RE: THE COLONIZED

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>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.
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>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.

No anti-colonialist movement has ever succeeded without outside help.  The 
Palestinians are not entirely isolated.  indeed, as Khalidi pointed out in the 
interview you posted, it is the US and Israel which are isolated.  Most of the 
world sees the justice of the Palestinian cause.  However, the US sees at this 
point few consequences of being isolated on this issue.  This may change.  The 
US public's view of the situation may change. The US' current status as 'sole 
superpower' may also change--and competition between great powers is often 
fortitious for anti-colonial movements.
     I'm not sure nationalism or fundamentalism are the only options.  The 
Palestinians could argue that the communities in the occupied territories, the 
exile community, and the community within Israel are one community, done a 
serious injustice by Israel.  Their fate is thus linked to Israel, which owes 
them.  New ways of living together, with an awareness of the historical 
injustice done to one of the communities, could be forged.  This would be a 
different sort of state than a nationalist or fundamentalist one--but its 
solutions could speak to many other states, not least the US, which has a 
historical debt to a number of communities it has wronged.  The solutions of 
the past (one people, one state) need not be the only ones considered. As Said 
was saying, creative thinking is a must.

Steve Sherman


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>Khaldoun Samman