- Freedom in Palestine: the Johannesburg interview Archived Message
Posted by margo
on March 29, 2019, 10:59 am
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Activist Robin DG Kelley on freedom in Palestine: interviewed in Johannesburg, South Africa Darryl Accone New Frame -- THERE is a notion that every so often hope and history will coincide. The idea is perhaps most beautifully expressed in Seamus Heaney’s The Cure at Troy, the relevant stanzas going: “Human beings suffer, They torture one another, They get hurt and get hard. No poem or play or song Can fully right a wrong Inflicted and endured. [...] History says, don’t hope On this side of the grave. But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up, And hope and history rhyme. So hope for a great sea-change On the far side of revenge. Believe that further shore Is reachable from here. Believe in miracle And cures and healing wells.” It is an appealing concept and one that I put to Robin DG Kelley, the scholar, writer and activist who visited Johannesburg this month as a guest of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Will there – can there – be a happy intersection of Palestinian hope for statehood and history’s nod? After all, Palestinians seem powerless against the concentrated military strength of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the adamantine attitude of Israeli politicians and their electorate to Palestinian statehood. “Palestinians haven’t got the news yet that there is no hope,” says Kelley. “They’re not waiting on the boycott, divestment, sanctions campaign to solve the issue. They’re not waiting on the collapse of Israel. “Hope is an interesting concept. It’s not based on an expectation but on what’s possible and necessary for the survival of Palestinians as people.” Bringing an end to the cellular society dividing Palestinians and Israelis is imperative, Kelley says. “There is no secret strategy against overwhelming odds, but occupation is costly,” he says. “Israel is helped by the US, which is spending so much in financial and military resources that to create conditions of peace is impossible. Gaza and West Bank violence will continue.” And indeed, in the week after Kelley was in conversation at the University of the Witwatersrand about “Resistance, History, Palestine, Imagination, Hope, Intersectionality, Racial Capitalism, Jazz, Solidarity,” a rocket into Israel was met by retaliatory Israeli airstrikes on Gaza. Yet such escalations sow not so much the seeds of pessimism as the blooms of optimism. That’s because, Kelley says, “Israel is creating the conditions for the single state that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Hamas have called for since 1962.” ‘Two states to one state to no state’ That’s a startling statement at first. Kelley explains: “A single state could be read as a sign of the dominance of Israel. But open up the possibility of a single state and, viewed like that, it’s not hopeless; it can be pretty optimistic.” The question that comes to mind first is when this could happen. More pertinent, says Kelley, is another question: Where are the Palestinians? “Most don’t live there; they are the largest dispersed community. Part of the global character of their struggle is that Palestinians are globally situated.” There is a sense that the sort of state that Palestinians in exile would most desire is a progressive, socialist, social democratic state – not necessarily the type of state to which Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine might aspire. Related article: How to build a just society in 10 decrees That any future developments will occur in a single state is almost inevitable, says Kelley. When the Israeli and Palestine Liberation Organization leaderships met in Oslo, Norway, the upshot was that “Oslo proved a two-state solution was impossible. It would have policed Palestinians on behalf of Israel … if you go back further you recognise that so much of the struggle, back to 1948, was a push to turn a British mandate into a sovereign state for all its people, not into a Jewish state, which many anti-Zionist Jews did not support.” But what of Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu’s recent declaration that “Israel is the nation state of the Jewish people – and only it”? Kelley says bi-national states are possible, within which there would exist different ways of thinking about citizenship in one state. And also that “the side with the most radical activists and thinkers has moved from two states to one state to no state”. Reconsidering borders He references Huey Newton, the Black Panther activist, being interviewed after his release from prison and talking about national liberation. It’s accepted that the world is dominated by the United States propping up regimes and crushing foes. Newton urged thinking beyond that, fighting the US empire for socialism and rethinking national boundaries. It is with reconsidering borders that the “no state” idea kicks in. “Palestine was under the Ottoman Empire, then the British Empire, then a British mandate. Imperial powers seized bits of Egypt, ‘invented’ Jordan. Natural territorial integrity is itself a historical thing.” “Palestinians are intelligent and hold on to a deep political imagination and reject the knee-jerk ‘Palestine for the Palestinians’. They want to restore land, a right of return, a new beginning, reconciliation, not going back to the old ways. They rethink the economy, social relations. In refugee camps they are thinking what does a free Palestine look like?” One thing about that musing seems certain: “They don’t want a free Palestine to look like what is perceived to be a democratic South Africa.” Kelley elaborates. “One should not be surprised by the ANC harbouring neoliberal ideology. South Africa is forced by the West to play the game and at what cost? Give up global investment or not. What are you willing to give up or do to maintain a social democracy based on the promise of a social wage, housing, that you won’t take away even if it means sacrificing parts of the economy?”..../ longer article continues LINK https://www.newframe.com/activist-robin-dg-kelley-freedom-palestine |
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