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Identity Matters: The Nature of Nations

July 19th, 2008
By JEB KOOGLER

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Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir once famously stated that there is “no such thing as a Palestinian people.”

Was she right? In what way can one judge the legitimacy of a claim to nationhood?



This entry was posted on Saturday, July 19th, 2008 at 10:17 am and is filed under Palestine. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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    I don't have a side this argument, Jeb, but are you aware that the constitutions of virtually every Arab-majority country has language affirming the unity of the Arab nation? You don't have to take my word for it--you can look it up for yourself. So there is a point there to be made.

    My own view is that both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian or Arab-Israeli if you'd prefer dispute need to take a day forward approach, taking the facts currently on the ground into account and only those facts. How they get to that point I have no idea.
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    Israel has the stronger claim and by real international law (exercising authority, developing the land, etc.) has a stronger claim in particular to disputed parts of the Territories. More troublesome is how many activists have decried nationalism and national self-identity since the 1960s (in favor of global collectivism such as having greater United Nations authority and progressing from there to a more complete world government) but hypocritically over-emphasize nationhood and a national self-concept for the Palestinian Arabs than they themselves have ever conceived or have to this day, and have exploited this nationalism often for sinister purposes (directed against Israel), eerily similar to how Hitler abused nationalism as one pretext for territorial acquisition and expansion.
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    "the unity of the Arab nation"

    That is, not nation-states as we in the West see it but pan-Arabist thought that continues to this day (exploited by, for example, Saddam Hussein in the past).
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    As for the Palestinian Arabs, there is no real nation-state concept held by many of them; they just want the land themselves rather than for Israel and they want to expel Israel from the Mediterranean shores completely. Note that in addition to any larger-scope Arab thought there are local ties by the Palestinian Arabs to the land. Why? Anyone who has been in the western USA and traveled west of the Pacific Crest knows why, in particular. The west side of the crest, on the Mediterranean side, is the wetter side, more suitable for agriculture and for _living" than the east side of the crest (in the desert). Given a choice most would prefer to live on the west (wet) side. (and north versus south if possible)

    http://www.stockmapagency.com/zoomify.asp?name=...
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    This sounds to me like a political argument of convenience rather than an honest effort to understand the concept of nationhood. As I see it, the existence of nations is fundamentally determined by who owns or controls the land within its boundaries, regardless of how those boundaries came about. or how vaguely the boundaries are drawn. Niether does it depend on what national institutions are in place. Who is the propietor determines what is the nation.

    A sense of propietorship, in turn, can come about in many different ways: by being the residents on he land (American Indians) by their rulers (medieval European royalty) or by militarily stronger outsiders (colonists or invaders).who take the land by force.

    Once the bond between an area of land and a people is forged, however, it' can't be broken by merely losing controll over it. For American Indians, their lands and territories of occupancy still define their sense of nationhood even as that sense intertwines with US cntrol The Baltic States never lost their sense of nationhood even though the USSR had complete control for 50+years.

    The Palestinians clearly bonded with the lands and property they occupied and/or controlled and thus, a sense of nationhood (propietorship) was born.
    Unless a universal Solomon appears, there is no universal way to define which claim to nationhood is superior to which, if any superiority even exists.

    Wars, multi-occupancy lands and political manipulation produce a great deal of confusion and conflict. Solutions must be either brute force or political accomodation. China took Tibet by brute force, which is a solution of sorts, but is it a legitimate one? At present, only China thinks so.

    Identity is quite another, though equally comnplex, question. People do develop nationalistic idnetities, but often that comes chronoloigcally later than tribal identities or identifying with the land of occupancy.

    As borders change, cross-border tribal identities still persist and cause friction.
    The Kurds have both tribal and cross-border territorial identities, in addition to those also self-identifying as Iraqis or Turks. Multi identities are common.

    It's a very complex, multi-layered story, and simplifying by arbitrary rules of legitimacy only distorts and confuses further. It does not clarify.
    At least, so it seems to me.
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    'virtually every Arab-majority country has language affirming the unity of the Arab nation?"

    But what does an 'Arab nation' mean? The UAR didn't last very long, so that's not a guide. .Is it a territorial, cultural, ethnic or legal concept? Is it geogaphical or spiritual or just symbolic?

    When Palestinians or Iraqis end up in Syria or Jordan, they're not accepted as fellow citizens of an Arab nation. To the contrary, there are laws obstructing their integration in these adoptive countries.
    If an 'Arab nation' has no meaning for the Palistinian or the Iraqi, then what meaning is there?
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    Please look at the title of this post. If you don't like the idea of an “Arab nation”, then please propose a definition of nation that you do like. Contrariwise, if you prefer a legalistic definition then by defiinition there is no Palestinian nation.
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    The arab nation concept has always been somewhat vague and probably analogeous to the European Union. Yes people are members of the EU but first and foremost they are French, German etc. The same is true in the mideast where language dialects make arabic much less communal as a spoken language than written, similar to Mandarin and Cantonese in China. As time passes, nationalistic goals and cultures start to dominate. The Saudis and Egyptians are both arab but neither one can stand the other. Lebanon is arab but the people do not identify with the concept of an arab nation. The same is true with the Gulf States.

    The whole concept of an arab nation, while still honored at government levels, has no real hold on the people. If you want to look at a weak anachronistic organiization, see the Arab League. Thier identity as Muslims is stronger than arab or persian. America is part of Western Civilization but our identity is the good old USA.- not the rest of western nations like Europe except in vague terms.

    Land, tribe and common culture engender the spirit of nationhood. By those concepts, the Palestinians are a nation. Fighting Israel has forged a common identity and purpose amoung the Palestinians. If Israel wants to keep the land and make a second state unviable then they have to give the Palestinians citizenship. Israel has a simple choice to make, one that they have steadfastly avoided.
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    Dave Schuler,

    It isn't a question of what I,or anyone else, likes or dislikes.
    I happpen to believe., as I tried to explain, the the idea of 'nation' can be arrived at in many different ways, and, therefore, can mean different things to different people.. Palestinians and Israelis have never been the only ones who have defined 'nation' according to their own experience of it

    A legalistic definition is one way to look at it, but what is a legal nation one year (Yugoslavia, etc.) can cease to exist the next., while new legally defined nations spring into being. (Slovenia, Montenegro). I conclude, then, that a legal definition is often not a dependable indicator for determining how a nation springs up or how it survives It's a geographic snapshot at a fixed point in time and in legal parlance.
 
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