For nearly three years, Israel has been waging war against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank, with no end in sight. It is a war that has engulfed other parts of the Middle East, with repeated invasions and massive bombings of Lebanon — including the current one launched at the end of February as part of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. Palestinians face abysmal conditions of massacres and colonization, particularly in Gaza, and land grabs, home demolitions, and growing dispossession in the West Bank. The Palestinian national movement is facing its "darkest day" since the 1948 Nakba, as Palestinian American scholar Rashid Khalidi has put it. In this context World-Outlook is re-publishing an essay by another Palestinian leader, Edward Said, who in 1999 described the "two-state" perspective as a dead end and argued that sustainable peace can only be achieved through a binational, democratic, secular state in Palestine/Israel with equal rights for all its citizens. At a minimum Said's assessment deserves re-examination and discussion today.
  • NewOldGuard@lemmy.mlEnglish
    4·
    15 days ago

    Love Said, great essay. I will say though that the Khalidi foreword was frustrating. So much ink spilled about the “unrestrained violence some Palestinian groups advocate” and “unproductive opposition to normalization by some Palestinian youth” (paraphrased). This rhetoric only serves to undermine the just and correct line of armed resistance that Palestinians have taken against the genocidal settlers on their land, and concedes so much ground to the invaders for no benefit, just some perceived pragmatism. How they can criticize the PA’s spineless collaborationism while also having venom for the active resistance and self defense exercised by Hamas, PFLP, PIJ in Gaza, I cannot comprehend.