The depoliticization of the Palestinian cause as a tool of colonial oppression

Insight by Basem Kharma and Youssef Siher, researchers

Too often we read on various news channels and hears in political discourse the term “Palestinian community,” almost always used to generally describe Palestinians, or people of Palestinian descent, as a group without any separations or distinctions whatsoever. This flattening of the term, which homogenizes diverse individualities into a single whole, is in fact nothing more than a legacy, still strongly present in Western societies, of that colonialist and Orientalist attitude inherent in the way media, cultural and power structures represent the “others,” regarded as a homogeneous mass, a compact, indivisible and all alike human block. 

According to this view, Arabs - and in this specific case, Palestinians - are all the same, victims to be rescued, sometimes dangerous, hardly civilized, but certainly still attached to outdated traditions and religions and worldviews that cannot be reconciled with “Western values” and, therefore, “universal”. Edward Said explained that one of the most inherently obvious aspects of the Orientalist approach to the Arabs is to describe the East as timeless, uniform, and incapable of defining itself. This attitude thus leads one to think that it is inevitable, and even scientifically “objective,” to take for granted the use of a systematic terminology full of generalizations to describe the Oriental.

It is admittedly true that in extraordinary situations, such as the one we have been experiencing since October 7, the various Palestinian realities around the world have tried, through a difficult work of dialogue between the parties, to unify into a single voice, representing the struggle of Palestinian anti-colonial resistance, in Italy as elsewhere. But taking this unity for granted, especially on the ideological and methodological approaches with which each side conceives and carries out its demands, is a distorted view and therefore dangerous and harmful to the Palestinian national liberation movement. In this sense, it is good to recall one of the crucial points that most characterizes the ideological divergences between the various Palestinian realities present in Italy as elsewhere: the normalization of relations with the Zionist colonizer. In particular, a watershed in defining the relationship with colonialism were the Oslo Accords. With them, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), headed by Yasser Arafat’s Fatah party, recognized Israel in exchange for the creation of a future Palestinian state on the ‘67 territories, namely Gaza and the West Bank. The Oslo Accords, however, further fragmented the Palestinian people leading to the exclusion from the decision-making tables of the issue of the “right of return,” or the return of Palestinian refugees to their homes. Today, in fact, more than half of the total Palestinian population (about 12.5 million) does not reside in Palestine having been driven out and forced into exile in 1948. In addition, Oslo established security cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority (PA) security apparatuses, often resulting in the PA itself making arrests on Israel’s instructions. This has led - and still leads - to a split in Palestinian society that, on the one hand, is irremediable and, on the other, is natural in defining its enemy and thus the primary contradiction to be addressed.

Today, the primary contradiction experienced by the Palestinian population, and preventing any development, is colonialism. It is in fact the brake that limits all activity and therefore is the first issue to be resolved in order to then be able to address the other contradictions within Palestinian society. Those who carry on the Palestinian struggle today see Oslo as a real betrayal, perpetrated by those who now hold power in an authoritarian manner by assuming the self-styled title of “Palestinian Authority.” To ask those who are fighting for the total liberation of Palestine to relate to and maintain a constant dialogue with those who have struck the Palestinian cause from behind is beyond outrageous and denigrating, also a symptom of a colonial attitude that short-sightedly wants to see the Palestinian movement as one without divergence. 

Even more serious and problematic, moreover, is the attitude that some Italian entities take in wanting at all costs to converge - under hypocritical pacifist slogans - the various parties toward a dialogue with the settlers of Palestinian land. This attitude, which does not respect the martyrs and exiles of Zionist colonialism, places the oppressed and the oppressors on the same level or, to better quote Palestinian journalist and intellectual Ghassan Kanafani, “the sword and the neck". To clarify the issue once and for all, there is no compromise and nothing less than the total liberation and decolonization of Palestine, from the river to the sea, is accepted. 

Who is the spokesperson for the Palestinians?

The desire to identify someone to speak on behalf of the “Palestinian community” is useful to the West to achieve two objectives: first, to delegate control of the “community” itself to a class that is inevitably linked to colonial institutions and, second, to homogenize positions, depowering them and reducing their demands, which are reduced from political to simple community, social and humanitarian issues. It often happens then that, just as the PA has been entrusted with the role of “spokesperson for the Palestinian people,” despite having authority only over the Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank, thus excluding the Palestinians of ‘48 and the entire Palestinian diaspora, in the same way this paradigm that reinforces the colonialist vision is replicated, albeit in a different way, in countries where Palestinians are found, including Italy. Since at the international level it is the PA that acts as the spokesperson for the Palestinians, at the local level those who espouse the positions of the PA self-concede the role of “spokesperson for the Palestinian community.” Such attitudes and positions are harmful, dangerous and misrepresenting the reality of the facts, which are far more complex and intricate than the easier - and politically instrumentalizable - dichotomous view with which power groups tend to approach history and its actors. Even more often it is movements and groups sympathetic to the Palestinian cause that seek this phantom “unity of purpose,” pushing for an artificial unification of Palestinian voices and ultimately seeking tout-court interaction with “the” Palestinian community. 

But by using attitudes and actions of this kind, solidarity movements are only delineating themselves as also carrying a colonial approach in dealing with Palestinians, falling fully within the narrative of the elites and bourgeois power structures that they themselves combat. It is therefore important to keep all this in mind when expressing and relating to Palestinian (and Arab in general) realities and individualities. It is necessary to overcome this mental limitation typical of colonial societies, and to accept the structural internal divisions and different approaches to anti-colonial resistance, if one really wants to help Palestinians in their national liberation struggle and be conscious actors in the anti-imperialist revolution.

A political and not just an identity-based cause

The element that is most apparent from the above contexts is a strong depoliticization of the Palestinian cause: the defining element becomes one of identity and not political positioning. In doing so, what is put before anything else is the defense of the existing in the face of the desire to totally eradicate Palestinians and their identity. While this is necessary, it is by no means sufficient and above all does not lead to the liberation of Palestine. For the liberation of Palestine, the gaze must be on the future and not on the past. If, for example, the position one adopts is a wish for a simple cease-fire today, for a return to October 6, one wonders what the situation on Oct. 6 offered. And the answer is that on October 6, Palestine was not free, Palestinians in Gaza were under a decades-long siege, Palestinians in the West Bank killed daily, Palestinians in ‘48 subjected to an oppressive colonial system, and above all, Palestinian exiles were still prevented from returning.

For this reason, adopting identity politics deliberately limits the cause’s spheres of action and delimits its future prospects. Rather than understanding the term community in an identity-only sense, it is convenient to give it a political valence as well. Therefore, as far as the Palestinian context is concerned, it is possible to consider that those who stand up for Palestinian national and social interests are within the Palestinian community, while those who oppose them and pursue their own specific agenda are estranged from their community. Therefore, with regard to any national liberation cause, and the Palestinian cause is among them, one of the first steps is to clarify who is really fighting for liberation from colonialism and who is directly or indirectly opposed to it. Only a total and complete end to colonialism is in fact capable of truly liberating the Palestinian people and allowing them to develop in the directions they believe in, and therefore our task here is to give voice to those who stand for true national interests, and to marginalize those who instead put their own before those of their people.