The Israel/Palestine Reader

Alan Dowty

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781509527342, 9781509527335
• eBook ISBN: 9781509527373
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Introduction to any complex international conflict is enriched when the voices of the adversaries are heard. The Israel/Palestine Reader is an innovative collection, focused on the human dimension of the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian confrontation. Its vivid and illuminating readings present the voices of the diverse parties through personal testimonies and analyses. Key leaders, literary figures, prominent analysts, and simply close observers of different phases of this protracted conflict are all represented—in their own words.

From Mark Twain to Theodor Herzl, Gamal Abdul Nasser, Golda Meir, Anwar Sadat, Ezer Weizman, Ehud Barak, Marwan Barghouti, Mahmoud Abbas, Benjamin Netanyahu, John Kerry, and dozens of others, the firsthand narratives brought together in this Reader bring the conflict to life as seen by those closest to it. Though structured to complement Alan Dowty's introductory text Israel/Palestine (4th edition, Polity 2017), this Reader also stands on its own as a survey of "voices" in the conflict. Each of the ten chapters is framed by an editorial introduction that sets the pieces in context. By juxtaposing contrasting viewpoints both between and within the opposed parties, these pieces underline the drama of the conflict, while final judgment is left to the reader. This lively volume will add color and texture to any study of Arab–Israeli issues or of the Middle East generally.

Chapter 1
Two Worlds Collide

The origins of the modern Israeli–Palestinian and Arab–Israeli conflicts lie in the flow of Jewish settlers to Ottoman Palestine that began in the 1880s. These settlers—refugees by today's accepted international definition—were fleeing anti-Semitic attacks and official policies in tsarist Russia and elsewhere. Their aim was to renew a Jewish presence in the historic homeland that would not be subject to the will of others. This inevitably created a clash with the established Arab population, whose own historic roots in Palestine reached back well over a millennium.

This conflict is thus, in its essence, a conflict over the claim of two peoples to the same land. This immediately raises the issue of defining a “people” or a “nation” as a collective body that holds “national” rights to a certain territory, and then of determining whether Jews or Arabs meet this definition. At the outset neither side saw the other as a “nation” in this sense, and thus as a legitimate contender for territorial claims.

All of this was happening at a time when “nations,” particularly in Europe, were discovering or rediscovering their identities and nationalism was emerging as the most powerful political current of the time. Jews—particularly those in Europe—and Arabs—targets of European influence—could hardly fail to be touched by these ideas.

One of the classic definitions of nationhood was offered in 1882—the very year when the flow of refugees from Russia began—by Ernest Renan, a renowned French scholar. Renan's famous lecture on the issue (Reading 1) tests the various ways in which a “nation” might be defined and reaches conclusions that continue to be hugely influential in debates on this matter today.

Apart from the ideological context in which the conflict arose, the geographical context is also critical. European influence and presence in the Middle East, and in Palestine, grew apace during the nineteenth century; the Jewish influx was part of a larger picture. Western perspectives on Palestine during this period bear, of course, the marks of the huge gap between East and West. Travelers from Europe or America saw late Ottoman Palestine as desolate and backward; but they had few means to appreciate the changes that were taking place. A typical—and colorful—portrait was provided by Mark Twain after his visit in 1867 (Reading 2). On the other hand, Nu'man al-Qasatli, a traveler from elsewhere in the Arab world, had a much less negative view when he visited Jerusalem a few years later (Reading 3).

Further online resources:

1. The Origins of Modern Palestine in Ottoman Documents: https://palestinesquare.com/2016/02/09/the-origins-of-modern-palestine-in-ottoman-documents.
2. Napoleon Bonaparte's Letter to the Jews, April 20, 1799: http://jewishliberation.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/napoleon-bonapartes-letter-to-jews-in.html.
3. George Bush, The Valley of Visions; Or, the Dry Bones of Israel Revived (1844): https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3TbDDxRB_t4C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false.
4. Bernard Lewis, “The Ottoman Empire in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: A Review,” Middle Eastern Studies 1.3 (1965): 283–295.
5. Edict of Gülhane, 1839 (beginning of Tanzimat reform): https://eudocs.lib.byu.edu/index.php/History_of_Turkey:_Primary_Documents.
6. Ottoman Reform Edict of 1856: www.anayasa.gen.tr/reform.htm.

1.
“What Is a Nation?”

Ernest Renan*

EDITOR’S NOTE Ernest Renan (1823–1892) was a noted philologist and expert on Semitic languages, though this plays no part in the lecture presented here. He also published landmark studies in history and philosophy, including a life of Jesus based on a scholarly approach that attracted considerable attention. At a time when nationalism seemed to be in the ascendant, he simply asks: what makes a nation into a nation? Is it race, ethnicity, language, religion, common interest, geography—or some combination of these “objective” elements? Or is it something that resides much more in the realm of “subjective” factors, such as perceptions of the past or of imagined commonalities, which are not necessarily “real”? Renan's answer is remarkably consistent with many contemporary theories of nationalism and national identity.

What I propose to do today is to analyse with you an idea which, though seemingly clear, lends itself to the most dangerous misunderstandings. […] Race is confused with nation and a sovereignty analogous to that of really existing peoples is attributed to ethnographic or, rather, linguistic groups. […]

Since the fall of the Roman Empire or, rather, since the disintegration of Charlemagne's empire, western Europe has seemed to us to be divided into nations, some of which, in certain epochs, have sought to wield a hegemony over the others, without ever enjoying any lasting success. It is hardly likely that anyone in the future will achieve what Charles V, Louis XIV, and Napoleon I failed to do. The founding of a new Roman Empire or of a new Carolingian empire would now be impossible. Europe is so divided that any bid for universal domination would very rapidly give rise to a coalition, which would drive any too ambitious nation back to its ‘natural frontiers’. A kind of equilibrium has long been established. France, England, Germany, and Russia will, for centuries to come, no matter what may befall them, continue to be individual historical units, the crucial pieces on a checkerboard whose squares will forever vary in importance and size but will never be wholly confused with each other.

Nations, in this sense of the term, are something fairly new in history. Antiquity was unfamiliar with them; Egypt, China, and ancient Chaldea were in no way nations […] France, Germany, England, Italy, and Spain made their way, by often circuitous paths and through a thousand and one vicissitudes, to their full national existence, such as we see it blossoming today.

What in fact is the defining feature of these different states? It is the fusion of their component populations. In the above-mentioned countries, there is nothing analogous to what you will find in Turkey, where Turks, Slavs, Greeks, Armenians, Arabs, Syrians, and Kurds are as distinct today as they were upon the day that they were conquered. Two crucial circumstances helped to bring about this result. First, the fact that the Germanic peoples adopted Christianity as soon as they underwent any prolonged contact with the Greek or Latin peoples. When conqueror or conquered have the same religion or, rather, when the conqueror adopts the religion of the conquered, the Turkish system—that is, the absolute distinction between men in terms of their religion—can no longer arise. The second circumstance was the forgetting, by the conquerors, of their own language. […]

The crucial result of all this was that, in spite of the extreme violence of the customs of the German invaders, the mould which they imposed became, with the passing centuries, the actual mould of the nation. ‘France’ became quite legitimately the name of a country to which only a virtually imperceptible minority of Franks had come. In the tenth century, in the first chansons de geste, which are such a perfect mirror of the spirit of the times, all the inhabitants of France are French. […]

It is [only] by contrast that these great laws of the history of western Europe become perceptible to us. Many countries failed to achieve what the king of France, partly through his tyranny, partly through his justice, so admirably brought to fruition. Under the crown of Saint Stephen, the Magyars and the Slavs have remained as distinct as they were 800 years ago. Far from managing to fuse the diverse [ethnic] elements to be found in its domains, the House of Hapsburg has kept them distinct and often opposed the one to the other. In Bohemia [for instance], the Czech and German elements are superimposed, much like oil and water in a glass. The Turkish policy of separating nationalities according to their religion has had much graver consequences, for it brought about the downfall of the East. If you take a city such as Salonika or Smyrna, you will find there five or six communities each of which has its own memories and which have almost nothing in common. […]

If one were to believe some political theorists, a nation is above all a dynasty, representing an earlier conquest, one which was first of all accepted and then forgotten by the mass of the people. […] Is such a law, however, absolute? It undoubtedly is not. Switzerland and the United States, which have formed themselves, like conglomerates, by successive additions, have no dynastic basis. […] It must therefore be admitted that a nation can exist without a dynastic principle, and even that nations which have been formed by dynasties can be separated from them without therefore ceasing to exist. The old principle, which only takes account of the right of princes, could no longer be maintained; apart from dynastic right, there is also national right. Upon what criterion, however, should one base this national right? By what sign should one know it? From what tangible fact can one derive it?

Several confidently assert that it is derived from race. The artificial divisions, resulting from feudalism, from princely marriages, from diplomatic congresses are, [these authors assert], in a state of decay. It is a population's race, which remains firm and fixed. This is what constitutes a right, a legitimacy. The Germanic family, according to the theory I am expounding here, has the right to reassemble the scattered limbs of the Germanic order, even when these limbs are not asking to be joined together again. The right of the Germanic order over such and such a province is stronger than the right of the inhabitants of that province over themselves. There is thus created a kind of primordial right, analogous to the divine right of kings; an ethnographic principle is substituted for a national one. This is a very great error, which, if it were to become dominant, would destroy European civilization. The primordial right of races is as narrow and as perilous for genuine progress as the national principle is just and legitimate. […]

Ethnographic considerations have therefore played no part in the constitution of modern nations. France is [at once] Celtic, Iberic, and Germanic. Germany is Germanic, Celtic, and Slav. Italy is the country where the ethnographic argument is most confounded. Gauls, Etruscans, Pelasgians, and Greeks, not to mention many other elements, intersect in an indecipherable mixture. The British Isles, considered as a whole, present a mixture of Celtic and Germanic blood, the proportions of which are singularly difficult to define. […]

What we have just said of race applies to language too. Language invites people to unite; but it does not force them to do so. The United States and England, Latin America and Spain speak the same languages yet do not form single nations. Conversely, Switzerland—so well made, since she was made with the consent of her different parts—numbers three or four languages. […] Let me repeat that these divisions of the Indo-European, Semitic, or other languages, created with such admirable sagacity by comparative philology, do not coincide with the divisions established by anthropology. Languages are historical formations, which tell us very little about the blood of those who speak them and which, in any case, could not shackle human liberty when it is a matter of deciding the family with which one unites oneself for life or for death. […]

Religion cannot supply an adequate basis for the ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• 1  Two Worlds Collide
• 2  The Jewish Story
• 3  The Arab Story
• 4  The Emergence of Israel
• 5  The Reemergence of the Palestinians
• 6  The First Pass at Peace
• 7  The Fourth Stage
• 8  The Downward Spiral
• 9  The Impasse that Remains
• 10  The Perfect Conflict
• Index
• End User License Agreement