THE COLONIZED

THE COLONIZED PEOPLE (Who are they)
Khaldoun Samman

I would like to raise the issue about the similarities the Palestinians 
have faced with that of other "colonized" peoples.  First, as many
have already argued, there seems to be a strong resemblance
the Palestinians are undergoing with that of the American
Indians.  In all the dimensions the similarities run deep, everything 
from the appropriation of land ("they were a nomadic, tribal like
people with no history of productivity & creativity) to the Biblical
narrative used to justify that conquest of land.  

But one of the questions I have been lately thinking about is how
unexceptional this has been to the history of the modern world.
Indeed, it has been one of the most consistent themes over the
past five centuries or more.  In just about every region and period
the biblical account has been used to justify the conquest of
land of others, in the Spanish and Portuguese colonization and 
settlement of Latin America, in the "white" settlement in South 
Africa, in the Ulster-Scot Partitioning of Ireland . . .

What struck me most is that this structure of thought was built over 
time not only for the purposes of colonizing some far off lands, but in 
the national consolidation of states all over the world, from European 
States to the Arab regimes themselves.  Of course, the texts cited for 
this project in all these cases varied, but all came from the same cast 
of mind: the creation of states over a fixed territory defined as the land
of a particular people.  And in all these cases the myths of history were 
deployed: the Hittites for Syria, the Pharaohs for Egypt, the Babylonians
for Iraq, while the British and other Protestant "nations" preferred the 
Old Testament texts.

In all these cases, the indigenous people were given the choice to either
join the nation or face extermination, either physically (genocide) or 
culturally (forced assimilation).  In many of these instances (the Jews
of Europe, the American Indians of the US, the Palestinians of Israel,
the Kurds of Iraq and Turkey. . .) were not permitted a choice, even though
formal "emancipation" laws were passed.  They were the quintessential
"other," the outsider that under no circumstance will be allowed into the
new Covenant.  

The latter are the ones that tend to "stick" and seem never to be resolved.
They are the ones that never seem to go away, and that is simply
because the only way they can disappear is if the overwhelming power
of the colonizer deploys, in a massive effort, a military strategy of total 
defeat.  But usually this rarely seems to accomplish a total victory.

That is why the nationalism of Palestinians will not go away, no matter
how much many of us wish to transcend this strategy.  They are, thanks
to the Israelis, stuck with this strategy, physically in so far that they
are being herded like sheep into ever smaller territory.  Indeed, their
only other options besides this nationalist one is to appropriate Islamic
themes, the "Al-Aqsa Intifada," the protectors of Islamic sacred sites...

To some of us this may seem a weak option, one which will surely not
gain a positive response from other key areas of the world, but what
hope is there really in expecting the US or Europe to all of a sudden
turn away from its own histories of colonizing to become involved in
a campaign to aid "just another colonized people"?  Admittadely, there
are people here (US) and elsewhere who, if they had the power to make
a difference, would intervene on behalf of Palestinians as they had 
effectively
done in the case of South Africa and Vietnam.  

But honestly, "the left," when it comes to the Muslim and Arab world, 
are generally a poor candidate for this job, themselves internalizing much
of the "orientalist" conceptions of the Palestinians as their oppressive
regimes.  And when it comes to the Arab regimes, well, they are themselves
part of the arsenal, a colonizing group of states that in the end serves not
its people but those in positions of power, locally and globally.

So if you are Palestinian what do you do?  The guns are pointed at you,
the helicopters are swarming over your heads, the settlers equipped to kill,
the Arab regimes are repressing your people in their own territories, the
US desiring to keep its "Jewish" friend for its own reasons.  You either
become another people run into the ground or you pick up the nearest rock
and throw it as hard as you can with the hope of creating a little place
you can call home, PALESTINE.  Sometimes options are limited, and
what we have today is a people fighting for the right to live, to breathe 
the air, to have access to clean water, to plant and pick their olive trees,
and if the world is stacked against them then they have to do it by
themselves, as a Palestinian people.

Khaldoun Samman