Category Palestinian politics
CHOOSING BETWEEN IMPOSSIBLES
Palestinians always claimed their rights to historical Palestine. . . Then someone came along and convinced them that this was utopian and would not happen, offering a trade-off to go for the possible instead. Now people realise the possible and the impossible are both impossible, so they might as well stick to the impossible. But […]
AMIRA HASS ON ISRAEL’S ENCLAVES STRATEGY
Amira Hass on how Hamas and Fatah have effectively bought into and become invested in Israel’s strategy for preempting Palestinian self-determination: Both rival ruling movements were manoeuvred into becoming part of a geopolitical reality that Israel has been shaping relentlessly since 1991: the enclaves reality, aka the Bantustans – in short, the deliberate torpedoing of […]
MOUIN RABBANI ON THE CRISIS OF PALESTINIAN NATIONALISM
[The Palestinian national] movement no longer exists. Its rival claimants, for the time being based in Ramallah and Gaza City, have essentially abandoned anything remotely resembling a genuinely national project, consistently put factional privilege ahead of the national interest, and have become past masters at sabotaging any effort at popular mobilisation. It would be no […]
NOT QUITE AS PRONOUNCED
Former Obama administration Middle East advisor Dennis Ross: In the Bush administration, elections were a fundamental part of the Freedom Agenda, and it led to, for example, strong support for elections across the board, but particularly for elections within the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian Authority in 2006 had elections when Hamas ran… Well Hamas ended up […]
