MANY young Palestinians do not see a two-state solution as politically possible, regarding it as a “smokescreen by Western powers and Israel to continue further colonising”, a Palestinian reconciliation activist told a gathering in London this week.
Delivering a lecture, organised by Embrace the Middle East, at St Martin-in-the-Fields, “Is there hope for the Holy Land?”, Daniel Munayer, the executive director of Musalaha, an organisation dedicated to facilitating reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians, said that, in the Palestinian context, hope had been “misused and abused”.
“For Palestinians to talk about hope during these times is absurd,” he said, given that organisations had classified what was happening in Gaza as a genocide. The title, echoing a question asked by international visitors, was “my least favourite topic to address. . . I ask myself, why do people need to jump to hope all the time? What about the reality of our suffering? Our need for justice? Why do you need Palestinians to be hopeful? It’s as if we always need something from the oppressed, to make us feel better.”
Those who followed the Palestinian struggle without taking action started to become “consumers of our situation”, he said. “When I become a product of your consumption, I am dehumanised in the process. . . Don’t jump to hope. We need to sit with the suffering and the disparity.”
Yet, he continued, “the despair of Palestine necessitates hope. . . Biblical hope declares that victory of the oppressors and oppression is temporary; that those who bomb, kill, rape, occupy, colonise, building walls, settlements, stealing land, will not have the last say. . . Hope must face the ugly reality that we live in. Hope is connected deeply to our struggle against injustice. . . Hope compels us to speak the truth.”
Hope also compelled the work of reconciliation, he said, “a reconciliation that is committed to the liberation of the oppressed . . . that puts the human need for freedom at the centre. If you don’t understand the Palestinian’s need for freedom, you haven’t understood our humanity.”
He warned: “If we don’t hope and if we don’t imagine, we are leaving hope and imagination to other people, to our oppressors.”
While cautioning that he could not speak for all Palestinians, he responded to a question by reporting that “People from my generation do not see the two-state solution as something politically possible any more, and the two-state solution is largely seen as a smokescreen by Western powers and Israel to continue further colonising. . . The real issue . . . is Zionist settlers dispossessing the indigenous people of Palestine. . . We need to think of political frameworks that have principles that respect the dignity of every human that lives in that area.”
The two-state solution raised questions about the fate of the two million Palestinians living in Israel, he said. “The current settlement, which says that only one group of people has the right to self-determination, is one of the root causes for the violence and turmoil.”
The work of Musalaha entails taking groups of Palestinians and Israelis to the desert, to begin a dialogue. All came from the starting point of opposition to the occupation, Mr Munayer said. “I think it is unethical to ask Palestinians to engage in such a programme if there isn’t this starting point.” Those who engaged risked being called “traitors” by their own communities.