Hamas, Anarchism, State(s)
George Salzman has assembled a number of thought-provoking pieces about the Hamas election victory on his Website of an Anarchist Physicist, where he posts on a range of topics from his homes in Boston and Oaxaca, Mexico. His new blog will likely come to reflect those topics as well. Calling this page on Hamas Out of the box! Towards humane survival, George has this to say:
The January 25th Palestinian vote carried a strong message to all who would listen. But for those of us ready to listen, to whom ought we turn for our understanding of the meaning of the vote, of its possible consequences, and how we might try to influence what will happen? Responses range from extreme pessimism to extreme optimistic hopefulness. Interestingly enough, the most optimistic and hopeful view I’ve yet read is expressed by a mature Jewish anarchist who has clearly managed to “free [himself] from this prison . . . [this] delusion of … consciousness” of which Einstein spoke. His inspiring essay, rich with references that I still want to pursue, is the principal part of this posting. I highly recommend Bill Templer’s article.
Among the many responses to Hamas’s sweeping electoral victory is the relatively brief assessment of Dr. Eyad El Sarraj, psychiatrist and founder and director of the Gaza Community Mental Health Center (GCMHC)….
I’m not much more, I would say, than hopefully optimistic that the United States government is becoming more and more hated and isolated and that as its attempt to build a global empire falters and collapses, its support for the government of Israel will be greatly reduced, which will undercut and end the project of colonial conquest of the Palestinians. As I see it, transitions of this kind will not happen without fundamental changes in the world social structure. As long as the major capitalist forces currently spearheaded by the U.S. try to maintain control over the Middle East, and Israel remains allied with and serving those interests, the torment will continue. I believe it will be necessary to break out of the prison of false consciousness — the prison built of beliefs in nationalism, capitalism, privatization of wealth, the notion of technological solutions for social problems, the inevitability and desirability of hierarchies of power, privilege and the class divisions they imply, and the existence of real, deep differences (not just cultural) between different groups of human beings.
Here then are the thoughts and feelings of several people, not so-called “great leaders” but ordinary every-day people who experienced and reacted to the Hamas electoral victory in various ways.
Bill Templar’s detailed article, reprinted by Salzman, covers a lot of ground. One section:
If the “‘two state solution’ has been all but killed off by the very powers who today claim to be supporting it, primarily Israel and the U.S. [and] the fictitious ‘Road Map’ is as much on life support as is Ariel Sharon himself”, perhaps other options can begin to be envisioned and pragmatic steps taken toward their realization. Many foresaw that the Oslo agreement would not bring stability to the region because it spelled Palestinian capitulation to colonization, no settlement freeze, the continuation of apartheid within Israel and across the West Bank and the de-Arabization of Palestine. Adam Hanieh notes: “The Hamas victory helps to dispel the myths surrounding the negotiations of the last decade. The Palestinian population of the West Bank and Gaza Strip has overwhelmingly stated that these negotiations have merely been a cover for the deepening of Israeli apartheid”.
Whatever the prevailing ‘two-state fantasies’ in the pipeline, none can provide a lasting just solution to the intractable impasse in Palestine. The populations are too massively intertwined (1.3 million Palestinians live in Israel, and 450,000 Jews in the West Bank), the physical geography of water and transport militates against it. The apartheid nature of the Israeli ‘ethnocracy’, marginalizing its large Arab citizenry, cries out for radical change and civil equality within Israel. Moreover, both peoples’ identities and national meta-narratives are now interwoven with the total area of historic Palestine, most especially that of Hamas. In a unitary state, those narratives would move to revision. The very upending of old structures and command networks on both sides of the divide signaled by the Hamas breakthrough at the municipal level (and Sharon’s demise) may open up new wormholes in anti-state space. …
Can we imagine ordinary people working together to build a single democratic state for all Palestinians and Jewish Israelis, one democratic polity, its citizens living in ta’ayush (solidarity) and full equality? Sound totally utopian? This is the concrete vision of the Palestinian peace activist Mazin Qumsiyeh, as laid out in a powerful article in 2005. The compelling 2004 Olga Appeal by a group of non-Zionist Israeli intellectuals is also in this spirit.
Virginia Tilley’s comprehensive and incisive study The One-State Solution (University of Michigan Press 2005) is illuminating. Though a concrete political anti-capitalist pathway forward to that new symbiosis is not projected, her overall description of the present dead-end and pragmatic argument for one unitary polity in Palestine is cogent. The book deserves wide discussion.
February 21st, 2006 at 7:50 pm
A two state solution is idiotic, both in its impracticality and its unfairness. The one democratic state you mention is the only possible solution. Of course, that requires an end to United States insistence on the “defense” of Israel.