Over at Normblog you’ll find the latest installment of Sam Fleischacker’s series “A Cool Hour on the Israel-Palestine Conflict” here. You’ll find my comments on previous installments behind these numbers: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. On this occasion Fleischacker deals with questions relating to the idea of collective ownership of particular territories.
The post, like all the others in the series, deserves a careful reading. Here’s a taster:
Back to collective ownership. How can a land, as a whole and independently of individual claims to it, be intrinsically either ‘Palestinian’ or ‘Jewish’? Who - which group - really ‘owns’ any part of the world? An Englishman may look out on the rolling hills of the Cotswolds and think that of course this is ‘English’ land. But is even that so obvious? All sorts of people lived in the Cotswolds in the past. Some - Celts, for instance - have been forcefully expelled. And in the future, it may come to be dominated by immigrants from Pakistan or China. Perhaps its characteristic churches will one day be replaced by mosques, or Buddhist temples. Would that be a tragedy? Would it be an injustice?
I have just one small quibble. Referring, I presume, to the Israeli Law of Return and the right claimed by Palestinians to return to the homes from which they fled/were expelled, Fleischacker says,
Finally, the whole idea that a land intrinsically ‘belongs’ to any group of people, that individuals should be welcomed into it or barred from it on the basis of group membership, is a highly suspect one that smacks of racism.
I agree with this. However, allowing or barring access to the national territory on the basis of some or other form of group membership is a typical behavior of states, regardless of what encomiums to universal rights that their constitutions may contain and it doesn’t require a belief that the land “belongs” to the group in question. To give one example; there are thousands of Argentine citizens with at least one Irish grandparent and who are thus eligible for Irish citizenship. They are, therefore, entitled to move to Ireland anytime they like and take advantage of a full range of civil and political rights. And they may do this even if they are entirely bereft of knowledge of both national languages and are utterly ignorant of contemporary Irish life. Immigrants to Ireland from outside the European Union and not lucky enough to have an Irish grandparent are treated in an entirely different and much more restrictive manner and the Irish-born children of such immigrants had their automatic right to Irish citizenship taken away from them through an amendment to the constitution that was passed by a disgracefully large margin in a 2004 referendum.
This brings me back to a point I have made before in these commentaries; the history and politics of the Israel-Palestine conflict are less sui generis than they are generally held to be and the behavior and beliefs of the parties often bears comparison with the behavior and beliefs of those involved in similar contemporary and past conflicts.
Excellent last paragraph.
A comparison with other many countries would show parallels in what is regarded - by ignorance - as issues specific of the I/P conflict, like the Law of Return, for example.
One problem is ignorance. Besides you and me and some other guy in the UK interesed in Argentinian history, who knows that there is an identifiable Irish, Welsh and English community there, with Argentinian citizenship, but with cultural links to their mother country that makes them elegible for citizenship in the EU?
The other is that focusing only on Israel is an easy method of applying double standards.
Chag Sameach!
The Welsh community in Argentina was reintroduced to the British public during the Falkland’s War. The public by then having forgotten how green was my valley then, and the valley of them that have gone.
The principle of the Law of Return is irrefutable: it is intrinsically racist or discrimminatory (since it does not differentiate upon the colour of skin or ethnicity). Also true that it does bear in comparison with many other laws from other nations that does favour one over another; but I do think there is distinct differences that does not make it so benign as other examples of an Argentinian gaining Irish citizenship.
Point being: said Argentinian can gain Irish status solely on the basis of lineage. That’s the same with most other nations. There is a difference though with Israeli citizenship: one needs to be Jewish and not a descendent of an Israeli. One can convert to Judiaism and gain citizenship. An Argentinian cannot “convert” to Irish to gain Irish status. This makes it remarkably different: anyone so long you are a follower of a faith can gain Israeli citizenship. This cannot be the case of the Argentinian-Irish person as they have to be a direct descendent (or through marriage). Particularly heinous for this analogy is that the Argentinian can practise any faith or no faith at all to get such Irish status: the Palestinian cannot do so because they are of the wrong faith. Wrong lineage and wrong faith are two completely different categories.
Secondly, the direct comparison is not one based on nationalist citizenship but on faith-based one: the Law of Return when applied to other nations would require Pakistan or Iran or Saudi Arabia to favour all Muslim citizenship (which indeed they must do at some level) or the US favour Christianity or the Spanish for Catholics and etc. I somehow believe that when used on this much larger scale that there would be more of a call to review such a policy.
It is true that there is nothing inherently “evil” or unique when you champion one over the minority, the erection and the basis of Zionism was intent on a Jewish majority. Simply put: it’s structure is to favour one over the other on archaic reasons.
Another important distinction is the fact that the Palestinians are not just some minority: in fact they number in the millions and are almost equal in number to the Israelis in the region.