Humpty Dumpty Was Pushed

In his commentary anticipating a Palestinian initiative to promote statehood at the United Nations, Aaron David Miller chooses to focus almost exclusively upon the realities of Palestinian political and demographic fragmentation. But rather than providing an explanation of how these divisions have come about, or recommending means to overcome them, Miller instead suggests that on their account Palestinians remain unworthy of freedom.

The fact of the matter is that Humpty Abu Dumpty did not accidentally fall off a wall; he was purposefully shoved off the edge of a cliff, beaten to a pulp, and then bombed to smithereens. As for the king's men, as Miller well knows, they made no effort to put him back together again, instead providing the gang responsible for his torment a steady supply of crack and endless rounds of ecstatic applause.

Miller's analogy fails on another count as well. Despite the extraordinary traumas of 1948 and 1967 and numerous lesser ones between and since, the Palestinians managed to build and maintain a reasonably coherent national movement that until the early 1990s was perceived as genuinely representative by a clear majority within virtually every Palestinian constituency. The fragmentation that, for Miller, today defines Palestinian existence and should therefore limit Palestinian aspirations, was therefore until fairly recently all but irrelevant.

The most important culprit in this respect has been the Oslo process. Among its many mortal sins, it subordinated the Palestinian Liberation Organization to the Palestinian Authority (PA) and in so doing marginalized that majority of Palestinians that does not reside in the West Bank or Gaza Strip, and national to local interim agendas. Oslo not only institutionalized existing differences and gave them political dimensions that previously were all but non-existent; it additionally fostered new divisions.

Among these has been the Fatah-Hamas schism, which Miller characterizes as fundamentally ideological. Yet there is ample evidence these two movements no longer differ all that much in their political programs, and are primarily involved in a struggle to control the PA and its dwindling resources. This conflict additionally needs to be seen in the context of the West's open encouragement of Palestinian political fragmentation and even civil war, and its active obstruction of national reconciliation.

Put differently, fragmentation is a symptom of Palestinian dispossession, and Miller surely knows better than to promote it as its cause and suggest that resolving it is a prerequisite to sovereignty.

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COMETLINEAR

7:41 PM ET

September 20, 2011

I'm not surprised to see you shifting blame

I have never seen Palestinians accept responsibility for *anything*.

1:51 AM ET

September 21, 2011

For example...

Mahmoud Abbas' dissertation about how the Holocaust is a lie?

JOHNBOY4546

7:13 AM ET

Well, yeah, it happens about as often as an Israeli apology

"I have never seen Palestinians accept responsibility for *anything*."

Nor does Israel.

But I will have to point out that the Palestinians ARE a people under an endless occupation - which is a burden that the Israeli political establishment has never had to contend with - and so maintaining any political/national cohesiveness under those circumstances is, indeed, a very considerable achievment.

Nation-building under an occupation ain't easy, COMET, and especially so when the occupier is showing every signs of wanting to make this arrangement permanent.

9 VOLT

9:33 PM ET

Abstain You Idiot

Why Obama is actually threatening to veto a largely symbolic recognition of Palestinian statehood can only be explained by the complete choke hold Israeli and Israelophile extremists have on the American institutions of government. At most he should just ABSTAIN if the political pressure from the Israelicons is so unbearable. But no, he actually has to lead the charge against and threaten to VETO this completely innocuous initiative which, incidentally, completely concurs with everything Obama has previously said regarding a two-state solution. This is Israeli extremism being embodied by a U.S. government owned by AIPAC.

American has become a Golem state in the service of Israel. Enjoy permanent war everyone!

11:02 PM ET

What an utterly vacuous post

Boy, you threw it all in there, didn't you. Everything except the kitchen sink.

WINSTON SMITH 9584

7:43 AM ET

Obama should abstain...

The Palestinians are justified in seeking statehood at the UN...it is obvious to anyone paying attention that the Israeli Government is not interested in peace and only wants to serve the interests of Israeli "settlers" who are illegally occupying land owned by the Palestinians....Obama should abstain not veto.

TARQUINIS

1:51 PM ET

Obama's UN speech

President Obama says that peace must be obtained through negotiations directly between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

But for the past forty years or so this has never gone anywhere, and absent outside intervention, it never will.

Why? Because the so called "peace process" has always been a bogus fraud being analogous to a little girl on the ground with the foot of a 300 lb man on her throat supposedly negotiating over who gets the lollipop, because the US is entirely co-opted by the vast political power of the Zionist lobbies (to wit. Rick Perry's slavish crawling for political advantage), and basically because the relative negotiating power of the parties is so vastly disparate. All this is obvious and so it remains.

Short term advantage: Zionism

Long term advantage: Palestine

How many of our dear readers noticed the recent article in Foreign Policy "How did a million Israelis go missing"? There is a good reason why they are leaving Israel, voting with their feet.

(The million missing Israelis: By Joseph Chamie, Barry Mirkin
Israeli Demographers in Foreign Policy: July 5, 2011)

Israel is now in a strategic trap of its own creation. With thanks and felicitation to the vast power of the Zionist lobbies. Don’t worry; be happy (if unending war is what you want). But if not, then get out while the getting is good. And according to Israeli demographers Chamie and Mirkin, around a million have in recent years.

It is a simple fact that unending war can only in time come to a catastrophic outcome. You must figure that most Zionist posters know this too.

That is why I think them delusional.

This is neither liberal, nor conservative. It is history. Get used to it.

11:21 PM ET

Video of Hamas member throwing a Fatah member off a roof

I suppose this was Israel's fault, Mr. Rabbani?

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=c67_1188887407

GURINGO

2:37 AM ET

The author's point is that

The author's point is that Israel is not a legitimate nation and Palestine always was....History says otherwise.

7:06 AM ET

Say that again, guringo?

"The author's point is that Israel is not a legitimate nation and Palestine always was"

Where did you get THAT from?

The author's point was that the Palestinians did have a coherent and cohesive body politic until 1993, and were then suckered into an Oslo "process" which they were *told* would lead them to an independent state, but was actually intended to produce the opposite result i.e. it was intended to marginalize the PLO and, therefore, to perpetuate an endless occupation by playing bait 'n' switch between the PLO and the PA.

To be honest, it more closely fits the facts than does Miller's nonsense, which reads as an apologia of this occupation as Israel's modern-day version of The White Man's Burden.

12:46 PM ET

here ya go, johnboy...

q/ "The author's point was that the Palestinians did have a coherent and cohesive body politic until 1993" /q

On what planet? Because back here on Earth the PLO was formed in '64 by the Arab League as a terrorist organization to harass Israel with plausible deniability at the UN. Beforehand, no Palestinian 'nationalism' was tolerated by the neighboring regimes, as it conflicted with their plans to slice up Israel between themselves.

Don't drink the Palestinian kool-aid, it'll make you sick.

7:06 PM ET

Well, at least you acknowledge something

You appear now to have completely dropped THIS nonsensical assertion:
"The author's point is that Israel is not a legitimate nation and Palestine always was"

It appears that we now both agree that the author's point was this:
"The author's point was that the Palestinians did have a coherent and cohesive body politic until 1993"

Progress of a sorts, I suppose....

We disagree, of course, on the assertion that the PLO was the One And Only Address For Palestinian Aspirations Until 1993.

Here is my evidence *for* that assertion:
When the IDF occupied the West Bank the Israeli govt set up a series of Arab-run regional councils, and the Israeli occupation forces would *only* deal with those councils.

When Yitzak Rabin became Prime Minister he abolished those councils.

Q: Why did he do that?
A: Because they were a waste of time.

Q: Why were they a waste of time?
A: Because every single Arab councilman - no matter how hand-picked by the Israelis - would not make a single decision without first conferring with their higher-ups.

Q: Where were their higher-up?
A: In Tripoli.

Get it? There really was only O.N.E. address for the Palestinian body politic - from the bottom to the top all roads led to Tripoli - and Rabin decided that Israel was just playing pretendies by ignoring that fact of life.

3:16 PM ET

September 22, 2011

I wtf agreed with you?

Rabbani evades the origins of said 'reasonably coherent national movement' and so do you. No that there is/was anything coherent or national about it.

Here's his question to us -

"Should Palestinians be required to negotiate their right to emancipation, or is theirs the cause of a colonized people with an inalienable right to self-determination, entitled not only to pursue their rights by any and all means consistent with international law, (..)"

Rabbani of course forgets to mention that for Muslims there is only Sharia, international law for them is man-made and contemptuous. So like wtf is he talking about, 'consistent with international law'? And like I said, he can't bring himself to truly address the origins of the Palestinians or that of their national movement (hopping mad doesn't count), he can only imply and insinuate...

Why? Because any Arab in the 'occupied territories' prior to '67 never conceived or cared for an independent state. And why would they? Their neighboring regimes would have deemed any such aspiration as high treason and for the past 20 yrs their objective was the elimination of the Jewish state, not the creation of a new one, Islamic or otherwise. How many times have Palestinian leaders said 'we won't wait even one minute in reuniting with Jordan after clearing Palestine of all Jews'?

Let's also not forget that the first 'Naqba' occurred in 1920 with the partition of the land by the Allies; Sykes–Picot Agreement. Prior to then, the entire Arab population in Palestine considered itself Syrian, as they had just recently migrated from present-day Syria and elsewhere to the flourishing region the Zionists were developing. That year the Arabs fought the Allies in both places over the separation.

And you're off your meds to think your regional councils hotline to Tripoli amounted to anything..the Israelis in Beirut, in '82, had the opportunity to take Arafat down, they chose to not do so, they allowed the PLO to board the boat for Tripoli, so much for your pretendies... it's people like you, in the west, Muslims and Leftards alike, that perpetuate the suffering of Falestinians or Balestians, as 'Palestine' ain't something they can pronounce..so much for this and all other Arab claims....bottom line is, the Palestinian identity was sired by Israel, try and get over it.

4:05 PM ET

Here, choke on this....

"The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel. For our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of Palestinian people, since Arab national interest demand that we posit the existence of a distinct 'Palestinian people' to oppose Zionism". (~ Zahir Muhse'in, Member PLO Executive and the hoax of "Palestinian" identity - March 31, 1977 interview with the Amsterdam-based newspaper "Dagblad de Verdieping Trouw"~)

MARCUS_HOLCOM

6:28 AM ET

The Palestinian Bid for Statehood.

The split left the Palestinian Authority in control only of portions of the West Bank. Some 60 percent of the West Bank is under full Israeli control, and both the Palestinians and the Israelis claim East Jerusalem, which is now in Israeli hands.

Over the years, repeated rounds of negotiations meant to bring about the final settlement made little progress, although former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the current Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, said later that they had been on the verge of a sweeping deal when Mr. Olmert was forced from office in 2008.

The latest round of talks with Israel stalled shortly after they began in September 2010. Mr. Abbas said he would not negotiate while Israel continued to build on occupied lands, and the Israeli prime minister, They can also make use of Affiliate Programs to get benefits for their social awareness programs. Benjamin Netanyahu, declined to renew a construction moratorium that expired three weeks after the talks began.

JOSSEFPERL

11:00 AM ET

Here you go again!

The Palestinian saga of victimhood continues. Now even their internal division is blamed on outside forces; this time the Oslo peace process is the chosen culprit. We can only conclude that when people have been used, brainwashed and abused by corrupt Arab dictators and then by their own corrupt leadership, they have lost their ability to take responsibility for anything.

Soon after their first election, one constituncy (Hamas) took absolute power by force with significant amount of killings of people on the other side. A few months ago, in attempt to show unity in preparation for the appeal for UN recognition, the PA tried to reconcile with Hamas. One would think that under such favorable circumstances they should be able to show at least a semblance of unity, but no, the talks between them disolved after only a few weeks. In spite of all this Mr. Rabbani is telling us: "Yet there is ample evidence these two movements no longer differ all that much in their political programs, and are primarily involved in a struggle to control the PA and its dwindling resources." Really? The fight is about resources? How greedy! A people whose only wish is to have a state of their own cannot unify around that aspiration because of resources? How promising! May be Mr. Rabbani does not know that the Palestinians get more aid per capita than any other group in the world.

Mr. Rabbani tries to justify the inability of the Palestinian to unify, by the traumas they suffered in 1948 and 1967. He tells us that "the Palestinians managed to build and maintain a reasonably coherent national movement that until the early 1990s was perceived as genuinely representative by a clear majority within virtually every Palestinian constituency." The traumas that Mr. Rabbani claims the Palestinians suffered both in 1948 and 1967 were due to wars declared by Arab countries (supposedly on behalf of the Palestinians). Wars are traumatic for all sides. Trying to use that as an excuse for internal violent division is utter nonsence. The examples of peoples around the world who suffered traumas of wars and were able to unify for causes they belived, are endless. The traumas Jews suffered through 2000 years of exile, culminating in the Holocust make any traumas the Palestinians might have suffered look like a child play. Yet Jews never used their trauma to justify internal divisions when they struggled for a homeland of their own. As to Mr. Rabbani's claim that until the early 1990s they maintained a reasonably coherent national movement (called the PLO), he just neglected to mention that there was no autonomy or resources to fight over, until the Oslo peace process led Israel to accept a Palestinian autonomy, followed by large donations from European countries to enable that autonomy to survive. As soon as they recived autonomy and large sums of money started pouring in, a system of corrupt cronyism developed, leading to Hamas rise to power.

In summary, if the Palestinians' aspirations were really a peacefull state, they would take responsibility for accomplishing it and accept almost any compromise to achieve that goal. Unfortunately, at this time the Palestinians have become so used to their role as victims, which is perpetuted by corrupt leaders, that they still rather fight for a cause instead of a state.

PHAEDRUS3

1:45 PM ET

Go Jossef

A very well reasoned response to the article. This is the type of dialogue FP shouldbe promoting. There should be a way to remove people who consistently use words like 'hasbarah' to appear as if they are clever but only spew the same old diatribes. Then the pathways would be clear for Jossef Perl and Marcus Holcum and others who present points, refute points all without sinking into the morass portrayed by oh so many other commentators here (we all know to whom I refer...).

QUITERIGHT

4:42 PM ET

"Despite the extraordinary

"Despite the extraordinary traumas of 1948 and 1967 and numerous lesser ones between"

I think that any statement which equates Arab (and consequently, Palestinian) attempts to commit genocide using the means of modern warfare with a "trauma" automatically qualifies the author's credibility as non-existent.

DIANA RELKE

8:32 PM ET

Bravo!

thank you.

JACKJONES

11:40 PM ET

Not to hard..

Why do people think that its even possible to stop segmentation in Palestine. It has been the same way for years and years and years. These people have EXTREMELY strong beliefs, and neither culture is going to allow their people to budge.

I think Miller does know better.. I think he is just playing politics, that area of the world is always going to be a hot bed for turmoil and conflict. Get lpn training and or Phlebotomy Training in my opinion. And get on with life Palestine.

CHUCKAMOK

Oh duh

There already is a Palestinian state, and it's called Jordan.

But then, realizing that would upset the blame-anybody-but-us mentality that defines the Moslems.

While other downtrodden countries of the world have raced past them economically - without the stunning largesse of petrodollars - Moslem Arabs are busy with Shiite/Sunni squabbling, when they are not persecuting Kurds, Christians, Bahais or anybody else who DARES to believe otherwise.

GARFI

11:49 AM ET

September 23, 2011

The creation of a Palestinian state

The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel. For our Arab unity. In reality today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of Palestinian people, since Arab national interest demand that we posit the existence of a distinct 'Palestinian people' to oppose Zionism". (~ Zahir Muhse'in, Member PLO Executive and the hoax of "Palestinian" identity - March 31, 1977 interview with the Amsterdam-based newspaper "Dagblad porno day de Verdieping..

APRA

6:45 PM ET

October 3, 2011

Source of Palestine’s fragmented self

U.S has been a silent witness to the process of political defragmentation in Palestine for decades; an unlikely stance from a country of that stature. A thousand questions start buzzing in our heads about the legitimacy and genuineness of U.S’s role in resolving the Palestinian conflict right from the start. Why didn’t U.S stop the Fatah – Hamas schism from happening, in the way antiinflammatory foods stop the inflammation in your body? Was it secretly wishing the Palestine to fall all this while? The Oslo accord has proved to be a catalyst rather than a harbinger in this process of defragmentation.

YARINSIZ

8:06 PM ET

October 14, 2011

And you're off your meds to

And you're off your meds to think your regional councils hotline to Tripoli amounted to anything..the Israelis in Beirut, in '82, had the opportunity to take Arafat down, they chose to not do so, they allowed the PLO to board the boat for Tripoli, so much for your pretendies... it's people like you, in the west, Muslims and Leftards alike, that perpetuate the suffering of Falestinians or Balestians, as 'Palestine' ain't something they can pronounce..so much for this and all other seslichat Arab claims....bottom line is, the Palestinian identity was sired by Israel, try and get over it.

CORTES

5:59 PM ET

October 15, 2011

Palestinians ought to act not

Palestinians ought to act not in order to continue discussions from a position of power, but instead to guarantee the enactment of what should at no time have been negotiated and written originally, be it with Israel or its advisors.

Foreign Policy Magazine

Palestine may be fragmented. But let's remember whose fault that is.

BY MOUIN RABBANI | SEPTEMBER 20, 2011

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