Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: Do the Palestinians Really Want a State?

interessante articolo sulla prestigiosa rivista The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200904u/palestinian-statelessness
Why landlessness may be its own source of power
by Robert D. Kaplan
Do the Palestinians Really Want a State?
The statelessness of Palestinian Arabs has been a principal feature of
world politics for more than half a century. It is the signature issue
of our time. The inability of Israelis and Palestinians to reach an
accord of mutual recognition and land-for-peace has helped infect the
globe with violence and radicalism—and has long been a bane of
American foreign policy. While the problems of the Middle East cannot
be substantially blamed on the injustice done to Palestinians, that
injustice has nonetheless played a role in weakening America’s
position in the region.
Obviously, part of the problem has been Israeli intransigence. Despite
seeming to submit to territorial concessions, one Israeli government
after another has quietly continued to bolster illegal settlements in
the occupied territories. The new Israeli government may be the worst
yet: Its foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman of the Yisrael Beiteinu
party, is so extreme in his anti-Arab views that he makes the right-
wing Likud prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, appear like the
centrist he isn’t. The prospects for peace under this government are
fundamentally bleak.
And yet this Israeli government faithfully represents the Israeli
electorate, which is in utter despair over the impossibility of
finding credible partners on the Palestinian side with which to
negotiate. Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of Israel. President
Mahmoud Abbas’s more moderate Fatah movement may be willing to live in
peace with Israel, but it has insufficient political legitimacy among
Palestinians to negotiate such a deal. With Fatah and Hamas facing off
against each other, the Palestinians are simply too divided to
plausibly meet Israel across the table. And because the Palestinians
are unable to cut a deal, a majority of Israelis, as shown by the
recent election results, have apparently given up any hope for peace.
But there is a deeper structural and philosophical reason why the
Palestinians remain stateless—a reason more profound than the
political narrative would indicate. It is best explained by associate
Johns Hopkins professor Jakub Grygiel, in his brilliant essay, “The
Power of Statelessness: the Withering Appeal of Governing” (Policy
Review April/May 2009). In it, Grygiel does not discuss the
Palestinians in particular, but rather the attitude of stateless
people in general.
Statehood is no longer a goal, he writes. Many stateless groups “do
not aspire to have a state,” for they are more capable of achieving
their objectives without one. Instead of actively seeking statehood to
address their weakness, as Zionist Jews did in an earlier phase of
history, groups like the Palestinians now embrace their statelessness
as a source of power.
New communication technologies allow people to achieve virtual unity
without a state, even as new military technologies give stateless
groups a lethal capacity that in former decades could be attained only
by states. Grygiel explains that it is now “highly desirable” not to
have a state—for a state is a target that can be destroyed or damaged,
and hence pressured politically. It was the very quasi-statehood
achieved by Hamas in the Gaza Strip that made it easier for Israel to
bomb it. A state entails responsibilities that limit a people’s
freedom of action. A group like Hezbollah in Lebanon, the author
notes, could probably take over the Lebanese state today, but why
would it want to? Why would it want responsibility for providing
safety and services to all Lebanese? Why would it want to provide the
Israelis with so many tempting targets of reprisal? Statelessness
offers a level of “impunity” from retaliation.
But the most tempting aspect of statelessness is that it permits a
people to savor the pleasures of religious zeal, extremist ideologies,
and moral absolutes, without having to make the kinds of messy,
mundane compromises that accompany the work of looking after a
geographical space.
Grygiel raises a challenging proposition. If his theory is correct,
then the Palestinians may never have a state, because at a deep
psychological level, enough of them—or at least the groups that speak
in their name—may not really want one. Statehood would mean openly
compromising with Israel, and, because of the dictates of geography,
living in an intimate political and economic relationship with it.
Better the glory of victimhood, combined with the power of radical
abstractions! As a stateless people, Palestinians can lob rockets into
Israel, but not be wholly blamed in the eyes of the international
community. Statehood would, perforce, put an end to such license.
The closest that Israelis and Palestinians ever came to peace was at
the end of the Clinton Administration in 2000, when then-Israeli Prime
Minister Ehud Barak of the center-left Labor Party offered a slew of
concessions to the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat—only to have
Arafat reject them. Arafat’s epitaph was that he remained loyal to the
cause of his people, that he never compromised, and that he was
steadfast to the bitter end. He may have seen that as a more morally
and emotionally satisfying conclusion to a life of statelessness than
that of making the unenchanting concessions associated with achieving
statehood.
Even if Grygiel’s theory is right, the United States should apply
ample pressure on the new Israeli government to compromise with the
Palestinians—ratcheting up the rhetoric and slowing down arms
deliveries if necessary. It should do this because it is the right
thing to do, and because it will help the U.S. to reestablish
credibility in the Muslim world. But the U.S. should also brace itself
for an Israeli-Palestinian conflict that may never end, because the
Palestinians may already have what they want.

 Do the Palestinians Really Want a State?
SPUT!

 
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200904u/palestinian-statelessness
Bell'articolo. Ma IMHO la mettono un po' troppo sul complicato.
Non sono d'accordo che la mancanza di una spinta nazionale (spinta che 
dovunque e sempre ha fatto accettare anche i compromessi più incredibili 
in vista del bene maggiore), sia dovuto al fatto che i palestinesi hanno 
già quello che gli serve. Spero proprio di no.
IMHO il problema è la consapevolezza che nemmeno uno stato, con tutti i 
compromessi e i costi che comporta, realizzerebbe quello che, 
generalmente, vorrebbero.
Tb
-- 
"A vote is like a rifle, it's usefulness depends upon the character of
the user."
~ Theodore Roosevelt

 già quello che gli serve.
l'apartheid?

 ha scritto nel messaggio 
news:2e5260da-531b-4505...@h28g2000yqd.googlegroups.com...
interessante articolo sulla prestigiosa rivista The Atlantic
http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200904u/palestinian-statelessness
Why landlessness may be its own source of power
by Robert D. Kaplan
Do the Palestinians Really Want a State?
Interessante, e vedo in che modo sia possibile almeno porre la domanda. Ma 
ciň detto, non credo che la risposta sia davvero "no". Il problema č la 
mancanza di realismo.