Palestine by Sumaya Awad

Author:Sumaya Awad
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Published: 2020-11-02T00:00:00+00:00

Palestine and the Arab Question

Ten years of upheaval in the Arab world have revealed many things about the region, its peoples, states, and governments. The events of the last decade have shown that there is in fact a common set of problems facing the Arab world, which allows us to speak of the region and peoples in terms of “the Arab Question.” The Arab Question is defined by a variety of interrelated issues or conditions facing the Arab people: issues of authoritarianism, development, citizenship, and sectarianism; the legacy of colonialism, the nature of the state, and the relationship between states and citizens; social and economic justice, access to resources, social rights and freedoms, and ethnic and religious minority rights; and the conflict with Israel and the destructive impact of foreign military and political interventions. These are all part of one matrix that determines the experiences of the majority of the people of the Arab world. Decades after Kanafani’s work, Palestinian intellectual Azmi Bishara has revolutionized the study of the Arab Question. The term “question,” which can be used interchangeably with “problem,” might not have a positive connotation in the minds of many. After all, for a long time, European and Western imperialisms have only evoked the terms “question” or “problem” as part of furthering external colonial and imperialist projects, as was the case with the “the Oriental question,” with regards to the fate of the Ottoman Empire, or in furthering internal colonialism and oppression within Europe, as was the case with the “Jewish question.”

But the discussion on the Arab Question in present times is different. Although Kanafani did not use the term “Arab Question,” his argument centered the Arab dimension as it related to the question of Palestinian liberation. Bishara’s work on Palestine and the Arab Question resituates the Palestinian cause in its Arab dimension. It is important to reiterate that speaking of an Arab dimension when it comes to discussing Palestine doesn’t take for granted the narrow notion that there is “only one Arab nation,” void of difference, richness, disagreement, or even different visions and ideas about sub-identities, world views, and so on. Samir Amin (who regrettably became an ardent supporter of Egypt’s Sisi) warns against this depiction of the region in such terms. For Amin, “the national reality of the Arab people is expressed in terms of the overlapping stages of a pyramid. The Pan-Arab dimension (Qawmi) is a reality. But the ‘local’ dimensions (Qutri) are no less a reality.”12

In the post-colonial and decolonization era, Arab states and intellectuals did not tend to separate the Qutri from the Qawmi. For them, an understanding of the complex relationship between overall Arab liberation within the broader Pan-Arab (Qawmi) dimension was not mutually exclusive with a focus on local issues and concerns. It wasn’t until Egypt’s Sadat surprised the Arab world with the peace deal with Israel, breaking away from the Arab consensus, backed by “intellectuals” who argued that the state of war with Israel drained state resources, and the only path forward was to pursue peace agreements with Israel.

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