Summary
Nimer’s name for the enduring and racist trope that paints Palestinians as unreasonable and rejectionist — contrasted with Zionist counterparts historically positioned as willing partners in peace and compromise — and that he argues was weaponized to deny Palestinians their fundamental rights and demonize their collective aspirations for sovereignty (The Enduring and Racist Trope of Palestinian Rejectionism, lines 143, 157).
Details
- Its founding dichotomy, in Nimer’s account: “the prosperous and civilized Settler and the regressive and rejectionist Arab standing in the way of progress”, manufactured from the onset of the Zionist project — Theodor Herzl envisioned Palestinian Arabs welcoming the colonizers, and resistance was instead dismissed as regressive and rooted in a fear of ingenuity and prosperity, and later characterized by charges of antisemitism and senseless bloodlust (lines 139-143).
- Mandate period: Palestinian opposition to the Balfour Declaration is used as one of the first examples of rejection of coexistence, although the 1921 Haycraft Commission of Inquiry pointed to the threat of Zionist takeover, not antisemitism, as the basis of Arab resistance, and although the 1937 Peel Commission partition and transfer proposal was also rejected by large parts of the Zionist community, as were unitary-state offers in 1928 and 1947 (lines 151-155). The period’s distillation is the saying Nimer quotes: “The Arabs never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity” (line 157).
- Peace process: the trope — as “the myth of Palestinian intransigence” — dominated how the international community dealt with Palestinians, above all at the 2000 Camp David negotiations, where the rejected offer was a quasi-state without sovereignty and the PLO counterproposal gave up nearly 80% of Palestine; Israeli rejections of Palestinian counteroffers, in 2008 and in the earlier cases Nimer lists, are not recorded under the same standard (lines 161-171).
- After October 7, 2023: the trope was redeployed “as if in lockstep” in the Times of Israel, The Spectator and the Jewish News Syndicate, and in asymmetric ceasefire coverage, so that blame for the genocide in Gaza is placed on Palestinians themselves (lines 177-185).
- Nimer’s conclusion: the trope is part of a larger anti-Palestinian framework relying on racist and dehumanizing tropes to legitimize and advance Zionist Settler Colonialism, and the issue is that “the issues at hand have never been about details or parameters of dialogue, but rather about extinguishing resistance and Palestinian identity as a whole” (lines 189-191).
Related pages
The Enduring and Racist Trope of Palestinian Rejectionism, Fathi Nimer, Settler Colonialism, Middle East Peace Process, Antisemitism