Why did the "Palestinian people", whose emergence was declared in the Palestinian Charter in 1964, prove stillborn? To answer this question, we must first understand what a "people" is and how it comes into being. (Download in Word format.)
Since "people" is one stage in the development of an ethnic group, it's first necessary to clarify the concept of "ethnic group". According to the most universal definition by Doctor of Historical Sciences Valery Solovey:
"An ethnic group is a biological community united by a common origin and possessing a common biogenetics." [1]
ETHNOGENESIS
The process of the emergence and development of an ethnic group is called "ethnogenesis". It goes through a series of stages:
family, clan, phratry, tribe, people, nation. [2]
The classic model of ethnogenesis is described in the Old Testament using the development of the Jewish ethnic group as an example:
• It all began with the family of Jacob and Rebekah;
• This family then became a clan when Jacob's 12 sons founded their own families;
• In Egypt, each of these families grew into a phratry;
• By the time of the Exodus from Egypt, the Jewish ethnic group was already a large tribe numbering 23 million people, divided into 12 phratries, with a common ancestor for both the entire tribe and each phratry. [3]
TRIBE, PEOPLE AND NATION
Now let's define the last three stages of ethnogenesis, which we will use later. In his book "Fundamentals of Ethnopolitics", which can be considered a kind of encyclopedia of ethnogenesis, Alexander Sevastyanov formulated the following definitions of the "tribe" and "people" stages:
A tribe is a huge family, whose members are connected to each other in one way or another, at least formally, by family ties. [4]
A people is a tribe that has developed to the point of recognizing the need for its own sovereignty, but has not yet achieved statehood as a nation does. From a tribe with no aspirations to statehood to a people with such aspirations, and then to a nation that embodies them this is a path that not every ethnic group can traverse. [5]
The most precise definition of "nation" was given by history professor Alexander Vdovin:
A nation is a stage of development of a people, a historical community that arises as a result of the development of capitalist relations, leading to the territorial, cultural, linguistic and psychological unity of a certain group of people striving to ensure the interests of their further independent development through a separate national state. [6]
Thus, a people differs from a tribe in its awareness of the need for sovereignty, and a nation differs from a people in that it realizes this sovereignty in the form of a national state.
WHY DO SOME TRIBES REACH THE STAGE OF "PEOPLE", WHILE OTHERS FAIL TO DO SO?
Now let us try to answer the main question: why did the collection of numerous Arab, Berber, Turkic, Kurdish, Circassian, Bosnian, Persian and other tribes and clans that were on the territory of Palestine [7] after its division into two states in 1947 never turn into a "Palestinian people"?
There are many large ethnic groups in the world that never became peoples, and, conversely, there are relatively small ethnic groups that not only became peoples but also realized their identity as nations, creating their own states.
For example, the Berber tribes of Morocco numbered approximately 4 million at the founding of that state (1956), yet a "Berber people" still does not exist. Meanwhile, ethnic Norwegians, who numbered approximately 2 million at the founding of Norway (1905), not only became a people but also created their own state, becoming a nation.
Why did the Norwegians recognize the need for their sovereignty, while the Berbers did not? To answer this question, we need to consider the factors that contributed to the formation of the people. These can be divided into objective and subjective.
• Objective factors include the capitalist production relations under which the tribe developed.
• Subjective factors include: 1) the racial identity of the tribe and 2) the strength of tribal consciousness.
CAPITALISM AS AN OBJECTIVE FACTOR IN THE FORMATION OF A PEOPLE
Nation states and the peoples who created them first emerged in Europe in the 19th century. This unique phenomenon was the culmination of three centuries of capitalist developmentfrom the 17th to the 20th centuries.
Capitalist relations, on the one hand, destroy blood ties within the tribe, and on the other, form new, social ties, transforming tribal members into individuals. This transformation is a key stage of sociogenesis. [8]
Civic consciousness as a criterion distinguishing a nation from a tribe
The development of social ties gives rise to a special phenomenon"civic consciousness".
As the French sociologist Raymond Aron noted, "civic consciousness, rising above the interests of individual groups and individuals, defends the interests of society as a whole." [9]
Civic consciousness underlies civil society, where people voluntarily unite to defend common interests. Such associations include non-profit organizations, social movements, trade unions, independent media, and other forms of civic activism. [10]
A people is distinguished from a tribe by its capacity for self-government.
Civic consciousness manifests itself primarily in the ability of its bearers to create self-governing bodies. Thus, European colonists in North America, when establishing settlements, typically elected local government bodies, including:
• a committee for the improvement and development of the settlement;
• a sheriff and his assistants, responsible for maintaining order;
• a judge, who resolved disputes.
These structures were formed and operated without the intervention of colonial or federal authorities.
The simplest form of local self-government is the house committee of an apartment building. Even at this level, the difference between the people and the tribe is noticeable. Representatives of the people are ready to pay dues and participate in improvements, while tribesmen are reluctant to spend money and effort on anything that extends beyond their own apartment.
This disparity is even more pronounced at the municipal level. For example, in Israel, only 18% of Israeli Arabs pay municipal taxes [11]. As a result, the burden of maintaining Arab settlements falls on the Jewish population. In 2016, the Israeli government allocated a one-time grant of 750 million shekels to Arab municipalities and approved a five-year plan providing for annual funding of 5 billion shekels over five years. [12]
RACE AS A SUBJECTIVE FACTOR IN THE FORMATION OF A PEOPLE
Since capitalism is a phenomenon of European civilization, such products of capitalism as "people", "nation", and "nation-state" are phenomena of the ethnic groups of Europe.
I deliberately use the term "ethnic groups of Europe" rather than the term "White European race" to exclude the so-called "Secondary race" ethnic groups inhabiting North Africa, the Middle East, the Caucasus, and Central Asia, which are often mistakenly classified as belonging to the White European race.
The Secondary race formed in the areas of contact between Cro-Magnons (the ancestors of Europeans) and Neanderthals (representatives of a primitive species of people) - in the Mediterranean, the Middle East, the Caucasus and Central Asia. For more information, see the article "Morality and Intelligence Depend on Race".
Many ethnic groups are unable to overcome the "tribe" stage not only because they have not undergone, like the ethnic groups of Europe, a social transformation under the conditions of capitalist production relations, but also because of their racial affiliation.
Races are not equal even Marxists and progressives agree with this undeniable fact, since they promote "positive discrimination" that grants privileges to representatives of the Secondary, black and other colored races.
Alexander Sevastyanov writes:
"Races are not equal at all. And the law of uneven development, propagated by Marxist science, according to which all peoples go through the same stages of development some just earlier, others later is not actually a law. We see that some peoples are capable of passing through certain stages, while others are not.
If, in fifty thousand years, Europeans reached Karl Marx and a post-industrial society, while Tasmanians remained in the Paleolithic, then the question arises: how long would it have taken Tasmanians to traverse the same path? The correct answer is: none, since they are fundamentally incapable of it. The reason is one thing: they are not biologically equal to Europeans; they are different." [13]
TRIBAL CONSCIOUSNESS AS AN OBSTACLE ON THE PATH FROM TRIBE TO PEOPLE
Race is not the only factor influencing ethnogenesis. Ethnic self-awareness and ethnic psychology, shaped by the tribe's economic activities, also have a significant impact on ethnogenesis.
Based on their economic activity, tribes can be divided into two large groups:
• Sedentary agricultural tribes,
• Nomadic pastoral tribes.
Nomadic herders are distinguished by strong blood ties and a strong tribal consciousness. Given the harsh conditions of nomadic life and the constant struggle for pastures and water sources, kinship ties are much more important to them than to sedentary farmers. This bond is especially strong among the Bedouin tribes of Arabia, Sinai, and North Africa, who survive in extreme climates and acute shortages of water and animal feed.
Tribal consciousness is focused on the survival and well-being of one's tribe. Its characteristic feature is extreme suprematism: the belief in the absolute superiority of one's tribe over outsiders. Outsiders are perceived primarily as rivals or enemies in the struggle for resources.
Tribal consciousness shapes a special tribal morality, in which good is everything that serves the interests of the tribe, and evil is everything that harms it. In this value system, outsiders are viewed as inferior or even deprived of human status, and any encroachment on their property, health, or life can be considered justified.
The strength of tribal consciousness directly depends on the conditions of survival: the harsher the natural and climatic environment, the stronger it is and the coarser the human material.
All sedentary Arab tribes are descended from Bedouins, who led a nomadic lifestyle for many generations. Even after sedentary lifestyles, they often continued to combine agriculture with nomadic herding. Therefore, the Bedouin mentality is deeply ingrained in their subconscious.
French Orientalist historian Andre Servier put it this way:
"To know and understand the Muslim, we must study Islam. To know and understand Islam, we must study the Bedouin of Arabia. And to know and understand the Bedouin, we must study the Desert." [14]
A strong tribal consciousness often becomes an insurmountable barrier to the evolution of an ethnic group from the "tribe" stage to the "people" stage. States formed from such tribes are typically unstable due to constant intertribal competition and hostility.
This is how Andre Servier describes it:
"Throughout the whole course of Muslim history, wherever the Arabs are found, in Syria, in Spain, or in Africa, one notes the devotion of the individual to his tribe, at the same time as the rivalry between the different tribes.
The notable upon whom the Caliph has been pleased to confer a high appointment loses no time in devoting himself to the interests of his own tribe, and at once arouses the anger of the others, who intrigue against him until they procure his disgrace, when the game begins over again with somebody else.
The Caliphs had to struggle without ceasing against the turbulence of the tribes, who were hostile to all regular government and incapable of submitting to discipline. It was these tribal rivalries that in the end broke up the unity of the [Islamic] Empire." [14]
An illustration of Andr Serviers words can be found in Michael Chernins book "The Arab Population of Israel and the Palestinian Territories" [7], which describes the continuous clashes and wars between Arab tribes and clans that took place in the territory of Palestine until the 20th century.
MAN-MADE PSEUDO-PEOPLES AND PSEUDO-NATIONS
Non-European peoples belonging to the Secondary, Mongoloid, Polynesian, Negroid and other races arose due to the social, economic and political influence of Europeans on them during the period of global expansion of capitalism. Many of them are artificial in nature and are still in the "tribal" stage, so the states created for them have proven failed.
Almost all peoples of the Negroid race and many peoples of Secondary race with their failed states can be classified as artificial, for example:
• the Lebanese people and the Lebanese Republic,
• the Syrian people and the Syrian Arab Republic,
• the Iraqi people and the Republic of Iraq,
• the Yemeni people and the Republic of Yemen,
• the Libyan people and the State of Libya.
The artificiality of the people and the failure of its state are manifested in intertribal and interfaith wars that break out whenever the power of the ruling tribe or dominant religious group weakens.
In his book Imagined Communities (1983), British sociologist Benedict Anderson described how European colonizers united various tribes and ethnic groups into larger entities "Malays", "Indonesians", "Filipinos", and so on.
These examples demonstrate that it is entirely possible to:
1) create an artificial community,
2) bind it with citizenship,
3) declare an imagined community ("nation"),
4) impose a new identity on the tribes that comprise it. [15]
This is precisely how the entity called the "Palestinian people" was created in 1964.
CONCLUSION
Based on the above, we will formulate conclusions in an attempt to answer the question: why was the Palestinian people not born?
1. The Arab tribes that inhabited Palestine did not, like the tribes of Europe, undergo a long social transformation under capitalist conditions. Capitalism arrived in the Middle East only in 1917, along with the British colonial administration, and affected the Arab tribes only superficially: their representatives continued to engage in individual agriculture, nomadic herding, and odd jobs on construction sites.
2. The Arab tribes belong to a Secondary race, therefore such phenomena of European civilization as "people", "nation" and "national state" remain alien to them.
3. Moreover, Islam, which plays a key role in Arab life, does not recognize the nation-state. Its ideal is a theocratic entity, the unifying element of which is not the people, but religion. Palestinian Hamas is an offshoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, whose goal is to establish a worldwide caliphate rather than to protect the national rights of Palestinian Arabs.
According to one of the founders of Hamas, Mahmoud Zahar:
"Islamic and traditional views reject the notion of establishing an independent Palestinian state In the past, there was no independent Palestinian state. [Hence] our main goal is to establish a great Islamic state, be it pan-Arabic or pan-Islamic." [16]
The idea of creating a pan-Islamic state in the territories of Arab countries and Israel is not fringe. It is based on the views of theologians at Cairo's Al-Azhar University, one of the most authoritative Islamic centers of learning in the world, with which the Muslim Brotherhood maintains close ties.
4. Arab tribes are characterized by a strong tribal consciousness and are in a state of constant competition and hostility. Their members lack civic consciousness, without which the formation of a civil society is impossible. Unification of such tribes is possible only through brute force. In the Palestinian Authority, this role is fulfilled by the secular organization Fatah, and in the Gaza Strip, by the religious organization Hamas.
Palestinians confirm: the "Palestinian people" does not exist
The Palestinian Authority and its state institutions were created by Israeli socialists as part of the Oslo Accords for Yasser Arafat, whom they brought from Tunisia to Israel in 1995.
The Arabs have turned the system of governance created for them into a caricature. Power in the Palestinian Authority is divided among powerful clans and is riddled with corruption and nepotism. The term "crony capitalism" has even become popular to describe its political and economic model.
The situation in the Gaza Strip is even worse. Having gained a parliamentary majority in 2006, the terrorist organization Hamas physically eliminated its rivals from Fatah and has since monopolized parliament and government.
In the preface to his book, "The Arab Population of Israel and the Palestinian Territories", Michael Chernin writes:
"I became friends with Abu Mazen and his son, Yasser Abbas, and attended meetings of the Palestinian government under Arafat's chairmanship. I saw Palestinian businessmen stuff a truck with bags of casha sign of respect for Arafat. I interacted with prominent terrorists and realized how far removed theories about a Palestinian state are from the reality and its leadership neither needed nor built a state. It created only a facade for the Americans, Europeans, and Israelis." [7]
Palestinian leaders themselves recognized the difficulty of creating a nation from competing tribes and clans. In 1978, General Secretary of the Romanian Communist Party Ceausescu (on Brezhnev's instructions) urged Arafat to feign a willingness to transform the PLO into a government-in-exile and renounce terrorism. Brezhnev hoped that President Carter would rise to the bait, after which the West would shower Arafat with money and glory. However, Arafat remained stubborn, arguing that "the Palestinians lacked the tradition, unity, and discipline to become a formal state." [17]
In conclusion, we quote from an article by Lebanese journalist and Middle East expert Hussein Abdul-Hussein:
"Palestinian nationalism was a late-comer that only surfaced after the 1967 defeat of the leader of Arab nationalism, Egypts Gamal Abdul-Nasser.
While insisting on the creation of independent Palestine, a majority of Palestinians seem to think that a state is made of land and people, not of people organizing themselves into a successful state. But land alone does not make states. Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq are all sovereign over the land, and yet all three of them are failed states. This is why Israel fears that land concessions to Palestinians will result in a failed state, and not country in the world wants a failed state that would turn into a hotbed of terrorism, crime, and illicit trade on its borders.
Palestinians spent a century trying to learn how the Zionists managed to overpower them. The Palestinians drew many lessons, but the only one they never seem to have learned was that Zionists created a state long before they had any land.
In his manuscript on Zionism, written in the 1890s, Palestinian Rawhi al-Khalidi was impressed, not only by the good organization of the Zionist movement and its regular elections, but also by the dedication of its rank and file. Al-Khalidi wrote that poor Jewish peasants in Russia or Eastern Europe saved on buying food in order to pay their membership fees to the Zionist organization and elect its officials. Khalidi described the movement as a government without a land.
While self-determination is a right enshrined in the UNs founding literature, it is not a guarantee that sovereign nations can create and manage successful states. If other Arab states including Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq are any indicator, it is highly likely that the Palestinian state will be a failed state too.
Such a state next to Israel means that the Jewish state will have to keep tabs on its neighbor, and maybe police it. After all, no state would want to sit adjacent to a failed state that can become a hotbed for terrorism, crime, and illicit trade." [18]
Igor I. Isaev, June 2024.
REFERENCES
[1] A.N. Sevastyanov "Fundamentals of Ethnopolitics" (2014), p. 111. Quote from V.D. Solovey, "Russian History: A New Reading", p. 52. http://vk.com/wall-39136195_1359
[2] A.N. Sevastyanov "Fundamentals of Ethnopolitics", p. 111.
[3] A.N. Sevastyanov "Fundamentals of Ethnopolitics", p. 156.
[4] A.N. Sevastyanov "Fundamentals of Ethnopolitics", p. 158. Quote from Y.V. Bromley and R.G. Podolny "Humanity is nations", 1990, p. 160-161.
[5] A.N. Sevastyanov "Fundamentals of Ethnopolitics", pp. 198-199.
[6] A.N. Sevastyanov "Fundamentals of Ethnopolitics", p. 187. Quote from A.I. Vdovin's "The Russian Nation." National and Political Problems of the 20th Century and the Pan-National Russian Idea, 1995, p. 28.
[9] E.V. Sotskaya, "Civic Consciousness and Civic Culture as Elements of the Sociocultural Process", with reference to R. Aron, "Stages of Development of Sociological Thought." Moscow: Progress. Univers, 1993. http://superinf.ru/view_helpstud.php?id=3905