Upstream - [BONUS] Palestine Pt. 2: Justice for Some with Noura Erakat

Episode Date: November 23, 2023

For those of us living in the United States, today — what we call Thanksgiving — is a very significant holiday because, for some of us at least, it’s a day to recognize and remember the violent, genocidal, settler-colonial history of the land we live on. Our lives here in North America are predicated on a history and a pattern that is repeating itself as we speak, most notably in occupied Palestine, where we are witnessing what feels like the culmination of a decades-long ethnic cleansing campaign against the Indigenous population of Palestine by the forces of Zionism, the state of Israel, and, by the reigning global hegemon, the United States.  We've already covered some of the history that led us to this point in Part 1 of our ongoing series on Palestine with Sumaya Awad, and on today's show, we're going to be exploring a different angle, outlining the history and context of the formation of the state of Israel, how Palestinians resisted Israeli occupation from before the state was even created, and how they continued to resist throughout the disingenuously named “peace” process that culminated with the Oslo Accords. As we’ll see, this process was never intended to bring a lasting peace to the region, but was intended to cement in the status quo of Israeli supremacy and the ongoing subjugation of Palestinians. To talk about this we’ve brought on Noura Erakat, Associate Professor at Rutgers University in the department of Africana Studies and the program of Criminal Justice and author of Justice For Some: Law and the Question of Palestine. From the Great Arab Revolt in 1936 to the second Intifada at the start of this century, and up to Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7th, in this conversation we explore the history of Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation, the so-called peace process, the betrayal of the so-called two-state solution, where Israel's ethnic cleansing campaign is headed, and what it’s up against. Further Resources: Upstream – Palestine Pt. 1: A Socialist Introduction with Sumaya Awad Justice For Some: Law and the Question of Palestine by Noura Erakat Palestine: A Socialist Introduction edited by Sumay Awad and brian bean The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi Palestine, Israel, and the U.S. Empire by Richard Becker Donate to Middle Eastern Children's Alliance (MECA)  Anera: Provide urgent humanitarian aid to Palestinians Write your member of Congress to demand an immediate ceasefire This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

The violence of colonialism, its destructive nature, the fact that it acts with a double-edged sword of claiming the mantle of victimhood know, as a scholar of what we study, but vividly, just how violent colonialism is, just how alive colonialism is, is I think making a lot of people realize they too are palaces in your life. You are listening to upstream. Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. A podcast of documentaries and conversations that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about economics. I'm Dela Duncan. And I'm Robert Raymond. For those of us living in the United States, today, what we call Thanksgiving, is a very

significant holiday because for some of us at least, it's a day to recognize and remember the violent genocidal settler colonial history of the land we live on. Our lives here in North America are predicated on a history and a pattern that is repeating itself as we speak, most notably in occupied Palestine, where we are witnessing what feels like the culmination of a decade's long ethnic cleansing campaign against the indigenous population of Palestine by the forces of Zionism, the state of Israel and the reigning global hegemon, the United States. We've already covered some of the history that led us to this point

in part one of our ongoing series on Palestine with Sumea Awad, and on today's show, we're going to be exploring a different angle, outlining the history and context of the formation of the state of Israel, how Palestinians resisted Israeli occupation from before the state was even created, and how they continued to resist throughout the disingenuously named peace process that culminated with the Oslo Accords. As we'll see, this process was never intended to bring a lasting peace to the region, but was intended to cement in the status quo of Israeli supremacy and the ongoing subjugation of Palestinians.

To talk about all this, we've brought on Nora Erichat, associate professor at Rutgers University in the Department of Africana Studies and the program of Criminal Justice and author of Justice for Some Law in the Question of Palestine. From the great Arab revolt in 1936 to the second intifada at the start of the century, and up to Operation Al-Aqsa flood on October 7, in this conversation, we'll explore the history of Palestinian resistance to Israeli occupation, the so-called peace process, the betrayal of the so-called two-state solution, where Israel's ethnic cleansing campaign is headed, and what it's up against. We are really excited to

share this conversation with you, and before we do, really quickly, upstream is a labor of love. So if you haven't already yet, and if you can, if you're in a place where you can afford to do so, and if it's important for you to keep upstream sustainable, please consider going to upstreampodcast.org forward slash support to make a recurring monthly or one-time donation. Also, if you can, please go to Apple Podcasts to rate, subscribe, and leave us a review there as well as Spotify. You can leave us a review there too. This really helps get upstream in front

of more eyes and into more ears. We do not have a marketing budget or anything like that for upstream, so we really do rely on listeners like you to help grow our audience and spread the word. Thank you. And now here's Robert in conversation with Nora Erika. Hey Nora, it's great to have you on. I'm wondering if you could start by maybe introducing yourself and just sharing a little bit about the work that you do for our listeners. Sure, my name is Nuda Erika. I am a human rights attorney by training turned into scholar. I am now an associate professor at Rutgers University in the Department of Africana Studies in the program of criminal justice and author. My book is Justice for some, along the question of Palestine.

I also serve as an editor of the Journal of Palestine Studies and a co-founding editor of Jadaliyya as well. As a board member of several organizations, I have deep admiration for including the Center for Constitutional Rights and Palestine Legal. So before we get into more of the meat of our conversation, which hoping can focus a little bit on the Oslo Accords

and the so-called peace process and the lead up to that, the history behind that whole process. But to start, I'm wondering if maybe you could talk a little bit about how the last few weeks have been for you. I'm particularly curious about what kind of backlash you might be receiving in your outspoken support for the Palestinian cause. Because I think we're seeing a level of anti-Islamic or anti-Arab hysteria that's reaching similar levels as during the lead up to the Iraq war, really.

And we're also seeing Israel's propaganda campaign pick up drastically as they begin to really realize that they're losing public support in many ways. So I'm wondering, yeah, what's your personal experience been like? And maybe what you think more broadly of this propaganda campaign by the West to really sanitize Israel and punish its critics? Yeah, I mean, I think as a Palestinian in the world, we've all been in the same place of watching with absolute horror. I think for the past, you know, 75 years, we, you know, most of us were younger than that and wake

up to this world, realize a deep bias against Palestinians, a deep bias for Israel, a default Zionist position that we have to help people unlearn and then, you know, to scaffold onto that to help reconstruct a history very much, you know, a people's history in the tradition of Howard's in and other emancipatory historians. But with this current onslaught the past six weeks have demonstrated is that it's far, far worse than we could have imagined. The level to which Palestinian life is disregarded. The fact that day after day, we have seen images of children buried alive

or their feet jetting out from beneath crumbled homes or you know, even just now an image of a young boy embracing his brother, they're both dead from another yet another building that's fallen on them. You know, in the words of Secretary General Gaterra's Gaza has become a graveyard for children, right? 5,600 children have been killed of the 13,000, 75% are women children in the elderly, which is not to not mourn our men properly, but to emphasize, we know for a fact that women children and the elderly are not militants and involved in Hamas, and yet they constitute 75% of those dead, 5,600 are children right now,

33 are in the NICU hospital. What could they possibly be held to account for, right? On its face, you know, even if they were ideologues, imagine if they were ideologues, we would forgive them as children and yet here there's not even a trial of that basic thing, despite these images, despite the fact that their aggressor is the only nuclear power in the Middle East backed by by even greater nuclear power, the United States with impunity at the United Nations together with more weapons in this moment and diplomatic support across European nations is killing these babies with advanced weapons technologies

with precision. They're not children caught in the crossfire. These are missiles. This is a sky reigning missiles and white phosphorus and one ton bonds onto neighborhoods. And for us today's day 47, there still to be a debate about whether or not this is okay. Really speaks to the gutting nature of what it means to be a Palestinian in this moment.

And I think for a lot of people who have been involved in this movement who are not Palestinians who are just getting involved, this isn't necessarily a unique position. I think that many people who have survived apocalypse and genocide, indigenous nations, the world over African descendants who have been kidnapped from their homes and transformed into chattel, transformed into property and ripped apart from their families.

I mean, the memory, the lineage of this kind of apocalypse is not unique to Palestinians, but we're living it in 2023. And I think for everybody watching this, there's both a sense of the horror, of the violence, of colonialism, its destructive nature, the fact that it acts with a double-edged sword of claiming the mantle of victimhood and righteousness as it meets out cruel, cruel unfettered violence with this advanced military might, I think that it's become apparent to a lot of people vividly beyond the theoretical, you know, as a scholar of what we study, but vividly, just how violent colonialism is, just how

alive colonialism is, is I think making a lot of people realize they too are Palestinians, right? they too are Palestinians, right? The fact that the salt of this earth has risen in a bounding support for Palestinian life and for Palestinian freedom, that we can register that in the United States, 80% of Democrats, 60 now 8% of all Americans support ceasefire and yet only 43 of 535 members of Congress have endorsed that call, evidences that this is not about democratic representation and governance, but that there is collusion amongst political, economic, and I would say social-in-eat against people is also right, evidencing for people what it means to be Palestinian. That truth, that force, integrity, morality, just democratic majority, you can mobilize

all of these different elements. And yet still, there are forces that work against you. I mean, this is what it's been like. This is what it's been like. It's the duality of grieving, grieving, and a genocide that we're watching in real time. I think obviously this genocide is not the first, but it's probably the first we're watching in real time

across social media, the most well-documented form of genocide. There's horror here. It's not just Palestinians, but all of humanity that's watching this with horror of what our states capable of and then to say that they have a right to do so together with this energy of a fighting. That if the world is this bad, it means we have to fight that much harder and take those risks. You asked about what I've gone through. I don't, you know, Robert asking any Palestinian anywhere that is just a source of shame and guilt. What fortune did my family have to have not been born and gassed into the situation at this moment that were not trapped?

And even if we had American passports, we would be granted exit. But then the fortune of not being there, I mean, all of it is just fortune between, you know, 11 million Palestinians in the world. What separates the fate of any Palestinian from, you know, now being afraid that the sky is going to fall on you or your home is going to be demolished over you or that you can't protect your children. For what? It's a really, really difficult reality to contend with that I've done nothing to deserve where I'm at right now. I'm here for you of being in the United States. And so obviously I for a very, very long time I've been in this for a while now. And for a very, very long time, organized and worked from a place of guilt, and it

took me a lot of work to organize from a place of love instead, because organizing from a place of guilt can be quite destructive, internally fracturing, you function on deficit, and you have very little grace for yourself and others. And so, you know, I've organized now for over a decade from a place of love and grace. And we fight so hard because we want to live. We want everyone to live, which includes for yourself, respite.

But in this moment, having to answer, how are you feeling? I mean, we're lucky to be alive. As Beesan tells us every day day as she gets on social media and She reports to us that she's alive. We don't worry about that We haven't had to worry about that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Thank you so much for that really I think a really important point very heart-wrenching to To hear that response, but also I think that's really beautiful to hear that you've begun working More from a place of love and I think that's really beautiful to hear that you've begun working more from a place of love. And I think that's something that we can all take as a North Star to follow because it's

very, at least for me, instinctual to almost respond from a place of just pure rage and my blood boils whenever I listen to the news or think about what's going on. And I really appreciate you talking about how this is sort of a window into the brutality and utter horror of colonialism, this force that shaped the world that we live in, every corner of it, and serves as the foundation of the land that many of us live on.

And also the monstrosity of the US imperial empire and its client state, Israel, I mean, we talked with Sumeo Wad a few weeks ago, deeply about this question of settler colonialism. And she gave us a pretty thorough account of the Nakba and the 1948 war and just how horrendous that was and looking at the early roots of Zionism and how it's manifested to create the situation today. So I think, you know, our listeners should be fairly familiar with some of that history if they've listened to situation today. So I think our listeners should be fairly familiar with some of that history if they've listened to part one.

But I'm wondering if maybe you can pick up on some of the threads that we haven't really had a chance to get into yet. Particularly, I'm really interested in looking at this so-called peace process that I think a lot of us, at least my generation, really as we were growing up, that's what we heard about a lot of us, at least my generation, really as we were growing up, that's what we heard about a lot, right, when it came to Israel and Palestine, this ongoing piece process. And I think it's really important to explore the false nature of

this so-called piece process, but there's so much context leading up to it. So I'm wondering maybe if you could talk a little bit about the lead up to the peace process before we get into this, you know, the Oslo Accords more formally, and how Palestinians have just really been shut out and treated unfairly by the United States and other, you know, quote, brokers that have facilitated these peace processes. And do you think that maybe you can walk us through a little bit of history of maybe the Palestinian liberation organization or the PLO? And yeah, just maybe get into, you know, some of the history leading up to the Oslo

courts. So yeah, I think I heard in your question a lot there. I mean, there is Oslo, which is a very particular history and juncture, which then, you know, frames Palestine within a peace and conflict, studies framework, and is also, is the liberal veneer that is basically providing cover for Israel to continue its settler colonial expansion. And then, you know, that fits within, you know, more than a hundred years of Palestinian resistance to Zionist settler colonization of Palestinian land. And so how do we answer that question? Let me start with the broader framework and just provide some junctures for the listeners

and then delve into Oslo and why peace process is actually a dangerous discourse, has become a very dangerous discourse, despite the words, peace there. So Palestine is under Ottoman authority, and when the Ottomans are defeated in the First World War along with German empires defeated in the First World War, there is a move to then bring these Turkish and German territories now under what the peoples want, you know, African people and people of the Middle East, what they want is for self-determination and independence, which is why they join, you know, especially for the Arabs,

why they join against the Ottomans and with the British during the war in a promise for their independence and self-determination, which they are not granted. Instead, these territories are now marked for a different kind of administration under mandatory authority or what the League of Nations established, a mandate system whereby a mandatory power, think here an imperial or colonial power, would shepherd these different territories to independence, a kind of tutelage that is very explicitly infantilizing and one that maintains the, you know, European supremacy by wanting that none of these colonized peoples

who have been under imperial power will be able to exercise national self-determination until and when a mandatory power says that they've reached that stage of eligibility, which is a standard that's measured across Eurocentric norms. What the mandate system becomes is a means for ongoing colonial penetration,

but under the veneer of the liberal veneer of some totalage, area A, or the former Ottoman territories under Ottoman administration are recognized as provisionally independent, and this includes Palestine. Classes B and C, German territories in the Pacific

and the African continent are not, which reflects, you know, not only the Euro-Centrism, but also an ingrained anti-blackness that shapes this international legal order. In that context, as the mandates are being chosen and are being established for these territories in class A or the former Ottoman territories, Palestine is designated by the British as a site of Zionist Jewish settlement, and then incorporated into the Palestine mandate in 1921 as part of an international order where the British, where the Balfour Declaration

designating Palestine as a site of Jewish Zionist settlement, which marks 90% right? There's a juridical erasure as it marks 90% of this indigenous population, which is Arab, Palestinian, of many religions right, which is Arab, Palestinian, of many religions, including Jewish, but primarily Muslim and Christian, designates them merely as non-Jewish, with religious rights, but not any political rights, or not any national rights. And so, here we see any razor of this population and basically a plan to supplant their sovereignty,

their nascent sovereignty with Jewish Zionists, settler sovereignty, and immediately Palestinians are organic, even before the declaration, the Balfour Declaration, even before its incorporation in the Palestine Mandate verbatim as pureambular text in 21 Palestinians are organizing themselves in opposition to Zionism and when the US to US senators Conduct the King Crane Commission to even assess who Palestinians want to be their mandatory power

They're united in their opposition to youism. And the King Crane Commission says we do not recommend this plan. There is no support for it on the ground by a native people. And so Palestine's continue to organize themselves in this period, in the inner war period, before, between the first and the second world war, they're organizing themselves in legal opposition. They're actually traveling to challenge the mandate and saying that the mandatory power is by advancing Zionist settlement is breaching the terms of the League of Nations covenant, specifically Article 22 on the mandate system, that it's a violation of Article 22.

It's a violation of Article, you know, all of these provisions, these very astute legal arguments that are amounting to nothing. The British in their role as a mandatory power are also, you know, creating an exception of the Palestine mandate where they're not preparing natives for, you know, their own governance, but are supplanting that native governance

with this settler government, 1936 to 39 Palestinians, wage, the most significant popular uprising at the time that begins in boycott and then manifests into armed resistance against the British mandate. One that echoes the struggle against British mandate and basically mandatory rule across the Middle East. In this context, Britain finally reverses its Zionist policy in 1939 and says that, yeah, this is a failed policy.

We cannot achieve it except by force. There is, you know, even though they've recommended partition in 1936 that you can't partition these lands. I mean, all of this to tell you that Palestinians have been resisting since the moment that we see European powers colluding. And even before that, as they're organizing themselves and society for national liberation and self-determination, and they're part of a global context. They're not. And they're part of a global context. They're not unique. They're part of a global context. What's made them exceptional is that their lands have been

designated for Zionist settlement and is being facilitated by European powers. All of this, of course, the reversal of the white paper, the reversal of Zionist policy and the white paper, all of this gets reversed in the course of the white paper, the reversal of Zionist policy and the white paper, all of this gets reversed. In the course of the Second World War, which featured Nazi genocide of Jewish Europeans and I can't even say Jewish Jews of Europe, because many of them were denied citizenship, where specifically as a result of Nazi racialization have been deemed outsiders could not be included within the European fabric.

They're orientalized as being too religious to primordial, they're ghettoized. And so this leads to what we see as Nazi genocide and annihilation, the attempted annihilation in order to purify European society. I mean, it's horrifying. It's horrifying. And yet, as many anti-colonialist thinkers have pointed out, it was a policy that reflected colonialism outside of Europeans. Shores like Amy Society describes Hitler as a boomerang effect.

He reflects what colonialism looked like, what was done to Jews and targeting them had been formalized and practiced against colonized peoples that deemed them as outsiders, right? And yet it, too, this genocide is exceptionalized because it happens within Europe shores with these advanced weapons in a way that revealed to Europe its own horrors, ones that they couldn't recognize when it was done and meted against brown and in black and indigenous peoples of the world and their colonialism. So, 1948, we have the genocide convention. And now the question of Palestine, which had been administered by the British, as well as, you know, with the League of Nations, when the League of Nations crumbles, now we establish the United Nations in 1945, and then the

Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the genocide convention in 1948. Now Palestine becomes a question that's administered by the United Nations. What do we do here with failed Zionist policy, Zionist settler sovereign that is seeking its national independence as well as an native people who have sought its independence. In the special committee on Palestine, they basically approach this question three possibilities and there's three committees that explore it. One is a Palestinian state with strong minority protections for the Jewish minority. The second is a binaural state

where two peoples are able to administer this as shared sovereignty and the third is a two-state partition, where they don't even recognize Palestinians, but they, the idea of partitioning the land. And even though the partition has the least amount of support is contravening, you know, the terms of international law, there's really no grounds for it, that's the one that gets the greatest support.

Because in the aftermath of the Second World War, the entire question of Palestine is also a question of what happens to the Jewish refugees. Now rendered refugees in Europe. And now, but you have to ask your question, why are they refugees? The refugees because they've been denationalized, they've been subject to a genocidal campaign, and they're

refused refuge across Europe. That now Palestine becomes not only with the British had created a problem on their own terms by promising a land that already belonged to a people to Jewish Zionist, but now they're also answering the question, how do we resolve a Jewish refugee question? Hence, unscrup recommends partition. I guess this isn't an answer to your question, Robert. But there's a legacy here. I mean, no, it is definitely an answer to my question.

And regardless, I think this is really interesting, important context. I've been reading a lot about this history lately, and it's super interesting because every author, I read, has a unique perspective and focuses on different elements. And so I think it's really cool to hear what's shaping North Pacific retelling of this history. And I do appreciate you know, you have been weaving in the ongoing thread of Palestinian

resistance throughout. So yeah, I really do appreciate it. Yeah, there's a legacy here. There's a legacy here of Palestinian resistance. There's a legacy of European collusion. There's a legacy of contravention of international law. There's a legacy here of exception. Fast forward by 19, you know, what happens when

unscrup recommends partition is that Palestinians rejected Arabs rejected that there's no grounds for partition. And in this framework, Zionist militias now realize that in order to establish partition and because Palestinians are refusing that they will establish it by force. And hence, we see in early December 1947, the beginning of a campaign and hostilities between Palestinians and these Zionist militias that grows exponentially. That before May 1948, we see an explicit ethnic cleansing

campaign that is targeting Palestinian homes and villages that understands that in order to establish a Jewish state with a demographic majority, that the land has to be depopulated. And we see that process begin in early December 1947. By March 1948, it's become so horrifying that even the United States reverses its position on partition and other powers reverse their position on partition at the United Nations, but at that point, they're not stopping, they're not stopping the Zionist militias and don't

intervene. And now in May 14, 1948 Israel declares itself as a state. And by May 15, 1948 is already now, you know, consecrating Palestinian force removal and exile as well as dispossession. It's only after, it's only after that declaration and after this mass expulsion that now Arab states declare war against the newly established state of Israel, many historians have demonstrated

that just militarily, they couldn't mount a united victory that they were not united politically, that militarily they weren't organized, and it results in, you know, by 1949 some two years later, now we have the completed expulsion of 80% of native Palestinians from the land, 80% their dispossession, armistice lines, there's a truce, but not a permanent piece that's established in March 1949, and hence begins this moment where Palestine is understood as a refugee issue, but now of Palestinian refugees who are framed as a humanitarian, a matter of humanitarian concern.

Well during that time time Palestinians are also organizing themselves to resist this, to mobilize and transform themselves from a humanitarian charity case into a political question. They have been deprived of their self-determination. We see this transformation become formalized in 1968, one year after the 1967 war, whereby Israel now completes and expands its colonial takings and holdings, now of the Syrian Guolan Heights, the Egyptian

Sinai, and the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. This is the moment that most people recognize and that's recognized most in international law before that the dispossession of Palestinians that had been established and consecrated between 1917 and 1948 is normalized, more or less normalized, in an international law framework under the framework of Israeli sovereignty. So that won't be, that's not being examined or criticized only until 1967 when Israel now occupies these other Palestinian-indiption and Syrian territories. Now we have a different way of understanding the question of Palestine.

And you see this almost simultaneously, right? You see the normalization of Palestinian removal and erasure as well as the occupation of Arab lands. And so I would say, you know, for the most part Palestinians are rejecting this framework and this duality, but the international community is not. It's what frames their approach, and that's what's consecrated in Security Council Resolution 242. That mandates that Israel must withdraw from the territories that it occupied.

It doesn't do that. Instead, too for too, also in shrines, a quid pro quo arrangement whereby Israel is given permission, literally, to maintain a hold on these territories occupied and will only give them back an exchange for permanent peace. Here's the moment of the formal exclusion of Palestinians because under Henry Kissinger's leadership, who at this time is the head of the National Security Council, and I think at the time is also Secretary of State, masterminds an ongoing now wouldalbe the Middle East peace process by disaggregating.

The Arab is rarely conflict into a series of bilateral conflicts. So it's Israeli Egyptian, Israeli Lebanese, Israeli Syrian, Israeli Jordanian, and then excludes Palestinians and the PLO altogether formally. We see the formal exclusion here of the PLO, and instead the West Bank, the future of the West Bank is going to be negotiated with Jordan. The future of the Sinai is going to be negotiated, Sinai and Gaza with Egypt, but that's not what, you know, what happens and the PLO is now organizing to be recognized and to step in.

They want to represent themselves. And in 1968, they assume the mantle of the PLO had been established in 1964 by Egypt's Gamal Abdel-Nasr, primarily comprised of a number of Arab elite, but in 1968, its Palestinian militias and political forces who have organized themselves that take over the PLO. And now, assume leadership of it, yes, it had a fad and fathah, assume it's mental. And so we see a new history beginning in 1968, one where, you know, they declare in the charter single state for a non-sectarian future that it belongs to Jews, Muslims, and Christians, one that wants

to restore Palestinian sovereignty, one where they declared the right to use armed force in order to reach that liberated future. And then in 1973, another war, yet that now, you know, between 67 and 73, nothing happens with Resolution 242 in 1973. We see an acceleration of that where the balance of power is tipped and here the PLO begins to plant the seeds for Oslo is early as 1974, where they frame this as an interim plan, right?

A 10 point program. This is a very detailed history and one that represents internal fracture and betrayal. Many would say betrayal. That's how the popular front for the liberation of Palestine, even though it endorsed the 10-point program where this phase approach framed it as betrayal because of its terms. And I would encourage folks if they're interested in a summary history of this to read, you know, my chapter, three and four,

injustice for some, but Alangresh has documented this in great detail. Elena Koban, as well as Yazid Sayer, have all, you know, documented this texture. I think Alangresh does the best job of the particular terms of the 10 point program, but all to say that here we see the beginning of fracture where some in the PLO identify the restoration, you know, the negotiated return of the West Bank and Gaza as the first phase, what they describe as the first phase of liberating Palestinian

land incrementally. But for some, they also see it as the final phase that it would be enough to restore sovereignty over Palestine and Gaza, which is only 22% of historic Palestine. Fast forward, this is obviously, you know, the Palestinians reject 242 as an instrument of surrender. Palestinians never explicitly talk about this incremental plan as a final plan. But we then see those terms change in 1988 in the aftermath of another, you know, the eruption of another Palestinian uprising, popular uprising. And now it's the Palestinian National Council that endorses not only two for two, but also endorses one eight one or the partition plan.

These are two resolutions that the Palestinian, formal Palestinian leadership has rejected for decades, that they endorse in 1988 as they embark on what will be framed as the two-state solution, which is a misnomer because Israel is already a state. It's been recognized as state and incorporated into the United Nations by 1949. It's really a plan to establish a Palestinian state on 22% of historic Palestine in the West Bank,

in Gaza, with East Jerusalem as the capital, and even though they agree to these terms, before negotiations, even though they then resumed resolution 3379, designating Zionism as a form of racism and racial discrimination, even though they resumed formally the right to use force in the pursuit of their national liberation, before they're giving anything, Robert, before they're giving anything, all they get in exchange, and they formally recognize Israel as well, and all they get in exchange is formal recognition as a juridical body that represents the Palestinian people.

This now is Oslo, right? And by 1993, they enter into a formal agreement where there's no possibility if you read the documents. There's no possibility of a Palestinian state. There's never going to be a Palestinian state achieved. It's not done to develop a Palestinian state. The terms of the Declaration of Principles also known as Oslo is basically an autonomy program.

It's a framework of derivative sovereignty where Palestinians will have autonomous, you know, lands over some of its lands and some of its peoples or what we know as area A that becomes a permanent occupation. It's a plan that, you know, is one that had been a tried in South Africa in the form of black homelands and one that exists and was developed in North America and the form of Native American reservations. Right? And that is what Oslo is. Oslo is an autonomy plan that will never be tantamount to Palestinian sovereignty or statehood. And within the first, you see that within the, it's first seven years between 93 and 2000,

Israel has actually doubled its settlements around Jerusalem. And we can talk about the terms of Oslo and go into the details, but suffice it to say that what this deal is allowing is permitting Israel to continue its settler colonial expansion in settlement on the one hand with international backing and international support while on the other side of their mouth saying that they're engaging in peace. But this piece is a pacification process, pacifying Palestinians incorporating the PLO as a representative of an 11 million person population across the globe and instead just becomes representative of what is two thirds of the population, even

less, because we're not even talking about the Palestinians within who are citizens of Israel, but who are just those in the West Bank and in Gaza. And now that body becomes part of the occupation process who are armed and trained by the United States to police Palestinians to protect Israeli settlements, settlers and settler expansion. So this falls apart in the early 2000s, and the entire peace process falls apart at Camp David. Details I'll spare you here, which then, you know,

plants the seeds for what's known as the second Palestinian in Thiefala. We're now many of these armed Palestinians who are armed and trained by the US to police Palestinians turn their arms against the Israeli army, but it becomes a militarized approach. And here we see in the second in Thief, we see the seeds planted for a lot of the rules of Israel's rules of war that are manifesting today, including the fact that Israel

in this context now says that it has the right to use lethal force against Palestinians even though they occupy those Palestinians. Now, obviously, they don't have that right. And in order to get around this, they neither recognize Palestinians as nascent sovereigns, which would give them the right to use force and recognize as an international armed conflict. Nor are they recognizing Palestinians as part of Israel, and therefore, regulated as a form of civil war,

because they don't want to include Palestinians, it would destroy a Jewish demographic majority. Instead, they create a new category of war, what they describe as armed conflict, short of war, literally a new category, which would say, right, this is above a normal civilian riot that we would just squash through coercive police power. It's a militarized force, but because we don't recognize the adversary as an ascent sovereign with the right to use force, their terrorists Israel then maintains the right to use force against who they describe as Palestinian terrorists, who any use of force is illegitimate, whether they're targeting soldiers and military infrastructure, or they're targeting civilians.

And we see a number now of, you know, we see here the transformation of extrajudicial assassination into targeted killings, right? The sanitized nature of that, you know, we see this idea of armed conflict short of war and exception, seeds that are planted in area A, in the West Bank now being applied to Gaza in in total or in totality by the time Israel withdraws unilaterally in 2005.

And so here we see I mean I think I've answered far more than you asked, but I'm providing a con. Yeah, no exactly. Yes. you provided a really important context. I really appreciate that. And thank you again so much for that really detailed history. I'm really I'm grateful for you putting it all into just 15 minutes of history there, of over a century of history. Final question for you before we wrap up here is, I'm wondering what you think the Israeli end game is right now in the bombardment and the onslaught that we're seeing in Palestine. Like what do you think the end game is here? What do they want to do with Gaza?

What are they trying to achieve and do you think that they'll be successful in that? Well, I think the end game has been pretty clear. You know what's really frustrating about this moment is that Israelis have been very, very explicit about what their end game is, what their vision is, and what they're doing. They've told us over and over that this is an ethnic cleansing plan

that for them ensuring their security and decimating Hamas as the equivalent of basically ethnically cleansing the entirety of the Gaza Strip of Palestinians putting their boots back on the ground, expanding their territorial takings, in line with what they've done for 75 years. That's literally, they literally told us that.

There are no Palestinians, civilians, there are all animals. They won't even recognize the innocence of Palestinian children. You know, in their calculation, Palestinian children are basically going to grow up and become, you know, Palestinian resistance fighters, right? So that they're criminalized by their very existence, which, you, which is part, frankly, of an anti-Palestinian racism, where there's a presumption of guilt, there's a presumption of anti-Jewish bigotry, there's a presumption of violence and a propensity to violence that Palestinians have to then work against.

That's talking about Palestinians all over the world and any geography, but for Palestinians right now trapped in the Gaza Strip, it's far, far worse, right? They just never had the right to exist at all and for them to have the audacity to not want to die quietly makes them worthy of cruel, mass, mass killing and a genocidal campaign. The problem is they're telling us this, they're saying that there's no fuel electricity in water, they're saying that they want to disease the population, they're explaining that they are resurrecting the Sinai plan, which is to remove Palestinians altogether to place them in the Sinai and

formalize their exile. And yet once this gets into Western press amongst Western governments, that's where this language is being laundered. I feel like it's a money laundering situation. It's dirty, it's obvious, and then it gets into the media and it gets into you know these diplomatic capitals who then spin it for the rest of the world and say, nope, this is self-defense. Nope. Pierce Morgan says insane things like if it was genocide, they would have killed more Palestinians.

Nope. There's tunnels under these hospitals and literally lying, dropping all journalistic standards, right? I can't be on a show where I cite a number of dead that can't be cross verified three times. And yet you have Israeli Army spokespeople talking about tunnels that nobody has bothered to investigate or verify. So I think that, you know, for Israel, the end game has been very clear. They've made it very clear.

There is only one solution. They've resurrected now this idea and a shelf life for itself to expand Zionist settler sovereignty under the framework of defensive force, building on this legacy of the war on terror and Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism to achieve it. But I also think that as you know, as dismal, as this might be, and as dismal as this is

in the short run for Palestinians who are suffering, suffering so unnecessarily, so cruel that this is an inflection point for Zionism in Israel. The fact that young people are in complete opposition and we can measure this, that they're in complete opposition to their elders who they feel have betrayed them and have betrayed humanity and have failed them. Very similar to the attitude, I would say, of young people who have resisted the failure to regulate gun control in the US or the failure to regulate climate globally, right? Adults have failed children, have failed children

against empirical evidence against certain doomed futures and setting them on the course of catastrophe and more apocalypse, right? That, so in the short term, Israel, you know, may achieve this, but in the long term, they've demonstrated the bankruptcy of Zionism that it doesn't have moral force. There aren't people fighting for a Zionist future based on moral principles.

It's coercive force that's being used. It's military might that's being used in order to enforce it and then measures of repression elsewhere in order to punish opposition to it. We're universities American universities in a country that covers fetishizes first amendment rights to speech and assembly and press and protest are banning student organizations in order to railroad and steamroll this particular future. I mean, I think that, yeah, the short run might be dismal in the failure of adults.

We failed. We failed. Who will be our future? And yet, I have, you know, I have no doubt that it's this future that will set us on a different course who have seen, with their own eyes, have seen not only the dangers of Zionism and the violence that it breeds and the instability

that it creates, not just obviously in Palestinian lives, but for the world, but also the repressive powers that will consolidate themselves in order to repress them, in order to silence dissent, in order to coerce them to accept a very unjust future. And this is where I see a lot of hope. I see a lot of hope for us. I also see a future of more repression and you know the one thing that I'll say to listening audiences who

may or may not be interested in Palestinians or who may agree you know let's just throw all the Palestinians under the bus that might be the easier way you know genocide seems a lot easier than anti-colonial resistance and decolonization. Even for those folks who might be quite short-sighted and have a questionable moral compass, is that it's not as if this is going to be contained. It's not as if when states and universities expand their police powers of repression that they'll only apply them to Palestinians or those who advocate for Palestinian liberation, right? It's not as if a military power that you know,

preaches racial supremacy and righteous colonialism that if they practice genocide and establish that as a precedent that that then gets contained, that too could be replicated. So what we're seeing here is a danger for everybody. You know, it echoes what James Baldwin wrote to Angela Davis as she sat in Marin County jail when he said to her, if they came for you in the morning, but our silence means that they'll come for us in the night. Obviously that's not verbatim, but more or less, yeah, they'll come for us in the night. Obviously that's not. Rebeidom, but more or less, yeah, they'll come for everybody in the night. So this really is a struggle for everybody I said it earlier.

When people realize that they're all Palestinians, yes, yes, you are. The future of Palestinians, their fate, our fate is your fate as well. You've been listening to an upstream conversation with Nora Erikaat, associate professor at Rutgers University in the Department of Africana Studies and the program of Criminal Justice and the author of Justice for Some, Law and the Question of Palestine. Stay tuned for part three of this ongoing series on Palestine, where we'll have Sumea Awad back on the show. If all goes to plan, that episode should be ready by next week.

And we know there was a lot of history presented here in a very short span of time, so if you want to dig deeper, a few books that we recommend are, of course Norris book Justice for Some, as well as Palestine, a socialist introduction edited by Sumea Awad and Brian Bean. Also, the Hundred Years War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi, and finally, Palestine, Israel, and the US Empire by Richard Becker. Please check the show notes for links to these books as well as any of the resources mentioned in this episode, including ways that you can support Palestine. Thank you to Carolyn Raider for this episode's cover art. Upstream The Music was composed by Robert.

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