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The Grandeur of Yasser Arafat Author(s): Gilles Deleuze and Timothy S. Murphy Source: Discourse, Vol. 20, No. 3, Gilles Deleuze: Areason to Believe in this World (Fall 1998), pp. 30-33 Published by: Wayne State University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/41389494 . Accessed: 30/01/2014 16:09

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This content downloaded from 136.167.3.36 on Thu, 30 Jan 2014 16:09:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions The Grandeur of Yasser Arafat

Gilles Deleuze

The Palestiniancause is firstand foremostthe set of injusticesthat thesepeople have sufferedand continueto suffer.These injustices are acts of violence, but also illogicalities,false reasonings,false guarantees that claim to compensate or vindicate them. Arafat needed onlyone wordto describethe broken promises, the violated agreements,at the moment of the Sabra and Shatila massacres: shame, shame.1 It's said that this is not a genocide. And yet it's a storythat consistsof manyOradours, from the verybeginning.2 Zionist ter- rorismwas practicednot solelyagainst the English,but on theArab villageswhich had to disappear;Irgoun was very active in thisrespect (Deir Yasin).3 From beginningto end, it involvedacting as if the Palestinianpeople not onlymust not exist,but had neverexisted. The conquerorswere those who had themselvessuffered the greatestgenocide in history.Of this genocide the Zionistshave made an absoluteevil But transformingthe greatestgenocide in historyinto an absoluteevil is a religiousand mysticalvision, not a historicalvision. It doesn't stop the evil;on the contrary,it spreads the evil, makes it fall once again on other innocents,demands reparationthat makes theseothers suffer part of what the Jews suf- fered(expulsion, restriction to ghettos,disappearance as a people) . With "colder" means than genocide, one ends up withthe same result. The and Europe owed reparationto the Jews. And theymade a people, about whom the least thatcould be said

Discourse,20.3,Fall 1998, pp. 30-33. Copyright by© 1998 Wayne State University Press, Detroit,Michigan 48201-1309.

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This content downloaded from 136.167.3.36 on Thu, 30 Jan 2014 16:09:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Fall 1998 31 is that theyhad no hand in and were singularlyinnocent of any holocaustand hadn't even heard ofit, pay this reparation. It's there thatthe grotesquebegins, as wellas theviolence. Zionism, then the stateof willdemand thatthe Palestiniansrecognize its right {droit).But the stateof Israel willnever stop denyingthe veryfact of a Palestinianpeople. Theywill never speak of Palestiniansbut of the of Palestine,as ifthey found themselvesthere by chance or in error.And later,they will act as if the expelled came fromoutside, they will not speak of the firstwar of resistance that the Palestiniansled all alone. Since theyhaven't recognized Israel's right,they will be made into descendants of Hitler. But Israel reservesthe rightto denytheir existence in fact.Here begins a fictionthat had to stretchfurther and further,and to weighon all those who defended the Palestiniancause. This fiction,this wager of Israel's, was to make all those who would contest the defacto conditionsand actions of the Zioniststate appear as anti-Semites. This operationfinds its source in Israel's cold politicswith respect to the Palestinians. From the start,Israel has never concealed its goal: to empty the Palestinianterritory. And even better,to act as ifthe Palestinian territorywere empty, always destined for the Zionists.It was clearlya matterof colonization, but not in thenineteenth-century European sense: the local inhabitantswould not be exploited, theywould be made to leave. Those who remainedwould be made, not into a dependent territorialworkforce, but ratherinto a mobile and detached workforce,as ifthey were immigrantsplaced in a ghetto. Fromthe start, lands are boughton thecondition that they be empty of occupants,or can be emptied.It's a genocide, but one in which physicalextermination remains subordinated to geographicalevac- uation: being onlyArabs in general,the survivingPalestinians must go merge with the other Arabs. Physicalextermination, though it may or may not be entrustedto mercenaries,is most certainly present.But thisisn't a genocide, theysay, since it's not the "final goal": in reality,it's just one means among others. The complicityof the United Stateswith Israel does not arise solelyfrom the Zionistlobby. Elias Sanbar has shown clearlyhow the United Statesrediscovered in Israel an aspectof itsown history: the exterminationof the Indians which,there as well,was onlyin part directlyphysical. It was a matterof emptying,as if there had neverbeen Indians exceptin theghettos which were made forthem as immigrantsfrom inside. In manyrespects, the Palestiniansare the new Indians, the Indians of Israel. Marxistanalysis reveals the twocomplementary movements of capitalism:constantly to impose limits,within which it develops and exploits its own system;and

This content downloaded from 136.167.3.36 on Thu, 30 Jan 2014 16:09:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 32 Discourse20.3 alwaysto push theselimits farther back, to exceed themin orderto begin itsown foundationonce again on a largerand more intense scale. Pushingback limitswas the act of Americancapitalism, the AmericanDream, taken up byIsrael and thedream of on Arab territory,on the backs of the Arabs. How the Palestinianpeople learned to resistand are resisting; how a people of ancient lineage became an armed nation; how theygave themselvesa body which didn't simplyrepresent them but embodied them,outside theirterritory and withouta state:all these eventsdemanded a great historicalcharacter, one who, we mightsay from a Westernpoint of view,could have stepped out of Shakespeare,and thatwas Arafat.It wasn'tthe firsttime in history thatsomething like this has happened (theFrench can thinkof Free ,except forthe factthat it had a smallerpopular base at the beginning). And all theoccasions on whicha solutionor elementof solutionwas possible,occasions thatthe Israelishave deliberately, knowinglydestroyed, are not happeningfor the first time in history either.The Israelisheld onto theirreligious position of denying not onlythe Palestinian right but also thePalestinian fact. They cleansed themselvesof theirown terrorismby treatingthe Palestiniansas terroristsfrom outside. And preciselybecause thePalestinians were not that,but ratherwere a specificpeople as differentfrom other Arabs as Europeans can be among themselves,they could expect only ambiguous aid from the Arab states themselves,aid which sometimesturned back into hostilityand exterminationwhen the Palestinianmodel became dangerous for them. The Palestinians have run throughall the infernalcycles of history:the failureof solutionseach timethey were possible, the worst reversals of alliance of whichthey bore the brunt,the mostsolemn promisesnot kept. And on all thistheir resistance had to nourishitself. It maywell be thatone ofthe goals ofthe Sabra and Shatilamas- sacreswas to discreditArafat. He onlyconsented to thedeparture of the combatants,the forceof whichremained intact, on condition thatthe securityof theirfamilies be absolutelyguaranteed by the United States and even by Israel. Afterthe massacreshe had no otherword than "shame."If the ensuingcrisis for the PLO resulted, in more or less the long term,either in an integrationinto an Arab stateor in a dissolutioninto Muslimfundamentalism, then it could be said that the Palestinianpeople had effectivelydisappeared. But thiswould be in such conditionsthat the world,the United Statesand even Israelwould not finishregretting the lost occasions, includingthose that still remain possible today. To Israel'sarrogant formula,"We are not a people like others,"the Palestinianshave not stopped respondingwith the crythat was invokedin the first

This content downloaded from 136.167.3.36 on Thu, 30 Jan 2014 16:09:15 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Fall 1998 33 issue of the Revued'études palestiniennes: Ve are a people likeothers, we onlywant to be that. . . ." Byleading the terroristwar in , Israel believedit could suppressthe PLO and depriveit of the supportof the Palestinian people, alreadydeprived of their land. And perhapsit is succeeding, since in surroundedTripoli there is nothingmore than the physical presence ofArafat among his own,all in a sortof solitarygrandeur. But the Palestinianpeople will not lose theiridentity without cre- ating in its place a double terrorism,of the stateand of religion, whichwill profitfrom their disappearance and render impossible anypeaceful settlement with Israel. From the war in Lebanon Israel itselfwill not escape merelymorally divided and economicallydis- organized,it willfind itself faced withthe mirrorimage of its own intolerance.A political solution,a peaceful settlementis possible only with an independent PLO which will not have disappeared into an alreadyexisting state and willnot be lostamong the diverse Islamicmovements. The disappearanceof the PLO would onlybe a victoryfor the blind forcesof war, indifferent to the survivalof the Palestinianpeople.

Translatedby Timothy S. Murphy (originallypublished in Revued etudespalestiniennes , September1983)

Translator'sNotes

1 Sabra and Shatilamassacres: 1982 massacresof Palestiniansat refugeecamps in Lebanon,carried out by Lebanese Phalangists aided by theIsraeli army. 2 Oradour:French village destroyed by Nazi .occupation troops in retaliationfor Resistance activity shortly after the start of the D-Day invasion. 3 Irgoun:right-wing Zionist organization that used terroristtactics againstBritish forces and othersin postwarPalestine.

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