Summary
The idea of a secular, democratic state in Palestine for Muslims, Christians and Jews, first espoused by the Palestine Liberation Organization, which Said calls the true novelty and the revolutionary force of the Palestinian movement — later held alongside, and in the change to particular liberation partly displaced by, the goal of a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza.
Details
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Palestinians were the first Arab community to take up the problem of a multiethnic population; no other group took as advanced a position as proposing a secular-democratic state for Muslims, Christians and Jews in Palestine (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.160 / printed p.139).
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Had armed struggle and people’s war been all there was to the Palestinian movement, its force would have ended in Jordan; first espoused by the PLO, the idea of a secular, democratic state in Palestine represented the true novelty and the revolutionary force of the movement, advancing democratic values for a region still shackled by reaction and oppression (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.185 / printed p.164).
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The Palestinian community underwent the change from a goal of general liberation to particular liberation, that is, from the hope of a secular democratic state in all of Palestine to a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza, while retaining its goal of self-determination and its values, and the larger ideal that men and women should be neither defined nor confined by race or religion (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.196 / printed p.175).
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Chapter Four III restates the idea as the Palestinian resistance movement’s break with all past ideas: a secular democratic state in Palestine for Arabs and Jews, which accepted the presence of a community of Jews in Palestine who had gained their state by conquest, and posited a state based on secular human rights, not on religious or minority exclusivity — still, to Said’s mind, the only possible and acceptable destiny for the multicommunal Middle East, transcending the ghetto state, the national security state and the minority government (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.241 / printed p.220).
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Said adds that much of the vision’s work was done in its mere formulation — for the first time the idea of an Arab Palestine underwent historical acculturation — while Western commentators and the Zionist establishment did not grasp it, and it became a habit to equate the idea with genocide (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.242 / printed p.221).
Related pages
The Question of Palestine, Palestine Liberation Organization, Self-determination