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Jewish World Review Sept. 14, 2000 / 13 Elul, 5760
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http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
SO YESTERDAY was the day when a Palestinian state was nearly declared --- for the
third time.
On October 1, 1948, the mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin Husseini, stood
before the Palestine National Council in Gaza and declared the existence of
an All-Palestine Government.
In theory, this state already ruled Gaza and would soon control all of
Palestine. Accordingly, it was born with a full complement of ministers to
lofty proclamations of Palestine's free, democratic, and sovereign nature.
But the whole thing was a sham. Gaza was run by the Egyptian government, the
ministers had nothing to oversee, and the All-Palestine Government never
expanded anywhere. Instead, this façade quickly withered away.
Almost exactly forty years later, on November 15, 1988, a Palestinian
state was again proclaimed, again at a meeting of the Palestine National
Council.
This time, Yasser Arafat called it into being. In some ways, this state
was even more futile than the first, being proclaimed in Algiers, almost
3,000 kilometers and four borders away from Palestine, and controlling not a
centimeter of the territory it claimed. Although the Algiers declaration
received enormous attention at the time (the Washington Post's front-page
story read "PLO Proclaims Palestinian State"), a dozen years later it is
nearly as forgotten as the Gazan declaration that preceded it.
In other words, yesterday's declaration of a Palestinian state would have
retreaded some well-worn ground.
We do not know what yesterday's statement would have said, but like the 1988
document it probably would have claimed that "the Palestinian Arab people
forged its national identity" in distant antiquity.
In fact, the Palestinian identity goes back, not to antiquity, but
precisely to 1920. No "Palestinian Arab people" existed at the start of 1920
but by December it took shape in a form recognizably similar to today's.
Until the late nineteenth century, residents living in the region
between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean identified themselves
primarily in terms of religion: Moslems felt far stronger bonds with remote
co-religionists than with nearby Christians and Jews. Living in that area did
not imply any sense of common political purpose.
Then came the ideology of nationalism from Europe; its ideal of a
government that embodies the spirit of its people was alien but appealing to
Middle Easterners. How to apply this ideal, though? Who constitutes a nation
and where must the boundaries be? These questions stimulated huge debates.
Some said the residents of the Levant are a nation; others said Eastern
Arabic speakers; or all Arabic speakers; or all Moslems.
But no one suggested "Palestinians," and for good reason. Palestine,
then a secular way of saying Eretz Yisra'el or Terra Sancta, embodied a
purely Jewish and Christian concept, one utterly foreign to Moslems, even
repugnant to them.
This distaste was confirmed in April 1920, when the British occupying
force carved out a "Palestine." Moslems reacted very suspiciously, rightly
seeing this designation as a victory for Zionism. Less accurately, they
worried about it signaling a revival in the Crusader impulse. No prominent
Moslem voices endorsed the delineation of Palestine in 1920; all protested
it.
Instead, Moslems west of the Jordan directed their allegiance to
Damascus, where the great-great-uncle of Jordan's King Abdullah II was then
ruling; they identified themselves as Southern Syrians.
Interestingly, no one advocated this affiliation more emphatically than
a young man named Amin Husseini. In July 1920, however, the French overthrew
this Hashemite king, in the process killing the notion of a Southern Syria.
Isolated by the events of April and July, the Moslems of Palestine made
the best of a bad situation. One prominent Jerusalemite commented, just days
following the fall of the Hashemite kingdom: "after the recent events in
Damascus, we have to effect a complete change in our plans here. Southern
Syria no longer exists. We must defend Palestine."
Following this advice, the leadership in December 1920 adopted the goal
of establishing an independent Palestinian state. Within a few years, this
effort was led by Husseini.
Other identities - Syrian, Arab, and Moslem - continued to compete for
decades afterward with the Palestinian one, but the latter has by now mostly
swept the others aside and reigns nearly supreme.
That said, the fact that this identity is of such recent and expedient
origins suggests that the Palestinian primacy is superficially rooted and
that it could eventually come to an end, perhaps as quickly as it got
By Daniel Pipes
JWR contributor Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and the author of several books, most recently Conspiracy: How the Paranoid Style Flourishes and Where It Comes from. Let him know what you think by clicking here.
