Palestine
From the Editors (March/April 1983)
Most readers are only too familiar with the litany of harassments endured by Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, from restrictions on personal freedoms to attacks on institutions and confiscation of land. Nonetheless, for the purposes of building campaigns to support Palestinian rights, and for a dearer understanding of the workings of the occupation, it is worth focusing on particular violations that are significant both for the victims and for that much-evoked phantasm, “world public opinion.”
West Bank Journal
Raja Shehadeh, The Third Way: A Journal of Life in the West Bank (London: Quartet Books, 1982).
My problem with the newspapers is that I can’t settle on the right time to read them. In the morning they darken the day, at noon they kill my appetite, after lunch they make me sick, and in the evening they set the pattern of my nightmares.
The 100-Year War
“Israel is fighting in Lebanon,” declared Israel’s armed forces chief of staff Raphael Eitan on July 10, “to win the struggle for Eretz Yisrael.” Addressing officers and soldiers of a front-line armored unit, Eitan declared that “destroying and uprooting the terrorists’ base in Lebanon, would weaken the Palestinians’ opposition to the Jewish presence in Eretz Yisrael.” [1] In Eitan’s view, “The principal enemy has been fighting us for Eretz Yisrael for 100 years.” [2]
From the Editors (May 1982)
Professor Menachem Milson, the Israeli “Arabist” who heads the West Bank occupation forces, compares the intensity and seriousness of the recent unrest there with the war of 1948. The Begin government, determined to root out all assertions of Palestinian nationalism, is trying to destroy those institutions that articulate the Palestinian national identity under occupation. These are the elected municipal councils and mayors, and institutions of higher learning such as Birzeit University. The mayors, representing major social and political forces, embody the support of the vast majority of the population for the Palestine Liberation Organization.
From the Editors (January/February 1982)
It is no easy task to comprehend the significance of religion in its political dimension. Here in the US, for instance, Black churches have played a vital and progressive role in the struggle for political and civil rights. More recently, fundamentalist and revivalist Christian churches have participated intimately in advancing the political fortunes of the new right. Other church people have been in the forefront of the campaigns against nuclear weapons. In Central and South America, “liberation theology” emerged out of fierce mass struggles against political oppression and. economic degradation, while the Catholic hierarchy remained committed, for the most part, to the ruling classes.
Two Views of Said, The Question of Palestine
Edward W. Said, The Question of Palestine (New York: Quandrangle, 1979).
In the late 1950s, my political education began at the knees, or rather the soapboxes, of Union Square’s old lefties. Saturday morning meanderings among the Fourth Avenue bookstores were followed by afternoon “classes” in New York’s equivalent of London’s Hyde Park. Every political tendency on the American left, each splinter group and faction, had its champions — and its critics.
“The Palestinian Demand for Independence Cannot Be Postponed Indefinitely”
Salim Tamari was born in Jaffa and now teaches sociology at Birzeit University, in the West Bank. He spoke with Penny Johnson, Peter Johnson and Judith Tucker in Boston in July 1981.
The Israeli military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza is entering its fifteenth year. How would you characterize the development of political forces among Palestinians during these years?
A Palestinian Option
Fred Halliday’s comments on the debate that constitutes the bulk of Towards a Socialist Republic of Palestine (1978) require a serious Palestinian response. Unwittingly, perhaps, Halliday’s comments tend to undermine this debate, and put a damper on Palestinian intellectual and passionate explorations of genuinely democratic options to their undemocratic, persistent and oppressive predicament.
Revolutionary Realism and the Struggle for Palestine
The discussion of socialist strategy in Palestine recorded in Towards a Socialist Republic of Palestine has lost none of its pertinence despite the fact that it was recorded some time ago, in 1976. Sadat’s initiatives have not yet revised the basic terms in which the problem has been set since 1948. The refugees remain in the camps, and new bands of Jewish settlers are entrenching themselves on the West Bank.
From the Editors (May/June 1981)
The question of Palestine has consistently been of great importance to our work ever since the first issue of MERIP Reports was published ten years ago, in May 1971. More recently, in our introduction to “The PLO at the Crossroads” (July-August 1979), we wrote that MERIP is interested “in encouraging further efforts to evaluate specific conditions at any given time and appreciate their implications for Palestinian strategy.” Reports since then have discussed the impact of Camp David on Palestinians in the occupied territories ("Palestinians Confront the Treaty," December 1979) and examined aspects of the current crises in Israeli society (“Israel’s Uncertain Future,” November-December 1980).
Tuma and Darin-Drabkin, The Economic Case for Palestine
Elias H. Tuma and Haim Darin-Drabkin, The Economic Case for Palestine (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1978).
This book does not seem destined to become a classic in the literature concerning a future Palestinian state. Its intent is both polemical and practical but because of its narrow economic scope it is addressed, to a small audience: those who oppose a West Bank-Gaza Strip state on economic grounds, and the future economic planners of such a mini-state. People who fall outside either category are likely to find The Economic Case for Palestine dry reading.
Israel Previews “Autonomy” with Halhoul Curfew
Muhammed Milham is the mayor of Halhoul, a West Bank town of mostly peasant farmers. In March 1979 the Israeli occupation authorities imposed a total curfew on the town for more than two weeks. The mayor here describes the events heading up to the curfew, its impact on the townspeople, and its implications for current Egyptian-Israeli negotiations over “autonomy.&rdquo The text is the edited transcript of an interview with Jim Zogby of the Palestine Human Rights Campaign in Washington, DC, in late April 1979.
On Thursday, March 15, the Israeli authorities imposed a 23-hour-a-day curfew on the town of Halhoul. It began like this.
The PLO at the Crossroads
Throughout the twentieth century history of Palestine, none of the numerous proposals for “partition” of the country have ever been accepted by any significant group of Palestinian Arabs in spite of the many proposals to that end prior to and following the forced dismemberment of the country in 1948. [1] Palestinian and Arab resistance on this point has been unequivocal and effective — at least until recently.
Introduction to “PLO at the Crossroads”
As Sameer Abraham points out in the article that follows, no proposal for the partition of Palestine has ever been accepted by any significant number of Palestinians. Such proposals have always had the intention of securing and legitimizing the Zionist presence in Palestine. But with the “transitional program” accepted by the Palestine National Congress in June 1974 we are faced with a proposal of different intent, for this time the suggestion has come from the Palestinians themselves.
