Recent Calls for the Replacement of Palestinian Leadership Might Just be Another Paternalistic Scheme with a “Civilizing” Agenda that Ignores the Realities on the Ground

By Jesse Wheeler

News

Western media discourses surrounding the Palestine-Israel conflict have recently born witness to a virtual flood of appeals for the replacement of top Palestinian leadership. Whether in reference to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas or Palestinian leadership more generally, such calls are made in response to the supposed failure on the part of the leadership to seek peace with Israel. Within such discourses, the Palestinian leadership is likewise portrayed as betraying its own population in its adamant refusal to pursue the peace Palestinians overwhelmingly want and need – coupled with accusations of creeping totalitarianism and festering corruption. The deteriorating humanitarian situation in Gaza has been likewise ascribed to political infighting, with very little mention of the longstanding Israeli blockade or devastation left in the wake of recent wars. And yet, there is something uniquely different and intensely unsettling about the narratives being propagated through international media outlets, namely the ostensible, albeit cynical, concern – love, even – expressed for Palestinians themselves.

Analysis

While space certainly remains for legitimate critique of Palestinian leadership, these international discourses remain suspiciously lacking of one crucial element: Palestinians. Lacking authentic, though diverse, Palestinian voices, such declarations of filial concern amount to little more than counterfeit affection, dripping with inauthenticity and archaic paternalism. Reminiscent of the white man’s burden and civilizing missions of days gone by, such doublespeak aims to convince the international community that the occupiers are merely acting in the best interests of the occupied, should only their troublesome leadership (“authorities without any authority”) get in line and start acting in the interests of their people. As is clear to those with knowledge of the Palestinian perspective, this is nonsense – another attempt, they would say, to “blame the oppressed for their oppression.” In a response to the New York Times article by Roger Cohen linked to above, Darin Hussain writes the following:

While Cohen mentioned the “unrelenting settlement growth and use of military force” under Israeli occupation, Cohen did not fully disclose to readers the primacy of Israel’s agency in: Palestinian electricity coming and going, Palestinian lack of access to water, Palestinian hours-long journeys, Palestinians being “dragged from their homes,” and the endless Israeli permits that regulate all manner of Palestinian movement within and beyond the West Bank. Cohen dispenses of these realities of Palestinian life, saying, “Little humiliations multiply.” No, the emphasis in the article was on the Palestinian Authority’s responsibility for these conditions.

To which he would add, “Cohen’s agenda was to say that Palestinians have ‘agency’ in our own absence of freedom and thereby absolve Israel of being the primary source of Palestinian oppression.”

What this ultimately represents is an underlying attempt to pressure Palestinian leadership to acquiesce once again to whatever “peace process” is being offered them, lest they be accused once again of refusing “the deal of the century” – whether in line with Palestinian interests or not and inclusive of an ever moving goalpost of preconditions. In reality, both Palestinian leadership and people need to be convinced that the “peace” on the negotiation table will truly offer justice, equality, dignity and an end to military occupation and blockade. This, however, is not the case.

Implications for Regional Christians

The above, it must be said, applies equally to Muslim as well as Christian Palestinians. The plight and persecution of Christians in the Middle East has long been a western rallying cry for increased activism, advocacy and political action. While the suffering of MENA Christians has at times been extreme, such advocacy on their behalf has often been based less on lived reality than imagined constructions projected onto the region. Palestine, where the Christian faith began and has maintained a continuous presence ever since, witnessed over the past half-century one of the sharpest declines in the percentage of Christians, surpassed only by the emptying of Iraqi Christians since 2003.

Yet, the Palestinian Christian voice is often completely absent from global discourses surrounding Christian persecution in the Middle East. Only rarely does one find such voice expressed. According to a recent report, titled “From pilgrimage to exodus: Is the end nigh for Palestinian Christians?”

[In the face of regional persecution], it is arresting to hear one of Jerusalem’s highest-ranking Christian figures declare that the most pressing threat facing Christians in the Middle East is not from a terror group, but rather the White House. The former Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, 84-year old Michel Sabbah, says it was the destabilization of the region, resulting from the war in Iraq in 2003, that led to the increase in persecution of Christians from groups like ISIS. Our fear is not from our people, from Muslims. Our fear is from America,” Sabbah tells CNN. “If [Trump] wants to defend Christians in the Middle East, he has to start [by] changing American policy in the Middle East: to [begin] a new vision of politics, built on life and … not more death or destruction.”

What has been leading to the decline of Christians in Palestine, the article further mentions, is the occupation and resultant restrictions on the “lives, movements and opportunities of Palestinian Christians, as well as Muslims.”

Just this week, in an unprecedented show of ecumenical solidary, leadership in the Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, and Armenian churches made the decision to shut indefinitely Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulcher – built atop the traditional sites of Jesus’ crucifixion, burial, and resurrection –  to protest “persistent moves [by Israel] to intimidate Christians and discriminate against churches in the Holy Land.” This is in response to what they experience as a “systematic campaign against the churches and the Christian community” in an intentional “attempt to weaken the Christian presence in Jerusalem.”

Theological Reflections and Recommendations

There is a long history of ignoring the Palestinian voice, especially the Christian. As followers of Jesus, we are required to love both Arab (Christian and Muslim) and Jew. And yet, we mustn’t do so in a way that stifles the voice and denies the agency of those we seek to love, which is essentially what Joel Rosenberg does in his article “Are Evangelical Christians Anti-Palestinian?” How can there be love without agency? (I would recommend instead Martin Accad’s recent article, “American Evangelical Influence on US Foreign Policy and How It Impacts Us as Middle East Christians.”) Loving others requires us to listen, seeking to understand what they want on their own terms and in their own words and to compare what it is they want in a critical manner with our own values as followers of Christ Jesus. Only in this way might we one day come to witness a holy land, a holy world of justice, peace, and even love.