Palestine: The Last State to Be Born For a Lie?
The prevailing criticism of the push for Palestinian statehood comes from an Israeli or pro-Israeli standpoint. Arguably, what's most needful is a critique based on the reality of political life among Palestinians and mideastern Muslims.
How can it be that world's supposed best friends of the Palestinians have invested all their moralism in the fabrication of a state without a nation to support it -- at a time when both statism and nationalism are buckling under global strain?
Imagine that Mahmoud Abbas did not go to the United Nations to cast Palestinian statehood as the moral and political imperative of a Western-born worldview beholden to a cramped vision of historical progress. Imagine he came before the UN to suggest that the monopoly of the nation-state over the imagination of struggling human beings had come to an end — that the tragedy of the Palestinians could never be overcome by enclosing their future within the bounds of a political unit that had failed so many — not just in Africa but, palpably, in Europe and the Mideast itself.
Absurd? Maybe. But the manifest absurdity of actual developments in the Palestinian case is dangerous and foolish enough to make imagination take flight.
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May '10
Re: Palestine: The Last State to Be Born For a Lie?
Wrong picture of Abbas. The right one is here.
Jul '10
Re: Palestine: The Last State to Be Born For a Lie?
Well, nation-states (which the Palestinians aren't really demanding, btw) have failed plenty.
But it still seems to me that political power matched to discrete cultures is the best way to promote self-rule.
And while I've seen plenty of evidence of nationalism being actively suppressed, I haven't seen too much evidence of it "buckling under global strain."
Oct '10
Re: Palestine: The Last State to Be Born For a Lie?
Anarcho-libertarianism? What is this? What alternatives to nation-states are there? States are necessary for economies to work, since only within states do monetary unions function; history is quite clear on this (compare the United States to Europe). In a world without nation states, you either have thousands of floating currencies, or one global monetary union. Both are impossible to sustain.
Or are you suggesting something akin to American Limited Government Lite? Loose consortium of regional governments, with enough of a fiscal and political union to hold a monetary union together? I'm confused.
Sep '10
Re: Palestine: The Last State to Be Born For a Lie?
The Palestinians have a homeland, its called Jordan. The more relevant question to ask is why all the oil rich Arab kleptocrat nations running around the UN shooting their own citizens haven't opened their arms wide to the Palestinians so they can open fire on them as well. Or, is it a case of never having developed a taste for fine Palestinian cuisine, the rich Palestinian language or the latest Palestinian architecture, charmingly called Post Modernist Bauhaus-Adorno Detonator?
Ice cream, ice cream, we all scream for Cyrene.
Mar '11
Re: Palestine: The Last State to Be Born For a Lie?
While it is true that the Socialists and Islamists would like One-World without nation states, the European failed superstate and currency suggests that the nation state might be staging a comeback, as the States are within the United States. I hope so, anyway.
The basic problem with the One-State of Palestine is that it extends from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean, thereby wiping Israel off the map (the map is conveniently missing on the piece of paper).
Edited on Sep 24, 2011 at 12:49pmRe: Palestine: The Last State to Be Born For a Lie?
Joseph, those are fair questions, I suppose, but I'm most interested in the rhetorical power of this basic question: why do the Palestinians *need* a state? And, Palaeo, I'm thinking of nationalism running into some basic problems accelerated and exacerbated by current macro social and economic developments in places like Syria, Europe, Afghanistan, perhaps Turkey, perhaps China...
Oct '10
Re: Palestine: The Last State to Be Born For a Lie?
I don't see any alternative, so I suppose "statehood by default" is my answer. At the very least, you need a viable state to enforce contracts and protect private property rights.
Nov '10
Re: Palestine: The Last State to Be Born For a Lie?
You get full credit for asking an imaginative, fundamental question.
The counterfactual illuminates the actual.
Sep '10
Re: Palestine: The Last State to Be Born For a Lie?
Am I the only one that gets irritated at the jumbling of the grain in marble? It irritates me everytime I see someone speaking at the UN.
There's some symbolism in there somewhere.
May '10
Re: Palestine: The Last State to Be Born For a Lie?
I can't think of any reason that the Palestinians should not have a state, if they ever made a deal to leave Israel alone. There are a lot of states out there that are not questioned but have a lot less of a case than the Palestinians.
The problem is that the "leaders" still cling to the dream of returning to 1947. If they would ever get past that nonsense, give them a state and help them get it up and running. That eliminates all of Hamas from having any role, of course, and the vast majority of Fatah as well.
Jul '10
Re: Palestine: The Last State to Be Born For a Lie?
Oh sure, nationalism has its downsides. I'd be more inclined to label it a cause, rather than a recipient of those problems.
However, how'd the attempts at pretending away nationalism work out in Yugoslavia?
I guess I just have a hard time buying the notion that supra-national organization will be anything other than authoritarian in the near future. "Tribal" differences are just too significant.
May '10
Re: Palestine: The Last State to Be Born For a Lie?
Palaeologus
...I guess I just have a hard time buying the notion that supra-national organization will be anything other than authoritarian in the near future...
Chief among the problems would be is to whom would it be accountable? At least with multiple nations, there is the option of going elsewhere if unhappy with the governance.
Mar '11
Re: Palestine: The Last State to Be Born For a Lie?
Um, because it drives the "Little Satan" into the Mediterranean?
Do I have to explain everything?
Mar '11
Re: Palestine: The Last State to Be Born For a Lie?
'Palestinian' demands for statehood are strictly for the ears of gullible westerners. They don't really mean it. If they were a sovereign state they might be expected to be independent. They have been parasites for too long to want to be anything else.
Re: Palestine: The Last State to Be Born For a Lie?
Palaeologus
Oh sure, nationalism has its downsides. I'd be more inclined to label it a cause, rather than a recipient of those problems.
However, how'd the attempts at pretending away nationalism work out in Yugoslavia?
I guess I just have a hard time buying the notion that supra-national organization will be anything other than authoritarian in the near future. "Tribal" differences are just too significant. · Sep 24 at 6:50pm
Without being too cute I think we can say nationalism will intensify in a reactionary way even as the 'natural' pull of nationalist feeling erodes. (And ethnic politics will grow more tribal in some cases and more artificially national in others.) Transnational political organizations do tend to increase and sharpen hierarchies.