The Palestinian national movement is an illusory empire

Constructed on poetry and prejudice and generations of fantasy, it must come crashing down so that it can be rebuilt, this time on a more solid basis.

In an August 2017 edition of The New Yorker, Hussein Agha and Ahmad Samih Khalidi offer a grim eulogy for the Palestinian national movement. “Palestinians are sliding toward the unknown,” they write. “The contemporary Palestinian national movement—founded and led by Yasser Arafat and embodied by the P.A., Fatah, and the P.L.O. over the past half century—is reaching its end.”

It isn’t just self-defeating violence of October 7 that hinders the Palestinian cause. Agha and Khalidi point out two more defects.

THE WEAKNESS OF PALESTINIAN IDENTITY.

Currently, there is no “unifying Palestinian bond” that can “forge a truly national enterprise out of highly localized components.” As the 1948 generation dies off, young Palestinians are wondering what the cause is all about. Is it about resistance? Negotiations? Religion? Real estate? There isn’t a clear answer. “Without ‘armed struggle,’” Agha and Khalidi write, “the national movement had no clear ideology, no specific discourse, no distinctive experience or character.”

The PLO formally abandoned the armed struggle and the liberation of Greater Palestine in the 1990s for the establishment of a smaller state inside the West Bank and Gaza. But the spectacular failure to achieve even that more limited goal has pushed many young Palestinians back to the original vision. “The conflict may be dragged back to its historical origins as a struggle over and across the entire Holy Land,” suggest Agha and Khalidi, “reopening old wounds, inflicting new ones, and redefining how and if the conflict will be resolved.”

THE LACK OF POLITICAL PRAGMATISM.

The Jews have always accepted something over nothing (Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann famously declared his willingness to accept a Jewish state “even if it’s the size of a tablecloth”); Palestinians have consistently preferred nothing over something. From Haj Amin al-Husseini and Izz ad-Din al-Qassam to Yasser Arafat and Ismail Haniyeh, the basic Palestinian position has been to sacrifice oneself and one’s people in a blaze of glory before conceding one point of the political program. Palestinian culture gives the word shahid mythical power, making gritty compromises like the 1947 Partition Plan and other peace deals impossible to contemplate. Far better to die in purity.

If martyrdom is the greatest Palestinian virtue, tatbi’a, or normalization, is the greatest Palestinian sin. A normalizer is a Palestinian who accepts Israel, cooperates with Israel, or suggests that Palestinians should get used to a Jewish state living next door. Professor Mohammad Dajani of Al-Quds University was accused of tatbi’a in 2014 when he brought his Palestinian students on a study trip to Auschwitz. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was accused of tatbi’a that same year when he dared to lament the Arabs’ rejection of the 1947 Partition Plan.

THIS BASIC INABILITY TO COPE WITH THE FACT OF ISRAEL IS A MAJOR OBSTACLE THAT NEEDS TO BE OVERCOME. “Yesteryear’s conventional nationalism and ‘national liberation’ are no longer the best currency for political mobilization and expression in today’s world,” explain Agha and Khalidi. Palestinians must “adapt their struggle and aspirations to new global realities.

“Nationalism itself has changed,” they continue. “Palestinians need to search for new means of expressing their political identity and hopes in ways that do not and cannot replicate the past.”

Yet, the establishment of a State of Palestine is still possible.

President Abbas raises an eyebrow: “How so?”

Admit mistakes. The starkest difference between Israeli and Palestinian political culture is self-criticism. Israelis never stop criticizing each other and their policies; Palestinians almost never do, at least in public.

Forget Greater Palestine. It’s over. Israel is not going anywhere and is getting stronger. That doesn’t mean a new political entity called Palestine cannot emerge: that is, a smaller state of the Palestinian people in some part of historic Palestine, just as Israel is a state of the Jewish people in some part of historic Israel. Accept that, and get your people to accept it.

Forget the refugees. Or rather, forget the idea that the 800,000 refugees from 1948 and their millions-strong progeny will ever return to the State of Israel. You can throw those old keys away. The refugees belong in their country of residence or in the new State of Palestine. Accept that.

Be pragmatic. You’re not going to get what you want. So start asking yourself what is a “something” Palestine, a Palestine the size of a tablecloth. Create a state that you can be proud of for the sake of your children and grandchildren. The Jews have accepted less than they wanted. You should too.

Punish violence and incitement to violence. This is simple enough.

Embrace tatbi’a. You must deal with the Jews; you must befriend them. Terrorizing their civilians won’t scare them away; it will do the opposite. If independence and coexistence are your goal, they are not your enemy. Normalize. Concede. Compromise. Live.

Accept Jewish citizens. The current position of the Palestinian Authority is that the future State of Palestine will be free of Jews—Judenrein, as der Führer used to say. Jews are an ancient people who belong there as much as you do. Just as 20 percent of Israelis are Arab, there is no reason that 20 percent of Palestinians shouldn’t be Jewish. Settlers should be able to stay if they want to become citizens. Embrace their love of the land.

Palestinians need to raze the old empires of the mind and to build anew.