via memeorandum
Martin Peretz (or perhaps Josh Patashnik) writes in review of a book “Army of Shadows: Palestinian Collaboration with Zionism, 1917-1948”
What we learn about the three decades after General Allenby conquered Jerusalem from the Ottomans was that the nationalist impulse among the local Arabs was not one impulse at all, but fissured and, in any case, intrinsically weak. The elites of the Arab Higher Commission sold their lands to the Zionists; many Arab professionals worked with the Zionists; many ordinary Arabs found deeper sympathy among the Jews than among their own effendi. So they did not much view their routine cooperation with Jews and Jewish associations as disloyal. Palestine Arab nationalism was a minority sentiment. It did not cohere and its cement, such as it was, was fear.
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Elder of Ziyon projects a straight line to the current situation
It is interesting that the same fear that Palestinian Arabs had in the 1930s against publicly opposing the Mufti exists today in a more institutionalized form: the death penalty for selling land to Jews, the threats against anyone wanting to co-exist with Israel, and the underlying fear that stops would-be critics from saying anything out loud, even extending to journalists who work in the territories.
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Israel Matzav draws a reasonable conclusion from this
His second sentence needs to be pointed out again and again to those who believe that the ‘Palestinians’ are going to wake up one morning and suddenly decide to co-exist with us. They’ve had more than a hundred years to change their tune and have given no indication of doing so.
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If the nationalistic impulse among the Palestinians wasn’t strong what factor or factors helped it coalesce into a more cohesive ideology.
Clearly the Six Day War played a role. Once the issue could be attributed to “Israel’s occupatoin” rather “Israel’s existence” it conferred a(n international) legitimacy to the movement.
Another possible factor is Israeli public opinion. The degree to which elite opinion in Israel advocates finding a solution to the Palestinian problem has also helped develop a more unified sense of Palestinian nationalism.
In other words Palestine Arab nationalism is a movement that derives some measure of its strength from external sources not internal ones.
Crossposted on Soccer Dad.
