Palestinians: a nation without a state

Last updated on: May 25, 2017 at 5:33 am by Gerald McDermott

Palestinians: a nation without a state 2017-05-25T05:33:19-04:00 Gerald McDermott

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David Brog begins his Reclaiming Israel’s History with a quotation from Thomas Friedman, the New York Times columnist:

“Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic, and saying so is vile. But singling out Israel for opprobrium and international sanction–out of all proportion to any other party in the Middle East–is anti-Semitic, and not saying so is dishonest.”

Then Brog is disarming. He concedes that Israel has committed “sins both small and large” (ix). In 1948-49 the new Jewish state expelled Arabs from their villages, “and not always in cases of clear military necessity.” Jewish soldiers have killed innocent Arab civilians “–and not always by mistake.” He says we know this because Israeli scholars have documented these things and the Israel media has publicized them (ix).

But while before 1967 Israel was lionized as an ideal young nation, “the myth of the perfect state is being replaced by the myth of the evil Israel” (x). The exceptionally multiracial and multicultural society is condemned as “apartheid” and its efforts to defend its citizens while minimizing harm to Palestinian citizens are “dismissed as massacres.” “A complex reality in which the Palestinians have rejected repeated Israeli offers of statehood is dismissed as ‘occupation.'” (x)

What about Palestinians statelessness? Is this a strange thing? Not at all, writes Brog. Brog points to The Encyclopedia of the Stateless Nations, which lists more than 350 nations without a state, most of whom could be called “occupied.” The author of the Encyclopedia says the 350 are only a “fraction” of the world’s stateless nations.

Think of the better-known stateless nations today: the Kurds (30-32 million), the Tibetans (6.5 million), the Tamils of south India (70 million), the Welsh in Great Britain (3 million), the Assyrians and Chaldeans of Iraq (.4 million), and the Copts of Egypt (3-7 million).

Compare these numbers with the number of Palestinians: according to a UN estimate in 2010, 4.4 million. Modest by comparison with other stateless nations such as the Kurds and Tamils, and roughly equal to Tibetans and Copts.

Why then so much rage about the Palestinians and the relative silence over repeated persecutions and indignities accorded Tibetans and Copts?

Then there are the lesser known nations without a state: the Alewites of Syria, the Arab Druze, and the Arabistanis (also known as Ahwazis) who number 5-8 million. The latter live in Iran and are brutally suppressed by Iran’s government. They declared independence in 1923 but the rebellion was crushed by Persian troops. In 2005 the Iranians killed 130 of their protestors and imprisoned many more. Amnesty International reports that Iran has forcibly relocated Arabs to other areas and has eased the transfer of non-Arabs into their region. This is ethnic cleansing.

So if being stateless is fairly common in the world, and the Palestinians have been offered and have refused a state five times (more on this later), why so much attention to Palestinians? Is it because of their refugees? Tune in tomorrow.

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