Jordan Elgrably Interviews Rashid Khalidi
THE CRISIS OF OUR TIMES
Nationalism, Identity, and the Future of Israel-Palestine
Rashid Khalidi's Palestinian Identity, The Construction of a Modern Conciousness Movement (Columbia, 1997) was a major contribution to the contemporary historiography of the Palestinians. Grounded in the study of primary sources in Arabic--many housed in the Khalidi library in Jerusalem--along with interviews and detailed documentation culled from more than two dozen Arab newspapers and magazines, the book presents the "other side of the story," and in effect an irrefutable argument: that the Palestinian people not only exist, but have had a consciousness movement nearly as long as Jews have had Zionism. National identity, however--for Israelis and Palestinians--is not a fixed monolith, as Khalidi notes; his work is based on the premise "that national identity is constructed; it is not an essential, transcendent given, as the apostles of nationalism . . . claim." Nonetheless, the current crisis, with the collapse of the Oslo accords and a peace process which appears all but buried, has roots in the parallel struggle of the Jews and the Arabs of Palestine to forge a new identity in the aftermath of the second World War.
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Q: How do you see this sort of third wave of resistance, a second intifada as it were, reshaping Palestinian identity?
RASHID KHALIDI: I don't think it's going to reshape Palestinian identity. I think it's going to reshape the course of the so-called peace process between Palestinians and Israelis. . . it's really brought an end to the Oslo approach, the nine years that we've been engaged in since Madrid. It has bypassed Arafat . . . sooner or later it will force . . . the Israelis to come to terms with an issue that they've refused to come to terms with, which is removing settlements and ending occupation. I don't think you can negotiate while settlement building continues and while occupation continues.
Q: At times Israel reminds us of apartheid-era South Africa: draconian special emergency laws, pass laws and codes against both Palestinians and Israelis in the peace camp; in fact a great number of Israeli activists have been tossed into jail merely for cooperating with Palestinian activists. Why do you suppose American Jewish supporters of Israel fail to recognize Israel for what it is? Why do they support it so reverently?
RK: The mental framework in which they operate won't allow them to see what's happening. They can't accept that this is basically an apartheid system in creation. They've been brainwashed into forgetting that there's been an occupation of 90-odd percent of the West Bank . . . the Israeli Army has utter and absolute control over 90% of the West Bank . . . they don't see that, because they've been told that through the Oslo peace process, Israel has withdrawn its forces . . .
Q: Palestinians have not been successful in either military or political terms in achieving the aims of Palestinian national identity. What force could help them to achieve their dreams of an independent state with respected borders?
RK: I think the main problem is internal, but there is a need for fair negotiations between the sides. If anything, you should have the United States at the negotiating table on the Israeli side, and then it would be clear: you'd have the 900-pound gorilla and Israel together at the table, so they're one party. Then have the Palestinians and the European Union on the other side, and the United Nations in the middle. That would be a fair way to negotiate. The point is, end the farce which would have the United States is in the middle; the United States is not in the middle. The United States is actually worse than Israel on some issues. Israelis are easier to talk to about some issues than some American government officials are.
Palestinians have to have a completely different approach. They have to understand what they want, they have to focus on it, they have to put that message across to Israel, and they have to put that message across in this country. I mean look at the way apartheid was ended; apartheid was ended because what was happening in South Africa was coordinated with a whole diplomatic campaign. The ANC was watching abroad, it was one seamless message, one seamless campaign; everybody was doing the same thing towards the same end. That's not the case with the Palestinians. Specifically you have to decide how . . . to achieve independence. Well, we have to end this occupation. That should be the focus.
They should be speaking to the United States public and they should be speaking to the Israeli public. Those are the target audiences.
Q: How can they do this when the mainstream media is often closed to alternative messages, platforms?
RK : . . . the most important thing that some Palestinian leaders should be doing is have people out here; you can get access. . . . The media is like a prostitute in the sense that the picture will carry the day, even if the picture isn't favorable to the biases of the editor.
Q: What I sense from Arab American leaders and activists, is that they often feel a kind of powerlessness in access to the chambers of politics and media--and they are less well organized, having been here less time than the organized Jewish community, for example.
RK: I think that that's a big part of it. . . the other part of it is that we're not being supported from back home. I mean there is no official Palestinian support for anything like this. And it can only be done to a limited extent from here, in my view. The Edward Saids of this world, and people like me, are really very few and far between . . . . What you need is a reinforcement of that from within, from the inside core of Palestinian national identity, which is there, not here. It can't be a one-shot affair; it has to be systematic and ongoing. It has to be understood that the battlefield is the streets of Jerusalem, the hilltops of the West Bank, and the American and Israeli media, and the publics of these two countries. Everyone else is with us; literally, every other single place on the face of the earth is in support of the Palestinians, yet all of them together aren't a hill of beans compared to the United States and Israel, because the United States and Israel can basically do anything they please. They are the world superpower, they are the regional superpower.
Q: Everywhere we look today--in the Third World as well as in democracies such as the United States--the power of the people on the street, the protesters, is challenged; in fact protesters everywhere routinely get beaten, shot, and thrown in jail. Haven't democratic movements or expressions been severely curtailed by the power elites, by capitalism or multinational corporations?
RK: I would not under any circumstances underestimate the value of people making sacrifices in the street, protesters, who are beaten up in places like Seattle and L.A. and Prague, to take one movement, or the West Bank. That sacrifice is not in vain, in the sense that it forces an issue . . . people who are supportive of the IMF and the World Bank talk about the way these protests have forced them, fundamentally against their will, to reorient themselves, to deal with issues, to face things and how these issues are put on the national, political, and media agenda. . . . What you say about the power elites is entirely true; what you say about the kids getting their heads beaten in is true. And yet you would not have the discussion of the Palestine question, you would not have the word "occupation" in public discourse, were it not for [many] people killed. Now, I'm not saying the sacrifice is a welcome thing, I'm not saying that people in L.A. should have their heads broken open. It shouldn't happen. But sometimes, the only way to bring an issue forward is to be willing to make that kind of a sacrifice. And basically in the Palestinian case, this is not a rational calculation. People have just had it; they're fed up. It's like "I won't take it anymore," literally, to the point that tens of thousands of people are willing to go out and risk death, to make that point. . . .
You can't eliminate nationalism; at least there's no historical model in the modern world the last two hundred years for eliminating nationalism. You have to transcend it. And there are ways it can be transcended. Europe is an example; there are other parts of the world that go beyond nationalism. And that's what will have to be done in the Middle East. . . . People giving up aspirations--I mean there were once a lot of Germans who really wanted Alsace-Lorraine back, and now they just don't care. The Palestinians may want things, the Israelis may want things, but if there's going to be peace between these two peoples, they're going to have to give up on some of their aspirations.
--© Open Tent, 2000. -This article was abstracted from a much longer interview, the full text of which can be found at <www.opentent.org/khalidi.html> or call (323) 650-3157.
Rashid Khalidi is Professor of Middle East History at the University of Chicago, where he directs the Center for International Studies. He has taught there since 1987. Previously, he spent more than a decade teaching at the American University of Beirut, witnessing Lebanon's Civil War. Khalidi was one of the early Palestinian negotiators during the Madrid talks, 1991-1993. He is the recipient of numerous fellowships and grants, and he writes regular op-eds for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and The Nation.
Jordan Elgrably, an Arab Jew, is a writer and an activist who founded the Sephardi/Mizrahi organization Ivri-NASAWI in 1996, and Open Tent Middle East Coalition in 1998. He interviewed Rashid Khalidi in October during a visit to Los Angeles, where Khalidi delivered his lecture, "The Emergence of a Nationalism in the Modern Middle East." Khalidi asserted that most conflicts in the region are no more than 100 years old, even though Western rhetoric invariably uses the "age-old conflict scenario" to justify Middle East policy.