Re: AUT: de- and re-territorialization

[topp8564@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

On 20/10/2002 8:05 PM, "Scott Hamilton" <s_h_hamilton@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>
> So where is the Palestinian proletariat Peter? Please
> let me know when you locate them on your map. In the
> meantime, I'll settle for the ones shouting 'Free,
> free Palestine' and confronting Israeli tanks with
> small arms. Bloody leftists, eh?


They would be in the holy land, which is easily recognisable because it is full
of bullet holes.

I think it is a pretty serious failure of imagination to think that a free
Palestine should take the form of a Palestinian nation-state. It just clearly
cannot take the form of a chauvinist Zionist nation-state. "Free Palestine"
could be a very radical idea, if you chose to push it.

But it would also be a big mistake to neglect the fact that some form of
statehood is the quickest way to achieve what Palestinians desire. At a
pragmatic level this includes passports, return to their homes, safety, etc...
There is no reason I can see why these could not be achieved within the
framework of statism. I don't regard these are retrograde steps either.

Although I am very much inclined to agree with Peter in this matter, I think
that it is important that we make our case particularly strongly if we are to
tell the Palestinians that they should not fight for a state, that they rather
wait for some cosmic event which will free everyone everywhere all at once. The
argument that a Palestinian state would surely be in the bottom of the rubbish-
heap of nations is small potatoes, given that the property and civil rights
afforded by such junk-nations as East Timor or Liberia would be vast
improvements on the current situation in the occupied territories. Another
important reason is that as non-Palestinians we don't get harmed very much if
what we tell them to do happens to be catastrophically wrong. If we are going
to argue that something more than a nation state is needed to free the
Palestinians, we'd better make the case very tightly and we better not fuck it
up. Telling them to wait for the millennium is really not on.

Ah, but the ironies mount! Mr. Hamilton, of course, is the guy who only a
little while ago got stuck into me for supporting the Australian liberation/
conquest of East Timor. Now he wants a nice state in Palestine. Well, all I
have to say is: what is the fucking difference? In one instance it is
foreigners in another it's not. Big deal? It's some pretty magical thinking at
work here: the magical force of the brown people's agency vindicates anything
they do, specially if it conforms to our ideas of what a national liberation is
supposed to be. Yet the state of affairs to be brought about by such liberation
is unlikely to be very different from that now obtaining in Timor Leste; in
fact, I know Palestinians who envy their fate....

Thiago



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