The conflict in Palestine is not simply a territorial one: this fact cannot be strategized, Sadatized, or Kissingerized. There is a radical conflict between a view stating that Jews have more rights than non-Jews, and a view-as yet to be formulated with the cogency and power it deserves-stating that all present communities and individuals have, in principle, equal civil rights in Palestine. Every departure from this second view has brought sustained disaster to opponent and proponent alike. The need for a new politics in the occupied territories is the need for a new effective theory for combating tyrannical exceptionalism, by which one communitys claim is given divine status, the others reduced to an occasional appearance. None of what is being said here can minimize the unimaginable complexity of the tasks ahead. No Palestinian is ever afraid to admit that the struggle we face may be far bigger than we are. Certainly any political theater that incorporates the swirl of Arab nationalism, Zionism, the history of anti-Semitism, anticolonialism, Islamic, Jewish and Christian apocalyptic millenarianism, decolonization, imperialism, and the threat of nuclear annihilation, to say nothing of every variety of human degradation and exaltation, is an epochal stage indeed. To be a Palestinian is to stand at the nexus of these forces, either to be swept away by them or in some way to comprehend and employ their force constructively. If an Israeli military solution, no less than a cosmetic American or Arab solution, will not serve, this is the exact moment for Palestinians collectively, using all the means at their disposal, to state what will serve. Rarely in human history has the articulation of a program acquired such a revolutionary and far-reaching significance. But rarely too has so much of a peoples political identity depended on the collective act of counting, rendering, and projecting themselves-beyond the armies, the states, the lamentable stabilities of the present. --- Palestinians in the Aftermath of Beirut Author(s): Edward W. Said - Source: Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 12, No. 2 (Winter, 1983), pp. 3-9
Posted on: Wed, 03 Dec 2014 11:37:58 +0000
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