Why would pose a threat to Israel, the establishment of a Palestinian state can be explained by looking into the history of Palestine. BY RALF BALKE print Something like a Palestinian people do not exist. When the then Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir in June 1969 in an interview with the Sunday Times spoke those words, it seemed the classic bogeyman for all to provide that since Israel, such as the mirror in September 1993, again attest to a rabid refusal to recognize the Palestinians as a people, to instead continue »obstinate to deny the realities. But one thing makes the news magazine like most other critics of the policies of the Jewish state in his journalistic attacks regularly mentioned: The opinion of the Prime Minister was not a specifically Israeli. Even prominent Palestinians expressed again and again like this: A Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel in favor of our Arab unity , for example, said Zuheir Muhsin, the time after all a member of the Executive Council of the PLO against the Dutch newspaper Trouw in 1977 And even representatives of Hamas admit that a Palestine would be an absolute historical novelty as a political or administrative unit: Never in the history we were an independent state, said her spokesman Mahmoud Zahhar, inter alia, the Economist in 2008. But we were always a part of an Arab and an Islamic state. Who is a Palestinian? At first glance, like all three quotes included similar sounding statements. But at the same time they contain different answers to the question of what a Palestinian identity actually was, and from which different components it is composed is. For example, Israels prime minister denies the existence of a Palestinian people, this does not happen because of a latent racism or sheer ignorance. Rather, the attitude of Golda Meir its very specific perception of the term Palestinian as well as her own biography must be understood in context. Because strictly speaking, it was once a Palestinian. Finally, the residents of the region between the Mediterranean and Jordan were renamed in the years of the British Mandate as citizens of Palestine. Entered into effect in 1925 Regulation made from anyone who had formerly lived as a Turkish citizen in this field, automatically a Palestinian. This rule applied regardless of religious or ethnic affiliation of the person. So who managed to escape as a Jew to 1948 from Europe and settled in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem or Haifa, was so by law also to the Palestinians. It was the British who promoted both a Jewish and an Arab self-government. For quite pragmatic considerations residents of the Mandate received a passport and thus that form of citizenship in the Western sense, which undoubtedly played for them a sense of identity role. In return for the efficient infrastructure that built the British administration at the time, loyalty and compliance with the law were called for. Because of these conditions meant for the Jewish inhabitants of the British-controlled territory to the labeling as Palestinian the most normal thing in the world: your English-language newspaper called Palestine Post and operated by Jews Brewery »Brewery Palestine. The ubiquity of this concept in Jewish life before 1948 was then arise on the Arab side even the suggestion that the use of the word Palestine was part of a Zionist conspiracy, because he stood in contrast to the pan-Arab ambitions own and was seen as an attempt to targeted great Arab nation to split. But with the proclamation of the State of Israel and the Jordanian and Egyptian occupation of those lands on which according to the UN partition plan of 1947 an Arab state should have been established, also the British construct of Palestinian nationality disappeared. For someone like Golda Meir was therefore long history, for the Arabs, who had formerly lived in this area were either Jordanian or Israeli citizens. Or they lived as refugees in Lebanon, Syria and Egypt, whose governments deny civil rights to members of this group to this day. During the Hashemite Kingdom of trying to implement on the West Bank, a Jordanian identity, the Jewish state created the Israeli-Arab identity, both with dubious success. The idea of the nation state Even had the Arab inhabitants of the region to the question What are you? Long time determined not respond with Palestinians. Because there were originally multiple identities to choose from. Until the first decades of the 20th century, traditional Ottoman or großsyrische models compete with each other, which had also been enriched by Arab, Islamic or Christian elements. Then there were local features such as belonging to one of the ruling families of the country, about the clans of the Nashashibi, the Husseini and Khalidi and Hadis. These aspects were for the Arab inhabitants at least as influential as the origin Hebron, Nablus and Jaffa. For all these reasons, it is almost impossible to give before the year 1948 a certain event as constitutive for Palestinian nationalism, which developed simultaneously with other identity-ideologies like pan-Arabism and Islamism. The American historian Rashid Khalidi-Palestinian, even a scion of the prominent families of the region, locates the beginnings of a specifically Palestinian identity in the late phase of the Ottoman Empire and the beginning of British rule. Then many Arabs from Palestine numerous political clubs, the first in Damascus and Paris, and later also in the country itself. Especially by the power loss of Constantinople as a result of defeat in World War I and redrew the mandatory powers lost the Ottoman model but rapidly in importance and attractiveness . It created a political vacuum that would be filled with groups that primarily initially stood in opposition to the established by France and the UK new power relations and new national ideologies represented. The first highlight of this development was the proclamation of the Syrian-Arab state under Emir Faisal immediately after the end of the First World War. Thus the idea of a modern Arab nation-state had become reality, even if only temporarily, because Frances ambitions Faisal and his followers quickly put an end to. But the response to the proclamation of an Arab state was enormous, especially in Palestine. Many educated Arabs signed resolutions to the European Allies to their demand expression, to be henceforth recognized as citizens of the new Syrian state. We consider Palestine as part of Arab Syria and nothing else, it said, for example, on the first Palestinian-Arab Congress held in Jerusalem in the year 1919th At the same time show the early organizational approaches that Palestinian identity in its origins primarily a project of the elites of the country was, in turn, which are basically in their concepts of Western nationalism. But also the political orientation of a large Syrian quickly lost its appeal and was taken up in later years only by Palestinian factions again, who stood as the aforementioned Zuheir Muhsin on the payroll of the Assad regime. At the same time the first rudimentary beginnings of a new national identity formed as a reaction to Jewish immigration. In the moment in which Zionism was a major political force in Palestine, he had also to some extent share in the definition of Palestinian identity, Khalidi puts it behave something. Significant is the decidedly anti-Zionist sociologist Baruch Kimmerling, had the Jewish national movement almost as much share in the creation of the Palestinian people as the establishment of the State of Israel, the latest with the collective experience of defeat and flight in the War of Independence of 1948 and the six. Day War of 1967, but became a reality, the Palestinian identity. mother Palestine Given these but relatively short history of the Palestinians, as such, it is noteworthy that their identity already in the Palestinian National Charter of 1968 is proclaimed as unique and eternal. By birth you will automatically become the Palestinians, provided the father is one. A Palestinian mother alone is not enough to obtain this status. Palestine is the homeland of the Arab Palestinian people, it is an indivisible part of the Arab homeland, and the Palestinian people is an integral part of the Arab nation, it said in the Charter. The diction of that time was clearly due to the dominant pan-Arabism, and probably only in the context of the Arab nation seems the phrase eternal here to have binding force. What is striking is not only that Palestine is described as in countless other resolutions or statements once again as a hybrid structure. On the one hand actually an independent state this name emerge, on the other hand he is also broader than legally not specifically defined portion of a much more powerful and Arab nation refers to the addition also represents a fiction. Also striking is the use of a strong biologistic and feminine imagery in the earlier documents of the Palestinian national movement. In it, the Zionist colonization is referred to as rape. The country itself comes across as being feminine and takes over his people were, the role of a mother one: The Palestinian people was born in Palestine, says the Palestinian Declaration of Independence in the year 1988 addition martyrdom and self-sacrifice mutate into major components Palestinian identity, and long before the suicidal terrorist was discovered as a weapon against Israel and used. One hundred percent Palestinians can only be one who fights and sacrifices there. Every defeat the Palestinians is here represented as a triumph, or at least as a heroic act against all odds. In their history, they have always have to fight against a constellation of enemies that was terrible, overwhelming and insurmountable at the same time, writes Rashid Khalidi. From this perspective, it is of course not surprising that they were inevitably defeated. Therefore the historian speaks of a narrative of triumph in defeat, on the basis of a social consensus had emerged that the constant struggle and self-sacrifice to a question brought honor and national pride. In the first years after World War II, the similarities between the inhabitants of the land have been determined yet on culture and language. This may in particular the exceptionally strong presence of Christian Arabs in all independence movements in the region be due at the exact social acceptance and equality identified a way in the concept of the nation state, which was denied to them because of their traditional dhimmi status. At first Palestinian congresses, which later became the Arab Executive Committee should indicate which represented the Arab interests against the mandatory power, for example, the claim was loud, creating a sort of National Assembly, the only speaking of the Arabic people of Palestine to have inhabited the outbreak of war, should be selected. The participation of Jews on such a representation was thus never intended from the beginning of the Palestinian struggle for independence. But already in the twenties and thirties used a Islamisation and a Panarabisierung the nascent yet emerging Palestinian nationalism, which should also prove to the Arabs on the spot to be fatal. Were embodied these developments by Haj Amin al Husseini, who was appointed by the government to mandate Mufti of Jerusalem. The later allies of Hitler and Mussolini, as it has already taken in the thirties all anticipated what the Palestinian national movement should stand out negatively in particular after 1967: lack of democratic structures, nepotism and rampant corruption and an almost unerring instinct for choosing the wrong allies regularly. The new kingdom of believers Thus, the Mufti issued a fatwa in 1935, which defined the land of Palestine as a territory that was handed over by Allah and all orthodox Muslims locally in trusteeship. This prohibited per se any concession and any territorial compromise. Based on this Islamic legal opinion both accepted by the representatives of the Jewish population subdivision plans of the Peel Commission in 1937 as well as the UN Partition Plan of 1947 were rejected. The consequences are well known. This also led by the Mufti Arab Higher Committee, which in a sense represented the nucleus of the Palestinian national movement, it served as a platform to exercise his quest for power. Religious leadership and secular nationalism then entered into a murderous symbiosis, sometimes already reminiscent of conditions in the Palestinian territories during his lifetime Arafat or Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip the present. Only those Arabs who were loyal to the Mufti could hold influential posts, and in areas controlled by Mufti bands territories Sharia courts were introduced. Each resistor was nipped in the bud, and dissenters were liquidated, the historian Klaus Gensicke describes the terror regime of the man of God, the Palestine really was too small anyway. Rather, he saw himself as the ruler of a future great Arab empire, which he hoped to build with German and Italian help. At the same time the Mufti began the tradition of Islamic agitation, the terminology still exists today has: Jewish immigration was presented as a forced entry into the pure and virtuous Islamic society, where the infidels approached the role, either corruption, imperialism or the to make communism feed. The life of a simple fellahin, the Palestinian farmers, the modernity threatens in the form of Zionism and its livelihood rob is already almost a fetish applicable here. In the later propaganda of the PLO, this type then become fully national icon. In the thirties, has also called for the first armed jihad against the British and the Jews. Sheikh Izz al-Din al-Qassam, whose initiator was already an acknowledged expert in this field. Because even during the Ottoman-Italian war to todays Libya, radical preacher Italy had declared war on the saints, what was but had no major consequences. The Sheikh was far away, and Constantinople influence in North Africa was on the wane anyway. Different, however, in Palestine. The Izz al-Din al of-Qassam not only spiritually guided terrorist cells committed numerous acts of violence against Jewish civilians, against representatives of the British mandatory power, and all real and alleged collaborators. After the death of the sheikh in 1935 he became the hero of the Palestinian national movement and the namesake of the missiles, which are now fired repeatedly from Gaza into Israeli territory. The fact that he was actually born in Syria, confirmed the importance of Islam as a unifying bond and provides an indication that the struggle for Palestine now longer solely for the Palestinians was not, but all Muslims should integrate with. So Islam broke through not only the traditional social boundaries between fellahin and Effendi or rural residents and city dwellers in Arab society in Palestine, but he mobilized his supporters also beyond its borders. It is the commitment of the Muslim Brotherhood based in Egypt should be derived, which began to be active in the forties in Gaza and other places in the mandated territory. Mythologies of origin Exactly this Islamisation of national movement caused multiple fractures not only in the context of the Palestinian understanding of history, but also in the construction of a Palestinian identity. Because suddenly it was necessary to bring the universality of Islam and the particularism of the nation-state concept under one roof. For example, if the Palestinians today derive their origin from the Canaanites and Jebusites, then this alleged link is plentiful problematic. After all, the two tribes that populated the country to biblical times, not to Arabs, and certainly not to Muslims. The whole thing turns out to be rapidly than trying to invent a mythological continuity, whose reference points are older than the Israelite settlement in order to thus easier to deny and reject the Jewish claims can. Although would have an Islamist movement like Hamas, which are usually classified as Jahiliya all relics from pre-Islamic times - so as coming from a epoch of ignorance and darkness - damn, those constructed traditions actually prepare really hard time. But just as the prophet of Islam claimed in his time that Abraham was the first Muslim, Palestinians make today the Canaanites to their ancestors, describes the Islamic scholar Raphael Israeli of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem this Umdeutungsprozess. Even in the pan-Arab context Canaanites and Jebusites are hardly compatible. But in the Arab world juggling with identities is nothing unusual, is almost de rigueur. Without any problems about Nasser and Sadat proposed a bridge between her presidency and the glory days of the Pharaohs, which also were neither Arabs nor Muslims, of course. Tunisias rulers sought their self-identification, the Phoenicians, and also Iraqs dictator Saddam Hussein wanted to refine his reign of terror in which he sat propaganda as a remake of Mesopotamian ruler Hammurabi in scene. Especially in the fight against colonialism, Islam acts of identity, explains anthropologist and explorer Ernest Gellner nationalism. He may be right, just the example of the increase in power of Hamas can be observed in any case, as Islam has increasingly become the dominant component of a Palestinian identity. But when a national movement and Islam merge, arises very quickly a certain ambivalence. This ambiguity can not only be stated for the years before 1948, but also in the present. For the Islamists can start with the concept of the nation state usually as good as nothing. Likewise the speakers utterance of Hamas, Mahmoud Zahhar, compared to the Economist to understand: The Hamas project beyond the dimensions of an ordinary bourgeois state, which is created by man. Man defines himself only as part of a larger whole, and thats created and determined by Allah alone. Naturally, therefore, also for the propagandists of Hamas, which is an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, the drawing of national divisions in the Arab world not as a Western devils work, or, as in 1966 formulated the Egyptian ideologue of Islamism, Sayyid Qutb, spiritual decadence . In a similar way, argued already Zahhars predecessor Ibrahim Ghawsha: Never was there in our Arab and Islamic history limits At the same time he accused his rivals of the PLO, to make the Palestinian identity too much in the foreground and in this way national interests to feed. afford. According to the ideology of Hamas, these have kindly submit to the far weightier Arab and Islamic bonds. Therefore, the nation-state, according to this ideology at best comes to the importance of a step on the way to a fictional supranational community in which alone the Sharia determines the rules of law. However, one might dispense with nationalism as a mobilizing force still not. How can this square the circle function, Hassan al-Banna led already in the thirties in Egypt. Finally, it was even the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood on the Nile widespread nationalism not simply ignore. So he pointed ado religion as a source of a true love of home in order for it worthwhile to fight in any case and die. But in the adaptation of such mythological explanations Palestinian Islamists must be more innovative than others. While the apologists of a theocracy in Syria and Egypt with a reference to the great role of their countries in the past, in addition to everything universalism also put a strong local patriotism of the day, the Palestinians have difficulty coming up with such a glamorous history, as it it as ethnic or national unity has finally never existed. Since only the religious mythologizing of the tribal area Palestine remedy. The entire territory is declared the Holy Land, which play a very special role within the Islamic world, because here the religious traditions, according to the first encounter between God and man took place. Even that does not work without contortions, because in the real sense Islamic Jerusalem can only be holy. The Arabic word al-Quds to German The Holy, interprets the significance of the city in exactly this sense. The term Holy Land was first in the Quran in connection with the Jews mentioned (Surat al-Maidah: 21), as a Moses to the children of Israel on their entry there saying, writes Meir Litvak, Islamic scholar at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies. He also points out that Hamas content of the fatwa of the Mufti is linked from 1935, in which Palestine is declared the property of the entire Islamic nation. According to this formula, even the Palestinians have no right to negotiate over the country, neither in the present nor in the future. The boundaries of the Holy Land It is worth noting in this context that both the leaders of Hamas and the PLO speak of Palestine that will range from the Jordan to the Mediterranean and represents their ideological conceptions according to a quasi-spontaneously developed historical and political unity. They embezzled that exactly this entity has been the product of the British Mandate policy of the twenties. Suddenly to the conclusions drawn in the name of the detested as criminal imperialism, supposedly arbitrary boundaries of then leave the bounds of his country of tomorrow, for the establishment, where appropriate, the martyrdom must be dead. And just like the PLO, which had previously resorted to religious motifs such as the importance of the al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, to provide an identity offer their followers, in whose name could be mobilized against the Zionist enemy, now start the Islamist groups, herself merry at Arsenal national symbols such as the flag or militant logos to use. The religion borrowed terms such as jihad or Shahid for as martyrs who have died members of the respective groups used now anyway long since both currents. Creativity is also needed when it comes to the role of the non-Muslim inhabitants of the land in connection Islamized identities. Even though they belong to a different faith, Christians are because of their civilization and their cultural Muslims, can Hamas announced this. Justice and peace between Muslims, Christians and Jews can only give according to her, if Islam is the dominant force and the society dominated. What does that mean, know the Christian Palestinians too well. In droves they leave the country, in particular, since the Islamists have created a political situation in Gaza, but also in the West Bank, the Palestinian identity is in fact only be permitted as part of a Muslim. It is this approach to extend the pure national framework and integrate them into a universal seems to prove one of the biggest obstacles to an agreement between Israel and the Palestinians. After all, it runs the solution of two national states in the area west against the Jordan: While ostensibly secular PLO still spoke of a dispute between Palestinians and Zionists and has understood merely as one of many national liberation movements in the Third World, with which one common fight against imperialism and colonialism, the Hamas radicalized this fight over the years into a war of Muslims against the Jews. This explains the openly anti-Semitic diction of the Charter of Hamas, which suggests openly that violence is legitimate, not only against Israeli citizens. And because they see themselves as an integral part of the Arab and Islamic world, they see the Israelis also not a nation but merely a religious-ethnic grouping or only the members of a religion, which of course no legitimate claim to them complaining Holy Land could login. If the United Nations will soon decide seriously to recognize an independent state of Palestine, the Palestinian struggle against the Jews would by no means complete, just because it is now next to the Jewish just also would be a Palestinian state. On the contrary, this fight would receive by a nation-state basis. So much good would certainly not be expected from such a decision. At best, Shlomo Sand writes a new book entitled The Invention of the Palestinian people.
Posted on: Sat, 23 Aug 2014 07:01:28 +0000
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