When I joined this board there was a poster called David 2004 (I think he joined that same year). As far as I know he posted only about the IP conflict and his threads presented details of a future palestinian state. His ideas for a palestinian state were so incredibly detailed, so academic that no one could believe he had came up with them by himself so everybody searched the Net trying to find the source to no avail.
After I read 10 or 12 of his threads I felt sorry for the guy and decided to explain to him why his plans were a terrible waste of time. I started by comparing the South African and Palestinian identities:
What's the origin of the South African national identity?
Why do the black people of South Africa today identify the territory of South Africa as their historical homeland if their ancestors fought like lions to prevent the white invaders from creating the country in the first place?
When the white settlers arrived in South Africa they found a native population that had no concept of nation states, national boundaries. Their homelands were the territory inhabited by their clans, tribes or kingdoms.
It was exactly the 3 century-long war against white colonialism and supremacism that created among the diferent bantu peoples of South Africa a sense of shared history, a sense of belonging to a single south african people, a sense that the national boundaries of South Africa, established by the white colonists by force, against their will, had, ironically, become the limits of their new homeland too. The fight against dutch and english colonialism and supremacism is what distinguishes the black population of South Africa from the african people of neighboring countries, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, etc...
Without white colonialism and supremacism this sense of belonging to a single people, to a new homeland with new frontiers would never have developed. Instead of South Africa you would have dozens of smaller republics.
In settler-colonial ethnocracies the colonists find a native population who has no concept of the country, the nation state the settlers intend to found but in the course of their historical struggle against the creation of that alien, colonial society in their homeland the native people often end up united in a single national identity that mirrors the national identity and/or the territorial space created by the settlers.
It was precisely this new national identity, this new territorial configuration created by the white settlers and IRONICALLY absorbed by the black population in their struggle against the settlers that prevented black south africans to accept the Bantustans, the pseudo countries that South Africa under Apartheid created for each bantu people.
The Bantu peoples of South Africa could never accept the ethnic enclaves, the pseudo countries of Transkei, Ciskei, Kwazulu-Natal as their homeland, because in 1960, 70, 80, the whole image below corresponded to their mental image of their homeland, not only the parts in green, red, yellow, orange, etc...:
The same historical process of struggle against colonialism created the Palestinian people and the boundaries of their homeland.
Zionists are absolutely right when they say there was no Palestinian people in the 19th century. The people who inhabited Palestine at that time identify themselves as:
1 Arabs, Jews
2 Muslim, Christian, Jews
3 Ottomans
4 Members of their respective arab clans.
It was precisely the 140 year war against Zionist colonialism that created the palestinian people and the boundaries of their homeland that coincide perfectly with the territory of the British Mandate of Palestine.
The reason there will never be a palestinian state is the simple fact that their mental image of the borders of their homeland corresponds to this:
and not to this:
I remember I said to him:
"David, all your plans about a future palestinian state are a tremendous waste of time... This state will never exist.
You sound like someone who sympathizes with the palestinian cause but doesn't really understand what means to be a palestinian.
The zionist colonialism, building a new society inside Palestine against the will of the natives, ended up, inadvertently, generating a new collective identity among the arabs that inhabited that part of the Levant. The struggle for the land lost to Israel is what separates a palestinian from a Jordanian, Syrian, Iraqi or Lebanese. Their common struggle against european colonialism is what defines them as a people.
So when you ask a palestinian arab to accept the partition of Palestine so your state can be created you are, in reality, asking him to stop being a palestinian arab, you're asking him to renounce to his own national identity built during the creation of the state of Israel.
And this, David, is something the palestinian arabs will never be able to do."
After I read 10 or 12 of his threads I felt sorry for the guy and decided to explain to him why his plans were a terrible waste of time. I started by comparing the South African and Palestinian identities:
What's the origin of the South African national identity?
Why do the black people of South Africa today identify the territory of South Africa as their historical homeland if their ancestors fought like lions to prevent the white invaders from creating the country in the first place?
When the white settlers arrived in South Africa they found a native population that had no concept of nation states, national boundaries. Their homelands were the territory inhabited by their clans, tribes or kingdoms.
It was exactly the 3 century-long war against white colonialism and supremacism that created among the diferent bantu peoples of South Africa a sense of shared history, a sense of belonging to a single south african people, a sense that the national boundaries of South Africa, established by the white colonists by force, against their will, had, ironically, become the limits of their new homeland too. The fight against dutch and english colonialism and supremacism is what distinguishes the black population of South Africa from the african people of neighboring countries, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, etc...
Without white colonialism and supremacism this sense of belonging to a single people, to a new homeland with new frontiers would never have developed. Instead of South Africa you would have dozens of smaller republics.
In settler-colonial ethnocracies the colonists find a native population who has no concept of the country, the nation state the settlers intend to found but in the course of their historical struggle against the creation of that alien, colonial society in their homeland the native people often end up united in a single national identity that mirrors the national identity and/or the territorial space created by the settlers.
It was precisely this new national identity, this new territorial configuration created by the white settlers and IRONICALLY absorbed by the black population in their struggle against the settlers that prevented black south africans to accept the Bantustans, the pseudo countries that South Africa under Apartheid created for each bantu people.
The Bantu peoples of South Africa could never accept the ethnic enclaves, the pseudo countries of Transkei, Ciskei, Kwazulu-Natal as their homeland, because in 1960, 70, 80, the whole image below corresponded to their mental image of their homeland, not only the parts in green, red, yellow, orange, etc...:
The same historical process of struggle against colonialism created the Palestinian people and the boundaries of their homeland.
Zionists are absolutely right when they say there was no Palestinian people in the 19th century. The people who inhabited Palestine at that time identify themselves as:
1 Arabs, Jews
2 Muslim, Christian, Jews
3 Ottomans
4 Members of their respective arab clans.
It was precisely the 140 year war against Zionist colonialism that created the palestinian people and the boundaries of their homeland that coincide perfectly with the territory of the British Mandate of Palestine.
The reason there will never be a palestinian state is the simple fact that their mental image of the borders of their homeland corresponds to this:
and not to this:
I remember I said to him:
"David, all your plans about a future palestinian state are a tremendous waste of time... This state will never exist.
You sound like someone who sympathizes with the palestinian cause but doesn't really understand what means to be a palestinian.
The zionist colonialism, building a new society inside Palestine against the will of the natives, ended up, inadvertently, generating a new collective identity among the arabs that inhabited that part of the Levant. The struggle for the land lost to Israel is what separates a palestinian from a Jordanian, Syrian, Iraqi or Lebanese. Their common struggle against european colonialism is what defines them as a people.
So when you ask a palestinian arab to accept the partition of Palestine so your state can be created you are, in reality, asking him to stop being a palestinian arab, you're asking him to renounce to his own national identity built during the creation of the state of Israel.
And this, David, is something the palestinian arabs will never be able to do."
