The Re-Emergence of the Single State Solution in Palestine/Israel

Providing the first in-depth intellectual and organizational mapping of the single state idea’s recent resurgence in Palestine/Israel, this book enquires into its nature as a phenomenon of resistance, as well as into its potential as a counterhegemonic force in the making against the processes of Zionism.

Reconstructing this moment of re-emergence through primary material and interviews with diverse influential intellectuals, its analysis highlights their self-understandings, worldviews, strategies and perceptions of the phenomenon in which they are involved, while questioning whether the single state idea has the potential to become a Gramscian-inspired movement of resistance against Zionism. In presenting this rare insight into a resistance movement in the making, this book resurrects an empowering image of Antonio Gramsci infused with the writings of Edward Said. This it does in an effort to both problematize the dominant interpretations of Gramsci’s writings in International Relations, and to decolonize the abstract way in which resistance and counterhegemony are often studied in the discipline.

Contributing a mapping of a silenced alternative and hopeful way forward in the context of escalating violence, this book is essential reading for those studying the Arab–Israeli conflict, Middle East Politics and International Relations.

Cherine Hussein is currently a Research Fellow at the Council for British Research in the Levant (CBRL), and the Deputy Director of the CBRL’s Kenyon Institute. She is also a Visiting Research Fellow at Sussex University’s International Relations Department, where she received her PhD. Her research focuses on the politics of social transformation in the Middle East, with a particular interest in the writings of Antonio Gramsci and Edward Said, and the role of organic intellectuals in instigating social change.

ROUTLEDGE STUDIES ON THE ARAB–ISRAELI CONFLICT

Series Editor: Mick Dumper, University of Exeter

The Arab–Israeli conflict continues to be the centre of academic and popular attention. This series brings together the best of the cutting edge work now being undertaken by predominantly new and young scholars. Although largely falling within the field of political science the series also includes interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary contributions.

1.   International Assistance to the Palestinians after Oslo

Political Guilt, Wasted Money

Anne Le More

2.   Palestinian Political Prisoners

Identity and Community

Esmail Nashif

3.   Understanding the Middle East Peace Process

Israeli Academia and the Struggle for Identity

Asima A. Ghazi-Bouillon

4.   Palestinian Civil Society

Foreign Donors and the Power to Promote and Exclude

Benoît Challand

5.   The Jewish–Arab City

Spatio-Politics in a Mixed Community

Haim Yacobi

6.   Zionist Israel and Apartheid South Africa

Civil Society and Peace Building in Ethnic-National States

Amneh Daoud Badran

7.   The Political Right in Israel

Different Faces of Jewish Populism

Dani Filc

8.   Reparations to Palestinian Refugees

A Comparative Perspective

Shahira Samy

9.   Palestinian Refugees

Identity, Space and Place in the Levant

Edited by Are Knudsen and Sari Hanafi

10. The Rise and Fall of Arab Jerusalem

Palestinian Politics and the City since 1967

Hillel Cohen

11. Trans-Colonial Urban Space in Palestine

Politics and Development

Maha Samman

12. Zionism and Land Tenure in Mandate Palestine

Aida Asim Essaid

13. Women, Reconciliation and the Israeli–Palestinian Conflict

The Road Not Yet Taken

Giulia Daniele

14. UNRWA and Palestinian Refugees

From Relief and Works to Human Development

Edited by Sari Hanafi, Leila Hilal and Lex Takkenberg

15. The Naqab Bedouin and Colonialism

New Perspectives

Mansour Nsasra, Richard Ratcliffe, Sarab Abu Rabia-Queder and Sophie Richter-Devroe

16. Israel–Palestine in the Print News Media

Contending Discourses

Luke Peterson

17. The Re-Emergence of the Single State Solution in Palestine/Israel

Countering an Illusion

Cherine Hussein

The Re-Emergence of the Single State Solution in Palestine/Israel

Countering an Illusion

Cherine Hussein

First published 2015

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

© 2015 Cherine Hussein

The right of Cherine Hussein to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Hussein, Cherine.

The re-emergence of the single state solution in Palestine-Israel : countering an illusion / Cherine Hussein.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Arab-Israeli conflict--1993---Peace. I. Title.

DS119.76.H875 2015

956.9405’4--dc23

2014030632

ISBN: 978–0–415–71332–0 (hbk)

ISBN: 978–1–315–73754–6 (ebk)

For Pakinam and Hassan, a love that lights up all my skies,

For Perihane, my mirror, my strength, and so much of my laughter,

For Seif, my sweetness, my rhythm, and all the hugs in our house,

For the Cairo I forever carry in my heart,

For Egypt, may it one day reflect the life affirming beauty of its long enduring people.

Contents

Acknowledgments

List of acronyms

Introduction

The single state movement in Palestine/Israel

Theoretical framework: Edward Said, Antonio Gramsci, and a decolonial approach

Methodological reflections

A note on limitations

Structure of the argument

Note

Interlude: The many images of Antonio Gramsci

The politics of interpretation, and the recovery of a silenced revolutionary project of resistance

1    Edward Said and revitalizing Gramsci’s project of counterhegemony: Laying theoretical foundations

Introduction

Edward Said, postcolonialism and neglected images

Edward Said: A brief look into a spirit of opposition

Postcolonialism and neglected images of Edward Said

Edward Said and buried images of Gramsci

A Saidian inflected Gramsci

Re-centring the revolutionary role of the intellectual

The philosophy of praxis, geography, and counterhegemony

An emphasis on the critique of ‘common sense’

Conclusion: Towards the invention of new souls

2    The context: The Oslo Accords and the hegemony of Zionist common sense

Introduction

The Context: The Oslo Accords and their aftermath

The Oslo Accords: Circumstances of emergence and the groundwork lain for the following ‘peace process’

Accepting a two-state paradigm and the main features of Oslo

Extent Oslo represents a departure from pre-Oslo

Conclusion: Towards a countering of Zionist common sense

Notes

3    The re-emergence of the single state solution: An intellectual mapping of an emergent movement

Introduction

Critiques of Oslo

The centrality of Edward Said

The re-emergence of a single state movement

A critique of the common sense of Oslo and after

Reinserting silenced facts on the ground

An anti-Zionist conception of the world: Intellectual points of beginning, unity, and reorientation

A unified critique of Zionism

Transcending Zionism: Positive intellectual reorientations

Points of inclusion and exclusion

Conclusion

Notes

4    The re-emergence of the single state solution: An organizational mapping of an emergent movement

Introduction

A sketch of the organic intellectuals

The Palestinian diaspora, the Palestinian refugees, and the Palestinians under Occupation Bloc

The anti-Zionist Jewish-Israeli Bloc

The Palestinian citizens of Israel

Strategies of resistance advanced by the single state movement

Conferences, networks, and uniting theory and practice

Joint action between Jewish-Israelis and Palestinians

Hamas, the Israeli right, and some geopolitical considerations

Conclusion: Divisions within the whole and a Gramscian process of transformation

Notes

5    Building a war of position: The tactic of BDS, anti-Zionist Jewish voices, and the single state solution

Introduction

The single state movement and the tactic of BDS

The BDS call as part of the single state movement

The politics of solidarity, the BDS tactic, and the single state strategy

Building a war of position: Mobilizing civil society in Europe and North America

A geographical focus on Europe and North America and the emergence of an anti-Zionist Jewish Bloc

The BDS movement: A gradual expansion within civil societies

Conclusion: BDS and the potential for an anti-Zionist war of position

Notes

Conclusion: Reflections on Saidian-Gramscian counterhegemony

Appendix: Key figures in the resurgence of the single state solution (cited by the author)

Bibliography

Index

Acknowledgments

The making of this book would not have been possible without the support of many wonderful people, to whom I am grateful. To those specifically acknowledged in the little space below, this writing owes a special debt, and profound wells of gratitude.

To the intellectuals and activists who participated in this research with warmth, insight and generosity, fuelled it with passion, and inspired it into becoming. Without them, the pages that follow would not exist.

To Jan Selby and Benno Teschke, for taking all of my enthusiasm for this project and guiding its chaotic process of transformation into a coherent piece of writing. To Jan for his clarity, commitment and attention to empirical detail. To Benno for many pleasurable conversations on Gramsci and the philosophy of praxis, his attention to my voice, and his unwavering eye on the big picture.

To my community of heroes at Sussex University, who were my moments of delight, my sanity and my saving grace. To Synne, Maia, Hela and Katya for saving me when I needed it most, for a beautiful friendship, and for conversations that always led me back to myself. To Ishan, Clemens, Steffan, Ole, Andrea, Francesca and Can for uplifting days and nights filled with music, laughter, and love.

To my friends and family in Egypt, who remain my greatest inspirations, my places of deepest happiness, and the anchors in all of my life journeys. To May S., May F., Yasmine R., Yasmine B., Jenan, Dina, Karine, Hala, Amna, Sawi, Marwa, Nassar, Magda, Amr M., Amr C. and Nayera for being parts of my self I would be lost without, and for always reaffirming in me that life must be lived with openness, humanity and joy despite its dark moments.

To my grandfather who first taught me how beautiful revolutions can be, but did not live to see the fleeting beauty of ours.

And mostly, to my parents Pakinam and Hassan, and to Perihane and Seif, who will forever be my home, and the brightest lights in my life.

List of acronyms

AATW

Anarchists Against the Wall

ANC

African National Congress

AIPAC

American Israel Public Affairs Committee

AIC

Alternative Information Center

APJP

Architects and Planners for Justice in Palestine

BDS

Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions

BNC

Boycott National Council

BRICUP

British Committee for Universities for Palestine

CAIA

Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid

CUPE

Canadian Union of Postal Workers

DOP

Declaration of Principles

EI

Electronic Intifada

ICAHD

International Committee Agains Home Demolitions

ICJ

International Court of Justice

IJAN

International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network

IJV

Independent Jewish Voices

IR

International Relations

JA

Jewish Agency

JAZAN

Jewish anti-Zionist Academic Network

JNF

Jewish National Fund

LON

League of Nations

PA

Palestinian Authority

PACBI

Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel

PLO

Palestinian Liberation Organization

OPT

Occupied Palestinian Territories

SOAS

School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London

UN

United Nations

UNGA

United Nations General Assembly

UNSCOP

United Nations Special Committee on Palestine

UNR

United Nations Resolution

WBGS

West Bank and Gaza Strip

WZO

World Zionist Organization

Introduction

The single state movement in Palestine/Israel

Few handshakes in history have been celebrated more for ushering in a new dawn of peace in the Middle East than that between Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin after the signing of the Oslo Accords in 1993. Perceived to have inaugurated a new era of hope in the search for peace and justice in Palestine/Israel, this moment enshrined the two-state solution as the only possible, viable solution to the conflict within the international arena, as well as within the hearts and minds of many diverse publics around the world. Since then, the two-state solution has continued to both dominate, and frustrate, the official search for peace in Palestine/Israel. In parallel to this however, a more obscured struggle of resistance—centred upon the single state idea as a more liberating pathway towards justice—has re-emerged against the hegemony of Zionism and separation, and the shrinking territorial space for a viable two-state solution in the contested land.

Crystallizing in the aftermath of the principle and processes of separation embraced and exacerbated by the Oslo Accords, this phenomenon of resistance seeks to highlight the failure of Arafat’s strategy to create a viable two-state solution from within the paradigms of Oslo, and the expansion of the processes of Zionism on the land, despite the existence of the American-sponsored peace process. In doing so, it strives to reformulate Palestinian resistance into a collective struggle that opposes Zionism and separation; is relocated within a framework of international law, universal human rights and citizenship for all; and is based within the political desire to both reunite the Palestinian national collective and to bring about a single state solution to the conflict built upon a vision of coexistence, democracy, and the sharing of the land among all of its inhabitants. It is with the illumination of this largely silenced struggle of resistance, and its potential as an alternative pathway of liberation against Zionism, that I am centrally concerned in this book.

The single state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict re-emerged within this present historical conjunction largely as an academic debate, centred upon a critique of Oslo, and driven by a number of prominent Palestinian and Israeli intellectuals. Painted and dismissed by many as a utopian academic exercise, I sought to take a different pathway of inquiry. As such, the pages that follow inquire into the nature of the single state alternative as a movement of resistance, and investigate its potential to become a counterhegemonic force against the processes of Zionism as embedded within the Israeli–Palestinian peace process since Oslo. Rarely engaged with from within this context in existing academic literature, I explore the single state alternative through the analysis of diverse primary sourced material. To this end, I reconstruct the re-emergence of the single state solution both intellectually and organizationally since the signing of the Oslo Accords.

In presenting this reconstructive analysis, it is perhaps important to note that my work acknowledges the political nature of writing and knowledge production and views “the study of social movements (as) a political act. For, in taking the possibility of a particular movement seriously, social movement scholars are helping to call it into existence” (Eschle and Maiguashca 2005: 22). As such, I seek to explore the possibility of a single state movement seriously, and to highlight the existence of its processes as a potential arena for further investigation within academia. In this vein, I reconstruct and analyse the single state movement in two interlinked ways. On the one hand, I endeavour to highlight and analyse the single state movement from within its own self-understandings, strategies, and maps to power. In doing so, I strive to mobilize this primary sourced material in order to centre the political practices of the situated resistances of the oppressed themselves, and to inquire into what these practices may be able to inform the discipline of International Relations (IR) about what constitutes the political today. Interlinked with this is an exploration of where the potential for meaningful social transformation is perceived to be located when it is analysed from within this different point of beginning, and simultaneously, an intervention to resurrect the often muted potential of the human spirit to resist within the discipline.

On the other hand, as shall be elaborated upon, it is from within this reconstruction that my work has striven to resurrect a classical Gramscian theoretical approach—one that re-centres the processes of counterhegemony themselves in its analysis, and Antonio Gramsci’s radical embrace of the transformative power of the human being—through the writings of Edward Said. For, as opposed to the more dominant frameworks associated with Neo-Gramscian approaches in IR, it was in this resurrection that I found a more fruitful lens through which to understand the nature and dynamics of this particular phenomenon of resistance. Moreover, the elaboration of this lens enabled me to both analyse the counterhegemonic potential of the single state alternative from within its own self-understandings, as well as through an evaluation of the extent to which it meets the more stringent demands of becoming a Gramscian-Saidian counterhegemonic force of liberation. In this way, this book represents both an empirical contribution to knowledge, and a theoretically informed analysis of the nature of the single state alternative.

In view of the above, the pages that follow deploy a Saidian rereading of Gramsci to trace what I argue is a presently (re-)emerging collective of one-state organic intellectuals attempting to trigger an ‘intellectual-moral reformation’ within their communities in Palestine/Israel. As such, I argue that there is a single state movement behind the resurgence of the single state idea as a more just avenue through which to counter the injustices inflicted and exacerbated by Oslo’s transformations. Asserting that it is centred within a transformative project of critical pedagogy, this movement is argued to be Gramscian in spirit, and to be laying the groundwork of an expansive anti-Zionist historic bloc based upon the desire to coexist within a framework of democracy and equal citizenship. Hence, it is my view that this historic bloc aims at countering the conception of the world upholding the formulation of the Israeli–Palestinian peace process since Oslo—a conception that is based upon the notion that separation remains the only avenue through which the conflict can be resolved. However, due to both the emergent character of this alternative, its lack of discernable leadership, and the divisions within its ranks as to the form of movement it should organize itself to become, my research finds that while the single state movement has laid much of the groundwork required to become an expansive Gramscian-Saidian counterhegemonic force, this potential has yet to be fulfilled. More specifically, it has yet to be seized by an officially recognized single state leadership, or transformed into an actively endorsed single state political force or party. On the one hand, this reflects the ambiguity within the role of these intellectuals as leaders within an expansive alternative, who nevertheless have no official mandate to represent their constituencies. Added to this, a majority among them prefer to be organizers engaged in activism centred on a long-term process of critical pedagogy that shifts established political positions, rather than a process in which they become these established, more traditional political forces themselves. On the other hand, this internal indecision is linked to the obstacles the single state alternative faces in its struggle to become an established political force that aims at unifying the Palestinian national collective. Most crucial among these is the continued fragmentation of the Palestinians and their leadership. This is especially problematic in view of the continued existence of this fragmentation in the Occupied Territories; the fact that neither cadres within Fatah or Hamas have officially endorsed a single state solution as of yet, and that it remains unrepresented as an alternative within the Occupied Territories; and of course, the fact that the Palestinian Authority has yet to walk away from the official peace process.

Theoretical framework: Edward Said, Antonio Gramsci, and a decolonial approach

The publication of Edward Said’s groundbreaking Orientalism (1978) is often credited with inaugurating Postcolonialism as a body of writing (e.g. Rubin 2003) which takes as its unifying element a focus upon the “historical fact of European colonialism and the diverse material effects to which this phenomenon gave rise” (Ashcroft et al. 1995: 2). Mirroring Said’s defiance of disciplinary labels, these writings defy categorization in terms of subject matter, methods, or theorizations, beyond an arguably Saidian spirit of opposition that seeks to animate silences, highlight exclusions, and shift points of historical beginning, with the activist aim of advancing struggles of liberation on the ground. Thus, besides their point of beginning, or contextual focus upon the historical processes of European colonialism, postcolonial writings are loosely bound together by an explicitly political aim to embody, create space for, and insert, insurrectionary, disruptive narrations by ‘the people without history’ into dominant Western accounts of ‘global’ history. The aim of this is to contest the silences and erasures of dominant Western accounts of human history and progress, which neglect the contexts, struggles, and humanity of the vast majority of the world’s people. Hence, it is an epistemic intervention of alternative ways of being, and of understanding the world—one that is inhabited by the impulse of Amilcar Cabral’s words,

The colonialists usually say that it was they who brought us into history: today we show that this is not so. They made us leave history, our history, to follow them, right at the back, to follow the progress of their history.

(Young 2003: 18)

While placing myself within the broad contours of this literature, and recognizing its immense contribution, liberating potential, and continued political significance, my work steers itself in an overlapping, but slightly different decolonial¹ direction. In highlighting the difference between these two intertwined strands of thought which share common themes and political motivations, and yet choose to undertake them in slightly different ways, I seek to align my writing with those writing to decolonize knowledge in IR, as opposed to painting myself as adding to particular debates within postcolonial thought, or delineating a specifically postcolonial approach to counterhegemony.

This choice is a reflection of the fact that my research is located within a broadly historical materialist framework that asserts that there is a need to revive Antonio Gramsci’s obscured project of counterhegemony in IR, through a re-centring of his philosophy of praxis; of his emphasis upon the transformative power of critical pedagogy; and of the centrality of organic intellectuals in both empowering the oppressed, and building counterhegemony on the ground. Hence, it arises from within, and speaks to, the tensions and omissions of the dominant interpretations of Gramsci’s work by the Italian School in IR. Arguing that these interpretations blunt the transformative power energizing this Gramscian revolutionary project, I strive to re-excavate an image of Gramsci that begins with the latent potential within people’s thoughts—or conceptions of the world—to revolutionize the limits of the possible and usher in alternative, liberating social realities. In striving to recover this neglected Antonio Gramsci within IR, I mobilize the Gramscian images and interpretations within the writings of Edward Said. The overall aim of highlighting this particular image of a Saidian Gramsci is an attempt to decolonize the potential of the politics of resistance on the ground in Critical IR today—and more specifically, one that emerges from within the endeavour to illustrate and analyse the counterhegemonic potential of the present single state movement in Palestine/Israel.

However, while my work emerges from an engagement with neo-Gramscian debates in IR, it must be noted that the tensions and omissions critiqued in the Interlude and in Chapter 1 do not reflect a trend to neutralize critical theory and privilege abstracted disciplinary debates that is specific to neo-Gramscian scholars, but one that is reflected in many strands of IR theory today (Ayers 2008). As Gruffydd Jones writes,

A lot of writing in IR seems strangely more interested in the discipline itself than the world around us, even the substantive concerns that are recognized as defining IR’s field of enquiry remain stubbornly narrow.

(Gruffydd Jones 2006: 2)

Since my writing here is concerned with reaffirming the fact that “critical theorizing constitutes a necessary part of subaltern politics and radical transformation” (Ayers 2008: 2), and that “without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement” (Ayers 2008: 2), I endeavour to revitalize Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis within it, while emphasizing the fact that “the mode of theorizing has profound implications, not only for explanation and analysis, but also for political practice” (Ayers 2008: 2). As such, I seek to remind readers that a central element of historical materialism involves a highlighting of Marx’s thesis eleven (Saurin 2008: 26) and aims at “providing a theoretical foundation for interpreting the world in order to change it” (Ayers 2008: 7). Moreover, I seek to underline that both Gramsci and Marx were “involved in a practice of critique which aimed at uncovering and making explicit a social ontology” (Ayers 2008: 3)—and crucially, that it is “through the practice of critique that ontology itself is radicalized … it becomes an on-going social product, historically concrete and contestable” (Ayers 2008: 3).

While arguing that rereading Gramsci through Said highlights these buried images of an obscured Gramscian revolutionary project in IR, it is important to note that this rereading simultaneously recovers aspects of Said’s writings that have been similarly blurred in the dichotomies in much postcolonial writing today. Thus, in bringing the writings of both of these intellectuals and activists together, my work also endeavours to overcome the abstracted disciplinary dichotomies between a more recent Postcolonialism that seeks to disengage itself from the material, and a Marxism that seems to dilute Gramsci’s more radical embrace of human subjectivity. In this vein, it stresses the activist anti-colonial Marxist roots of Postcolonialism itself, as well as the flexible, situated Marxism many postcolonial activists and intellectuals have tried to elaborate as part of specific liberation struggles, against specific forms of oppression in the non-West (Young 2001).

Hence, it must be recognized that as part of the elaboration of a Marxism more suitable to the lives, struggles, and realities of oppression in the non-West, there has been a movement by postcolonial scholars to both highlight the importance of subjectivities in the creation of liberation movements, as well as the role culture plays in both maintaining domination and in liberation struggles. As Young argues, following some strands of European Marxism—most notably the Frankfurt School—postcolonial theory diverges from orthodox Marxism by fusing “its critique of material conditions with analysis of their subjective effects” (Young 2001: 7). As such, it is part of the increasing culturalism of modern political and social analysis (Young 2001: 7). Arguing that this highlighting of cultural politics is a reflection of its crucial role in liberation practices on the ground, and has simultaneously benefited academic theorization through its shift of focus, Young stresses that culturalism is not a move away from “more direct forms of political action” (Young 2001: 8) but a needed insertion of people’s subjective experiences, as well as the recognition of the diverse forms of knowledge, that complements more traditional forms of analysis on the Left (Young 2001: 8).

While acknowledging the significance of this contribution in elaborating a more flexible Marxism, and the importance of a particular notion of culture as an arena of struggle against the ‘common sense’ of an oppressive status quo (following both Gramsci and Said), it must be emphasized that the work of many anti-colonial intellectuals is greatly diluted if not truncated from the historical materialist basis within which it first sprang. Moreover, in view of the fact that Postcolonialism itself credits Said for its birth, this sidelining of the materialist aspect of Said’s work on culture (Said 1983: 177) does not just obscure the Gramscian transformative aspect of his writing, but also his (acknowledged) indebtedness to several Marxist intellectuals—most notably Theodor Adorno and Walter Benjamin (Williams and Chrisman 1994: 7). In a similar vein, commenting upon the “fashion of French theory and poststructuralism, and the serious reception of Foucault’s work in the early 1980s” (Rubin 2003: 864), Rubin notes that this emphasis, while important, has obscured both the role of Gramsci in Said’s work, and that of British Marxism. More problematically still for my purposes, this “fashion” has sidelined Gramsci’s emphasis upon resistance as a process that must be built, must be historical, and must involve “collective man” (Gramsci et al. 1971). For example, criticizing the Postcolonialism reflected in The Empire Writes Back, Williams and Chrisman stress that it paints resistance as effortless, continuous, and instantaneous (Williams and Chrisman 1994: 12–13).

In the context of IR, and on this widening divide within postcolonial writing, Gruffydd Jones writes,

Much contemporary postcolonial theory distances itself from historical materialism and political economy while in the process misappropriating iconic figures such as Fanon into a cultural studies shorn of political economy.

(Gruffydd Jones 2006: 6)

Hence, in this context, an increased culturalism would in effect represent a move away from more direct forms of political action. Similarly, this artificial theoretical distancing of those who write within more poststructural locations, and those who locate themselves within the sphere of political economy, both obscure a Gramscian philosophy of praxis, and blunt its transformative power. This can be seen to be at the root of Saurin’s warning that, while deeply political and interventionist, Postcolonialism does not fundamentally challenge “the dominant representations of world order in IR (which) reflect what James Blaut has called “the colonizer’s model of the world” (Saurin, 2006: 24), since it does not begin by acknowledging IR’s continuing imperial character.

Saurin’s intervention seeks to highlight the need to revive the more Marxist (Leninist) tradition of anti-colonial (or anti-imperial) writing which centres (a continuing) historical process of imperialism “as the fundamental problem for the study of IR” (Saurin 2006: 29) as opposed to those who argue that “the period of de-colonization from about 1947 represents the clear historical demise of colonialism and ushers in a period of national freedom” (Saurin 2006: 28). In many ways, this speaks to the problematic tension among postcolonial scholars about the term postcolonial itself, and what this particular “post” is meant to signify (Williams and Chrisman 1994: 5–6). This has become increasingly problematic in view of the fact that it has become more and more difficult to overlook the fact of neo-colonialism, and hence the fallacy of any trans-historical notion of colonialism that celebrates the (imperial) idea of the nation-state as liberation (Saurin 2006: 28). This, of course, begs the question of what is really new about the processes of Postcolonialism themselves. More importantly still for my purposes, Saurin argues that those who portray colonialism as having ended and ushered in a new liberated world order of sovereign independent nation-states are simply creating theory that reflects and bolsters the status quo, rather than critical theory that is based upon contextualized realities on the ground, or that seeks to explain the origins of a world order in order to transform it (Saurin 2006: 30).

Similarly, Gruffydd Jones argues that it is remarkable that a discipline such as IR has yet to acknowledge its inherited imperial character, and be conscious of its imperial origins; its exclusionary choice of “canon in classical European thought from ancient Greece through to the Enlightenment” (Gruffydd Jones 2006: 3); its narrow debates and concepts which “reflect the history of the West (in idealized form) and the interests of the powerful” (Gruffydd Jones 2006: 3); and hence, to problematize its own self-presentation as ‘international’ relations (Gruffydd Jones 2006: 2–3) rather than “imperial relations” (Saurin 2006: 23–42). Gruffydd Jones echoes Saurin, arguing that a large part of the effort to decolonize IR must be one that revolves around method—and the need for critical theory to demystify, historicize, and situate the illusory, abstracted image of IR presented by more conservative, problem-solving strands of theory in their imperial contexts—highlighting the intertwined political nature of knowledge and power, and the situated (in this case imperial) human agencies which created it. She writes,

What is needed is a broader and deeper form of critique that encompasses the discipline as a whole—its underlying assumptions, modes of thought and analysis, and its consciousness and very attitude … only by doing so can we hope to free the imagination of social inquiry from the narrow blinkers of Eurocentrism and enable the study of IR ‘from the perspective of the world’.

(Gruffydd Jones 2006: 6)

While decolonizing IR as a discipline is beyond the scope of this book, the pages that follow do proceed in the spirit of Saurin’s highlighting of the fact that there must always be an organic link between decolonizing knowledge, and “struggling against the real structures and practices of imperial international relations” (Gruffydd Jones 2006: 219). Hence, as previously stated, I seek to underline within them the centrality of Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis in the creation of revolutionary theory, and thus in the reinvigoration of the practices of building counterhegemony on the ground. More specifically in this context, I endeavour to revitalize Gramsci’s liberating project of counterhegemony through a broadly Saidian reinterpretation. As such, my research follows one of the central strategies of decolonizing knowledge elaborated within Decolonizing International Relations, and described by Gruffydd Jones as a refusal of “the disciplining taboos of dominant inquiry” (Gruffydd Jones 2006: 223), which are “precisely both legacy and continuation of what Saurin has termed imperialism’s ‘habitual refusal to translate or interpret’ but only impose meaning” (Gruffydd Jones 2006: 223).

In the context of theorizing resistance, this involves an insistence that the practices of resistance of the oppressed, their situated strategic maps to power, their self-understandings, and agency be taken seriously in redefining what is worth knowing within the discipline, and in re-imagining what the political is in the process of becoming today. As Anghie points out, knowledge in IR, “is governed by a set of conceptual categories centred on Europe, and it is these categories that are routinely reaffirmed by conventional histories” (Anghie 2006: 223). In this context then, “the detail of non-European history more broadly are ‘somehow incidental’ to the proper disciplinary concerns” (Anghie 2006: 223). Thus, there is a need here for the highlighting of alternative types of historical knowledge, of alternative social and political relations and struggles in much longer historical perspectives that are not “framed by the same coordinates as dominant forms of knowledge” (Gruffydd Jones 2006: 223).

Moreover, my work echoes Saurin’s sentiment that while it is essential for the oppressed to counter narratives of history that erase their existence, locations, and knowledges, that alone is not enough. For that alone does not challenge the politics of disciplinary knowledge production itself (Saurin 2006: 29)—politics of production which Said referred to as, “the nexus of knowledge and power creating ‘the Oriental’ … obliterating him as a human being” (Said 1978). As Said himself argued in Orientalism, Orientalism has little to do with the agency, context, history, or writings of anyone located in the Orient. Rather, it involves the exclusion of those lives, histories, and voices through an outsider’s abstracted representation, which simply mirrors the superiority of his own reality, or location (Said 1978). Hence, in the context of IR, Saurin links this argument of exteriority with the abstractions of international relations theory as a discipline, arguing that there is a need to acknowledge the imperial character of IR itself, and thus, a need to decolonize its concepts, theories, and methods in order for the voices, experiences, and histories of the excluded to be taken seriously as an anti-colonial struggle for liberation (Saurin 2006: 23–42). In rereading Gramsci’s project of counterhegemony through Said, this is what this book strives to do.

Methodological reflections

While my research does emerge from within an engagement with the wider available academic literature upon the single state idea in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, it has been significantly influenced by primary sources of information in the form of texts written by intellectuals linked to the single state solution; my presence and observations within diverse single state forums, public interventions, and academic conferences; and a series of in-depth semi-structured interviews undertaken with key figures linked to the resurgence of the single state solution.

Though texts on the single state solution as a reformulated Palestinian resistance struggle are difficult to find within academia—with the notable exception of writing linked to the single state idea published in the Journal of Palestine Studies—these texts, interventions, and declarations abound on the alternative media sites and blogs on the Internet. Since some of these media sites are linked to the single state movement itself (such as the Electronic Intifada, the AIC’s blog and podcasts, the websites of Zochrot, PACBI or ICAHD) much of the primary texts used in researching this book stem from within these spaces. My attendance of single state conferences, debates, book launches, and public interventions has also been a valuable source of information, as well as an important arena from within which I was able to meet diverse people involved with the idea and engage in informal conversations, email exchanges, and Skype chats about it and its nature. Among the most influential of these experiences was attending one of the founding single state conferences held in SOAS, London in 2007; a conference debating diverse solutions to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict held in York University, Canada in 2009; and the book launches and diverse university talks of Omar Barghouti, Ilan Pappe, Jeff Halper, Joseph Massad, and IJAN. These public forums were all chosen due to the fact that they either revolved around the single state solution, were being participated in by prominent single state intellectuals, and were geographically and financially accessible. While I am not a member of any single state groups or initiatives, and had not seriously engaged with this idea before the researching of this book, the fact that I was sympathetic to its premises, to the intellectuals involved within it, and to the Palestinian people’s struggle of liberation from Zionism positioned me as a participant-observer within these forums. It should also be noted that the fact that I am Egyptian played a big role in establishing an easy rapport based upon a natural solidarity with the Palestinian people, and provided a foundation of openness and trust with many among the Palestinian and Israeli-Jewish intellectuals encountered both formally and informally during these forums. This form of participant-observation has been especially relevant in the process of formulating this book due to the relatively recent re-emergence of the single state idea in the context of Palestine/Israel. Thus, these empirical snap-shots of what I argue to be a resistance phenomenon in the making colour much of the mappings of the movement presented in Chapters 3, 4, and 5.

Interlinked with the above, a significant source of primary material informing the content, arguments, and ideas within this book are ten semi-structured in-depth interviews. Of these, nine were recorded using a digital recorder, one was both not recorded and off the record, and all were conducted in English. The selection of the interviewees was based upon them being prominent intellectuals linked to the resurgence of the single state idea in diverse public arenas, as well as undertaken with the intention of speaking to as representative a selection as possible in terms of the diverse communities of Palestinians and Israelis these intellectuals are linked to. In practice however, this proved difficult and the majority of the intellectuals interviewed were Ashkenazi-Jewish Israelis and Diaspora Palestinians. Their brief biographies are provided in the Appendix, along with those of the prominent single state intellectuals cited in this book. The purpose of these interviews was primarily to inquire into whether or not the single state solution simply represented the resurfacing of an idea within the corridors of academia; to illuminate the kind of phenomenon the single state idea could be in the process of becoming; and to inform the understandings of political and social transformation deployed within it. In parallel to this, the interviews were an inquiry into—and a highlighting of—the histories, self-understandings, motivations, strategies, and visions of those involved within both the articulation of the single state as a more just solution, and its mobilization as a practice. As such, they contained within them a biographical section linked to the backgrounds of the interviewees, the re-emergence of the single state solution itself and their perception of their roles within it; a strategy section linked to the nature of the movement and the ideas, vision, aims, and strategies of resistance underpinning it; an organizational section focused upon what this phenomenon looks like structurally, the groups, associations, or parties it is linked to, and its outreach, alliance building, and sources of funding; as well as three further sections linked to the specific activities, strategies, and presence of the single state alternative globally, regionally, and locally within Palestine/Israel. Of these interviews, eight have been central in the direction of argumentation which this book has taken, the avenues of research explored, and the theoretical approach I attempted to elaborate in order to analyse the single state movement.

In practice though, many of the interviews conducted were constrained by the geographical location, availability, and willingness of the interviewees. This was made more difficult by the short time-span within which they were conducted, and the lack of funding available to me for this form of research. As such, none of these interviews were conducted with Palestinian intellectuals living under Israeli occupation. While I have striven to rectify this lack of access through other sources of available information, this under-representation also reflects the fact that this particular segment of Palestinians is not among the central driving forces behind the resurgence of the single state solution in Palestine/Israel, and as such is also difficult to find represented within its public forums and conferences. In a different vein, despite being the central driving force behind the resurgence of the single state solution, none of these interviews were conducted with Palestinian-Israelis either. This is mostly due to the time constraints on the schedules of these intellectuals when they travel to attend conferences and forums. This however was rectified in view of their visible presence both within the conferences and public forums of the single state idea, within its written interventions, initiatives, and declarations, as well as through informal meetings and email exchanges with these intellectuals. It should also perhaps be noted that with the exception of one interviewee, who was uncomfortable with being recorded and with the line of questioning itself, and another Jewish-Israeli interviewee who declined to be interviewed due to the intensity of the backlash against his views, the remainder of those interviewed and recorded were very open about their lives and views, related to the questions asked, were generous with their time and with the detailed information they provided, as well as helpful in establishing connections for future interviews, conversations, and meetings among their colleagues and friends.

A note on limitations

As highlighted above, the illustration and analysis of the single state movement within my research represents both a reflection of the inclusions and central driving forces behind this resurgent phenomenon of resistance, as well as its obstacles and exclusions. As such, mainly due to practical issues of geographical accessibility and limited sources of information, I have not been able to engage with Palestinians in the OPT as much as I would have liked. This limitation is greater in the context of a lack of direct engagement with Palestinian refugees in Syria, Lebanon, and Jordan, upon whom sources of information in the context of the single state solution are difficult to find. This, of course, applies equally to Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, and Palestinians affiliated with Hamas. Such engagements would have surely made possible a more penetrating and textured analysis of the single state movement itself, and clarified the effectiveness of its strategies and practices of building counterhegemony further. Moreover, the recent, emergent character of the single state idea itself also represents an obstacle in terms of a deeper analysis of the effectiveness of its strategies and practices of resistance, as well as the form of movement it is in the process of becoming. It is for this reason that a focus upon the practices, visions, and self-understandings of those blocs of intellectuals I argue to be central driving forces behind its ignition served to be a particularly illuminating window into this movement in the making in this context.

Furthermore, as I previously underlined, my choice to begin within, and focus upon counterhegemony as a situated practice of resistance was undertaken within a decolonial Saidian-Gramscian framework. Hence, my research does not directly engage with hegemony, or try to illustrate its detailed workings, production, and maintenance. Instead, to the extent that the following pages engage with hegemony itself—as demonstrated in Chapters 3 and 4 for example—it is through an understanding of it as a situated form of domination that is discerned through the political practices, strategies, and understandings of the single state intellectuals attempting to transform it. This conceptualization is further emphasized by highlighting the fact that the single state movement dealt with this hegemony in a manner that both stressed contextual sensitivity, and this hegemony’s different formulations (and hence strategies used to counter it) in relation to the single state idea in different geographical theatres. In a different vein, as I illustrate in Chapter 2, I engage with hegemony through this lens in order to affirm Gramsci’s claim that every relationship of hegemony is an educational relationship (Gramsci et al. 1971), whose transformation on the ground must begin with an empowering critique of the common sense notions upholding it as an inevitable, just, or desirable status quo. Thus, I try to highlight the interlinked nature of both hegemony and counterhegemony through this engagement with the centrality of the theory of common sense in Gramsci’s writings in both upholding hegemony, and providing the key to transformative counterhegemony in the form of the long-term revolutionary strategy of the war of position.

In doing so, it is important to underline that it was not my intention to argue against the centrality of analysing the processes of hegemony itself in creating a clearer picture of the power and effectiveness of a counterhegemonic movement. While I touched upon this in Chapters 3, 4, and 5 in the form of the backlashes and obstacles that have faced the single state movement, the scope of this book did not permit a more comprehensive engagement with the processes of hegemony itself. A further obstacle to this kind of more comprehensive analysis—and another central element behind the emphasis placed within this book—revolves around the relatively new re-emergence of the single state solution as a phenomenon of resistance. Thus, apart from some of the backlashes mentioned within this book, many of the possible counter-attacks to the single state movement from within the hegemonic blocs upholding the current peace process, and the ideology of Zionism and separation on which it is based, remain to be seen. The same, of course, can be said for the potential within the single state movement itself to build its resistance into a more powerful, and hence damaging and transformative, war of position.

Structure of the argument

From within the spirit, and framework highlighted above, in the interlude and Chapter 1 of this book I elaborate a critique of the tensions and omissions found within some neo-Gramscian interpretations of Antonio Gramsci’s writings, and the application of his ideas within disciplinary debates in the realm of Critical IR Theory. In doing so, I aim at placing an emphasis upon a particular revolutionary project within Gramsci’s writings that seems to be largely silenced within the appropriation of his ideas in the discipline of IR. Thus, I argue that there is a need for the resurrection of this energetic image of Gramsci—an image that centres the power of organic intellectuals, critical pedagogy, and the philosophy of praxis in the building of counterhegemony and the empowerment of the oppressed. In this vein, I suggest that resurrecting this image of Gramsci through Edward Said’s interpretation of his writings opens up a possible channel through which this form of a decolonial Gramsci could be re-excavated.

Building upon this critique further, in Chapter 1, I attempt to resurrect this silenced project of Gramscian counterhegemony using the writings of Edward Said. I present this reformulation with the aim of deploying it in order to trace, illustrate, and analyse the re-emergent single state idea as a Gramscian form of counterhegemonic resistance, aimed at creating an anti-Zionist historic bloc to counter the conception of the world upholding the Israeli–Palestinian peace process since the Oslo Accords. Hence, through this reformulation, I try to re-centre the role of the organic intellectual within Gramsci’s insurrectionary writings; the centrality of Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis and emphasis upon situated territorial geography in elaborating the process of building counterhegemony; and the necessity of revisiting Gramcsi’s critique of ‘common sense’ and his interlinked revolutionary strategy of the ‘war of position’ as central processes within the triggering of liberating social transformation on the ground.

Following from this, I aim to set the context of the situated Zionist hegemony that single state activists perceive themselves to be struggling against in Palestine/Israel in Chapter 2. In doing so, I simultaneously outline the context and struggles from within which the single state idea re-emerged as a potential alternative force to the current Israeli–Palestinian ‘peace process’. As such, I strive to highlight the disjuncture between the rhetorical production and elaboration of the ‘common sense’ of Oslo as the inauguration of a peace process towards a two-state solution, while disguising the territorial expansion of Zionism on the ground—in the form of a reformulated Allon Plan. Following the outlining of the contextualized setting from which a single state idea resurfaced, I aim to sketch a preliminary picture of what I argue is a present day (re-)emergence of a conception of the world championing a single state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in Chapters 3 and 4. This sketch involves an intellectual and organizational mapping of this alternate conception of the world. Based upon the interlinked thoughts and actions of four distinct, yet overlapping, blocs of organic intellectuals argued to be central to this process, I argue that it is their conceptual articulations and interlinked strategies and practices of resistance that underlie the resurgent single state movement today.

Contending that the alternative vision outlined by single state organic intellectuals represents a critical conception of reality that goes beyond the common sense notions of the so-called ‘peace process’ in an attempt to dismantle its illusion in favour of a single state future of some form, it is in Chapter 5 that I demonstrate how these blocs fuse to create the groundwork for a potential anti-Zionist war of position against the Israeli–Palestinian peace process. Centring upon the global Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, I argue that the BDS call is an integral part of the single state movement’s conception of the world, and its attempt to build an anti-Zionist war of position against the current Israeli–Palestinian peace process. In presenting an analysis and interim evaluation of the BDS tactic itself, I suggest that this practice of resistance, and the intellectual reformulations underpinning it, could prove to be a powerful and expansive strategy within the long-term process of building counterhegemony within diverse, yet interlinked, geographical spaces. In the conclusion, I strive to bring the arguments within this book full circle by reflecting upon the mobilization of—and the processes, potentials, and limitations within—this Saidian-Gramscian re-excavation of counterhegemony.

Note

1  The term decolonial here refers to its meaning as it is elaborated within Branwen Gruffydd Jones’ edited volume Decolonizing International Relations—one of the few books to highlight the need for a decolonial intervention, and decolonial strategies of research, within the discipline of IR specifically.

Interlude

The many images of Antonio Gramsci

The politics of interpretation, and the recovery of a silenced revolutionary project of resistance

Within the realm of IR today, there appears to be a fragmented assortment of images of Antonio Gramsci (e.g. Germain and Kenny 1998: 10; Rupert 1998: 427; Morton 2003: 118–46; Ayers 2008: 1–228). This largely seems to be a result of Gramsci’s rather scattered writings, and a lack of consensus surrounding the interpretations that should be assigned to his theories and visions. Thus, each image of Gramsci is painted by highlighting certain aspects of his dense web of interconnected, fragmented, and at times coded and contradictory writings, while rendering other facets less important, or at times, even invisible. And while it is true that interpretation is a contested terrain (Said et al. 2000: 195–217), and understandable that within certain contexts and historical junctures, authors are naturally, and perhaps politically, more inclined to bring certain sides of Gramsci’s thoughts into play, something about the overall picture presented by neo-Gramscian appropriations of his writings does not do justice to the rich, diverse, loosely intertwined, sometimes contradictory, whole of Gramsci’s vision.

While virtually all scholars who engage with Gramsci’s work acknowledge the difficulties surrounding the interpretation of his texts (e.g. Germain and Kenny 1998: 3–21; Said 2001: 453–73; Morton 2003: 118–46; Ayers 2008: 1–228; Gramsci et al. 1971), it seems obvious to argue that the life, political activism, struggles, motivations, and context of the author himself should not be forgotten in any engagement with, or mirroring of, the political meaning of the texts themselves. Borrowing from Auerbach, and Vico before him (Said 2001: 453–58), Said argues that it is this attentiveness to historicity and temporality that gives the art of interpretation meaning, when it is mediated through the agency of a critical consciousness (Said 2001: 456). In the appropriation of Gramsci’s writing in IR however, it was not until Germain and Kenny’s intervention that a disciplinary debate was launched on the apparent lack of engagement neo-Gramscian scholars have given to the context and motives of Gramsci himself in the analysis of his writing, as well as the validity of their application of interpretations of his texts to the debates of the discipline, and the realm of the international (e.g. Murphy 1998: 417–25; Ayers 2008: 1–228). Sorely overdue, this debate highlights that while an unproblematic, definitive interpretation of Gramsci’s writings will never be possible, neo-Gramscian appropriations of his thought are problematic due the fact that they decontextualize the author from his texts, and the texts from the settings within which they were written.

Thus, Germain and Kenny argue, “Gramsci comes to IR at a third remove: abstracted from the debates which sparked his thinking, from the interpretive difficulties surrounding his ideas, and from the contending interpretations which his thinking has ignited” (Germain and Kenny 1998: 8). While Germain and Kenny go on to attempt to “reconnect Gramscian IR with the bountiful scholarship devoted to his ideas” (Germain and Kenny 1998: 8), and to debate the validity of neo-Gramscian appropriations of his concepts in IR, I strive to stress a related, but slightly different concern. In this vein, I take minor issue with Craig Murphy’s criticism in defence of the Italian School that, “as students of international relations we should keep our focus more on understanding international relations than on understanding Gramsci” (Murphy 1998: 417). For, in this context, it can be argued that it was the overlooking of Gramsci himself by the neo-Gramscians, and their narrow focus on the advancement of the debates within critical IR theory, which resulted in an appropriation of his writings which silenced his political praxis; his emphasis on the power of the mind to both transform societies, or uphold status quos; and his underlining of the latent power within people to become active forces of change in the making of societies when organized and led by organic intellectuals.

Following Gramsci himself, who strove to always begin with ‘life’ (Gramsci et al. 1971: 330), I would like to make a case not only for the need to take one of Gramsci’s most energizing projects of social transformation seriously, but to also suggest that there is a different path that can be taken by critical theorists concerned with analysing the politics of resistance and counterhegemony today. This path does not need to either privilege International Relations as such, or debates surrounding Gramsci himself. Instead, it can locate its beginning within the situated practices of resistance, and inquire into how they may inform our understandings of international relations, and illuminate new paths of liberation for those who struggle on the ground today (Shaw 2003: 199–221). Both truncated theoretical debates on understanding international relations that are divorced from ‘life’ and privilege disciplinary conversations as an end in itself, and debates that reify and essentialize an author’s texts as the only valid interpretation within any discipline in the name of a grand, abstracted, forever coherent and clinical theory, ignore the spirit of critical praxis; the desire to overcome the crude distinction between theory and practice on which it entered the discipline; and most crucially its celebrated purpose of affirming that ‘another world is possible’.

In parallel to this, debates of this kind which are framed as Gramscian sideline one of the core themes of Gramsci’s writings, which revolves around a critique of this ‘traditional’ type of intellectual work as elitist and disconnected from the people and their struggles, and as bolstering a past and present status quo within which these intellectuals tend to hold privileged positions (Gramsci et al. 1971: 1–23). More importantly, in the call for a ‘new’ type of intellectual to emerge as a theorist who is simultaneously an active part of the world for which he or she theorizes, and the elaboration of the centrality of these organic intellectuals for the empowerment of the groups to whom they belong and for instigating revolutionary change, Gramsci highlighted the importance of breaking down the artificial distinction between theory and practice. Thus, Gramsci attacked those who are intellectuals by profession, and perceive the situated, practical knowledge of those struggling on the ground as beyond the realms of academia, or belittle it as irrelevant to their abstract theorizations. Hence, he argued that these traditional intellectuals disempowered the masses, perpetuating the myth that philosophy is beyond the intellectual capabilities of ordinary people (Gramsci et al. 1971: 323), and put up barriers towards both the analysis of, and the attainment of a more liberating world. As such, in the Prison Notebooks, describing the efforts of the socialist magazine he edited to politicize this matter and create these empowering new types of intellectuals, Gramsci writes,

The Ordine Nuovo worked to develop certain forms of new intellectualism and to determine its new concepts. The mode of being of the new intellectual can no longer exist in eloquence … but in active participation in practical life, as constructor, organiser, ‘permanent persuader’ … from technique as work one proceeds to technique as science and to the humanistic conception of history, without which one remains “specialised” and does not become “directive” (specialised and political).

(Gramsci 1971: 9–10)

Following from this, in the context of neo-Gramscian interpretations of Gramsci, I argue that perhaps interpretations which do not engage with the author himself, and paint over the revolutionary intent behind both his political praxis and writings, can be seen to be more about their insertion into disciplinary debates and the advancement of abstract theoretical conversations among specialists in a specific area, rather than an engagement with a political activist and revolutionary intellectual that is aimed at both understanding and promoting social transformation on the ground. In this vein, it is the obscuring of Gramsci’s attempt to empower the oppressed through his own critical praxis and his belief in the transformative potential found within a critical pedagogy triggered by organic intellectuals that I take issue with as an erasure of Gramsci’s interpretively problematic legacy, and argue for a need to resurrect. As Edward Said has argued, while acknowledging the severe difficulties of interpretation found within the Prison Notebooks, they are still held together by Gramsci’s “own central determination … to come to clearer formulations of the role of the mind in society” (Said 2001b: 465), and the fact that “everything Gramsci wrote was intended as a contribution to praxis” (Said 2001b: 466). Following Said, my work also suggests that the significant interpretive difficulties presented by Gramsci’s writings aside, there may be a liberating space and elasticity to Gramsci’s concepts that defy a forever static context, time or space, that recognize the unpredictability and messiness of reality in their contradictions, and that derive their meaning from the specific, the particular, and the local at any given point in time or contextualised space. Hence, these difficulties can also be perceived as something that can be celebrated, rather than lamented as indecipherable, or as a lacuna that must be corrected in the name of a monolithic, all-encompassing, grand theory that applies to all times and all places.

This point may be taken further to argue, as Said does, that Gramsci was intentionally opposed to the “tendency to homogenize, equalize and mediatize everything” (Said 2001b: 466); and that though his fragmented writings were partly a result of his conditions, they also represent a chosen textual form that reflects “his desire to preserve his critical consciousness” (Said 2001b: 466); and a choice of “never finishing his discourse … for fear that it would compromise his work … turning it into a body of resolved systematic ideas that would exercise dominion over him and his reader” (Said 2001b: 467). While these speculations on Said’s part (Said 2001b: 466) may be debatable, and may reflect the faces of Gramsci that most influenced his own critical practice, they emphasize the fact that there is much to be gained by not de-linking the author from the text, and the text from the situations and struggles out of which it sprang. For it is herein where the strength, and transcendental art, of the historical method lies.

1    Edward Said and revitalizing Gramsci’s project of counterhegemony

Laying theoretical foundations

Introduction

It was the late Howard Zinn who once wrote,

What we choose to emphasize in our human history will determine our lives … If history is to be creative, to anticipate a possible future without denying the past, it should, I believe, emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes of the past when, even if in brief flashes, people showed their ability to resist, to join together, and occasionally to win.

(Zinn, 2007: 270)

Similarly, in the Prison Notebooks, Antonio Gramsci strove to impress upon his readers that, “every revolution is preceded by an intense labour of criticism, including the spread of ideas among masses of men that are at first resistant” (Gramsci et al. 1971). For this particular Gramsci, it is important to recall that, “every relationship of hegemony is necessarily an educational relationship” (Gramsci et al. 1971: 349) and that the creation of a new conception of the world is synonymous with the creation of a new type of civil and political society. Hence, the elaboration of a new conception of the world marks the beginning of an energizing project of counterhegemony—one that centres around the power of critical pedagogy to revolutionize possibilities on the ground. One that, to return to Zinn, paves the way towards “the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction” (Zinn, 2007: 270).

Within this framework, it is organic intellectuals who are the pivotal agents in the forging of new historic blocs, based upon the creation of collective wills championing an alternative, liberating conception of the world, and waging battles to disseminate this world-view within diverse civil societies. This form of counterhegemony—involving alternative popular education initiatives, and ‘intense labours of intellectual criticism’ aimed at dismantling a world-view, and its transformation into political action—is arguably the first step in the long and arduous road towards the creation of a Gramscian counterhegemonic force. A force that eventually becomes expressed in the emergence of a new, coherent historic bloc. A historic bloc that suddenly illuminates the potential for radical change in societies, building upon the battles of past generations to bring humanity closer to that chaotic tipping point of crisis in which the social forces of resistance finally become coherent enough to structurally transform reality.

In this chapter, I attempt to resurrect this silenced project of Gramscian counterhegemony using the writings of Edward Said. This resurrection emerges from within my engagement with neo-Gramscian debates in IR, and therefore speaks to the tensions and omissions within these debates. As such, I neither directly speak to Postcolonialism, nor do I seek to add to the debates within this body of literature. Rather, my aim is to underline the centrality of Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis in both empowering the oppressed and creating revolutionary theory that begins with ‘life’, while highlighting alternative potential pathways to power within situated struggles for liberation. In doing so, I neither seek to essentialize Said as a Gramscian, nor to box his interdisciplinary largely anti-methodological spirit into a specific arena of thought. Instead, I aim at deploying this Saidian rereading of Gramsci in the chapters that follow in order to trace what I argue is a presently (re-)emerging collective of one-state organic intellectuals, and their (on-going) attempts to trigger an ‘intellectual-moral reformation’ within their own communities. This project of critical pedagogy is aimed at creating an expansive anti-Zionist historic bloc to counter the conception of the world upholding the formulation of the Israeli–Palestinian peace process since Oslo. A conception of the world that these organic intellectuals perceive to be based upon the preservation of an oppressive, expansive, and coercive status quo—and the triumph of Zionist ‘common sense’ ideology. In painting this emergence through the mapping of the struggles, solidarities, and strategies of those involved in the attempt to create it, and by highlighting their situated political practices, self-understandings, and knowledge, I endeavour to both decolonize the potential of the politics of resistance in Critical IR theory today, and to analyse the counterhegemonic potential of the present one-state movement in Palestine/Israel. Echoing Mark Rupert, this is neither an innocent reading of Gramsci, nor of Said, but one that is inspired by the desire to enable a particular lens into the processes of a largely silenced political project of transformation, as well as to enable a politics of solidarity to emerge on the ground today (Rupert 2003: 189).

I begin this chapter by engaging with Edward Said, the appropriation of his writings in Postcolonialism, and by emphasizing an arguably neglected Gramscian influence in his work. From there, I proceed to outline a Saidian inflected re-excavation of Gramsci’s writing in an attempt to revitalize Gramsci’s obscured project of counterhegemony and method of collective human empowerment. In doing so, I strive to re-centre the role of the organic intellectual within Gramsci’s insurrectionary writings, as well as the centrality of Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis, and the emphasis upon territorial geography in elaborating the process of building counterhegemony. In elaborating this focus, I simultaneously strive to call attention to the necessity of revisiting Gramcsi’s critique of ‘common sense’ and revolutionary strategy of the ‘war of position’ in the triggering of liberating social transformation. It is my hope that through this re-excavation, more space will be created for the empowerment of human beings to resist situated forms of oppression today.

Edward Said, postcolonialism and neglected images

Edward Said: A brief look into a spirit of opposition

It is a stand in defiance and opposition to the disempowerment of the oppressed—and the political act of underlining the secular nature of humanly constructed history underlying it—that represents a unifying thread through much of the eclectic work of Edward Said from the writing of the fittingly titled Beginnings (1985) onwards. Beginnings itself was triggered by the 1967 Arab–Israeli War and the alienating existential crisis it unleashed in Said himself, who found himself within an American context in which “everybody was very powerfully identified with the Israelis” (Said et al. 2000: 422). The shaking up of Said’s sanitized setting as a literary scholar, who had “placed himself in an environment that presented few reminders of his past and his identity” (Said et al. 2000: xxi), and Said’s consequent political awakening, came as a result of living through the process of this crisis (Said et al. 2000: 422–23). It is from here that the emphasis upon the link between the life, context, situated historical juncture, and motivations of an author and the narratives he or she writes emerges in Said. In parallel to this personal and political awakening, Beginnings was simultaneously inspired by the work of the Italian philologist Giambattista Vico and his emphasis upon the links between situated beginnings and narrative. Thus, as Bayoumi and Rubin write, Said embraced Vico as a thinker who,

Represented a method of situating and unfolding the literary work of art in all its worldly, secular relations. Furthermore, he challenged the specialization and sequestering of knowledge.

(Said et al. 2000: xxiii)

It is from within this context that Said embarked upon a lifelong quest against the specialization and fragmentation of knowledge, the erasure of its affiliations with power and imperialism, and its de-linking from the general body of citizens within civil society. Thus in “Secular Criticism”, he would lay the basis of his whole critical practice writing, “My position is that texts are worldly, to some degree they are events, and part of the social world, human life, and of course, the historical moments in which they are located and interpreted” (Said 1983: 4). For Said, it was criticism—as a political act of illuminating affiliations between power, knowledge, and imperialism; as a practice that is located within the secular, situated, humanly created world—that would constitute the groundwork for any loose methods he may have deployed in his writing after this point. In The World, the Text and the Critic, Said would clearly emphasize this point:

Contemporary criticism has retreated from its constituency, the citizens of modern society … a precious jargon has grown up, and its formidable complexities obscure the social realities that … encourage a scholarship of ‘modes of excellence’ very far from daily life … Criticism can no longer cooperate in or pretend to ignore this enterprise … Each essay in this book affirms the connection between texts and the existential actualities of human life.

(Said 1983: 5)

Linking this erasure to “the cult of expertise and professionalism” (Said 2001e: 119) Said, as Gramsci did years before him, held intellectuals both accountable for participating within a ‘program of non-interference’ that privileges and exalts professional and expert knowledge, and viewed them as potential powerful agents of dissent, of disseminating non-coercive knowledge, and of outlining alternative social and political relations. He therefore embraced the role of the activist, public, and secular intellectual, who defiantly took positions against injustice, and historicized, contextualized, and humanized knowledge in the name of the oppressed, while reminding readers that knowledge production and the political, the personal, the spatial, and the circumstantial were intimately intertwined.

Thrust into the realm of the political, and following his newfound conviction in the link between thought and action, Said “began to feel that what happened in the Arab World concerned (him) personally and could no longer be accepted with a passive political disengagement” (Said et al. 2000: xxii). Thus he began to reaffiliate himself with the Palestinian community in the Arab World (Said et al. 2000: xxiv). In 1977 Said was elected as an independent member of the Palestinian National Council (PNC), which he embraced as a channel through which he could “act politically on behalf of Palestinian self-determination” (Said et al. 2000: xxiv). The Question of Palestine (Said 1979) emerged in this period, and represented a “more political, cultural, and historical investigation of Palestinian dispossession … (that) delved into the brute practices of the various colonialism that the Palestinians have endured” (Said et al. 2000: xxv). Never one to advocate solidarity before criticism, Said took a public stand against the PLO here arguing for a two-state solution, as opposed to the liberation of all of historic Palestine. Years later he would come out in vocal opposition to Arafat and his selling out of the Palestinian cause for his own personal gain in signing the Oslo Accords, demanding that he resign. In an interview on this period, Said confessed,

In 1991 I was involved with a group of people … to formulate the assurances that we as Palestinians required as our entry into the Madrid process. Our conditions were fairly stringent … Arafat simply cancelled them all. He more or less made it clear to the Israelis and the Americans that he had no conditions. He just wanted to be in on the process … by accepting these conditions Arafat was in effect no longer representing the Palestinian people.

(Said et al. 2000: 439)

Having quit the PNC, in 1999 Said would come out in favour of a single state solution to the conflict, and against the principle of separation (Said et al. 2000: 429).

Intertwined with the above, Said’s discovery of Vico also led to his discovery of Gramsci, and the consequent shift in his writing towards an emphasis upon imperialism, power, and geography (Wainwright 2005: 1036), which began with the writing of Orientalism (1978). Culture and Imperialism (1994) which Said originally began writing as a sequel to Orientalism, came out of the desire to emphasize this Gramscian influence more directly—an emphasis which had been blurred due to an over-magnification of the influence of Foucault in Orientalism. In an interview, Said explains,

I think, this is perhaps one of the negative effects of Foucault: You get the impression that Orientalism is just continuing to grow and have more power. This is misleading. I was much more interested in locating the axis of this book, Culture and Imperialism, in the contest over territory, which is at bottom what I am really writing about.

(Said 1994: 3)

In this vein, and on the importance of Gramsci’s emphasis upon geography and its constant contestability to his work, Said states,

This is the single most important thing that I took from Gramsci-the idea that everything, including civil society to begin with, but really the whole world, is organized according to geography. …

(Said 1994: 13)

For Said, this stress upon geography was linked to a desire to highlight the territoriality of lived historical experiences, and the physical realities on which they were built and experienced, rather than “a shift away from the contents of history … to their form, their language, their rhetoric” (Said 1994: 5). Thus Said describes Culture and Imperialism as a book that is about the complexities of the lived experiences of history (Said 1994)—complex experiences which, following Gramsci, he has no interest in resolving into a systematic grand theory—but in working out on the ground (Said 1994: 13). Culture and Imperialism, and many of Said’s writings that followed, were really an attempt to uncover a form of liberation that transformed social and political relations in a way that set both the colonized and the colonizers free. As such, this form of liberation has little to do with nationalism, statehood, or independence for Said at this point in his life, but with a cathartic energy that frees everyone involved within it from the imperial experience, and stands against the principle of separation.

Liberation is really what I am trying to talk about, and freeing oneself from the need to repeat the past. We’re back to the Eighteenth Brumaire … We’re not always necessarily condemned to repeat the past. I’m trying, here, to move toward some notion of a universalism … it has to be universally accepted that certain democratic freedoms, certain freedoms from domination of one kind or another, freedom from various kinds of exploitations, and so on, are the rights of every human being—which is not the framework of the imperial world in which we live.

(Said 1994: 14)

Thus, it is a struggle that must begin with the tensions and irreconcilabilities that exist within situated contested geographies, and aspires to a form of reconciliation that is not based upon the imperial impulses of partition, nationalism, or separation (Said et al. 2000: 437). Rather, it is a form of reconciliation that involves the building upon these territories in the interest of what Said advocated as “an attempt to find out about the other” (Said et al. 2000: 431) based upon a desire to “extend the notion of human rights to cover everyone” (Said et al. 2000: 433), and Gramsci advocated as a struggle towards the construction and consolidation of new social relationships (Gramsci et al. 1971). It is this face of Said, and its connection to the writings of Gramsci, that the rest of this chapter attempts to bring back to light in order to revitalize Gramsci’s project of counterhegemony on the ground.

Postcolonialism and neglected images of Edward Said

In view of the above, a note of caution should be sounded on the directions in which, or aspects of, Edward Said’s work that have either been embraced, or largely ignored in the appropriation of his writing in IR specifically, but also in the overall picture of the debates emerging within Postcolonialism itself today. As Gruffydd Jones argues,

Much Postcolonial theory seems to be framed by unhelpful dichotomies between political economy and materialism on the one hand, and poststructural inflections of power, identity, culture and knowledge on the other.

(Gruffydd Jones 2006: 6)

In sounding this note, I simultaneously strive to stress the fact that though much has been written about Said in the context of Poststructuralist and Postcolonial debates within IR, it is striking that not more attention has been given to the influence of the writings of Gramsci on much of Said’s work, ideas, and activism. This neglect remains despite the credit given to Gramsci’s writings and ideas by the author himself in a vast array of diverse interventions (e.g. Said 1983; Said 1994; Said 2000; Said 2001: 464–68). As Andrew Rubin writes, this neglect may be linked to Said’s own interdisciplinary eclecticism, and refusal to, “Identify a method other than in relative general terms of an on-going and worldly process and activity of critical consciousness, which undermines the immobilizing limitations around which almost all methodologies revolve” (Rubin 2003: 863). However, a further barrier revolves around the obscuring of the vast oeuvre of Said’s work—with its diverse influences—by Orientalism itself, and the interlinked perception of an overriding Foucaultian element in any analysis of a Saidian method (Rubin 2003: 863). This is not to say that there isn’t an important Foucaultian element in much of Said’s work, but that this element is not without its tensions, disagreements, and limitations. Limitations that were engaged with and underlined by Said himself in many of his writings (e.g. Said 1983; Said 2001; Said 1978), and even more significantly for this re-excavation, contrasted with Gramsci’s resistance enabling conception of power and overtly political praxis of social transformation on the ground. For example, in “Criticism Between Culture and System” Said argues that Foucault’s work was instrumental in emphasizing the disguised power dynamics within texts, as well as the interlinked nature between discourse and authority—one which becomes all the more powerful due to the invisibility of its affiliations to power (Said 1983: 178–225). Thus, Said acknowledges that for Foucault,

Where there is knowledge and discourse, there must criticism also be, to reveal the exact places—and displacements—of the text, thereby to see the text as a process signifying an effective historical will to be present, an effective desire to be a text and to be a position taken.

(Said 1983: 221)

However, what remains relatively obscured in considerations of Said’s work, is the fact that he does not stop there. He continues to argue that one of the strangest elements within Foucault’s work is the fact that despite the power that they afford criticism as an activity, “Foucault takes a curiously passive and sterile view not so much of the uses of power, but of how and why power is gained, used and held onto” (Said 1983: 221). He writes,

Power can be made analogous neither to a spider’s web without the spider nor to a smoothly functioning flow diagram; a great deal of power remains in such course items as the relationships and tensions between rulers and ruled, wealth and privilege, monopolies of coercion …

(Said 1983: 221–22)

For Said, this is the “most dangerous consequence of Foucault’s disagreement with Marxism, and its result is the least convincing aspect of his work” (Said 1983: 221). Said also argues that this is a reflection of the fact that while “Foucault’s theories move criticism from a consideration of the signifier to a signifier’s place, a place rarely innocent, dimensionless, or without the affirmative authority of discursive discipline” (Said 1983: 220), Foucault stops there and appears uninterested in broaching the question of why this is the case (Said 1983). As such, for Said, “Foucault’s flawed attitude to power derives from his insufficiently developed attention to the problem of historical change” (Said 1983: 222). It also reflects his lack of interest in human empowerment, in the processes of building collective action and creating critical consciousness, and thus, a deep pessimism towards any possibilities of instigating liberating change within an oppressive status quo. Hence, it should always be stressed that there is a conscious significant methodological divide for Said between his own work and that of Foucault’s, which he argued was “largely with rather than against (power)” (Said 2001a: 242), and was at the base of Foucault’s paradoxical oeuvre:

I would say that [Foucault’s] interest in domination was critical but not finally as contestatory as on the surface it seems to be. This translates into the paradox that Foucault’s imagination of power was by his analysis of power to reveal its injustice and cruelty, but by his theorization to let it go on …

(Said 2001a: 242)

Furthermore, it is important to note that what Said found lacking in Foucault’s work, he did find in—and frequently contrast with—Gramsci’s (Said 1983: 221–22). As such, for Said criticism “must see itself inhabiting a contested cultural space” (Said 1983: 225); it must recognize that it is of this world, and “aspire to hegemony in Gramsci’s sense of the word” (Said 1983: 167); it is “an interventionary and directive phenomenon” (Said 1983: 171); and it must remain linked with the realities of human life. Thus Said writes,

The realities of power and authority—as well as the resistances offered by men, women, and social movements to institutions, authorities, and orthodoxies—are the realities that make texts possible, that deliver them to their readers … these realities are what should be taken account of by criticism and critical consciousness.

(Said 1983: 5)

In many ways, this is an affirmation of the centrality of Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis in the elaborating of revolutionary theory—one which remains of this world, begins with human empowerment, and with the building of counterhegemony as a process of mapping spaces of power that can be territorially gained by an oppositionary collective with an alternative vision of social relations. Furthermore, it is also one that centres its struggle for elaboration and expansive hegemony within civil society.

Within this potential space in civil society, Said argues that it is the intellectual’s role to impart their students or constituencies with critical awareness, and to highlight the fact that human beings make their own history. It is the intellectual’s role to reassert the intellectual vocation as one that opposes oppressive orthodoxies in order to alleviate human suffering, to realize that their writings and activities are located within the realm of the public sphere, and to defiantly take positions against misguided policies (Said 2001c: 501–6). Hence, it is their role to act as a public memory that strives “to recall what is forgotten or ignored; to connect and contextualize” (Said 2001c: 503), since in an increasingly fragmented and separated public sphere “it falls to the intellectual to make the connections that are otherwise hidden; to provide alternatives for mistaken policies” (Said 2001c: 503); to remain marginal and “try … not to collaborate with the centralizing powers of society” (Said 2001c: 504); and perhaps most crucially, to align themselves with an on-going struggle against human subjugation, and actively seek to conquer more space for it within civil society by creating new audiences and constituencies (Said 2001c: 504–5). Of course, Said’s engagement with the central role of the intellectual in instigating social change stems from the writings of Gramsci, and what he argued was his central “determination to elaborate, grapple with, to come to clearer and clearer formulations of the role of the mind in society” (Said 2001b: 465).

Hence, interlinked with the above arguments, what follows is a highlighting of what I perceive to be a lack of engagement with the different images of Gramsci that arise out of a broadly Saidian reinterpretation of his writings in IR, and their potential for reinvigorating a Gramscian project of counterhegemony for those struggling against oppression today. What I contend, is that a rereading of Gramsci through Said may go a long way towards highlighting these buried images of an obscured Gramscian revolutionary project in IR. Mirroring this outlining of an obscured Gramscian revolutionary project in IR, the pages that follow simultaneously recover aspects of Said’s oppositional writings that have been blurred in the dichotomies within much Postcolonial writing today.

Edward Said and buried images of Gramsci

A Saidian inflected Gramsci

As highlighted in the Interlude, the power of this Saidian inflected Gramsci lies in a re-excavation of the fact that Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks, while ridden with textual and interpretive difficulties, remain held together by Gramsci’s “own central determination to elaborate, to grapple with, to come to clearer and clearer formulations of the role of the mind in society” (Said 2001b: 465); as well as by the fact that Gramsci himself “was political in the practical sense, conceiving of politics as a contest over territory, both actual and historical, to be won, fought over, controlled, held, lost, gained” (Said 2001b: 464). As such, the power of Gramsci’s writings for Said were centred around what he viewed as Gramsci’s attempt to produce a kind of critical consciousness that Said argued was both “geographical and spatial” (Said 2001b: 465); embodied the unification of theory and practice; was aimed at contributing to praxis; and is in itself the embodiment of the kind of intellectual work that he argued to be revolutionary, and called upon all organic intellectuals to produce as a central catalyst to the triggering of revolutionary change (Said 2001b: 465).

In illustrating a Saidian inflected Gramsci, perhaps it is important to begin by emphasizing the fact that Said came to Gramsci having already accidentally discovered the work of Giambattista Vico (Said 1994: 421–22). Vico’s relatively obscure work on the connection between situated history—with an emphasis upon its human construction and its physicality—and philology would greatly influence Said’s own critical methods, as well as his reading of Gramsci’s work (Said 2001: 86). Thus, Said always underlined the need to recall the fact that Gramsci’s training was not only in philology, but in a form of philology that was, following Vico, always contextualized, always historical, always situated. These situated texts—their contexts, producers, inclusions, and exclusions—can then be used to reconstruct and animate human history, societies and self-understandings, when mediated through an intellectual’s critical consciousness.

It is from within the context of this Vichian opposition to Cartesian philosophy (Said 2001), and Vico’s desire to re-situate philology into human history in his New Science (1725), that Said highlights the fact that, “cutting through the large and fundamentally disjunct edifice of his work is the never to be forgotten fact that Gramsci’s training was in philology” (Said 2001b: 465). As such, Said argues that Gramsci always remained conscious of the “profoundly complex and interesting connection among words, texts, reality and political/social history of distinct physical entities” (Said 2001b: 465). Due to this, Said argues that Gramsci is forever sensitive to the fact that texts and ideas are always situated, and that the fact that they are produced, disseminated, and become accepted as ‘common sense’ within a historical juncture, is in itself a reflection of the power dynamics on the ground in a particular place and time (Gramsci et al. 1971: 345). Of equally crucial importance to Said here is the fact that Gramsci’s theorization of both ‘common sense’ and hegemony is one that centres around the empowerment of human agency, underlines the always present latent potential for counterhegemony in any historical juncture, and is at its base, energizingly oppositional in its affirmation of the crucial link between collective thought and action (Said 2001b: 130).

Before engaging with these images in more detail, two further crucial elements of Said’s representations of Gramsci should be highlighted in order to do the over-arching picture of a Saidian inflected Gramsci justice. The first concerns Said’s own critical attitude towards the camps of abstracted grand theory, which first surfaces in his writings on Vico, but would also colour Said’s understandings of, and affinities with Gramsci. Hence, Said would describe Vico’s method as a form of “anti-Cartesian atavism with a vengeance” (Said 2001: 85) that, “drives meanings back into the bodies whence originally they came” (Said 2001: 85); and represents a “methodical anti-theorizing … (that forces) one to see the gross physical circumstances from which a text emerges” (Said 2001: 86). Of course, one of the crucial aspects of Said’s work that this analysis mirrors, is his own concern to always highlight the contradictions and messiness of real, physical, lived life—and his opposition to any desire to erase, censor, or otherwise tame or dilute the complex, colliding, contradictory, and ultimately incredibly human dimension of the reality of life on the ground—by an overriding desire to create pure theory (Said 2001e: 131).

For Said, this crowded spectacle of life (Said 2001) is embraced in Gramsci’s writing, concepts, and more importantly, in Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis—and hence his concepts and theorization of counterhegemony. In this vein, Said celebrates the liberating space and flexibility he attributes to Gramsci’s terms, arguing that they are “critical or geographical rather than totalizing or systemic”; that they “illuminate and make possible elaborations and connections rather than reify”; that they represent terms that are inhabited by a view of power that “is never abstracted from a particular social totality; never irresistible; never one directional”; and that they ultimately always “remain in contextual control” (Said 2001b: 467). It is due to this that Said stresses the political and practical aspects of Gramsci’s thought, which are not abstracted, or based within theoretical disciplinary conversations that are divorced from the complex, forever fluid, political realities on the ground.

It is also due to this that Said emphasizes Gramsci’s particular type of situated, empowering critical consciousness (Said 2001b: 465), which revolves around locating and understanding the self as a process within history. For Gramsci of course, this process of critical self-understanding represents the starting point for the possibility of any revolutionary action, the centrality of human empowerment to any successful revolutionary process, and crucially the basis upon which this form of social transformation is not one that aims at replacing an oppressive reality with its mirror image, but is “an act of exorcism for both the colonizer and the colonized” (Saurin 2006: 26). Foreshadowing the centrality this Gramscian emphasis upon critical self-understanding would have for Said’s own critical practice, Said confides in his reader that it was this Gramscian impulse that lay at the base of his personal motivation to write Orientalism itself (Said 1978: 25).

Intertwined with the above, the second element that should be underlined revolves around the fact that at the basis of Said’s understandings of Gramsci, is an appreciation for the central place Gramsci accords to a situated and contextualized geography, territory, and place in his concepts—especially with regards to his theorizations of counterhegemony (Said 2001b: 465). This emphasis within Gramsci’s theorizations mirrors Said’s central concern with countering imperialism, not just as an expansive, oppressive ideology of common sense, but also as an interlinked, deeply territorial process of colonizing land. Hence, the connection between culture and imperialism for Said (1994) is one that involves a territorial battle that is always in motion, always in search of expansion, and always contested—and it is within the sensitivity to this connection, and to the fact that the common sense ideas of an epoch are produced and maintained territorially, geographically, and materially, that Said’s attraction to Gramsci lies. Moreover, Gramsci’s emphasis upon the territorial creates space for Said for the reinsertion of realities on the ground that may have been silenced, or buried, by an oppressive common sense narrative, but which when viewed from within the power of their geographical physicality, become part of a strong counter-project (Said et al. 2000: 425).

This underlining of the crucial place of geography in both Gramsci’s writings, as well as Said’s interpretations of Gramsci, is pivotal for any understanding of what waging a Gramscian ‘war of position’ looks like. For, it is a spotlighting of the fact that this re-excavation of Gramsci’s theorization of counterhegemony is ultimately a strategy for the conquering of territory, space, and constituencies in order to create more just social and political relations that alter oppressive realities—and not an invitation to descend into discursive battles that are truncated from a strategy of actual social transformation. As such—and of particular importance to the purposes of this book—it is an affirmation of the centrality of a Gramscian philosophy of praxis in bringing about social transformation and liberation. Thus, as Saurin warns in Decolonizing International Relations—and Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis illustrates—while it is crucial, insurrectionary, and deeply political to highlight the histories, voices, and struggles of the oppressed, that alone is not enough for the triggering of liberating, empowering change. For, as previously emphasized, this too is ultimately a question of method, and of reinvigorating a Gramscian (following Marx’s) political praxis. A reinvigoration that takes anti-imperial counterhegemonic resistance, as a practice, seriously:

Resolving the problems of historical subordination, whether material or ideational, is not exclusively (perhaps not even primarily) an intellectual or mental task but instead a substantive political task: thesis eleven … Decolonizing IR therefore requires not just the willingness—which was always there—of the subordinated to write world history but also, crucially, the means of production of that world history to be recovered by the dispossessed, by agreement, or by force.

(Saurin 2006: 37–38)

Simultaneously, it is a highlighting of Said’s own obscured political project, which did not just involve what many in Postcolonialism have hailed as the inauguration of colonial discourse as a field of academic inquiry (Williams and Chrisman 1994: 5). While recognizing that “an analysis of the texts of imperialism has a particular urgency given their implication in far-reaching, and continuing systems of domination and economic exploitation” (Williams and Chrisman 1994: 4), this begs the question of whether this emphasis upon Said’s work does not focus in upon only one aspect of his writings, while not building upon its Gramscian counterhegemonic potential. For, as I illustrate in this chapter, Said’s work can equally be read as an attempt to activate Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis, and theorize counterhegemony, in a more modern context of anti-imperial resistance and struggle. As such, it is only that much more perplexing that, with the notable exception of Subaltern Studies, there has not been more engagement with these politically liberating, Gramscian faces of Said generally, and especially within critical IR.

Thus, while it is true that there are many irreconcilable influences within Said’s own writings, any engagement with the author beyond a narrow reading of Orientalism should leave the reader concerned if his main academic legacy becomes one that truncates any discursive elements of hegemony and resistance from the deeply political, physical, situated reality of life and struggle on the ground (Said 1994: 5). After all, it was Said who, in praising Vico’s exaggerated emphasis upon the human and the physical, wrote that Vico’s works, “openly rub the philologists’ and philosophers’ noses (back into) what Yeats has called ‘the uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor’” (Said 2001: 84). Hence, from these points of beginning, it is my contention that a rereading which centres these images of Gramsci at the core of its conceptualization of counterhegemony may go a long way towards remedying some of the tensions and omissions of neo-Gramscian scholarship in IR, and revitalizing Gramsci’s obscured project of counterhegemony.

Re-centring the revolutionary role of the intellectual

One of the central themes of the Prison Notebooks revolves around Gramsci’s scathing critique of ‘traditional’ intellectuals for producing work that is “vulgarized”, elitist and disconnected from the people and their struggles, and bolsters a past and present status quo within which they tend to hold privileged positions (Gramsci et al. 1971: 1–23). Within this critique, it is important to emphasize that Gramsci was doing two inter-related things. The first involved a recognition of the central role played by traditional intellectuals and institutions of knowledge production and dissemination in bolstering hegemony in Western societies, and masking oppressive status quos as the inevitable ‘natural order of things’. The second involved a critique of those who are intellectuals by profession—and perceive the situated, practical knowledge of those struggling on the ground as beyond the realms of academia; or belittle it as un-intellectual, or irrelevant to their abstract theorizations—for disempowering the masses, perpetuating the myth that philosophy is beyond the intellectual capabilities of most ordinary people (Gramsci et al. 1971: 323), and putting up barriers towards both the analysis of, and the attainment of a more just, democratized, liberating world. From here, Gramsci elaborates upon the need for the formation of a ‘new’ type of intellectual, who is an active part of the world for which he or she theorizes. These organic intellectuals are central to the empowerment of the groups to whom they belong, to the instigation of revolutionary change, and most crucially, are the embodiment of the unity of theory and practice, and hence the key instigators (protagonists) of the process of actively building counterhegemony.

One of the most influential theorists who have built upon this Gramscian image of oppositional intellectuals in the context of more modern times is Edward Said. Thus, Said’s Representations of the Intellectual (1996), is inspired by (among several other influences) Gramsci’s analysis of intellectuals and their role in either preserving, or countering hegemony in the context of Western states, and attempts to reformulate this role in a more modern context. Counter-posing Gramsci’s famous statement that, “all men are intellectuals, one could therefore say: but not all men have in society the function of intellectuals” (Gramsci et al. 1971: 3) with that of Julien Benda’s more elitist and divinely inspired image of intellectuals as “a tiny band of super-gifted and morally endowed philosopher-kings who constitute the conscience of mankind” (Said 1996: 5), Said writes,

Gramsci’s social analysis of the intellectual as a person who fulfils a particular set of functions in society is much closer to reality than anything Benda gives us, particularly in the late twentieth century when so many new professions … have vindicated Gramsci’s vision. Today, everyone who works in any field connected with the production or distribution of knowledge is an intellectual in Gramsci’s sense. In most industrialized Western societies the ratio between so-called knowledge industries and those having to do with actual physical production had increased steeply in favor of the knowledge industries.

(Said 1996: 8–9)

Said argues that this proliferation of people connected to these ‘knowledge industries’ in modern times has led theorists such as Alvin Gouldner to describe this phenomenon of the ascendancy of intellectuals as the new class, replacing the old more traditional understandings of class that are linked to money, land, or property (Said 1996: 9). Simultaneously, Said argues that this shift in the role of the intellectual is crucial in its transformation from a public one that is organically connected to citizens within its community or civil society, to one of a specialized expert within a community of ever more inaccessible, disconnected, specialized experts (Said 1996: 9). Lamenting the impending loss of the figure of the intellectual amidst this proliferation of professionalized, disconnected specialists of information production and dissemination, Said’s Reith Lectures insist upon the existence of both the image and the role of the public intellectual as insurrectionary, and as connected to particular communities. In order to do this, Said begins with Gramsci (Said 1996: 11), and attempts to resurrect his image of the counterhegemonic organic intellectual in modern-day times and spaces in Western societies. Thus, he writes,

The central fact for me is that the intellectual is an individual endowed with a faculty for embodying, articulating … a philosophy or opinion to as well as for a public. This role has an edge to it, and cannot be played without a sense of being someone whose place it is to publicly … confront orthodoxy and dogma (rather than produce them), to be someone who cannot easily be co-opted by governments or corporations, and whose raison d’être is to represent all those people and issues that are routinely forgotten or swept under the rug. The intellectual does so on the basis of universal principles …

(Said 1996: 11)

It must be emphasized, that like Gramsci, Said’s image of the intellectual is intimately connected to his understanding of the intellectual’s public role as an articulator of an insurrectionary, liberating conception of the world to, and for, a community the intellectual is organically linked to, against an oppressive reality. This conception of the world is not only meant to transform people’s self-understandings—and thus, transform social relations and political possibilities—but also to simultaneously strive for attaining hegemony itself in a counterhegemonic battle against the ‘common sense’ produced and disseminated by the traditional intellectuals linked to that status quo. Hence, above all else, it is a geographical battle (or ‘war of position’) that focuses upon the conquering and enlargening of oppositional territory, or space.

In parallel to this, it must be underlined that, in opposition to Gramsci’s conceptualization of the intellectual, Said’s oppositional public intellectual is not linked to a particular class, but instead to communities of belonging, by which Said mainly means a nation (Said 1996). This, of course, is a major reformulation of one of Gramsci’s main arguments, part of which revolves around a highlighting of the fact that “the notion of the intellectuals as a distinct social category independent of class is a myth” (Gramsci et al. 1971: 3). From here, Gramsci goes on to argue for the need for the working class to develop its own intellectuals, who “are distinguished less by their profession than by their function in directing the ideas and aspirations of the class to which they organically belong” (Gramsci et al. 1971: 3). To this, Gramsci adds that the role of the political party is to fuse the ideas of these intellectuals with their class members, hence fusing theory and practice, as well as channelling the conception of the world of the group to broader segments of society, and creating alliances between the group and members of the traditional intelligentsia (Gramsci et al. 1971). This point, which underlines the centrality of the traditional intelligentsia in maintaining hegemony, and the importance attached to the conquering of their conception of the world by any successful counterhegemonic movement, is one that is often overlooked in Gramsci’s writing, and hence, may be worth quoting at length:

One of the most important characteristics of any group that is developing towards dominance is its struggle to assimilate and conquer ‘ideologically’ the traditional intellectuals—but this is made more efficient and quick the more the group in question succeeds in elaborating its own organic intellectuals.

(Gramsci et al. 1971: 10)

A few points should be emphasized about Said’s images of the oppositional public intellectual, which diverge from the organic intellectual of Gramsci’s context. First, for Said, though the intellectual is born into particular communities of belonging, and as such is at all times grounded within a locality, a language, a history, or a situated context, it is the oppositional intellectual’s duty to resist uncritical loyalty to these organic communities, to always choose criticism before blind solidarity, and to defiantly take positions against oppressive realities, and political and social relations, in the name of advancing human freedom and liberating knowledge (Said 2001). Thus, it must be emphasized that though Said’s public intellectuals are intellectuals who both organically belong to a certain community, and as such must represent the collective suffering of the groups to whom they belong, “testifying to (their people’s) travails, reasserting (their) enduring presence, reinforcing (their) memory” (Said 1996: 44), this alone is not enough. For Said, this oppositional act only gains powerful counterhegemonic potential when it is universalized, linked with the suffering of other people, (Said 1996: 44) and ultimately, aims at liberating both the oppressors and the oppressed in the name of their common humanity. Hence, following Fanon, Said asserts that, “The goal of the native intellectual cannot simply be to replace a white policeman with his native counterpart, but rather, the invention of new souls” (Said 1996: 41). Simultaneously, these intellectuals must be close to, or champions of a political cause, and preferably should be active members of a political movement in the name of that cause. Thus, while these intellectuals must be an organic part of a struggle, they must also actively create universalized links between that struggle and others in an attempt to create alliances in the common struggle for human liberation everywhere.

In parallel to this, Said’s emphasis on the necessity of affiliation for the oppositional public intellectual (as well as the emphasis on the public nature of the act of writing, teaching, representing, etc.) arises in juxtaposition with the de-linking of traditional intellectuals from the general public, and their acceptance of what Said describes as the “principle of non-interference” (Said 1983: 3). Writing specifically about literary theory, Said argues that though its European origins in the 1960s were an oppositional and revolutionary response to the “traditional university, the hegemony of determinism and positivism … the rigid barriers between academic specialties” (Said 1983: 3), by the late 1970s this had changed. In the context of American literary theory, there was a marked retreat into “the labyrinth of textuality” (Said 1983: 3), which truncated texts, documents, writings, ideas, etc. from what Gramsci would have described as “life.” As such, this move into textuality represented,

The exact antithesis and displacement of what might be called history. Textuality is considered to take place, yes, but by the same token it does not take place anywhere or anytime in particular. It is produced, but by no one at no time … literary theory has for the most part isolated textuality from circumstances, the events, the physical senses that made it possible and render it intelligible as the result of human work.

(Said 1983: 4)

Thus, Said criticizes what he describes as the erosion of Gramsci’s organic intellectual, and the triumph of the traditional intellectual, and “the ethic of professionalism,” which Said links to the “ascendancy of Reaganism” (Said 1983: 4). This obviously has grave political ramifications for the dissemination of forms of ‘common sense’ upholding oppressive status quos to which Said is opposed, and attacks as evidence of the erosion of the intellectual vocation and insurrectionary critical theory and consciousness.

Within this critique is also an argument for where organic intellectuals should strive to locate themselves physically in order to counter this “ethic of professionalism” and thus maintain their critical consciousness and ability to create oppositional, life-enhancing critical theory. Life-enhacing critical theory that aims at producing “non-coercive knowledge in the interest of human freedom” (Said 1983: 29). As such, Said’s emphasis upon geography, place, and territoriality in his reconstruction of a Gramscian form of counterhegemony extended to the geographical location in which he envisioned his oppositional intellectual to ideally operate. Within this location, which Said always elaborated as one that must be marginal—and hence “between culture and system” (Said 1983: 26); “between loneliness and alignment” (Said 1996: 22)—the image of the exile is very strong:

Exile is a model for the intellectual who is tempted, and even beset and overwhelmed by the rewards of accommodation … To be as marginal and as undomesticated as someone who is in real exile is for an intellectual to be unusually responsive to the traveller rather than the potentate, to the provisional and risky rather than the habitual, to innovation and experiment rather than the authoritatively given status quo. The exilic intellectual does not respond to the logic of the conventional but to the audacity of daring, and to representing change, to moving on, not to standing still.

(Said 1996: 63–64)

For the organic intellectuals whose lives, struggles, political practices, and interventions will be highlighted within the rest of these chapters, this image and its interlinked geographical and metaphorical locations will prove to be significant.

The philosophy of praxis, geography, and counterhegemony

Though the influence of Marxists, and in this particular case Gramsci, is rarely highlighted in writings about Said, Said’s own method—described by him as ‘secular criticism’—is mainly a call for a return to a Gramscian philosophy of praxis, which begins with “life” as opposed to the abstractions of theory. As such, it recognizes the political nature of ideas, texts, and institutions, and elaborates a strategy for the waging of a geographically sensitive counterhegemony in an effort to politically reclaim, as Saurin has described it, “the ownership of the means of production of memory and the definition of progress” (Saurin 2006: 37). Hence, it diverges significantly from the points of beginning (and hence contention) within which IR scholars debate the possibility of deploying Gramsci’s concepts within the discipline. It is within this divergence that I argue the basis of the anti-colonial, activist nature of Said’s images of Gramsci lays on the one hand, and the continuing (unintentionally) colonial (or abstracted) nature of IR debates on the other. In this vein, Said writes:

The dangers of method and system are worth noting. Insofar as they become sovereign and as their practitioners lose touch with the resistance and the heterogeneity of civil society, they risk becoming wall to wall discourses, blithely predetermining what they discuss, heedlessly converting everything into evidence for the efficacy of method, carelessly ignoring the circumstances out of which all theory, system and method ultimately derive.

(Said 1983: 25–26)

As stated above, one of the central attractions of the counterhegemonic theorizations of Gramsci for Said revolves not only around the fact that they always remain in contextual control, but that intertwined with this contextual control is, necessarily, a specific physical location that is embedded within an actual territorial geography. Moreover, it is a conception of both counterhegemony and hegemony that centres human agency in both its construction, as well as its transformation, and thus stresses the complicated, contradictory, interconnected messiness of actually lived human history.

It is the taking of this ‘human involvement’ (Said 2001d: 131) in both creating and transforming the world seriously—as well as the heterogeneity and irreconcilable contradictions of diverse physical historical realities—that lay at the base of Gramsci’s understanding of history as, “a far more open-ended series of developments which could be articulated in different directions and end in different kinds of resolutions” (Germain and Kenny 1998: 10). It is also this Vichian-inspired point of beginning that can be argued to be at the origin of Gramsci’s formulation of the historic bloc as the main vehicle for both transformation, and domination through hegemony. Thus, Gramsci understood history “as comprising of a contingent and unpredictable sequence of developments which he labelled historical blocs”, and historic blocs as, “temporary unifications of major social relations within a given national context under the hegemony of a ruling coalition” (Germain and Kenny 1998: 10). Even more crucially perhaps, it is this emphasis that led to Gramsci’s breaking away “from Crocean theory in his rejection of strongly teleological forms of thinking” (Germain and Kenny 1998: 10), but also in his emphasis upon the continuously contested nature of human reality. In this vein, Said writes:

Gramsci understood that if nothing in the social world is natural, then it must also be true that things exist not only because they come into being and are created by human agency but also because by coming into being they displace something else that is already there: this is the combative and emergent aspect of social change as it applies to the world of culture linked to social history.

(Said 2001d: 130)

Hence, it is also from within this starting point that Gramsci highlights the centrality of (national and Western) civil society as the arena within which social orders are built, contested, dismantled, and reconfigured. Civil society can therefore be viewed as the key arena of struggle within which historical blocs are formed and operate. It can be an essential ally to Gramsci’s ‘political society,’ and is the coveted terrain from within which hegemony is emanated, defined, perpetuated, and kept into place by the ‘common sense’ ideologies of a leadership of a historic bloc. Civil society though is simultaneously the site of alternatives, ideological struggles, wars of positions, and manoeuvres. It is the space from within which organic intellectuals battle the dominant ‘common sense’ view of reality, raise critical consciousness, transform mentalities, wage cultural revolutions, and launch counterhegemonic movements against political society.

Equally crucially here however is the fact that Gramsci’s notion of a historical bloc—and indeed, all of his interlinked concepts—is mobilized in order to view human reality as the fluid, combative interaction between situated collectivities of social relations, or social forces. Thus, Germain and Kenny’s assertion that the concept of historic blocs helps neo-Gramscians, “to look beyond the state, to peer through its narrow juridical form in order to apprehend the broader social order of which it forms a constituent element” (Germain and Kenny 1998: 6). It is this social order—which he argues is located within (national, Western) civil society—that Gramsci is concerned with. It is also the hegemony of this social order that Gramsci’s historic blocs in the making attempt to counter in order to become ‘integral states’ themselves and thus become in the position to launch a ‘war of manoeuvre’ against the political society of a state–society complex.

Hence, the fact that the meaning of Gramsci’s terms cannot be discerned without beginning within the contextualized, multi-directional, territorial ‘national’ within which the social forces of a state–society complex exist, does not mean that they cannot be seen to be interlinked with social forces in the international, which of course, Gramsci himself (as an international socialist revolutionary) recognized. However, these ‘international’ social forces themselves still have to be situated geographically. As such, Said asserts, “All intellectual or cultural work occurs somewhere, at some time, on some very precisely mapped out and permissible terrain, which is ultimately controlled by the state” (Said 1983: 169). Thus, it seems strange within this context that a debate surrounding the usefulness of Gramsci’s concepts for the discipline of IR would be framed around whether or not they can be exported into ‘the international,’ when by their critical and geographic nature they precisely create the space and fluidity for such (situated) elaborations (Said 2001).

As previously emphasized, it is my view that the underlying tension within this debate is one of method. As such, the question is not whether or not Gramsci’s concepts can be ‘internationalized’, but how this internationalization itself is done. As illustrated above, there is an inherent methodological problem with the desire to create critical theory under the banner of historical materialism, while simultaneously negating Marx’s thesis eleven (Saurin 2008) and simply ‘applying’ concepts within already defined and abstracted disciplinary IR debates. As Saurin highlights, these disciplinary debates themselves need to be problematized and historicized as a discursive, exclusionary reflection of their imperial origins.

Nothing is more illustrative of this than the fact that most IR debates operate within a framing of two opposing abstractions, faced-off against each other. This reflects the perception that these concepts represent two essentially different entities, with divergent characteristics placed in different locations. This method of abstracted opposition is illustrated by the debate between those who claim that Gramsci’s concepts can only operate within the national, and those who claim that they can be applied within the ‘international’. For, what the framing of this debate in this oppositional manner does not problematize is what scholars of IR are meant to actually understand by a ‘national’ that is diametrically opposed to an ‘international’. More problematically, especially in the context of neo-Gramscian discussions of hegemony (and hence ‘global’ civil society), is the sidestepped question of what is meant by an ‘international’ that does not by definition physically include the ‘national.’ Put differently, if the international is not to be found within situated, contextualized, territorial nationals, where are we to actually locate it? How do we discern what it looks like, whether or not it even exists, or whom it includes or excludes within its spaces? This disciplinary lacuna is particularly bizarre if, following Said, we accept the premise that Gramsci’s theorization of counterhegemony can only derive meaning—can only be operationalized—within a territorial, geographical context that is inherently linked to spaces within a situated national. Moreover, framing a debate upon the meaning and operationalization of a Gramscian concept in such abstracted and oppositional terms cannot be more unrepresentative of Gramsci’s entire political project.

In view of this, I find the fact that the overarching question within this disciplinary debate revolves around discussions of “whether Gramscian influenced analyses are themselves capable of comprehending the complex nature of social order in today’s world” (Germain and Kenny 1998: 4) rather bizarre. Instead, the question IR scholars should be asking themselves is where the contextualized, complex, fluid, physical world has gone in it’s narrow, abstracted debates—along with the vast majority of the world’s humanity. As Said emphasizes:

[Gramsci’s] terms always depart from oppositions … which are then contextualized … (not controlled) by some hypostatized, outside force … which supposedly gives them their meaning by incorporating their differences into a larger identity.

(Said 2001b: 467)

Hence, while Germain and Kenny’s concern about IR scholars’ decontextualized application of Gramsci’s methods and concepts (Germain and Kenny 1998: 4) remains valid, it must equally be underlined that in embracing this method of application, IR scholars remain neither true to Gramsci’s method, nor to his actual concepts. For this application begs the question of what it means exactly to place Gramsci’s terms within an abstracted, all-encompassing entity such as that of ‘the international’ in IR—one that defies situatedness, and is not mediated through a critical consciousness that is, following Said, ‘geographical and spatial.’ In a similar vein, while it also remains true that “it is not at all clear that (Gramsci’s) concepts can be ‘internationalized’” (Germain and Kenny 1998: 4), it must equally be emphasized that the problem does not lie with Gramsci’s concepts themselves. Rather, it lies with the Italian School’s conception of an international that is disembedded from the geography of the national, and hence from ‘life’ itself, in the name of an abstracted, difficult to locate, ‘global’ realm.

It is only in this context that a conception of a ‘global’ civil society that is disembedded from the territorial can be elaborated as a Gramscian-inspired conception—one that is interlinked with an abstracted, global, all-encompassing notion of hegemony. However, besides representing the anti-thesis of Gramsci’s spirit, activism, and life’s work, this abstraction which privileges theoretical disciplinary conversations over the production of revolutionary critical theory, only serves to eradicate some of the most revolutionary aspects of Gramsci’s theorizations themselves. For, as Said writes, the revolutionary power of Gramsci’s writing lies precisely in the fact that his notions of power and hegemony are always deciphered from within a physical, contextualized geography (Said 2001b: 467).

Thus, there is nothing that is meant to be all-encompassing, abstracted, indecipherable, or monolithic about Gramsci’s notion of hegemony—it is a contextualized, historicized, inherently territorial production of society, and the dominant ‘common sense’ notions upholding the conception of the world of an oppressive status quo as inevitable, natural, necessary, or desirable. As such, it happens within an equally contextualized, historicized, and inherently territorial conception of civil society, in alliance with a contextualized, historicized, inherently territorial conception of a political society, or state. It is also precisely this refusal to paint hegemony as abstracted, monolithic, or un-located that makes Gramsci’s notion of hegemony resistible:

For Gramsci … the analysis of discursive power is made coeval with an image of what we could describe as contingent power, the principle of whose constitution is that, since it is constructed by humans, it is therefore not invincible … there is the theoretical insistence of a guaranteed insufficiency in the dominant culture against which it is possible to mount an attack.

(Said 2001a: 244–45)

In addition to this, for Gramsci, hegemony is never static, but a manifestation within a continuous battle with marginalized groups who seek to overturn the conception of the world underpinning it. Hence, hegemony itself (as with all of Gramsci’s terms) is mired within diverse, continuous ‘wars of position’ in many diverse spaces, times, and contexts. As such, it cannot retain any overarching monolithic meaning outside of these situated contexts and the contexts of the specific struggles of wars of position themselves. As Rupert writes, Gramsci did not conceive of hegemony as “an unproblematically dominant ideology that simply shut out all alternative visions or political projects” (Rupert 2003: 185). Rather, hegemony was perceived as “the unstable product of a continuous process of struggle, ‘war of position’” (Rupert 2003: 185). As such, hegemony always aims at conquering more territory, and is by its nature expansive (and hence inter-national).

Moreover, Gramsci elaborated his conception of hegemony in the practical pursuit of and elaboration of a revolutionary theory of counterhegemony on the ground. Thus, when Said asserts that Gramsci “was political in the practical sense, conceiving of politics as a contest over territory” (Said 2001b: 464), he is not only underlining the importance of the Gramscian territorial battle for the production of hegemony, but also the fact that Gramsci’s theorization itself represents the anti-thesis of any attempt at producing grand, ‘pure’ theory. Theory that:

Cuts itself off from a self-reflective consideration of its relationship to material and political power, deluding itself as to its pure and autonomous status, and thereby becomes all the more readily an instrument and mirror of social domination.

(Williams and Chrisman 1994: 10–11)

Self-reflection through praxis though, following Adorno, “would see through itself to its practical moment; instead of mistaking itself for the absolute, it would know that it is a kind of conduct” (Williams and Chrisman 1994: 10–11). In view of this—and of Gramsci’s own method—it is my argument that in the uncovering of alternative pathways to power and social transformation, it is more fruitful to begin with the situated practices of counterhegemony themselves, as opposed to a description of the workings of an all-encompassing ‘global’ hegemony.

Besides remaining true to Gramsci’s political praxis—as well as decolonizing the way in which resistance is studied within the discipline by re-empowering the agencies and knowledges of those on the ground pursuing it—this re-centring of counterhegemony has the advantage of simultaneously reaffirming Gramsci’s conception of the state–society complex as one of the few historically and contextually sensitive views of human social and political organization and habitation that does not operate within the dichotomy between the nation-state and the international. As Saurin argues, this dichotomy is itself a reflection of IR’s exclusionary approach to social inquiry:

The consequence of the illusion of the epoch lies in mistaking the products of international ordering for international ordering itself … Central to orthodox IR is the assumption that to leave the waiting room of history and gain historical recognition can be achieved only through the assumption of national identity and state form … As a discipline IR served first and foremost to nationalize social scientific investigation.

(Saurin 2006: 30–31)

While Said did not directly engage with these more detailed aspects of Gramscian counterhegemony, it should be stressed that the advantage of Gramsci’s theorization of the state–society complex, is precisely the fact that it overcomes this specific dichotomy between the nation-state and the international. As such, it cannot be deployed within a framing that juxtaposes a ‘national’ with an abstracted, all-encompassing ‘international’ and still retain any of its original meaning. For it is a theorization that recognizes the interlinked nature of both national and international social forces, and strives to situate them within the national in order to bring out their contextualized forms and meanings.

Moreover, it is a theorization that is based upon a recognition of the little emphasized difference between (mainly Western) hegemonic state–society complexes that are ruled by consent, and state–society complexes located in the (mainly) non-West under systems of direct domination and open coercion. Needless to say, Gramsci recognized that oppressed people living under systems of direct coercive domination did not need to be alerted to the fact that they are oppressed, or living within an oppressive status quo that must be transformed. Gramsci also recognized that in these societies a war of manoeuvre (or frontal attack on the state) was an appropriate strategy to pursue (Gramsci et al. 1971). His theorization of counterhegemony though, along with his revolutionary strategy of the ‘war of position,’ evolved out of a recognition of the inherent power within perpetuating an oppressive status quo through a form of consent and ‘common sense’ that is produced by a strong civil society allied to a ruling, hegemonic political society. Hence Joseph Buttigieg’s emphasis that civil society here is not only “an integral part of the state … (but) its most resilient and constitutive element” (Buttigieg 1995: 4). Thus, Gramsci’s theorizations of counterhegemony that are linked to the strategy of building of a ‘war of position’ specifically target hegemonic state–society complexes of the West. Here, counterhegemony operates within these situated civil societies in an attempt to (re)conquer its territory, (re)politicize its citizenry, and to transform them into historical forces of change. In an attempt to produce and disseminate an alternative, liberating conception of the world championed by a collective that becomes hegemonic enough to create its own ‘integral state’—and hence mount an assault upon the political society of the oppressive state–society complex (Gramsci et al. 1971: 207).

In this vein then, what remains rarely engaged with in the literature surrounding Gramsci in the discipline is not whether Gramsci’s conception of civil society can be exported into the arena of an exclusionary ‘global,’ but what this theorization of the intertwined dynamic between force and consent may mean in a modern context where geographically situated civil societies (and hence the struggles within them) have become more and more interlinked themselves. In other words, in the context of a hegemonic world order, the social forces of domination are interlinked and expansive by definition. However, these social forces emphasize the use of consent as a means of domination within Western state–society complexes, and coercion within non-Western state–society complexes in which people are very aware of the fact that they live under an oppressive status quo. As such, perhaps the battle for liberation from oppression has in fact become a joint ‘war of position’ built by counterhegemonic forces in diverse nationals, that centres primarily within Western civil societies, aiming to dismantle specific hegemonies within them as a prerequisite for liberation for those who live within spaces of coercive, brutal oppression, as much as for those who live in spaces of consent.

An emphasis on the critique of ‘common sense’

For Gramsci, philosophy was a central powerfully liberating ingredient in the intertwined whole of thought and action. This belief is evident in the fact that he argued that the dominant philosophy of an age reflects that of the common sense of the dominant group upholding a particular world order and attempting to disseminate it as the ‘natural order of things.’ In this vein, the critique of this dominant common sense through the unveiling of alternative philosophies (or conceptions of the world) on the level of ideas is where counterhegemony begins for Gramsci. Hence, paralleling his view on philosophy, Gramsci’s notion of the organic intellectual is not one of a detached intellectual who speaks to academic audiences and practices philosophy for its own sake within specialized, elite circles of knowledge. Rather, Gramsci’s organic intellectual is a political figure who is simultaneously of his people, while in a privileged position to access theoretical ideas, fuse them with the realities of lived knowledge, struggles and experience—and unlock the key to revolutionary praxis. In the Prison Notebooks, Gramsci writes,

A philosophy of praxis … must be a criticism of common sense, but base itself on common sense in order to demonstrate that ‘everyone’ is a philosopher, and that it is renovating and making critical an already existing activity.

(Gramsci et al. 1971: 323–34)

The energetic power within the statement that everyone is a philosopher is often overlooked in analyses of Gramsci’s writings. For, it is not only a reflection of his belief in the untapped, latent power within human agency—a power that is unlocked by organic intellectuals in positions of privilege—it is also an illustration of Gramsci’s belief that the knowledges and practices of situated political agents must always inform the theoretical elaborations presented by organic intellectuals if theirs is ever to become a true ‘philosophical movement’. Thus Gramsci writes, “Only by this contact (with situated people on the ground) does a philosophy become historical, purify itself of intellectualistic elements of an individual character, and become life” (Gramsci et al. 1971: 323–34). Simultaneously, this is a reflection of Gramsci’s belief in the liberating potential of theory itself—a theory that enables and empowers the oppressed, and transforms them into a (collective) historical force while always beginning within their situated historical contexts and realities.

As such, for this Gramsci, counterhegemony challenges the limits of the possible through the transformation of actors thoughts, “which are the products of the prevailing, hegemonic ‘common sense’” (Germain and Kenny 1998: 10). It is herein where the Saidian Gramscian image I elaborate in this book stakes its point of beginning. As such, I attempt to elaborate a guide to revolution based upon a political theory in which the central protagonist is the organic intellectual, and in which the politics of knowledge plays a central role in either enabling or disempowering social change. Here, it is Gramsci’s level of the ‘ethico-political,’ or conceptions of the world, which is centred as the terrain within which counterhegemony must first be created. Thus, the pages that follow take Gramsci’s contention that a new world cannot be built before it has been ignited, or has come alive, within the minds of its activists seriously. Moreover, within this call to action is a political theory that does not just pay lip service to the fact that realities of oppression and status quos are secular and humanly constructed, but one that is based upon an affirmation of the power within human beings to transform them.

In this context, it is within the challenging of Gramsci’s ‘notion of common sense’ through the articulation of a liberating conception of the world that transforms the way in which the oppressed think and act—and hence redefines the political limits of the possible—that building counterhegemony must begin. In the Prison Notebooks, Hoare and Nowell-Smith write that the notion of ‘common sense’ was, “used by Gramsci to mean the uncritical and largely unconscious way of perceiving and understanding the world that has become ‘common’ in any given epoch” (Gramsci et al. 1971: 322). For Said Gramsci’s notion of ‘common sense’ is translated into situated ideas linked to a dominant social group that are produced within a hegemonic civil society, and hence given an aura of permanency and legitimacy through its diverse institutions (Said 2001b: 466). As such, Gramsci’s sphere of civil society is a powerful terrain of both domination and political struggle for Said, precisely because it is not based upon the use of force in order to maintain its conception of the world. Rather, it is based not only upon the ‘consent’ of diverse marginalized groups, but also upon the production of something altogether more positively affirmative, which mirrors Said’s own conception of ‘culture’ and his writings upon its own pervasiveness:

Gramsci grasped the idea that culture serves authority and, ultimately, the national state, not because it represses and coerces, but because it is affirmative, positive, persuasive. Culture is productive Gramsci says, and this, much more than the monopoly of coercion by the state, is what makes a national western society strong, difficult for the revolutionary to conquer.

(Said 1983: 173)

Said argues that the power of Gramsci’s insight here lies within the fact that, “thought is produced so that actions can be accomplished, that it is diffused in order to be effective, persuasive, forceful” (Said 1983: 170), and that crucially, “a great deal of thought elaborates on what is a relatively small number of principle, directive ideas” (Said 1983: 170). Thus, culture, art, the media, schools, and universities are essential components within the ensemble of elaborations that perpetuates a conception of the world, and bolster its hegemony.

One could even go so far as to say that culture—elaboration—is what gives the state something to govern, and yet (as Gramsci is very careful to demonstrate) cultural activity is neither uniform nor mindlessly homogenous …

(Said 1983: 171–73)

Of course, this process of elaboration within civil society is equally crucial in the building of an expansive counterhegemonic conception of the world. For Gramsci, the central elaborators—who can either represent the central legitimators of a status quo or the leaders of an alternative conception of the world—are intellectuals. In parallel to this, the central process of challenging the ‘common sense’ notions upholding an oppressive hegemonic status quo, is termed by Gramsci an ‘intellectual-moral reformation’:

A thoroughgoing transformation and development of people’s ways of thinking and acting in everyday life … A transformation fundamental enough to break the grip of bourgeois ideological formations and to transform the subaltern strata from a passive mass into an active historical force.

(Robinson 2005: 470)

The key to this transformation is to be found within a project of critical pedagogy. This project must be launched by organic intellectuals within their own communities with the aim of transcending ‘common sense’ notions—notions famously described by Gramsci as terrible slave drivers of the spirit (Gramsci et al. 1971), mentally condemning people to “political and social slavery” (Robinson 2005: 473). In order to do so however, organic intellectuals must remain true to the philosophy of praxis (Gramsci et al. 1971: 331).

It is within the context of a ‘war of position’ that Gramsci argues for a revolutionary strategy that centres upon the transformative power of ideas, education, and intellectuals. Within it, he paints a strategy for how a collective can begin to conquer intellectual, geographical, and institutional space within civil society to begin to create an alternative way of life. This process is meant to end in the formation of an ‘integral state,’ which, in this context, can be seen as an alternative civil society (the integral, most resilient constitutive part of the state–society complex for Gramsci) who’s alternative vision, institutions, and collective social and political self-understandings become powerful and expansive enough to be in a position to counter the hegemony of the existing state and wage a war of manoeuvre against its political apparatuses and institutions.

Hence, it is only within this context that Gramsci’s vision of a political party can actually be conceived of as being a ‘collective intellectual.’ One that is trying to conquer space and constituencies for its conception of the world—without actually directly assaulting the existing political society, or state apparatuses instrumental in oppressing them. This is evident in the strategies of the re-emergent one-state movement, which mainly centre upon the countering of the prevailing ‘common sense’ notions linked to the peace process since Oslo within Western hegemonic civil societies—in an attempt to realign them with a conception of the world that is based upon the struggles, realities, and collective social and political aspirations of a particular group of the oppressed.

In this vein, one of the most powerful Gramscian weapons of intervention in this battle of transformation involves the ideational ‘decolonizing’ of collective communities of people—unified by an alternative conception of the world articulated by a leading group of organic intellectuals. This process is one that is launched within diverse civil societies and marks the beginning of the creation of a counterhegemonic historic bloc. It is also a process that is only possible through the vehicle of a critical theory that is aimed at creating a programme of transformative action. It is only in this context that theory and practice become ‘life’—that they become revolutionary praxis.

Moreover, the process of constructing a counterhegemonic historic bloc for Gramsci is one that itself is fluid, and involves the meeting, intermingling, and exchange of diverse collective visions, selves, aims, and strategies. As such, though it begins with being led by the vision of a hegemonic group, it itself becomes a powerful arena of transformative politics and alliance building. A process that, as Rupert argues, is rooted in a belief in the political and liberating nature of education, and enables the meeting of activists that would normally be fragmented, made invisible, or denied collective action by an oppressive status quo—a status quo that seeks to portray resistance as futile, the oppressed as powerless, or itself as impossible to transform. And while Rupert stresses anti-capitalism (Rupert 2003: 188) due to the specific nature of the counterhegemonic movement he writes about, this Gramscian analysis can be applied to other contextualized struggles against oppressive status quos that may not centre on dismantling capitalism itself as a system. For, the central point being made here is that in negotiating political difference and creating alliances and strategies within a Gramscian counterhegemonic historic bloc, political solidarity is created through alliances based upon the common ‘anti’s of diverse oppressed social groups. It is this that creates unified platforms within which diverse groups can come together and wage a united struggle centred against a particular context of oppression, while agreeing upon a broad, forever evolving, outline of a more just future for all—as opposed to universal, homogenous, dogmatic solutions.

As such, existing tensions do not disappear or cease to exist in the sweeping victory of a homogenous identity and homogenous future vision. As Rupert reminds us, this form of counterhegemonic politics that is underpinned by a historic bloc that is not monolithic, deterministic, or bent upon the need to wipe out political difference in a dogmatic effort to not compromise, is a reflection of Gramsci’s true political project of liberation and his aversion to economism (Rupert 2003). For, in the process of launching a counterhegemonic effort, all groups are transformed in the articulation of this forever fluid and emerging common vision, including the hegemonic group itself. Simultaneously, a group can only become the hegemonic leading group of a counterhegemonic bloc of forces when its vision transcends its own particularity to inspire, include, and liberate all the oppressed groups within its bloc as a collective. Thus, Gramsci’s counterhegemonic bloc can be argued to be homogenous in the sense that it is built upon the common ground of what it rejects and stands against, and the principles upon which it would like to envision a more just world order, underpinned by liberating space for the creation of new political and social relations. This kind of liberating political transformation would potentially make room for a multiplicity of diverse visions of community and politics—all of which are silenced within the context of oppression, and all of which would be a particular illustration of liberation.

Conclusion: Towards the invention of new souls

It is the kind of liberating politics described above that I argue represents the essence of a form of social transformation aimed at human empowerment, the activation of Marx’s thesis eleven, and the ‘invention of new souls.’ In pursuit of a window into this process, it is to an analysis of the struggles, strategies, and practices linked to the building of this form of counterhegemonic resistance on the ground—in the form of the single state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict—that I turn in the following chapters. In alignment with the above, this window into the building of counterhegemony is focused upon the situated practices of counterhegemony itself. As such, counterhegemony constitutes its point of beginning. As underlined in this chapter, counterhegemony in this book is understood to begin with the latent potential within people’s thoughts to revolutionize the limits of the possible, and usher in alternative liberating social realities. Following Gramsci’s argument that hegemony is necessarily an educational relationship, counterhegemony here begins in the realm of the ethico-political, or that of the formation, articulation, and transformation of conceptions of the world.

Encompassing a movement of popular education as well as a process of critical and historical self-understanding, this form of counterhegemony is aimed at the systemic construction and consolidation of new social relationships on the ground. In this context, it is groups of people united by particular conceptions of the world—not classes—that are the most important social forces of transformation. It is also new conceptions of the world, elaborated and organized for by collectives of organic intellectuals, that represent the basis of new types of civil and political society. Considered a ‘party’, this unified collective of organic intellectuals aims at transforming an alternative conception of the world into an emergent, expansive, unified historic bloc, involved in the waging of a war of position for hegemony within the diverse spaces and institutions of civil society. Meant to represent the basis of alternative visions and institutions of state and society that become powerful enough to replace the existing state–society complex that is being countered, this counterhegemonic bloc aspires to become an ‘integral state,’ or a new form of collective social self-determination. It is only once a strong integral state is formed within civil society that a war of manoeuvre—or a direct assault upon the political society of the state itself—becomes possible.

It is my contention that this view of counterhegemony reflects Gramsci’s belief in the revolutionary nature of philosophy, as well as the inherent link between thought and action, and, as such, revitalizes his empowering project of social transformation. To the extent that I engage with hegemony itself in this book, it is as a form of hegemony that is understood as a situated form of domination which is discerned through the political practices, strategies, visions, and understandings of the single state intellectuals attempting to transform it. It is also itself an unstable product of a continuous war of position that aims at overtaking more and more territory—and as such, is inherently contestable. Dependant upon consent in Western state–society complexes—which is manufactured through complex mediums and diverse institutions, and ensembles of ‘elaboration’ located within civil society—it is based upon “uncritical and largely unconscious ways of perceiving and understanding the world that have become ‘common’ in any given epoch,” (Gramsci et al. 1971: 322), which translate into incoherent, passive, or conservative norms of collective action. This oppressive discourse of ‘popular common sense’ hence becomes a central arena of struggle in the countering of hegemony. It is from within this base that the process of constructing an intellectual-moral bloc begins, and is built into a ‘war of position’ seeking to revolutionize collective norms of thinking and acting. Thus, from within this Saidian Gramscian lens, it is to the outlining of the oppressive ‘common sense’ notions underpinning the hegemony of the Israeli–Palestinian peace process since Oslo, as defined by the collective of organic intellectuals struggling against them on the ground, that Chapter 2 turns.

2    The context

The Oslo Accords and the hegemony of Zionist common sense

Introduction

As underlined in preceding chapters, it is the aim of this book to attempt to present and deploy a rereading of Gramsci that centres the practices of counterhegemony in its analysis. Since hegemony and counterhegemony are inevitably interlinked though, this chapter paints the context of the Zionist hegemony that single state activists in Palestine/Israel perceive themselves to be struggling against on the ground—as embedded within the Israeli–Palestinian peace process since Oslo, and veiled by the rhetoric of a future two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. As Edward Said has argued, the Zionist hegemony contended to have prevailed in Oslo’s vision and processes is one that is perceived to be in the form of a “modified Allon Plan” (Said 1993: 3), and to have transformed Palestinian and Israeli lives and territory along the lines of this vision and its imperatives. As such, while the peace process launched in the aftermath of Oslo was seen to be one that would lead to a two-state solution¹ by the ‘international community’, and was represented in that way within their civil societies—it represented a process based upon the principle of separation, and limited Palestinian autonomy for the Israeli side, while for the Palestinian side it represented the potential of launching a territorial war of position towards the formation of a viable two-state solution.

Much has been written about the Oslo Accords, and the new era and realities they represented in the context of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and it is not my intention to add to this literature or to go into the details of these agreements in depth. Rather, I aim to provide the contextual setting for the platform from within which single state activists and intellectuals emerged and articulated their thoughts, visions, strategies, and struggles for social transformation against the current Israeli–Palestinian peace process since Oslo. As such, I begin this chapter by briefly outlining the circumstances within which the Oslo Accords were born, and highlighting the fact that it is these circumstances themselves—and the groundwork they lay as the basis of future negotiations and transformations on the ground—that foreshadowed the expansion of Zionism on the ground within the unleashing of the peace process. This, I do in two sections. The first briefly outlines the circumstances, personalities, and processes that led to the dominance of the ideology of the Allon Plan in the negotiation of the Oslo Accords, as well as its basis within an Israeli impulse of separation from the Palestinians rather than a decision to launch negotiations towards a viable two-state solution to the conflict in the future. The second section briefly outlines the circumstances, personalities, and processes that led the Palestinians to accept the processes and vision of the Oslo Accords, and their gamble upon a strategy of waging a territorial war of position towards a viable two-state solution from within the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT).

Having set the stage of the formation of a Zionist hegemony in the form of a modified Allon Plan, I then continue to set out the main features of the Oslo Accords themselves, and the extent to which they represented a departure from the pre-Oslo days. I strive to do this both in terms of the negotiation of a solution to the conflict itself, as well as in terms of the transformations unleashed or accelerated on the ground to both Palestinian and Israeli lives, resources, and territory in the aftermath of Oslo. Finally, I highlight the disjuncture between the rhetorical production and elaboration of the ‘common sense’ of Oslo as the inauguration of a peace process towards a two-state solution, while disguising the territorial expansion of Zionism on the ground, along the lines of the Allon Plan. My overarching argument here is that it is within this episode of history that the Palestinian war of position to create a viable two-state solution was perceived to have largely failed, and was reformulated by some Israeli and Palestinian organic intellectuals into a re-emergent war of position against Zionism and separation.

The Context: The Oslo Accords and their aftermath

The Oslo Accords: Circumstances of emergence and the groundwork lain for the following ‘peace process’

Yitzhak Rabin and the dominance of the Allon Plan’s imperatives

In the aftermath of Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip (WBGS) in 1967, a new reality emerged on the ground in which all of pre-1948 Palestine became Israel. For the Israelis, the question of what to do with these areas was an essential one in terms of Israel’s future as a state. As underlined by Nils Butenschøn, this question reopened a classical debate within the Zionist movement due to the strategic and symbolic value of the OPT themselves. This debate revolved around the questions of what the meaning and objective of the Jewish state is, what its relationship is with the non-Jewish population, and how best to conceive of maintaining its security in the future (Butenschøn 1998: 33). Hence, Butenschøn writes,

Translated into the field of practical policies after the 1967 war, these questions all focused on the definition of the future status and national identity of the territories … The Israeli government decided not to commit itself to a very specific position on these questions with the important exception of East Jerusalem, which was formally annexed by Israel in July 1967.

(Butenschøn 1998: 34)

As Butenschøn highlights, since 1967 the conception of the OPT as either an integral part of the land of Israel that cannot be conceded, as opposed to a territorial buffer zone, or strategic additional base, for Israel’s security, represents one of the main dividing lines in Israeli politics.² These two diverse conceptions on the OPT translated into ‘strategic pragmatism’ and ‘frontier nationalism’ in Israeli politics. Butenschøn elaborates:

The first trend was essentially formed around the Labour Party, which was in power until 1977; the other was anchored in the coalition of right-wing and national-religious parties which formed the government from then until 1992 … the best known document conveying the strategic approach was presented by the late Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Yigal Allon (of the Labour Party), and hence known as the Allon Plan.

(Butenschøn 1998: 35)

The Allon Plan’s aim was to “identify the significance of the Territories for Israeli security and strategic needs and come up with suggestions for territorial arrangements” (Butenschøn 1998: 35). Within the framework of the WBGS, Yigal Allon argued that Israel should annex the territories that were essential for it strategically (namely Jerusalem, the Jordan Valley and the Judean Desert), while withdrawing from areas with large populations of Palestinians as part of a territorial compromise with Jordan (Butenschøn 1998: 35).

As Butenschøn highlights, the ideology of the Allon Plan revolved around three main concerns. The first of these involves the establishment of secure borders, and as such viewed the West Bank as “a buffer zone against an Arab invasion from the east” (Butenschøn 1998: 35); the Jordan Valley as “an essential line of defence” (Butenschøn 1998: 35); while the annexation of land around Jerusalem was seen as crucial for control over the city, and the southern part of the Gaza Strip as crucial as a buffer against possible attack from Egypt (Butenschøn 1998: 35). In this vein, in 1968, “the Israeli government started the construction of semi-military settlements in those zones that the Allon Plan had marked for Israeli annexation” (Butenschøn 1998: 35).

The second concern outlined by Allon revolved around the question of demography, and was of special importance to the Labour Party and left-wing Zionists generally, for whom maintaining Israel both as a Jewish state as well as a democracy was essential (Butenschøn 1998: 35). As such, “the borders of the Jewish state had to be redrawn … to include as few non-Jews as possible in the appropriated areas” (Butenschøn 1998: 35). Third, Allon’s plan revolved around a territorial compromise with Jordan as a route around the problem of the Palestinian refugees and the dilemma of the Right of Return (Butenschøn 1998: 36). However, with the coming to power of Menachim Begin and the right in 1977, the Allon Plan was shelved and a “new intensive phase in the Israeli politics of expansion was initiated” (Butenschøn 1998: 37).

It is in this context that the first Intifada broke out, and Yitzhak Rabin was eventually elected (in 1992) on a platform that promised peacemaking, with “a priority to the Palestinian track” (Shlaim 1994: 27). As Avi Shlaim writes though, Rabin continued to view Arafat as an “archenemy” (Shlaim 1994: 28) in this historical conjunction, and as representing the Palestinian Diaspora and the Right of Return of the refugees of 1948 (Shlaim 1994: 28). As such, Rabin continued to, “shun the PLO and pin his hopes on the local leaders from the occupied territories who he considered more moderate and pragmatic” (Shlaim 1994: 28). In this context then, the reversal in Rabin’s³ attitude and the decision to directly negotiate with the PLO (first in secret and then officially) “constituted a revolution in Israeli foreign policy” (Shlaim 1994: 28). However, Shlaim underlines, as opposed to Peres and Beilin,⁴

Rabin … had no clear idea of the final shape of the settlement with the Palestinians. His thinking was largely conditioned by the Allon Plan, by the Jordanian option, and by the idea of territorial compromise over the West Bank … Hence the attraction of the idea of Palestinian self-rule for an interim period of five years during which the settlements would stay in place.

(Shlaim 1994: 29–30)

This analysis is echoed by Raz-Krakotzkin, who emphasizes that Rabin only agreed to recognize the PLO when he “realized that this was a better way to serve the same strategic interests” (Raz-Krakotzkin 1998: 61). Raz-Krakotzkin elaborates:

Rabin was a follower of Yigal Allon, who after the 1967 war outlined a plan according to which the district of Jerusalem, as well as parts of the Hebron district and the Jordan Valley, would be kept under Israeli sovereignty. The remaining territory … would become an autonomous Palestinian area, with a link to Jordan. Rabin considered the Oslo framework to be one which would enable him to achieve, via different tactics, the policy he had always favored.

(Raz-Krakotzkin 1998: 61)

It was also within this juncture that violence intensified on the ground in Palestine/Israel, Rabin “ordered the closure of the occupied territories” (Shlaim 1994: 30), “started the process of economic separation” (Shlaim 1994: 30) between both sides, and a “public debate reopened in Israel on the proposal for a unilateral withdrawal from the Gaza Strip” (Shlaim 1994: 30). As Raz-Krakotzkin argues though, the Intifada also:

Disturbed the self-image of Israelis, undermining their image of themselves as victims, an image which was central to their consciousness … (it) emphasized the contradiction between the Israeli self-image and the reality of occupation, confiscation and brutality. This led more and more Israelis to the conclusion that there could be no solution except through negotiations with the PLO.

(Raz-Krakotzkin 1998: 63)

As Raz-Krakotzkin highlights, “the principle of separation was the essence of the logic of the Oslo Agreement from the Israeli point of view … Both ‘right’ and ‘left’ accept(ed) the desire for separation as a starting point” (Raz-Krakotzkin 1998: 65). Thus, “the reality of separation which was formed after the Oslo Accords actually diminished the differences between the main political powers in Israel concerning the future of the Occupied Territories” (Raz-Krakotzkin 1998: 65). Raz-Krakotzkin argues that the motivating factor which brought both Labor and Likud around to accepting the solution offered by Oslo was “a rejection of a bi-national state … they all agreed that Jerusalem and most of the settlements should remain in Israeli hands” (Raz-Krakotzkin 1998: 65). Thus, he writes:

The Oslo framework terminated the previous debate about the settlements. The Labour Party and the whole ‘peace camp’ accepted the settlements as a fact of life, and in that sense, they have accepted Likud policy. On the other hand, the Likud accepted the principle of autonomy, and therefore the essential principle of the peace process.

(Raz-Krakotzkin 1998: 66)

It is in this context that Shlaim writes that Rabin did not oppose the ‘Gaza-Jericho first’ formula, for—due to his support for the Allon Plan—he had always “envisaged handing over Jericho to Jordanian rule, while keeping the Jordan Valley in Israeli hands” (Shlaim 1994: 31). However, Rabin’s condition was that “the Palestinian foothold on the West Bank would be an island inside Israeli controlled territory, with the Allenby Bridge also remaining in Israeli hands” (Shlaim 1994: 31). It is also in this context that Said denounced the Oslo Accords as a “re-formulated Allon Plan”, and the Palestinian national poet Mahmoud Darwish stated that the Accords laid the groundwork for “Gaza-Jericho first … and last” (Shlaim 1994: 35). It is this Zionist hegemony, with its underlying principle of separation, that is argued to have prevailed in both the texts and the transformations on the ground that were either rooted in—or accelerated by—the Oslo Accords and the ensuing peace process.

Yasser Arafat and the waging of a war of position

While the PLO had adopted the formula of ‘two states for two people’ at the Palestinian National Council’s meeting in Algiers in 1988, it was not until the signing of the Oslo Accords that this formula became one in which the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem were clearly designated as the territories upon which a Palestinian state would be constituted (Hilal 2007: 3)—and the Palestinian refugees’ right of return was deemed mutually exclusive to this formula.⁵ Prior to 1988, and stretching as far back as the Palestinian national movement during the British Mandate period, the Palestinian position “called for a democratic state to include the various ethnic and religious communities that made Palestine their home” (Hilal 2007: 1). As such, it stood against the idea of partitioning the land into separate Arab and Jewish states, and against the idea of establishing an exclusionary ethno-religious Jewish state (Hilal 2007: 1–3). And though it was the British Government which issued the Balfour Declaration in 1917 that would set the stage for the paradoxical peace process that would ensue, it is also important to note that the British themselves initially envisioned a sharing of the land between both parties within the framework of a unitary state based upon the principle of parity. As Ilan Pappe recounts,

Until 1937, the British were still visualizing the future within a one state paradigm … In a country that had a majority of Palestinians (85% of the population), the British must have felt triumphant when they succeeded in persuading the Executive Committee of the Palestinian National Council … to share land with the Jewish settlers. The idea was to build a state on the basis of parity … It was a concept of a unitary state that was accepted by a Palestinian leadership in a rare moment of unity … But the Zionist leadership refused to partake in such a solution … The Zionist leaders preferred the idea of partition, with the hope of annexing more of Palestine when favourable conditions for such expansion would develop.

(Pappe 2007c: 35)

As such, Butenschøn argues that it is the Balfour Declaration itself that lies at the core of the irreconcilable, contradictory nature of the two-state solution as adopted by the UN Partition Plan in 1947. For, it was the Balfour Declaration that furnished the basis for both the recognition of the right to self-determination of the indigenous inhabitants of the land of Palestine (the Palestinians), while simultaneously validating the Zionist claim to the land, “based on a ‘historical connection’ with Palestine of an external non-territorial population” (Butchensøn 2007: 78). This resulted in a “dual commitment to self-determination” (Butenschøn 2007: 75) to two separate parties on the land of Mandatory Palestine, that, “deviated fundamentally from well-established legal interpretations of the principle of self-determination” (Butenschøn 2007: 75), and gave “a clear political priority to the latter (i.e. to the Zionist claim)” (Butenschøn 2007: 78). As Butenschøn highlights, it is herein that the unprecedented paradox of Palestinian self-determination was born from a legal, and hence political, perspective:

The policy implications implied … that any solution to the question of Palestine would have to be based on the recognition of a Jewish national right in the country and that the rights of the non-Jewish population (i.e. the Palestinians) would have to be subordinated to that policy … The paradox is that recognition of Palestinian national rights has been conditioned on Palestinian renunciation of their right to the same, leaving any Palestinian leadership with a catch 22 situation.

(Butenschøn 2007: 75)

By making this paradoxical unprecedented dual commitment to the territory of Palestine—one to the indigenous people, and the other to immigrant-settlers whose claim of a ‘historical connection’ to the land on behalf of world Jewry was “unique and not supported … by established interpretations of the principle of national self-determination, expressed in the Covenant of the League of Nations (LON), and as applied to other territories with the same status as Palestine (‘A’ mandate)” (Butenschøn 2007: 78)—the British planted the seeds for any ensuing peace process to be based upon contradictory, yet internationally recognized claims to self-determination in Palestine. These claims, while operating outside the realm of accepted international law and the resolutions of the LON, were nevertheless accepted by the dominant powers as the basis for the creation of a future peace:

The ‘international community’ (or more precisely dominant powers in the international system) has contributed directly to creating the conditions of intractability of the conflict … by accepting a dual commitment to the two parties. The incompatibility of the conflicting claims was from the very start inherent in declarations, treaties and agreements related to the political future of Palestine.

(Butenshøn 2007: 78)

This paradox was accepted and adopted by the United Nations (UN) in 1947. This is reflected in the UN General Assembly’s adoption of the partition plan on Palestine in 1947, despite the centrality of the principle of national self-determination to its creation as a world organization. As Butenschøn recounts,

Finding a lasting political solution to the historical ‘Jewish problem’ in the aftermath of the World War II genocide against the Jews and the failure of the mandatory government of Palestine to find a solution within a unitary state were given as reasons by the majority of UN members to ignore the principle of self-determination for the Palestinians.

(Butenschøn 2007: 79)

In a similar vein, Ilan Pappe highlights the fact that the inquiry commission set up by the UN in the aftermath of the British decision to leave Palestine (UNSCOP) was inexperienced, and “acted within a vacuum that was easily filled by Zionist ideas” (Pappe 2007c: 36). In 1947, the Jewish side originally proposed to the commission a solution to the conflict based upon the creation of a Jewish state on 80 per cent of the land of Palestine—which constitutes the State of Israel today without the Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT) (Pappe 2007c: 36). The commission reduced this proposal to 55 per cent of Palestine, and it is upon this plan that the partition plan was drawn up as UN General Assembly Resolution 181 and imposed upon the Palestinians, who remained united against the idea of partition.

In the aftermath of Palestinian rejection of the partition plan, the Jewish leadership decided to take matters into its own hands, and unilaterally create a Jewish state on the ground upon 80 per cent of Palestine (Pappe 2007c). On this process, Ilan Pappe writes:

The problem was that within the desired 80% of the land, the Jews were a minority of 40% … The leaders of the Yishuv had been prepared ever since the beginning of the Zionist project in Palestine for such an eventuality. They advocated … the enforced transfer of the indigenous population so that a pure Jewish state could be established. Therefore, on March 1948, the Zionist leadership adopted the by now infamous Plan Dalet, which ordered the Jewish forces to ethnically cleanse the areas regarded as the future Jewish state in Palestine.

(Pappe 2007c: 36)

As Pappe argues, during this episode of history, “Palestine was not divided it was destroyed, and most of its people expelled” (Pappe 2007c: 36). Those who were expelled or forced to flee the Zionist forces became refugees, under the administration of the UN—the most impoverished of which were housed in around 60 camps in surrounding countries (Hilal 2007: 3). The Palestinians who remained were given Israeli nationality,

But were looked upon with suspicion, treated as second class citizens and as non-Jewish minorities, and not as a national group with collective rights. This is consistent with the self-definition of Israel as combining Jewishness and democracy.

(Hilal 2007: 3)

As Hilal writes, the Palestinian national movement did not recover from the devastation of 1948 until after the 1967 Six Day War, when it re-emerged under the umbrella of the PLO. It was not until 1974 though, in the aftermath of the Arab–Israeli War in October 1973, that the PLO adopted a strategy of a transitional struggle, based upon the model of “two states for two people”:

In 1974 the PLO adopted the notion of a two-stage struggle in which it was envisaged that a Palestinian state would exist next to an Israeli one, while the establishment of a full democratic state would be left to a later stage of the struggle.

(Hilal 2007: 3)

It is telling that even in the PLO’s initial acceptance of a paradigm of a two-state solution based upon a partitioning of the land of Palestine, it did this in the form of a transitional strategy of war of position on the ground. Emboldened by the outbreak of the first Intifada, and the promise it held for a struggle of liberation on the ground, the PLO shifted its strategy to one centring upon returning to the OPT and launching a territorial struggle from within.

Accepting a two-state paradigm and the main features of Oslo

Upon returning from exile to the OPT after the signing of the Oslo Accords, PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat addressed a crowd of 70,000 Palestinian refugees in the camp of Jabalya—where the first Intifada had begun in 1987—and said, “I know many of you here think Oslo is a bad agreement. It is a bad agreement. But it’s the best we can get in the worst situation” (Usher et al. 1995: 1). As Hilal underlines, understanding the slow and reluctant acceptance of the Palestinian national movement of a two-state paradigm must begin in remembering the PLO’s increasingly difficult and fluctuating situation, as well as the regional and international transformations from the late 1960s to the 1980s (Hilal 2007: 3–5). To begin with, the fact that the PLO did not have a territorial base of its own resulted in frequent clashes with the host governments in which it set up headquarters, as well as frequent relocations, as was seen with Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. (Hilal 2007: 4) This left the PLO with little space in which to manoeuvre or to organize and mobilize its people. Describing the hostility of this episode in history, Graham Usher writes,

Lebanon had already imposed draconian restrictions on its Palestinian residents. This was aggravated by a Syrian-sponsored siege … against Palestinian refugee camps in the late 1980s … There was no possibility of any PLO mobilisation in Syria given the frigid relations between Arafat and Asad. Finally, relations between the PLO and its constituency in Jordan … were increasingly tense. King Hussein was historically suspicious of any PLO activity on his turf …

(Usher et al. 1995: 2)

This shrinking of territorial manoeuvring space, added to the dispersal of PLO forces from Lebanon in the wake of Israel’s 1982 invasion (Hilal 2007: 4), and made the OPT themselves much more politically and strategically significant in the PLO’s considerations of its strategy at this point in its history. As such, this shift in strategy based upon territorial considerations also strengthened the appeal of accepting a two-state solution to the conflict. Considering that, for the Palestinians of the OPT,

The immediate and most important aim … was, and still is, freeing themselves from the Israeli occupation, which raises the question about the political future of the Palestinians. The obvious answer was to establish an independent Palestinian state. The first Intifadah … made the two state solution the logical solution.

(Hilal 2007: 4–5)

In parallel to the above, it should also be recalled that the PLO received a significant amount of funding from the oil rich Arab states, as well as from Soviet and socialist countries, which enabled it to both establish a fast growing and cumbersome bureaucracy, as well as provide the Palestinian communities (particularly the refugees in the camps) with services, employment, welfare, organization, and empowerment (Hilal 2007: 4). This special link made the PLO particularly vulnerable to the political advice of the Arab states and the socialist camp, both of which largely favoured the acceptance of a state on the OPT (Hilal 2007: 4). More importantly however was the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1980s, which dealt a heavy blow to the PLO internationally. This collapse of, “what for the PLO had been a historic counterweight to the imperial and pro-Israel designs of the United States in the region” (Usher et al. 1995: 2), was worsened further still by Arafat’s ill-fated decision to side with Saddam Hussein during the second Gulf War in 1990. As Graham Usher recounts, Arafat’s decision,

Estranged the PLO from Egypt and the Arab states of the Persian Gulf, and cost the organization $120 million in annual donations from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq. Confiscations of Palestinian deposits in Kuwaiti banks, plus the loss of revenues, brought the PLO forfeits from the Gulf states in the years 1991–93 to around $10 billion.

(Usher et al. 1995: 1)

The effect of all of the above on the PLO itself was devastating, and negatively affected many of its missions abroad and its services of empowerment, mobilization, connection, employment, and welfare to its Palestinian constituencies. As Usher writes,

Thousands of functionaries were laid off, missions abroad closed and, crucially, educational, welfare, and social services for Palestinian refugees were suspended. In August 1993, on the very eve of Oslo, the PLO in Tunis simply closed down the organisation’s … departments for lack of funds.

(Usher et al. 1995: 2)

It was this context that Arafat was referring to as ‘the worst situation,’ and it is in this state of international and regional despair that “a delegation of Palestinians from the territories, excluding Jerusalem, and approved by the Shamir government” (Usher 1995: 3) entered the Madrid conference in 1991, as part of a Jordanian delegation. As such, the Oslo Accords “reflected the core PLO leadership reading of the balance of forces existing at the time” (Hilal 2007: 5). The only silver lining in the liberation organization’s woes was the Intifada, which “gave that leadership the feeling that it could change the balance of forces once it returned to Palestine, to the extent of achieving an independent Palestinian state” (Hilal 2007: 5).

It is important to note that the Madrid conference itself came about after the collapse of the Soviet bloc, and as such constituted part of the ‘new world order’ George Bush Senior envisioned for the region of the Middle East (Usher et al. 1995: 3). Seeing the potential for US hegemony in the region in the aftermath of the Gulf War, which had “thrown together a coalition of Arab states more susceptible to US hegemony than at any point in the last 40 years” (Usher et al. 1995: 3), the American president strove to provide these “authoritarian and discredited regimes with some gesture of US concern for Arab grievances” (Usher et al. 1995: 3). These grievances, of course, revolved around the Israeli occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem, South Lebanon, as well as the Golan Heights. It is here that the principle of “territories for peace” was born (Usher et al. 1995: 3). For the PLO, this American “rhetorical accommodation to the anti-Saddam alliance” (Usher et al. 1995: 3), provided a window for it to rejoin the international scene after its exclusion as a result of the Gulf War. As Graham Usher argues, by this point in history, “the only thing the PLO had going for it … was the ‘peace process’” (Usher et al. 1995: 2).

The Oslo Accords themselves were negotiated through “14 secret meetings between PLO officials and Israeli government advisors and academics … hosted and facilitated by Norway’s Foreign Affairs Minister Johan Jorgen Holst and social scientist Terje Rod Larsen” (Usher et al. 1995: 7). They are made up of two parts: mutual recognition letters between Israel and the PLO, and a Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements (DOP or Oslo I) signed by Israel and the PLO on September 13th, 1993 (Butenschøn 2007: 85). As Avi Shlaim notes, perhaps the most significant achievement of the Accords lies in the fact that “mutual denial has made way for mutual recognition” (Shlaim 1994: 25). Crucially though, the Accords are not a peace treaty, but “agreements on a method and timetables for reaching a lasting solution and interim institutional and security arrangements” (Butenschøn 2007: 85). This calendar for negotiations initially covered an interim period of five years, after which a permanent settlement would be negotiated based upon UN Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338 (Usher et al. 1995: 8). It was this clause that gave Palestinian supporters of Oslo the most hope, since, as Hanan Ashrawi (Palestinian delegation spokesperson) said, “This means that you recognize that Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza are occupied territory, that international law prevails and that withdrawal is a basic component of the agreement” (Usher et al. 1995: 9).

The agenda itself though was made up of five main points. The first stipulated that upon the signing of the DOP, the IDF would withdraw from Gaza and Jericho, and “be replaced by a ‘strong Palestinian police force’ responsible for Palestinian ‘internal security and public order’” (Usher et al. 1995: 8). The second stipulated that Israel would remain in control “of external relations and foreign affairs” (Usher et al. 1995: 8). The third point stated that once the IDF withdrew from Gaza and Jericho, “the Israeli government would transfer to ‘authorised Palestinians’ civil power over five services: education and culture, health, social welfare, direct taxation and tourism” (Usher et al. 1995: 9). Fourth, the Palestinians would elect a Palestinian Council in nine months time to be responsible for these services (Usher et al. 1995: 9), and finally, “No later than two years after this, Israel and the Palestinians would start negotiations on a permanent settlement and address such issues as Jerusalem, settlements and the 1948 refugees” (Usher et al. 1995: 9). A settlement on these issues, of course, has yet to be reached.

In essence, for the PLO, the Accords represented their acceptance to create a Palestinian Authority with limited powers in Gaza and Jericho first, while agreeing to bracket the issue of statehood itself to negotiations on a permanent settlement (Hilal 2007). In parallel to this, as Pappe emphasizes, there were three central Israeli stipulations upon entering negotiations after 1967, and upon any future peace agenda. The first concerned “being absolved from the 1948 ethnic cleansings, with that issue no longer being mentioned as part of a prospective peace agenda” (Pappe 2007c: 39). The second outlined the OPT of 1967 as the only territories upon which any peace negotiation would be valid (Pappe 2007c: 39), while the third stipulated that the Palestinians within Israel would not be part of any future negotiated settlement (Pappe 2007c: 39). Thus, in effect,

This meant that 80% of Palestine and more than 50% of the Palestinians were excluded from the peacemaking efforts in the land of Palestine. This formula was accepted unconditionally by the USA and sold as the best offer in town to the rest of the world.

(Pappe 2007c: 39)

Moreover, Pappe argues that the core of the Oslo Accords revolved around the reselling of the idea of ‘territories for peace,’ conceived of in Madrid:

At the heart of this formula stood an equation of territories for peace, produced by the Israeli peace camp, and marketed by the Americans. It is a strange formula, if you stop and think about it: at one end of the equation you have a quantitative and measurable variable: at the other, an abstract term, not easily conceptualized, or even illustrated.

(Pappe 2007c: 39)

In parallel to this, Oslo mirrored Israel’s approach in Madrid, which:

Focused upon the specifics of Palestinian self-government … while avoiding discussion of substantive issues … Many Palestinians began to view Israel’s stonewalling as a cover for escalating land confiscation and military repression in the territories … In 1991, the year of Madrid, Israel expropriated a further 187,000 dunums of Palestinian land in the West Bank and Gaza … This was de facto annexation. It was no longer creeping: it was raging.

(Usher et al. 1995: 3–4)

The significant difference the DOP represented to the Madrid formula was to be found in Israel’s “pledge to withdraw militarily from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank town of Jericho as the ‘first step’ (towards Palestinian autonomy)” (Usher et al. 1995: 8).

For the PLO of course, and especially for Arafat, the greatest incentive of the Accords was Israel’s recognition of the PLO, and not the text of the DOP, which he signed unilaterally from his headquarters in Tunis, without consulting with the Palestinian delegation. Upon being faxed the document from Tunis, the delegation was “alarmed by its content … It overhauled positions they had previously been told to defend ‘at all costs’. They were also angered by the cavalier way in which Arafat had relegated their status to that of a ‘fax machine for Tunis’” (Usher et al. 1995: 10). For their part, the Israelis had come around to the idea of negotiating directly with Tunis, and granting the PLO recognition after “‘internal security assessments’ assured Rabin that Arafat’s domestic and international plight had become so dire, that for the carrot of recognition, he would be amenable to making unprecedented political concessions” (Usher et al. 1995: 11). The secret Oslo channel confirmed this assessment, and the fact that “the PLO—though not any other Palestinian or Arab representative—would sign the DOP” (Usher et al. 1995: 11). For Arafat and his supporters, these concessions—which included that the PLO “renounces all acts of terrorism and other acts of violence and will assume responsibility over all PLO elements and personnel in order to ensure their compliance, prevent violations and discipline violators” (Usher et al. 1995: 11)—marked the beginning of a war of position within the OPT as opposed to an armed struggle of liberation. In this new phase,

The stakes of liberation would depend on whether Israel’s security-led and ‘functional’ vision would prevail or whether the PLO could establish independent, national, democratic institutions inside the territories that would make the momentum toward national independence and self determination irreversible.

(Usher et al. 1995: 13)

As Mahmoud Abbas, Arafat’s main political advisor at the time, reflected after the signing of the DOP, Oslo, “could lead to a Palestinian state or a catastrophic liquidation of the Palestinian cause” (Usher et al. 1995: 15). For Oslo’s opponents—including the PLO’s Marxist Popular and Democratic Fronts, Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and the Palestinian refugees—these concessions, sold as ‘realism’ by Abbas, “disguised a political defeat for the PLO that would prove to be every bit as catastrophic as its 1982 military defeat in Lebanon” (Usher et al. 1995: 13). As Usher writes though, “at the time of Oslo, the optimists were in a majority” (Usher et al. 1995: 13), and even the majority of the pessimists of the WBGS could not resist the wave of joy triggered by Israel’s recognition of the PLO.

Extent Oslo represents a departure from pre-Oslo

As Butenschøn emphasizes, the Oslo Accords, “irreversibly altered the legal and political landscape of the Middle East. Even if the peace process remains stalled for the next decade, the Accords will continue to furnish the basis for Israeli–Palestinian relations, to serve as a sort of “Basic Law” or constitution for the unhappy polity” (Butenschøn 2007: 85). While the Oslo Accords were essentially a repackaging of the principle of territory for peace, their greatest advantage for the Israeli side was precisely the fact that they were so vague on the issue of territoriality, focusing instead upon a “temporal spacing of issues” (Usher et al. 1995: 9). As Usher writes,

‘While the proposal lacks the clarity of a map’, said Peres, ‘it provides the commitment of a calendar’. ‘The clarity of a map’, however, was what most Palestinians had insisted the peace process was all about. The core of their conflict with Israel had always been about land … Yet it was on the issue of territoriality that the DOP was so deeply ambiguous.

(Usher et al. 1995: 9)

In addition to this, as underlined by Butenschøn, the agreements avoided negotiations on any of the fundamental issues of the conflict—such as questions of sovereignty, borders, Jerusalem, the right of return of the Palestinian refugees, or the Jewish settlements in the OPT—sidelining them to future ‘permanent status negotiations’⁶ (Butenschøn 2007: 85). Instead, both sides agreed to officially disagree upon the legal status of the OPT. Thus, while paragraph 7 of the DOP states that “neither side shall take any step that will change the status of the WBGS pending the outcome of the permanent status negotiations” (Butenschøn 2007: 86), the fact that both sides have conflicting views on this status renders it open to diverging interpretations. Thus, as a result of this lack of reference to the internationally recognized status of the OPT as occupied, “as expressed in all relevant UN General Assembly and Security Council resolutions, confirmed by the ICJ in its advisory opinion” (Butenschøn 2007: 86), the status of the OPT was left “open to conflicting interpretations, giving Israel a reference for its claim that the status of the territories is ‘disputed’” (Butenschøn 2007: 86). This arguably remains one of the gravest consequences of Oslo for the Palestinians, and represents a great triumph for the Israeli side in all negotiations that were to follow, as well as in any discussion surrounding its continuous land confiscation and settlement expansion on the ground in Palestine/Israel. As Butenschøn emphasizes, in the aftermath of Oslo, the Israelis challenged the Palestinian claim that “all Palestinian territories occupied by Israel in 1967 should be handed over to a Palestinian Authority as the territorial foundation for a future independent and sovereign state,” and “never renounced their self-proclaimed rights to expand the Israeli-Jewish society into parts of or the entire OPT” (Butenschøn 2007: 87).

In a similar vein however, it should also be pointed out that while the UN Security Council has been disabled from imposing sanctions upon Israel due to the USA’s non-opposition to its policies,

In terms of prevailing international law, Israel has not been able to change the status of the OPT as ‘occupied’, as clearly demonstrated in the advisory opinion by the ICJ. It is worth noting that the Oslo Accords … have not in any way impacted on the legal status of the OPT.

(Butenschøn 2007: 87)

At the time of the signing of the DOP, its Palestinian supporters viewed this territorial ambiguity as something that could potentially be used to their advantage once the Palestinian Authority was created in Gaza and Jericho:

‘Gaza-Jericho will not automatically lead to national independence’, said Fatah leader, Marwan Barghouti, ‘but the political space it opens up enables us to set off an irreversible dynamic (towards independence) through the new national mechanisms we set in place.

(Usher et al. 1995: 9–10)

For those that opposed it, these ambiguities represented the beginning of the end of the idea of a viable two-state solution, and the beginning of a form of apartheid:

Haidar Abd al-Shafi, head of the Palestinian delegation (to Madrid) … argued that the notion of ‘disputed’ rather than ‘occupied’ territory pervaded every aspect of the DOP. Even where Palestinians were granted limited jurisdiction … this refers to ‘Palestinians in the territories’ but not the territories themselves … Israel would preserve jurisdiction over existing Israeli settlements and military installations … At the time of the signing of Oslo, these lands comprised 65 percent of the West Bank and 42 percent of Gaza … In the opinion of Abd al-Shafi, this augured ‘a kind of apartheid’.

(Usher et al. 1995: 10)

Meanwhile, the political (and territorial) space Oslo actually opened up for Arafat on the ground was filled with daunting obstacles impeding the creation of a viable Palestinian state. To begin with, by signing the DOP, Arafat had,

In effect accepted that building a Palestinian state was from now on, subordinated to Israeli security concerns … The DOP authorized the PLO to establish ‘a strong police force’, but Arafat could not use his constantly growing number of security forces to liberate the OPT. That would be a material breach of Oslo.

(Butenschøn 2007: 87)

Instead, the police force could only be deployed to either repress Palestinian resistance and armed struggle against Israel, its settlements, occupation forces, and its settlers, or defend the PA itself from Palestinian threats against it. In a context of continuing settlement expansion and occupation, this put the PA in a very precarious position, and begged the question of how Palestine would be liberated if its forces (and people) can only do so under the command of the Israelis.

In the sphere of the economy, the establishment of the PA in 1994 also served to heighten and exacerbate Israel’s policies on economic development in the WBGS. As Alissa argues, “these policies have been directed coherently and consistently to secure military, economic and political control over the WBGS and … to undermine the viability of the Palestinian economy … and weaken its indigenous economic base” (Alissa 2007: 123). Israeli policies sought to implement this “process of de-development”⁷ (Alissa 2007: 124) by pursuing two contradictory aims—“improving the standard of living without achieving any structural change in the WBGS economy and progressively weakening the indigenous economic base” (Alissa 2007: 124). Created through employment in Israel, an improved standard of living was part of both creating dependency upon Israel and combating nationalism—and never included professional, middle-class or skilled labour (Alissa 2007: 124–25). Based upon what former mayor of Jerusalem Meron Benevisti has called “individual prosperity and communal stagnation” (Alissa 2007: 125) that is mainly based upon what Alissa has described as marginalization, dependency, and exploitation:

Marginalization and isolation mean here the systematic destruction of the WBGS economy and its production base and the segregation of this economy from the international market. This process has been consolidated by a policy of closures. Exploitation in this context refers to the use of the WBGS as a cheap source of labour and raw materials and as a supplementary market for Israeli goods. Dependency … refers to the deliberate and systematic process of making the separation of the WBGS from the Israeli economy an impossible task.

(Alissa 2007: 125)

As Alissa recounts, these policies were made much worse after the second Gulf War in the 1990s when Israel began to employ collective punishment policies restricting the movement of people and goods. This intensification of closure policies, added to “settlement building, bypass construction and, a separation wall and control over natural resources” (Alissa 2007: 125–26) made the economic realities on the ground in the WBGS dire. These Israeli policies were also paralleled a political process of ‘Bantustanization’ on the ground in the WBGS:

The term was first used by Azmi Bishara (1995 and 1999) and Meron Benevisti (April 2004) to refer to the territorial, political and economic fragmentation model that the Israeli government has created in the WBGS. Bishara defines the Palestinian Bantustan as ‘a place that lacks sovereignty and at the same time is not part of Israel. It’s neither one thing nor the other. Its people do not have right of entry to … neighbouring countries.

(Alissa 2007: 128)

Alissa argues that there are four Bantustans being created on the ground in the WBGS by Israel. The first is that of the Gaza strip itself, which became much more apparent in the aftermath of Sharon’s disengagement (Alissa 2007: 128). The remaining three, which “will be finalized with the completion of the separation wall” (Alissa 2007: 128) are made up of Jenin-Nablus, Bethlehem-Hebron, and Ramallah.

As Alissa highlights, this process of destroying the basis upon which a viable Palestinian state can be created, is rooted in the Oslo Accords. The Oslo Accords themselves “specified the PA mandate over the WBGS” (Alissa 2007: 131) as well as “its ability to determine political and economic policies” (Alissa, 2007: 131). The Accords also dictated the “institutional nature, structure and capacity of PA institutions” (Alissa 2007: 131), while granting the PA full control over only 18 per cent of the WBGS. The Oslo Accords divided the WBGS itself into zones A, B, and C:

Zone A (the 18%) is under full control of the PA; Zone B is under the administrative control of the PA and the security control of Israel; Zone C is under full control of Israel. Zone A is divided into many enclaves, effectively dividing one from another. These enclaves are surrounded by areas B and C, which gives Israel effective control over the whole WBGS … Since 2000 the PA no longer even controls Zone A, since Israel reoccupied most of it.

(Alissa 2007: 131)

With no control over foreign policy, over borders, or determining citizenship, with no currency, or control over fiscal policy, or natural resources, let alone any full control over territory, the PA was created not as a sovereign state in the making, but as a client authority that is highly dependent upon Israel. Alissa writes,

The term client state is used by Jamil Hilal and Mushtaq H. Khan to characterize the transfer of selective responsibility by Israel to the PA to ensure political compliance by this authority in the security-first route to Palestinian statehood in the WBGS … many conditions observed in the WBGS since the establishment of the PA appear to support the consolidation of a client state. For instance, the PA has played the policing role in the WBGS to protect Israel … and to oppress opponents of Oslo. In addition, Israel has controlled the finances of the WBGS.

(Alissa 2007: 132)

Moreover, as Jad Isaac and Owen Powell argue, it is transformations to the Palestinian territorial environment itself that represent the most serious obstacles to the establishment of a viable, sovereign state. Though the Oslo Accords brought about the rhetoric of a Palestinian state, Isaac and Powell highlight the fact that “this rhetoric of a Palestinian state does not indicate, for example, the size, or political and socio-demographic parameters of such an entity” (Isaac and Powell 2007: 144). As previously underlined, whereas the Palestinian side envisages the creation of such a state upon all of the Palestinian territory occupied by Israel in 1967, “Israeli governments have come up with a wide range of scenarios and options for defining what could constitute … a Palestinian state, which comprises 40%-70% of the Palestinian area mentioned” (Isaac and Powell 2007: 144). As such, in view of both the territorial ambiguities inherent within the DOP, as well as the bracketing of both statehood (and its components) itself and the delineation of borders to ‘permanent status’ negotiations, the space (and time) was created within which Israel could establish the possible options open as answers to these questions as new, unalterable realities on the ground. Isaac and Powell write,

The power imbalances between Israel and Palestine have enabled Israel to appropriate Palestinian land and other resources virtually unchallenged … The borders of a future Palestinian state and the status of its environment will most probably be determined by Israel’s unilateral actions over the coming years as it continues its occupation and unilateral ‘disengagement’ or ‘convergence’. Subsequently, the viability and sustainability of a Palestinian state will be profoundly influenced by the geo-political and environmental conditions Palestine will inherit.

(Isaac and Powell 2007: 145–46)

Among the issues that Isaac and Powell cite as the most worrying in an analysis of the viability of a Palestinian state in the WBGS are “population growth, lack of space, depletion of water resources, solid waste disposal, deterioration in water quality (and) land degradation” (Isaac and Powell 2007: 146). Of these, however, the most dramatic transformation to the Palestinian environment remains its fragmentation into ‘cantons,’ or ‘Bantustans’:

The presence of checkpoints, settlements, the segregation barrier and bypass roads constitute perhaps the greatest transformation of the Palestinian environment. Many of these activities have led to the destruction of Palestinian assets such as orchards and arable land … However, by far the greatest impacts have been related to socio-economic factors deriving from the fragmentation of the environment and the compartmentalization of Palestinian areas into isolated cantons.

(Isaac and Powell 2007: 151–52)

As Isaac and Powell illustrate, the expansion of the settlements in the WBGS is “geared to the formation of blocks; i.e. they grow outwards and towards each other” (Isaac and Powell 2007: 152). Thus, different Israeli governments “have encouraged the development of specific blocks more than others, which enables the linking of Israeli colonies and the enclosing of Palestinian areas” (Isaac and Powell 2007: 152). This expansion—part of which aims at de-linking Jerusalem from the West Bank—as well as the construction of new housing blocks, has increased since the signing of the Oslo Accords. This segregation is further exacerbated by the many Israeli checkpoints restricting the movement of Palestinians in the WBGS, as well as the bypass roads linking the Israeli settlements. Perhaps the most destructive of all of these transformations for the Palestinian environment though, is the construction of the separation wall. Isaac and Powell write,

Construction of the segregation barrier is a fundamental component of Israel’s geo-political strategy … its construction has clearly been shown to be part of Israel’s ‘land grab’ policy … The wall dips significantly into Palestinian territory dividing Palestinian communities, annexing land and appropriating vital resources … (it) encloses … 83% of the Israeli settler population and 55 Palestinian localities. The wall has effectively become the de facto boundary of Israel/Palestine.

(Isaac and Powell 2007: 157)

As Ilan Pappe has previously argued, the Oslo Accords were in essence a celebration of the Zionist idea of partition, that was applied only upon the WBGS, and which was based upon the idea that everything could be divided up between Israel and the PA therein. This resulted in emptying Palestinian statehood of any meaning (Pappe 2007c: 40–43). Furthermore, as previously highlighted, the Oslo Accords themselves set the stage for the creation of a Palestinian Authority that in essence is a client authority of Israel, and as such incapable of resisting its geo-political goals. Thus,

The geo-political ambitions of Israel can be analyzed in direct relation to Zionist aims to secure strategic advantage, provide high standards of living for Israelis, as well as to accommodate large numbers of immigrants for the purposes of creating an ethnically Jewish state.

(Isaac and Powell 2007: 160)

With the onset of the first Intifada though, as well as the rise of Hamas, the Zionist political elite began to reconsider its policies in the OPT, its position against the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, and the advantages of unilaterally separating form the OPT instead (Isaac and Powell 2007: 161). As such, the emergence of the two-state solution, as it is formulated in the DOP, has been “assimilated into the Zionists’ strategy to maximize their control over Palestinian land” (Isaac and Powell 2007: 161). As Isaac and Powell point out, demography is also a factor in the on-going territorial realities being created on the ground. They write,

Israel cannot continue to deny equal rights and services to a portion of its territory’s population on the basis of ethnicity, without this appearing as a form of apartheid. The only way for Israel to resist both democratizing pressures and the moral dilemma of racial discrimination is to exclude Palestinians physically and declare that they have a ‘state’ …

(Isaac and Powell 2007: 161)

By the year 2000, in Camp David, the Israelis proposed, “65% of the West Bank on a discontinuous land mass” (Isaac and Powell 2007: 157) to the Palestinians.

Finally, and in parallel to the above, another consequence of Oslo, which came about as a result of the establishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA), was the dismantling of the PLO’s empowering forums, associations, and institutions in favour of building the PA. As Hilal illustrates, this disintegration of the former PLO superstructure, left both Palestinian refugees, and the Palestinian minority within Israel abandoned and disconnected from those Palestinians in the OPT:

The result (of the PA) was the effective dismantling of the entire organizational superstructure that the PLO had constructed in the last 1960s, which provided a complex network of relations connecting Palestinians in their diverse and scattered communities and a forum for their political deliberation.

(Hilal 2007: 5)

As Karma Nabulsi highlights, the Oslo Accords were responsible for setting up an opposition between the Palestinian principle of self-determination, and that of the Right of Return of the Palestinian refugees, and making them appear to be mutually exclusive and incompatible. Arguing that these two interlinked principles have defined the Palestinian struggle from its beginnings, she writes:

The fundamental question that connects these two principles to the debate about a one-state or two-state solution is whether they are harmonious and conjoined to each other, or are incommensurable and in conflict with each other. Previously—the last time probably in 1988 at the Palestinian National Council in Algiers—it was commonly understood that both these principles were fundamental, and were, above all, inextricably linked to each other.

(Nabulsi 2007: 233)

The Oslo process however, along with the elections and the institutional structures that were set up in the WBGS, resulted in the,

Slow emergence of a Palestinian political discourse of a predominantly interest-based nature, which assumes that the two key principles of self-determination and the Right of Return are incompatible … From the Geneva initiative to the Nusseibeh-Ayalon platform one can hear articulated the claim that there can be no independent Palestinian state while holding on to the Right of Return.

(Nabulsi 2007: 233–34)

This formula, articulated as a ‘painful compromise’ (Nabulsi 2007: 234) fragmented the Palestinian national community into rival interest groups, operating under the assumption that these two interlinked principles were incompatible. She writes:

The institutional arrangements that helped strengthen this discourse also brought about a radical fragmentation not just among geographically disparate Palestinians, but also between different Palestinian classes, between Palestinian refugees and non-refugees, between Gaza and the West Bank … The Palestinians have been reduced to distinct interest groups pursuing different agendas.

(Nabulsi 2007: 234)

After having been at the core of the PLO’s struggle, its decision-making processes, as well as its institutions of deliberation, mobilization, and empowerment, the Palestinian refugees found themselves completely silenced and disempowered as a result of Oslo. In parallel to this of course, the PA—as opposed to the PLO—only represents those Palestinians within the OPT. This sudden transformation of emphasis (in the aftermath of Oslo) upon those in the Diaspora from “a people with the internationally recognized right to self-determination and of return” to:

‘Palestinian refugees’, rather than a core element of the Palestinian decision-making body politic … [who were] made the subject of ‘final status’ negotiations … suddenly put the civic and political status of millions of Palestinians into an existential limbo from which they have yet to emerge.

(Nabulsi 2007: 235)

As Nabulsi argues, it is only through the renewed interlinking of the principles of national self-determination and the right of return—upon which the Palestinian struggle was premised prior to Oslo—that a common platform can be rebuilt uniting all Palestinians everywhere, and that any formulation of a state can represent a just way forward to ending the conflict.

Conclusion: Towards a countering of Zionist common sense

There are few handshakes in history that have been celebrated more as inaugurating the beginning of peace in the Middle East than that between Yasser Arafat and Yitzhak Rabin after the signing of the DOP. On the White House lawn, amidst cheering crowds, Bill Clinton introduced both leaders and continued to say, “The peace of the brave is within our reach. Throughout the Middle East there is the great yearning for the quiet miracle of a normal life” (1993). However, as has been illustrated above,

The reality on the ground was one state, 20% of which was under indirect Israeli military occupation, while it was represented as the making of a two state solution with the display of a dramatic discourse of peace.

(Pappe 2007c: 39)

For those Palestinians on the ground in the OPT, as well as those in the Diaspora and those inside of Israel, the signing of the DOP—and its consequent ramifications upon both the geography of Palestine, Palestinian lives, and the Palestinian national movement—effectively marked the beginning of the implementation of a reformulated Allon Plan in the form of an American-sponsored peace process.

It is the masking of these oppressive realities on the ground, through the production of a dominant common sense discourse that is elaborated as a reflection of the power dynamics on the ground, that Gramsci argued keeps oppressive conceptions of the world hegemonic, and seemingly inevitable and unchangeable. As such, it is within the countering of these common sense notions that Gramscian counterhegemony, with its empowerment of human agency, and revolutionizing of political possibilities on the ground begins. In parallel to this, as Said argued, Gramsci’s emphasis upon the territorial creates space from within which the silenced realities on the ground can be reinserted, and can become a powerful, geographical counter-project against an oppressive common sense narrative that, in this case, veils Palestinian dispossession on the ground. Moreover, this different point of beginning also stresses that hegemony itself must be located in the national, and refined according to the peculiarities of this situated, contextualized location. As such, this chapter tried to show that the Zionist hegemony embedded within the peace process, and veiled by the rhetoric of the two-state solution, was based on slightly different common sense notions in different geographical locations. As such, (broadly speaking) in European and North American civil societies, this common sense was based upon the acceptance of the principle of separation as the only viable solution to the conflict, and as one that would lead to two independent states for two people. In the Israeli arena, this common sense was also based upon the embrace of the Zionist principle of separation, but in the pursuit of a solution along the lines of a modified Allon Plan. In the Palestinian arena of the OPT, this common sense also involved an embrace of the principle of separation as the only viable way forward, but in this case, it was coupled with a territorially focused strategy to create a viable two-state solution on the ground. It is from within this context that the single state counterhegemonic movement eventually emerged, against the principle of separation embraced within the peace process since Oslo, and its situated common sense notions within these different, interlinked locations. It is to a description of who the single state organic intellectuals are, the process of their emergence, and an analysis of their efforts to counter their own perceptions and elaborations of these ‘common sense’ notions in order to reveal the oppressive nature of the present status quo, and empower resistance against it by embracing a new conception of the world that is against separation, that the next few chapters will turn.

Notes

1  The first time the two-state solution itself was directly addressed and articulated as the mutually agreed upon solution to the conflict by both sides was in Annapolis in 2007, under the mediation of George Bush. One of the aims of the conference was to “demonstrate international support for the commencement of negotiations on the realization of peace between two peoples.” At the conference itself, George Bush stated, “We’ve come together this week because we share a common goal: two democratic states – Israel and Palestine – living side by side in peace and security”. (www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/History/Modern+History/Historic+Events/The+Annapolis+Conference+27-Nov-2007.htm) The Middle East Quartet strongly supported this initiative, as did the UN. For more details on this, as well as the text of the Joint Understanding on Negotiations, see, (www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/History/Modern+History/Historic+Events/The+Annapolis+Conference+27-Nov-2007.htm).

2  For a detailed account of these two approaches to Jewish sovereignty, see for example, Raz-Krakotzkin, 1998. A Peace without Arabs: The Discourse of Peace and the Limits of Israeli Consciousness. In After Oslo: New Realities, Old Problems. London: Pluto Press.

3  As Shlaim recounts, Rabin was initially “inclined to ditch the Palestinians altogether and to strike a deal with Syria” (Shlaim, 1994: 28), who was prepared to make peace with Israel in return for complete Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights, and the dismantling of Israeli settlements there. Faced with a choice between a deal requiring complete withdrawal and the dismantlement of settlements—as opposed to an Interim Agreement on self-government with the PLO—Rabin chose to recognize the PLO instead. See, Avi Shlaim, 1994. The Oslo Accord. Journal of Palestine Studies, 23(3), 24–40.

4  For more on the roles of Peres and Beilin in bringing about the Accords, and the initial emphasis on economic cooperation in the negotiations prior to Oslo and Rabin’s closure policies, see, for example, Avi Shlaim, 1994. The Oslo Accord. Journal of Palestine Studies, 23(3), 24–40.

5  In 1974, after the Israeli–Arab war of October 1973, the PLO first adopted the idea of a two-stage struggle. This strategy was based on accepting the existence of a Palestinian state next to an Israeli one as an initial phase in the struggle towards the establishment of a single democratic state on all of historic Palestine. This idea was articulated further in the PNC meeting in Algiers in 1988 at the time of the first Intifada. Though the PLO endorsed the idea of ‘two states for two people’ in Algiers, no territories were specified, and the Right of Return of the refugees remained an integral part of this formula.

6  The two sides came close to an agreement on permanent status issues in Camp David in 2000, and in Taba in 2001, with the mediation of Bill Clinton. Though the talks officially broke down, they unofficially continued and resulted in the Geneva Accords in 2003. As Butenschøn writes, “The Geneva Accords represent the most elaborate compromise to date within the ‘Oslo paradigm’ between established political and military elites on both sides” (Butenschøn 2007: 94). However, the Sharon government rejected them. The Annapolis Conference in 2007 also involved negotiations on permanent status issues.

7  The term ‘de-development’ was coined by Sara Roy in 1995, to refer to an economy that “is deprived of its capacity of production, rational structural transformation, and meaningful reform, making it incapable of even distorted development” (Roy, 1999: 65). Roy argues that Oslo brought on a significant increase in these processes, which were made much worse by Israeli policies of closure. These policies of closure were a defining feature of the post-Oslo economy, and have not been lifted since 1993. For more on this see, Roy, Sara. Failing Peace: Gaza and the Palestinian–Israeli Conflict. (Pluto Press: 2007).

3    The re-emergence of the single state solution

An intellectual mapping of an emergent movement

Introduction

In writing Chapters 4 and 5, I aim to sketch a preliminary picture of what I argue is a present-day (re-)emergence of a conception of the world championing a single state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. This sketch will involve an intellectual as well as an organizational mapping¹ of this oppositional conception of the world. Both branches of this sketch are based upon the interlinked thoughts and action of three distinct, yet overlapping central blocs of organic intellectuals to this process: the Palestinian citizens of Israel; the Palestinian Diaspora, refugees, and the Palestinians under occupation; and anti-Zionist Jewish-Israelis (who later expand to include anti-Zionist Jewish people globally). While I will introduce these blocs themselves in Chapter 4, it is important to note that it is their conceptual articulations and interlinked practices of resistance that underlie the resurgent single state movement—despite the fact that other groups of people may be involved with them in solidarity, or joint struggle.

As I will illustrate in Chapter 5, these blocs themselves fuse to create what appears to be becoming a Gramscian-inspired war of position in the making against the current peace process—a war of position articulated and waged by their respective organic intellectuals. The preliminary groundwork for this war of position can be seen to be set under the umbrella of an overaching, international anti-apartheid movement—an anti-apartheid movement that is empowered by a global boycott divestment and sanctions (BDS) strategy, and centred around the dismantling of Zionism, the ending of the Israeli occupation of the OPT, the return of the Palestinian refugees, and the embracing of imaginative ways Palestinians and Israeli-Jews can reconcile, share land, and coexist.

In creating this mapping, it is not my intention to argue that the re-emergence of the single state idea, and the potential movement emerging around it, represents the only Palestinian resistance movement against the peace process today. For, as I stressed in Chapter 2, the two-state solution itself (as outlined by the UN) represented an attempt at staging a territorial war of position from within the OPT for the Palestinians, and some Palestinians and Israelis remain committed to carrying this territorial struggle forward despite the obstacles created on the ground after Oslo. However, the perceived failure of Arafat’s war of position after Oslo by many Palestinians also set the stage from within which the single state idea re-emerged, and set out to reposition itself as a reformulated, potential war of position against the principles of Oslo. In the three chapters that follow, I strive to tell the story of this re-emergence, and to analyse its potential as an alternative pathway to power towards justice in Palestine/Israel.

In telling this story, it is my contention that the alternative conception of the world outlined by single state organic intellectuals represents a critical conception of reality that goes beyond the common sense notions of the peace process in an attempt to dismantle its illusion in favour of a single state future of some form, appears to be expansive, and to show signs of hegemonic potential. I also argue that while the re-emergence of the single state idea initially ignited a divisive intellectual debate between Palestinian and Israeli supporters of a two-state solution—and those supporting different forms of a single state solution—this debate when viewed from within the lens of the practices of resistance to Israel’s policies in the OPT, as well as inside Israel proper, becomes a largely superficial abstraction within the present phase. As such, I seek to highlight that since the point of beginning of the single state movement is that the reality on the ground is of a single apartheid state, it may be more fruitful to locate the distinction (in terms of practice) between those who are engaged in ‘anti-Zionist practices’ of resistance, and those who are engaged in practices of separation.

In the same breath though, it must be underlined that the expansiveness, decentralization and myriad of diverse groups and personalities with multiple visions and separate, uncoordinated actions involved within the broader picture of this single state project, makes it difficult to decipher as one, concrete, unified phenomenon that resembles any traditional view of what a coherent movement looks like. As such, I argue that a more accurate reflection of the dynamics, shifts, and strategies of this movement emerge when analysing it through a lens inspired by a Saidian Gramsci, which centres upon the revolutionary power of philosophy, and the inherent link between thought and action in building a new collective historical force against a particular status quo. In this vein then, the picture of the single state movement that emerges from my mapping in the following chapters, along with my analysis of its counterhegemonic potential, is based upon what Gramsci defined as a “philosophical movement” (Gramsci et al. 1971: 330). As previously elaborated, this form of resistance beginning within the realm of the ethico-political was described by Gramsci as one that, “when, in the process of elaborating a form of thought superior to ‘common sense’ … it never forgets to remain in contact with the simple, and finds in this contact the source of the problem it sets out to study and resolve” (Gramsci et al. 1971: 330).

In the spirit of the above, it is my argument that the single state movement is one that centres upon the launching of a project of critical pedagogy by organic intellectuals within their own communities in order to transcend the common sense notions linking them to the status quo, in a process of mutual transformation and empowerment. This process itself revolutionizes political possibilities on the ground, and is reflected within Ilan Pappe’s assertion that while the current two-state solution needs politicians, the single state solution needs educators (Pappe and Avnery 2007), and involves the launching of a long-term process of resistance aimed at decolonization, liberation, and empowerment. For Gramsci, this was the central meaning behind his claim that the creation of a liberating new conception of the world was not only based upon the triggering of a process of critical and historical self-understanding, but also upon the creation and consolidation of a new form of civil and political society. This process does not just represent one of resistance, but simultaneously “involves a reconstructive moment” (Eschle and Maiguashca 2005: 216).

I begin this chapter by highlighting the centrality of the anti-Oslo writings of Edward Said to the re-emergence of the single state idea as a historical force of joint Palestinian and Israeli resistance to Zionist separation and dispossession. I then continue to briefly introduce the emergence of the single state movement itself, and elaborate its critique of the common sense of the Israeli–Palestinian peace process since Oslo. As such, this critique is elaborated as it is perceived, articulated, and struggled against by these intellectuals and activists themselves. Mirroring this unified critique, I go on to argue that it is within a commitment to anti-Zionism, and an ethical de-Zionization of the historical land of Palestine, that the main platform of unity of the single state conception of the world lays today. Detailing the articulated principles and arguments underpinning this anti-Zionist world-view, I then proceed to outline the key intellectual reformulations and paradigm shifts that are interlinked with this alternative conception. Finally, I attempt to highlight the boundaries of inclusion and exclusion of the single state movement in an endeavour to further clarify the types of movements and forces that can potentially be embraced within this anti-Zionist platform, and those that cannot.

Critiques of Oslo

The centrality of Edward Said

As highlighted in Chapter 2, it is from within a critique of the paradigms and transformations of the Oslo peace process that I argue the present single state idea re-emerged as an alternative pathway to the resolution of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. This platform of emergence, anchored within a critique of the processes of separation and Zionist expansion that the Oslo process exacerbated on the ground, is one of the main unifying elements of the single state movement’s alternative conception of the world. As such, it is from within this critique of common sense—and this ‘intellectual and moral reformation’—that single state intellectuals articulated their visions and strategies of resistance for social transformation against the peace process. It is important to recall that this form of transformation—that is centred upon a critical process of historical self-understanding and empowerment—is one that is based upon overcoming oppression altogether, and hence liberating both the colonizer and the colonized. In this call for a resistance movement embodying a liberating form of decolonization based upon the desire for mutual coexistence and the recognition of mutual humanity, the anti-Oslo writings of Said are central (Abunimah 2006: 169).

Thus, the momentum of the resurgent one-state idea’s transformation into a collectively endorsed vision can arguably be traced back to Said’s writing of an article entitled “The One State Solution” for The New York Times in 1999. Interestingly, this same article was run in the Egyptian Al-Ahram Weekly, under the different title of “Truth and Reconciliation”, mirroring two key principles that are argued to underlie the single state’s conception of the world. To many of those involved in this struggle against the common sense of the peace process, this highlighting of the complex, intermingled truth on the ground that is based upon a desire for justice, decolonization, and reconciliation, reflects what lies at the core of their counterhegemonic project of liberation both theoretically and politically. This core premise is mirrored in Said’s words,

It is my view that the peace process has in fact put off the real reconciliation that must occur if the 100-year war between Zionism and the Palestinian people is to end. Oslo set the stage for separation, but real peace can come only with a binational Israeli–Palestinian state … I see no other way than to begin now to speak about sharing the land that has thrust us together, sharing it in a truly democratic way, with equal rights for each citizen. There can be no reconciliation unless both peoples, two communities of suffering, resolve that their existence is a secular fact, and that it has to be dealt with as such.

(Said 1999)

Arguing that while Israel’s “raison d’être as a state has always been that there should be a separate country, a refuge, exclusively for Jews” (Said 1999), and that this principle of separation was the basis upon which Oslo’s vision and processes lay—the fact remains that the lives of Israeli-Jews and Palestinians remain inextricably intermingled on the ground. This intertwining was further exacerbated by the fact that this Israeli urge for separation was paradoxically linked to that of a desire for territorial expansion in the OPT, which necessarily entailed the annexation of more and more communities of Palestinians. This increase, of course, is in addition to the Palestinian-Israelis within Israel proper who make up 20 per cent of the population. And while the expansion of illegal Israeli settlements within the OPT has been accompanied by the building of “a whole network of connecting roads reserved for Israeli citizens only and, most recently, the Separation (in Afrikaans, apartheid) Wall” (Peled 2006), Said underlines the fact that this has only made separation within the small land of historical Palestine even more unviable. Thus, he writes,

Palestinian self-determination in a separate state is unworkable, just as unworkable as the principle of separation between a demographically mixed, irreversibly connected Arab population without sovereignty and a Jewish population with it. The question is not how to devise means for persisting in trying to separate them but to see whether it is possible for them to live together.

(Said 1999)

In many ways, Said’s article represented a call to action to do just that—to counter the dominant idea of separation as being the only solution to the conflict with a new conception of the world that is based upon the desire to coexist, reconcile, and share the land. This stemmed from a desire to highlight the messiness of life itself, and to reinsert the overlapping territorial and human realities back into the accepted notion that an abstract, clinical separation remains both possible, and the only route to peace. Similarly, it is rooted within the argument that partition itself as a solution has historically rarely worked (Said et al. 2000).

Perhaps even more crucially for Said, this attack upon separation is a reflection of his rejection of the essentialist, static, binary identities, and histories that underpin much of the common sense understandings and depictions of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, while concealing the fluidity of the overlapping interconnectedness of people, histories, and spaces of coexistence that exist and have historically existed upon the land. Hence,

Palestine is and always has been a land of many histories; it is a radical simplification to think of it as principally, or exclusively Jewish or Arab … (there is a need for) an innovative, daring and theoretical willingness to get beyond the arid stalemate of assertion and rejection.

(Said 1999)

In this vein, Said calls upon both Israelis and Palestinians “to undertake political initiatives that hold Jews and Arabs to the same general principles of civil equality while avoiding the pitfalls of us-versus-them” (Said 1999). In parallel, he calls upon Palestinian intellectuals to “express their case directly to Israelis in public forums, universities, and the media” (Said 1999), and to actively mount a challenge “within civil society, which long has been subordinate to a nationalism that has developed into an obstacle to reconciliation” (Said 1999) in the name of peaceful coexistence and a more liberating world-view for bothpeople. However, Said simultaneously highlights the fact that if this more inclusive world-view is to emerge as an effective force, it is imperative that injustice is jointly countered by both Israelis and Palestinians who seek an alternative pathway to real self-determination for all. In other words, the call was for a movement that must both be one of active resistance to the world-view of the present status quo and, as Ilan Pappe would state years later, “the very composition of the movement (should) be a model for the future” (Pappe 2009).

It is within this context that Said is often cited as one of the central inspirations behind the resurgence of the single state idea in its present form, as well as the intellectual to whom many of the current single state advocates dedicate their struggle both theoretically and politically. Thus, the inauguration of the SOAS conference in 2007 on “A Single State in Palestine/Israel,” begins with a tribute to Said, and a quote from this very same article,

The beginning is to develop something entirely missing from both Israeli and Palestinian realities today: the idea and practice of citizenship, not of ethnic or racial community, as the main vehicle of coexistence.

(SOAS Palestine Society and London One State Group 2007)

It is crucial to emphasize that this point of beginning sets the stage for what would become the single state conception of the world’s second unifying platform—which is that of its articulation as an attack on the ideology and practices of a separatist, essentialist, settler-colonial political Zionism.

While I will elaborate upon this unifying anti-Zionist platform in detail below, it should be noted that the single state movement was primarily conceived of as a decolonial counterhegemonic resistance struggle that is based upon the political desire to de-Zionize Palestine/Israel. This is rooted in the fact that it is political Zionism itself that is perceived by single state intellectuals to stand in the way of coexistence, justice, equal citizenship, and the liberation of both people’s common humanity from oppression. The centrality of this premise is reflected in Omar Barghouti’s statement that, “We are organizing for self-determination (for all) and the ethical de-Zionization of Palestine” (Barghouti 2009b). Similarly, it is echoed by Ilan Pappe, who argues that, “A movement for a one-state solution disseminates a new discourse about the past, about Zionism as colonialism … about the magnitude of the Israeli destruction of the land of Palestine, (and) about the future which (can be) different from the present” (Pappe 2009). As alluded to above, it must be underlined that it is within this unifying platform of anti-Zionism that the struggle for a single state solution in Palestine/Israel represents not only a struggle of Palestinian resistance and liberation—which, of course, it primarily is—but also one of Israeli-Jewish liberation as well. Even more crucially for my purposes in this chapter, this platform of unity is also a reflection of the single state movement’s critique of the common sense of Oslo itself, and as such, rooted within it in an effort to transcend it, and revolutionize political possibilities on the ground.

The re-emergence of a single state movement

In November 2007, the Annapolis Conference was applauded for creating history by being the first conference between Israel and the Palestinians (within the framework of the American-sponsored peace process) to directly endorse a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Aimed at demonstrating international support for the two-state solution at a time when US State Secretary Condoleeza Rice warned that the window for the creation of a viable two-state solution was closing (Macleod 2007), the conference’s joint declaration was strongly supported by the Middle East Quartet. Made up of the United States, the European Union, the Russian Federation, as well as the UN, the Quartet also, “took note of the broad international support for the Annapolis Conference” and, “affirmed its commitment to seize this opportunity to mobilize international support to achieve meaningful progress towards a just and lasting negotiated settlement to this conflict” (The Quartet 2007).

In parallel to Annapolis though, a different group of Israelis and Palestinians came together in a self-financed conference hosted by the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. Titled, “Challenging the Boundaries: A Single State in Palestine/Israel,” this conference was put together by students of the newly created London One State Group and the SOAS Palestine Society. Organized as a follow up to the Madrid Conference in July of that same year, it aimed at creating “a platform for a broad debate on democratic alternatives to the two-state paradigm, and mak(ing) those ideas more accessible to the general public” (The London One State Group 2007). Bringing together many of the prominent Israeli and Palestinian academics and activists who have spoken out and written against the peace process since Oslo, the conference aimed at highlighting the fact that the two-state solution had failed to bring about peace and justice for the Palestinian and Israeli-Jewish people.

Instead, these intellectuals argued that the two-state solution served to distract from the territorial and political realities on the ground; to distract from the fact that the processes unleashed by Oslo “entrenche(d) and formalize(d) a policy of unequal separation on a land that has become ever more integrated territorially and economically” (Abunimah et al. 2007); and to distract from the fact that an independent Palestinian state was no longer viable on the ground. Moreover, they argued that the process of the solution is based upon a false premise of equality in terms of both power and morality between “a colonized and occupied people on the one hand and a colonizing state and military occupier on the other” (Abunimah et al. 2007). Furthermore, the process’ historical point of beginning and terms are set within “the unjust premise that peace can be achieved by granting limited national rights to Palestinians living in the areas occupied in 1967, while denying the rights of Palestinians inside the 1948 borders and in the Diaspora” (Abunimah et al. 2007). In view of this, these intellectuals argued that a just, liberating alternative must be found to counter this paradigm of peacemaking and its deflection from the continuing processes of separation and colonization on the ground.

To this end, after two days of debate, the conference culminated with the drafting of “The One State Declaration.” This declaration set out the principles upon which all of the participants of both Madrid and London agreed an alternative democratic single state solution should be founded, mobilized for, and created. These principles included the fact that any process of justice must historically begin in 1948, and affirm the fact that the land of Palestine historically belongs “to all who live in it and to those who were expelled or exiled from it since 1948, regardless of religion, ethnicity, national origin or current citizenship status” (Abunimah et al. 2007); that any system of government must be based upon the principle of equality in all of its diverse arenas; that the Palestinian Right of Return must be implemented; that any form of state must be non-sectarian; that a process of justice and reconciliation must be launched; and significantly, that the segments of the Palestinian collective that have been historically silenced by Oslo—the Palestinian Diaspora, the Palestinian refugees, and the Palestinians inside Israel—must be centrally involved in the articulation of the outlines and contents of such a solution (Abunimah et al. 2007). As shall be detailed below, it is these principles that remain the basis of unity within the vision, strategies, and initiatives of this group of organic intellectuals and activists—despite their divisions, lack of centralized coordination, and at times, shifts in emphasis or direction. In parallel to this, these principles also reflect what these organic intellectuals perceive to be, and articulate as, the oppressive common sense of the peace process since Oslo. It is this “labour of intellectual criticism” that represents their unified platform of emergence as a potential alternative force.

In the conference’s closing session, the London One State Group stated,

The two days of discussions in London proved that there’s a growing movement among Palestinians and Israelis that calls for thinking about their common future in terms of equality and integration, rather than separation and exclusion.

(The London One State Group 2007)

It is to an intellectual mapping of the alternative conception of the world underpinning this movement—with its critique of the common sense notions of Oslo, its elaboration of an anti-Zionist platform of unity with interlinked anti-Zionist strategies and practices, as well as its boundaries of inclusion and exclusion—that I will now turn in the remainder of this chapter.

A critique of the common sense of Oslo and after

Since counterhegemony must begin within the historical common sense notions elaborated by a hegemonic status quo in order for organic intellectuals to overcome them with their constituencies, I begin this section by briefly outlining the common sense notions of the Oslo Accords and after. These common sense notions are outlined as perceived, articulated, and struggled against by single state organic intellectuals themselves, and as such, represent the base from within which their struggle to highlight them as an oppressive form of ideology springs. An ideology that must be overcome in favour of a world-view that is more aligned with the realities on the ground.

Oslo represents the launching of a process of peace

It is important to underline that for single state intellectuals, the fact that the American-sponsored peace process since Oslo does not reflect the launching of a comprehensive process for peace based upon the desire for justice and reconciliation—but rather represents a process of separation and fragmentation—is to be found in its choice of historical point of beginning. Thus, the choice of beginning the peace process in 1967 (as opposed to 1948) results in the erasure of the Palestinian Nakba, in absolving Israel of any responsibility for the ethnic cleansing of 1948, and as such in closing a significant door for justice and reconciliation between the two people. Furthermore, beginning the peace process in 1967 denies Palestinian history and rights to self-determination by setting the OPT as the only territorial part of historical Palestine upon which negotiations can be held. As such, the peace process involved negotiations that would lead to further territorial concessions and fragmentation within the WBGS from its inception. Furthermore, by negating 1948, it was also based upon the fragmentation of the Palestinian collective from its inception—excluding both the Palestinians inside Israel, and the Palestinian refugees from the negotiating table. As such, the single state movement is an effort to relocate the search for peace and justice between Israelis and Palestinians in 1948, and crucially, represents a force that seeks to reunify the Palestinian collective “around an idea that serves the rights and the agenda and aspirations of all of us” (Abunimah 2007).

In parallel to this, single state intellectuals argue that it is only by beginning in 1948, that true processes of justice and reconciliation can be launched between the two people. Thus Eitan Bronstein argues,

One state is the only arrangement that will permit Palestinian refugees to realise their right to return. The implementation of this right is both moral and a necessary step towards ending the conflict and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians. It also gives the Israelis the opportunity to be true inhabitants of this land rather than settlers or colonisers. Only after Israeli Jews accept the right of return will they become aware of the real history and geography of the country, rather than knowing only the mythology of the land of Israel.

(Bronstein 2007)

It is from within this critique that the One State Declaration stipulates that any process of peace must begin in 1948, and involve all of the inhabitants of Mandate Palestine, regardless of ethnicity, religion, and current citizenship status.

Oslo marks the beginning of a process towards a two-state solution to the conflict

While Oslo was applauded by the international community as the beginning of a two-state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, single state intellectuals argue that it represented the launching and exacerbation of Zionist processes of separation and colonization on the ground. While, these processes themselves were highlighted in Chapter 2, it is important to note that single state intellectuals view the fact that the peace process is officially accepted as one that will lead to a two-state solution as both a “misnaming” of the two-state solution itself, and as a deflection from the realities on the ground within Palestine/Israel that have made a two-state solution territorially and economically unviable. In parallel to this, single state intellectuals view the concessions made by Arafat—in order to be able to return to the OPT and launch a war of position from within—as the beginning of the emergence of a Palestinian Authority that was placed in an inevitable position of collaboration with Israeli occupation and colonization, while simultaneously having sidelined Palestinian popular resistance. To this effect, Said famously wrote,

The sudden transformation of Arafat from freedom-fighter and “terrorist” into an Israeli enforcer and a guest at the White House has been difficult for Palestinians to absorb … most Palestinians saw the new Arafat as the symbol of defeat.

(Said 2001d: 551)

While the details of this have been dealt with in Chapter 2, it should be stressed that this critique reflects the fact that the single state movement is an attempt at reigniting non-violent Palestinian mass resistance to the continuing processes of separation and colonization on the ground, as well as a call for both reformulating the PA and re-democratizing the PLO into a mass organization that represents, empowers, and reunifies the whole Palestinian collective. Equally important to note is that it is due to this position on the two-state solution—as mislabelled in the framework of the peace process—that single state intellectuals do not perceive their battle to be one that is against two-state solution supporters, but one that is against the processes of Zionism, and against those who collaborate with its processes.

The Palestinian Authority represents the Palestinian people

As previously argued, only Arafat and his small entourage in Tunis were involved in the acceptance of the terms of the Oslo Accords on behalf of the PLO, which resulted in a crisis of representation within the Palestinian national collective, as well as a questioning of the legitimacy of a leadership that viewed the internationally recognized rights of its collective as bargaining chips that could be compromised. As such, Joseph Massad underlines that,

To date, no Diaspora Palestinian has proposed to Israel that if Israel grant the Diaspora a right of return, in exchange, it could deny West Bank and Gaza Palestinians their right to self-determination, and continue to colonize their land. Why then does the leadership of the West Bank believe that it can compromise the rights of Palestinians it does not even represent?

(Massad 2007)

In accepting the terms of Oslo and after, the PLO officially accepted the fragmentation of the Palestinian collective and the erasure of the rights of the Palestinian Diaspora and refugees and Palestinian-Israelis. Hence, single state intellectuals argue that the view that the PA represents the Palestinian people today, is one that only holds if the only people recognized as Palestinians are Palestinians who are native to the WBGS (and not the Palestinian refugees currently present within the WBGS). In this vein then, it would make sense that the only Palestinians set to benefit from within the peace process would be native WBGS Palestinians. However, single state intellectuals point out that even these Palestinians’ lives have been made significantly worse by the processes of Oslo, with the “only hope awaiting them being an apartheid Bantustan solution” (Massad 2007).

It is from within this context that single state intellectuals seek to throw the PA into the “dustbin of history” (Massad 2007), and to re-democratize the PLO. More significantly, it is also from within this context that the single state movement can be perceived as one initially launched as a war of position of the Palestinian Diaspora, Palestinian refugees, and Palestinian-Israelis. As reflected in the One State Declaration, it is those who have been historically silenced by Oslo who must now become central agents in the articulation, mobilization, and creation of a more just alternative to the status quo. An alternative based upon the urgent need to reunify the Palestinian national collective once again within a mutually inclusive liberation struggle.

Reinserting silenced facts on the ground

Perhaps it is important to begin this section by noting that the single state alternative conception of the world emerged from within an explicit Saidian-Gramscian political desire to highlight the territorial facts on the ground that have been silenced by an abstracted peace process since Oslo. Thus, single state intellectuals seek to push the oppressive common sense notions of the peace process “back into the human struggles from which they emerge” (Said 2001: 86), and to reinsert the “gross physical evidence of human activity” (Said 2001: 86)—in all of their messy complexities—back into the discussion of the promotion of peace and justice in Palestine/Israel. Hence, for single state intellectuals, their political project of counterhegemony represents the exact opposite of what many two-state solution supporters accuse them of, namely, that they are engaged in a dangerous exercise of promoting an impossible utopian alternative to a conflict that requires an urgent solution more than ever before. Thus, Eyal Sivan argues,

It might be a professional deformation, or just a refusal of notions like utopia—but I have a problem in speaking about a one state solution … as a future idea. I deal with documentary cinema and documentary cinema deals with what exists. One state … is the accurate juridical definition of what is today the ruling power over Palestine, or Eretz Israel. (This) is not (about) a revolutionary position that requires us to think about how we can create this one state. What I’m talking about is more modest, and more concrete—the transformation of the existing one state into a democratic state.

(Sivan 2007)

It is also within this context of dealing with what exists that Virginia Tilley’s book The One-State Solution, sought to ignite a debate highlighting what she termed the “immovable obstacles on the ground” that rendered a two-state solution unviable—the most important among them of course being the expanding illegal Israeli settlements in the OPT. Thus, she stresses that her book sought to illustrate,

The geographic realities of the settlement grid—that huge and deliberately sprawling network of stone and concrete cities, suburbs, industrial zones and highways that has already dissected the West Bank into cantons—as well as the social, political and economic grids that underpin them.

(Tilley 2006)

As underlined in Chapter 2, this settlement grid itself is designed to form blocks, which grow outwards and towards each other in order to remain territorially continuous—and enclose Palestinian areas into fragmented cantons (Isaac and Powell 2007). Significantly, part of this illegal settlement design also aims at annexing Jerusalem to Israel and disconnecting it from the West Bank. As Yoav Peled points out, the settlement grid itself,

Was designed, in terms of its density and territorial dispersion, to make the occupation irreversible by fragmenting the territory of the potential Palestinian state and making the removal of the settlements impossible. The settlements are inhabited by over 200,000 people, plus another 200,000 in the area that Israel has already annexed as ‘Jerusalem’.

(Peled 2006)

In a much publicized debate with two-state supporter Uri Avnery, Ilan Pappe echoes the irreversibility of the settlements on the ground of the OPT, stressing that it is the two-state solution that has become utopian and divorced from reality,

If this unrealistic two-state formula—that says that settlements can be dismantled—is realizable, who is going to dismantle Gilo? Who is going to dismantle Ma’ale Adumim? The real two-state formula is the one being implemented in front of our eyes. It means fifty percent of the West Bank annexed to Israel, and the other fifty percent as a Bantustan surrounded by walls and fences, but with a Palestinian flag.

(Pappe and Avnery 2007)

In this context of being painted as disconnected dreamers by those who oppose them, it might be important to emphasize that many among today’s single state activists and intellectuals had been two-state solution supporters themselves. As such, it is this collision with ‘the facts on the ground’ that prompted them to reorient their struggle for the re-emergence of a single state as an alternative. Moreover, as Pappe highlights, this conclusion that the two-state solution had collapsed was reached by diverse groups of people within this historical conjuncture—and it is within this convergence that the alternative idea’s resurgent power lies (Pappe 2009: interview).

Furthermore, it is critical to flag the fact that if the single state alternative indeed represented an unattainable flight of fancy, it would not have been the subject of the fears, (counter-)strategies and debates of many among Palestine/Israel’s formally two-state supporting political elite. Hence, Ehud Olmert’s famous assertion in Haaretz after the Annapolis Conference that,

If the day comes when the two-state solution collapses, and we face a South African-style struggle for equal voting rights (also for the Palestinians in the territories), then, the State of Israel is finished … The Jewish organizations, which were our power base in America, will be the first to come out against us, because they will say they cannot support a state that does not support democracy and equal voting rights for all its residents.

(Landau et al. 2007)

As shall be seen below, this fear resulted in the reformulation of official Israeli policy in the form of the disengagement plan under Sharon and the convergence plan under Olmert himself. Moreover, as Al-Jazeera recently reported, the PA began using the single state alternative as a threat during negotiations with the Israelis since the Annapolis Conference—in an effort to counter the increasingly expanding illegal settlement construction in the West Bank with the outcome that the Israelis feared the most (Poort 2011). Significantly, by 2009 Saeb Erekat (the chief PA negotiator) declared the one-state solution the Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA) during a meeting with US Middle East Envoy George Mitchell—despite the fact that up until 2008 Erekat had come out strongly against the single state idea. By November 6, 2009 Juan Cole quotes Erakat as saying,

Palestine Authority president Mahmoud Abbas should be frank with the Palestinian people and admit to them that there is no possibility of a two-state solution given continued Israeli colonization of the West Bank. It is morally and ethically unconscionable to leave millions of Palestinians in a condition of statelessness, in which they have no rights. Therefore, if there isn’t going to be a two-state solution, there will have to be a one-state solution, in which Israel gives citizenship to the Palestinians.

(Cole 2009)

As some single state intellectuals have argued, one of the signs of successfully challenging a hegemonic idea is being able to force yourself on the agenda—especially when you represent a marginalized alternative. As many other single state intellectuals have argued, there is inspiration in Ghandi’s words, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win” (Abunimah 2009: interview). In this context, it is a considerable achievement that the single state idea has swiftly gone from both being ignored and ridiculed, to being feared and fought against by the official Israeli political elite, and perhaps equally feared but used as a threat by their official Palestinian counterparts.

An anti-Zionist conception of the world: Intellectual points of beginning, unity, and reorientation

As highlighted above, perhaps the strongest unifying thread within the single state conception of the world—and hence its point of beginning as a counterhegemonic movement—is that it is a resistance movement aimed at the dismantling of Zionism’s world-view and interlinked processes of separation on the ground. As such, it is politically committed to the de-Zionization of the land of historical Palestine. In the section that follows, I outline both the unified critique of Zionism presented by single state intellectuals, as well as the positive intellectual reorientations they seek to set in motion, with the aim of transcending Zionism and its interlinked set of processes. It is my view that the core elements within this critique of Zionism are an emphasis upon the important distinction between Zionism and Judaism, a highlighting of both the settler-colonial and exclusionary nature of Zionism, as well as an underlining of the peculiar dangers this form of exclusionary settler-colonialism represents when it is coupled with the equally entrenched desire to create a democracy upon as much of the land of ‘Greater Israel’ as possible.

These core elements of single state intellectuals’ conception of the world are the platform from within which they advance a set of interlinked positive intellectual reformulations against the hegemony of Zionism’s world-view. Hence, I argue that these reformulations primarily centre upon breaking the taboo of critically and publicly engaging with the nature of Zionism and the Israeli regime (in Europe and North America), and its links to settler-colonialism, occupation, separation, and apartheid. Paralleling this is an effort to “South-Africanize” the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in order to unveil the specific nature of Israeli apartheid and Palestinian fragmentation and dispossession—and make a case for launching a boycott, sanctions, and divestment (BDS) strategy of resistance to it. Interlinked with this is also a political stand taken by single state intellectuals against partition, a problematizing of the essentialist binary identities of ‘Arab’ and ‘Jew’ underpinning hegemonic understandings of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and a reinsertion of a notion of equal citizenship and democracy as important remedies to many of these ideologically oppressive impasses.

A unified critique of Zionism

Following the Encyclopedia Hebraica, Uri Davis defines Zionism as “a Jewish national movement emerging at the end of the nineteenth century” (Davis 2003: 7) that had as its objective the “returning the people of Israel to their historical homeland in the land of Israel” (Davis 2003: 7). This return was inspired by “a vision of return to Zion (a synonym for Jerusalem)” (Davis 2003: 7). Of the various schools of thought that this definition encompasses, it was “political Zionism, founded by Theodor Herzl, (which) became the hegemonic and dominant mainstream” (Davis 2003: 7). Political Zionism itself represents a school of thought and interlinked practice that,

Is committed to the normative statement that it is a good idea to establish and consolidate in the country of Palestine a sovereign state, a Jewish state, that attempts to guarantee in law and in practice a demographic majority of the Jewish tribes in the territories under its control.

(Davis 2003: 7)

As Ilan Pappe argues, this form of Zionism “secularized and nationalized Judaism” (Pappe 2007b: 11). According to Judaism itself, “Palestine had been revered throughout the centuries by generations of Jews as a place for holy pilgrimage, never as a future secular state” (Pappe 2007b: 10). Furthermore, “Jewish tradition and religion clearly instructs Jews to await the coming of the promised Messiah … before they can return to Eretz Israel as a sovereign people … (which) is why today several streams of Ultra-Orthodox Jews are either non or anti-Zionist” (Pappe 2007b: 10). As such, the single state conception of the world seeks to highlight the important distinction between Zionism and Judaism, as well as the fact that Zionism goes against the central tenants of Judaism, and as such, should not be allowed to speak for—or act in the name of—those who belong to the Jewish faith. In this vein, at the single state Madrid Conference in 2007, Steven Freedman argued that Zionism represented a revolt against the mainstream and widely held beliefs of Judaism. Thus,

It is very important that Zionism, as the leading force of the essentialization process that has taken place within Jewish identity, be undone and deconstructed, in order to erase its structural and fundamental characteristics (colonialist, separatist, racist), which are indeed the main obstacles to a just and long-term solution in the region.

(Salamanca 2007: 57–80)

Similarly, while Zionism emerged due to the growing persecution of Jewish people in Europe in the late 1880s (Pappe 2007b: 10), many single state Jewish-Israeli intellectuals argue that it simultaneously has a complex inter-relationship with anti-Jewish racism itself. Thus, Davis highlights that though political Zionism is based upon the premise that it can offer a solution to anti-Jewish racism, it is in fact simultaneously interlinked to this racism, since they both “share a common worldview on the existential status of Jewish minority communities in non-Jewish societies” (Davis 2003: 11). He elaborates,

Both the political Zionist and the anti-Jewish racist believe that, given the fundamental racial incompatibility of Jews and non-Jew, Jews … cannot … be equal citizens and free minority communities within a non-Jewish society and polity … For the political Zionist, Jewish society must also be segregated outside the body of ‘Gentile’ society, in this case in Palestine.

(Davis 2003: 11)

Haim Bresheeth echoes this analysis at the single state Madrid Conference, arguing that Zionism and anti-Semitism have in common that they both agree upon the distressing notion that Jewish people must, and want to separate themselves from the rest of humanity (Salamanca 2007).

In a different vein, Pappe underlines that while the impulses from within which Zionism emerged as a movement can be argued to have been both fair and humanistic, the moment it decided that its aims would be implemented on the land of Palestine—Zionism was transformed into a settler-colonial movement (Pappe and Avnery 2007). Elaborating upon this point, Davis writes that political Zionism’s solution to anti-Jewish racism involved:

The transformation of the Arab country of Palestine … into the Jewish land of Israel, through the dispossession and mass transfer of the native indigenous Palestinian Arab population out of Palestine, the mass migration of Jews the world over into Palestine, and the establishment, through the Jewish colonization of Palestine of a sovereign Jewish state …

(Davis 2003: 19)

While the Zionist colonization of Palestine reflected European practices of colonization, single state intellectuals emphasize that there was one crucial difference, namely that Zionism did not colonize the land in order to dispossess and exploit the indigenous population, but to dispossess and replace, or exclude them. Thus, Davis writes,

Among the key Zionist slogan were not only the ‘conquest of land’ but, equally important, ‘the conquest of labour’. As expressed in the programme of (‘The Young Worker’) Party, ‘The necessary condition for the realization of Zionism is the conquest of all branches of labour in Eretz Israel by Jews’.

(Davis 2003: 27)

As Patrick Wolfe argues, this form of elimination (of the indigenous population) is structural, and in the context of the conquest of labour, “subordinated economic efficiency to the demands of building a self-sufficient proto-national Yishuv (Jewish community in Palestine) at the expense of the surrounding Arab population” (Wolfe 2006: 390). It is through this practice of conquering both land and labour that the problem of creating an exclusively Jewish state amidst an overwhelming Arab majority population was resolved. It is also from within this context that single state intellectuals argue that the laws and institutions of the Israeli state represent a form of apartheid. As Davis writes, “the legal structure and the routine of everyday life of the Israeli Jewish society are determined in every domain by the apartheid distinction of ‘Jew’ versus ‘non-Jew’” (Davis 2003: 157).

It is important to note however, that in the case of Israel, the official veiling of the existence of this apartheid in practice is crucial, since it is perceived (as reflected in Olmert’s statement above) that openly embracing apartheid in written documents linked to the law, the purchase of land, or joining the labour force would cause a serious blow to its American support. This is viewed as especially the case among the American-Jewish community, and what Tilley has described as a “matrix of high-profile pro-Israeli ‘research’ and lobbying organizations, coordinated with a nationwide array of small but active grassroots constituencies which are regularly mobilized to pressure Congress and the media” (Tilley 2006). Thus, as Davis details, the State of Israel deals with this dilemma by enshrining the crucial distinction between ‘Jew’ and ‘non-Jew’ in its laws through a “two-tiered structure … that has preserved the veil of ambiguity over Israeli apartheid legislation for over half a century” (Davis 2003: 39). Through this system, the first tier distinguishes openly between ‘Jew’ and ‘non-Jew,’ and involves the “Constitutions and Articles of Association of all the institutions of the Zionist movement and, in the first instance, the World Zionist Organization (WZO), the Jewish Agency (JA), and the Jewish National Fund (JNF)” (Davis 2003: 40). The second tier incorporates the constitutions and articles of these agencies into the laws of the Israeli state (Davis 2003: 40)—using legislation such as the Knesset’s WZO/JA Status Law of 1952 (Davis 2003: 44)—while making no explicit mention of the open distinction between ‘Jew’ and ‘non-Jew’ above. Thus,

It is through this two-tiered mechanism that an all-encompassing apartheid system could be legislated by the Israeli Knesset in all that pertains to access to land under Israeli sovereignty and control without resorting to explicit and frequent mention of ‘Jew” as a legal category, versus ‘non-Jew’.

(Davis 2003: 43)

Of course, as Oren Yiftachel underlines, this duality became more difficult to veil after Israel’s 1967 occupation of the OPT, when the difference between its democratic features and its political programme of de-Arabizing the land became more stark, and the subject of much criticism (Yiftachel 2000). It is from within this context that Jamil Hilal argues that Zionism is a special branch of European settler-colonialism—one that is an exclusivist ethno-religious state building project (Hilal 2007).

Similarly, it is from within this context that Pappe contends that the real source of the Palestinian tragedy is rooted within the fact that the Jewish population of Mandatory Palestine was so small—coupled with the Zionist movement’s insistence upon creating both an exclusively ethnic Jewish state, as well as a democratic state. It is this irreconcilable logic that led to the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians in the past—and that lies at the core of the continued Israeli genocidal policies against the Palestinians today, due to the above-mentioned paradox of a continued desire for more land, yet less Palestinians. On the obsession with a “demographic danger” within Israel, As’ad Ghanem writes,

The discourse on the future of Israel is based, according to most of Israel’s leaders, elite, and average public, on what is known as the ‘demographic danger’. Related to the ‘demographic danger’ is the fear that Israel, within its extended borders, including the West Bank and Gaza, or within the limits of the borders before the June 1967 war, would sooner or later turn into a ‘bi-national’ state.

(Ghanem 2007: 48)

As highlighted in Chapter 2, it is also this irreconcilable logic that lies behind the ‘Bantustanization’ of the OPT—the blueprint for which was laid out in Oslo, along the lines of a reformulated Allon Plan. In this context, it should be noted that two-state solution supporters make much of Ariel Sharon’s disengagement from Gaza (and to a less extent of Olmert’s consequent ‘Convergence Plan’) to argue that single state supporters are misguided to stress the expanding settlements as immovable facts on the ground. However, single state intellectuals argue that both the disengagement and convergence plans cannot be viewed separately from Israel’s desire to preserve its Jewish character as a state, while simultaneously annexing as much resource-rich West Bank land as possible. Thus, it is precisely during the Sharon and Olmert years that this process of ‘Bantustanization’ was made most clearly visible on the ground—and within Israeli public discourse. As Lily Galili writes in Haaretz on the link between disengagement from Gaza, Ariel Sharon, and Professor Arnon Sofer’s work on the ‘demographic crisis’ (Ghanem 2007: 50–51):

Demography, as the science that examines changes in the make-up of the population, has always existed. But there is no doubt that the sense of the threat that has been felt by the Jewish population of Israel during the past two years has removed it from the academic realm to daily discourse. From it, transfer has now sprouted as a legitimate outlook.

(Galili 2002)

Citing parts of the letter itself that Sofer sent to Sharon, Galili writes,

Most of the inhabitants of Israel realize that there is only one solution in the face of our insane and suicidal neighbor—separation,” wrote Sofer. “You should have known this months before they did, as the grave demographic data were put on your desk many months ago. In the absence of separation, the meaning of such a majority [of Arabs] is the end of the Jewish state of Israel.

(Galili 2002)

As Ghanem argues, Sharon himself was a reflection of Israel’s irreconcilable dilemma since its 1967 occupation of the WBGS, namely, a belief in the ‘Greater Land of Israel,’ coupled with a fear of a bi-national reality and a desire to maintain both the Jewish and democratic character of the Israeli state (Ghanem 2007: 52). Disengagement represented the answer to these irreconcilabilities, based upon a vision, “to withdraw from the Gaza Strip and 42% of the … West Bank in return for annexing those Palestinian areas where Jewish settlements are established and other West Bank areas with coveted resources” (Ghanem 2007: 52). Similarly, commenting upon the inherent link between Olmert’s Convergence Plan and the desire to preserve the nature of Israel as a Jewish state through separation (from the Palestinians), Jonathan Cook states, “The disengagement from Gaza last year and now the convergence plan for the West Bank are about … protecting Israel as a “Jewish and democratic” state in the sense that Palestinians, citizens and non-citizens alike, will be excluded” (Cook and Bistrich 2006).

As Ghanem details, Olmert took over after Sharon with the same vision, and proclaimed that Israel’s “dramatic and important mission” (Ghanem 2007: 55) was to “demarcate permanent borders so as to ensure a Jewish majority” (Ghanem 2007: 55). Ghanem cites Olmert’s telling 2006 closing statement Herzliya Conference on Israeli security:

The term ‘Jewish nation’ is absolutely clear: it means a Jewish majority. With this Zionism began, and it is the basis of its existence … We firmly stand by the historic right of Israel to the entire Land of Israel … However, the choice between the desire to allow every Jew to live anywhere … to the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish country—obligates relinquishing parts of the Land … This is not the relinquishing of the Zionist idea, rather the essential realization of the Zionist goal—ensuring the existence of a Jewish and democratic state.

(Ghanem 2007: 55–56)

As Elia Zureik highlights, this resurgence of the open talk of transfer and expulsion within the mainstream Israeli media, its academic institutions and the government of Sharon (Zureik 2003), brings the struggle within Palestine/Israel against Zionist settler-colonialism full circle. As Jewish-American Tony Judt has written, one marked difference is that Israel finds itself at the start of the 21st century today, and as such, in danger of standing on the wrong side of history. In an article that triggered the ire of many within the USA, and sparked an urgently overdue debate upon the nature of the Israeli regime, Judt wrote,

The very idea of a “Jewish state”—a state in which Jews and the Jewish religion have exclusive privileges from which non-Jewish citizens are forever excluded—is rooted in another time and place. Israel, in short, is an anachronism.

(Judt 2003)

As has been shown above, it is precisely this schism that single state intellectuals attempt to unveil, and struggle against, with their alternative anti-Zionist conception of the world. As previously emphasized, this struggle is based within a deployment of a process of critical pedagogy based upon the need for organic intellectuals to work within their own communities in order to transcend the common sense notions of the present status quo. Thus, as Pappe stated, single state intellectuals believe that, “There is a need for people who struggle with their society. The kind of people who can say to their society: I’m sorry, the collective ideological identity which you have chosen is (immoral), and impossible to maintain” (Pappe and Avnery 2007). In pursuit of a more penetrating window into this struggle, it is to the interlinked strategies and paradigm shifts of the promotion of the single state conception of the world that I now turn.

Transcending Zionism: Positive intellectual reorientations

Attacking Zionism: Breaking a taboo, “South-Africanizing” the conflict and reunifying Palestinians

The link between what Wolfe calls the “Western myopia concerning the on-going catastrophe in Palestine” (Wolfe 2007: 315) and the “casting of Israelis as victims” (Wolfe 2007: 315), should not be underestimated as a powerful mechanism through which the legitimization of Israeli settler-colonialism is maintained in the West’s public consciousness. Wolfe argues that while “dispossession is not altered by absentmindedness” (Wolfe 2007: 315), breaking through this Western myopia requires a highlighting of Zionism as a settler-colonial movement that intentionally planned the dispossession and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people in order to replace them. Thus, he writes,

The idea that Zionists planned the expulsion of the natives in advance of Palestinians’ ‘miraculous’ 1948 mass flight is seen as injurious to the crucial image of Israelis as victims. So long as Israelis are cast as victims, their opponents figure contrapuntally as the persecutors of Jews, a formula whereby Palestinians have been cast as succeeding to the mantle of Nazism.

(Wolfe 2007: 315)

It was in this context, years earlier that Said told David Barsamian, “Palestinians have the misfortune of being oppressed by a rare adversary, a people who themselves have suffered long and deeply from persecution … The uniqueness of our position is that we are the victims of the victims” (Barsamian et al. 2010: 15). Breaking through this taboo of holding critical debates and conversations on the nature of Zionism, coupled with the moral stature of Jewish-Israelis as victims (Said et al. 2000: 432) is one of the central aims of the single state conception of the world—one that is intimately interlinked with a need to decolonize the minds of their own communities, as well as open up space for the creation of an alternative vision for justice and coexistence within Palestine/Israel. As seen above, this aim is coupled with the desire to reinsert the history of the conflict itself, and counter the erasing of the Palestinian Nakba of 1948. As Pappe states, “We have to move (the conflict) out of the Occupied Territories” (Pappe 2009: interview). Thus, it is important to underline that while the two-state solution focuses upon ending the Israeli military occupation and colonization of the WBGS, the single state solution is about ending the Israeli–Palestinian conflict as a whole; de-Zionizing the land of Palestine; and transforming the struggle into one that revolves around democracy and equal citizenship.

In this vein, it was in the London Review of Books in 2003 that single state advocate Virginia Tilley wrote “The One State Solution”, declaring the two-state solution dead (Tilley 2003) and followed it up with the publication of her groundbreaking book in 2005. It was also within this juncture that Tony Judt’s article, “Israel: The Alternative” was published in the New York Review of Books, declaring Israel to be “an anachronism of its time” (Judt 2003), and a state that is in danger of being on the wrong side of history. Due to the article’s controversial and high-profile reception by the majority of American intellectuals and audiences, it can be argued that it went a long way towards launching the single state debate into public consciousness. In parallel, both these written interventions triggered the take-off of the intellectual ‘one-state versus two-state’ academic debate, which itself triggered a sudden flurry of written interventions² (the most influential of which were published in the New Left Review in 2006 and Counterpunch in 2008),³ as well as conferences, panels, talks, podcasts, and blogs dedicated to this topic.

It is essential to note that the ignition of this intellectual debate did in effect go a long way towards lifting the taboo on questioning Zionism and the nature of the regime of the State of Israel in the USA (and, to a lesser extent, in the UK and Canada). In an article published in The Nation in 2003 titled, “The One-State Solution,” Daniel Lazare argues that whereas it was impossible to have an honest conversation about Zionism in the USA previously, it has now become impossible not to (Lazare 2003). In Counterpunch, former CIA analysts Kathy and Bill Christison declared Zionism a form of racism, and sought to remind American audiences of the UNGA’s resolution in 1975 declaring it a racist ideology according to the UN’s principles and definitions of racism and racial discrimination (Christison and Christison 2003). Helena Cobban also joined the chorus of voices calling for reconsidering bi-nationalism (Cobban 2003), while Jeff Halper described Israel’s irreversible ‘matrix of control’ in the OPT and the resulting apartheid system on the land of historic Palestine at the UN’s International Conference on Civil Society in Support of the Palestinian People (Halper 2003). Within this speech, Halper declared the two-state solution ‘doomed,’ and a delusion that disguised permanent apartheid (Halper 2003).

Though this taboo on critically discussing the nature of Zionism is largely an American construction, it was also in 2003 that mainstream Labour Zionist Daniel Gavron published his book, The Other Side of Despair (Gavron 2004). Concluding that a two-state solution is no longer possible, Gavron advocated a move to a multi-ethnic democratic state. That same year, Zionist establishment figure and then mayor of Jerusalem Meron Benvenisti declared the two-state paradigm “unworkable” in Haaretz (Benvenisti 2003b). Benvenisti also gave a seminar at the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs underlining that bi-nationalism is not a future solution, but the current reality in historic Palestine disguised as the ‘military occupation’ of the WBGS (Benvenisti 2003a). As such, Benvenisti argued that bi-nationalism is the only framework from within which a workable solution must be sought (Benvenisti 2003a). The same year also witnessed the publishing of Avi Shavit’s “Cry, the Beloved Two-State Solution” in Haaretz, in which he reflected on the fact that both Israeli mainstream Zionist figures and members of the radical left were declaring the two-state solution unworkable and calling for democracy and bi-nationalism (Shavit 2003). This phenomenon in itself highlights the extent to which ‘the facts on the ground’ created by Israel were irreversible, and how profoundly this reality had transformed the search for workable solutions and viable futures.

Perhaps also important to note is that besides being instrumental in packing a blow to the American taboo on discussing Zionism, this same intellectual debate had the complementary effect of revealing a platform from within which anti-Zionist like-minded activists, academics, organizations, students, and individuals involved in Palestine/Israel could locate each other, share stories, find common ground, and create what some have termed to be a growing single state grass-roots ‘movement’ or ‘network’. This almost cathartic platform materialized as a result of the many conferences, panels, and debates on the single state solution that suddenly took off in 2004. Beginning with the Lausanne University conference entitled “One Democratic State in Palestine/Israel” in 2004, these conferences reached a crescendo in 2007 and 2008 in both Europe and Palestine/Israel, finally managed to cross the Atlantic in 2008/2009, and continue to multiply as of the present writing. This wave of activity also resulted in the formation of some single state groups, many of which were launched by student activists, academics, and activists in Palestine/Israel.

In parallel to this, it is simultaneously within this juncture that single state advocates began to draw parallels between Israeli apartheid and South African apartheid, and to call for ‘South Africanizing’ the Israeli–Palestinian conflict instead of the continued use of the occupation–liberation paradigm. Thus, in 2003, Uri Davis published his critically acclaimed book Apartheid Israel detailing Zionism’s specific form of apartheid (Davis 2003). In Press Action, Mark Hand noted that there is a movement growing in favour of bi-nationalism in Palestine/Israel, which is causing “advocates of apartheid Israel” much concern (Hand 2003). Barghouti renamed the two-state solution ‘the apartheid solution,’ and detailed Israel’s form of apartheid as a ‘three-tiered’ form of apartheid, consisting of,

The occupation and colonization of the 1967 territory; the system of racial discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel, which is the Zionist form of apartheid; and the total denial of refugee rights, particularly the right to return home and to reparations.

(Barghouti 2009b)

In this vein, it should be stressed that another driving force behind this strategy revolves around the reunification of the fragmented Palestinian national collective. For by centring the struggle around Zionism, and its multiple forms of apartheid, the rights and aspirations of all three segments of the Palestinians are taken into account, and the struggle for Palestinian liberation is realigned as one that is mutually inclusive, and hence more powerful.

The move to the apartheid paradigm itself is one that had begun to be advocated by scholars in the post-Oslo period—and especially by scholars who believed that this paradigm shift was the only avenue left from within which Palestinians could hope to break through the intransigent wall of US elite support for Israel and their inaccurate reflection, and hence popular understanding, of the occupation–liberation paradigm within this specific conflict. Moreover, as single state intellectuals underline, it is also the most accurate reflection of the obscured reality on the ground in Palestine/Israel. On this paradigm shift, George Bisharat states,

One of the reasons that the anti-apartheid movement in the US reached such heights, was because it resonated with the American civil rights movement … Unfortunately, that’s not the way Israel/Palestine reads to Americans … if you talk to Americans about settlers or settlements some of them actually have a positive connotation of that, because it reminds them of the American west and pioneering settlers—it’s not a bad term. Apartheid however, they all know that apartheid is bad. They all respond to it. So, yes, I think that analogy … is a valuable tool. And it’s not just a valuable tool—it’s accurate.

(Bisharat 2009: interview)

Similarly, Barghouti underlines the importance this paradigm shift represents in terms of the moral and legal power it contains for Palestinians within the realm of the established legal conventions of the international community:

The significance to the Palestinian struggle for self-determination of the fact that international law considers apartheid a crime against humanity that therefore invites sanctions … cannot be overemphasized. The UN and the international community know full well … how to deal with apartheid; all Palestinians and defenders of justice have to do is prove … how Israel’s … (regime) constitute(s) apartheid.

(Barghouti 2011b: 63–64)

As I will illustrate in later chapters, the space this reformulation opens up for the launching of an anti-apartheid BDS campaign for the rights of all three segments of the Palestinians proves to both resonate with these wider publics and civil society institutions, and to contain much potential of expansive power.

One of the most recent reflections of the strength of this paradigm shift came in March 2011, when veteran diplomat Ilan Baruch resigned from his post in the Israeli Foreign Ministry (as Ambassador to South Africa) stating that, “Over the past two years the political and diplomatic messages by the state’s leaders, which have grown more pointed, have infuriated me and given me no rest. I find it difficult to represent them and explain them honestly” (Ravid 2011). In the aftermath of his resignation Haaretz reports that several senior Israeli ambassadors have identified with Baruch’s resignation letter. As Barack Ravid writes,

“It has become impossible to explain Israel to others these days,” one ambassador said. “There is no clear policy and it is very difficult to respond to international criticism.” Another ambassador said: “The diplomatic impasse is dangerous to the State of Israel, and it doesn’t seem as if the prime minister has a solution in the form of a diplomatic initiative. Under such circumstances, the international community will simply force a solution on us.”

(Ravid 2011)

As Baruch himself reportedly stated, “we have been finding every opportunity to turn someone into an opponent. We think the whole world is against us … It’s time we checked ourselves” (Ravid 2011).

Intertwined with this push to ‘South-Africanize’ the conflict is the unanimous agreement of single state intellectuals upon the centrality of launching a BDS campaign against the State of Israel as one of the collective’s central weapons of non-violent resistance. While the surprising subsequent take-off of the BDS campaign, and its transformation into a powerful, expanding global movement will be addressed in Chapter 5, it should be highlighted that the BDS strategy was developed as a central component of the single state movement. Thus, as Haim Bresheeth succinctly put it, “Boycott is a tactic, and the strategy is one state” (Bresheeth 2008: interview). Elaborating upon this point further, Bresheeth states,

There are many diverse groups within Israel that are against the occupation—soldiers, women, doctors, architects, lawyers, Peace Now, etc—but there are no linkages among the separate groups, and they don’t gain any support in Israel because most Israelis financially depend on the occupation. This is why there must be structural change in Israeli lives, and why this is a South African moment in which the BDS movement is so crucial.

(Bresheeth 2008: interview)

Thus, single state intellectuals seek to aid any dissent that exists within Israel Proper by launching a tactic for external pressure against Zionism and its practices. Perhaps most crucially of all though is Palestinian civil society’s BDS call in 2005, which represented the first unified Palestinian national call to unite all segments of the Palestinian people within it, and call for the achievement of the rights of all three segments of the Palestinian collective. As Nadia Hijab states,

In July 2005, over 170 Palestinian coalitions, unions and associations from across the spectrum, representing tens of thousands of Palestinians throughout the Occupied Territories, in Israel and in exile, issued a call for BDS until Palestinian human rights are achieved.

(Hijab 2009)

These goals (which significantly mirror those of the single state conception of the world) were the inalienable right to Palestinian self-determination; ending the Israeli occupation and colonization of all Arab lands, and dismantling the Wall; the recognition of the fundamental rights of the Palestinian citizens of Israel to full equality; and the implementation of the Palestinian Right of Return as stipulated in UNR 194.⁴ Speaking on the significance of this call, Hijab states,

This is perhaps the most significant national document since the national movement was founded. It establishes a clear set of goals for the entire Palestinian people. This clear set of goals is the first most crucial source of power of the Palestinian people.

(Hijab 2009)

Moreover, single state intellectuals developed the tactic of BDS as a central weapon of resistance as a result of their disillusionment with the PA and the international community’s complicity with Israeli policies, as well as their interlinked failure to hold Israel accountable for its actions under international law. Thus, this campaign primarily targets diverse civil societies in Europe and North America in an effort to transcend the common sense notions of the conflict among their citizens, and transform them into social forces of change against their governments’ complicity with Israeli policies. It also seeks to create this change in tactic within all of the organizations, institutions, associations, and groups that support Palestinian rights and are involved in Palestinian solidarity campaigns. As Pappe recounts, single state intellectuals were largely successful in this aim:

I think we are nearly there, with all these good people who were involved in what I can say was the ‘kissing cousin industry’—you know, the good people of civil society who thought that their role in the West was to assimilate better understanding by giving spaces for Palestinians and Israelis to meet. I think we’re succeeding now in changing their orientation to the BDS doctrine, which is great, and very important.

(Pappe 2009: interview)

In tandem with these shifts, this tactic seeks to shame the PA as a collaborator leadership—and to present an alternative for those within the PA who realize that the peace process is dead; feel the need to reformulate their positions; and can be influenced to actively join the re-centring of the Palestinian struggle for self-determination around a unified, grass-roots Palestinian (and Israeli) collective, waging a non-violent struggle for decolonial liberation. As Mahmoud Darwish famously wrote, “Besiege your siege … there is no other way” (Darwish 1983 quoted in Barghouti 2011b: 1). For single state intellectuals, that is exactly what the BDS tactic represents.

Partition, rethinking identities, and highlighting Orientalism

As detailed above, the single state’s vision stands against partition on the grounds that it is interlinked with practices of transfer of populations and ethnic cleansing, as well as on the grounds that the people of Mandate Palestine have always been too intertwined for such a solution to succeed. Interlinked with this argument is another that seeks to stress that identities themselves are fluid, interlinked, and complex. As such, the binary essentialist opposition between ‘Arabs’ and ‘Jews’ that underpins much of the common sense notions of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict does not actually reflect the complex reality on the ground in Palestine/Israel. For single state intellectuals, nothing reflects the silencing of this complexity more than the negating of the identity and history of the Arab-Jewish people. Hence, one of the most interesting threads within the anti-Zionism of single state supporters revolves around the countering of the hegemonic European Ashkenazi depiction of Israeli-Jewish history and identity, the re-articulation of the identities and voices of Arab-Jews, as well as the reinsertion of the history of coexistence between Arabs and Jews within the Arab world within public arenas, public consciousness, and written interventions.

In this vein, the fact that the majority of the Jewish population in historic Palestine were Arab-Jews is a suppressed fact that’s highlighting plays a large role in the single state world-view, and their desire to launch a project of re-Arabizing Jewish history—combating the common sense view of what it means to be Jewish, the essentialist Zionist binary opposition between Jewish and Arab identity, as well as Israel’s identity as a European state rather than a state that is interlinked with the Arab world. In this vein, Sivan argues that the Zionist movement was not just a European colonial movement, but also an Orientalist one (Sivan 2007). As Smadar Lavie highlights, many among the Mizrahim were brought to Israel from countries like Yemen, Morocco, and Iraq in order to work there instead of the Palestinians who were excluded from the work force. Yet, she argues, these Jewish Arabs did not fare much better than Palestinian-Israelis:

Like the Palestinian-Israelis, the Mizrahim have only token representation in all Israeli financial, legal and cultural institutions run by the Ashkenazi elite. This almost hermetically sealed group of families ensures the inter-generational transmission of their Ashkenazi Zionist pedigree and financial assets. Upward mobility is almost impossible.

(Lavie 2009)

Similarly, in a talk at Suffolk University in Boston, Sami Shalom Chetrit recounted Ben-Gurion’s famous dilemma with the Yemeni-Jews—50, 000 of which were airlifted to Israel in 1951 (Chetrit 2010):

Ben Gurion said in a discussion in the Knesset, we have to put so much effort to turn these Yemenites into Jews as fast as possible. And Yemenites—I mean you could say that if you want to talk about a Jew in the Middle Eastern tradition, talk about a Yemenite. You know, people who recite the entire Torah by heart from a very early age. But that was the concept. A Jew is a European. And, of course, a new Jew must be a European.

(Chetrit 2010)

It is within this highlighting of the fact that in the consciousness of the Israeli Ashkenazi elite the Jewish identity could only be conceived of as a European one that the link between proving your Jewishness and de-Arabization can be found. Describing this process more concretely in terms of a state-sponsored project of the de-Arabization of the Middle Eastern Jewish communities in Israel, Sivan states,

The idea of a Jewish state today is that of a non-Arab state. It’s not a Jewish state in any religious definition. The history of the people, the history of the country, is the history of the European in the land, and before they came to the land … this is (reflected in the) system of education, a system that is built on the fact that ‘we’, this common we, have one history which is a European history. This brought us to the situation that today, every descendant of an Iraqi-Jewish family in my class would say, “but when we were in Poland we were persecuted”. This means that the personal ‘we’ transforms every Israeli into a European with a European heritage.

(Sivan 2007)

Thus, the Mizrahim themselves were brought into a hostile environment in which they represented one of the biggest fears of the Ashkenazi Jewish population—that Israelis would sooner or later become Arab. This fear is reflected in Ben-Gurion’s concise statement “We do not want Israelis to become Arabs” (Wurmser 2005: 21–30)—and lays at the root of the resulting ardent Zionism most Mizrahim embrace within Israel today. On this paradox and how it is represented from within the eyes of Palestinians, Azmi Bishara states:

The Palestinian has learned to recognize the Mizrahi as the extremist Israeli. And the Palestinian understands that the Mizrahi is in a predicament, since he constantly tries to distinguish himself from the Arab in his Arab-ness. The Ashkenazi does not have to emphasize his Jewishness, for it is obvious to him that he is not Arab … There is no mixing. Yet, the Mizrahi resembles the Arab in looks, customs, dialects and other aspects that force him to differentiate himself from the Arab in order to win equality on the basis of national identity. If the criterion for equality is nationalism, then they must prove their nationalism.

(Chetrit 2010)

Thus, while the Mizrahim remain among the most Zionist communities within Israeli society, there is a growing movement of Arab-Israeli intellectuals seeking to counter the mainstream Zionist narrative that Zionism saved them from their own (Arab and Iranian) communities. Hence,

Post-Zionist writers … attack the claim that Mizrahi Jews longed to immigrate to Israel. In reality, they argue, as loyal residents of the Arab world, Zionism played a relatively minor role in the Mizrahi worldview … Even after the Holocaust, post-Zionist writers maintain Mizrahi Jews remained largely opposed to Zionism.

(Wurmser 2005: 21–30)

It is due to the complexity of these suppressed histories, experiences, and identities and the fear and oppression within which they are based that single state intellectuals argue that despite the outward Zionism of the Mizrahim, it is a Zionism that can potentially be readily transformed through a cathartic reclaiming of all that has been negated within them. Interlinked with this, single state intellectuals seek to question the Zionist notion of “security” itself—as one of the central concerns underlying the need for the existence of an exclusively Jewish state. Thus, they argue for the need to enlarge its meaning within Israeli society, and thus to counter its definition as one that must be seen in demographic and military terms rather than in terms of citizenship, coexistence, and cultural, social and educational security (SOAS Palestine Society and London One State Group 2007). In parallel to this, single state advocates seek to highlight the fact that Zionist security does not equate with an equal level of security for all Jews within Israel—let alone non-Jews. For, as illustrated by Sivan and Michel Khleife’s documentary film Route 181, the Orientalist divide between Ashkenazi Jews and Arab-Jews within Israel also plays itself out geographically in terms of the security and life worth of the two communities. Hence, it is Arab-Jewish communities who reside in both the north and south of Israel Proper—the zones within the range of Palestinian rockets.

It is within this context that Massad stated,

There’s been much ambivalence within the Mizrahi population towards Ashkenazi hegemony and more generally with regards to their Arab culture. I think this is a population that is mobilizable despite the racist Ashkenazi depiction of the Mizrahim as something of a right-wing Zionist racist … and I think that’s the work of our Israeli colleagues and friends.

(Massad 2007)

It should be noted that the discussion upon the revival of the Arab-Jewish identity is interlinked within the single state’s broader discussion of citizenship and the fluid, intermingled identities of much of the population of Palestine/Israel. Moreover, this underlining of the complexity of the identities within the land (especially those of the Palestinian-Israelis and the Arab-Jews) is an attack upon the argument of many single state opponents that a homogenous block of “Israelis” would never accept a single state solution, remaining forever united in a static (Orientalist and racist) Zionism. The same of course applies to critics who claim that “Palestinians” would also never renounce their own nationalism—though this argument is voiced much less. Hence, as Pappe argues, the one-state solution does not come from a place of despair:

There is no despair of human nature or of civil society … There is hope. You can see it in the Galilee where Jews and Arabs live in a region relatively free from state interference … There are business partnerships, joint schools … suddenly there is a budding common life of the two nationalities. It turns out that you can fight segregation … The idea that nationalism is bound to win around here is the result of manipulation and education—not of human nature.

(Pappe and Avnery 2007)

It is this process of critical education that the single state conception of the world seeks to trigger within its own communities, as well as within diverse civil societies globally.

Points of inclusion and exclusion

As has been outlined above, it is the critique of the common sense notions of Oslo and the launching of an anti-Zionist conception of the world—with all of its various points of beginnings, reinsertions of silenced realities on the ground and paradigm shifts—that unites the presently re-emergent single state movement. Thus, it is on the basis of adherence to the red lines of the principles of the One State Declaration that social forces are either included within this struggle of resistance, or excluded. However, while the majority of these red lines are adhered to (i.e. you cannot be a Zionist, an anti-Jewish racist, negate the history of the conflict, stand against the principle of equality, etc.) these lines do encounter some divisive tensions when faced with certain forces (of perhaps heroic resistance) with slightly divergent, yet potentially complementary world-views in Palestine/Israel—and the dilemma of whether or not to include them. This tension is perhaps most clearly illustrated with the dilemma that faces single state intellectuals on whether or not to include, or form alliances with, members of Hamas.

As shall be elaborated upon in Chapter 4, it is perhaps important to note that the broad ideological orientations of single state intellectuals are located within the realm of the secular. As such, in practice single state intellectuals tend to either place an emphasis upon secularism in terms of a vision of a democratic, one-person one-vote single state; or of a more flexible recognition of the importance of religion within the framework of a bi-national state centred on some form of community rights. However, all the ideological orientations of single state intellectuals exclude the possibility of any form of religious state. Thus, it is from within this context that the red lines of this movement have faced a particular dilemma in negotiating a position upon Hamas, which while being anti-Zionist and anti-separationist in principle, is largely considered to also desire an Islamic state. This dilemma is further complicated within the single state movement by the fact that the majority of single state intellectuals also view Hamas as a political force that remains largely untouched by the corruption of many of Fatah’s elites as a movement; a force that still remains outside of the Oslo peace process, and as such have yet to accept its capitulations; and a force that represents grass-roots resistance, and is neither monolithic, nor unwilling to compromise in the interest of national unity and national liberation.

Hence, many within the single state movement—and especially within the Palestinian Diaspora—have raised the necessity of engaging in dialogue with Hamas, and the possibility of creating alliances with some of its members. It should be mentioned that for most of these intellectuals, this engagement is viewed as a necessary part of the process of creating a representative deliberative democracy, as well as of unifying the full spectrum of the Palestinian collective in a new movement of liberation, regardless of the disagreements within it. Thus, it is resistance and embracing the plurality of the collective here that takes centre stage. Thus, Abunimah states,

There are people who are opposed to resistance who use Islamism as an excuse. And say things like, those people want to oppress women therefore we should oppose them. But I don’t think that’s honest politics. What ties Palestinians together is the need to resist colonial reality. That doesn’t require them to all sign up for the same vision, and I don’t think that most of Hamas requires as a condition for working with people that they sign up to any kind of social agenda, or social vision that Hamas has.

(Abunimah 2009: interview)

Similarly, Hamas’ leadership—in opposition to those who perceive it as being a monolithic movement with a fundamentalist, unchanging vision—has shown itself to be open to accepting a two-state solution. As such, some single state intellectuals have argued that since the single state is much closer to Hamas’ original vision, they may equally show themselves to be open to take part in a movement towards a democratic single state as opposed to an Islamic one. Hence, Bisharat says,

If Hamas is actually contemplating approving a two-state solution, which they appear to be, why wouldn’t they support a one-state solution, which is far closer to what they aspire to? It wouldn’t entail Muslim rule, but its 95% of their vision instead of 30% of it. My expectation is that they would respond to an invitation like that just the way Hezbollah has in Lebanon, (and) become a political party … I don’t think they’d ever grow beyond their current dimensions, and they would probably shrink once the national issue is taken care of.

(Bisharat 2009: interview)

Paralleling Bisharat and Abunimah, and highlighting the urgency of this moment in terms of resistance further, as opposed to a rigid desire for there to be an absolute agreement on a detailed future vision, Ilan Pappe argues that,

We cannot allow ourselves to say that we are going to exclude a major Palestinian force. The question to my mind is not whether to include, but under what conditions. I mean, can we agree, and I think we can, on a set of understandings which leave some of the questions which are dear to us all—the nature of the state, gender relations, etc—to leave them open? By saying that there’s an urgency. …

(Pappe 2009: interview)

Thus, while the single state conception of the world is interlinked with the realities of oppression and resistance within Palestine/Israel—and as such seeks to be as reflective of these realities and as inclusive of the plurality of forces on the ground as possible—it is important to note that the discussion upon Hamas revolved around under what conditions it could be included within the single state vision due to the urgency of the moment in terms of resistance. In the end, despite this urgency, these agreed upon conditions still reflected the principles of the single state conception of the world. Thus, while as a major Palestinian force of resistance many argued that Hamas should be engaged with and included, this inclusion is stipulated upon negotiating an agreement wherein the possibility of an Islamic state is excluded. Moreover, it should be highlighted that there were single state intellectuals who still disagreed with the inclusion of Hamas in principle. Hence, as of the present writing, Hamas remains excluded from within the re-emergent single state movement.

Conclusion

Through a highlighting of its emergence, intellectual points of beginning, unity, and advocated reformulations, this chapter has contended that the dynamics and processes of the re-emergent single state movement are most fruitfully unveiled when viewed through the lens of a Gramscian form of philosophical movement. As such, this chapter has attempted to show the central roles of single state intellectuals in triggering a project of critical pedagogy within their own communities. In doing so, it sought to highlight their own self-understandings as educators energizing an alternative, more just, and liberating anti-Zionist world-view from within which coexistence and a practice of equal citizenship can begin to be embraced on the ground. In parallel to this, this chapter has equally attempted to demonstrate the inherent interlinkage between this alternative anti-Zionist world-view and the critique of the common sense notions linking these diverse communities to a status quo championing the notion of separation as the only solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. In doing so, it endeavoured to underline Gramsci’s argument that it is only when a philosophical movement begins from within the common sense notions of its communities that it contains within it the power to transcend them in the name of an alternative, liberating vision. For, it is within this inter-linkage that the activation of Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis lays, and as such the potential for building a transformative process of counterhegemony. Hence, it is from within this premise that I argue that the single state movement both represents a Gramscian movement of philosophy, as well as one that contains within it much potential for building a transformative process of counterhegemony through its project of critical pedagogy. Argued to be an energetic avenue through which political possibilities are revolutionized on the ground, this chapter contends that the anti-Zionist conception of the world elaborated by single state intellectuals represents a long-term process of resistance aimed at both triggering a liberating process of critical and historical self-understanding, and laying the groundwork for the formation of a new kind of civil and political society.

Notes

1  For the purposes of this book, the term ‘mapping’ is used to describe an analytical and descriptive narration of the present day re-emergent single state movement both intellectually and organizationally. As such, it is not a historical mapping of the single state idea itself—but a mapping that sets its beginning with the signing of the Oslo Accords. This narration is presented within a Saidian-Gramscian framework.

2  For an example of a written intervention in opposition to the single state idea, see Benny Morris, One State, Two States, Resolving the Israel/Palestine Conflict (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009).

3  To read the debate published in the New Left Review in 2006, see Peled, Y., 2006. Zionist Realities. New Left Review, 38, 21, and Tilley, V., 2006. The Secular Solution. New Left Review, 38, 37. For some examples from Counterpunch, see, Neumann, M., 2008. The One State Illusion: More is less. Counterpunch. http://www.counterpunch.org/2008/03/10/the-one-state-illusion-more-is-less-the-debate-over-israel-and-palestine/ Christison, K., 2008. The Myth of International Consensus. Counterpunch. http://www.counterpunch.org/2008/01/24/the-myth-of-international-consensus/ Cook, J., 2008. One State or Two? Neither. The Issue is Zionism. Counterpunch. http://www.counterpunch.org/2008/03/12/one-state-or-two-neither-the-issue-is-zionism/ Nuemann, M., 2008. The One State Illusion: Reply to My Critics. Counterpunch. http://www.counterpunch.org/2008/03/14/the-one-state-illusion-reply-to-my-critics/ Barat, F., 2008. On the Future of Israel and Palestine: an Interview with Ilan Pappe and Noam Chomsky. Counterpunch. http://www.counterpunch.org/2008/06/06/an-interview-with-ilan-papp-eacute-and-noam-chomsky/

4  See: www.bdsmovement.net/call

4    The re-emergence of the single state solution

An organizational mapping of an emergent movement

Introduction

In this chapter, I endeavour to paint a broad picture of the blocs of organic intellectuals I argue to be pivotal in the re-emergence of the present single state idea—both as an articulated alternate vision to the Israeli–Palestinian peace process since Oslo, and as an interlinked set of practices and strategies focused upon resistance. As such, I echo Omar Barghouti’s description of the resistance movement within which he is involved, as one that is based upon the dialectical link between thought and action:

Organizing for self-determination and ethical de-Zionization of Palestine, must proceed in two simultaneous, dialectically related processes—reflection and action … Ethical decolonization, anchored in international law and universal human rights, is a profound transformation that requires above everything else a principled and popular Palestinian resistance movement with a clear vision for justice and shared society, and an international movement supporting Palestinian rights and struggling to end all forms of Zionist apartheid and colonial rule. Without vision and reflection our struggle would become like a ship without a skipper. Without resistance, our vision would amount to no more than armchair intellectualism.

(Barghouti 2009b)

Thus, though the single state movement largely emerged as a reformulated intellectual idea triggering an academic debate, it simultaneously attempted to activate Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis, fusing intellectual vision with the struggles of activists resisting oppression as a practice. Similarly, it is a resistance movement operating within the Gramscian premise that social transformation begins with the potential within people’s thoughts to challenge the limits of the possible, triggering critical processes of historical self-understanding and empowerment that eventually transform them into a unified historical force. Hence, there is an emphasis upon the need for an idea to be active within people’s minds first before it can become a transformative reality. This emphasis reverberates in Eyal Sivan’s words on the question of whether there is support for the bi-national idea among Jewish-Israelis:

You cannot support or oppose an idea that does not exist yet. It’s language and discourse did not yet exist … there is a need to create a debate around this question … an urgent need to start to articulate a discourse which is not a discourse of opposition to two states, but a discourse that says we should find a real solution.

(Sivan 2008: interview)

This point of beginning equally resonates with Barghouti, who argues that the power of articulating a moral vision for the mobilization of social transformation should not be underestimated as an integral part of the process of building resistance. Thus, in the context of the struggle for a single democratic state,

The main challenge facing advocates of a democratic state in historic Palestine is to convince mass organizations and civil societies around the world of two issues: that it’s a morally compelling vision that is worth struggling for, and I believe in the power of vision, and second to show that this vision can indeed be realized through ethically sound and politically effective processes.

(Barghouti 2009b)

It is in the context of this form of movement that the following mapping of the political processes and forces underlying the alternative vision which I outlined in Chapter 3 is presented. As such, I begin this mapping by analysing the main blocs of organic intellectuals involved within the creation of the single state movement, and the ideas, experiences, and organizations they may be linked to on the ground. In outlining this picture, I argue that these blocs are made up of an Israeli–Palestinian bloc, a Palestinian Diaspora/Refugees and Palestinians under Occupation Bloc, and a Jewish-Israeli bloc. Following a Saidian Gramsci, these blocs are defined in terms of the organic belonging of the intellectuals within them to a particular national community, as well as to a particular geographical location. Moreover, I argue that these groupings are reflected organizationally among these intellectuals in terms of the contextualized activism each bloc carries out within its own community. However, as the fusing of the Palestinians under Occupation with the Palestinian Diaspora/Refugees implies, the pages that follow also reflect the fact that not all segments of the Palestinians are equally active or represented within the single state movement for various reasons. In these pages I also highlight that it was Palestinian-Israelis who were initially deemed the hegemonic group leading this process of resistance, before what Gramsci would term a “collective intellectual”¹ with unified principles and visions emerged, and the dynamics of the whole shifted. In painting this sketch though, it is important to note that it is not my intention to obscure the considerable overlap that also exists within these blocs and their activities in everyday life, but to broadly map their stories of becoming.

Having created this sketch, I then proceed to briefly outline the strategies these intellectuals try to deploy in pursuit of a broader mass base for the single state idea, and the avenues through which they propose to transform the reality on the ground from one of separation and occupation, to one of joint struggle and coexistence. In doing so, I contend that viewing the resistance practices of the single state movement in terms of ‘anti-Zionist practices’ that oppose the processes and practices of separation on the ground provides a more accurate reflection of what it stands for as a collective, and what it stands against. Finally, I highlight the most significant divisions within the single state movement, with an emphasis upon the Gramscian contention that the process of building a unified historical bloc transforms all of the social groups involved within it. As such, it is neither static, nor void of shifts in positions, vision, or strategy.

A sketch of the organic intellectuals

This section aims to paint a broad picture of the blocs of organic intellectuals that I argue played (and continue to play) the most pivotal roles in the re-emergence of the present single state idea, both as an articulated alternate vision to the Israeli–Palestinian peace process since Oslo, and also as an interlinked set of practices, strategies, and joint endeavours focused upon resistance. The type of Gramscian movement this form of resistance through critical pedagogy is argued to represent has previously been underlined. However, it should also be emphasized that while the majority of single state intellectuals do speak of the single state in public arenas as a movement in the making, not all of them agree upon the fact that they are in fact part of a movement. Thus, for example, to the question of whether or not he considered there to be a single state movement emerging, and whether or not he considered himself to be a part of it, Bisharat states,

Yes to both. You know, it’s halting, it’s slow, it’s inchoate, but yes, I would say there is the beginning of such a movement, and you know, I’ve been at several of the conferences on one state that have issued declarations, and please don’t misunderstand me, this is nothing in real organizational terms other than just a beginning. So, we’ve … begun a dialogue and begun to refine our thoughts and … to establish at least a small community to move forward.

(Bisharat 2009: interview)

Echoing a similar sentiment to the same question, Abunimah states,

It is a movement in the sense that there is a significant and growing number of people who are enthusiastic about this idea, who are advocating for it, organizing for it … they are challenging a hegemonic idea so they are very much marginal … (but) we’re at a conference which probably was unthinkable a few years ago, so this is a sign of this idea becoming more mainstream, successfully challenging the hegemonic notion that there is no solution but a two-state solution, and forcing itself onto the agenda. That’s, I think, a result of activism and discussion and so on. So, I think it is a movement in that sense, but it has no central leadership, or structure or body … but yes.

(Abunimah 2009: interview)

Hence, while the central concern of this section is to shed light upon this small community, and their preliminary organizational efforts to begin to challenge a particular hegemony, it must be underlined that at this early stage, the single state movement does not have a centralized leadership, structure, or body. Moreover, as reflected in the words of Sivan, there are some among these intellectuals who do not perceive themselves as part of a movement in the making:

No, I don’t see myself as part of a movement. At the same time, I am constantly aware of the fact that I’m occupying a public space, and that this is a political question. Whether it be in the classroom, or in making films, or in conferences, it’s all-together a project. Which is not a question of a movement, but it’s, yes, it’s being conscious that it’s a way of, or an act of activism.

(Sivan 2008: interview)

Thus, it is important to note that even among those intellectuals who would not characterize their actions to be undertaken within the framework of an emergent movement, there remains an emphasis upon the consciousness of being part of a transformative political project of critical pedagogy, aimed at conquering public spaces and creating new constituencies. As previously argued, it is in this context that I view this resistance struggle as one that is aimed towards the creation of a Gramscian reconstructive moment. Similarly, while the majority of single state intellectuals view themselves as activists, some also feel uneasy due to an awareness of a lack of official mandate to represent anyone but themselves. Expressing the ambiguity of the affiliated intellectual’s role, Abunimah states,

Of course it’s a political act to speak publicly. To advocate for any kind of programme is a political act … But in what capacity am I doing it? As an individual, as an intellectual, as a representative of some group of people? Of course, I have no formal position. I have no formal mandate to speak for anyone except myself … so I don’t represent a party or organization. Sometimes though I do feel that I have a responsibility to speak, or to represent peoples’ views … again being very careful not to speak for them, but to speak within. I feel that if I’m speaking to an audience with a large number of Palestinians, they sometimes receive me as if I’m speaking for them, even though I haven’t asked for that, and I would be very cautious about ever claiming that. So, it’s an ambiguous role. I feel like people look to me as if I have some kind of position of leadership or authority to speak, but I’m very conscious that there’s no mechanism … no one really put me in that position, so I have to be very careful about it.

(Abunimah 2009: interview)

In this vein, most single state intellectuals feel that they can only represent, or speak from within, the collectives of Palestinians and Israelis to which they belong, with the recognition that this sense of belonging is more straightforward for some than others. Interlinked with this however, is a conviction that the emphasis on action and resistance has to reside primarily within the local setting within which they live, even if it targets a wider audience geographically. Hence, it can be argued that the organization of the single state movement mirrors that of the London One State Group that brought them together for the single state conference in SOAS to a certain degree. On the strategy behind the London One State Group’s vision for grass-roots mobilization for the single state idea, Ziada stresses,

Every member of our group work(s) with their own community. Yoni’s in charge of the Israeli side, and with finding activists and experts who support the one state idea there. I’m involved with the Palestinian side, especially Gaza. There are initiatives to link the refugee camps in Lebanon and Syria through one-state activists from within their communities. One way to create transformation is through grass-roots activism like this—and this is why it’s so crucial to create a mechanism to connect all of these activists together and promote the idea of one state in different locations.

(Ziada 2008: interview)

The single state movement seems to also have more or less organized itself along this model. Hence, Israeli-Jewish intellectuals work within their communities, Palestinian-Israelis within theirs, and so on. In parallel to this, those organic intellectuals who live outside of Palestine/Israel come together within their local communities in exile to promote single state initiatives, and give exposure to the idea among the diverse groups and platforms they are affiliated with locally. Thus, complementing the broad national organic grounding of the different groups of intellectuals, there is an emphasis upon the importance of simultaneously working within the geographical localities and contexts within which they each live. It is largely due to this loose form of organization and activism that stresses both the need for an organic connection within a national community, as well as one that is fused with a localized theatre of activism, that the single state idea itself continues to gain momentum in (loosely interlinked) diverse national theatres.

The Palestinian diaspora, the Palestinian refugees and the Palestinians under Occupation Bloc

In presenting a sketch of this bloc of intellectuals, it is important to underline that while the single state idea itself is not new, it was re-articulated by Fatah in 1969 and became the PLO’s official position in 1971 “under the slogan of a democratic state in Palestine inclusive of Jews, Muslims, and Christians” (Farsakh 2011: 56). As Farsakh writes, this re-articulation initiated by Fatah, and later adopted by the PLO at its 8th Palestinian National Council constituted a shift from the PLO’s position to liberate all of historic Palestine, to one that acknowledged the Jewish presence within the land. Thus “the democratic state represented the first Palestinian attempt to come to terms with the reality of Jewish presence on the land, rather than negate it, albeit within a nationalist Palestinian paradigm” (Farsakh 2011: 56). As such, the Jewish community within this paradigm of a secular democratic state was considered Palestinian. However, what is important for my purposes in this section is that this historical precedent provides a national platform from within which the idea can be legitimately re-articulated and reintroduced as the most moral and just solution for the Palestinian national collective today. Thus, despite the fact that the single state solution remains unrepresented within the OPT by any official parties, it is not a foreign, unimaginable, or even undesirable idea for many among them. Moreover, the fact that the idea itself was reformulated by Fatah could gradually increase the influence of the present single state movement among elements of Fatah (and other Palestinian political factions) who are disillusioned with both the PA and the current Israeli–Palestinian peace process.

Equally important to highlight within this context is that amongst these three segments of Palestinians, the Palestinian refugees and the Palestinians under occupation are the least represented. This is due to various reasons linked to geographical accessibility, the non-existence of mechanisms of representation, criminalization, or in the case of the Gaza Strip, the existence of an Israeli blockade. Thus, for example, it is generally acknowledged that the Palestinian refugees—who are estimated to constitute around 4.5 million Palestinians—would overwhelmingly favour a single state due to the fact that they would not be accommodated within the framework of the two-state solution as it now stands. However, there is no mechanism of representation through which Palestinian refugees can make their voices heard (in the context of any Palestinian national solution or movement), and there remains an urgent need to re-create such a mechanism of empowerment and representation.² In parallel to this, the Palestinians under occupation in the Gaza Strip are also under-represented due to the Israeli siege and the difficulties this represents in terms of freedom of movement, connection, and dialogue with the outside world, as well as the criminalization of Hamas itself as a movement. Thus, on the obstacles to engaging with Hamas in North America, Abunimah states,

There’s practical difficulties—in Canada or the US, maybe you’d go to prison. You don’t know. Particularly in this post-9/11 era, it’s not easy. You can’t invite someone from Hamas to this conference to have a discussion with them. So how? That engagement, you know … it’s difficult. If I had more opportunities to do (it), I would. But there’s a criminalization of Hamas.

(Abunimah 2009: interview)

Hence, for members of the Palestinian Diaspora for example, accessing geographical spaces within which they can engage with Palestinians from Gaza, or Palestinians affiliated with Hamas, remains a difficult task. In contrast to both the Palestinians in Gaza and Palestinian refugees, the Palestinians under occupation in the West Bank are more represented than their two counterparts. However, initial support for a single state solution among them was the lowest, since the majority were primarily concerned with resistance aimed at ending the Israeli occupation of the OPT (and of course still are), and still prefer a Palestinian movement that would lead to an independent Palestinian state. In this vein, Bisharat states,

Well, I certainly know Palestinians who live under Occupation who are supporters of one state, and people who are as actively engaged in it as I am. But I do think that speaking on the basis of interests—the appeal of one state is greatest for Palestinian citizens of Israel and Palestinians in exile. One of the things that the movement for one state needs to do is develop a program of relief for people in the Occupied Territories. They can’t just focus on the distant future.

(Bisharat 2009: interview)

Thus, while the single state movement does not consider the ending of the Israeli occupation to represent the end of Israeli–Palestinian conflict, it nevertheless remains centrally concerned with ending the occupation as part of its three mutually inclusive demands. However, speaking to the urgency of ending the occupation in the OPT was not the only hurdle the single state idea faced within this context. As Abunimah underlines,

Right now the main split among Palestinians in the Occupied Territories is between supporters of resistance and effectively … collaborating with Israel. It’s not an even split. There is a class and a segment that are benefiting from the status quo and want it to continue. That’s one of the tragedies … On the other hand, there is support. All the polls show that a solid fifth to a quarter sometimes as high as a third are interested in a one state solution, or see it as possible and desirable on the basis of equal citizenship. But they’re not represented. There aren’t political parties or movements that represent the 20% of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories who want a one state solution.

(Abunimah 2009: interview)

Presently, support for the single state solution is increasing significantly³ within this segment of Palestinians, despite the above, and the fact that the solution itself remains unrepresented by any political parties within the OPT.

In view of the above—and of the previously highlighted fact that the single state movement emerged as a war of position of the Palestinian Diaspora, the Palestinian refugees, and the Palestinians inside Israel—it is clear that the driving force behind this bloc of Palestinians are the organic intellectuals of the Palestinian Diaspora. As such, their activism constitutes the bulk of this bloc’s sketch, with the acknowledgement that the gradual increase of support for the single state among Palestinians in the West Bank created an increasing overlap within these initiatives. Moreover, it is my view that it is the centrality of the above-mentioned groups within the present resurgence of the single state idea that has placed an emphasis within this reformulated struggle on the centrality of equal rights and citizenship for all—as well as that of international law—as opposed to that of establishing a Palestinian nation-state within a framework of national self-determination.

Hence, it should be noted that the Palestinian Diaspora represent a more fluid and diverse bloc of intellectuals than their generally more homogenous counterparts below. This diversity is reflected in terms of the existence of more universalized perceptions of identity, more eclectic ideological orientations, and a more pronounced visibility of women amongst them. In parallel to this, as opposed to the two blocs that will follow, this bloc is overwhelmingly in favour of a secular democratic state, as opposed to a bi-national one. Elaborating on this impulse Yasmin Abu-Laban states,

The way I would articulate it is not around binationalism, partly because … when you start talking about nation and national communities, it can sound very closed. So what does that mean when you say there are two national communities? Who’s included in that? I would favour the idea of a secular democratic state—but that being said, I think those are terms that you would want to unpack.

(Abu-Laban 2009: interview)

On the link between the realization of the three demands reunifying all three segments of the Palestinians and the secular democratic solution, Barghouti states,

The democratic solution lays out the clearest mechanism for ending the three tiered regime of Israeli Zionist oppression—the occupation and colonization of the 1967 territory; the system of racial discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel, which is the Zionist form of apartheid; and the total denial of refugee rights, particularly the right to return home and to reparations.

(Barghouti 2009b)

This preference is further emphasized by the description of many amongst this bloc of Palestinians of themselves as ‘secular humanists,’ as well as their more fluid experience of identity and place. Thus, on where he would locate himself within the Palestinian collective, Bisharat states,

I consider myself Palestinian-American. My father was Palestinian, from Jerusalem, and my mother is American. I have lived most of my life in the US, although I have spent extended periods of time in Palestine, and elsewhere in the Middle East, including Cairo. And I consider myself first and foremost a humanist and an activist for justice and human rights worldwide.

(Bisharat 2009: interview)

Abunimah echoes this sentiment (Abunimah 2009: interview). As previously argued, this world-view can be linked to the marked influence of Said within this collective, as well as to the centrality of his arguments in the re-emergence of the single state idea within the Palestinian arena. However, it can also be argued to be a result of the North American location of the majority of these Palestinian intellectuals, and their engagement with debates on citizenship, equality, civil rights, and democracy within this particular setting—coupled with the influence of the particular movements they encountered within it (Abu-Laban 2009: interview). Thus, Abunimah stresses the influence of a multiplicity of locations and identities—and the resulting disillusionment and claustrophobia with one-dimensional nationalism—within Diaspora Palestinians:

To many Diaspora Palestinians, the whole idea of nationalism … has lost its luster … Long accustomed to transience and movement, Diaspora Palestinians no longer necessarily feel the need for a unidimensional identity embodied by a homogenized, nationalist state. What Palestinians do want and need, is freedom of movement and expression, education, and equal access to the benefits of democratic society.

(Abunimah 2006: 170)

It is from within this context of fluidity, transience, and multiplicity that for this group of Palestinians in particular, there is anxiety towards ideas linked to bi-nationalism that seek to define communities into reified national identities. Reified national identities that would magnify antagonistic uni-dimensional difference, while raising questions around representation.

While it is Palestinian-Israelis who are acknowledged to be the central energy behind the re-emergence of the single state idea, Diaspora Palestinians are its fastest growing force. Thus, at a single state conference Ghada Karmi states, the “constituency where the one state has got the most currency … is the Palestinian Diaspora” (Karmi 2009). This is illustrated in the fact that they visibly reflect the largest constituency of single state organic intellectuals present at publicly organized single state events, such as the fast growing network of conferences aimed at expanding the single state movement. While this visibility could be linked to their geographical locations and mobility, this rapid expansion is also reflected in the growing number of single state initiatives and networks within which the Diaspora are involved.

The first of these initiatives brought together members of all three segments of the Palestinian national collective, and represented their most ambiguous effort to date. This ambiguity reflects the fact that this effort was among the first to be able to bring together many diverse representatives of all the segments of the Palestinians from “all walks of life” (Abunimah 2008)—in an effort to genuinely reassess Palestinian strategy in view of a disillusioning peace process. Forming what became known as the Palestine Strategy Group, these members met for a series of intensive workshops organized by the Oxford Research Group, and funded by the EU. They released their own document in 2008 titled, “Regaining the Initiative: Palestinian Strategic Options to end the Israeli Occupation.”⁴ The report’s main aim was to create a unified platform, leadership, and voice for all Palestinians. In the report, the group calls for the rejection of what they term the “peace-building”⁵ and “state-building”⁶ discourses as based on fabricated realities and entities (such as a Palestinian state) that do not exist. Thus, as Abunimah writes, the report “calls on Palestinians to reject and expose the deceptive language of “peacemaking” and “state-building” that have been used to conceal and perpetuate a lived reality of expulsion, domination and occupation at Israel’s hands” (Abunimah 2008). Instead, the report advocates that these discourses must be replaced with a discourse that is centered around decolonization, liberation, and self-determination—since it accurately reflects the lived realities and social, political, and territorial transformations on the ground. Importantly, the stress for these authors is upon the need for the international community to embrace this discourse of decolonization and to stop concealing the gravity of these realities by collaborating in the perpetuation of the “peacemaking” and “state-building” discourses.

In addition to this, the report is an embrace of Palestinian agency, and conveys an empowering message to the Palestinian community by underlining the fact that they have the power to become an active force in shaping where the peace process goes from here, and that they need to seize control of their own destiny. Thus, they write, “The central proposal in this Report is that Israel’s strategic calculations are wrong. Israeli strategic planners overestimate their own strength and underestimate the strategic opportunities open to Palestinians” (Palestine Strategy Group 2008). These ‘strategic opportunities’ include, “the definitive closing down of the 1988 negotiation option” (Palestine Strategy Group 2008), as well as the reformulation of the Palestinian Authority from an entity that serves Israeli interest and legitimizes occupation, to one that becomes a “Palestinian Resistance Authority” (Palestine Strategy Group 2008); the reconstitution of the PLO as an organization of national unity and resistance; and significantly, “the shift from a two state outcome to a (bi-national or unitary democratic) single state outcome as Palestinians’ preferred strategic goal” (Palestine Strategy Group 2008).

While the report formally favours a two-state outcome, and uses the single state solution as a threat more than as a desired outcome—hence, playing into Israeli perceptions of it—it does represent an unprecedented reassessment of Palestinian official positions and strategies on the peace process by a broad spectrum of Palestinians, among whom were official PA members, as well as many Palestinian supporters of the two-state solution. Hence, the report does acknowledge the increasingly immovable obstacles on the ground to the realization of a viable two-state solution, as well as the growing support for the single state idea among Palestinians (Palestine Strategy Study Group 2008), and the significant support for it among Palestinian-Israelis (Palestine Strategy Group 2008).

Significantly, the report also discusses the need to radically reformulate the PA, or abolish it—regardless of the political outcome advocates desire to see manifest most. Moreover, it calls on all Palestinians to seize the initiative and to speak in a unified voice for their own unified interests, rather than to allow other powers to speak for them or define the terms within which they are allowed to speak. Furthermore, it calls for the re-establishment of the mutually inclusive link between Palestinian self-determination and the Palestinian Right of Return. These strategic suggestions do move the internal Palestinian debate in a positive direction, regardless of the differences in vision of the members. They also reflect the fact that even within such a broad representation of diverse Palestinians, the majority agree that the peace process is going nowhere and are engaging in an active search for alternatives—among which the single state solution remains one of the strongest contenders, as reflected by the strategic suggestions of the report itself.

Following this report, a significant initiative by this group of intellectuals is represented in the launching of Al-Shabaka. Al-Shabaka is described in a press release as, “The first independent strategy and policy-related think tank for Palestinians and by Palestinians. A think tank without borders or walls, Al-Shabaka draws on and benefits from the diverse experiences of Palestinians from around the world” (Al-Shabaka: Press Release 2010). Significantly, Al-Shabaka’s principles and visions are “are guided by Palestinian Civil Society’s 2005 Call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS)” (Al-Shabaka: Press Release 2010) against Israel, until it complies with international law. The BDS call, which will be elaborated on in Chapter 5, makes three main demands: that Israel dismantle the wall and end its occupation of the OPT; that it recognize the right of Palestinian-Israelis to full and equal citizenship; and that implements the Palestinian Right of Return (Palestinian Civil Society 2005a). Al-Shabaka’s goal is to “to create a vibrant forum for Palestinian policy and strategy development and analysis” (Al-Shabaka: Press Release 2010). As such, many of the original 35 policy advisors were prominent single state supporters, the work of the network is fully funded by its members and its Palestinian supporters, and its self-expressed mission is to “educate and foster public debate on Palestinian human rights and self-determination within the framework of international law” (Al-Shabaka 2010).

Many Palestinians within this bloc also engage with the idea of incorporating elements of Hamas to their cause, or engaging them within the dialogues and platforms of the single state movement. Viewing the movement as one that essentially remains largely uncorrupted by politics, and represents a powerful symbol and practice of resistance on the ground, these intellectuals are open to, and often argue for, the idea of engaging with Hamas’ leadership:

I believe that this is a dialogue that should be undertaken. To say that I don’t agree with Hamas’ ideology, I mean that’s a platitude in the sense that it’s not this monolithic body that has one idea … it’s not a Cyclops … it’s many people and many different perspectives. Although I would call myself a secular humanist and a democrat, I think that the service that Hamas has performed for the Palestinian nation is to have kept its leadership honest, and to prevent it from having surrendered basically. So I think they’ve done monumentally important and positive things, and I think they’ve done it with incredible courage and principle and sacrifice. So I respect them deeply.

(Bisharat 2009: interview)

Moreover, Hamas remains (as of this date) un-co-opted by the Oslo peace process, even though its leadership has shown itself to be capable of much pragmatism in both accepting a two-state solution, as well as being open to a single state solution. Similarly, Massad echoes this dismay at the Orientalist, secular bias among many of who seek to dismiss Hamas on principle:

The elephant in the room of course is Hamas. It is important to address Hamas. The Hamas leadership has shown much flexibility on many questions. The attempt to depict Hamas through an Orientalist Zionist or even secular chauvinist lens as some unchanging Islamist chauvinist group is not only untrue, but anti-Islamist. Hamas remains a leadership that has remained uncorrupt, and also open to all kinds of issues, and therefore, I think we can influence the Hamas leadership in some ways on the question of the one state solution. Many of the top leaders of Hamas have shown much openness about the idea of one country. To dismiss them apriori is a big mistake.

(Massad 2007)

The same of course can be said about elements within the cadres of Fatah, who themselves have become critical of the corruption and collaboration of the PA’s leaders with Zionism, and as such are searching for alternatives to the current reality. As Farsakh has highlighted, this disillusionment is taking place in the context of a generational struggle within Fatah between its old cadres and its younger ones. While Farsakh underlines that it remains too early to analyse in which direction these younger elements may shift Fatah’s political positions, “What has been noted is that the young Fatah cadres in the West Bank at least have started an internal debate on whether or not to adopt the one-state solution as a political project” (Farsakh 2011: 65). This, added to the existence of significant support for the idea among some cadres who view it as reformulating Fatah’s own single state idea, provides some hopeful signs for single state intellectuals. However, no representative within Fatah has embraced the present single state solution as a political position yet. Moreover, as Farsakh emphasizes, “Both young and old (Fatah) cadres cannot yet envisage a political struggle for citizenship and equal rights before first obtaining their own Palestinian state” (Farsakh 2011: 65). Hence, for intellectuals within this bloc (and the resurgent movement in general) the question of official leadership remains an open one—centering upon calls for the need to revitalize the PLO around a political programme that reunifies all three segments of the Palestinian people.

The anti-Zionist Jewish-Israeli bloc

Though the ideological convictions of these intellectuals vary, it can be generalized that the main bulk of Jewish-Israelis involved within the present single state movement stem from a broadly Marxist, anti-imperialist background. The majority of them also seem to be Jewish-Ashkenazi. In this vein, many among these intellectuals were also founding members of—or activists within—the Israeli socialist anti-Zionist organization Matzpen. Founded in 1962 by a small group of dissidents expelled from the Israeli Communist Party (Warschawski 2005: 24), Matzpen,

Put forward a radical critique of Zionism: breaking with the traditional line of the PCI, it analyzed the war of 1948 as a war of ethnic cleansing rather than as a war of national liberation; the program of the group called for a democratization, a de-Zionization of Israel, and its integration into the Arab Middle East. …

(Warschawski 2005: 25)

In parallel to this, it should be underlined that Matzpen’s emphasis upon an internationalist perspective of revolution meant that their world-view both liberated them from “the provincialism and the narrow nationalism of Israeli political culture” (Warschawski 2005: 34) and from the daunting obstacles contained within viewing themselves as a powerless minority within a closed Israel that is uncontextualized geographically. Thus:

Matzpen was not a marginal and insignificant minority in Israel, but rather it was Israel and its people, who, defending a reactionary policy and backward ideas in the eyes of most of the world, were a small minority in the context of the decolonization of the Arab world.

(Warschawski 2005: 34)

Hence, for Matzpen members, the emphasis of the struggle for liberation was upon the decolonization of the Arab world in the context of a Pan-Arab revolution that would liberate Israel in the process. This emphasis upon both locating Israel within a geography that stresses its minority status among its Arab neighbours, argues that its own liberation involves its acceptance of its ‘Easternness,’ and locates the potential for social transformation outside of Israel itself—is still reflected within the arguments, sentiments and positions of many Israeli-Jewish single state intellectuals today. Thus, in an interview, Haim Bresheeth argues that Israel should have been a place that embraced its Eastern identity and its Arab neighbours, and that Palestine was always meant to be an Arab entity within an Arab world (Bresheeth 2008: interview). Similarly, underlining the empowering impact of rediscovering himself through reconnecting with the Arab world, Bresheeth describes his first visit to Cairo as a liberating experience:

There is something about the liberating effect of stepping into a completely Arab world—a city that is an explosion of the presence of Arab-ness that makes you feel like you are not alone, that there is an alternative world that exists to which you belong, that just by stepping out of Israel, the whole Arab world and its history and your sense of self is rediscovered … You are here, you still exist.

(Bresheeth 2008: interview)

It is within this discovery of community, belonging and possibility within the wider region—and more broadly within the outside world—that the hope of liberation lays for Bresheeth. Significantly then, Bresheeth argues that the impulse for social transformation must come from outside of Israel:

The key for transformation now is the Palestinians, not the Israelis. They must support the one state idea, they must refuse to be partners in the “two-state” peace process, and they must refuse to play by Israel’s rules and create a new framework for peace … Change will not come from within Israel. For Israelis—changing their position as a public has to come from intense pressure—inside and outside.

(Bresheeth 2008: interview)

Paralleling these views, Matzpen co-founder Moshe Machover elaborates that these positions were also based upon the fact that for Matzpen members, this struggle was not just about Palestinian rights and national liberation—but about a struggle for socialism in Israel. In a talk at SOAS he states, “Israel’s articulation in the world capitalist system is specifically as a Zionist state, a colonial-settler state, with a regional role as a local enforcer of imperialism. Therefore the struggle for socialism in Israel, against capitalism, necessarily involves resolute opposition to Zionism” (Machover 2010). Hence, the emphasis among these intellectuals is a perception of Zionism as a project of colonization that stems from, and collaborates with, Western imperialism against the Palestinian people particularly, as well as being a project that exploits the Israeli working classes.

As such, solidarity and joint struggle with their Palestinian counterparts came naturally for the Jewish-Israelis who embraced this Marxist internationalist world-view—for they met as people of the left and not as Israelis and Palestinians (Warschawski 2005). In parallel to this, another recurrent theme among these intellectuals is the impact crossing borders—and the resultant highlighting of joint lives between them and fellow Palestinians or Arabs—had upon their embracing of an anti-Zionist single state position. Thus, Eyal Sivan recounts,

On the personal level it starts with growing up in Jerusalem … in a period where there was a bi-national colonial reality. And then there is a very important moment—which is leaving to Paris, and suddenly discovering living with, or encountering, Arabs in a non-colonial relation. To be an immigrant, and to be an immigrant with Arabs and to suddenly have relations that become very human because of the fact that you are immigrants and that you immigrated from the same kind of place in the world.

(Sivan 2008: interview)

Echoing this form of experience, Ilan Pappe recounts his own journey to becoming a single state supporter in Palestine/Israel,

I don’t know when the exact moment was, but I think it has a lot to do with several trips I did, before the outbreak of the second Intifada, from my house—which is near Nazareth—to friends of mine in Jenin. It was the same landscape. And it was half of a Palestinian family I knew in Nazareth. So I couldn’t see the difference. There was nothing in what I saw that justified Jenin and Nazareth not being in the same place. Now of course, this fit into a longer process of thinking about history, morality, justice in Palestine, but I think this particular trip, and particular landscape—both human and geographical—was very important.

(Pappe 2009: interview)

As Warschawski stresses, historically Matzpen never had more than a few members within Israel, but was always perceived as a significant threat to the Zionist conception of the world and the consensus the settler-colonial project had created within Israeli society (Warschawski 2005: 27). He also emphasizes that the most vicious attacks on Matzpen members emanated from within the Israeli left, due to the influence of Matzpen’s views, research, and information dissemination within the circles of the European left, who found it increasingly difficult to relate to their Israeli counterparts (Warschawski 2005: 27–30). As such, Matzpen’s members were ostracized, and “being a Matzpen militant meant expulsion beyond the borders of the (Israeli) tribe” (Warschawski 2005: 43). This sentiment is still echoed by members of the single state movement today. Thus, asked which segment of the Israeli-Jewish collective he considered himself to belong to, Ilan Pappe states,

Subjectively the sense is of great isolation. However, if you flex the definitions, there is a group of people who either went the same way or are nearly there, or are about to get there, so the group is bigger than I thought … Its main problem for me was not its numbers, but that it’s not a social millet. I envied my Palestinian friends, even those who were in the worst kind of condition … because family ties, national ties, social ties (gave them) a reference group. There is no reference group (for me yet). There is more than one person, and we know each other, but we live and act as individuals. Our social community is one in which we are a pariah politically. If we are lucky, people are nice. People in my neighbourhood are nice to me, but that does not make it easier. The fact that a racist is nice to you does not make them any less racist.

(Pappe 2009: interview)

This sense of marginalization and oppression within their own communities parallels yet another thread of Matzpen’s old vision within many Israeli-Jewish single state activists today, linked to the idea that change can only be located within forces and pressures external to Israel. Hence, in the context of Matzpen, the debate upon the most suitable pathway towards the realization of the common goal of a democratic (in this case also socialist) Palestine/Israel or Pan-Arab federation caused a split in analysis among its members:

For some, the capitalist character of the Israeli economy and the existence of class conflict would exacerbate the internal contradictions … For others, the colonial aspect of Israel was the dominant factor: the entire Jewish population enjoyed the privileges conferred on it by Zionism, and consequently had no interest in changing the situation in favor of the Palestinians … Change could only be provoked from the outside … The defenders of the second analysis were quick to draw the conclusion it implied: Those few Israelis who opposed Zionism should join the Palestinian national movement and its struggle.

(Warschawski 2005: 50)

The majority of the Israeli-Jewish intellectuals and activists involved within the single state movement stem from the second analysis, as opposed to the first. Thus, at the SOAS conference, Eyal Sivan argued,

In this transformation of the one (apartheid) state into a democratic state, we have to sell to the privileged ones (we, the Israelis) the benefits of transformation into a one democratic state. We have to know who can benefit from this transformation. I would think of populations like the non-Jewish Zionists for example—the new immigrants from Russia, who are having a lot of problems in terms of identity, marriage, work, language, cultural autonomy. The huge population of Arab-Jews that continue to be discriminated against inside Israel culturally and economically. Israel’s population is still ruled by us—the Ashkenazi Jews.

(Sivan 2007)

In a similar vein, Ilan Pappe argued at the same conference,

Our main task is to coordinate and reunite our forces. There is no more room for an anti-Zionist Jew to be in his or her own outfit, and for Palestinians to be in their own outfit. If we want to have a shared democracy, we should have a shared leadership. We should have shared institutions here in exile, before we start to visualize them in the future. These are things which we can do without the interruptions of Israelis, the Western governments—we have no excuse for not building, as any other liberation movement built, institutions outside the occupied land, outside the dispossessed land, together with the people who are there, in order to move forward to a better future.

(Pappe 2007b)

Intertwined with the overlap elaborated upon above, today many of these same Matzpen members have been central in the creation of pivotal single state platforms, strategies and networks in the cities in which they currently live—the city of London being a particularly powerful example. An important example of this, which will be elaborated upon in Chapter 5, is that of the inauguration of the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network’s (IJAN) branch in London in 2008, in which Moshe Machover was a pivotal figure.

Within Israel itself lies the example of Michel Warschawski,who is the co-founder of the revolutionary Palestinian-Israeli Alternative Information Center (AIC) in Beit Sahour. AIC is an organization which stands against separation, and was essentially founded by radical Palestinian and Israeli activists to bridge the information gap between the two societies; promote joint struggle; provide Palestinian activists, national organizations, and popular movements with information on new developments within Israeli society, and to inform the Israeli anti-war and anti-occupation movement about new developments inside Palestinian civil society. Today it presents critical analyses of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict (and both Israeli and Palestinian societies) from within a global anti-imperialist perspective. It also publishes, disseminates information, stages talks, and creates awareness on issues related to Israeli apartheid and joint struggles and experiences on the ground between Israeli and Palestinian activists. Moreover, AIC was a central actor in the release of over 1000 Palestinian political prisoners, as well as in battles for family reunification.

Essential in AIC’s tools of awareness creation and critical analysis dissemination is the organization’s ground breaking podcast, ‘News From Within.’ Many sessions of this podcast are specifically dedicated to talks, book reviews, and debates on bi-nationalism; the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement against Israel; activist experiences within Palestine/Israel; and live recordings of conferences, debates, and interviews on these topics within both Palestinian and Israeli societies. As a reflection of the revolutionary and unprecedented nature of its work and its promotion of joint struggle and resistance, in 1987 Warschawski was arrested and the AIC closed down on (false) charges that it created the Palestinian Intifada (Warschawski 2005).

Within Israeli society itself, three other organizations deserve mentioning in this context: Zochrot, the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD), and Anarchists Against the Wall (AATW). Zochrot, or “Remembering,” was founded by Eitan Bronstein in Tel Aviv, and is made up of a group of Israeli citizens dedicated to raising the awareness of the Israeli public about the Palestinian Nakba of 1948—as a fundamental first step towards peace and reconciliation. Zochrot does this through hosting conferences, panels, and research initiatives—as well as through direct action initiatives that involve the conquering of Israeli public spaces in order to showcase that the land upon which every Israeli lives, simultaneously tells the story of Palestinian ethnic cleansing and dispossession. The organization also has a Learning Centre dedicated to this topic, screens films, and holds a seminar and lecture series, and draws up maps showing the destroyed Palestinian villages. Moreover, Zochrot recently launched an art gallery, and a journal on the Nakba, highlighting the integral importance of the Palestinian Right of Return for any peaceful reconciliation to occur between Israelis and Palestinians. It also suggested ways with which Israeli society can come to terms with the Nakba in order to open the door for true justice for the Palestinians; begin reconciliation between the two peoples; and significantly, simultaneously launch a process of decolonizing and liberating Israeli-Jews themselves (Zochrot).

In 2008, Zochrot held a groundbreaking conference in Tel Aviv on the Palestinian Right of Return. Based upon the work of Salman Abu Sitte, the conference centred upon how this return could be implemented, and what its implementation would mean for Israeli and Palestinian inhabitants of Palestine/Israel. The conference showcased detailed studies on the physical possibility of return, as well as the number of destroyed Palestinian villages that still remain uninhabited and could be rebuilt. It was centrally aimed upon the need to dismantle the idea that there is no geographical room for the refugees to return should they choose to do so (whether independently or as collectives).

Anarchists Against the Wall (AATW) is also a direct action group, founded in 2003, to work specifically against the Israeli apartheid wall. It works with Palestinian committees struggling against the construction of the wall, its confiscation of their land and resources, and the consequent demolition of their homes. Its actions are largely led by these Palestinians, and involve physically opposing bulldozers, the army, and the occupation, as well as staging demonstrations against them. As opposed to Zochrot, AATW do not specifically advocate for a single state future, but perceive their struggle to be part of the global struggle against the processes of capitalism. However, they argue that though they see no need to advocate for a specific political programme in Palestine/Israel, they “demand an entirely different way of life, and equality for all of the inhabitants of the region” (Anarchist Communist Initiative 2004). Moreover, they emphasize that the wall is part of Israel’s war against the Palestinians, and is ultimately aimed at “mak(ing) life so appalling for the Palestinian people that they will be left with one choice: move out” (Anarchist Communist Initiative 2004). As such, AATW’s actions can be interpreted more widely as part of diverse ‘anti-Zionist practices’ on the ground—practices which highlight Israeli apartheid and ethnic cleansing; wage struggles on the ground in order to territorially counter the processes of Zionist separation; and are based on joint activities and struggles between Palestinians and Israeli-Jews.

While its ideological orientation is broadly Marxist, AATW is also an example of the transition in joint struggle and solidarity that was made on the ground in the 1980s—after what has been described by radical activists as the ‘death of ideology’ and the beginning of a much simpler form of solidarity through joint action. Warschawski describes this shift in solidarity through a conversation he had with an AATW activist, who was on his way to meet a Palestinian activist named Mohammed in Bil’in:

I asked him who is Mohammed? Is he communist, PFLP, Fatah or Hamas?” Yossi looked at me and said, “I don’t know”. “So how did you make a connection with him?” I asked. He said, “I don’t understand what you mean. He’s my friend”. I started thinking about what changed. We, Palestinians and Israelis, couldn’t meet in the 60s, 70s, 80s, unless we had a clear common platform. As Israelis we had to prove that we had a clear anti-Zionist position and offered unconditional solidarity. Otherwise our communication would have been accused of being normalization. At the beginning of the 80s though (something) changed, (Yossi and Mohammed represented this change). Their co-operation in 2000 was made possible through action. The fact that they had been struggling together, were arrested together, beaten together by the Israeli army … made possible what in our generation needed weeks of writing documents.

(Warschawski 2008)

Another example of an organization engaged in ‘anti-Zionist practices’ of resistance within Israel is the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD). Established in 1997 as a direct-action organization against the demolitions of Palestinian houses, their activities expanded as their awareness of the separation processes of Zionism and the occupation itself grew. Thus, they have now expanded their struggle to include resisting “land expropriation, settlement expansion, by-pass road construction, policies of ‘closure’ and ‘separation’, the wholesale uprooting of fruit and olive trees, the Separation Wall, (as well as) the siege of Gaza” (ICAHD). Hence, in addition to engaging in physically blocking Palestinian home demolitions, and mobilizing Palestinians and Israelis in order to rebuild demolished homes, ICAHD also works within Israeli society to advocate for a just peace; organizes tours aimed at highlighting the realities of separation on the ground; stages international speaking tours to disseminate information and create awareness of the reality within Palestine/Israel; attempts to lobby government officials worldwide against these processes of separation; and participates in BDS campaigns, among other practices.

While ICAHD does not openly support a specific solution to the conflict since it believes that to be a decision that must be made by the Palestinian collective, it supports Palestinian civil society’s 2005 call for BDS against the state of Israel, and any solution that is based upon justice and the forging of an inclusive peace. Furthermore, ICAHD’s founder, Jeff Halper, is a prominent figure in single state events and supports a single state solution in the form of a confederation. More recently, ICAHD has expanded to open offices of advocacy in both the UK and the USA.

The Palestinian citizens of Israel

As Warschawski argues, one group of people within Israel that Matzpen affected and eventually developed serious ties with were the Palestinian citizens of Israel—or the Palestinians of 1948—who mainly came from “villages in the Galilee and the Triangle—the only region in the centre of the country where the ethnic cleansing of 1948 had failed” (Warschawski 2005: 30). These ties began within the realm of university campuses, with the Union of Arab Students which,

Had a semi-clandestine existence and its leaders were subjected to the treatment reserved for all militant Arabs, whether nationalist or communist: house arrest, a ban from travelling outside certain zones, regular arrests followed by rough interrogations … Matzpen served as a school for their political and ideological education; for many of these students, it was the first opportunity to learn about their history, since their parents had chosen to remain silent.

(Warschawski 2005: 30–31)

These ties quickly spread beyond the university campuses, and eventually became organized into a coalition of diverse nationalist organizations known as Abnaa el-Balad, or “Children of the Land.” Abnaa el-Balad arguably represents the most revolutionary movement of the Palestinian-Israelis. Formed in 1969, it is a grass-roots movement made up of both Palestinian-Israelis and Jews who identify themselves as Palestinian-Jews. It views itself as an integral part of the Palestinian national movement (Abnaa el-Balad). It grew out of the student movement described above by Warschawski in the 1960s and 1970s, with the aim of preserving the collective identity of the Palestinians inside Israel, linking their struggle with that of their Palestinian brothers and sisters in the West Bank and Gaza, and with that of the Palestinian refugees (Abnaa el-Balad). They support the Palestinian Right of Return, recognize the PLO as the only legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, and advocate for the principle of equality within the Israeli state—which they argue was forcibly imposed upon them in 1948, and which they do not recognize as legitimate. Paralleling Matzpen, Abnaa el-Balad is Marxist, anti-imperial, and anti-Zionist in orientation. It boycotts the Israeli Knesset and Israeli elections since it does not accept the definition of the Israeli state as that “of the Jewish people” (Abnaa el-Balad). As such, it stands against the normalizing of relations with “the Jewish state in Palestine” (Abnaa el-Balad).

Instead, these activists participate in local Arab councils and civil society institutions and actively seek to empower Palestinian-Israelis and link them with the Palestinian national cause. In an interview, one of the movement’s founders explains how this form of organization came about,

In Israel, the Arabs are not allowed to organize themselves freely because the Israeli government is opposed to the existence of the Palestinian nation, as a nation. So, to be able to operate, we have exploited the Israeli law concerning municipal elections and set up our group according to the requirements of this specific law. This means that we are run as a local organization. We participated in the municipal elections in December 1973 and I was elected to the council in Umm al-Fahm as a representative of ‘Abna’ al-Balad. The day after the election, we began to expand by setting up a cultural club in Umm al-Fahm. There we hold public meetings and speeches about the Palestinian cause.

(Smith and Kiwan 1978: 15)

After this, many other Arab villages in Israel began to organize themselves in this way. The movement thus gained ground in forms that either paralleled it—remaining linked to the Palestinian national movement—or, as in the case of Nazareth at the time, formed a united front with the Israeli Communist Party (Rakah) to take over Nazareth’s municipal council (Smith and Kiwan 1978: 15). For as previously noted, Abnaa el-Balad position themselves as both part of the Palestinian national movement and as representing the Palestinian and Jewish working class. They also advocate for the return of the Palestinian refugees, the end of the Israeli occupation, and the establishment of a democratic state on all of the land of historic Palestine as the ultimate solution to the “Arab–Zionist” conflict. Moreover, they were instrumental in the organization of the Palestinian Land Day demonstrations, whose importance as a turning point in national consciousness is often overlooked. As such, it not only highlighted the emotional bond Palestinian-Israelis had with the land, but linked this bond with an awakened identification with their Palestinian brethren in the WBGS, and hence, their nationalism (Rekhess 2007: 9).

Abnaa el-Balad became more popular among Palestinian-Israelis after the first Intifada. In 1996, it was part of the broad coalition of Palestinian nationalists calling for a democratic state of all its citizens in Israel. The coalition—known as the National Democratic Alliance, or ‘Tajamuu’’—was headed by Azmi Bishara, and succeeded in winning him a Knesset seat. The aims of Tajamuu’ are centered upon ending the marginalization and ‘Israelization’ of Palestinian-Israelis (Bishara et al. 1996). As such, it calls for cultural autonomy in order to transform the Israeli state into a state of all its citizens. The demands of Tajamuu’ were summarized by Bishara as follows:

1)  The determination of the curriculum of Arab schools by the Arab community;

2)  the establishment of an independent, non-government run Arab television station;

3)  the participation of the Arab community in decisions concerning the development of the Galilee and the Negev (centers of Arab population);

4)  the abolition of the concept of Jewish national land (unavailable for use by Arab citizens);

5)  the severing of the links between Zionist institutions (the Jewish Agency and the Jewish National Fund, for example) and the institutions of the state of Israel.

(Bishara et al. 1996: 27)

Positioned as a localized Arab national movement within Israel (as opposed to earlier positionings as either internationalist, or part of the Palestinian national movement), Tajamuu’ was focused upon democratizing the State of Israel and both introducing and creating a notion of equal (individual) civic citizenship within Israeli-Jewish society that simultaneously recognizes Palestinian-Israelis as a national minority that wanted collective rights (Bishara et al. 1996: 27). The party won three seats in 2006, represented by Bishara, Wasil Taha, and Jamal Zahalqa. In the years to follow all three men were tried in Israeli courts, Bishara was forced into exile, and in 2009—while Israel launched ‘Operation Cast Lead’ in Gaza—Tajamuu’ was banned on the grounds that it did not recognize the Israeli state and called for armed conflict against it. However, it remains important to note that Tajamuu’ was the first party in the Israeli state’s history to advocate for a democratic state of all its citizens; cultural autonomy and equal national citizenship for all minorities; the separation of religion and state; as well as for the implementation of the Palestinian Right of Return. Despite the fact that many of its members are single state supporters, Tajamuu’ did this within the framework of the two-state solution, advocating for Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders, and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.

It is from within this context that single state intellectuals today acknowledge Palestinian-Israelis to be the pioneers of the return of the single state idea, and the initial driving force behind it. As As’ad Ghanem underlines, “Palestinians in Israel are the only group of Palestinians calling clearly for bi-nationality” (Ghanem 2007: 68). This can be argued to largely stem from their own peculiar fate as Palestinians confined within the Israeli state, and frequently perceived as an enemy threat within it (Rouhana and Sultany 2003: 6–10); are separated from their own Palestinian people, while being subjected to Zionist processes of de-Arabization (Yiftachel 2009: 58–60); were rendered invisible by the PLO after Oslo; and yet crucially, are simultaneously Israeli second-class citizens. Hence, while they are subjects under what Oren Yiftachel termed an Israeli system of creeping apartheid (Yiftachel 2006) they have certain points of access into the political process at their disposal. Yiftachel writes,

State policies … weaken the minority through segmentation, denial of most collective cultural or political rights, and pervasive material deprivation. The Arabs have, however, developed a collective political agenda based on grounding their status as a national homeland minority. They are determined to protect their property and heritage and to achieve equality and recognition.

(Yiftachel 2009: 57)

Yiftachel argues that Palestinian-Israeli citizenship is structurally limited by the inherent contradiction within the fact that Israel is simultaneously an exclusionary Jewish and a self-proclaimed democratic state (Yiftachel 2009). Moreover, the period of Oslo can be argued to be one of the lowest points of distress for Palestinian-Israelis who, “Felt that they were ‘falling between the chairs’ … Their difficult struggle in the face of the new reality was aptly described … as a situation of ‘double peripherality’” (Rekhess 2002: 7). Ignored by the PA, and cognizant of the fact that struggling for equal citizenship within Israel Proper is a difficult battle, Palestinian-Israelis found themselves in an increasingly precarious position. It is in this context that the idea of bi-nationalism was raised as a pathway out of their dilemma as an unrecognized national community within Israel, as well as a silenced integral part of the larger Palestinian national collective.

This dilemma was further intensified by the Al-Aqsa Intifada, and the consequent protests that broke out in the Palestinian-Israeli community in October 2000, and resulted in the “unprecedented killing of 13 Arab citizens in the Galilee” (Rekhess 2002: 34) by Israeli police. This was paralleled with a sharp rise in Israeli discourse portraying them as a “demographic threat” to Jewish-Israelis (Rouhana and Sultany 2003: 5–6). Thus, in a Haaretz interview Bishara would state, “If a just solution is being sought, it can be realized only in the bi-national context” (Rekhess 2002: 18). Similarly, Nadim Rouhana proposed a model for a bi-national solution that focused upon transforming the Israeli constitution—though his proposal only dealt with Israel itself, and not with the OPT (Rekhess 2002: 18). As’ad Ghanem echoed the efforts of Bishara and Rouhana, making the most forceful proposal against separation yet in 2000. Within it, he argued that “solutions aimed at developing liberal democracy in Israel, or separation, were not workable, and therefore efforts must be directed toward a more inclusive solution in the form of a bi-national alternative in the entire area of Mandatory Palestine” (Rekhess 2002: 18).

Of these efforts to come to terms with their collective national identity, their location, and their visions for a more just future—three documents would become central in the context of the single state idea, and the possible democratization of the Israeli state: The Haifa Declaration, the Future Vision, and Adalah’s Democratic Constitution. Taken together, these documents became known as the ‘vision’ documents. Written by a group of Palestinian intellectuals, academics, and activists in 2007—with the prominent involvement of Rouhana—the Haifa Declaration is a call for a democratic bi-national solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, a stand against the occupation and Israel’s wall, and an affirmation of the Palestinian and Arab identity of Palestinian-Israelis, in a context within which the Israeli state consistently attempted to erase them (Rouhana et al. 2007). A reflection of how pervasive and systematic this erasure was, can be seen in the Jewish-Israeli public’s reaction to the protests of October 2000:

The October 2000 protests by Palestinian citizens were construed in Israel as an “internal intifada” or “joining intifada.” Jewish Israelis felt deeply threatened by the “discovery” that the people they had always called “Israeli Arabs” are, in fact, Palestinians; 74 percent of the Jewish public polled in the aftermath of the Palestinians protests categorized the behavior of Arab citizens as “treason”.

(Rouhana and Sultany 2003: 9)

The Haifa Declaration itself was a project that was begun in 2002 within the Mada al-Carmel Arab Center for Applied Social Research, with the aim of providing a forum for a broad collective of Palestinian-Israelis to discuss their position in their homeland and possible pathways towards a more equal collective future. The Declaration also represented a refusal on the part of Palestinian-Israelis to live within a system that has discriminated against them through diverse policies of marginalization. As Yiftachel highlights, these policies are reflected in numerous areas, which include land ownership, power-sharing, economic resources and opportunities, the legal system, loss of life due to the deployment of state violence, and of course, the state’s processes of Judaization (Yiftachel 2000).

In parallel to all single state advocates, Palestinian-Israelis called for justice and reconciliation between the two people, and argued that the first steps towards decolonization must begin with the Israeli acknowledgement of the Palestinian Nakba, and the acceptance of the Palestinian Right of Return. As such, it emphasized the centrality of history in any resolution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and of the unity of the Palestinian collective in any just solution to the conflict.

The Haifa declaration was preceded by The Future Vision of the Palestinians of 1948—a similar, though much more detailed document that was the result of a year of workshops and meetings fusing academics and activists, and initiated by The National Committee for the Heads of the Arab Local Authorities in Israel. Published in 2006, it also stressed the importance of the development of national collective institutions after their disintegration in the post-Oslo era; the creation of a unified political leadership; as well as the need for creative dialogue with youth movements, media outlets, trade unions, diverse political parties and local authorities, with special attention given to mixed Arab-Jewish cities (Rinawie-Zoabi 2006).

In 2007, Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, followed this up with a draft of a democratic constitution, calling for a bilingual, multicultural, democratic state. This action can be argued to be especially powerful in view of the fact that Israel has yet to adopt a constitution. Adalah took this opportunity to highlight the fact that all proposals of constitutions for the state to date had been based upon the question of ‘who is a Jew,’ and the preservation of the Jewish character of the state—rather than advancing an embrace of democracy and the question of who is a citizen (Adalah 2007). Adalah’s constitution also stipulated the acknowledgement of the Palestinian Right of Return; the Palestinian Nakba and the occupation; the recognition of the ‘unrecognized villages’ in the Negev; and the need for Israel to define its border in order to eradicate the ethnic nature of its exclusive form of citizenship.

It should be highlighted that today Palestinian-Israelis are considered crucial for the single state solution as a result of the fact that they have linked all of their vision documents with the Palestinian collective as a whole, and hence produced documents for collective Palestinian liberation centered upon equal rights and citizenship for all within a democratic unitary state. Moreover, Palestinian-Israelis represent a crucial geographical presence for the possibility of a single state on the ground. As such, it is acknowledged that their defection from within the single state movement would damage the possibility of a single state solution on the land of historic Palestine. Thus, in the context of the single state movement, they represent one of the most basic, and yet perhaps most powerful sources of power for any movement of liberation against settler-colonialism—namely, the power of remaining upon the land.

Strategies of resistance advanced by the single state movement

Before outlining the various strategies the single state movement has launched, or desires to launch, as channels from within which to counter the prevalent notions of the two-state solution since Oslo, and the processes of separation worsened by Oslo on the ground, I should highlight that these strategies came about as a direct reflection of the intellectual critique the single state project elaborated against Oslo. Thus, what follows here represents a brief outlining of these strategies—the majority of which reflect the historical background, experiences, and world-views of the blocs of intellectuals illustrated above.

In tandem to this, it is important to stress the fact that while the single state movement initially resulted in creating an intellectual and political divide between those who support a single state solution and those who support a two-state solution, single state intellectuals have since attempted to shift this divide to one that reflects the practices and realities of resistance more accurately. As such—while all single state intellectuals oppose partition—the emphasis of their practices, alliances, and strategies have focused less upon a need to openly support a specific type of solution to the conflict at this point in time, and more upon a need to struggle against Zionism and separation.

As previously underlined, this largely stems from the fact that single state intellectuals believe that the reality on the ground is already one of a single apartheid state that must be transformed into a democratic state for all its citizens. Moreover, this shift can be argued to be a reflection of the shift in the practices of solidarity and resistance on the ground themselves. As highlighted above through the example of the AATW, this shift emphasizes joint struggle within a platform that is opposed to the processes of separation and apartheid—rather than a form of alliance that can only be created if an explicit agreement upon a detailed and entrenched political outcome exists. It is my contention that this new understanding of resistance and solidarity is mirrored in the strategies of resistance advanced by single state intellectuals.

Furthermore, this same shift in emphasis can be seen in the initially significant division within the movement among those who prefer a bi-national state, and those who prefer a secular democratic one. Thus, by 2009, this divide was argued to be based upon false dichotomies between ideal types of states that have neither been problematized enough, nor reflect the urgency of the present moment. Instead, as Abunimah has argued, the present emphasis should not be upon an entrenched position regarding the type of state, but rather upon mobilizing as broad a base as possible around the principles of the One State Declaration (Abunimah 2009: interview). As such, I argue that viewing the resistance practices of the single state movement in terms of ‘anti-Zionist practices’ that oppose the processes and practices of separation on the ground may provide a more accurate reflection of what it stands for as a collective, and what it stands against. Moreover, this lens serves to underline the fact that it is the continuing processes of Zionism that stand in the way of both a viable two-state solution and a one-state solution (Cook 2008). Hence, it is within its unified anti-Zionist platform and anti-Zionist practices, that the strength of the single state conception of the world lies. It is to these practices that I now turn to in the following section.

Conferences, networks, and uniting theory and practice

As previously emphasized, one of the most powerful strategies of the single state movement is the declared practice of fusing theory and the practice of resistance, in an effort to activate a form of Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis as the most effective way of creating empowering, critical historical self-understanding and social transformation. Thus, on the importance of the practices of activists to his ideas and strategies in the context of the single state movement, Pappe states that much of his strategizing and theorizations began with intensive contact with Palestinian activists, and are empowered by them (Pappe 2009: interview). Moreover, he argues that in places like Israel “where academia becomes the mouthpiece of the government” (Pappe 2009: interview) the Israeli activism milieu fills the space that a critical engaging academia should have provided.

The most obvious arena within which both intellectuals and activists organize to do this is through a growing network of conferences, workshops, and talks in various cities within which they seek to mobilize for their struggle. As highlighted in Chapter 3, these conferences were sparked with a Lausanne University conference titled “One Democratic State in Palestine/Israel” in 2004, and continued to expand to include single state conferences in Madrid and London in 2007; Zochrot’s groundbreaking conference in Tel Aviv, and Abnaa el-Balad’s Haifa single state conference in 2008; The Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s conference in Boston in 2009; A second Haifa conference organized by Abnaa el-Balad in 2010, as well as conferences in Dallas, Stuttgart, and London organized by activists and supporters of the single state idea that same year.

It is important to note that the majority of single state declarations, visions, initiatives, informal networks, groups, and strategies emerged from within these deliberations. Significantly, this fusion of theory and practice was not just initiated by academics, but was equally important for groups and activists involved in practices of resistance, who were “conscious of the fact that the one state idea is an intellectual exercise, and wanted to move beyond that” (Ziada 2008: interview). Hence, Tilley argued that the Madrid conference arose out of a need to create a programme of political action from within academia (Salamanca 2007), while the SOAS conference in 2007 was launched in order to bring academics and activists together, fuse activism and theory, and launch joint single state projects in Palestine/Israel and transnationally (Ziada 2008: interview). Complementing the Madrid and London conferences, in 2008 both Zochrot and Abnaa el-Balad held conferences within Palestine/Israel itself that both underscored the necessity of expanding the single state resistance struggle within this geographical theatre, as well as the necessity of exploring strategies to implement the Palestinian Right of Return on the ground. By 2010—bringing this fusion of activism and theory full circle—the second Haifa conference intentionally highlighted a more activist oriented agenda. As such, its workshops centred around outlining the practices of building a global movement for the return of the Palestinian refugees and the establishment of a single democratic state in Palestine/Israel from within the more theoretically elaborated ideas of the previous conferences. This conference also underlined the importance of Haifa itself as a base for the growing movement for the establishment of a single democratic state in Palestine/Israel—thus placing further emphasis upon the need for any single state resistance struggle to continue to have a strong, and expansive geographical base within Palestine/Israel. Picking up where the Haifa conference left off and building upon the platforms, networks, and declarations of the Madrid, London, Haifa, and Boston conferences, the single state conference held by activists and academics in Dallas also outlined an agenda underlining the interlinked practices and strategies of resistance itself, and declared its aim to be that of the “launching a mass movement for the creation of One Democratic State in (historic) Palestine” (Hallaby 2010).

As such, beyond the deliberate desire to create this synthesis, and the programmes of action and declarations that came out of them as a result, these conferences were instrumental in highlighting the existence of a core community of Israeli and Palestinian academics and activists engaged in the idea of a single state solution—and linked them in expanding networks of action, information dissemination, mobilization, and deliberation (Abunimah 2009: interview).

While these networks remain fluid, uncoordinated, and lacking in concrete organizational structure, many single state intellectuals do not see the need for a centralized, structured form of organization in order for there to be an active interlinked community struggling for a single state. In this vein, Abunimah argues that,

You have tremendously committed people. Palestinians second and third generation, who have clear politics, who are more committed than their parents, and they didn’t need any centralized leadership to bring them to that. I do think that there is something (about the internet) … I’m part of the first generation of Palestinians who had access to the internet. People talk about social media as if it’s brand new, you know, facebook and twitter and all this, but recently I was thinking that ten years ago we went through this with much cruder technologies … in those days, listserves were very important because they were the first place, for me, that I met other Palestinians across global boundaries. There was one particular listserve called freedom list and many of the people at this conference, and some of the most visible activists who I know and formed strong relationships with, I knew from that list. So for me, that was the first time I had this consciousness of being part of a global Palestinian community that could talk together, that could act together, and that was really important. Now, I think that this is just how things are done. Things aren’t done by centralised organizations.

(Abunimah 2009: interview)

Paralleling this view, many single state networks, groups, and alternative media forums have been created on the internet—the most famous among them probably being Ali Abunimah’s Electronic Intifada (EI), which he himself describes as “a major forum for discussing the One State Solution” (Abunimah 2009: interview), and as the sort of alternative forum that is essential for any marginalized movement to create. As such he states, “I do see things as EI as absolutely necessary because you cannot rely on the mainstream media, which are generally committed to the hegemonic consensus” (Abunimah 2009: interview). This strategy is used by the single state movement in order to disseminate its critiques, world-view, and actions to as wide an audience as possible, as well as in an effort to create new constituencies, and stage interventions that would not be accepted within the mainstream media and its institutions. Moreover, there are many intellectuals who target popular mainstream media outlets, and use their academic standing and writing skills in order to infiltrate public discourse (Bisharat 2009: interview). In addition to this, a minority among these intellectuals have been able to build upon these efforts to establish single state forums of debate and information dissemination within academia itself—the most prominent example to date being Edinburgh University’s multidisciplinary journal Holy Land Studies (Pappe 2009: interview).

In many ways these arenas of deliberation and forms of organization also mirror the fact that with the exception of there being some academic bodies that are willing to fund single state conferences, the majority of single state initiatives remain self-funded. As Abunimah points out in terms of funding single state initiatives, “There’s a lot of institutional opposition. Not support. Everywhere” (Abunimah 2009: interview). This of course is not only a reflection of the institutional opposition to this alternative force in the making, but simultaneously that of the backlash its attempted expansion in civil societies, the media, and academic institutions⁷ has created.

Joint action between Jewish-Israelis and Palestinians

Another crucial strategy of the single state movement reflects itself in the organization of the movement itself, and in all its intellectual endeavours and practices of resistance—namely, the fact that it is based within, built upon, and seeks to promote joint action between Palestinians and Israeli-Jews, and more broadly, Arabs and Jews. The single state movement strives to do this both intellectually and on the ground, with the ultimate goal of creating joint struggle, and highlighting and expanding spaces of coexistence between both communities. While this is reflected in all of its deliberations, joint writings and strategies, it also involves a project in which they seek to revive the silenced common history of Jewish presence and coexistence within the Arab world that has largely been silenced by both the creation and the narratives of history of the Israeli state—which centre upon Ashkenazi-Jewish identity, history, and experience. On the need to engage in this project of joint re-excavation, Sivan elaborates,

This is something that can be a joint call both to Arabs and to some Jews—to upload, to insist upon, and to create a common knowledge about the history of Jews in the Arab world … (To create) a real data base done by the Arab world and Palestinians about the history of Jews in the Arab world as an alternative to the perception that the existence of Jewish minorities in every place leads to extermination, to persecution, to discrimination.

(Sivan 2007)

This project of re-excavation parallels another strategy within the single state movement—that of reviving the erased Arab-Jewish identity, and the attempt to target this community within Israel as a latent potential ally to the single state vision. It is important to note that this joint project of historical re-excavation aims not only to shift the historical understandings of the around 3 million Arab-Jewish people within Israel, but to simultaneously breach the silence around the role Jewish people played within Arab history and culture in the Arab world. Perhaps equally important to note is that this sort of joint action reflects the new type of joint struggle that is emerging between Israelis and Palestinians—especially within the OPT—and which was described above in the context of organizations such as the AIC, Zochrot, AATW, and ICAHD. As such, this form of historical re-excavation mirrors the efforts of these groups on the ground. More importantly still, it is an effort to highlight that—as opposed to the dominant discourse of binary opposition—the reality in Palestine/Israel contains overlaps in identity, culture, struggle, and solidarity between Arabs and Jews, as well as spaces upon which Palestinians and Jewish-Israelis already coexist, intermingle and overlap, such as in geographical spaces like the Galilee. It is these spaces, struggles, overlaps and fusions that the single state movement seeks to build upon and expand.

Hamas, the Israeli right, and some geopolitical considerations

As mentioned in Chapter 3, many within the single state movement—and especially within the Palestinian Diaspora—have raised the necessity of engaging in dialogue with Hamas, as well as the possibility of creating alliances with some of its members. In a different vein to whether or not to incorporate elements of Hamas, a much more controversial strategic suggestion (initially from the Israeli-Jewish bloc) has revolved around the possibility of forging alliances with elements of the Israeli right, who may have become more attached to the land, and the idea of an undivided land, than the need to cling on to an ethnically exclusive Jewish state. This paradox of the Israeli right being a group that is historically against partition, and as such perhaps willing to choose its love of the land over the form of state was first brought up by Sivan at the SOAS conference in 2007. Commenting upon this idea in the context of groups within Israel itself that may be open to a one-state solution, Ilan Pappe says,

[A group] which is interesting, though it’s very hard to imagine how we’re going to deal with them, is actually people on the right-wing, even settlers in a way, who would think that maybe a certain colony could stay, provided the right of return is given to the Palestinians. I mean the people—who I don’t want to idealise—who really cherish life more than anything else, and wouldn’t really care what the political regime would be. It’s a tiny minority, but I think it’s an important group to include.

(Pappe 2009: interview)

This debate upon the Israeli right and the possibility of transforming their love of the land into support for a single democratic state has recently taken off with the publishing of Abunimah’s piece “Israeli right, embracing one state?” in Al-Jazeera English (Abunimah 2010). In it Abunimah highlights that,

Recently, proposals to grant Israeli citizenship to Palestinians in the West Bank, including the right to vote for the Knesset, have emerged from a surprising direction: right-wing stalwarts such as Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin and former defence minister Moshe Arens, both from the Likud party of Binyamin Netanyahu. Even more surprisingly, the idea has been pushed by prominent activists among Israel’s West Bank settler movement, who were the subject of a must-read profile by Noam Sheizaf in Haaretz.

(Abunimah 2010)

The profile of this group of people included prominent politicians, who argued for the granting of Israeli citizenship to most, if not all Palestinians in the West Bank, has since vanished from the Internet and Haaretz’ website. Sheizaf⁸ himself though had this to say about the actions of this movement,

People who read the article understood how revolutionary this step might be, even though it’s not complete and it ignores many of the basic problems of the conflict … Part of what is fascinating about this group of one-state right-wingers … is that it speaks about a land in which the two populations are totally mixed, linked to each other, have a common history by now, even though it’s a pretty awful one, and reading it as one territorial unit.

(Malsin 2010)

And while these proposals do not include the Gaza Strip, they do parallel recent moves being made by a growing number of Palestinians in the West Bank applying for Israeli citizenship—moves that largely began in East Jerusalem around the time of the Annapolis conference.⁹ As Abunimah argues, while these moves remain inadequate, they may contain some hopeful possibilities for creating bridges for a single democratic state.

Having said this, these strategies remain within an overall framework that is centred upon Palestinian resistance. As such, while an integral part of the single state movement—especially among its Israeli-Jewish and Palestinian-Israeli blocs—is to create alliances and bridges with communities and movements in Israel who would be open to a single democratic state, the movement remains geopolitically focused upon mobilizing internal and external resistance to de-Zionize the Israeli state, and not upon whether or not Israeli-Jews think a single democratic state is a good idea. Barghouti elaborates,

The point is not about convincing (Israeli-Jews), it’s about resisting to get there … as far as the resistance is concerned—there’s a Palestinian pillar, an Arab pillar and an international pillar. … If we work on the three pillars together, I think we can ultimately ‘convince’ Israelis by putting some sense into their heads. I choose a non-violent path, because I believe it is morally and politically much more sound, but ultimately, it is resistance. Without resistance we cannot fix the balance of powers, and we cannot ‘convince’ anyone.

(Barghouti 2009b)

Of course, for the single state movement, the reunification of the Palestinian pillar of this struggle into one mutually inclusive, indivisible collective that has the right to self-determination takes central stage. As previously mentioned, strategies to reach this goal revolve around reforming the PA, and recreating a grass-roots, representative, empowering PLO. As Barghouti argues on reviving the PLO, this is not something that the Palestinian collective has not accomplished before:

The PLO—it does not exist but it has a seat at the UN. We’re not going to give up that seat. We just want to put the right person in it … I suggest a democratic take-over of the PLO. Which means, grassroots organizations, Palestinians everywhere, can start organizing, as we’ve done in the 50s and 60s … this is not something that we need to learn from Ghandi, we’ve had this in our history, we’ve done this before—so (we should) re-establish a representative organization.

(Barghouti 2009b)

In parallel to this—and in conjunction with the vision of this movement as one that seeks to re-establish the Eastern location of Israel itself, and relocate Palestine within its roots, history, and identity in the Arab world—single state activists emphasize that the Arab world is a central geopolitical partner in this struggle if real justice and democracy will ever be reached (Barghouti 2009b).

This point is taken up further by Leila Farsakh, who argues that this nurturing environment must be created in the Arab world as a whole in order for there to be space from within which to mobilize mass support for a single state in Palestine/Israel. Engaging in the creation of this kind of space requires “a serious reconsideration of the concept of (equal) citizenship, of the other, and of identity” (Farsakh 2009). For the Diaspora Palestinians especially, this goes back to the idea of “rehabilitating cosmopolitan Arab identity” (Farsakh 2009) as well as “rehabilitating a truly humanist identity” (Farsakh 2009) that does not privilege ethnic or religious divisions and recognizes that historically these categories have always been porous. This argument also ties into the single state movement’s strategy concerning the need for the revival of Arab-Jewish history.

Moreover, for Abunimah, both the centrality of the Arab world in this struggle, as well as the difficulties the single state movement faces in targeting them revolve around the centrality of resistance. Thus, people tend to overestimate the power of forces within, for example, the USA, neglecting that resistance to its policies exists, and can play an important role in the dialectical outcome of any situation (Abunimah 2009: interview). However, it is this very same emphasis upon resistance that he argues has created difficulties for the single state movement in speaking to Arab publics:

I think you can only talk about a one state solution, or some kind of common future … (which) sound like fuzzy liberal things … in a context where resistance is legitimised and seen as legitimate. When people are struggling to maintain the idea that resistance is even legitimate, you can’t talk to them about the one state solution, because it sounds like affirming the status quo. So you have to win the argument about resistance in a sense … You have to establish that this is an anti-colonial struggle, and then you can talk about what the possible outcomes are.

(Abunimah 2009: interview)

In view of this, it must be said that beyond strategies involving the mobilization for a single state within Israel, the OPT, and the Palestinian collective, it is within the international pillar that the single state movement has been most active in promoting its struggle, and it is also within this arena that it has made the most powerful and rapidly expanding gains. This success is largely due to the launching of the global BDS movement against the State of Israel, on which I will expand in Chapter 5. For my purposes in this chapter though, it is important to stress that the BDS movement is intimately intertwined with the single state strategy of ‘South-Africanizing’ the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Hence, many single state intellectuals felt that this paradigm shift would resonate more with Western, and especially American, publics—helping to convey the reality in Palestine/Israel better. On the effectiveness of this strategy, Pappe states,

I think that there are a few things there that make it potentially effective … there are African Americans in the US that are surprisingly pro-Zionist, and one has to work on them in terms of disseminating these ideas. Progressive Jews were at the forefront of the anti-apartheid movement. America as a whole, as a state, eventually, took a tough position on South Africa and used to be South Africa’s ally because of the Cold War. So you have all these ingredients that make you think that it’s a familiar concept. Of course, the Israelis will do all they can to refuse this comparison, but I think if anything will work, this will work better than anything else.

(Pappe 2009: interview)

As such, single state intellectuals do view forces within American civil society (and Western civil society more broadly) as key factors in launching a successful struggle for a single state solution, and view key communities within these societies as potentially mobilizable allies. These groups include students, who make up one of the single state idea’s fastest growing constituency of supporters. They also involve attempts to create links with various unions, with progressive African American communities, and with elements of society that are usually considered to be more critical, such as academics, artists, and media personalities for example. Most crucially however, the most powerful gain of the single state movement in this context has been among the growing number of anti-Zionist Jewish communities internationally that have joined the BDS movement—a movement which continues to expand into a growing force in Western civil societies at present.

Conclusion: Divisions within the whole and a Gramscian process of transformation

As I highlighted in Chapter 3, the large unifying threads of the single state conception of the world are its re-emergence out of a critique of Oslo and its underlying embrace of separation as a solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and its political and moral stance against Zionism’s world-view and processes. Hence, in this chapter I contended that the single state movement’s practices of resistances should be conceived of as ‘anti-Zionist practices’ against the processes of separation unleashed by Zionism on the ground. However, as this conception of the world is elaborated by separate, though interlinked blocs of intellectuals, divisions inevitably also arise within its ranks. Similarly, since the building of a common platform from within which to launch a Gramscian counterhegemonic struggle transforms all groups involved in its processes, I tried to underline the fact that many of the initial divisions among the blocs within the single state movement shifted in its evolution towards collectively agreed upon principles within an anti-Zionism platform. Simultaneously, I attempted to show that disagreements and contradictions do exist within the diverse blocs of organic intellectuals, as well as within their perceptions of themselves as activists and of the nature of the movement itself.

Hence, the biggest of these divides can be argued to have been the divide among those who support a single bi-national state solution, as opposed to those who desire a secular democratic state. In this regard, it is important to note that the majority of anti-Zionist Israeli-Jewish intellectuals, as well as Palestinian-Israeli intellectuals initially preferred to speak in terms of a bi-national future that guaranteed collective community rights for national minorities within a single state. In contrast to this group however, intellectuals of the Palestinian Diaspora, and the Palestinians under occupation, overwhelmingly prefer a secular democratic, ‘one person-one vote’ state. As I argued above, this division was bridged in an effort to create unity on collectively agreed upon anti-Zionist principles, mobilize as broad a public as possible, and place an emphasis upon joint action that reflects the urgency of the present historical moment. Similarly, there exists divisions within the movement on whether or not to engage elements of Hamas, or—more problematically—of the Israeli right. However, the same effort of bridging this divide through an agreement upon the movement’s core anti-Zionist principles and practices—as opposed to a binding agreement upon a detailed blueprint for a future outcome—is being advocated as the way forward by many out of this impasse as well. Moreover, this strategy is based within an acknowledgement of the fact that solutions themselves become fluid and flexible once applied to a reality—and that neither Hamas nor the Israeli right are monolithic, static entities themselves, incapable of pragmatic compromise.

Perhaps the most significant tension that has arisen within the single state movement for my purposes here revolves around a lack of clear consensus upon whether it has reached a point in which it can envision itself becoming a more traditionally organized part of the political spectrum of alternatives. Paralleling this, it remains unclear whether or not this evolution is even desirable for the majority of single state intellectuals. Commenting upon the type of movement the single state represents today, and this internal tension within it, Pappe states,

It’s a movement in the making. And the reason it is not a movement yet is because it has to take a decision … (on) whether it’s part of the present political game. Mainly, does it want to join the game as a new political party? Does it want to join an existing political party? Which is one kind of a movement … I think that the whole structure of political parties is something which is based on the two-state solution, so we can’t fit in. What is better but would take longer, is to be a movement in the more popular sense of the word. A force to influence opinions, disseminate new views. It’s more fluid as a structural concept, but it’s more powerful because it’s more alternative. There’s a certain stage where one can become the other. But we have to be clear on what we are, and what we can be, or can’t be yet.

(Pappe 2009: interview)

There are a minority of single state intellectuals who would like to see the single state movement become a more traditional political organization—the most prominent among them perhaps being Ghada Karmi (Karmi 2009). However, it is clear from their own self-perceptions, strategies, and perceptions of the movement itself, that the majority of single state intellectuals are involved in the creation of what Pappe describes above as an alternative movement—and what Massad has argued to be a Gramscian war of position against the peace process (Massad 2007). It is in view of these dynamics that I have contended that this movement is most fruitfully viewed as a Gramscian form of resistance—one that is aimed at creating a reconstructive moment within interlinked diverse geographical theatres. Centred within a framework of rights, democracy, and international law, it is in my engagement with the single state movement’s global BDS strategy in Chapter 5 that the strength of the potential within their emerging war of position is to be found.

Notes

1  As underlined in early chapters, for this book’s Gramsci the notion of a party is defined as a ‘collective intellectual’.

2  For more on this obstacle in the context of the single state solution, and attempts to deal with it, see for example Karma Nabulsi “Justice as the way forward”, in J. Hilal (ed.), Where Now for Palestine?: The Demise of the Two-State Solution (London: Zed Books, 2007). See also a more recent initiative to emerge to re-democratize the PLO by seeking unified representation for all Palestinians through registration with the PNC, available at: http://palestiniansregister.org/?page_id=47 (accessed October 15, 2014).

3  In the latest poll carried out by the Jerusalem Media and Communication Center in April 2010, it was found that there was “a notable increase in the level of support for the establishment of a bi-national state in all of Palestine from 20.6% in June 2009, to 33.8% this month while the percentage of Palestinians who support the two-state solution declined from 55.2% last June to 43.9% in April 2010”. To view this poll, go to: www.jmcc.org/documentsandmaps.aspx?id=749 (accessed October 15, 2014).

4  To read the full report, go to: www.palestinestrategygroup.ps/ (accessed October 15, 2014).

5  The report defines the peacemaking discourse as one that “assumes that the problem is one of ‘making peace’ between two equal partners, both of whom have symmetric interests, needs, values and beliefs. This is the wrong discourse because there are not two equal conflict parties. There is an occupying power and a suppressed and physically scattered people not allowed even to have its own identity legally recognized”.

6  The report defines the state-building discourse as one “which assumes that the problem is one of ‘building a state’ along the lines attempted in Cambodia or El Salvador or Mozambique – or even to a certain extent in Afghanistan. This is the wrong discourse because there is no Palestinian state”.

7  For an example of this backlash, see the controversy surrounding the funding the conference partially received from the Canadian government at York University in Canada, which resulted in much negative media press and protest from within pro-Zionist groups and institutions. This, despite the fact that this particular conference was not primarily on the One-State Solution, but a debating of solutions to the conflict in general.

8  For more on this movement, see an interview with Sheizaf in his article “Endgame,” available at: https://arielzellman.wordpress.com/2010/08/18/endgame-meeting-with-noam-sheizaf/#more-691 (accessed October 15, 2014). Also, see: www.haaretz.com/print-edition/opinion/is-there-another-option-1.293670 (accessed October 15, 2014).

9  For more on this trend, see: www.haaretz.com/news/israel-reports-jump-in-jerusalem-arabs-seeking-israeli-citizenship-1.232665 (accessed October 15, 2014).

5    Building a war of position

The tactic of BDS, anti-Zionist Jewish voices, and the single state solution

Introduction

This chapter is a culmination of Chapters 3 and 4, in which I attempted to map the alternative conception of the world of the single state project. This I strove to do both intellectually—as a critique of a disempowering form of common sense that must be contested in order for a more just reality to become possible—as well as in terms of the organization, strategy, and political practices mirroring this intellectual critique of an oppressive status quo, and put forward by its advocates as avenues of possible transformation. As I also illustrated, this form of intellectual critique turned into action seeks to re-energize a form of Gramscian praxis that is seen as a promising route towards the transformation of political possibilities and oppressive realities by single state intellectuals. For, as Omar Barghouti argues, only resistance that is based upon an interlinking of reflection and action can transform the world and create the tools with which people can rise above the domesticating power of oppression and counter it (Barghouti 2009a). It is precisely this form of resistance that the emergent single state movement is attempting to build—one that is built upon “Palestinian civil society’s reflection on the roots of Palestinian oppression, and its concerted action to end this oppression” (Barghouti 2009a: 1). More importantly still, following a Saidian-inflected Gramsci, this form of resistance begins within counterhegemony, and as such is concerned with (and reflects) the practical, messy, contradictory, context-sensitive pursuit of liberation on the ground—as opposed to a clinical adherence to dogmatic theoretical positions, static ideas, identities, and solutions that must remain pure and forever unchanged.

The conventional assumption upon the recent emergence of a rapidly growing global BDS movement against Zionism is that it is de-linked from, and a separate phenomenon to, the re-emergence of the single state idea and its counterhegemonic project. This is mainly due to the fact that the global BDS movement does not openly champion a single state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. In contradistinction to this, the pages that follow strive to show that while the BDS movement does not take any positions upon a political solution, it remains both interlinked with and an integral tactic of the single state movement’s long-term revolutionary strategy against Zionism. As such, I present an analysis of the BDS movement’s emergence, call, tactics, obstacles, and strategies, and the extent to which they mirror those of the single state movement’s anti-Zionist practices of resistance. In doing so, I simultaneously attempt to present a preliminary evaluation of the effectiveness of the tactic of BDS in light of its own goals within the geographic theatres of Palestine/Israel and Europe and North America. I do this, however, while underlining the fact that the early stage of this analysis skews it more towards the descriptive and the highlighting of the expansive potential within these tactics to become an effective counterhegemonic force in the long-term—rather than a comprehensive attempt at evaluation itself.

Hence, building upon the previous mappings of the single state movement, I begin this chapter by reasserting the fact that the BDS call is an integral part of the single state movement’s conception of the world, and its attempt to build an anti-Zionist war of position against the current Israeli–Palestinian peace process. Second, I argue that an integral function of the BDS call involved an attempt to reunify the Palestinian national collective from within civil society, and significantly, through the practice of resistance itself. As such, the call serves to sidestep the lack of official Palestinian endorsement of a single state solution to the conflict in the present by launching a war of position against Zionism and separation based within the framework of an inter-national politics of solidarity, as opposed to preference for a declared solution to the conflict. Thus, while the BDS movement may not take an open stand on political solutions, I argue that its practices of resistance remain interlinked with the tactics of the single state conception of the world. I then go on to sketch the emergent war of position triggered by the BDS call, arguing that it is geographically centred within civil society arenas of Europe and North America and that it has been given significant expansive power by the emergence of a network of anti-Zionist Jewish voices within this arena. Illustrating its gradual expansion within diverse institutions and arenas within these geographical theatres, I go on to highlight the minor cracks this war of position has begun to create within Israeli society itself. I end this chapter with a brief interim assessment of the BDS tactic in light of its own goals, while underlining the fact that it is too early at this stage to evaluate its effectiveness in terms of the more demanding long-term strategy of an expansive war of position against Zionism.

The single state movement and the tactic of BDS

The BDS call as part of the single state movement

In July 2005, more than 170 Palestinian civil society groups—representing all three segments of the Palestinian national collective, and including political parties, trade unions, faith-based groups, and associations—launched a global call for BDS against the State of Israel “until it complies with international law and universal human rights” (Palestinian Civil Society 2005b). Launched a year after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel’s wall and settlements were illegal (International Court of Justice 2004), the call was an attack upon the unwillingness of the international community to hold Israel accountable under international law. Writing that they were “inspired by the struggle of South Africans against apartheid” (Palestinian Civil Society 2005b) the call was directed at “international civil society organizations” (Palestinian Civil Society 2005b), at “people of conscience” globally (Palestinian Civil Society 2005b), as well (and significantly) at “conscientious Israelis” (Palestinian Civil Society 2005b). These citizens, institutions, and organizations of Europe and North America (and Israel) were called upon to engage in BDS actions to pressure their states to shift their policies regarding Israel, and significantly, to continue to do so until the mutually inclusive rights of all three segments of the Palestinian collective have been met.

As such, the BDS campaign is a long-term strategy of resistance, with the interlinked goals of ending the Israeli occupation of 1967; recognizing the right to equal citizenship of Palestinian-Israelis; and implementing the Palestinian Right of Return in accordance with UNR 194 (Palestinian Civil Society 2005b). As Omar Barghouti stresses, this call represents the emergence of “a qualitatively different phase in the global struggle for Palestinian freedom, justice and self-determination” (Barghouti 2011b). In this context, I contend that it is important to understand the BDS movement as an expansive practice of resistance that is intimately interlinked with the single state conception of the world’s war of position against the Israeli–Palestinian peace process. Thus, the BDS movement itself mirrors the intellectual reformulations and political strategies of the single state movement in several ways, and is arguably one of the most powerful arenas through which single state intellectuals are transforming political possibilities on the ground—and slowly conquering spaces and institutions within hegemonic European and North American spaces for the articulation and building of their alternative.

Hence, in this vein, it should be highlighted that the BDS movement is primarily an attack on the marginalization of Palestinian liberation after the Madrid and Oslo peace processes, and a resistance practice that seeks to reinsert the history of the conflict as an anti-colonial struggle of liberation against Zionism within Western civil societies and institutions. In parallel, the BDS movement is also an attack upon the UNGA’s repeal of its 1975 “Zionism is racism” resolution in 1991 due to US pressure—as well as the PLO’s recognition of Israel under Oslo (Barghouti 2006: 52). As Barghouti argues, the repeal of the resolution “removed a major obstacle to Zionist and Israeli rehabilitation in the international community” (Barghouti 2006: 52). Moreover, the PLO’s recognition of Israel added to “the transformation of Israel’s image from that of a colonial and inherently exclusivist state into a normal state engaged in a territorial dispute” (Barghouti 2006: 52). As such, a central part of the BDS movement involves a reassertion of the roots of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict in parallel with the single state conception of the world’s critique of Oslo, in an attempt to transform its oppressive common sense notions within the arena of practice.

Further to this, the BDS movement is a reappropriation of the power of civil and non-violent resistance as a powerful form of struggle for unified collective Palestinian liberation. Thus, it is an attack upon what Barghouti argues is a common sense notion among Palestinians, namely an interlinking between non-violent resistance and minimalist (or fragmented) political goals, as opposed to a linking between armed resistance and maximalist goals (Barghouti 2006: 51). In opposition to this misconception, he writes,

While I firmly advocate non-violent forms of struggle such as boycott, divestment and sanctions to attain Palestinian goals, I just as decisively support a unitary state based on justice and comprehensive equality to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

(Barghouti 2006: 51)

Thus, the BDS movement strives to pave the way for an alternative pathway of non-violent resistance to negotiations within the framework of the peace process since Oslo that excludes armed resistance. As such, it is both an attack upon the dichotomous misconceived ‘natural’ choice between the collaborationist policies of the PA within the framework of non-violent negotiations, and Hamas’ armed resistance as the inevitable only choices facing Palestinians in the present historic conjuncture. In this way, it is a revolutionizing of political possibilities on the ground within the OPT, and among Palestinians.

Moreover, it was launched in order to do what single state intellectuals had criticized the PLO for failing to do—to take advantage of the victories and considerable support the Palestinian people had within the arenas of international law and universal human rights, and advocate for Palestinian rights from within this framework as opposed to one of direct negotiations with its oppressor that veils the realities of dispossession and separation on the ground. Thus, Bisharat writes,

A rights-based approach¹ is posed here as an alternative, if not an antidote, to the approach that prevailed during the years of the Oslo peace process, in which international law was treated largely as an impediment to peace negotiations. Although Palestinian representatives repeatedly sought to base negotiations on international legal principles, Israeli and American negotiators favoured “pragmatism,” flexibility, and political accommodation.

(Bisharat 2008: 4)

Hence, while the BDS call is a reclaiming of the Palestinian agenda by Palestinian civil society, it is also centrally concerned with reasserting the Palestinian Right of Return, and re-centring international law and universal human rights within any negotiation of a just, comprehensive solution for the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. As Bisharat highlights, it is the single state solution that “offers superior opportunities to maximize the legitimate rights, interests, and aspirations of the greatest number of Israelis and Palestinians” (Bisharat 2008: 2). This, of course, is especially true in the case of the Palestinian refugees (who constitute the majority of the Palestinian national collective) and Palestinian-Israelis. And while Bisharat underlines that, “states and international organizations wield powerful tools to urge the parties toward a one-state solution” (Bisharat 2008: 3), they presently lack the political desire to do so, and will arguably continue to lack this desire in the future. Thus, Bisharat writes,

It is, therefore, necessary to consider whether international civil society is capable of playing a facilitating role, analogous to the role it played in fostering the demise of apartheid in South Africa. In view of current realities in the region and foreseeable trends, it is conceivable that Israel might suffer sustained international isolation, similar to that experienced by South Africa during the apartheid era. This might eventually bring a cadre of Israeli leaders to view the one-state solution as the only viable long-term option.

(Bisharat 2008: 3)

Therefore, and perhaps most importantly for my purposes in this chapter, the BDS call itself was a significant remedy to the fragmented Palestinian leadership’s lack of any clear vision of resistance and future goals—especially in terms of a simple programme of action in which European and North American supporters of Palestinian liberation could channel their energy and activities in solidarity with the Palestinian people. Thus, as Sivan articulated,

We have to create debate around one state … We have to realize that the solidarity movements with Palestine today are stuck because they are preaching for something that exists less and less. Dismantling all the settlements, return to the 64 borders—I mean, they are preaching utopia but in the name of what? In solidarity with the Palestinians, but in fact they are in solidarity with the Americans and Israelis. I mean they are articulating the suspension of a solution. I’m sure that part of the depression and the lack of activism comes out of the lack of perspective on what to do and how to do it. That is what a solidarity movement comes out of.

(Sivan 2008: interview)

As previously underlined by Pappe, it was precisely this reformulation in both paradigm and practice that single state intellectuals sought to lead within the “kissing cousin industry” (Pappe 2009: interview) of civil society in Europe and North America, by reorienting their actions into one of solidarity within the BDS call. Crucially, as Barghouti emphasizes, the BDS call reformulated Palestinian resistance, and reintegrated the struggle for Palestinian self-determination within the “international struggle for justice, long obscured by the peace process” (Barghouti 2006: 54). In doing so, it managed to break through the PA’s collaboration with negotiations perceived to be going nowhere, and to relaunch the Palestinian struggle for liberation within an arena in which it historically had much moral and legal power—that of civil society.

Moreover, the call also resulted in a challenge by Palestinian civil society to diverse segments of Palestinian society within the OPT to embrace an alternative pathway of resistance, reformulate their vision, and create a unified collective leadership. Thus it was a direct challenge to the legitimacy of the PA as an authority that lacks the mandate or ability to mount any credible resistance to Israeli apartheid, ethnic cleansing, or occupation. Similarly, it was a shaming of Palestinian bodies and NGOs linked to international donors who chose to remain complicit with Palestinian oppression due to the promotion of their own interests. Hence, Barghouti writes,

A number of Palestinian NGOS, ever attentive to donor sensitivities, declined (the BDS call), some citing as ‘too radical’ the clause on the right of refugee return, while others, bowing to pressure by their European partners, feared the term ‘boycott’ would invite charges of anti-Semitism.

(Barghouti 2006: 55)

In parallel to this, it represented an invitation to the most significant Palestinian political factions to consider shifting their focus on armed struggle in favour of the pathway of resistance offered by a global BDS and civil resistance movement. Perhaps most crucially, the BDS call made apparent the great difficulties involved in attempting to mobilize any official Palestinian leadership body to openly support the movement as an alternative. Initially this lack of official support created a hurdle for the BDS movement in the sense that many solidarity groups and movements in Europe and North America expected a form of ‘Palestinian ANC’ to take the lead (Barghouti 2006: 54). In view of this hurdle and due to the rapid expansion of the BDS movement, the first BDS conference was held in Ramallah in 2007. Out of this conference, the Palestinian Boycott National Committee (BNC)² emerged as a coordinating body for the BDS movement within Palestine. The BNC today is the committee that provides unified Palestinian leadership for the BDS movement, is the point of reference of global BDS programmes,³ and coordinates all BDS actions, strategies, programmes, and statements from within Palestine.

The conference itself brought together activists, members of associations and NGOs from the villages, towns, and refugee camps of the West Bank, as well as representatives of the global solidarity movement in Canada, the UK, Spain, Norway, and South Africa (Conference Steering Committee 2007). Perhaps more crucially for the purposes of this chapter, the convenors, speakers, and organizers of the conference included prominent single state intellectuals, as well as organizations and institutes linked with the single state project, and aims that paralleled motions and decisions taken by single state intellectuals and activists in one of their first official deliberative conferences at SOAS in London. Moreover, the conference was made up of three parallel workshops centred upon the aim of building civil resistance in the local, the regional, and the international level (Conference Steering Committee 2007). It is from within these three workshops that the different types of boycotts, divestment, and sanctions strategies emerged—as well as the emphasis upon the need for each tactic to be both context and audience sensitive. This involved an overarching three-pronged strategy that is based upon three separate theatres with different targets and audiences (the local, regional, and international).

To illustrate, the local Palestinian BDS workshop called for a significant emphasis to be placed upon institutions and spaces of education (both public and private) to make sure that students were taught historical accounts that were accurate and reflective of Palestinian narratives of history; to spread both an awareness of and culture of BDS; as well as to call upon all private education institutions to refrain from selling Israeli products, or collaborating with Israeli organizations through the ministry of education (Conference Steering Committee 2007). This workshop also called for the forming of popular boycott committees in all geographical areas and sectors of the OPT; for the development of a strategy with which to combat normalization attempts from within; and a strategy with which to pressure PA officials to end normalization with Israel (Conference Steering Committee 2007). Of course, this in essence meant dismantling the institutions and organizations that came out of Oslo, as well as declaring the agreements of Oslo and after (economic, security, etc.) to be no longer valid.

The regional workshop resulted in calls to revive the Arab League boycott committee; to cooperate and coordinate with anti-normalization groups and associations in the Arab world; as well as to raise the profile of BDS in the Arab media, and convince Arab investors to invest in the Palestinian economy, and the Arab states to sell Palestinian products (Conference Steering Committee 2007). In contrast, the workshop centred upon the international recommended the highlighting of the fact that the BDS campaign aims not only to affect Israel’s economy, but to counter it’s legitimacy as part of the international community by exposing it as a colonial apartheid state (Conference Steering Committee 2007). As such, much of the emphasis of this BDS branch’s strategy is upon the launching of an academic, cultural, and sports boycott (in addition to the consumer boycott). This difference in emphasis is rooted in the fact that a core aim of the BDS movement within Europe and North America revolves around creating a shift in the common sense notions veiling Israeli colonialism and apartheid, as well as engaging in a strategy that intentionally creates space within civil societies for debating the nature of the Israeli regime and Zionism as a racist and separatist ideology. Thus, under suggested targets for this form of boycott, the workshop underlined the importance of targets “that provide an opportunity for public education about Israel’s apartheid regime” (Conference Steering Committee 2007).

It is from within these workshops that the BDS movement emerged organizationally as a movement that is centralized and unified within the OPT through the leadership of the BNC, and yet decentralized within these diverse theatres. Elaborating upon how this form of semi-decentralized leadership works in Canada, Abigail Bakan states,

The BDS movement in Canada was initiated by Palestinian youth who were directly linked with the Palestinian BDS call—in email contact regularly, on the phone, fluent in both English and Arabic, and so on. And there is an organization called Palestine House in Mississuaga (that’s a community center in Canada) and there are people here who are part of it. So that’s sort of the network of the Palestinian community. So we’ve established links through the Palestinian activists in the BDS movement with the Palestinian community here, who are linked directly to Palestine. The BDS movement has been a big unifying force, it seems to me, in the Palestinian community.

(Bakan 2009: interview)

As such, the BNC gave groups and movements that adhered to its call the freedom to create BDS campaigns and actions that spoke best to their audiences, received the most public attention, and were operationalized within their contexts in the ways deemed most effective for public education by these localized forces. Arguably, it is within this form of semi-decentralized transnational organization that much of the power and expansiveness of the BDS movement lays. Moreover, the BNC itself and the unified leadership mechanism it provided for both Palestinians, and their supporters internationally, solved the BDS movement’s initial dilemma of a lack of a Palestinian form of ANC. Thus, by the time the BDS movement began to expand in Canada the question of unified leadership as a hurdle for support to be mobilized within European and North American civil societies had disappeared. To this effect, in 2009 Bakan states,

I haven’t encountered (the question of the ANC) a lot. The leadership of the BDS movement has often involved Palestinian youth, who are very closely connected with the Stop The Wall movement, and feel themselves as filling the space that the ANC might have filled.

(Bakan 2009: interview)

Furthermore, these strategies, political positions, and practices of resistance linked to the reformulation of ‘common sense’ notions both within the OPT, and within Europe and North America mirror those of the single state movement, and only serve to highlight the interlinked nature of the BDS movement and the single state conception of the world further.

The politics of solidarity, the BDS tactic, and the single state strategy

The standard assumption that the BDS movement against Zionism and the re-emergence of the single state idea (with its anti-Zionist counterhegemonic project) are separate is reinforced by the BDS movement’s tactical decision to not openly support a political solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict due to the perceived urgent need to mobilize as many forces as possible within a minimalist platform. Thus, the movement centres itself upon the mobilization of diverse civil societies in solidarity with Palestinian civil society’s BDS call, with the aim of including and mobilizing as broad and diverse a coalition of people, institutions, and organizations within it as possible. As such, it aims at spreading a simple (and context sensitive) message to its audiences. Hence, in an interview on BDS mobilization in Canada, Abigail Bakan states, “Those of us who are part of the BDS movement work really hard to not make it too complicated—so if you agree with these demands, you’re part of the movement” (Bakan 2009: interview). Moreover, while the BNC is the central coordinating body of the BDS, in practice, it is the solidarity groups and networks who adhere to the BDS call in specific contexts, and who are delegated the tasks of choosing appropriate BDS targets and building campaigns that are sensitive to the political environments to which they belong (Barghouti 2011a). As such, there remains a significant emphasis upon the local, and upon the need for activists, intellectuals, and groups to be organically linked to the communities and realities that they seek to transform.

In parallel to this, as touched upon above, the BDS movement is based within a form of alliance building that adheres to the politics of solidarity. As such, those coalitions, movements, associations, and groups who join the BDS movement, and are neither Palestinian nor Israeli, believe that the question of the form and components of an advocated political solution to the conflict is a question that must be decided by the Palestinians themselves. Hence, on her preferred vision for a future solution, Bakan states,

I guess my feeling is that we’ve got a colonial settler-state, and Palestine belongs to the Palestinians. I don’t feel normatively in a position to prescribe what the outcome would be, but to do my best to remove barriers that could allow Palestinians to be able to make their own decisions. And Canada is criminally integrated into this network, and the West is in general.

(Bakan 2009: interview)

This view is paralleled by the Palestinians and Israelis involved within the BDS movement, who call for action in solidarity with the achievement of the above-mentioned three specific demands, as opposed to any interference in the nature of a future, permanent solution. Furthermore, it mirrors the strategy of the single state movement itself—which specifically advocated the deliberation upon a common platform of unity among Palestinians and anti-Zionist Israelis only—prior to the launching of a process of resistance aimed at the creation of alliances with groups and institutions globally. This initial process of deliberation, and the strategy behind it, was described by Ziada:

At this stage, it’s central for the idea to be introduced, debated and mobilized within our own communities, and not among Westerners. No one who is not Palestinian or Israeli can politically support a one-state solution, until the people of Palestine themselves support it. We are very conscious to not turn this movement into an Orientalist one, which is also why we don’t have any alliances in the UK, or Europe or the US. The idea must be mobilized among our own people first—and it is only when the Palestinians (for me) want a one-state solution that work on an international or regional level can begin.

(Ziada 2008: interview)

Thus, the lack of direct mention of a single state as the desired future political vision of the BDS movement can also be seen to be a reflection of the fact that no official Palestinian body or faction has openly supported the single state solution as the desired Palestinian solution as of this writing. As such, single state intellectuals are obstructed by this obstacle in openly calling for a single state solution within diverse theatres of international civil society, since no official representative of the Palestinian people has accepted it as the desired solution of the unified national collective. This, of course, is further exacerbated by the fact that there remains (as of yet) no unified Palestinian national collective (which is one of the central raison d’êtres of the single state movement itself). However, what single state intellectuals can do is counter the fragmentation of the Palestinian national collective through unified practices of civil resistance centred around the tactic of BDS; reformulate a unified collective vision and strategy of resistance through the practice of BDS; and create the alternative space and tools from within which an alternative unified leadership may emerge. As has been demonstrated in the previous chapters, this was precisely the meaning behind Bresheeth’s succinct statement that “BDS is a tactic, and the strategy is one state” (Bresheeth 2008: interview).

It is also for the above reasons that it can be argued that the single state movement’s strategy involves a significant emphasis upon the transformation of political possibilities through initiatives centred around critical pedagogy within this present phase of its emergence. Thus, as Bakan and Abu-Laban write, the BDS campaign’s “stated goals are specifically grounded in education and building an international culture that supports Palestinian human rights” (Bakan and Abu-Laban 2009: 23). This focus is mirrored in the BNC’s website itself, which emphasizes the fact that while economic impact is important in BDS campaigns, an important measure of their success is their ability to shift conceptions and political positions.⁴ Thus, beyond economic impact, the BNC lists the following criteria as measures of a BDS campaign’s success in the Western context:

Shifts generated in popular discourse over understanding and dynamics of the Palestinian struggle; psychological impact upon the offender that their behaviour is not acceptable; and greater exposure of the issue in the media.⁵

As such, despite the fact that the BDS movement itself does not take a position on political solutions, what remains important here is the fact that the BDS movement itself—and all of the multiple actions of resistance emanating from within it—is a central weapon of the non-violent struggle against Zionism. Thus, it arguably paves the way for a single state solution on the ground in the OPT, as well as for mobilizing support for a single state within diverse theatres of North American and European civil society, through the process of political education implicit within BDS action. Commenting upon the BDS tactic and its strong connection with the single state idea, Ilan Pappe says:

I think you cross a certain threshold, or red line, when you talk about the BDS, which is that of asking questions about the nature of the regime in Israel. The ideology of the state. You don’t attack a particular policy, you confront the very nature of the state. Now, if that’s the tactic, and that is what the tactic is all about, then of course, the one-state solution is the next stage—that of not just saying what you don’t want, but what you do want, and what you do want allows you to have the moral and political courage to support the BDS, and so I think that there is a connection. A very strong connection.

(Pappe 2009: interview)

George Bisharat also echoes this view, while highlighting the strong link between the BDS tactic, the reinsertion of international law within the peace process, and the single state solution:

I think that what the Palestinian call for BDS does, is demand respect for international law and it demands the fulfilment of substantive rights—the right of return, the right to equality of Palestinian citizens of Israel—and also the end of occupation, but those first two things are demands that are almost incompatible with the two states for two peoples vision. So in substance, though not explicitly, they are calling for rights that can only reasonably be fulfilled via one state. So, in that sense yes, I think it’s fair to say they are part of (the single state) movement.

(Bisharat 2009: interview)

Similarly, commenting upon the effect of the process of entering the BDS movement itself upon an activist’s consciousness, Bakan states,

What I have found—it’s a movement in a lot of controversy, it’s under a lot of threat, and people get really interested in Israel and Palestine, and in the peace issue and it’s part of the anti-war movement—so when people get involved in it, they move very readily towards thinking about the one-state solution, and the limits of the two state.

(Bakan 2009: interview)

Furthermore, Abunimah highlights the fact that the BDS movement and the single state movement are intertwined in terms of the networks of intellectuals, activists, and solidarity groups involved in both processes of resistance. This is made further apparent by the fact that the conferences, initiatives, and alternative media sites of information dissemination linked to both movements are largely the same, and parallel each other. Thus, Abunimah states,

The call for BDS is not a call for a one-state solution necessarily, but on the other hand some of the leading voices for BDS are also leading voices for one state. Omar Barghouti’s a very prominent BDS leader, and at the same time has been very prominent in initiatives to promote the one-state idea. So I think in a sense it wouldn’t make sense to establish a separate network of organisations … because also, most people who have thought seriously about a one-state solution think that BDS is a necessary part of the struggle. So, formally you can separate the two notions, but in many senses they’re conflated and they run together.

(Abunimah 2009: interview)

However, having highlighted the above, it also remains true that the lack of official support for the single state solution within Palestine represents an obstacle for the mobilization of direct support for a single state solution within Palestine/Israel. Thus, as Bresheeth underlines, while the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP) was set up in response to the Palestinian call for an institution centred academic boycott against Israel, it refrains from talking about a single state solution for the simple reason that the Palestinians still officially advocate a two-state solution (Bresheeth 2008: interview). Similarly, Pappe agrees that the single state movement has “a slight problem with the Palestinian leadership” (Pappe 2009: interview), which is made more complex by the fact that while they represent part of the occupation, they also still represent, and remain a part of, the occupied (Pappe 2009: interview). It is for this reason, as well as that of the current balance of power, that the single state conception of the world perceives itself to presently be within the preliminary crucial phase of the launching of a war of position (Massad 2007)—centred upon shifting the conceptions and political positions of diverse civil societies. While, as shall be seen below, this war of position is centred within Europe and North America, its ultimate goal remains that of becoming powerful enough to shift conceptions and political realities and possibilities within Palestine/Israel itself.

Building a war of position: Mobilizing civil society in Europe and North America

A geographical focus on Europe and North America and the emergence of an anti-Zionist Jewish Bloc

In the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy conference of 2009, Executive Director Howard Kohr gave a speech about an expanding and dangerous concerted campaign of BDS aimed at the de-legitimization of the State of Israel “in the eyes of her allies” (Kohr 2009). Stating that while this campaign may have originated from within the Middle East, it has not stopped there. Rather, its discourse is being echoed in the “halls of the United Nations and the capitals of Europe,” in international organizations and universities, and is increasingly “entering the American mainstream” (Kohr 2009). Reflected in the radio and television shows of the USA, in newspapers, in blogs, and on the campuses of elite academic institutions, Kohr states that Israel now stands “accused of apartheid and genocide” (Kohr 2009), while Zionism is being equated with racism.

Kohr’s message to his audience however is not one of a dismissal of this campaign as another instance of hateful defamation. Rather, he seeks to stress the fact that this campaign “is a conscious campaign to shift policy, to transform the way Israel is treated by its friends to a state that deserves not our support, but our contempt; not our protection, but pressured to change its essential nature” (Kohr 2009). As such, Kohr underlines the fact that this campaign must not be shrugged off, or seen as irrelevant rhetoric, but understood as “a battle for the hearts and minds of the world” (Kohr 2009) that is “working on the international stage” (Kohr 2009). Thus, Kohn argues, it is tantamount that it not be allowed to gain ground in the USA. For, “the stakes in that battle are nothing less than the survival of Israel” (Kohr 2009). Had Kohr replaced the term Israel with Zionism, all single state intellectuals would have agreed. For, as Omar Barghouti highlights, the greatest achievement of the BDS movement so far has been to “expose the ‘essential nature’ of Israel’s regime over the Palestinian people as one that combines military occupation, colonization, ethnic cleansing and apartheid” (Barghouti 2011b: 11). If one of the indications of the strength of a movement is through the counter-reaction of its powerful enemies within a hegemonic status quo, Kohr’s statement provides an encouraging sign for the expansive counterhegemonic potential being seen within, and felt by, the BDS movement. As shall be seen below, this reaction arises in parallel with the emergence of a powerful and expansive network of anti-Zionist Jews within European and North American civil societies, as well as the establishment of the more liberal J Street in the USA in opposition to AIPAC’s policies.

It is important to emphasize that the BDS tactic is about the creation of an alternative non-violent pathway of civil resistance to the current peace process. As has been previously argued it is intimately intertwined with the single state’s project to South Africanize the conflict, de-legitimize the PA, and reunify the Palestinian national collective. As such, it is an integral component of the single state movement’s counterhegemonic resistance against the Israeli–Palestinian peace process. More importantly for this chapter though, is that it involves the launching of a geographically sensitive and diverse war of position against Zionism and the nature of the Israeli regime—with the aim of creating space for the building of a new type of anti-Zionist civil and political society. This new historical force is seen as key in “transforming modes of thinking and acting” and hence possibilities for transformation on the ground. Beyond the importance of this strategy within Palestine/Israel itself, it is Europe and North America that are considered the central arena of struggle for single state intellectuals—with a special emphasis upon the USA as “the main sponsor, supporter and protector of Israel, diplomatically, economically, and otherwise” (Barghouti 2011b: 80). Thus, it is especially within the arenas of these civil societies that the single state conception of the world seeks to build its war of position, create alternative institutions and intellectual resources for a more liberating political culture, and a network of groups and movements to build this alternative through critical pedagogy and the liberation of the mind.

Hence, Barghouti writes that while other parts of the world should not be ignored, “the West, owing to its overwhelming political and economic power as well as its decisive role in perpetuating Israel’s colonial domination, remains the main battleground for this non-violent resistance” (Barghouti 2006: 56). As has been previously elaborated, the strategy launched within Europe and North America specifically is one that focuses upon attacking the taboo of debating Zionism and the nature of the Israeli regime—as well as reformulating the intellectual conceptions that have veiled the oppressive realities of Oslo and after in Palestine/Israel within these civil societies. In this context, a great impetus was given to the expansive strength of both the single state conception of the world and the BDS movement by the emergence of a growing bloc of anti-Zionist Jewish groups and prominent personalities as powerful allies. Among them were many prominent intellectuals, including Judith Butler, Tony Judt, Jaqueline Rose, Naomi Klein, Mike Marqusee, and Harold Pinter.

The emergence of this group of voices as a collective can perhaps be traced back to the publishing of a letter in The Guardian in 2007. Written by a prominent group of British-Jewish intellectuals, this letter was an attack upon the fact that the broad spectrum of Jewish opinion regarding the Israeli–Palestinian conflict was being silenced by “those institutions which claim authority to represent the Jewish community as a whole (in Britain)” (Independent Jewish Voices 2007). As such, these intellectuals declared the establishment of “alternative Jewish voices” in relation to the conflict that is committed to social justice and human rights. To this effect, they wrote,

We hereby reclaim the tradition of Jewish support for universal freedoms, human rights and social justice. The lessons we have learned from our own history compel us to speak out. We therefore commit ourselves to make public our views on a continuing basis and invite other concerned Jews to join and support us.

(Independent Jewish Voices 2007)

While the letter received a significant backlash,⁶ especially within the USA, it was also instrumental in opening up space for fierce debates upon who is allowed to speak for Jewish people globally (Klug 2007), the nature of the Israeli regime and Zionism (Goldberg 2007), the myth of the self-hating Jew (Rose 2007), and the need to resist the concerted fascism of the American Israel Lobby towards Jewish voices of dissent (Hayeem 2007). Today, many more prominent personalities have added their voices to this group—including Stephen Fry, Mike Leigh, and Eric Hobsbawm—and Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) itself has become an influential group in North America, among several other countries.

For example, as a member of IJV in Canada, Abigail Bakan recounts her own journey towards anti-Zionism:

I’m clearly Jewish, my family’s very strongly identified as Jewish … I was Bar Mitzva’d, I went to Hebrew school, my father was a rabbinical scholar—so the reality of my family history is clearly Jewish. My family’s history goes back to Eastern Europe, my parents were the children of survivors of the first wave of pogroms and grew up in the States, and I have relatives who stayed over, and so there’s lots and lots of Jewishness, but religiously I’m not a practicing Jewish person … I think Jewishness is increasingly not a stable category. But the other thing is that the synagogues (here) have been overwhelmingly Zionized. So part of my feeling catapulted out of a Jewish religious identity that rejected the Zionist narrative that is a very powerfully part of most religious institutions in the West. So, now I’m active in the Jewish anti-Zionist political community, which I feel quite at home in. And that is a way, and a number of us have been talking about it, of reclaiming what it means to be Jewish, and part of the Jewish community.

(Bakan 2009: interview)

This reclaiming of a universal, humanist, rights championing Jewish tradition that calls for a public, liberating reappropriation of what it means to be Jewish from within the obfuscations of Zionism, has been a potent call that has represented a significant threat to Zionist hegemony within these civil societies. Thus, on the particular intensity of the backlash to anti-Zionist Jewish actions and voices in North America, Bakan states,

I think it is possible that in Canada and the US we have a particular problem with Zionism. The backlash is pretty intense here. The Zionist Lobby, The Christian Zionists, the sense of trauma in the Jewish community, the fear of dialogue … I think we’ve got a particular set of problems to work through, but on the other hand, what I find is that as individuals get their confidence up and start talking, it’s like, hello, where have you been all my life! And you meet lots and lots of people who want to talk about this, but they’re just afraid of being slapped down and charged with anti-Semitism or punished. The repression in the US has been pretty bad too—the Daniel Pipes kind of witch hunting, Norman Finkelstein losing his job …

(Bakan 2009: interview)

Thus, while this growing collective of anti-Zionist Jews have created much controversy, and been met with intense repression and criticism, there is a cathartic process of reclaiming their humanist Jewish identity, history, and heritage from Zionism that has been unleashed, as well as a space within which an expansive number of Jewish people globally are realizing that they are not alone, finding the courage to speak out, and creating groups and networks of activism, linkages, and solidarity.

One of the most significant examples of these groups is that of the International Anti-Zionist Jewish Network (IJAN). IJAN was initially founded in London with the participation of Israeli-Jews who had previously been linked to Matzpen—most notable among them being Moshe Machover. IJAN pledges to oppose Zionism, its colonial legacy, and continued expansion, as well as to directly confront and expose Zionist organizations and institutions in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for self-determination and their call for BDS.⁷ Hence, in addition to its own initiatives and networks, many of IJAN’s statements and calls come out in parallel with those of the Palestinian BNC—sending out a united message of resistance from Palestinians, Israeli-Jews, and anti-Zionist Jewish people globally. Moreover, the network’s principles of unity mirror those of the single state conception of the world, and significantly include challenging Ashkenazi racism towards Arab-Jews,⁸ as well as taking a stand against the conflation of Judaism with Zionism and racism. In this vein, IJAN’s overarching commitment is to the de-colonization of Palestine,⁹ as an act of exorcism for both the colonizer and the colonized. Groups who adhere to these principles of unity are invited to affiliate themselves with IJAN, whose network now encompasses chapters in several cities in the USA, Canada, and Europe, as well as India and Argentina, and significantly, within Israel itself.

Perhaps most significant among IJAN’s campaigns has been an international campaign against the Jewish National Fund, which it launched with Habitat International, the Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign and the BNC, and involves a network of activists in the USA and several European cities.¹⁰ IJAN has also launched a counterhegemonic programme of education in the form of study groups that counter Zionism’s narrative of history, identity, and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and are meant to inform action for transformation. Thus, commenting on the purpose of six study groups that have been set up in the USA, the website of “Study to Action” states,

Through political education, we are working to build a framework for a shared understanding of imperialism, colonialism, and Zionism, and locate our work within different political ideologies, tendencies, and movements, and within a history of anti-Zionist and anti-imperialist struggle and strategy. We will use study to inform our campaigns and tactics and assess our context, conditions, and strategic role. We hope that through this process we will build relationships within the network, and deepen our strategy and practice as we support our personal transformation and emotional divestment from Zionism.¹¹

As the Electronic Intifada reports, IJAN seeks “to rekindle a long Jewish tradition of participation in struggles for liberation and against exploitation and oppression” (IJAN 2008), as well as “challenge Zionism and its claim to speak on behalf of Jews worldwide” (IJAN 2008). To this end, in June 2010 IJAN held the first ever “Assembly of Jews Confronting Racism and Israeli Apartheid” in Detroit. Within it, it introduced its Jewish Anti-Zionist Academic Network (JAZAN), which aims to “broaden and deepen anti-Zionist discourse and put forward alternative visions.”¹² The forum itself emphasized that academic institutions were a central arena from within which this work must be done:

Teachers, researchers and writers who work on university and college campuses engage with political justice both ideologically in our own work and materially in collective struggle—as such the academy is a site within which there is potential for Zionist discourse to be de-legitimized and Zionist militarism to be strategically opposed.¹³

Consequently, JAZAN has launched several collaborative projects between anti-Zionist Jewish intellectuals with the above aims, and also serves as a network of support and linkages among anti-Zionist intellectuals, student, faculty, and staff members.

Commenting upon a similar dynamic that has occurred among anti-Zionist Jewish academics and students in Canada, Abigail Bakan recounts the formation of the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA) and Faculty for Palestine, in the context of the ensuing backlash to attempts to reformulate hegemonic conceptions on Israel and Zionism within Canadian academic institutions. She states,

I helped start the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA) here in Canada, which launched Israeli Apartheid Week, and that wasn’t my sector, students really did that. But then we formed a committee of the Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid called Faculty for Palestine that’s a network—and it’s just taken off. There’s like 400 of us now … it’s an email tree … We wanted to defend the students being attacked for participating in Israeli Apartheid Week. There were efforts to ban the word apartheid from campuses, the poster was banned on a couple of campuses, and the professoriate who support Zionism are very well organized. They’ve got years on us in that sense. They have seen that as intellectual space they want to preserve. So we felt that faculty who were defending Palestine had to find a way to come together.

(Bakan 2009: interview)

Moreover, Bakan highlights that within Canada Independent Jewish Voices has emerged as a nationwide network of Jews who are critical of Zionism (Bakan 2009: interview). Within this network are several groups, one of which is called Not in Our Names, Jewish Voices Opposing Zionism. As Bakan states, “both of these groups have now taken positions in support of the BDS campaign—so yes, it’s really taken off” (Bakan 2009: interview). Israeli Apartheid Week itself has become the largest and most significant BDS student-led campaign (Barghouti 2011b: 21–22) within university campuses in the West today.

In parallel to this, it is important to note that networks such as IJAN and CAIA have also been instrumental in linking the Palestinian BDS call with the wider anti-war movement within their localities. Thus, in IJAN’s press release upon its formation, the network states,

Anti-Zionism is part not only of the movement against racism but also the movement against war. We are convinced that we speak to a great unexpressed, in fact censored sentiment of support for this perspective, including among Jewish people.

(IJAN 2008)

Similarly, on the formation of these linkages in Canada Bakan states,

Making the links (is important) so that Israel/Palestine is not this exoticized issue that you have to be a specialist to talk about, or afraid to talk about. Just putting it in the context of apartheid, anti-war, labour, faith-groups—just putting it there—then the human rights arguments are pretty obvious … Through the anti-war movement, there are links between the Islamic community and the BDS movement, and they’ve been very supportive. And there have been links with the United Church, so … faith communities have been really active.

(Bakan 2009: interview)

Hence, the emergence of this new bloc of anti-Zionist Jewish voices, many of whom stand in solidarity with the Palestinian BDS call and centre their actions of opposition to Zionism and the State of Israel around its demands, has given a significant boost to the BDS movement within Western civil societies. It has also resulted in strengthening the revived links between the Palestinian struggle for liberation and diverse anti-war movements and forums within different locations and contexts in the West. The next section attempts to paint a brief picture of this expansion as part of a growing war of position linked to the single state conception of the world.

The BDS movement: A gradual expansion within civil societies

Beyond this specific emergent bloc of anti-Zionist Jewish groups, the BDS call has made rapid achievements within civil societies in Europe and North America, and continues to expand. Thus, in parallel to the above, the Palestinian BDS call was endorsed by the sixth annual World Social Forum (WSF) in Caracas, and its Social Movements’ Assembly adopted the call (Badil 2006). From within this platform, the assembly also called upon the European Social Forum to give special attention to the on-going colonization of Palestine and the BDS call during its own form in May (Badil 2006). Palestinian civil society also attended the WSF in Nairobi in 2007 to present their BDS call to around 100,000 delegates from the Global South, and call for the building of a global BDS movement within that arena (Badil 2007).

By 2009, the BDS campaign scored a significant victory when the eighth annual US Campaign to End Israeli Occupation’s national conference (which is made up of around 300 groups) unanimously voted to endorse the academic and cultural boycott of Israel (Elia 2009). This in effect aligned and unified all Palestinian solidarity groups and movements within the USA with the BDS call and narrative. As Nada Elia, who presented the call with Omar Barghouti at the conference wrote, this vote “will go down in history as the moment US-based Palestine solidarity activists overcame tactical differences that had long hindered us, to finally come together to confront Israeli apartheid” (Elia 2009).

As previously highlighted, the academic and cultural boycott of Israel is of specific importance to BDS campaigners in Europe and North America. It is important to underline that these boycotts are institutional, and as such, do not target individuals. Hence, the Palestinian Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)’s call¹⁴ “specifically targets Israeli academic institutions because of their complicity in perpetuating Israel’s occupation, racial discrimination, and denial of refugee rights” (Barghouti 2011b: 94). Barghouti clarifies the form of this complicity, writing,

This collusion takes various forms, from systematically providing military-intelligence establishment with indispensable research—on demography, geography, hydrology, and psychology, among other disciplines—that directly benefits the occupation apparatus to … institutionalizing discrimination against Palestinian Arab citizens; suppressing Israeli academic research on the Nakba; and directly committing acts that contravene international law, such as the construction of campuses and dormitories … in the OPT, as Hebrew University has done.

(Barghouti 2011b: 94–95)

As such, the call is part of a targeting of institutions complicit in oppression within Israel until they comply with international law—as well as a call for international universities to divest and disinvest from Israel. This campaign’s roots can be traced back to the UK—when a petition initiated by Hilary and Steven Rose for ending EU funding of research collaboration with Israel was published by The Guardian in 2002 (PACBI 2009). While attracting a significant backlash, this petition was also instrumental in the formation of BRICUP, which was a pioneer in advocating for this boycott movement in Europe and North America, instrumental in linking it with British academic unions, and in the union movement in the UK in general (PACBI 2009).

The Israeli bombing of Gaza in 2009 was key in the expansion of the BDS movement in Europe and North America. Thus, in the UK at least 17 universities saw a wave of student-led occupations in solidarity with the Palestinians. These occupations made various demands, which included official condemnation of the Israeli attack by their universities, the establishment of scholarships for Palestinian students, and institutional divestment from any Israeli companies complicit with apartheid, colonization, and occupation (Humphries 2009). Many of these occupations scored significant victories within their institutions, and were visited by prominent guest lecturers linked to the anti-war movement within the UK (Humphries 2009) as part of efforts to stage counterhegemonic lectures and talks that paralleled the action. In the USA, these efforts reached a peak with the decision of the prestigious Hampshire College in Massachusetts to divest from six military companies complicit in Israel’s occupation—and “to adopt a ‘social responsibility’ screen for Hampshire’s investments” (Horowitz and Weiss 2010). Another significant BDS victory was achieved in Olympia’s Evergreen College, which passed a resolution to divest from “companies profiting from the occupation and banned the use of Caterpillar equipment on campus” (Horowitz and Weiss 2010). In 2009, more than 40 campuses in the USA launched similar campaigns.

Of course, the divestment campaign itself encompasses a much broader scope than that of academic institutions, and it is here that the most significant victories have been made in the West (Horowitz and Weiss 2010). These campaigns range from attacks on Israeli cosmetic companies like AHAVA who manufacture their products in Israel’s illegal settlements (Barghouti 2011b: 26), to motions for pension funds to divest from Israeli Apartheid (Barghouti 2011b: 27), to campaigns targeting Israeli ‘blood diamonds’ (Barghouti 2011b: 27). Most significant among these global campaigns in terms of economic loss has been the campaign launched against French conglomerates Veolia and Almstom, for their involvement in the Jerusalem Light Rail project, which illegally sought “to cement Israel’s colonial hold on occupied Jerusalem as well as on the colonies surrounding it” (Barghouti 2011b: 27). Dubbed ‘Derail Veolia’ this campaign “launched in 2008 in Bilbao, Basque Country, (cost) Veolia particularly contracts worth billions of dollars … due to intensive campaigning against the company in several countries” (Barghouti 2011b: 27). As part of this campaign, Dutch ASN Bank also severed its ties to Veolia (Horowitz and Weiss 2010), who has since dropped out of the project all together.

Moreover, the Church of England had been among the first institutions to divest from Caterpillar (The Electronic Intifada 2006), and by 2010 several Churches in Europe and North America had either endorsed aspects of the BDS call, or moved closer towards passing BDS resolutions (Irving 2010). In the aftermath of the attack on Gaza in 2009, The Nation reported that several rabbis in the USA had also begun to openly be critical of Israel and to discuss the silence of Jewish communities on the war crimes committed in Gaza with their synagogue congregations (Horowitz and Weiss 2009), while liberal Jewish-Americans’ views on Israel shifted dramatically and culminated in the formation of J Street—a reformist Israeli lobby to counter the influence of AIPAC (Horowitz and Weiss 2009). Commenting upon the formation of J Street, Bakan states,

It’s a new organization that’s an alternative to AIPAC. They call themselves pro-peace, pro-Israel, but they’re an alternative lobby group that seems to want the US, and the Democratic Party in particular, to have an autonomous strategy that will pressure Israel in the interest of what they see as a peace strategy. So not terribly radical, but it’s very much not AIPAC.

(Bakan 2009: interview)

In the context of the extent to which synagogues in the USA have been Zionized, the strong links between AIPAC and the Democratic Party in the USA, and Christian Zionism itself, the emergence of voices critical to Israeli policies within the religious institutions of churches and synagogues, as well as a more reformist alternative to AIPAC should not be underestimated.

In parallel to the shifts and actions above, trade unions in Europe and North America have also been a significant arena within which the BDS call has been gaining support, with particular success being achieved in the UK, Ireland, South Africa, and Scandinavia. Hence, in the UK for example,

The British Trade Union Congress, representing more than 6.5 million workers, unanimously passed a motion in September 2010, supported by the public-sector union Unison and the Fire Brigade Union as well as the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (UK), calling for boycotting the products of and divesting from companies that profit from Israel’s occupation.

(Barghouti 2011b: 25)

In Norway, the Norwegian Civil Service Union voted in favour of an arms embargo on Israel, while Connex Ireland annulled its plans to train Israeli engineers and drivers in Ireland (Bakan and Abu-Laban 2009: 25). In Canada, the largest public-sector union of workers in Ontario (CUPE)—representing 200,000 workers—overwhelmingly passed a resolution endorsing BDS against Israeli apartheid (Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid 2006). The resolution also “commits CUPE Ontario to educate its members on the apartheid nature of the Israeli state and Canada’s support for these racist practices” (Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid 2006) and pledges to “call on the Canadian Labour Congress to join the campaign against Israeli apartheid” (Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid 2006). In 2008, the Canadian Union of Postal Workers became the first national union in North America to endorse the BDS call (Anti-Apartheid Wall Campaign 2008). After the Israeli attack on the Free Gaza Flotilla, the UK’s largest union, UNITE, “passed a motion to ‘vigorously promote a policy of divestment from Israeli companies,’ along with a boycott of Israeli goods and services” (Horowitz and Weiss 2010). Meanwhile, Sweden, the USA, South Africa, India, and Turkey saw their dockworkers’ unions endorse the BNC’s appeal to boycott the loading and offloading of Israeli ships (Barghouti 2011b: 25); while in Norway the Locomotive Drivers’ Unions stopped all train, trams, and subways for two minutes in a nationwide show of solidarity with the Palestinian people (Stop the War Coalition UK 2009).

The cultural boycott¹⁵ itself has seen numerous prominent academics, film-makers, artists, and authors endorse it, among whom are the American author Alice Walker, the Jewish-American academic Judith Butler, the Jewish-American author Naomi Klein, the British film-maker Ken Loach, the French film-maker Jean-Luc Goddard, and the British artist and author John Berger (Barghouti 2011b: 22). In a statement on his reasons for declining to participate in the Haifa Film Festival, Ken Loach said:

I support the call by Palestinian film-makers, artists and others to boycott state sponsored Israeli cultural institutions and urge others to join their campaign. Palestinians are driven to call for this boycott after forty years of the occupation of their land, destruction of their homes and the kidnapping and murder of their civilians. They have no immediate hope that this oppression will end. As British citizens we have to acknowledge our own responsibility. We must condemn the British and US governments for supporting and arming Israel. We must also oppose the terrorist activities of the British and US governments in pursuing their illegal wars and occupations. However, it is impossible to ignore the appeals of Palestinian comrades. Consequently, I would decline any invitation to the Haifa Film Festival or other such occasions.

(PACBI 2006)

In response to this, the Greek Cinematography Center also withdrew all Greek films from the Haifa Film Festival (Bakan and Abu-Laban 2009: 26). In parallel to this, several famous artists have also responded to the BDS call, and cancelled performances, or appearances in Israel, including the American actress Meg Ryan, and artists Elvis Costello, Gill Scott-Heron, Carlos Santana, the Gorillaz, Massive Attack, the Pixies, Bono, Roger Waters, Faithless, Bjork, and Vanessa Paradis (Barghouti 2011b). In the aftermath of the Gaza bombing in 2009, these calls reached North America, where prominent artists and film-makers drafted the “Toronto Declaration”¹⁶ in protest of the Toronto International Film Festival’s association with the Israeli Consulate, and “a city-to-city program featuring Tel Aviv as part of a campaign by the Israeli government to “rebrand” itself after the Gaza conflict” (Horowitz and Weiss 2009). Signed by the likes of Danny Glover, Jane Fonda, Julie Christie, and Viggo Mortensen, the declaration stated,

We object to the use of such an important international festival in staging a propaganda campaign on behalf of what South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, and UN General Assembly President Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann have all characterized as an apartheid regime.

(Horowitz and Weiss 2009)

Earlier that year the Edinburgh International Film Festival had also returned money donated to it by the Israeli Embassy, after it received a “torrent of angry letters expressing incomprehension, fury or sadness at the EIFF being associated with the Israeli State.”¹⁷ In the US context, while not being an endorsement of the comprehensive BDS call itself,

More than 150 US and British theatre, film, and TV artists issued a statement initiated by Jewish Voice for Peace, supporting the spreading cultural boycott inside Israel of Ariel and the rest of Israel’s colonial settlements, due to their violation of international law.

(Barghouti 2011b: 22)

In addition to these actions, there is also a growing movement of architects that have also joined the BDS movement in the West (APJP 2006), as well as doctors (PACBI 2007).

In the context of the above, there has simultaneously been a rise in state-sponsored sanctions action against Israel, as well as support for the movement from within the UN. Thus, in 2008, the president of the UNGA, Father Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, called upon the UN to:

Use … the term “apartheid” to describe Israeli policies in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. (Brockmann) noted the resonance of the sanction campaign against South Africa in the UN historically, and suggested, “perhaps we in the United Nations should consider following the lead of a new generation of civil society, who are calling for a similar non-violent campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions to pressure Israel to end its violations.

(Bakan and Abu-Laban 2009: 25)

The UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights John Dugard also termed Israeli policies in the OPT as apartheid, as did Archbishop Desmond Tutu (Barghouti 2011b: 198), while UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights Richard Falk criticized the UN’s inaction during the Gaza siege, and later came out in support of the Palestinian BDS call. In an interview in 2010, Falk stated,

The best hope for the Palestinians is what I call a legitimacy war, similar to the anti-apartheid campaign in the late 1980s and 1990s … I think that is happening now in relation to Israel. There’s a very robust boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign all over the world that is capturing the political and moral imagination of the people, the NGOs and civil society and is beginning to have an important impact on Israel’s way of acting and thinking.

(Barghouti 2011b: 16)

Meanwhile, in both Norway and the Basque Country local regional councils passed motions for the comprehensive boycott of Israeli goods in 2005 (Bakan and Abu-Laban 2009: 26), foreshadowing a growing trend of state-sponsored BDS action that would also emerge. Thus, in 2006 the Irish Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs called upon the Irish government to “push for sanctions against Israel in the EU due to Israel’s human rights abuses” (Bakan and Abu-Laban 2009: 25–26), while the Norwegian government banned arms trading with Israel (Barghouti 2011b: 209). Perhaps most significant among these actions though has been the Norwegian government’s decision to divest its pension fund (which is the third largest in the world) from the Israeli military manufacturer Elbit Systems (Pappe 2009a). The Norwegian Ministry of Finance stated that its divestment was due to “the company’s complicity in Israel’s violation of international law” (Barghouti 2011b: 29). As Pappe writes,

The significance is not about who was targeted, but rather who took the decision: the Norwegian ministry of finance through its ethical council. No less important was the manner in which it was taken: the minister herself announced the move in a press conference. This is what transformed for a short while the media scene in the Zionist state.

(Pappe 2009a)

Following this decision, in 2010 a Swedish investment fund followed suit, citing the same reasons; the Norwegian pension fund divested from Africa Israel due to their complicity in the expansion of settlements; while Deutsche Bank sold its stakes in Elbit Systems, and the largest bank in Denmark, Danske Bank, divested from both Africa Israel and Elbit Systems (Barghouti 2011b: 30). In the aftermath of the Israeli attack on the Freedom Flotilla the Turkish parliament also unanimously voted to “revise (its) political, military and economic relations with Israel” (Barghouti 2011b: 209), while in the Global South—Venezuela and South Africa withdrew their ambassadors, and Bolivia and Nicaragua suspended their relations with the Israeli state.

While the civil societies in Europe and North America, and the institutions bolstering their common sense notions of Palestine/Israel remain the central focus of the BDS tactic against Israeli apartheid, colonization, and occupation, it is important to highlight that these practices of resistances both resulted in, and were given significant impetus by, a growing “Boycott from Within” inside of Israel Proper. As has been underlined above, a significant aspect of the Palestinian BDS call involved an invitation to “conscientious Israelis” to join the call in joint struggle for the decolonization of Palestine and the mutual liberation of Israelis and Palestinians. In 2009, these Israeli-Jews (most of whom are prominent single state intellectuals, or belong to groups within Palestine/Israel that are linked to the single state conception of the world) formed “Boycott! Supporting the Palestinian BDS Call from Within” (Barghouti 2011b: 31). Groups linked to this movement include Zochrot, the AIC, ICAHD, and Who Profits from the Occupation? (A Coalition of Women for Peace) (Barghouti 2011b: 31). This movement has been instrumental in strengthening the cultural and academic boycott of Israel, in convincing artists to cancel concerts and appearances in Israel, as well as prominent intellectuals, film-makers, and figures from accepting awards and honours from Israeli institutions. Moreover, they have been a significant ally to anti-Zionist Jewish voices and their actions globally. Furthermore, they have also been instrumental in giving a boost towards BDS to those liberal Jewish voices in North America who remain Zionist, but support ending the Israeli occupation and strengthening what they perceive to be the Israeli peace camp from within. Perhaps most crucially though, these Jewish-Israeli voices of dissent seek to highlight the fact that the idea that Israeli society is monolithic and void of oppositional voices to Zionism and separation—that can, and must, be expanded through the external pressure of BDS—is false.

Conclusion: BDS and the potential for an anti-Zionist war of position

It was Ehud Olmert who first warned that if the Israeli–Palestinian conflict was transformed into a “South African style struggle” centered within a rights-based agenda the “state of Israel (would be) finished” (Landau et al. 2007). It was also Olmert who stated that within this scenario, “the Jewish organizations, which are our power base in America, will be the first to come out against us” (Landau et al. 2007). In this chapter, I tried to show that the BDS movement has taken significant steps paving the way towards this shift in conceptions and political positions within diverse civil societies in Europe and North America. As illustrated by Howard Kohr’s warnings at the AIPAC conference in 2009, the emergence of J Street, and the reported shift in the views of liberal Jewish voices in the USA, I suggested that Olmert’s fears regarding the political red lines of Jewish American supporters of Israel were not baseless. I also argued that through mobilizing a rights-based approach within an overarching framework of South-Africanizing the conflict, the BDS tactic has succeeded in creating a significant rift within this constituency, and the arenas of civil society in Europe and North America more generally. This success is only amplified further by the emergence of an expansive bloc of anti-Zionist Jewish voices within this theatre, intent on reclaiming their humanist Jewish heritage and identity from Zionism. Contending that BDS is an integral tactic within the single state movement’s overarching strategy of creating an anti-Zionist war of position against the Israeli regime, I have simultaneously attempted to demonstrate the expansive potential within this tactic in this chapter.

As such, while the BDS tactic has been launched in 2005, it is my contention that it has already achieved significant victories in terms of its own self-prescribed goals. As I previously highlighted, in terms of transforming the political possibilities within the OPT itself (and among all three segments of the Palestinians) BDS has already established itself as a promising alternative route of non-violent civil resistance to Israeli apartheid, colonization, and occupation. Thus, it has broken through the divisive dichotomy created by the resistance through armed struggle represented by Hamas, and the non-violent collaboration of the PA and its institutions. Simultaneously aimed at shaming the PA’s policies of collaboration and normalization with Israel from within, the BDS call seems to have managed to have some transformative impact here as well. Hence, by 2010 The Nation reported that, “Even the Palestinian Authority—never celebrated for its connection to the grassroots—has made a nod toward the movement, with Prime Minister Salam Fayyad vowing to empty Palestinian homes of goods made in the settlements” (Horowitz and Weiss 2010). A little later this nod turned into a law drafted by the PA (and signed by Fayyad) calling upon President Abbas to make the selling of Israeli settlement products illegal (Prusher 2010). While not very revolutionary, these changes do show that the PA is not immune from the tactic of highlighting its image as one of shameful collaboration. As such, this arena could lead to significant inroads being made towards the greater (single state) goal of attacking it as an institution that lacks legitimacy, does not represent the Palestinian people, and as such needs to be reformulated from within the grassroots. Moreover, this tactic creates much potential for the reformulation of Fatah itself—and the Palestinian factions generally—as the more disenchanted among them find the space and courage to defect from the PA, or embrace an alternative strategy of resistance in the form of BDS.

While Hamas is less targeted by this tactic, the BDS call does call upon the movement to also accept the call as a form of powerful non-violent resistance—and perhaps most crucially, as a method of ending the fragmentation of the Palestinian national collective. While both the BDS and single state movements have a long way to go towards the achievement of this particular goal, the BDS call itself, along with the unifying practice of BDS and the emergence of the BNC set encouraging precedents in the search for both unity for the three Palestinian segments, as well as a unified leadership to represent their demands as mutually inclusive. Interlinked with the goals of the BDS call itself, the emergence of the Israeli-Jewish ‘Boycott from Within’ is also a significant achievement in terms of both revolutionizing possibilities on the ground in Palestine/Israel, and creating a powerful platform of Israeli legitimacy for attacking Zionist ideology globally.

To this effect, perhaps the most significant achievement of the BDS movement in terms of its stated goals is that of reformulating the Israeli–Palestinian struggle into a South-African-style struggle; breaking the taboo upon criticizing both Zionism and the nature of the Israeli regime in Europe and North America; and being instrumental in creating the space and environment for the emergence of a significant bloc of anti-Zionist Jewish voices within these civil societies. Highlighting the diverse arenas targeted by the BDS movement, and the effectiveness of its particular form of semi-centralized organization, I attempted to show the rapid growth of the movement within unions, media outlets, academic, cultural, and religious institutions, as well as institutions linked to international law and universal human rights conventions ratified by states. As I demonstrated in this chapter, this expansive momentum has gone as far as repositioning the policies of some states towards Israel (most notably Norway) in the short span of five years. Moreover, its interlinkage with transformations within Palestine/Israel, and the opening up of new spaces of resistance within its framework, arguably shows great signs of promise as a potentially expansive anti-Zionist war of position against the State of Israel. Whether or not this potential will be fulfilled, or a more powerful counter-attack will emerge against it, remains to be seen.

Notes

1  For a detailed legal exposition of what a ‘rights-based approach’ entails, see George E. Bisharat (2008) “Maximizing Rights: The One State Solution to the Palestinian–Israeli Conflict,” Global Jurist Vol. 8, No. 2 (Frontiers), Article 1.

2  See http://www.bdsmovement.net/bnc (accessed October 29, 2009).

3  Ibid.

4  See http://bdsmovement.net/files/bds%20report%20small.pdf (accessed October 29, 2009).

5  Ibid.

6  To read more about the details of this backlash, see Karpf et al. (2008) A Time to Speak Out: Independent Jewish Voices on Israel Zionism, and Jewish Identity. London: Verso.

7  See http://socialistunity.com/founding-charter-of-the-international-jewish-anti-zionist-network/ (accessed October 29, 2009).

8  See https://www.facebook.com/pages/International-Jewish-Anti-Zionist-Network-Twin-Cities/136949079713179?sk=info (accessed October 29, 2009).

9  See www.facebook.com/groups/48510138096/ (accessed October 15, 2014).

10  See www.stopthejnf.org (accessed October 29, 2009).

11  See www.ijsn.net/C9/. As of this writing, this particular document is no longer available online, though its link to study to action is, see: http://windowintopalestine.blogspot.co.il/2008/09/international-network-of-anti-zionist.html; or see: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/aplacefortruth/conversations/topics/16889?var=1

12  See www.jewsconfrontapartheid.blogspot.com/ (accessed October 29, 2009).

13  Ibid.

14  PACBI’s detailed guidelines for the academic boycott of Israel can be read at: www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1108 (accessed October 29, 2009).

15  To read the guidelines of the cultural boycott in detail, see www.pacbi.org/etemplate.php?id=1045 (accessed October 29, 2009).

16  See www.bdsmovement.net/?q=node/535

17  See http://bdsmovement.net/?q=node/405

Conclusion

Reflections on Saidian-Gramscian counterhegemony

In a Guardian article titled “The Power of Utopianism” Mike Marqusee argues that those who perceive politics to be, and practice it as, “the art of the possible” are conservative reformists at heart who would like to see “vested interests prevail” (Marqusee 2010). Marqusee paints those politicians who follow this dictum as unimaginative pragmatists, who shrink the space available for transforming unjust status quos, disregard the powerful motivational force of utopianism in the making of human destinies, and ultimately, are unmoved by injustices, or the plight of the oppressed around the world. Instead, they practice a kind of politics that is based upon their own narrow definitions and experiences of the possible, and that is designed to let injustices stand. In opposition to this dictum, Marqusee writes,

Utopias provide a perspective from which the assumed limitations of the present can be examined, from which familiar social arrangements can be revealed as unjust, irrational or unnecessary.

(Marqusee 2010)

They are a means of expanding the borders of the possible.

You can’t chart the surface of the earth or compute distances without a point of elevation—a mountain top, star or satellite. You can’t chart the possible in society without an angle of vision, a mental mountain top that permits the widest sweep. The pundits championing the art of the possible are the flat-earthers of today, afraid to venture too far from shore lest they fall off the planet’s edge.

(Marqusee 2010)

Similarly, in a conference on the Left in Palestine, Azmi Bishara argued that prior to being about a particular methodology, it should be recalled that the Left is about certain values. It is about justice, human dignity, the pursuit of happiness, and above all else, it is about equality (Bishara 2010). For, it is for these reasons and beliefs, for this vision of a more dignified future, that people wage collective struggles against the greatest of odds. A decade earlier, paralleling both Marqusee and Bishara, Edward Said expressed a similar sentiment. Writing in “On Lost Causes” Said argued that, “Every political theorist and analyst stresses the importance of hope in maintaining a movement” (Said 2001d: 544). Above all else, it was hope that Said argued was key in overcoming the daunting challenges the Palestinians faced as a people—hope that kept them alive as a collective, hope that empowered them to always reinvent and re-imagine new possible alternatives at the darkest of historical junctures.

In many ways, reflecting the political experiences of these intellectuals, it is hope and the powerful human ability to imagine new possible pathways towards more just, uplifting, and liberating realities from within the settings of oppressive status quos, that once was (and in some cases still is) the central impulse of the advent of critical theory within academia, and in this case specifically, within the discipline of International Relations. At the heart of this revolution in thought was a firm belief in the power of theory itself to start from within, to inform, enable, and revolutionize liberating political practice on the ground. In doing so, this kind of theory illuminated existing opportunities and possibilities for change. It emphasized the centrality, and political nature of both knowledge and its producers, in building, maintaining, and dismantling status quos. It reminded people that all history and world orders are secular and created by ordinary men and women, and that realities of oppression and injustice were neither divinely ordained, nor inevitable and natural. Perhaps even more importantly for my purposes in this book, the advent of critical theory highlighted the fact that those who produce knowledge—or intellectuals—are in possession of the power to give ordinary people the gift of critical thinking. Thus, should these intellectuals so choose, they could use their positions of privilege in order to empower people, transform their historical self-understandings, and in so doing, give them the key with which they themselves could become historical forces of social transformation in the world.

For Antonio Gramsci, it was this form of empowerment—activated by the organic intellectual—that he famously argued held the key to the transformation of the oppressed into a collective ‘historical force’ of liberating political change. Similarly, it was this type of intellectual that animated Said’s writings on social transformation—an intellectual which he painted as an amateur; as an ‘exile’ inhabiting marginal spaces, who is driven by a spirit of intervention against oppressive status quos; as well as a moral witness who is endowed with the ability to publicly represent, testify for, and highlight those voices, and struggles whose narratives, realities and lives have been erased, or misrepresented, by those in power (Said 1996). In interpreting the writings of both these intellectuals in tandem in this book, I have endeavoured to make a case for the centrality of this role of the organic intellectual in both embodying Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis, and in affirming Said’s notion of the intellectual vocation as one that is never paralyzed by a sense of political defeat, but is conscious of the ever-present possibility of resistance on the ground (Said 2001). In other words, organic intellectuals possess the power to reformulate a losing battle within a larger struggle of resistance in a new, revitalized direction that rejects the idea that any cause is ever lost. In many ways, this is also one of the central affirmations behind Gramsci’s writings upon the war of position as a revolutionary strategy—one that can always be reformulated within an ever-continuous interlinked battle between the hegemonic and the counterhegemonic.

In this book I have striven to illustrate and analyse what I argue to be such a phenomenon of counterhegemonic resistance in the making. Thus, mobilizing key Saidian-inspired Gramscian concepts, I have endeavoured to paint a rare picture of the beginnings of the creation of a new conception of the world by interlinked blocs of organic intellectuals—and hence of a new historical force energizing the political possibilities on the ground. Through a critique of the more dominant neo-Gramscian approaches to Gramsci in IR, and a re-excavation of a Saidian Gramsci, I emphasized the revolutionary nature of philosophy in Gramsci’s writings, the inherent link between thought and action within it, and, as such, I attempted to revitalize this form of empowering Gramscian counterhegemony in the context of struggles for social transformation against oppression. In revitalizing this form of Gramscian resistance I also attempted to stress that counterhegemony itself is a long and difficult process that is never spontaneous. Rather, it is a struggle that begins with what can be described as a practice of ‘education for liberation.’ As such, in mapping the present-day single state movement, I presented an analysis of this practice in this book, and underlined the fact that alternative conceptions of the world must be built on contextualized grounds in a slow and ever-contested process.

It is within this context that I stressed that the single state movement should be conceived of as a reformulated war of position against the Israeli–Palestinian peace process in Chapter 2, after the failure of Arafat’s war of position to create a territorially viable two-state solution within its confines. It is also within this context that in Chapters 3 and 4 I argued that the single state movement revolves around the launching of a project of critical pedagogy by organic intellectuals within their own communities in order to transcend the common sense notions linking them to the status quo, in a process of mutual transformation and empowerment. It is in view of these processes that I also contended that this movement’s dynamics, strategies, and practices of resistance can most fruitfully be understood as a Gramscian form of philosophical movement (Gramsci et al. 1971) that begins within the level of the ethico-political and is aimed at the larger aspiration of creating a “reconstructive moment” (Eschle and Maiguashca 2005: 216).

Paralleling the above, I argued that the articulated anti-Zionist conception of the world animating the single state solution has arisen from within, and in opposition to, the dominant common sense of the present Israeli–Palestinian ‘peace process’, and the Zionist ideology of separation upon which it stands. In highlighting this interconnectedness, I attempted to demonstrate that the single state movement is both a reflection of, and an attempt at activating Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis. It is from within this premise that I argued that the single state intellectuals energizing this movement in the making are organic intellectuals who strive to begin with the common sense of their communities, in order to be able to transcend it with them in a mutually transformative process of empowerment. For, it is within this process that Gramsci argued the key to revolutionary praxis lies—as well as the ability to build a critical consciousness and an empowering, liberating alternative conception of the world that has the power to then become ‘life’. Following this particular Gramsci, I contended that this insurrectionary anti-Zionist alternative vision—along with its interlinked practices of resistance—contains within it the power to transcend the common sense notions of these intellectuals’ communities, de-linking their thoughts and action from within the hegemony of the present status quo.

Moreover, in stressing the level of the ethico-political, and the centrality of the formation and articulation of conceptions of the world within it, I re-centred the revolutionary nature of Gramsci’s writings upon philosophy in this book, and the role of the organic intellectuals within them as key energizing links between thought and action within their own communities. As such, I demonstrated the centrality of single state intellectuals in activating a Gramscian form of revolutionary praxis, and in launching a project of critical pedagogy as the vehicle through which social transformation must begin on the ground. Furthermore, staking that this point of beginning emerged out of an impulse to re-excavate an obscured image of Gramsci within the discipline. An image which contends that the beginning of the political desire to revolutionize possibilities on the ground, and lay the groundwork for the emergence of new political and civil societies, must be located in the transformation of people’s thoughts. As I illustrated in Chapters 3 and 4, this pathway towards revolution is one that is advocated by single state intellectuals as the most energizing way forward, and underlies many of their political practices of resistance today.

In this vein, I mobilized this image of a Saidian inflected Gramsci in this book to highlight that in a context where conceptions of the world take centre stage in the transformation of political possibilities, and igniting Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis, it is social forces that are defined by their modes of thought and action that are central. As such, as I illustrated in Chapters 3, 4, and 5, it is groups of people united by particular conceptions of the world here (as opposed to class) that take centre stage in the analysis of the emergent blocs and alliances of social forces countering the hegemony of Zionism. Of course, this emphasis was guided by the self-understandings and strategic political maps of the intellectuals argued to be central forces behind the re-emergence of the single state idea, and its building into a movement of resistance in the making.

Hence, remaining true to the decolonial Saidian-Gramscian framework outlined in the first chapters, the reconstructive analysis of this emerging phenomenon of resistance both centre and takes seriously the practices of counterhegemonic resistance themselves. In doing so, I tried to reassert Gramsci’s insistence upon the transformative power of the human being, and to underline the centrality of Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis in both the creation of revolutionary theory and reinvigorating the building of counterhegemony as a long-term process of resistance. This emphasis, and point of beginning, has influenced the overall picture of this book in two main ways. On the one hand, the intentional interlinking between thought and action within the single state idea—as the arena within which empowering social transformation should be located—has been a central influence behind my illustration of this movement in the making as a Gramscian-inspired form of counterhegemonic resistance centred upon the activation of a transformative programme of critical pedagogy. As I illustrated in Chapters 3 and 4, this is reflected within the practices, strategies, and self-understandings of single state intellectuals themselves. Hence, in both illustrating and analysing this phenomenon of resistance by recalling Marx’s thesis eleven, I tried to pay attention to the aspirations, self-understandings, and situated contexts of the re-emergent social forces within it, and their freedom to transform the world according to their own realities, desires, and self-understandings.

On the other hand, this decolonial emphasis upon the re-energizing of Gramsci’s philosophy of praxis within the larger arena of those writing about resistance in IR, simultaneously underlies my choice to begin from within, and highlight the contextualized realities, practices, self-understandings, and strategic maps of those involved in building the resistance itself. Hence, it is important to underline that much of the analysis I presented in this book began within a mapping of the struggles, self-understandings, and strategies of the intellectuals themselves argued to be central leaders and organizers within this movement in the making. In taking this different point of beginning, I attempted to be decolonial in my engagement with theorizing. Following Saurin, I have striven to organically link the decolonizing of knowledge on resistance with those struggling against the real structures and practices of imperial relations (Gruffydd Jones 2006: 219). Similarly, following Said, I have equally tried to rub the theorists’ nose back into “what Yeats calls the ‘uncontrollable mystery on the bestial floor’” (Said 2001: 84). However, in choosing this different point of beginning, it was not my intention to argue against the undeniable importance of the structures of domination present in a particular historical juncture in shaping resistance, perpetuating oppressive realities, and constraining social change.

Rather, the central impulse behind this shift of emphasis onto the political practices of situated activists struggling to create specific types of social change was an attempt to uncover alternative pathways to power and social transformation than those often imagined by most IR scholars to be the most fruitful. Thus, the choice to give the visions, practices, and mapped pathways to power of those struggling on the ground space and voice was driven by the potential therein for a more liberating picture of resistance and human agency to emerge in critical IR today. In the particular spirit of a decolonial critical theory, this endeavour must also be one that is created in dialogue with activists’ own situated knowledge of resistance—and built in tandem with an analysis of their experiences and practices of resistance itself—and not only carried out in abstract within the insulated corridors of academia. For, it is this dialectic that Gramsci argued was the key to revolutionary praxis. And yet, as I attempted to demonstrate in these pages, it is precisely this dialectic that appears to be lacking in many theoretical accounts of resistance in IR today.

In a different vein, the focus upon counterhegemony, and the highlighting of the centrality of common sense within my framing of this book, emphasizes that part of the struggle against common sense involves an active effort by organic intellectuals to widen the scope of dissent and create spaces of resistance where none had existed before. It is argued to be a strategy involving the geographical and intellectual conquest of diverse interlinked civil societies, turning enough of its institutions and associations into interlinked social forces within a rival historic bloc, championing a more just social and political reality. It is an educative, gradual process, and not necessarily one that starts from a terrain within which it has many followers. Thus, while it could be argued that the fact that the majority of Jewish-Israelis oppose a single state solution today presents a significant obstacle to the present single state movement—for Gramsci specifically, this is not an insurmountable obstacle. For, as many single state intellectuals point out, this struggle represents first and foremost a process of resistance that must be built within the strategy of a war of position. Thus, the central issue revolves around where to uncover the spaces from within which organic intellectuals can launch their counterhegemonic movement and create new constituencies and possibilities on the ground—not how large or small their pool of supporters happens to be within the present historical conjuncture.

The importance of this aspect of Gramsci’s revolutionary project within the single state movement is also reflected in the fact that, while single state intellectuals do think that it is important to debate what a future Palestinian state should look like, they have shifted this focus to the more urgent task of analysing where the potential for mobilizing a solution lies, what its obstacles are and whether or not this potential can be transformed into a powerful counterhegemonic movement aimed at reunifying the Palestinian national collective and creating an anti-Zionist historic bloc against Zionism and separation. This is done from within the premise that the single state movement begins with the assertion that the reality on the ground in Palestine/Israel is of a single apartheid state, and that it is Zionism itself that stands in the way of both a single state solution and a viable two-state solution. As such, in Chapter 4, I argue that the practices of resistance of the movement are most effectively seen through the lens of anti-Zionist practices against Zionism’s processes of separation.

In Chapter 5 I take this argument further, highlighting the centrality of the BDS tactic within the strategy of the single state movement, and of the BDS movement within its anti-Zionist war of position. Hence, I underline the importance of the BDS call within the single state movement’s goal of unifying the Palestinian national collective through the practice of resistance itself. In parallel to this, I argue that the mobilization of the BDS tactic within a framework that is centred upon the universality of human rights and international law and is not only aimed at unifying the Palestinian collective in an alternative movement centred within a rights-based approach underlining the centrality of democracy and equal citizenship for all in seeking a solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. Interlinked with this is also an attempt at highlighting the three-tiered apartheid system (Barghouti 2009b) of the Israeli state outlined by single state intellectuals, and the launching of a war of position within Europe and North America aimed at both breaking the taboo of critically engaging with Zionism and the nature of the Israeli regime itself—and mobilizing diverse personalities, institutions, groups, unions, companies, and ultimately states to oppose Zionism through the practice of BDS. Framed within a mobilization of a politics of solidarity that by its definition does not interfere within the arena of political solutions to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, I argue that this tactic is a powerful and potentially expansive channel through which the single state movement’s anti-Zionist war of position could continue to gain momentum and expand.

Similarly, in highlighting the divisions, tensions, and debates within the single state movement, in Chapters 3, 4, and 5 I have striven to stress the fluid, transformative nature within the process of creating Gramsci’s historic bloc itself. As such, I emphasized that while these tensions do not disappear or cease to exist, they are negotiated within the framework of a politics of solidarity that highlights the unified objective of countering an unjust reality of domination that is oppressing all the social groups involved within a counterhegemonic effort. Thus, it is the common principles underpinning an empowering politics of liberation that are highlighted in this process—and it is these principles upon which unified agreement that a more just world must be built is reached. In the context of the single state movement, this kind of politics is reflected in the initially tense divide between those who supported a secular, democratic state solution, and those who championed bi-nationalism. As I demonstrated in these chapters, in the process of forming a common anti-Zionist platform, these organic intellectuals would later declare this divide a false dichotomy, and embrace agreed-upon principles (rather than defined visions of solutions) as the basis upon which the unity of their struggle should be collectively waged (Abunimah 2009: interview).

However, in highlighting these divisions and tensions and the types of negotiations underpinning them, I have simultaneously underlined the weaknesses of the single state movement—and the obstacles it faces in becoming a counterhegemonic force from within this particular theoretical lens. As such, in Chapters 3 and 4 I stressed that while many single state intellectuals perceived themselves to be active members within a movement of resistance, some did not, and others did not think that there was a movement at all. Interlinked with this, I underlined the dilemma faced by many intellectuals within the movement in defining the exact boundaries or nature of their role in the realm of the more official arena politics—due to the fact that they have no official mandate to represent their constituencies; have yet to consider proposals to establish a joint leadership in exile, and hence form their own party (Pappe 2007b); or alternatively, to become endorsed by an officially established party or faction within Palestine/Israel and work from within such a platform to create a more grass-roots form of leadership from within the OPT. Similarly, and in view of these dilemmas, they have yet to decide to actively mount a challenge within institutions such as the UN (Karmi 2009) as a recognised joint Israeli–Palestinian alternative force to the PA and its continued participation within the Israeli–Palestinian peace process. As I argue further in these chapters, these weaknesses are linked to there being no consensus within the movement upon what kind of political force the majority of its members seek to transform it into becoming, and as such, through what kind of vehicle. This lack of consensus reveals that while the majority of single state intellectuals are comfortable in engaging in a unified transformative process centred around critical pedagogy and the creation of a counterhegemonic alternative to the form of two-state solution embedded within the peace process, there is hesitation on where to go from there due to a lack of desire to become a more conventional political party themselves, and a distrust (and opposition to) approaching the more official avenues of established Palestinian political power. Of course, this is linked to a daunting obstacle facing the movement in this context—that of the lack of unified Palestinian national leadership, and thus, the continued fragmentation of the Palestinian national collective. Hence, while one of the central objectives of the single state’s strategies and reformulations is the reunification of the Palestinian people through a new grass-roots leadership embracing its pathway of non-violent resistance, it remains a long way from reaching this goal. This remains an obstacle standing in the way of more significant mobilization of its alternative within the OPT. This reality is further exacerbated by the fact that the Palestinians under occupation remain one of the least involved segments of the Palestinian collective within the single state movement. Thus, it remains in many ways a movement that is powered, articulated, and mobilized for primarily from exile.

As I argued in Chapter 5, the single state movement tried to overcome these interlinked obstacles by sidestepping direct endorsement and promotion of a single state solution, and attempting to lay the groundwork for its emergence through the practice of BDS instead. And while in this chapter I stressed the expansive power of this tactic; the potential within it for creating space for new grass-roots forms of leadership to emerge in the OPT; and of building new forms of unified Palestinian resistance to counter both those represented by Hamas and the PA—the single state solution itself remains to be brought back upon the agenda as its endorsed political programme among all of its Palestinian and Israeli supporters. Thus, while my research finds that the single state movement has laid much of the groundwork required to become an expansive counterhegemonic force through this Gramscian-Saidian lens, it has yet to seize this expansive potential and direct it through a unified joint Israeli–Palestinian leadership officially endorsing a single state solution to the conflict. Similarly, while support for it has been on the rise in the OPT despite the fact that it is not represented as a solution within this context, there remains a need for the movement to mobilize mass support among this segment of the Palestinians—and for the alternative to have more concrete presence within the OPT in order for it to become a force that unites all three segments of the Palestinian people. To this end, single state intellectuals must address the obstacle presented by Palestinians within this segment who continue to support a separate independent Palestinian state, address their fears, and incorporate them within the transformative dynamic of negotiating a common unified anti-Zionist platform. One avenue through which to do this involves a concerted effort to both target and mobilize the younger generations of Fatah who are disillusioned with the PA and actively searching for alternative solutions centred on popular resistance—as well as members of Hamas who are sympathetic to the single state’s vision, willing to renounce a vision of an Islamic state, and to embrace BDS as a strategy of resistance. This, of course, applies equally to the younger members of all the factions within the OPT. In this way, single state intellectuals could continue to engage in the directive transformative activities they are most comfortable with, while simultaneously establishing a more grass-roots form of party from within the OPT that establishes them as a recognizable political force in this arena. This kind of strategy could complement their insurrectionary activities among Palestinian-Israelis, and the Palestinian Diaspora—and go a long way towards unifying the Palestinian people within an alternative resistance strategy that has more power to call for the dissolution of the PA, and bring down the Palestinian political elites still supporting the peace process. In the end, the expansive anti-Zionist counterhegemonic potential being presently built cannot begin to transform itself into a declared political force until the Palestinian people officially voice their support for a single state solution to the conflict, and force the PA to walk away from the current peace process. The actualization of the transformative power within the politics of solidarity framework built and energized by the BDS tactic is conditioned upon this premise, in order for it to truly become a tactic within a strategy that leads to a single state solution.

Appendix

Key figures in the resurgence of the single state solution (cited by the author)

Yasmin Abu-Laban is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Alberta. She is part of the Palestinian Diaspora. Her father was a Palestinian refugee from Jaffa, and her mother was an American of Scottish origin. She is both a Canadian and American citizen, who specializes in gender, ethnic politics, and citizenship theory, and has supported a single democratic state as an ideal since the 1980s.

Ali Abunimah was born in Washington, DC. His mother is from Lifta, and became a refugee in 1948. His father, a former Jordanian diplomat and ambassador to the United Nations, is from the West Bank village of Batir. Abunimah grew up in Europe. He is a journalist, a fellow at the Palestine Center in Washington, and a co-founder of The Electronic Intifada. He never felt that the two-state solution was just, but had accepted it as the most realistic solution. He publicly came out against it in 2003 and has been a vocal single state advocate ever since.

Abigail Bakan is Professor of Political Studies at Queen’s University in Canada. She is a Socialist and has always supported a single state in Palestine/Israel. She is also Jewish. Her parents were children of survivors of the east European pogroms and were raised in New York City in the USA. Like most North American Jews, Bakan lost her relatives in the death camps of the Jewish holocaust. Today, she is a prominent anti-Zionist Jewish activist in Canada, has been instrumental in forming Faculty for Palestine in solidarity with CAIA, and is an active member of several anti-Zionist Jewish groups in North America.

Omar Barghouti is an independent Palestinian researcher and a human rights activist, with a background in the philosophy of ethics. He is a Palestinian refugee who grew up in Egypt and now lives in Ramallah. Barghouti is a founding member of PACBI and Palestinian Civil Society’s BDS Campaign against Israel, and is an advocate of a secular democratic state in Palestine/Israel.

Azmi Bishara is a Palestinian-Israeli who was instrumental behind the founding of the National Democratic Assembly in Israel, which he represented in the Knesset. Prior to this Bishara was Head of the Philosophy and Cultural Studies Department of Bir-Zeit University. He has been instrumental in leading the re-emergence of the single state solution, and the debate upon equal citizenship and democracy among Palestinian-Israelis. Bishara has since been exiled from Israel as a result of his activities.

George Bisharat is Professor of Law at Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco. He is a Palestinian-American. His father was a Palestinian refugee from Jerusalem and his mother is American. He grew up in the USA. Bisharat is an influential commentator on the legal and human rights aspects of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and a human rights activist. He always supported a single state in Palestine/Israel, though the Oslo process convinced him to be open-minded towards the two-state solution. He is a prominent single state advocate today.

Haim Bresheeth is an Ashkenazi Jewish-Israeli. He is the Chair of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of East London, a film-maker and photographer. He is broadly socialist, a former Matzpen member and a prominent BDS and a single state solution activist.

Eitan Bronstein is an Israeli-Jewish activist for peace and coexistence in the framework of a single state in Palestine/Israel. He is the founder of Zochrot. He was born in Argentina, and moved to Israel at the age of 5 with his parents, as settlers on Kibbutz Bahan near the Green Line. Today he lives in Herzliya and is a director in the School for Peace in the mixed Arab-Jewish village of Wahat al-Salam near Jerusalem.

Uri Davis is an Ashkenazi Jewish-Israeli academic, human rights activist, socialist and anti-Zionist. He has written several pioneering books against Zionism. He was born in Jerusalem, is a British citizen, and considers himself a Palestinian-Jew. He is an Observer member of the PNC and supports a single state solution in Palestine/Israel along the lines of the Belgian model.

Leila Farsakh is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts who specializes in Middle East politics. She is Co-Director of MIT’s Jerusalem 2050 Project, and won the Peace and Justice Award from the Cambridge Peace Commission in 2001. She is part of the Palestinian Diaspora, was born in Jordan, and supports a single state solution in Palestine/Israel.

As’ad Ghanem is the Head of the Department of Government and Political Philosophy and Senior Lecturer at the School of Political Sciences in the University of Haifa. He is Palestinian-Israeli, and advocates for a binational single state in Palestine/Israel.

Jeff Halper is a Jewish-Israeli anthropologist and peace activist. He is an American citizen and grew up in Minnesota in the 1960s, where he was influenced by the civil rights and anti-war movements. He supports a single state solution in Palestine/Israel in the form of a federation, and is the co-founder and coordinator of ICAHD.

Ghada Karmi is a research fellow and lecturer at the Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies at the University of Exeter. She was born in Jerusalem, became a refugee in 1948, and grew up in Britain. She is a physician, an academic, a writer, and the author of several books on Palestine/Israel. She supports a single state solution and is a prominent activist within it.

Smadar Lavie is a cultural anthropologist specializing in Egypt and Palestine/Israel. She is currently Associate Professor at the University of Virginia. Lavie is a Mizrahi Jewish-Israeli, a feminist, and a member of the Mizrahi Democratic Rainbow Coalition. She supports a single state solution.

Malcolm Levitt is Professor of Physical Chemistry at Southampton University. He is a (non-observant) Jewish anti-Zionist who grew up in England. In 1981 he visited and lived in Israel, where he travelled extensively and did postdoctoral research at the Weizmann Institute. Today, he is part of a group of Southampton academics who support the single state solution, are linked to the London One State Group, and organize events around the idea.

Moshe Machover is Professor of Philosophy at the University of London. He is a Jewish-Israeli who was born in Tel Aviv, and moved to London in 1968 to become British citizen. He is an anti-Zionist socialist internationalist, and one of the founders of Matzpen. Machover was instrumental behind the launching of IJAN in London and supports a socialist single state in Palestine/Israel.

Mike Marqusee is a Jewish anti-Zionist British-American journalist and writer. He is an activist for social justice who has written books and columns on diverse topics, including, If I am Not for Myself: Journey of an anti-Zionist Jew. Marqusee was a trade union activist in his youth, as well as a member of the Labour party until 2000. He supports a single state solution in Palestine/Israel today.

Joseph Massad is Associate Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University, and the author of several influential books on Arab and Palestinian identity. He was Edward Said’s doctoral student and close colleague. Massad is a Palestinian refugee who was born in Jordan, is an American citizen, and a prominent single state supporter in Palestine/Israel.

Ilan Pappe is Professor of History and Director of the European Center for Palestine Studies at the University of Exeter. He is the author of several critically acclaimed books on the history of Palestine and the Israeli–Palestinian question. He is also a peace activist. Pappe is an Ashkenazi Jewish-Israeli (of German descent), who is an influential member of the resurgent single state idea, and supported a single state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict prior to Oslo.

Nadim Rouhana is Professor at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. He is Palestinian-Israeli, the Director of Madal al-Carmel, and an instrumental figure in both the drafting of the Vision Documents and the re-emergence of the single state solution among Palestinian-Israelis.

Eyal Sivan is an Ashkenazi Jewish-Israeli Reader in Media Productions at the University of East London. He is an award-winning film-maker, producer, and essayist. Born in Haifa, he grew up in Jerusalem and settled in Paris in 1985. He is broadly socialist, who supported a single state solution prior to Oslo, and currently lives in London.

Michel Warschawski is an Ashkenazi-Jewish Israeli. A Polish-French Rabbi’s son, Warschawski moved to Israel when he was 16 to study the Talmud. He is a socialist internationalist, a former Matzpen member, the founder of the joint Israeli–Palestinian Alternative Information Center in Jerusalem, and a single state supporter.

Khaled Ziada is a Palestinian activist from the Gaza Strip who was one of the founders or the London One State Group at SOAS, and is one of the most influential personalities within the SOAS Palestinian Society. He supports a single state solution to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and lives in London.

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List of interviews

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Bresheeth, H., 2008. Interview with Dr. Haim Bresheeth, Chair of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of East London. Conducted in London, April 24.

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Index

Abbas, M. 61–62, 168

Abnaa el–Balad (Children of the Land) 125–127, 132–133

Abu–Laban, Y. 113, 152, 180

Abu Sitte, S. 123

Abunimah, A.: on BDS movement 154; biographical sketch 180; on Diaspora Palestinians 114; Electronic Intifada and 134; on Hamas 111–112; on Oslo Accords 79–80; on Palestine Strategy Study Group 115; on single state movement 103, 108–110, 112, 131, 133–134, 136, 138

Adalah (Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel) 129, 130

Adorno, T. 6, 40

Africa Israel 166–167

AHAVA 162

Al–Ahram Weekly (newspaper) 76–77

Al–Aqsa Intifada 128

Al–Jazeera (television network) 85

Al–Jazeera English (news website) 136

Al–Shabaka 116–117

Alissa, S. 64–65

Allon Plan 51–53

Allon, Y. 51

Almstom 162–163

Alternative Information Center (AIC) 122–123, 167

American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) 155, 163, 168

Anarchists Against the Wall (AATW) 123–124, 131

Anghie, A. 8

Annapolis Conference (2007) 71n1, 72n6, 78–79

anti–Zionism: BDS movement and 155–161; critique of Zionism and 87–92; single state movement and 78, 86–87; as taboo 92–95

anti–Zionist Jewish–Israelis 73, 107, 118–125

apartheid 63, 95–97

Apartheid Israel (Davis) 95

Arab–Israeli War (1967) 21

Arafat, Y.: Oslo Accords and 1, 57–62, 64, 70, 82; Rabin and 52; Said and 22–23; war of position and 54–57, 74

architects 165

Ashcroft, B. 3

Ashrawi, H. 59–60

Auerbach, E. 15

Avnery, U. 84–85

Ayers, A.J. 5

Bakan, A. B.: on anti–Zionism 157–158; on BDS movement 150, 151, 152, 154, 159–160, 163; biographical sketch 180

Balfour Declaration (1917) 54

Barghouti, O.: on BDS movement 145–146, 147–148, 155, 156, 161–162; biographical sketch 180; on resistance 143; on single state movement 78, 106, 107, 113, 137; on two–state solution 95

Barsamian, D. 93

Baruch, I. 96–97

Basque Country 166

Bayoumi, M. 21

BDS movement: civil society and 144–145, 161–167

Begin, M. 52

Beginnings (Said) 21

Ben–Gurion, D. 99, 100

Benda, J. 32

Benevisti, M. 64

Benjamin, W. 6

Benvenisti, M. 94

Berger, J. 164

Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA) 85

Bishara, A. 100, 127, 129, 171, 180–181

Bisharat, G.: on anti–Zionism 95–96; on BDS movement 146, 147, 153; biographical sketch 181; on Hamas 117; as secular humanist 114; on single state movement 103, 108, 112

Bjork 165

Blaut, J. 7

Bolivia 167

Bono 165

boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement: as anti–Zionist war of position 73, 167–169; demands of 116–117; politics of solidarity and 151–155; role of Europe and North America in 155–161; single state movement and 86–87, 97–98, 138–139, 143–151, 153–155, 176–177, 178–179

Boycott National Committee (BNC) 148–150, 151, 152–153, 158–159, 169

Bresheeth, H. 88, 97, 119, 152, 181

British Committee for the Universities of Palestine (BRICUP) 154, 162

Bronstein, E. 81, 123, 181

Bush, G. 59, 71n1

Butenschøn, N. 50–51, 54–55, 62–63, 64, 72n6

Butler, J. 156, 164

Buttigieg, J.A 41–42

Cabral, A. 4

Camp David Summit (2000) 68, 72n6

Canada 150, 157–158, 159–160, 164

Canadian Union of Postal Workers 164

Caterpillar 163

“Challenging the Boundaries: A Single State in Palestine/Israel” (SOAS conference, 2007) 78, 79–80, 110, 121–122, 132

Chetrit, S.S. 99

Chrisman, L. 6, 30–31, 40

Christie, J. 165

Christison, B. 94

Christison, K. 94

Church of England 163

cinema 164–165

civil society: BDS movement and 144–145, 161–167; Gramsci on 37–39, 41–42, 44–45

Clinton, B. 70, 72n6

Coalition Against Israeli Apartheid (CAIA) 159–160

Coalition of Women for Peace 167

Cobban, H. 94

Cole, J. 85–86

collective intellectual 45, 107–108, 141n1

common sense: Gramsci on 42–46; Oslo Accords and 70–71, 80–83; Said on 42–46; Zionism and 70–71

conferences: BDS movement and 148–150, 161; single state movement and 95, 132–134; see also “Challenging the Boundaries: A Single State in Palestine/Israel” (SOAS conference, 2007)

Cook, J. 91

Costello, E. 165

counterhegemony: Gramsci on 2, 19–20, 40–42, 43, 45–46, 171–179; Said on 171–179; single state movement and 46–48

Counterpunch (journal) 93–94

critical consciousness 29

critical pedagogy: Gramsci on 19, 45; single state movement and 3, 20

“Criticism Between Culture and System” (Said) 25

“Cry, the Beloved Two–State Solution” (Shavit) 94

Culture and Imperialism (Said) 23–24

Danske Bank 166–167

Darwish, M. 98

Davis, U. 87, 88–90, 95, 181

de–development 64, 72n7

decolonial approach 3–9, 20, 45, 174–175

Decolonizing International Relations (Gruffydd ) 8, 14n1

Decolonizing International Relations (Saurin) 30

Democratic Party (US) 163

Denmark 166–167

Deutsche Bank 166–167

doctors 165

Dugard, J. 166

Edinburgh International Film Festival 165

Elbit Systems 166–167

Electronic Intifada (EI) 134, 159

Elia, N. 161

empowerment 172

Erekat, S. 85–86

Eschle, C. 2

d’Escoto Brockmann, M. 165–166

European Social Forum 161

European Union (EU) 79

exile 35

Faculty for Palestine 159

Faithless 165

Falk, R. 166

Fanon, F. 34

Farsakh, L. 111, 117–118, 138, 181

Fatah 102–103, 111, 117–118

Fonda, J. 165

Foucault, M. 23, 25–26

Free Gaza Flotilla 164

Freedman, S. 87–88

Fry, S. 157

Future Vision 129, 130

Galili, L. 90–91

Gavron, D. 94

Gaza Strip 65–67, 111, 127, 162, 165; see also Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT)

Geneva Accords (2003) 72n6

geography 23–24, 29–30, 35, 37–39

Germain, R. 15–16, 36–37, 38–39, 43

Germany 166–167

Ghandi, M. 86

Ghanem, A. 90, 91, 128, 129, 181

Glover, D. 165

Goddard, J.–L. 164

Gorillaz 165

Gouldner, A. 32

Gramsci, A.: on civil society 37–39, 41–42, 44–45; on common sense 42–46; on counterhegemony 2, 19–20, 40–42, 43, 45–46, 171–179; on critical pedagogy 45; decolonial approach and 4–5; on geography 23–24, 29–30, 35, 37–39; on hegemony 39–40, 70; on history and historic blocs 36–37, 45–46, 177–178; interpretations of 15–18; on life 20, 34, 36; on organic intellectuals 2–3, 19–20, 27, 31–35, 42–43, 172; on philosophical movement 74–75, 104–105, 173; on philosophy of praxis 20, 26, 29, 30, 35–42, 104–105, 173–174; Said and 4–5, 15, 17–18, 23–25, 26–46, 171–179; on war of position 30, 41–42, 45

Gramsci, A.: writings: Prison Notebooks 17–18, 19, 27–28, 31, 43

Greek Cinematography Center 164

Gruffydd Jones, B. 5, 6, 7–8, 14n1, 24

The Guardian (newspaper) 156–157, 162, 171

Gulf War (1990) 58

Haaretz (news website) 85, 90–91, 94, 96, 129, 136

Habitat International 158–159

Haifa Declaration 129–130

Haifa Film Festival 164–165

Halper, J. 94, 181–182

Hamas: BDS movement and 168; criminalization of 111–112; single state movement and 102–103, 117, 135–136, 140

Hand, M. 95

hegemony 12, 39–40, 70

Herzl, T. 87

Hijab, N. 97–98

Hilal, J. 56–57, 68

historic blocs: Gramsci on 19–20, 36–37, 45–46, 177–178; single state movement and 3, 177–178

Hoare, Q. 43–44

Hobsbawn, E. 157

Holst, J.J. 59

Holy Land Studies (journal) 134

Horowitz, A. 162

Hussein, S. 58

Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) 156–157, 160

India 164

intellectuals: Said on 22, 27, 31–35, 107, 171–172; see also collective intellectual; organic intellectuals

International Anti–Zionist Jewish Network (IJAN) 158–159, 160

International Court of Justice (ICJ) 145

International Jewish Anti–Zionist Network (IJAN) 122

internet 134

Irish Joint Committee on Foreign Affairs 166

Isaac, J. 66–68

“Israel: The Alternative” (Judt) 93

Israeli–Arab war (1973) 72n5

Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) 123, 124–125, 167

Israeli Communist Party (Rakah) 118, 126

“Israeli right, embracing one state?” (Abunimah) 136

J Street 163, 168

Jerusalem Light Rail project 162–163

Jewish Anti–Zionist Academic Network (JAZAN) 159

Jewish National Fund 158–159

Journal of Palestine Studies (journal) 9

Judaism 87

Judt, T. 92, 93, 156

Karmi, G. 114, 182

Kenny, M. 15–16, 36–37, 38–39, 43

Khleife, M. 101

Kiwan, M. 126

Klein, N. 156, 164

Kohr, H. 155, 168

Larsen, T.R. 59

Lavie, S. 99, 182

Lazare, D. 94

League of Nations (LON) 55

Leigh, M. 157

Levitt, M. 182

life 20, 34, 36

Loach, K. 164

London One State Group 79–80, 110

London Review of Books (journal) 93

Machover, M. 119–120, 122–123, 158, 182

Madrid Conference (1991) 59, 60–61

Madrid meeting (2007) 79–80, 87–88, 132–133

Maiguashca, B. 2

Mandatory Palestine 54–55, 90

Marqusee, M. 156, 171, 182

Marx, K. 5

Marxism 5–6

Massad, J. 82–83, 117, 182

Massive Attack 165

Matzpen 118–122, 125, 158

Middle East Quartet 79

Mitchell, G. 85

Mortensen, V. 165

Murphy, C. 16

Nabulsi, K. 68–70

Nakba 123, 130

The Nation (journal) 94, 163, 168

National Democratic Alliance (Tajamuu’) 127–128

New Left Review (magazine) 93–94

New Science (Vico) 28

New York Review of Books (journal) 93

The New York Times (newspaper) 76–77

Nicaragua 167

Norway 164, 166

Norwegian Civil Service Union 164

Not in Our Names, Jewish Voices Opposing Zionism 160

Nowell Smith, G. 43–44

Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT): Allon Plan and 51–53; BDS movement and 178–179; Israeli settlements in 84; Oslo Accords and 62–63, 65–67, 81, 83, 90; Said on 76; Sharon and 91; symbolic and strategic value of 50–53, 57–58

Olmert, E. 85, 90, 91–92, 167–168

“On Lost Causes” (Said) 171–172

“One Democratic State in Palestine/Israel” (Lausanne University conference, 2004) 95, 132

One State Declaration 79–80, 102, 131

“The One State Solution” (Lazare) 94

“The One State Solution” (Said) 76–77

The One–State Solution (Tilley) 84, 93

organic intellectuals: anti–Zionist Jewish–Israeli bloc as 73, 107, 118–125; divisions within single state movement 139–141; features and role in single state movement 106–110; Gramsci on 2–3, 19–20, 27, 31–35, 42–43, 172; Palestinian citizens of Israel as 73, 107, 125–130; Palestinian Diaspora, Palestinian Refugees and Palestinians under Occupation bloc as 73, 107, 111–118; single state movement and 2–3

Orientalism 99–102

Orientalism (Said) 3–4, 8–9, 23, 25, 29

Oslo Accords (1993): BDS movement and 145–146; circumstances of 49–57; common sense and 70–71, 80–83; consequences of 62–70; critiques of 75–78, 80–83; OPT and 62–63, 65–67, 81, 83, 90; Right of Return and 54; Said on 22–23, 49, 53, 75–78; two–state solution and 1, 57–62

The Other Side of Despair (Gavron) 94

Oxford Research Group 115

Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO): Abnaa el–Balad and 126; Barghouti on 137; BDS movement and 146; Oslo Accords and 57–62, 68–70, 82–83; Rabin and 52; recognition of Israel by 145; Said and 22; single state solution and 111; two–stage struggle and 72n5; two–state solution and 54, 56–57

Palestine Strategy Study Group 115–116

Palestinian Authority (PA): BDS movement and 98, 148, 168; Oslo Accords and 60, 64–68, 69–70, 82–83; Palestine Strategy Study Group on 116; single state solution and 85

Palestinian Campaign for Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) 161

Palestinian citizens of Israel 73, 107, 125–130

Palestinian Diaspora, Palestinian Refugees and Palestinians under Occupation 73, 107, 111–118

Palestinian National Council (PNC) 22–23, 54

Pappe, I.: on anti–Zionism 120; on BDS movement 98, 139, 147, 153, 154, 166; biographical sketch 182–183; on British government 54; on Oslo Accords 60, 67, 70; on partition plan 56; on single state movement 75, 77, 78, 92, 103–104, 121, 122, 132, 136, 140–141; on source of Palestinian tragedy 90; on two–state solution 84–85; on Zionism 87, 88

Paradis, V. 165

partition 54–56, 98–102

Peled, Y. 76, 84

philosophical movement 74–75, 104–105, 173

philosophy of praxis: Gramsci on 20, 26, 29, 30, 35–42, 104–105, 173–174; Said on 29, 35–42; single state movement and 106

Pinter, H. 156

Pixies 165

Postcolonialism 3–4, 5–7, 20, 24–27, 30–31

Powell, O. 66–68

“The Power of Utopianism” (Marqusee) 171

Press Action (Hand) 95

Prison Notebooks (Gramsci) 17–18, 19, 27–28, 31, 43

The Question of Palestine (Said) 22

Rabin, Y. 1, 52–53, 61, 70

Rakah (Israeli Communist Party) 118, 126

Ravid, B. 96

Raz–Krakotzkin, A. 52–53

“Regaining the Initiative: Palestinian Strategic Options to end the Israeli Occupation” (Palestine Strategy Study Group) 115–116

Rekhess, E. 129

Representations of the Intellectual (Said) 32

Rice, C. 79

Right of Return: Abnaa el–Balad and 126; Allon Plan and 51–52; BDS movement and 145, 146–147; One State Declaration and 80; Oslo Accords and 54; Palestine Strategy Study Group on 116; Tajamuu’ and 127–128; vision documents and 130; Zochrot and 123

Rose, H. 162

Rose, J. 156

Rose, S. 162

Rouhana, N. 129, 183

Route 181 (documentary film) 101

Roy, S. 72n7

Rubin, A. 6, 21, 25

Rupert, M. 20, 40, 46

Russian Federation 79

Ryan, M. 165

Said, E.: on anti–Zionism as taboo 93; on Arafat 82; on common sense 42–46; on counterhegemony 171–179; on criticism 21–22, 25–26; on Foucault 25–26; on geography 23–24, 29–30, 35; on hegemony 70; on intellectuals 22, 27, 31–35, 107, 171–172; on Oslo Accords 22–23, 49, 53, 75–78; on philosophy of praxis 29, 35–42; political awakening and positions of 21–24; Postcolonialism and 6, 24–27, 30–31; reading of Gramsci by 4–5, 15, 17–18, 23–25, 26–46, 171–179; single state movement and 23, 83–84, 114

Said, E., writings: Beginnings 21; “Criticism Between Culture and System” 25; Culture and Imperialism 23–24; “On Lost Causes” 171–172; “The One State Solution” 76–77; Orientalism 3–4, 8–9, 23, 25, 29; The Question of Palestine 22; Representations of the Intellectual 32; “Secular Criticism” 21; “Truth and Reconciliation” 76–77; The World, the Text and the Critic 22

Santana, C. 165

Saurin, J. 7–9, 30, 36, 38, 41

School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS, University of London) see “Challenging the Boundaries: A Single State in Palestine/Israel” (SOAS conference, 2007)

Scott–Heron, G. 165

Scottish Palestine Solidarity Campaign 158–159

“Secular Criticism” (Said) 21

self–determination 54–55, 69–70, 116

Sharon, A. 90–91

Shavit, A. 94

Sheizaf, N. 136

Shlaim, A. 52, 53, 59, 71n3

single state movement: anti–Zionism and 78, 86–87; anti–Zionist Jewish–Israeli bloc and 73, 107, 118–125; BDS movement and 86–87, 97–98, 138–139, 143–151, 153–155, 176–177, 178–179; collective intellectual and 45; counterhegemony and 46–48; divisions within blocs of organics intellectuals in 139–141; features and role of organics intellectuals in 106–110; goals of 1; Palestinian citizens of Israel and 73, 107, 125–130; Palestinian Diaspora, Palestinian Refugees and Palestinians under Occupation bloc and 73, 107, 111–118; as philosophical movement 74–75; points of inclusion and exclusion in 102–104; primary sources on 9–11; re–emergence of 78–80; reconstructive analysis of 1–2, 11–14; Said and 23, 83–84, 114; strategies of 131–139; weaknesses of 177–178

Sivan, E.: on anti–Zionism 120; on BDS movement 147; biographical sketch 183; on idea of a Jewish state 100; Route 181 and 101; on single state movement 84, 106–107, 109, 121–122, 135, 136; on Zionism 99

Six Day War (1967) 56

Smith, P. 126

SOAS (School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London) see “Challenging the Boundaries: A Single State in Palestine/Israel” (SOAS conference, 2007)

Sofer, A. 90–91

South Africa 95–97, 164, 167

Soviet Union 58

Sultany, N. 129

Sweden 164, 166

Taba Summit (2001) 72n6

Taha, W. 127

Tajamuu’ (National Democratic Alliance) 127–128

Tilley, V. 84, 89, 93, 132

Toronto International Film Festival 165

trade unions 163–164

“Truth and Reconciliation” (Said) 76–77

Turkey 164

Tutu, D. 166

two–state solution: Annapolis Conference and 78–79; critiques of 79; Oslo Accords and 1, 57–62; Palestine Liberation Organization and 54, 56–57; Pappe and Avnery on 84–85; UN Partition Plan and 54; as war of position 73–74

UN Partition Plan (1947) 54–56

Union of Arab Students 125

UNITE (UK) 164

United Kingdom (UK): BDS movement and 162, 163–164; Mandatory Palestine and 54–55, 90

United Nations (UN) 54–56, 79, 165–166

United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) 145

United Nations Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) 56

United States: BDS movement and 155–157, 158–159, 162, 164; Madrid Conference and 59; Middle East Quartet and 79

US Campaign to End Israeli Occupation 161

Usher, G. 57, 58–59, 61, 62, 63

Venezuela 167

Veolia 162–163

Vico, G. 15, 21, 23, 28–29, 31

vision documents 129–130

Walker, A. 164

war of position: Arafat and 54–57, 74; BDS movement as 167–169; Gramsci on 30, 41–42, 45; single state movement and 73; two–state solution as 73–74

Warschawski, M.: on AATW 124; AIC and 122–123; biographical sketch 183; on Matzpen 118–119, 120, 125; on student movement 126

Waters, R. 165

Weiss, P. 162

West Bank and Gaza Strip (WBGS) see Occupied Palestinian Territories (OPT)

Who Profits from the Occupation? (Coalition of Women for Peace) 167

Williams, P. 6, 30–31, 40

Wolfe, P. 89, 92

World Social Forum (WSF) 161

The World, the Text and the Critic (Said) 22

Wurmser, M. 100–101

Yiftachel, O. 90, 128, 129–130

Young, R.J.C. 4, 6

Zahalqa, J. 127

Ziada, K. 110, 152, 183

Zinn, H. 19

Zionism: common sense and 70–71; critique of 87–92; see also anti–Zionism

Zochrot 123, 132–133, 167

Zureik, E. 92