An honest anti-Zionist Palestinian perspective the Iraeli POV, normalization, and whats next?
Sorry for the novel, but this has been rattling around my mind and I had to put it down even if it gets thrown out as total nonsense.
First, to get my bias out of the way I am a Palestinian American sunni muslim. My mom is a Palestinian from Israel (US/Israel citizen), with family mainly in Israel and the WB. My dad is a Palestinian from Jordan, with family mainly in Jordan/Lebanon.
Probably not shocking, I am anti-zionist. I reject the legitimacy of the foundation of Israel.
However, where I diverge from most pro-palestinian activists is that I believe you can reject the legitimacy of something (Israels foundation), but recognize the necessity of recognizing that Israel is state. You don’t have to think its right, or fair, you can be bitter for a generation, but in order to reach an adequate outcome for our people we need a bit more practice in contending with reality.
I understand the pushback against this thinking. We see Israel as a fundamentally colonialist project that displaced millions. This can be fine and true, but we need to contend with the reality that many of our “colonialist” points of contention (Balfour declaration, sykes-picot, the mandate for Palestine) are equally institutional to the foundation of the middle east as a whole. To effectively argue that one nation (Israel) has illegitimate borders we need to recognize the illegitimacy of Lebanon, UAE, Syria, Jordan etc which were founded in the same colonial vein. This isn’t just a thought exercise, it has real negotiation consequences that hurts the Palestinian cause by making pan-arab normalization far more likelier. This is one of the reasons Israel has been able to work directly with the gulf for decades now (although often covertly) and has normalized with neighbors year after year. Because the colonialism framing is a double edged sword pushed by Iranian Khomeinist ideology that aims to delegitimize all borders, not just Israels.
My point isn’t to say Israel should or should not exist (have any opinion you want privately). My point is it doesn’t matter if they should exist or not (it does exist, no matter how much we may wish it didn’t) and arguing against the validity of its existence actively hurts the Palestinian cause.
Colonialism and Iran brings me to my second point; This tragedy is loud and international, but our community needs to find an adequate way to protect ourselves from external influence. Iranian and Qatari influence has brought us nothing but destruction. For certain Israeli parties we represent a accelerant for the ultimate conclusion that peace is impossible. Pan-Islamist solidarity is a myth. Even Palestinian solidarity is plagued with well-meaning, but damaging actions (There is reason my mothers extended family in WB supports Hamas taking action in Gaza, but doesn’t support the PLO taking action in the WB. Theres a reason my dads family in Lebanon supports Hamas but doesn’t support Hezbollah taking action in Lebanon… This is a painfully common problem we have as a community where we support action being taken in the community where we wont have the live with the consequences.)
And I know, most people wont listen to what im saying. But this is the heartbreaking part of supporting a cause that is existential. These are our people and we are in a situation that is intractable (you cant have an adequate life unless you leave your home).
And my final point is the hardest for Palestinians / supporters to hear, but the most crucial. The broader Palestinian population takes minimal effort to understand the Israeli perspective and that threatens to doom us all.
This doesn’t mean you have to like them, but I promise you Hamas and Hezbollan leadership understands the Israeli perspective well. Iran understands them. You average Israeli understands the Palestinian perspective far greater than we understand theres (I know, a lot of this is because living under their thumb in destitution makes educational attainment tricky).
What do I mean by the Israeli perspective? This is a group of people who were chased around the earth for a millennium killed and dogged and robbed. Their entire identity is built around people trying to wipe them out. They had a brush with a near extinction even (holocaust), and after narrowly escaping into Israel (a meaningful, historical homeland) they have tons of their arab (Mizrahi) brothers streaming in from middle eastern pogroms. This is a group dealing every day with the trauma of exactly what happens if you don’t have a state that is majority Jewish (not really religiously Jewish, but ethnically and culturally). If they genuinely think they will cease to exist (which we often give them reason to believe), than they will exterminate every last palestinian before they allow themselves to become a non-jewish majority. Its easy to hold the moral high ground, but its much harder to admit to myself that I would do the same thing if I was in their situation.
Additionally, we need to contend with the reality that this group has nuclear warheads at this point, advanced tech and weaponry that every country actively tries to buy (even if they don’t admit it openly), and they occupy a strategically crucial part of the world. This is a group that whatever you think about them, view non-negotiable objectives of our cause as extermination level events (RoR, end of occupation, fully equal democratic rights if it means a muslim majority).
I know liberation is tempting and we have a habit of thinking the mahdi is around the corner… but seriously? What hope do we have taking the current path against an adversary like that. They could be the nicest people in the world, they could be evil… it honestly doesn’t matter. We know deep down it hardly matters for the state to continue to achieve their objectives in perpetuity.
So room for hope? I am in the minority of Palestinians in which I believe normalization efforts are on track and will yield positive results. I am still a large believer in Saudi-Israel normalization efforts and the decline of Iran (despite their newfound strategic leverage). My hope is with greater normalization we continue to see a shift of media coverage that makes Palestinians less manipulated towards the losing cause that is violence against Israel. Similar to UAEs re-education campaign that drastically shifted perspective towards a more productive POV. I have a similar hope that if a generation passes, if Qatar normalized and Al Jazeera moderates itself Palestinians would just have to tackle the issue of reforming lesson plans at school and we could have significant change within 20 years. It might be a pipe dream, but having a society that acts less as a weapon for external factions can help us pursue next steps (I cant pretend next steps are obvious as we are so far in the red currently, but I can see reasons to hold onto some fragment of hope).
I am a eternal optimist though who believes with my full heart that progression (if the goal is a better life) is something that can be achieved. To varying degrees Rwanda, Cambodia, Armenia/Turkey have all contended with enormous evil and found a way to move forward. The direction we are moving in currently my worry is we end up like the rohingyas.