Summary
For The Question of Palestine, a fundamental right of the Palestinian people — taken for granted morally in his premises — whose exercise is made extraordinarily difficult by exile and dispersion, since self-determination requires a clearly seen self to determine.
Details
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Said’s moral premise: human beings individually and selectively are entitled to fundamental rights, of which self-determination is one (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.17 / printed p.xvi).
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Chapter Three is titled Toward Palestinian Self-Determination. Said argues the process toward full Palestinian self-determination is extraordinarily difficult since self-determination is only possible when there is some clearly seen “self” to determine, and exile and dispersion make the problem immediately apparent (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.139 / printed p.118).
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After 1967, Palestinian self-determination has come to rest by and large on the need for an independent state on a liberated part of the original territory of Palestine (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.145-146 / printed p.124-125).
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The dispersion’s triple problem, to which Said traces every Palestinian difficulty since 1967: aspiration to self-determination, absence of a secure and possible territorial base, and the need for a Palestinian authority that would not become involved in struggles with the local authority (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.154 / printed p.133).
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In Chapter Three IV: the question of Palestinian self-determination includes all Palestinians, not just those on the West Bank and Gaza — the main achievement of the Palestine Liberation Organization — and the community changed from general liberation to particular liberation, a Palestinian state on the West Bank and Gaza, while retaining self-determination as its goal; Said’s own belief is that an independent and sovereign Palestinian state is required at this stage (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.195-196 / printed p.174-175).
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The Camp David Accords autonomy plan is, for Said, an overt plan to put the Palestinians under Israeli military authority forever in a Bantustan, inconsistent with self-determination; Assistant Secretary Harold H. Saunders testified in June 1978 that an independent Palestinian state would not, in the U.S. view, be a realistic or durable solution (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.210, p.213 / printed p.189, p.192).
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UN Resolution 3236 (November 22, 1974), as Said presents it, guaranteed the PLO’s international right to press for self-determination and to be the Palestinians’ sole legitimate representative; on January 22, 1976 the PLO supported a Security Council resolution restating the Palestinian right to self-determination including an independent state, which U.S. Ambassador Daniel P. Moynihan vetoed (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.246-247 / printed p.225-226).
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The 1977 near-agreement Said records: the PLO would accept Resolution 242 with a reservation specifying that 242 did not touch Palestinian national rights, in return for U.S. recognition of the PLO and something definite about Palestinian self-determination; at the last minute the United States would go no further than a dialogue, and the PLO could not accept on that basis (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.247 / printed p.226).
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In Chapter Four IV, U.S. policy’s blueprint for Palestine has self-rule and autonomy, well short of self-determination and independence, as its main ingredients; Said prefers to rely on the Palestinian will to self-determination he has described (The Question of Palestine, PDF p.258 / printed p.237).
Related pages
The Question of Palestine, Palestine Liberation Organization, Usrat al-Ard, UNRWA, Daniel P. Moynihan