The tasks of Arab society predate the Nakba and at issue is Arab will
A Good Piece
By Azmi Bishara
Al-Ahram Weekly
"....."Independence day" is one of those civil holidays intended to forge the new Israeli secular/ religious national faith, which is founded on a creed that fuses elements of biblical mythology, modern nationalist values, colonialist ethics and the legends of the founding fathers with militarism. It is immeasurably more extravagant than any equivalent Arab independence day celebration, which, in itself, has various ramifications on the question of the legitimacy of political entities in public eyes. The Israeli celebrations are popular events, not just official state occasions......
Naturally, the magnitude of human suffering inflicted upon the Palestinian people through the occupation and theft of their land, flight from terror, and then further occupation of their land, constitutes a very important dimension of the Nakba, especially in view of the fact that it is still ongoing without a solution in sight. However, the historico-political projections of the Nakba on the Arab world and peoples as a whole are of a larger and different order. The occupation of Palestine and the creation of Israel is the core complex of modern Arab history. The wound is open and inflamed, and it remains an endless font of pretexts for various nihilistic and rejectionist ideologies, on the one hand, and for capitulation on the other. It is impossible to understand enraged Arab consciousness without understanding the place of the Palestinian Nakba in it. Above all, the Nakba is the most salient embodiment of fragmentation, discord and other forces that have obstructed Arab unity......
The Arabs pursued Arab nationalism and then democracy not so much as valid political philosophies in their own right but as ideological instruments for confronting the realities created by the Nakba in 1948 and, subsequently, by the defeat in June 1967.....
It never occurred to the Arabs that Israel developed its nationalist ideology not as a weapon to wield against the Arabs but because that was the only way to forge a modern state. This was the aim of the Zionist movement. The state was simultaneously an aim and a means; it was a process of nation building. It escaped the Arabs too that Israel did not plump for the rule of law and democratic processes as its internal means of government because these were the best tools to use against the Arabs. It went the democratic route because this political-cultural mode for the management of the relationship between the individual and society and the state was the one that the political and intellectual elite believed would best produce the type of people and the type of society that would best serve their state, this being the state for Jews. The Arabs had nothing to do with this decision.....
The Arabs should ask themselves what Arab nationalism and the process of nation building, democracy and the rule of law, human dignity and citizenship mean in their own right. They should simultaneously contemplate the meanings of tribalism, family dynasties and corruption and how all these conflict with modernism and modernisation, with contemporary institutionalised government and the principle of the right person for the right job, and with a decision-making process founded upon properly relevant considerations. These are questions we should ask ourselves, not as derivatives of the Arab-Israeli conflict or as causes of or answers to the Nakba, but as questions that need to be asked for their own sake and for our own sake. Even if there is a historical connection between such questions and the Nakba, we must structurally separate the two so as to alter our functional relationship with them. There is no necessary link between the questions regarding modernism and the will to resist occupation and reject Israel, and to insist upon one is to convert such questions into political and ideological instruments.....
In like manner, the attempt to understand the direct concrete causes of the Nakba does not necessarily demand all that probing and analysis of the modernity gap between the Zionist movement and Arab societies. The Arabs could have nipped the Zionist project in the bud if they had had the political will. It would therefore be more appropriate to ask whether the Arab countries and peoples, as their societies stood at the time, could have fought better in 1948 and 1967 if they had had the political will. After all, were not these the same countries and peoples that actually did fight better in the War of Attrition in 1968-1969, in the 1973 War, and in 2000 and 2006? They fought better in those years without taking into account the remarks and recommendations of analysts and commentaries pertaining to structural and societal impediments and general backwardness. They did not fight well in 1948 because the political will did not exist and in 1967 they did not have the opportunity to put their will to the test. In fact, in 1948, the Arab regimes were fighting more against each other than against the Zionist state.
Modernisation and building the institutions of a modern state are important both as a goal and as a means to an end. Defeat was not inevitable because of the condition of Arab society at the time. Countries and peoples more backwards than the Arabs were then long since succeeded in their drives to resist colonial occupation and win national liberation. The Zionist project before 1967 was not an irrevocable guaranteed success. If the Arabs had had the will, they could have accomplished much. In this sense, the Arab question is the crux of the Palestinian question and not the reverse."
A Good Piece
By Azmi Bishara
Al-Ahram Weekly
"....."Independence day" is one of those civil holidays intended to forge the new Israeli secular/ religious national faith, which is founded on a creed that fuses elements of biblical mythology, modern nationalist values, colonialist ethics and the legends of the founding fathers with militarism. It is immeasurably more extravagant than any equivalent Arab independence day celebration, which, in itself, has various ramifications on the question of the legitimacy of political entities in public eyes. The Israeli celebrations are popular events, not just official state occasions......
Naturally, the magnitude of human suffering inflicted upon the Palestinian people through the occupation and theft of their land, flight from terror, and then further occupation of their land, constitutes a very important dimension of the Nakba, especially in view of the fact that it is still ongoing without a solution in sight. However, the historico-political projections of the Nakba on the Arab world and peoples as a whole are of a larger and different order. The occupation of Palestine and the creation of Israel is the core complex of modern Arab history. The wound is open and inflamed, and it remains an endless font of pretexts for various nihilistic and rejectionist ideologies, on the one hand, and for capitulation on the other. It is impossible to understand enraged Arab consciousness without understanding the place of the Palestinian Nakba in it. Above all, the Nakba is the most salient embodiment of fragmentation, discord and other forces that have obstructed Arab unity......
The Arabs pursued Arab nationalism and then democracy not so much as valid political philosophies in their own right but as ideological instruments for confronting the realities created by the Nakba in 1948 and, subsequently, by the defeat in June 1967.....
It never occurred to the Arabs that Israel developed its nationalist ideology not as a weapon to wield against the Arabs but because that was the only way to forge a modern state. This was the aim of the Zionist movement. The state was simultaneously an aim and a means; it was a process of nation building. It escaped the Arabs too that Israel did not plump for the rule of law and democratic processes as its internal means of government because these were the best tools to use against the Arabs. It went the democratic route because this political-cultural mode for the management of the relationship between the individual and society and the state was the one that the political and intellectual elite believed would best produce the type of people and the type of society that would best serve their state, this being the state for Jews. The Arabs had nothing to do with this decision.....
The Arabs should ask themselves what Arab nationalism and the process of nation building, democracy and the rule of law, human dignity and citizenship mean in their own right. They should simultaneously contemplate the meanings of tribalism, family dynasties and corruption and how all these conflict with modernism and modernisation, with contemporary institutionalised government and the principle of the right person for the right job, and with a decision-making process founded upon properly relevant considerations. These are questions we should ask ourselves, not as derivatives of the Arab-Israeli conflict or as causes of or answers to the Nakba, but as questions that need to be asked for their own sake and for our own sake. Even if there is a historical connection between such questions and the Nakba, we must structurally separate the two so as to alter our functional relationship with them. There is no necessary link between the questions regarding modernism and the will to resist occupation and reject Israel, and to insist upon one is to convert such questions into political and ideological instruments.....
In like manner, the attempt to understand the direct concrete causes of the Nakba does not necessarily demand all that probing and analysis of the modernity gap between the Zionist movement and Arab societies. The Arabs could have nipped the Zionist project in the bud if they had had the political will. It would therefore be more appropriate to ask whether the Arab countries and peoples, as their societies stood at the time, could have fought better in 1948 and 1967 if they had had the political will. After all, were not these the same countries and peoples that actually did fight better in the War of Attrition in 1968-1969, in the 1973 War, and in 2000 and 2006? They fought better in those years without taking into account the remarks and recommendations of analysts and commentaries pertaining to structural and societal impediments and general backwardness. They did not fight well in 1948 because the political will did not exist and in 1967 they did not have the opportunity to put their will to the test. In fact, in 1948, the Arab regimes were fighting more against each other than against the Zionist state.
Modernisation and building the institutions of a modern state are important both as a goal and as a means to an end. Defeat was not inevitable because of the condition of Arab society at the time. Countries and peoples more backwards than the Arabs were then long since succeeded in their drives to resist colonial occupation and win national liberation. The Zionist project before 1967 was not an irrevocable guaranteed success. If the Arabs had had the will, they could have accomplished much. In this sense, the Arab question is the crux of the Palestinian question and not the reverse."
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