states came together in a union in 1871, though under clear military pressure. The idea of a united Germany based on the common German culture and language arose among German speaking intellectuals and spread to much of the regional population by way of fabricated nationalist folk tales and literature), the Italians (who came together in similar fashion to the Germans, though in a less bloody manner), the Americans (whose national movement is nothing but the result of time distance decay and the rejection of foreign rule and unjust taxation, along with common economic and security concerns, later cemented through romantic art and literature) and many other peoples throughout the world. These national imperatives are often ignored, as have those of the Arabs living in Khuzestan, or the Uighars in western China, but it internationally recognized that peoples have certain political and cultural rights. Many of these are outlined in the American Declaration of Independence, Thomas Paine’s The Rights of Man, the works of John Locke, Adam Smith, and of course the founding documents of the United Nations and related organizations.

Only the most irrational forms of chauvanism (usually feuled by some sort of ethnic nationalism, but sometimes by rationalist nationalism) reject national aims by citing the age of a nation. The issue is not that the concern is new, but how widely held the concern is. The overwhelming majority of Palestinians support a two-state solution with an independent Palestinian state. The age of Palestinian ethnicity matters not. What matters is the sentiment of the people. There is no genuine historical precedent that warrents the brushing aside of a national movement because it was under age or because it arose only after a people realized that they were being displaced. The world supports, at least in principle, the right of nations to declare and govern themselves. There are some claims that are ridiculous, for a lack of popularity and rationale; for example, the New England secessionist movement is dismissed by the vast majority of Americans and New Englanders. But the rights of self-declared nations, such as the Palestinians, whose national legitimacy is recognized by almost the entire world, seem to escape Mr. Maher, and many other people in Europe and America.

If one believes that the revolutionaries that delivered the American nation in 1776 were justified in doing so, there ought to be no conflict in seeing the legitimacy of the Palestinian national movement. Setting aside the tactics used by many Palestinian terrorists and leaders (which only obscures the just cause that they corrupt), there is nothing about the Palestinian movement that is out of line with the history of nationalism. It follows the same trend as any other popular movement of a similar nature. The way I see it, Israel and Palestine are a lot like other nations in the Third World (though Israel is not quite a part of the Third World). Many regions have been released from the occupation of colonial or tyrannical governmental powers and then fallen into conflict, Yugoslavia, India-Pakistan-Bangladesh, Algeria and Morocco, et cetera. In my view, the proper criticism (and easiest one) of the Palestinians is that much of their leadership and support base has yet to come to terms with the fact that Israel is in the world to stay. It is difficult to demand the recognition of legitimacy from an entity that one believes and says ought not exist.

My second issue with Maher’s statement is his belief that all would have been well if the Arab states had simply given up land to the Palestinians instead of treating them like refugees. Certainly the Arab states have treated the Palestinians in an unsavory manner almost universally, but that does not mean that they should have created a “new” Palestine for them, or that they should have just soaked up the Palestinian refugees. No people wish to reside in exile; as the saying goes, “there’s no place like home”. The Arabs have perhaps made a bit too much of this mentality by refusing to allow the Palestinians a full place within their societies (with the most disgusting case being that of Lebanon), but the Palestinians, who are perfect examples of refugees, should not have been treated as what they were not. They were Palestinians, not Egyptians, and not Jordanians. They never desired to be such, and the brief annexations of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank by Egypt and Jordan, respectively, does not make them such. They were under the rule of these foreign governments as what amounted to be protectorate status, but likely with fewer rights than most subjects in British or American protectorates of the late colonial era. The thinking was entirely political and strategic, to secure the areas of what would be Palestine from being occupied by Israel. They were never intended to be permanent, and there is no impetus among a majority of Palestinians to return to that situation.

It is not the obligation of the world to bend to every nationalist demand, but there is little variation in the level of legitimacy among different sorts of nationalism. When there is, it is the result of the severity of those demands, or their viability. A nationalism that demands the total annihilation of another nation, or the establishment of a state or regime with the approval of only a tiny minority, would rightly be rejected as most undesirable. Though groups such as Hamas hold such views, they are not representative of the mainstream of Palestinian opinion, which does not seek the destruction of Israel. ( I will not discuss the reasons that the Palestinians elected Hamas here, long story short, they were tired of Fatah and its style of business (i.e. corrupt)) The militant factions wish to establish a regime of perpetual conflict and destruction that does not represent those that they claim to fight for. Such groups should be opposed, not the just cause of Palestinian statehood.

There is a Palestinian people, and if one wishes to discount the legitimacy of a Palestinian state, or an Arab identity, it ought to be done on a rational basis. Some hold this position because they favor Israel, or Jews, over Arabs for prejudicial reasons, and if this is the case, they ought to say so, thereby showing the hardihood of their character and position. Using the age of a movement
to dismiss it is not deferential of the human intellect and potential, and ignores the history of nationalism and nations. A man as well educated and intelligent (he is a libertarian after all!) as Bill Maher ought to realize that things are not quite as simple as a typeface and that nations take much more time to “move on” than do individuals, one of the great frustrations of libertarians. But, a man that would pull me and other Middle Eastern men of little to no threat out of line at Tweed International simply because we were, well, Middle Eastern, might find this going over his head just a little bit.

*Nouri’s Note I: For an overview of my thoughts on nationalism, see here. For a research paper of mine on Palestinian nationalism and the American Revolution, see here. Or here.*

**Nouri’s Note II: If there are any comments about the last sentence, e.g. in defense of profling, I will delete them, and if I recieve emails about the subject I will not respond. Because it’s beside the point of this post. If there are any unruly or comments that irritate me I will delete them as well. Keep your eyes on the ball please. Thanks.**

***Nouri’s Note III: For the record, I think that Palestinian nationalism makes more sense than any form of pan-Arab nationalism, mainly because it is well defined and not based off of the rejection of other peoples’ existance. Palestinian nationalists never deny that Jews existist, not matter how much they hate them. Pan-Arabists often times tell the world that Kurds, Assyrians or Berbers don’t exist at all, and are based off of the simple fact that a person speaks Arabic, instead of whether or not they identity with Arabism. Palestinians have at least told themselves that they are Palestinians (Palestinian Arabs), while many pan-Arab nationalists are busy telling others who they are.***