hello everyone the title of this talk is
palestinians and israelis subjective
perceptions objective realities and I’ll
continue with the question how to bring
to an end for seemingly endless
conflicts involving Palestinians and
Israelis it’s a simple the hard part is
the other side in reality of decades of
bloody combat and failed international
diplomacy no one really has a clue about
what to do next I shall come back to
this with the final truth or my first
serious encountered with this tragic
issue was on the 5th of June 1967 when
war abruptly broke out between Israel
and neighbouring Arab states it so
happens I was president of the Students
Union at the University of Birmingham
and that I arrived at the sphere at the
Union Building that day I was waylaid by
a Huracan of student activists of every
persuasion all eager to educate me on
the rights and Long’s of the conflict it
was an intense immersion course by the
end of the week I was so much better
informed and so much more confused later
I got caught up in national student
politics of any respected president and
international student politics where
Israel Palestine pervaded every agenda
as itself else over the years I have
acquired a close affinity with both
peoples and they remained heavily
embroiled with the issue I know how
complicated it can on the scene but I
don’t think I have come across anything
that provides more insight than the
simple adage attributed to Abraham
Lincoln during the American Civil War
that goes something like this if you
were born where they were born and you
were taught what they were taught you
believe what they believe
well for extort of a complete general
theory he goes some way to explaining
not just what we believe but why we
believe it why we whoever we happened to
be he take up certain positions and hold
them so fervently
but what would we believe if we held
from the other side of the track what
facts would we then be predisposed to
accept of self-evident truths and which
ones would we be inclined summarily to
dismiss as propaganda lies none of this
is to suggest that that’s a very
subjective nor that they were not
genuine questions of historical
interpretation just this galaxy or human
rights of course there are what is
suggested though is that if progress is
ever to be made there is a vital need to
think beyond our comfort zones for we
are trapped in and by Eero narratives
and we devote enormous resources to
justify the reinforcing their own
perspectives and simultaneously to
belittling or ridiculing the others this
is not the prerogative of any one side
all sides to it self-appointed experts
churn out reams of supposedly scholarly
research that prove the normal density
of the nation boodle people move the
other and the norm
validity of their cherished claims some
portray the other side as innately
wicked but these self-serving terms are
completely without value they had
nothing to the sum total of human
knowledge or wisdom once they demonize
all peoples falsify the histories
disparage their suffering deepen the
hatred and poison the air the solutions
invariably involve the capitulation or
subordination of the adversary they
offer no real solutions they merely
condemn us all to eternal conflict
indeed there is a serious risk of this
as such a future is not preordained
Israelis and Palestinians clashed in
modern times
not because of ancient idea
people or religious disputes but because
they simul taneous li aspired to the
safety for territory on which to
exercise their social determination this
is the root of the conflict the Bissell
product of generations of virulent
European anti-semitism at home and
rampant imperialism abroad everything
else has been grafted on retrospectively
in the early 1970s on embarking of a
doctoral thesis on the Israeli
occupation of the West Bank I agreed
with my supervisor to write a short
history of a conflict as the
introductory chapter he stressed the
need for it to be objective even-handed
partial Ernst and warned against being
swayed by the emotions and passions of
either side you know the sort of thing
but I soon found I could not make even
the most basic facts it’s still one
enough to get them down on paper then
clear my Eureka moment
the realization that what I was trying
to do was not achievable it wasn’t one
history but two discrete histories
stemming from two distinct peoples with
quite different pasts whose destinies
happened to can I at the same moment of
time so with some trepidation I adopted
an entirely different approach one that
himself seen the conflict as the
protagonists themselves forage
subjectively through their eyes each in
turn
lutely imbalances and emotions and
historical traumas even the distortions
fabrications and
fictions let be for factual inaccuracies
or pathologies and thought to be true
are known as potent and factual truths
in the minds of those who believe them
this I found was the only way of making
sense of disputed facts and coming to
grips with what made both sides
tick of course objective analysis is
vital and only after exploring and
perfectly the subjective perceptions
otherwise is what I have bought phony
objects
applying this methodology I authored a
pamphlet Attell to people’s published in
January 1973 which mapped out the
principle narratives and concluded the
keys resolving the conflict was the
creation of an independent Palestinian
state on the West Bank in Gaza Strip
alongside Israel what in later years
came to be known as the two-state
solution it was plain to me that both
peoples overwhelmingly wanted them at
her space and the not to settle for
anything less I could see no other way
of accommodating and riku sightings they
common basic minimum irreducible
aspirations to illustrate what follows
is a brief attempt to sketch the tour
the two core perspectives
although festively condensing them in
this way inevitably carries the risk of
doing them an injustice it makes sense
chronologically to start with the
Israeli Jewish perspective and then move
on to the Palestinian Arab perspective
the underlying case or a Jewish homeland
was strikingly if inadvertently put by
the British poet Lord Byron as far back
as 1850 and some of the worst tragedy is
to face the Jewish people including the
Sarris pogroms and the Nazi Holocaust to
lay a distance ahead Byron wrote the
wild out have her nest a fox his cave
mankind the country Israel but the brain
by either of course he meant the Jewish
people once the Zionist movement
eventually came into being however has
several decades later all sorts of
conspiracy theories and malevolent
intent the fastened onto it might
detractors some of it giving off a
familiar anti-semitic with not so
different from that which paid the
decisive role in winning so many Jews
and others designers
cause in the first place conceptually
Zionism for the distressed people’s
proud of defiant response to centuries
of contempt humiliation discrimination
and periodic bouts of military
suppression Israeli state or there would
be Phoenix to rise from the Jewish
embers still smoldering in the bud
Souter of another continent the
underlying purpose was the affirmative
one of achieving safety and justice for
each lamented people not the negative
one of doing damage to another people
yet in the attempt to rectify the
enduring Jewish calamity the reality as
we step out of one pair of shoes and
step into the other if the damage was
inflicted on another people on the
hapless Palestinian Arabs who paid a
heavy price and are still paying it the
Palestinians like all colonized peoples
had long yearned for their independence
free from foreign law elisa find that in
their case and other people mostly from
foreign parts were simultaneously laying
claim to the same land naturally a
palestinian resisted any people would
have resisted the palestinians in like
fashion did not set out to damage anyone
but a spanner to what they felt was
rightfully theirs displaced dispossessed
and deserted they were among the
principal losers in the geopolitical
lottery that followed the tolerance of
the second world war
their original therapy was in essence to
be in the way of another distress
people’s frantic survival strategy
fueled by an industrial chemist
authority palestinians bore no
responsibility but everything that has
happened since then is in some way a
consequence of this fateful clash of
historical forces as these renditions
signify the corp a screech sign has its
own internal justification which is not
snuffed out because the other side also
has in its own terms
a compelling case forty point is on i
still not cannot see a call
alternative to self-determination and
statehood in one form or another for
both peoples as the essential framework
of a settlement since there is very
little forensic support for anything
else
most of the myriad one-stage internal
teams are ill-thought-out unrealistic
and often contradictory and would deny
national rights to either open people’s
thus they are viewed as deeply
threatening by one side or the other or
by both sides the more likely
alternative to two states by design is
to States by disaster which make them
about eventually for a full-scale
Palestinian uprising on the West Bank
the bottom line is that it is hard to
conceive a long-suffering Palestinian
Arabs after all they have been through
but just at the hands of the Israeli
spaniard State at the hands of Arab
states – ever going up their struggle
for independence just as it is hard to
imagine the Israeli Jews after some 2000
turbulent years ever agreeing to become
a minority game in someone else’s land
however this is not to rule out a future
Confederated arrangement for Israel
Palestine and maybe Jordan – along the
lines of Benelux but it is instructive
to know that the Constituent states of
Belgium the Netherlands and Luxembourg
have retained their official
independence and separate identities
national allegiances evidently continue
to have an important appeal this said
the growth in the number of Israeli
settlers on the West Bank for fewer than
5000 in the early 1970s to several
hundred thousand today come with the
strong annexation as tendencies of the
current Israeli government is rendering
the two-state outcome less feasible by
today if we lose the only plausible
solution we will indeed have to contend
with the situation of perpetual conflict
in the end both peoples would enjoy
their places of the Sun or neither will
in other words this is not a zero-sum
conflict but any suggestion of symmetry
falls apart when you consider that one
side there is an established state ruled
by a sovereign government and on the
other side and occupy people represented
by an organization more than anything
else this structural imbalance explains
the serial failures of the talks between
the parties always up to the
International usually community to
compensate for the imbalance but the
major powers have been persistently
negligent in this regard now we are left
with the consequences a situation that
can only be described as diet and it
just got a lot worse in the light of the
radically altered geopolitical
environment but this is the Middle East
where the only thing we can expect with
certainty is the unexpected almost every
decisive development on the arab israel
front at least since the war of 1973 was
not anticipated by the experts and the
future may well be just as unpredictable
on this round alone there is some reason
to temper the prevailing mood of
despondency with a tinge of optimism not
everything there is unpredictable
sooner or later occupations like other
forms of colonial rule are resisted this
is probably one of the few cast iron
laws of history so anything the
occupation is the indispensable
condition for breaking free of the
current form and no end of conflict is
possible without this so what if
anything may be done here are two
suggestions first is that there is an
urgent need for all Palestinian and
Israeli anti-occupation activists to
come together to devise a common
strategy that the rest of the world may
then throw its
thought behind historical inhibitions
primarily on the Palestinian side about
cooperating with each other for this
sort of purpose needs to be set aside in
the greater cause of unity in ending the
occupation the second is a suggestion
for that strategy the Palestinian
American thinkers saying before and I
have together put forward a proposal
that the Israeli government be called
upon either to recognize an independent
Palestinian state imminently or pending
of future final agreements whatever and
whenever that might be from full civil
and political rights in the meantime to
everyone living under Israeli
jurisdiction before I conclude I’d like
to address a question that is perhaps
lingering in the minds of some of you
namely can be subjective approach I
about lies help us to understand that
maybe even resolve other conflicts
well I hesitate to generalize and of
course no two conflicts are the same and
I don’t at all suggest it is a
sufficient approach on its own but
insofar as it requires listening and
pathetically before leaping to judgments
and it tells not imposing on the other
parties our own values preferences or
prejudices even if subconscious I think
it can be a vital tool of analysis
whether the conflict is at the
international national or local levels
or even just within families or between
friends but I always try to serve
sometimes and maybe let us know
palestinians and israelis subjective
perceptions objective realities and I’ll
continue with the question how to bring
to an end for seemingly endless
conflicts involving Palestinians and
Israelis it’s a simple the hard part is
the other side in reality of decades of
bloody combat and failed international
diplomacy no one really has a clue about
what to do next I shall come back to
this with the final truth or my first
serious encountered with this tragic
issue was on the 5th of June 1967 when
war abruptly broke out between Israel
and neighbouring Arab states it so
happens I was president of the Students
Union at the University of Birmingham
and that I arrived at the sphere at the
Union Building that day I was waylaid by
a Huracan of student activists of every
persuasion all eager to educate me on
the rights and Long’s of the conflict it
was an intense immersion course by the
end of the week I was so much better
informed and so much more confused later
I got caught up in national student
politics of any respected president and
international student politics where
Israel Palestine pervaded every agenda
as itself else over the years I have
acquired a close affinity with both
peoples and they remained heavily
embroiled with the issue I know how
complicated it can on the scene but I
don’t think I have come across anything
that provides more insight than the
simple adage attributed to Abraham
Lincoln during the American Civil War
that goes something like this if you
were born where they were born and you
were taught what they were taught you
believe what they believe
well for extort of a complete general
theory he goes some way to explaining
not just what we believe but why we
believe it why we whoever we happened to
be he take up certain positions and hold
them so fervently
but what would we believe if we held
from the other side of the track what
facts would we then be predisposed to
accept of self-evident truths and which
ones would we be inclined summarily to
dismiss as propaganda lies none of this
is to suggest that that’s a very
subjective nor that they were not
genuine questions of historical
interpretation just this galaxy or human
rights of course there are what is
suggested though is that if progress is
ever to be made there is a vital need to
think beyond our comfort zones for we
are trapped in and by Eero narratives
and we devote enormous resources to
justify the reinforcing their own
perspectives and simultaneously to
belittling or ridiculing the others this
is not the prerogative of any one side
all sides to it self-appointed experts
churn out reams of supposedly scholarly
research that prove the normal density
of the nation boodle people move the
other and the norm
validity of their cherished claims some
portray the other side as innately
wicked but these self-serving terms are
completely without value they had
nothing to the sum total of human
knowledge or wisdom once they demonize
all peoples falsify the histories
disparage their suffering deepen the
hatred and poison the air the solutions
invariably involve the capitulation or
subordination of the adversary they
offer no real solutions they merely
condemn us all to eternal conflict
indeed there is a serious risk of this
as such a future is not preordained
Israelis and Palestinians clashed in
modern times
not because of ancient idea
people or religious disputes but because
they simul taneous li aspired to the
safety for territory on which to
exercise their social determination this
is the root of the conflict the Bissell
product of generations of virulent
European anti-semitism at home and
rampant imperialism abroad everything
else has been grafted on retrospectively
in the early 1970s on embarking of a
doctoral thesis on the Israeli
occupation of the West Bank I agreed
with my supervisor to write a short
history of a conflict as the
introductory chapter he stressed the
need for it to be objective even-handed
partial Ernst and warned against being
swayed by the emotions and passions of
either side you know the sort of thing
but I soon found I could not make even
the most basic facts it’s still one
enough to get them down on paper then
clear my Eureka moment
the realization that what I was trying
to do was not achievable it wasn’t one
history but two discrete histories
stemming from two distinct peoples with
quite different pasts whose destinies
happened to can I at the same moment of
time so with some trepidation I adopted
an entirely different approach one that
himself seen the conflict as the
protagonists themselves forage
subjectively through their eyes each in
turn
lutely imbalances and emotions and
historical traumas even the distortions
fabrications and
fictions let be for factual inaccuracies
or pathologies and thought to be true
are known as potent and factual truths
in the minds of those who believe them
this I found was the only way of making
sense of disputed facts and coming to
grips with what made both sides
tick of course objective analysis is
vital and only after exploring and
perfectly the subjective perceptions
otherwise is what I have bought phony
objects
applying this methodology I authored a
pamphlet Attell to people’s published in
January 1973 which mapped out the
principle narratives and concluded the
keys resolving the conflict was the
creation of an independent Palestinian
state on the West Bank in Gaza Strip
alongside Israel what in later years
came to be known as the two-state
solution it was plain to me that both
peoples overwhelmingly wanted them at
her space and the not to settle for
anything less I could see no other way
of accommodating and riku sightings they
common basic minimum irreducible
aspirations to illustrate what follows
is a brief attempt to sketch the tour
the two core perspectives
although festively condensing them in
this way inevitably carries the risk of
doing them an injustice it makes sense
chronologically to start with the
Israeli Jewish perspective and then move
on to the Palestinian Arab perspective
the underlying case or a Jewish homeland
was strikingly if inadvertently put by
the British poet Lord Byron as far back
as 1850 and some of the worst tragedy is
to face the Jewish people including the
Sarris pogroms and the Nazi Holocaust to
lay a distance ahead Byron wrote the
wild out have her nest a fox his cave
mankind the country Israel but the brain
by either of course he meant the Jewish
people once the Zionist movement
eventually came into being however has
several decades later all sorts of
conspiracy theories and malevolent
intent the fastened onto it might
detractors some of it giving off a
familiar anti-semitic with not so
different from that which paid the
decisive role in winning so many Jews
and others designers
cause in the first place conceptually
Zionism for the distressed people’s
proud of defiant response to centuries
of contempt humiliation discrimination
and periodic bouts of military
suppression Israeli state or there would
be Phoenix to rise from the Jewish
embers still smoldering in the bud
Souter of another continent the
underlying purpose was the affirmative
one of achieving safety and justice for
each lamented people not the negative
one of doing damage to another people
yet in the attempt to rectify the
enduring Jewish calamity the reality as
we step out of one pair of shoes and
step into the other if the damage was
inflicted on another people on the
hapless Palestinian Arabs who paid a
heavy price and are still paying it the
Palestinians like all colonized peoples
had long yearned for their independence
free from foreign law elisa find that in
their case and other people mostly from
foreign parts were simultaneously laying
claim to the same land naturally a
palestinian resisted any people would
have resisted the palestinians in like
fashion did not set out to damage anyone
but a spanner to what they felt was
rightfully theirs displaced dispossessed
and deserted they were among the
principal losers in the geopolitical
lottery that followed the tolerance of
the second world war
their original therapy was in essence to
be in the way of another distress
people’s frantic survival strategy
fueled by an industrial chemist
authority palestinians bore no
responsibility but everything that has
happened since then is in some way a
consequence of this fateful clash of
historical forces as these renditions
signify the corp a screech sign has its
own internal justification which is not
snuffed out because the other side also
has in its own terms
a compelling case forty point is on i
still not cannot see a call
alternative to self-determination and
statehood in one form or another for
both peoples as the essential framework
of a settlement since there is very
little forensic support for anything
else
most of the myriad one-stage internal
teams are ill-thought-out unrealistic
and often contradictory and would deny
national rights to either open people’s
thus they are viewed as deeply
threatening by one side or the other or
by both sides the more likely
alternative to two states by design is
to States by disaster which make them
about eventually for a full-scale
Palestinian uprising on the West Bank
the bottom line is that it is hard to
conceive a long-suffering Palestinian
Arabs after all they have been through
but just at the hands of the Israeli
spaniard State at the hands of Arab
states – ever going up their struggle
for independence just as it is hard to
imagine the Israeli Jews after some 2000
turbulent years ever agreeing to become
a minority game in someone else’s land
however this is not to rule out a future
Confederated arrangement for Israel
Palestine and maybe Jordan – along the
lines of Benelux but it is instructive
to know that the Constituent states of
Belgium the Netherlands and Luxembourg
have retained their official
independence and separate identities
national allegiances evidently continue
to have an important appeal this said
the growth in the number of Israeli
settlers on the West Bank for fewer than
5000 in the early 1970s to several
hundred thousand today come with the
strong annexation as tendencies of the
current Israeli government is rendering
the two-state outcome less feasible by
today if we lose the only plausible
solution we will indeed have to contend
with the situation of perpetual conflict
in the end both peoples would enjoy
their places of the Sun or neither will
in other words this is not a zero-sum
conflict but any suggestion of symmetry
falls apart when you consider that one
side there is an established state ruled
by a sovereign government and on the
other side and occupy people represented
by an organization more than anything
else this structural imbalance explains
the serial failures of the talks between
the parties always up to the
International usually community to
compensate for the imbalance but the
major powers have been persistently
negligent in this regard now we are left
with the consequences a situation that
can only be described as diet and it
just got a lot worse in the light of the
radically altered geopolitical
environment but this is the Middle East
where the only thing we can expect with
certainty is the unexpected almost every
decisive development on the arab israel
front at least since the war of 1973 was
not anticipated by the experts and the
future may well be just as unpredictable
on this round alone there is some reason
to temper the prevailing mood of
despondency with a tinge of optimism not
everything there is unpredictable
sooner or later occupations like other
forms of colonial rule are resisted this
is probably one of the few cast iron
laws of history so anything the
occupation is the indispensable
condition for breaking free of the
current form and no end of conflict is
possible without this so what if
anything may be done here are two
suggestions first is that there is an
urgent need for all Palestinian and
Israeli anti-occupation activists to
come together to devise a common
strategy that the rest of the world may
then throw its
thought behind historical inhibitions
primarily on the Palestinian side about
cooperating with each other for this
sort of purpose needs to be set aside in
the greater cause of unity in ending the
occupation the second is a suggestion
for that strategy the Palestinian
American thinkers saying before and I
have together put forward a proposal
that the Israeli government be called
upon either to recognize an independent
Palestinian state imminently or pending
of future final agreements whatever and
whenever that might be from full civil
and political rights in the meantime to
everyone living under Israeli
jurisdiction before I conclude I’d like
to address a question that is perhaps
lingering in the minds of some of you
namely can be subjective approach I
about lies help us to understand that
maybe even resolve other conflicts
well I hesitate to generalize and of
course no two conflicts are the same and
I don’t at all suggest it is a
sufficient approach on its own but
insofar as it requires listening and
pathetically before leaping to judgments
and it tells not imposing on the other
parties our own values preferences or
prejudices even if subconscious I think
it can be a vital tool of analysis
whether the conflict is at the
international national or local levels
or even just within families or between
friends but I always try to serve
sometimes and maybe let us know
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