NOVANEWS
Prof. Richard Falk describes four phases of the Palestinian anti-colonial movement. Photo Courtesy Palestine Center
Legal scholar Richard Falk discussed his new book, Palestine: The Legitimacy of Hope, (available from AET’s Middle East Books and More) at the Palestine Center in Washington, DC on Oct. 23. After teaching international law at Princeton University for 40 years, Falk recently completed his six-year term as U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Occupied Palestine.
His book is built on a series of essays originally published on Falk’s personal blog between 2010 and early 2014. Falk described the transformation of the Palestinians’ struggle over recent years into a struggle for legitimacy, similar to that pursued by all the anti-colonial movements of the 20th century. Falk also focused on the key role that international law, institutions and global solidarity movements have played in this struggle.
“If I were a strict realist, the title of my book would be The Legitimacy of Despair: From the Perspective of the Palestinian Struggle,” Falk began. That realistic perspective acknowledges “the continuous encroachment on Palestinian rights by way of the settlement expansion, the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem, the general drift of Israeli internal opinion,” and the election of Israel’s president, Reuven Rivlin, who advocates a Jewish state that encompasses the entirety of historic Palestine.
According to Falk, the Palestinian national struggle has gone through four phases:
In the first phase, Arab neighbors tried to prevent the establishment of the state of Israel, which they perceived as a European colonial solution to the so-called Jewish problem. This led to wars in 1948, 1956, 1967 and 1973, all of which ended in failure.
In the next phase, Palestinian leadership embraced a national liberation struggle. In 1988 the PLO accepted the legitimacy of Israel as a state in the region, as well as the 1967 borders as the basis for a Palestinian state, but even that didn’t solve their problems. Palestinians took ownership of their own struggle for self-determination, relying on armed resistance. They were characterized as terrorists, Falk said, although in his opinion “Israeli state terrorism far exceeded Palestinian terrorism.” Israel cast the PLO as a terrorist organization, Falk added, so it “was able to command for itself the high moral ground in the struggle and portray itself as the victim rather than the victimizer.
The third phase has two parts, Falk continued. The intifada of 1987 began a shift from a governmentally organized movement to a civil society-generated resistance and liberation undertaking. This was paralleled by the move toward a diplomatic approach to resolving the conflict—the so-called Oslo approach in 1993.
Falk lamented the famous handshake on the White House lawn, agreeing with Edward Said that it was tantamount to a “Palestinian surrender.” Palestinian leaders failed to assert their rights to national self-determination and agreed to a very flawed framework where the ally of the stronger side has the mediating role.
“But what was most flawed in the Oslo approach was the exclusion of international law from the diplomatic process,” Falk declared, adding that when it comes to the status of refugees, Jerusalem, water, borders or settlements, law is “the one area where the Palestinians hold a clear, systematic advantage.”
The fourth and, to Falk, decisive phase of this conflict is the civil society momentum that started with the two intifadas and has grown to a global solidarity movement that centers on the BDS campaign. This phase expresses the political aspirations and will of the Palestinian people better than any government, whether Hamas or the Palestinian Authority.
Falk concluded by suggesting two essential moves for Israel to make to achieve a sustainable and just peace. One is to release Marwan Barghouti from prison. “He is not Nelson Mandela,” Falk acknowledged, but he could unify Palestinians and his release would be an important symbolic gesture. The other “would be to accept the original conception of the Zionist project, which was to establish a Jewish homeland, not a Jewish state.”
