I’m stupidly busy, but will get some posts up over the next day or so, and just had to get these stories posted for comment and some thought.
I’ve said in the past that I’m not ready to support a Palestinian state, not out of a belief that Arab Palestinians aren’t worthy of having a state, but because one of the preconditions of statehood, I believe, is at least the approximation of a monopoly on the use of force. I quoted Max Weber:
…the right to use physical force is ascribed to other institutions or to individuals only to the extent to which the state permits it. The state is considered the sole source of the “right” to use violence.
Today’s Jerusalem Post has an enlightening story:
Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, said the Palestinian Authority should stop talking on behalf of all Palestinians. “A certain group should stop playing with the fate of the Palestinian people,” he said. “There should be partnership in making fateful decisions, and this partnership should be based on the centers of power in the Palestinian street. We must respect the opinion of the Palestinian street.”
“Israel understands only the language of violence and what we are doing is aimed at liberating the land, ousting the occupation and preserving the holy sites. We can’t accept a hudna similar to the one we had in June. The Palestinian people want their freedom and independence and Israel must pay the price for a hudna by halting the construction of the fence and settlements.”
“Our final response is that we are not ready to declare a new ceasefire,” said Muhammed Nazzal, a member of the Hamas delegation to the talks. “Hamas rejects the hudna and won’t accept it, because our reading of the current political situation shows that the Americans and the Zionists are in deep crisis because of the continuation of the resistance in Iraq and Palestine.”
He said there was a wide gap between Hamas and Fatah on the shape and content of the proposed truce. “This is a very big issue concerning the future of the Palestinian people,” Nazzal said.
So, in case you’re wondering when I do my post later on the Israeli settlements, why it is that I don’t call for the immediate formation of a Palestinian state. It has nothing to do with this statement from the same interview:
Hamas founder and spiritual leader Ahmed Yassin has told a German magazine that a Jewish state could be established in Europe. In interview excerpts slated for publication on Monday in Der Spiegel, Yassin opposed a two-state solution in which a Palestinian state would coexist next to Israel.
“That would not work,” he said. “The Israelis claim 80 per cent of the territory and will only let us have 20 per cent. It would only be an interim solution.”
Asked if there was no place at all for a Jewish state, he said, “They could set up a state in Europe.” Yassin also rejected the Geneva Accord, which was hammered out between Israeli politicians and Palestinian representatives. “That plan is worse than the Oslo one, because it abandons the right of return for the refugees,” he said.
On a more local front, an interesting article in the regional section of today’s L.A. Times (intrusive registration, use ‘laexaminer’/’laexaminer’):
Taking the Intifada to the Football Field
What could be more American? Dozens of young men in Orange County have planned a football tournament for the New Year’s weekend in Irvine.
But this gathering of Muslim American athletes on the gridiron – they say a first for Southern California – is being flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct by religious leaders dismayed by some of the team’s names.
Monikers for the flag-football teams include Mujahideen, Intifada and Soldiers of Allah and are accompanied on the league’s Web site, http://muslimfootball.com, by logos of masked men, some with daggers or swords.
There’s a dialog going on about it within the local Muslim community.
An organizer of the Jan. 4 event, geared for American Muslims in their teens and 20s, said the names are a sign of football bravado and a show of support for Muslims in the Middle East.
“A lot of the kids on our team are from Palestinian origin,” said Tarek Shawky, Intifada’s 29-year-old captain and quarterback. “We are in solidarity with people in the uprising. It’s about human rights and basic freedoms.”
“I think they should be more sensitive and show respect to other people’s sensitivities,” said Muzammil Siddiqi, director of the Islamic Society of Orange County and a national Muslim leader. “The words themselves do not have bad meanings, but people associate them with what’s going on in the world around them.”
Personally, I’m more than a little tired of the culture of sensitivity that we live in. That means that while I’m not happy with the names, and less happy with the political statements being made by the youth who have chosen them, it’s not a terribly big deal.
I will, however, wait with bated breath for Jackie Goldberg to weigh in on the need for cultural sensitivity.
It won’t happen. Because offense can only be taken by the powerless, of course.
Just a disclaimer: Weber’s definition of the state isn’t the only one out there, and rather conspicuously runs contrary to the fundamental principle the US was founded on: That all rights and powers originate with people, and are merely delegated to the state to such extent, and for so long as, it serves the people’s interest to do so.
In particular, Weber’s definition of the state would preclude any recognition of one of the most basic of human rights: Self defense. It’s not a privilege the state choses to extend to the people, it’s one of those rights the state exists to safeguard. It would be no exageration to say that any state Weber recognized as legitimate would FAIL to be legitimate by the standards of the Declaration of Independence.
Brett, Weber’s definition is far richer than my snippet suggests.
But to speak to your two points.
We in our republic have defined what violence may be done by citizens and agents of the state, and while the power those agents have comes from we, the citizens of the republic, they nontheless are the ones who make the decisions as to what is an approvable use of force and what isn’t.
And it is clear that self-defense is a right that is supported here in the U.S. (as opposed to, say, the U.K.); we the people, through the mechanism of the state leave a space for violent action by individuals in their own self-defense. Those actions will still be judged by agents of the state (see Ayoob).
Some people hold that constructs of statehood other than this are somehow illegitimate; I’ll suggest that they may be legitimate – because of history or custom – but that ours clearly works better.
A.L.
A.L.,
Your problem is the Chamberlin problem. You want to make a deal with people who can only be defeated.
The solution is not land for peace. It is to move the stupidstinians to Jordan where the goverrnment has a history of dealing effectively with the Palestinian problem. Kill 20,000 if they cause trouble.
In this case, the monopoly on force, particularly external use of force, is necessary (though perhaps insufficient). Any one of many cross-border terror attacks that have been staged from the West Bank would have been a casus belli, were there a Palestinian state at the time. Anyone care to guess the elapsed time from Palestinian statehood to legitimate invasion and conquest by Israel, if the monopoly of force issue is not settled in advance? A matter of a few weeks, on precedent.