TOWARDS A GLOBAL SOLIDARITY MOVEMENT FOR A FREE PALESTINE

Engaging Governments, Parties, Institutions, and Mass Action Networks

Dr. Sami A. Al-Arian

“The siege will last until those who lay the siege feel like the besieged.”

—FROM A POEM BY MAHMOUD DARWISH

DESPITE NOT BEING born in Palestine, early on in my life I intuitively realized that I was Palestinian, and that being one meant that we had to struggle to survive. While I was born in Kuwait, grew up in Egypt and moved to the United States at the age of seventeen to pursue my college education, being Palestinian was an instinctive feature of my upbringing. To be a Palestinian in the diaspora is to be fully conscious of the historical struggle and grave injustices the people of Palestine have endured for more than a century—a history that I absorbed since childhood through the tragic experiences of my parents and grandparents.23 Although I never lived in Palestine, throughout my life, Palestine has lived in me. Palestine was a present theme in my early attempts at writing poetry at the age of twelve. While Palestinian children learn about the history and tragedy of Palestine at a very young age, we cannot help but be attracted to its beauty and majesty.

Even though I was born a decade after the 1948 Nakba, for my generation this trauma was not just a historical event that one might learn about in school, read in history books or hear from elders; rather, it was our personal story. Like for many others, every detail of it was etched in my parents’ memory and subsequently implanted in me. On the occasions in which adults would gather together in a living room to sip coffee or tea, it was the norm to hear them discuss politics—almost always related to Palestine. Whether it was about the past, the present or the future, reminiscing about Palestine and talking about returning to it one day was at the heart of the conversation.

Just before I reached the age of ten, I had to witness a devastating ordeal and humiliating defeat, the June 1967 war. The rest of Palestine was lost and, with it, the illusion, as propagated by Arab leaders and their brand of nationalism, of defeating an elusive enemy. I can still see the silent tears my father shed upon learning that Jerusalem had fallen one night that June. From that moment, I realized that Palestine was not just a place to mourn and a distant home, but a defining cause for a just struggle.

To grow up Palestinian was to feel homeless, estranged and besieged, even in friendly environments. Wherever you might be, the struggle for truth, justice, dignity and survival was awaiting your presence and involvement. My father was deported from Kuwait—a country where he had worked tirelessly for eleven years to support his young family—because he refused to inform on the Palestinian community for the government. A decade later, I had to leave Egypt after being denied a proper education because I was Palestinian. Then, after four decades in the United States, once again, I was forced to move because I refused to be silenced as I was relentlessly targeted for my activism for Palestine—even after having spent nearly twelve years in prison and under house arrest.24 Struggling for truth and justice for Palestine was not really a choice, because abandoning it would have meant forsaking my soul, erasing my memory or negating my existence.

During my high school years in Egypt, my frequent conversations with my best friend at the time, another Palestinian, was not just about truth, justice or our common tragedy, but also about our path to recovery, return and redemption. Our search for answers necessitated extensive reading and understanding of history, philosophy, religion, politics, literature and the human struggle for freedom. Another important characteristic that defined me growing up was my early embrace of Islam, not simply as a religious belief to seek personal redemption, but more significantly, as a source of knowledge, empowerment and social change. My friend and I were asking hard questions regarding identity, purpose, history, politics, culture, social change, resistance, the struggle for justice and the future.

By the age of nineteen, I had studied various ideologies and political philosophies, including modern Western political thought. We felt that there was a dimension in Islam that was totally absent from Western ideologies such as communism, socialism, liberalism or secular-humanism. These dialectics and epistemological foundations were two dimensional, like a straight line with two end points. At one end is Man and at the other is the Universe. On the other hand, Islam’s epistemological foundation is three dimensional, like a triangle with three indices: God, Man, and Universe. In the first model, man is at the center of attention and action, and the goal is to maximize the happiness and pleasure of “Man,” regardless of the consequences, whether good or bad. In this paradigm, political power is used to subjugate the “Universe” and those who are weak and vulnerable to the will of the powerful and strong. It encourages conflict, corruption and exploitation. In the second model, however, God is at the center of the believer’s life and activity. The purpose is, then, to please God to the best of one’s ability by maximizing the best qualities one could muster to attain God’s favor. In this paradigm, political power is used to defend the venerated values and high morals that keep man from transgressing against God or His creation, including the universe and other beings. Such values include truth, justice, peace, wisdom, righteousness, kindness, mercy, compassion, respect, love, patience, humility, modesty, charity, cooperation and appreciation of beauty.25 However, belief in these values is not enough; one should be willing to act upon them and, if needed, be ready to defend them.

Furthermore, with God being at the center and focus of the second model, one would find and utilize an essential source of knowledge, which is revelation, that unlocks as much of the universe’s mysteries and discoveries, enabling us to use our minds and capacities to recognize and understand the potentials and limitations of our faculties and our realities. Consequently, we found that Islam, when interpreted in a dynamic civilizational context, provided meaningful answers to many of the questions we had. We believed that struggling for justice and changing the conditions of our society could not be undertaken without understanding our history and civilization, while realizing that consequential change occurs only when fulfilling its requirements of knowledge, determination, struggle and resistance. But more significantly, we believed that the endeavor needed to be guided by the Qur’anic principles of truth, patience, faith and virtuous acts. These were the bases for attaining righteousness and earning God’s favor.

It was in December 1976 that I had my first introduction to the true nature and history of Zionism, after listening to a lecture by the late and notable Palestinian scholar, Ismail Al-Faruqi.26 His presentation opened my eyes to the history of the Jewish European experience and the Zionist enterprise, with a view to better understand our predicament and the challenges we face. I studied these topics through the works of many renowned scholars, including Abdelwahab Elmessiri, Alfred Lilienthal, Maxime Rodinson and Roger Garaudy, among many others. It was only a few years after this educational process began, that I shared a stage with al-Faruqi and another renowned scholar at the time, the late Ali Mazrui, at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor in 1982, in which I lectured on the dangers of the Zionist threat. At the end of this educational journey, I concluded that our struggle is not only about recovering the land or the legitimacy of a particular narrative but more significantly, about the true nature of the conflict. If the essence of the struggle is not understood properly or defined correctly, there will not be a just and lasting resolution. It was quite clear to me that the ultimate goal of the Zionist movement is to negate the existence of Palestinians by denying their history, erasing their memory, destroying their future and degrading their humanity. Moreover, Zionism represented not only a grave and serious threat to Palestinians and their history and culture, but also to Judaism itself by redefining its essence, and undermining the relationship of its adherents with other communities and faiths, particularly Islam.

The summer of 1982 was particularly difficult for me, as I witnessed the Israeli army invade Lebanon, besiege Beirut and subject it to daily bombardment for 77 days, killing more than 17,000 Palestinians and Lebanese. The savagery of this onslaught continued with the massacre of over 2,000 Palestinians, overwhelmingly women, children and the elderly, in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps near Beirut, weeks after PLO fighters had evacuated. It was further evidence of the vicious nature of the Israeli state that it empowered its Phalangist proxies to do its dirty work.

Living in the US and teaching at a university, as well as lecturing on dozens of campuses across the country over many years, allowed me to engage directly with a significant number of students and intellectuals on many important issues, particularly on Palestine. Furthermore, I spent several years meeting with the political class, including powerbrokers in Congress, policymakers and journalists, while working and lobbying on issues related to civil rights. Through these life experiences and direct engagement, it was clear that the Zionist narrative had significantly influenced politicians, journalists and was prevalent in popular culture—to the degree that the US, itself, has become a willing participant and partner in the crimes perpetrated against the Palestinian people.

My life in the United States taught me the importance of establishing institutions in order to deliver long-lasting impact and change. I established many institutions related to education, research, interfaith work, and civil and human rights advocacy. I also established two national organizations that focused on the Palestinian struggle.27 Early on, I realized the importance of engaging the public, and the inevitability of clashing with staunch supporters of Israel. America has become the main, and sometimes only, sponsor and patron of the Zionist state’s expanding enterprise.28 In effect, that meant that the US had become a vital arena to litigate the future and fate of the Palestinian issue. Israel could not survive without US military and economic support, in addition to American political and diplomatic protection. And Palestine could not be set free without breaking that unholy alliance.

Understanding the Essence of the Conflict

Many Arab and Western scholars argue that history has known two types of Jewish societies across the world: the Jews who lived in the Islamic world (the Jews of Islam), and the Jews who lived in Western Christian societies (the Jews of Christendom). However, the status of these two types of Jewish communities living in these two worlds was strikingly different. If a brief historical analysis is conducted, one would find that, since the Charter of Medina during the time of the Prophet Muhammad, the Jewish communities in Medina had lived as part of the Muslim community (the Ummah) and were recognized and honored as a distinct community within that city-state. For centuries, Jewish communities in Muslim lands were recognized and afforded their rights under successive Islamic states and empires in what the Jewish Encyclopedia would refer to as “the golden age of the Jews.” These periods, especially in Andalusia, enabled the Jewish communities to flourish, with the rise of notable scholars and sages.

On the other hand, Jews who lived in the Christian world under the Roman umbrella and successive European empires, were subjected to all forms of oppression and persecution (when they suffered immensely in these countries, they found Islamic societies open for them to migrate to and settle in, as occurred during the Inquisition in Andalusia, during which many Jews were given the choice between converting to Christianity, or being exiled or even killed in the most heinous ways). The Jewish communities who resided in Europe for centuries had to live in ghettos, deprived of their most basic civil and legal rights. Despite their relative liberation after the Enlightenment and Renaissance era, as well as the French Revolution, racism and discrimination against them continued, examples of which are abundant, including the Russian pogroms at the end of the nineteenth century and the Holocaust in the twentieth century. Perhaps the most infamous incident that motivated the early Zionists was the Alfred Dreyfus case in France in 1894. This affair contributed enormously to the founding of the modern Zionist political movement. Because of the raw racism and hatred that the trial displayed, many Jews concluded that it was impossible for them to live among European Christians and began exploring the idea of establishing their own nation-state, most certainly influenced by European nationalism and their brand of settler-colonialism.

Thus, the Zionist movement was born out of a purely European experience. Within a few years, the early Zionists allied themselves with the leaders of the European powers, especially Britain and France, and to a lesser extent, the United States. The Zionist movement found common ground with Britain in its attempt to divide and colonize parts of the Arab world. The 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement called for the partition and fragmentation of the Arab states of the Ottoman Caliphate. In 1917, the British government issued the Balfour Declaration, which called for the establishment of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine. The British hoped that having a Jewish settlement in the midst of the Arab and Muslim world would serve their strategic interests in the region. Similarly, the Zionist movement knew that, for its project to survive, it had to ally itself with a great power for legitimacy and protection.

Consequently, since the emergence of the Zionist movement at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, its main goal has been the ingathering of the diaspora of the world’s Jews in a national home modeled on the modern nation-state system in Europe. The Zionist movement implemented its program by mobilizing Jewish communities, first in Europe and then in the United States and beyond. This process underwent many stages, in which the Zionist movement established multi-faceted institutions, often in consideration of existing geopolitical realities, as its elites were constantly interacting with colonial powers, particularly Britain. In adopting the vision of a settler-colonial state in Palestine, the Zionist movement effectively served British strategic interests in dividing, weakening and colonizing the Arab and Islamic region, which had been dominated for centuries by the Ottoman Empire. During this period, the Zionist movement marshalled much of its resources in order to implement its vision. It also utilized all its capabilities to build alliances with colonial powers that could directly impact regional conflicts and influence the international system with a view to empowering the Zionist movement to impose its will on weak colonized peoples and regimes.

During the British Mandate, in the aftermath of WWI and the fall of the Ottoman Caliphate, Zionists started to vigorously implement their project in Palestine, triggering fierce resistance by the indigenous people. The Palestinians initiated multiple uprisings, demonstrating their complete rejection of what they perceived to be an aggressive encroachment on their homeland. They mounted a fierce struggle, despite their limited resources while under British occupation. Palestinian leaders had limited experience and a poor network of relations in the international sphere, which hindered their ability to seek independence and prevent the occupation of their land. This ultimately led to the 1948 catastrophe or Nakba. The Nakba resulted in the displacement from their homes, cities and villages of about sixty percent of the Palestinians at the time (about 800,000), as well as the occupation of approximately seventy-eight percent of Mandatory Palestine in what many, including my ancestors, remember as a dreadful, painful and dark moment in history.

While the conflict with the Zionist enterprise in Palestine has been a struggle over land and history, it is also a struggle over the future. Since it targets the Palestinians in order to take over their land, it is also a struggle for the existence and survival of the Palestinian people. Furthermore, the presence of an exclusivist Zionist state in the region has represented a great challenge and threat to the security and stability of Arabs and Muslims. The Arab regimes that faced Zionist militias in 1948 were weak, divided and mostly under the control or manipulation of foreign powers, which were working diligently to establish the Israeli state and provide it with the means of survival. The Arab regimes that were defeated in 1948 were mostly monarchic and embraced capitalist western-liberal values. They would eventually fall and be replaced by regimes that espoused left-wing or socialist ideologies, claiming to be revolutionary. In essence, the replacements were mostly military regimes that ruled and controlled their societies in an authoritarian fashion, trying to assert their legitimacy by merely claiming to confront the Zionist state.

This understanding coincided with one of my early influential readings that analyzed the political developments in the aftermath of the 1967 war. It was a short book that I read in the mid-1970s under the title After the Two Nakbas by Syrian author, Tawfiq al-Tayyeb.29 It was a cogent and piercing analysis of the corrupt and incompetent regimes that lost Palestine, first in 1948 and then in 1967, and called for the importance and necessity of Islamic activists to be part of the struggle. After the 1982 invasion of Lebanon, I edited and published a study under the title The Fall of the Third Illusion.30 It reiterated al-Tayyeb’s argument about the first two illusions (the 1948 and 1967 regimes) and analyzed the consequences of the fall of the third illusion embodied by the Palestinian national movement, which was dislodged from Lebanon and scattered around the Arab world after the 1982 invasion, away from any border state. The study argued that the rise of the Islamic movements would ultimately necessitate their involvement in the Palestinian struggle. But it also questioned the nature of this engagement and whether it would end up as a fourth illusion. At the time, this study was heavily despised by many Palestinian Islamists because it raised the issue of the involvement (or lack of it) of Islamists in the Palestinian cause. A considerable number of Islamic activists dismissed the notion that the Palestinian cause should be central for the Muslim Ummah, as I and few others had been advocating. Advocating this slogan in those years brought me much grief and enmity from others.31

The centrality of Palestine for the Muslim Ummah, and the struggle for justice in Palestine have several dimensions: spiritual, political and civilizational. Palestine is at the heart of the Muslim world, where Jerusalem has been recognized in the Qur’an ever since the advent of Islam as a special sacred place and exalted land, next to Mecca and Medina. Throughout history, millions of Muslims visited and prayed in Jerusalem, fulfilling a prophetic saying that blessed those who prayed on its grounds. When the Crusaders occupied Jerusalem in the eleventh century, at a time of weakness and disunity for Muslims, its fall was considered a painful defeat and desecration of the holy land. During the time of the Crusaders, the Muslim holy places in Jerusalem were desecrated and defiled. It took almost a century to unite and mobilize the Ummah (Muslim community) under the leadership of Saladin, to push back the invaders, liberate Jerusalem and restore it to its majestic and revered status. Because Islam recognizes Christianity and Judaism and holds them in high esteem and great respect, the history of Palestine and Jerusalem was one of harmony and peace between the faith communities when foreign invaders were repelled.

People across the Muslim world recognize the symbolic significance of Jerusalem. Unlike any other place in the Muslim world (except Mecca and Medina), the status of Jerusalem is considered to be symbolic of the state of the Muslim Ummah: if occupied, it is seen as a sign of decline and weakness of the global Muslim community or, when liberated, a proof of its vibrancy and strength. Similarly, those who fought against Muslim powers had also understood the symbolic nature of Jerusalem. Upon entering Jerusalem in December 1917, British General Edmund Allenby remarked, “The wars of the Crusaders are now complete,” while the French military general, Henri Gouraud, who conquered Damascus in July 1920, stood at Saladin’s grave, kicked it, and declared: “The Crusades have ended now. Awake Saladin, we have returned. My presence here consecrates the victory of the Cross over the Crescent.”

Another important dimension in this argument is the geopolitical aspect. The Israeli state that has occupied Palestinian land for decades is surrounded by millions of Muslims as well as Arab Christians—the majority of whom consider themselves part of the mosaic of Islamic culture and civilization. For Israel to survive, it must keep the states in the region divided, requiring it to ensure their weakness and vulnerability by colluding with colonial powers, as well as sowing war and discord on religious, sectarian, ethnic or other grounds. If anything, the history of the conflict in the past century has validated this equation: the survival of the State of Israel depends on the fragmentation, weakness and powerlessness of the Arab and Muslim states in the region. That’s why Israel’s geopolitical grand strategy is to be the region’s hegemon, requiring it to maintain its aggressive military posture. Such a state of affairs is untenable for all parties, and casts uncertainty, instability and misery on the whole region. The examples of Israel’s hands in the politics of the region that promote chaos, conflict, discord and wars are many.32

On the civilizational level, there are three main impediments to overcoming the deep civilizational decline facing many Muslim societies. They are: (a) the divisions among major countries and regions within the Arab and Muslim world; (b) their dependency on foreign powers, such as the US, in many spheres including security, economy, technology, culture, etc., while the US not only supports Israel in all aspects, but also adopts it as its client state that can be used as a club against any regime that may misbehave; and (c) the Westernization of societies through what Edward Said calls “cultural imperialism.”33 The record is quite clear regarding the destructive role Israel, the Zionist movement and its backers have played to impede any genuine political, socio-economic, scientific or technological progress across the Middle East, in general, and in the Arab world in particular.34

After the 1973 war and the subsequent de-facto abandonment by the Arab regimes of the Palestinian liberation project, the PLO came to accept the Zionist state, starting with the declaration of the Ten Point Program in 1974, then with the recognition of Israel at the Algiers Conference and the Geneva declaration in 1988, and ending with the secretive talks that led to the 1993 Oslo agreement.

In the Oslo agreements, Israel insisted on postponing all issues that had any implications related to the legal or political rights of the Palestinian people. Referred to as final status issues, they included the status of Jerusalem, the Palestinian right of return, Jewish settlements on Palestinian lands, borders and sovereignty. With the return of the PLO leaders to the 1967 occupied territories in 1994, the bulk of Palestinian political action shifted, for the first time, from the outside to the inside. Still, the Israeli military Occupation was able to effectively control most Palestinian decision-making, setting up a system in which the so-called Palestinian Authority (PA) had limited political maneuvering insofar as it was shackled by economic agreements that heavily favored the occupier, and bound to a humiliating security coordination meant to keep any meaningful resistance under control.

After the Oslo process and the PLO leadership’s recognition of the Zionist state, Israel had three strategic options for ending the conflict. If it chose to keep its Jewish majority and preserve the democratic façade of the state, it would have required the acceptance of what was called the two-state solution which, in essence, would have given the Palestinians a truncated state on roughly the pre-1967 borders. But if it chose to keep all the Palestinian land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, while purportedly allowing democratic structures for all the inhabitants of the land, it would have meant accepting the so-called one-state solution, in which Palestinian Arabs would be granted equal civil and political rights to Israeli Jews. Of course, this option, which would have ended the Zionist dream of having exclusive control over the Holy Land, has so far been rejected by all Zionist parties, regardless of ideological or other differences, because the core of the Zionist ideology rests on the belief of Jewish supremacy and exceptionalism, and the refusal to grant equal rights to non-Jews. While the one-state solution was a Palestinian goal that the PLO had called for before it adopted the goal of the Palestinian state in 1974, the idea was vehemently rejected outright by all Zionist parties and their western allies.

The two-state solution, which was the goal of the Oslo process that many believed would end the conflict, has also gained the support of the so-called international community and great powers. However, with the continued colonization and expansion of Zionist settlements (colonies) during the post Oslo years, most international experts now recognize the impossibility of establishing a viable Palestinian state in the West Bank. The Israeli choice, as demonstrated by its strategy and policies, has been to maintain the occupation over all the historical land of Palestine and annex it, albeit gradually, and by establishing facts on the ground, either for religious, ideological, historical or strategic reasons, or through cost and benefit analysis against an opponent they consider weak, vulnerable and divided.

The path chosen by Israel has been clear: the complete rejection of both the one- and two-state solutions, in favor of an exclusionary Israeli Apartheid state. With this path, Israel is trying to convince the world that there is a fourth option: Palestine as a metamorphosed and demilitarized entity with limited sovereignty, not unlike the ten kingdoms of the Bantustans of South Africa. With Israel’s decision to kill the prospect of a negotiated settlement with a feeble PA, whose legitimacy is already questionable, the latter has reached its tragic end as the decades-old political process has resulted in an abject failure, awaiting a slow death.

Laying out a Vision

As a consequence, the logical response of the Palestinian national project must now be to return the Arab-Israeli conflict to its crux, by realizing the paradox of the Zionist project and its refusal to accept the Palestinian Arab existence in the land, recognize Palestinian rights or coexist on an equal basis. Therefore, the strategic goal of the Palestinian national project must be to dismantle the Zionist project with all its institutions and manifestations. In short, the goal is to completely de-Zionize Palestine. Some may say that this is unattainable due to the massive imbalance of power between the two sides. But the Zionist project, like any human project, has certain characteristics and features that must be analyzed and synthesized in order to understand its disposition, and to identify its strengths and weaknesses, capabilities and shortcomings. Thus, for the Palestinian national liberation project to realize this objective, it must provide a complete and comprehensive understanding and deconstruction of the nature and evolution of the conflict with Zionism. My vision for the just resolution of the struggle is predicated on the following:

1) The full right of return to the historical land of Palestine of the Palestinian people everywhere must be recognized and accepted. Since the Zionist project is based on the denial of the Other, there is no way to recover these rights except by dismantling it once and for all on the grounds that it is a danger, not only to the Palestinians and the people of the region, but also to Judaism itself. Zionism has defined itself as an ideology that ties Judaism and its adherents to a territory rather than to a belief system. This concept is dangerous to the Jewish identity and those globally who identify as Jewish, because it makes them complicit in crimes they may actually oppose or towards which they are at least apathetic.

2) This conflict is greater than the capacity of the Palestinian people to resolve on their own with their limited means or capabilities. Had it not been for the steadfastness, persistence and endurance of the Palestinian people to continue their struggle for more than a century, as well as the inability of the Zionist movement and its regional and international supporters to eradicate them or force their surrender, this conflict would have ended a long time ago. The Palestinian people were—and will remain—the spearhead in this conflict and will continue to pay the heaviest price for their sacrifices, and the sacrifices of future generations. This is their destiny. They either live under occupation, subject to the will of their enemy with humiliation and disgrace, or they remain defiant with their resolve, honor, resilience and continued resistance until their goals are achieved. Their goals are to liberate their land, return their people to their towns and villages and defeat their enemy’s plans to destroy them. However, despite all this, the Palestinian people are only a part (even if an essential one) of the power equation. The equation is simple: the Palestinians’ efforts—on their own—will not be enough to resolve this problem, but the problem cannot be resolved without them.

3) The Zionist project was a dream of the early fathers of the project who wanted to solve the “Jewish problem” in Europe. Their leaders argued that they could solve this problem at the expense of the Palestinians and the Arabs. Therefore, the Zionist movement harnessed all its resources and capabilities, established international alliances, built institutions and used all tactics and mechanisms to achieve its goals. Similarly, the Palestinian national project must be liberated from its confinement to just the Palestinians and transformed into a global and human liberation project that mobilizes all energies and capabilities, not only within the Arab and Islamic contexts, but across the whole world. It is a just liberation struggle against a racist, aggressive and ruthless settler-colonialist movement. Such a struggle requires the establishment of a global solidarity movement with the Palestinian struggle for liberation. It will also transform the Palestinian cause from being a local or regional struggle to become a universal one at all levels, including the enlisting of global leaders who assume their role and earn their legitimacy in the struggle through their efforts, commitment and sacrifices.

4) With the fall of the Oslo process and the end of the illusion of the two-state solution, sooner or later the center of gravity of the Palestinian cause, with its various manifestations, will move abroad again. This, of course, does not mean the end of the role of the struggle of the people inside the Occupied Territories, but rather its transformation after ending the role of the Palestinian Authority as a partner and collaborator of the occupier (by limiting and suppressing the resistance, as well as reducing the cost of the occupation). It will also result in the emancipation of the cause from the shackles of being merely local or regional to becoming part of the universal struggle for justice and freedom. In addition, this will allow those inside to take a more global leadership role to continue their resistance and shake up the occupation. Today, the Palestinians abroad represent more than half of the Palestinian people, while the other half is under occupation, siege or living under racist domination and a discriminatory system. Consequently, the logical result of this transition and transformation in the clash with the Zionist project is the rise of activities and the intensification of direct actions targeting the Occupation and its institutions and tools at all levels, in all fields and across all geographies.

The task of the Palestinian national project, then, will not be limited, as it was in previous decades, to the issue of establishing a demilitarized mini-state that, in reality, would continue to be under military occupation and oppression, as is the case of the vanquished and defeated. Thus, there will be two main missions for this project. The first is to support the Palestinian people in Palestine and in the refugee camps so that they continue their resistance and existence until they gain their full rights. The second mission is to engage and expose the global Zionist movement and its powerful backers worldwide at all levels and in all fields, economically, politically, legally, socially, culturally, academically, artistically, on human rights, in the media and in the courts. Not a single sphere or geography where myths and lies are propagated should be spared.

5) Like any political entity or social movement, the Zionist state, since its inception, has factors, components and strategic imperatives that guarantee its survival and continuity. Therefore, the strategic task for the Palestinian national liberation project will be to identify these factors and imperatives and exert all efforts to undermine, weaken and end them by all means available. Because many of these imperatives may be outside the control of direct Palestinian action, this reinforces the call for an effective global solidarity movement that may include states, governments, institutions, movements, parties, celebrities, as well as popular and mass action networks that utilize strategic plans and integrated efforts to undermine these factors and weaken these imperatives. This strategy, in turn, will gradually lead to the dismantling and collapse of the Zionist project just as other aggressive or racist regimes had fallen in the past, such as the apartheid system in South Africa.

6) The people must play an enormous role at the heart of this project not just the elites. Other people everywhere will see that they can play a major role in confronting the Zionist project and in supporting the Palestinian people until apartheid ends. This act of solidarity and engagement will not be limited only to the political, media or legal spheres, but will include everything that weakens the Zionist project. Resistance against it and the struggle against its colonization, expansion and racism will be the major mantra of the global liberation movement.

7) When the Palestinian cause becomes a requisite part of, if not at the center of the global struggle against injustice, occupation, oppression, racism, tyranny and exploitation, then the conflict will become not just global in its outreach but humane in its essence. It will transcend other conflicts and empty them of their destructive characteristics (be they sectarian, ethnic, tribal, class or ideological conflicts) that have preoccupied many parts of the region and the developing world for decades. At that time, Palestine will provide the scale, the compass and the rule, not because its people are more oppressed or their suffering is greater than others, but because of the nature of the conflict and the Zionist challenge that targets geography, history, the future and what it means to be a dignified human being.

8) As the Palestinian national liberation project realizes its universal appeal after the colossal failure of Oslo and, after it becomes the symbol for fighting for justice and freedom worldwide, and identified as the leading struggle against oppression and hegemony, it will become an indispensable partner for liberating the weak and poor of the world, like many global liberation and human rights movements that have struggled against exploitation, racism and enslavement.

9) This project, after adopting its strategic plan, establishing its institutions and activating its operational plans (many of which already exist but need activation and networking), will represent the core of all direct actions against the Zionist project, its institutions and its regional and global sources of strength.

10) With the escalation of all forms of resistance that would collectively weaken the strategic imperatives of the Zionist project, a certain historical moment would arise in which a strategic change will occur where the balance of power would shift, and where the aggressive, racist project would disintegrate and collapse after the factors for its survival and the imperatives of its continuity have been eliminated or greatly diminished.

In a previous presentation, I had outlined twelve main imperatives for the survival and continuation of the Zionist project on which it depends for its existence, expansion and control within the global political scene. Some of these imperatives are already beginning to erode.35 The global project for Palestinian liberation, then, must intensify its efforts and action, and focus on the mechanisms, tools, and tactics necessary to weaken all or most of these imperatives that will, eventually, lead to the dismantling of the ever-present racist and aggressive Zionist project. The main point of the vision here is that achieving the goal of dismantling this project as an end to the Israeli-Arab or Palestinian conflict is closely linked to the end or collapse of most, if not all, of these strategic imperatives.

Conclusion

This essay has briefly presented a grand vision about the liberation of Palestine from a racist colonialist enterprise. It can be summarized as follows. There are crucial imperatives that guarantee the existence and survival of the Zionist project. When all, or most of the aforementioned strategic factors are challenged, weakened and become inoperable, this would, in turn, weaken the Zionist state, jeopardize its existence and force its disintegration and collapse over time. Therefore, those who care about the Palestinian cause or work for its liberation at all levels must examine these imperatives and deal with them accordingly, in order to revitalize the struggle against the Zionist project.

In addition, the Zionist project will also be greatly weakened when structural and strategic changes take place in the not-too-distant future, whether internationally or at the regional level, which are based on many geopolitical factors related to the gradual transformation of the world into a multipolar system. These changes will force Israel to make massive concessions by eliminating or lessening its deep-rooted racist policies. In addition, there are many internal fault lines within Israeli society that will lead to its destabilization and significant weakening over time (Arab vs. Jew, Mizrahi vs. Ashkenazi Jew, secular vs. religious, rich vs. poor, settlers vs. city dwellers, old vs. young, etc.)

Furthermore, strategic shifts in the balance of power can be achieved when a consensus of vision, will and action are developed wisely, collectively and simultaneously. Additionally, shifts in allies and foes are part of the strategic power equation and are gradually shifting in favor of Palestinian rights. Half a century ago, Turkey and Iran were considered in Israel’s camp, as parties with whom the Zionist state would collaborate, ally and coordinate against their Arab neighbors. Today, Israel and behind it the Zionist movement and its allies consider these countries to be in the camp of their opponents. This strategic change in the balance of power is the best evidence that strength and weakness are not inevitable constants, but rather variables as long as the struggle continues, carried forward by believers in the vision, who have a determined will and strive with all their utmost efforts until their goals are achieved.

Finally, one must emphasize the importance of creating a global solidarity movement that seeks to end the Israeli apartheid regime by activating and employing many tactics including those of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The objective of such tactics is to isolate the Israeli apartheid state and force its racist-colonialist system to eventually disintegrate or collapse. This vision will lead to the increasingly vital role of people outside Palestine in the struggle against the Zionist project, after an absence of more than three decades. But this time, the struggle is not just a Palestinian struggle, carried out by Palestinians for a limited objective. It will be a universal struggle across the world, carried out by every person who cares about justice, freedom, equality and truth. This, of course, does not mean dwarfing the role of the Palestinian struggle inside, but rather their integration as they complement each other, with the realization that a large part of the struggle will become global, touching everyone and everywhere.

Naturally, many Palestinians abroad as well as activists for the Palestinian cause worldwide will spearhead this endeavor, implement this vision and execute its action plans. They will propel it forward by creating or activating all needed institutions to carry it out. This Palestinian act of resistance must also be complemented and shared in action, commitment and engagement by international solidarity movements, working side by side in all places and at all levels and in all fields, to invigorate the struggle, not for the sake of demarcation of borders or the creation of a truncated state, but rather for the sake of dismantling a racist colonialist ideology and its global manifestations.

While the Zionist settler-colonial state targets the land and the human being, the end of injustice and racism in Palestine will not only lead to the restoration of justice and freedom for the Palestinian people but will also save Judaism and its adherents from the racist doctrines of Zionism. In essence, this vision seeks not only to liberate Palestinians, but also to prevent the desecration of the great prophetic tradition of Judaism. The West, because of its racism, xenophobia, and anti-Semitism, has been unable to solve its “Jewish problem” (as they historically characterized it). However, the history of the Arab and Islamic world demonstrates that any Jewish person oppressed or persecuted in the West or elsewhere is welcome to migrate, and to live safely with dignity, to wherever he/she wants in the vast Islamic world, from Morocco to Indonesia, but without the exclusivist mentality and racist ideology that comes at the expense of the Palestinian people.

23 Sami Al-Arian, In Yasir Suleiman (Ed.), Being Palestinian: Personal Reflections on Palestinian Identity in the Diaspora (Edinburgh University Press, 2016), 48–53.

24 See Shackled Dreams: A Palestinian’s Struggle for Truth, Justice, and the American Way: The Story of Sami Al-Arian (National Liberty Fund, 2004).

Also, for a synopsis of my trial, see the documentary, USA vs Al-Arian, Jan Dalchow and Line Halversen Film production (98 min.), 2007. Link: https://vimeo.com/128413718

25 For a more elaborate discussion on this topic see: Ismail Raji Al-Faruqi, Al Tawhid: Its Implications for Thought and Life (Herndon, VA: International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1994). See also my presentation, Sami Al-Arian, Understanding Tawhid: The Basic Principle of Islam, April 25, 2020 (95 min.), CIGA Ramadan Webinar Series #1, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDX89EbxyiM

26 Ismail Raji Al-Faruqi, Islam and the Problem of Israel (TOP Publications, 2005).

27 The Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) in 1981 and the Islamic Committee for Palestine (ICP) in 1988. I had to leave IAP in 1983 as a result of a dispute mentioned in this piece.

28 See my study, Sami Al-Arian, Israel and the United States: From Enabler to Strategic Partner (CIGA Publications, Istanbul Zaim University Press, 2019). Link: https://www.izu.edu.tr/en/ciga/publications/publications/geopolitical-strategic-studies

29 Tawfiq Al-Tayyeb, Ma Ba’da Al Nakbatayn (After the Two Catastrophes) (Germany: Islamic Center of Aachen, 1968).

30 Mus’ab Al Zubeiri (pen name), Suqoot Al Wahm Al Thaalith (The Fall of the Third Illusion) (Islamic Association for Palestine, USA, 1982).

31 Most Palestinian Islamic activists in the late 1970s and early 1980s dismissed the notion that Palestine was the central cause of the Islamic movement or the Muslim Ummah. Some contended that it was God who was the central cause by seeking His pleasure. The majority, however, thought that the establishment of an Islamic state was the central issue. In 1982, I had a two-hour debate on the centrality of the Palestinian issue with another Islamic activist in an “invitation only” gathering that had over 120 people, the majority being Palestinian. At the end of the debate, not a single person in the audience supported my argument. However, by the late 1980s during the first Palestinian Intifada (1987–1991), the issue was no longer controversial and there was almost a consensus among Palestinian Islamic activists affirming the importance and centrality of the Palestinian cause. Another source of tension in the early 1980s was my advocacy to expand Palestinian activism, and involve non-Palestinian and non-Muslim activists.

32 Some of the countries impacted by Israel’s direct involvement to break them up, sow discord, encourage civil war, or face the wrath of its war machine since its founding include Lebanon, South Sudan, the Kurdish region in Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, and Iran, just to name a few. See also the Oded Yinan Plan, The Zionist Plan for the Middle East, translated and edited by Prof. Israel Shahak (The Association of Arab-American University Graduates, USA, 1982). Link: https://dokumen.pub/the-zionist-plan-for-the-middle-east.html

33 Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Vintage, 1994).

34 See for example, David D. Kirkpatrick, Into the Hands of the Soldiers: Freedom and Chaos in Egypt and the Middle East (New York: Viking, 2018). In the book the author details how Israel and its allies in the State and Defense Departments, as well as its regional allies thwarted Egyptian democracy as they supported and defended the 2013 military coup.

35 See my presentation, Sami Al-Arian, Ending the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A Geopolitical Analysis, May 15, 2020. Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaNW9AH6uVo