Re: Said, the "iron cage", the "quartet"

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

At 8:13 PM -0500 10/18/03, LouPaulsen wrote:
> Yoshie writes of Dr. Edward Said:
>
> "Said was trying to tell us the need to break out of the iron
> political cage created by the quartet of Israeli and Palestinian
> political leaders:
>
> (A) Labor (the Zionist Left)     (B) Likud (the Zionist Right)
>
> (A') the Palestinian Authority   (B') Hamas, Islamic Jihad, & Other Islamists
>
> "Said's argument is that Palestinians and solidarity activists (in
> Israel, the USA, and the rest of the world) must break out of the
> iron political cage of the Israeli and Palestinian quartet,
> fostering principled alternatives to (A), (A'), (B), and (B')."
<snip>
> In the search of some chapter and verse about the above assertions I
> did a Yahoo search trying to find any use of terms like "iron cage"
> or "iron political cage" in Dr. Said's writing.  No luck.

Edward Said took a clear and consistent stand, whether you agree with
him or not:

*****   A REPLY TO ARAB INTELLECTUALS
Israel-Palestine: a third way

. . . I have been saying for twenty years that we have no military
option, and are not likely to have one anytime soon. And neither does
Israel have a real military option. Despite their enormous power,
Israelis have not succeeded in achieving either the acceptance or the
security they crave. On the other hand, not all Israelis are the
same, and whatever happens, we must learn to live with them in some
form, preferably justly, rather than unjustly.

The third way avoids both the bankruptcy of Oslo and the retrograde
policies of total boycotts. It must begin in terms of the idea of
citizenship, not nationalism, since the notion of separation (Oslo)
and of triumphalist unilateral theocratic nationalism whether Jewish
or Muslim simply does not deal with the realities before us.
Therefore, a concept of citizenship whereby every individual has the
same citizen's rights, based not on race or religion, but on equal
justice for each person guaranteed by a constitution, must replace
all our outmoded notions of how Palestine will be cleansed of the
others' enemies. Ethnic cleansing is ethnic cleansing whether it is
done by Serbians, Zionists, or Hamas. . . .

<http://mondediplo.com/1998/09/04said>   *****
--
Yoshie

* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/>
* Calendars of Events in Columbus:
<http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>,
<http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/>
* Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/>
* Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/>
* Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio>
* Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>


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