The Question of Palestine (Vintage) [Paperback]

...in the truest sense of the word.

Edward Said wrote this book in 1979, around the time of the Camp David accords, one of the many efforts to bring peace to the region. Said's most famous work is Orientalism, a critical examination into the perceptions, and their formulation, of the Middle East by Europeans and Americans. He was a Professor of English at Columbia University in NYC, and, as a Palestinian Christian, was the most erudite and effective voice for the Palestinian people. In 1986 I was touring the Australian War Memorial in Canberra. Below each of the arches, engraved in stone in large letters is the name of the location of one battle. Certainly there is "Gallipoli," but there was also the one word: "Palestine." It commemorates the efforts of Australian troops there in 1916, and is devoid of present-day political connotations. But as a person who primarily had read the American media, I found seeing simply the word itself, unadorned, in stone even, so unusual, that I had to capture it on film.

Said's work provides much carefully documented evidence why seeing the word "Palestine" was so unusual at the time. Bluntly, the existence of the native inhabitants in this area was an enormous inconvenience, to say the least, for those who were proponents of the Zionist enterprise. Said quotes from the The complete diaries of Theodor Herzl, its "founding father": "We shall have to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly." Said notes that Golda Meir made the flat assertion in 1969 that the Palestinians simply do not exist, although, as he says, current fashion was to use the "somewhat gentler phrase": "so-called Palestinians."

One of the true strengths of this work is that Said has read (and much to the chagrin of the 1 and 2 star reviewers of this work, who do not comment on this facet) and can quote from the works of Israel's founders and leaders. For example, Menachem Begin, who suddenly became not only a statesman, but the Prime Minister, had documented his terrorism, "including the wholesale massacre of innocent women and children- in righteous(and chilling) profusion. He admits to being responsible for the April 1948 massacre of 250 women and children in the Arab village of Deir Yassin," in his book, The Revolt. Said quotes at length from an interview of the Israeli Army Chief of Staff, General Gur, in the Israeli newspaper Al-Hamishmar. Referring to the bombardment of the Palestinian civilian population: "Then you claim that the population ought to be punished? Of course, and I have never had any doubt about that." As Said says: "With sentiments bordering on pure disgust, I must note here that not a single US newspaper carried the ...interview."

Said goes on to examine the Palestinian experience as a victim of Zionism, and what steps might be taken to reach true self-determination. Aptly, he criticizes the short-sightedness of American foreign policy, and who we elect to associate with: "...played into the United States' fatal habit of being taken in by the likes of Marshall Ky, Chiang Kai-shek and the Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlevi, to the exclusion of more genuinely popular, and representative, leaders. Most disastrously of all, the United States seemed blind to the results of its support for such leaders as Sadat, Begin and the Shah."

Much of what Said documents is the madness and unreason that has resulted in the current conundrum that is the Middle East. But he also quotes from those who saw the problem clearly, such as Hannah Arendt, in The Origins of Totalitarianism (HBK): "After the Second World War it turnout out that the Jewish question, which was considered the only insoluble one, was indeed solved- namely, by means of a colonized and then conquered territory- but this solved neither the problem of minorities nor the stateless. On the contrary, like virtually all other events of our century, the solution of the Jewish question merely produced a new category of refugees, the Arabs, thereby increasing the number of stateless by another 700,000 to 800,000 people."

And speaking of reason, and seeing clearly, Nadav Haber has posted an excellent review of this book, almost a decade ago. And still, no real progress has been made on what NYT's journalist Anthony Lewis has called, in referring to the message of this book: "A compelling call for identity and justice." I recently read Josef Avesar's Peace, and strongly recommend it as a very viable path to a permanent solution. For Said's book, 5-stars, plus.