Comparing Palestine’s prospects for independence and peace

 https://johnmenadue.com/comparing-palestines-prospects-for-independence-and-peace/

Comparing Palestine’s prospects for independence and peace 

By Damien Kingsbury

 Aug 19, 2024

In trying to Palestine’s prospects of independence and peace with Israel, one is reminded of Tolstoy’s observation that ‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’. This is to say that, successful claims to independence share common features, but the circumstances of Palestine’s aspiration for independence are distinctively its own.

Despite this, comparisons have been, perhaps, inevitable. In this, some key principles appear to be universal to successful independence movements; they reflect a bonded political identity, they occupy a relatively clearly delineated territory, and they share a common grievance. These criteria apply to Palestine.

Two specific comparisons of, so far, unresolved claims to independence that are sometimes cited as similar to Palestine are those of Western Sahara and West Papaua. Where Western Sahara, West Papua and Palestine are similar is that their territories have been occupied by another, numerically large population.

In Western Sahara, under the banner of the Polisario Front, the Sahrawi people fought to achieve independence from colonial Spain when, in 1975, their territory was invaded by neighbouring Morocco and Mauritania. In this respect, Western Sahara bears closest similarity to East Timor and its invasion by neighbouring Indonesia as it underwent its own process of decolonisation from Portugal. The United Nations did not recognise Indonesia’s incorporation of East Timor, paving the way for an eventual referendum on independence in 1999.

Similarly, the UN also did not to recognise Morocco’s incorporation of Western Sahara (Mauritania having withdrawn in 1979). But a planned UN supervised referendum on independence in 1991 was thwarted when Morocco insisted on the dominant, transplanted Moroccan community in Western Sahara be included in the vote.

West Papua was nominally allowed a vote on independence in 1969, by a little over 1,000 hand-picked village leaders, at Indonesian gunpoint. Unsurprisingly, that sham vote – subsequently ratified by the UN – was for incorporation within Indonesia. The territory has since seen a significant influx of non-Melanesians, now comprising more than 40 per cent of the territory’s population.

By comparison, following the UK’s 1917 promise of a Jewish homeland, Mandatory Palestine saw increased Jewish immigration. With growing conflict between Jewish settlers and Palestinians and, following World War II, an influx of Jewish refugees, without Palestinian agreement, in 1947 the UK proposed to the UN that the territory be divided between Jews and Palestinians. As a result of the ensuing civil war, the UK withdrew and the state of Israel was unilaterally declared.

In response, Israel’s Arab neighbours invaded, sparking the first Arab-Israel War. Israel prevailed and Palestinians were largely expelled or forced to flee the Israeli state in what has been termed ‘the Catastrophe’ – ‘Nakba’. Subsequent war has only entrenched Israeli control over its own recognised territory as well, functionally, as over the Palestinian territories of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

As with Western Sahara, a 1995 agreement to transition towards Palestinian ‘final status’ – independence – for the remnant territories was subverted by Israel, in particular through establishing permanent settlements in the West Bank. Palestinian unity was also complicated by the civil war between the Fatah in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, when Fatah refused to recognise Hamas’ victory in the 2006 Palestinian Authority elections. The unity of independence movements has, historically, been critical to their success. The West Papuan independence movement is similarly afflicted by internal, if not fratricidal, divisions.

Perhaps another example of colonial occupation, if with a somewhat better outcome, is that of New Zealand. Under the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi, the indigenous Maori population agreed to British sovereignty in exchange for protection and recognition of ownership of their lands.

The critical differences are that, despite problems inherent in all post-colonial entities, New Zealand was established as a moderately progressive and inclusive state based on civic principles. By comparison, Israel was established as a largely exclusive state in which its civic principles are subordinated to largely ethno-nationalist principles. New Zealand incorporates its indigenous population within a civic democracy; Israel largely excludes the wider Palestinian population from what is, in effect, an ethno-state.

These two foundational state principles, of progressive civic nationalism and regressive ethno-nationalism, are, in the final analysis, mutually exclusive. Both Israel and the Palestinian resistance have increasingly redefined themselves in such ethno-nationalist rather than civic terms.

They key losers of this redefinition have been tolerance for the other and the status representative and accountable government. The other loser is, of course, the prospects of a peaceful resolution.

 

Damian Kingsbury is the author of ‘Separatism and the State’ and co-editor of ‘How Wars End’ (Routledge).

-----------------------------