Status Updates From A Questão da Palestina

Palestine has included Canonites, Moabites, Jebusites, philistines, in ancient times and Romans, Ottomans, Byzantines, and European crusaders in modern times as well as Arabs and Jews. Acting as if it has either always been Jewish or exclusively has included Arabs should not be the beginning of any argument on how to make peace there. Instead look at the recent material history of human rights abuse.

Okay, so Said puts forward in his 1991 article on the one state solution that Arafat became more and more “repressive” in his decrees that were obsessed with maintaining his own authority in a “peace process” that was a clearly a sold-out effort to the United States.

WOAH Big correction needed for my last note. Not Arafat, but Sadat.

Said argues that the camp David agreement is what effectively takes Arafat out of any role that could have some real leverage (minus the small leverage he had in Egypt). Further, that Arafat needed the support of either the Soviet Union, the United States, or a United Arab front

“To deal directly with the United States, “So long as,” he told me on one occasion, “impossible things are not asked of me”” —One example of Said and Arafat speaking directly

The consolidation of Palestinian representation into the PLO and Arafat is a very interesting dilemma to approach. It feels simultaneously necessary, and flawed. Would consolidation into a board as opposed to a main icon leader of ONE organization have worked out better? Ironic as this suspicion board is taking over the governance of Gaza and the West Bank with the approval of Trump.

“One purpose of Sadat’s initiative, which has culminated in peace with Israel on American terms, is to have asked the question whether talk […] is better than openly confessing defeat […] to get occupied there from Israel plus huge amounts of American Aid.”

“There is a very good case to be made that it is the failure to distinguish between merely borrowed ideals about liberation and genuinely earned ones that has brought the Arabs collectively to their present pass.“

Note the fact that the Civil War’s key conflict in Lebanon was a repeat of what happened in 1845 1860; Maronites and Druze fought. Additionally, both groups do not now, and did not then, define themselves exclusively in terms of religion.

“Iranians protesting against the Shah identified with Palestinians”