The question of Palestinian statehood

JVL Introduction

Leila Farsakh, Prof of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Boston, provides an overview of the quest for Palestinian statehood since the seventies.

Despite the State of Palestine being officially recognized by 139 of 193 member states of the United Nations, and a non-member state since 2012, the Palestinian project of national self-determination in a separate state has been drained of emancipatory potential.

As Farsakh puts it,  “state building became about law and order, not about national unity or democratic representation”. Critical, but not dismissive, she insists that it “fulfilled an important historical role, serving as the vehicle for affirming Palestinian political existence as a national group with a right to political independence” when Zionism was trying (as now) to eradicate it.

But it is exhausted, and it is necessary “to reassess the relationship between statehood and self-determination and imagine a political resolution that goes beyond partition.”

The question goes back to 1948 and before: “Who has political rights in the land between the river and the sea, and how are these rights going to be exercised and protected? Can this land accommodate two national groups, and if so, under what political configuration?”

The task now is to imagine what political liberation might look like, to articulate an alternative “that is democratic, viable, and capable of protecting the equal political rights of Palestinians and Jewish Israelis”.

RK

This article was originally published by the Boston Review on Wed 5 Jun 2024. Read the original here.