A good reply!!

by Situationist

Posted to Poetry and Politics on 2003-08-23 23:10:00

Parent message is 505477
I think we were alot closer in our positions than originally expected and thru posting we reached some common ground/ I didnt offer these comments as much as a critique (sorry if it came off that way) as an expansion on yr argument a sort of rejoinder to yr original post to expand upon the idea for other people. I just addressed it to you…poor rhetoric and composition skills, but well intended nonetheless.

As regards the section on imperialism, I didnt clarify. I had something in there about agency defying structure, in this case imperialism, and I think that’s what Palestinian nationalism (in its original manifestations at least, outside of the clerical and ideological manipulations of Fatah and Hamas) is what I call a “reactionary nationalism” as opposed to a “proactive” or “coercive nationalism”: in other words, distinguish between how the force and power of a nationalist group is deployed, and WHY it is deployed.

As far as my critique of Palestinian nationalism because of its focus on ethnicity, what I mean by this is not that ethnic distinctions matter, but rather, thats quite the problem: that they matter so much. I think this notion of Palestinian nationalism as an ethnic movement reduce the conflict to a case of “tribalism” (a la Kaplan) or a “civilizational” conflict (a la Huntington): both severely inadequate explanations. However, I feel that Palestinian nationalism, because of the use of ethnicity or culture as a colonial weapon by Zionist ideologues was forced to become a matter of ethnicity: hence its early complicity with pan-Arab nationalism (Nasser and Sadat) and its strategic importance to the pan-Arab nationalist movements that exist today (which, sadly function mostly as Islamist calls for pan-Arab theocracy). Palestinian nationalism at one time represented one of the most important secular Arab revolutions against hegemony. Said notes this in The Question of Palestine. But if you look at Said’s more recent writings, he fully acknowledges the failure in the political realm of Fatah, Hamas, and other Palestinian nationalist groups…why? Because the focus became about ethnicity and not politics, which is after all, the field within which ethnic conflicts are played. It is not to the Palestinian’s strategic advantage to battle out this conflict in the name of ethnicity as much as in each groups right to its own culture and its own survival and dignity (hence, Said’s insistence on a single state solution with Jerusalme as an international city and a secular and non-ethnically based democracy in Palestine).

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