This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Knowledge, Power, Identity Palestinian Intellectuals and the Discourse of a One-State Solution Dawson, Neil Charlton Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 30. Sep. 2021 Knowledge, Power, Identity: Palestinian Intellectuals and the Discourse of a One-State Solution Neil Charlton Dawson Thesis awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in War Studies Research, Department of War Studies, King’s College London June 2014 1 Abstract This study examines the discourse of a one-state solution and the Palestinian intellectuals who produce it. It draws on Pierre Bourdieu’s field theory and uses a discourse analytic methodology to address the following questions. What is the function of the discourse of a one-state solution in Palestinian politics and why has it taken certain forms? Why do intellectuals intervene in political struggles, an intervention that in this instance has occurred at a transnational level? How is it that the contentious practice of these intellectuals remains largely abstract and not otherwise? And finally, what role can these intellectuals play in converting their critique into an actual generalised historical form? The central thesis of this study is that the discourse of a one-state solution is a competing vision of Palestinian social reality which opposes the dominant discourse in Palestinian politics and which incorporates the particular standpoints of those intellectuals who produce it. These intellectuals seek to impose this vision on the Palestinian political field through challenging the authority of established elites and so claiming a position of symbolic power for themselves. They do this primarily through claims to possess politically indispensable knowledge and through claims to be the legitimate spokespersons of the Palestinian people. The precise manner in which this bid for symbolic power is performed has effects that contingently deny the possibility of these intellectuals playing a political role beyond their present mode of engagement. This study contends that it is important politically to reflect on the limits of critical thought and knowledge production, though how one does this is problematised and taken as a starting point for future research on reflexive practice. In addition, this study suggests 2 that different perspectives in a given social structure are necessary for the formation of a collective political subject. 3 Contents Introduction 6 Significance and Review of Literature 19 Conceptual Framework 26 Method and Sources 36 Structure 43 Chapter One: Thinking Tools 45 The Field: Relations between Positions as Struggles to Classify Social Space 49 Structured Struggles: Context, Habitus and Capital 60 The Political Work of Symbolic Power: Politics as Will and Representation 72 The Transnational Political Field 83 Chapter Two: Defining the Palestinian Field: Contesting Two-States, Calling for One 87 The Palestinian Political Field: A History. 90 Counter-Knowledge: Contesting the “Pragmatist” Perspective 105 The Content of Counter-Knowledge 122 Concluding Remarks 148 Chapter Three: Legitimate Domination: Intellectuals, Diaspora, and the Discourse of One-State 157 The Crisis of Political Elites: An Opportunity for Whom? 163 Mobilising Cultural Capital: Or, the Political Indispensability of Knowledge 170 Claiming Discourse for the “Outside” 186 4 Augmenting this Claim I: Representing Palestine 201 Augmenting this Claim II: Re-presenting Palestine 213 Concluding Remarks 228 Chapter Four: Modes of Criticality: The Contingent Political Limits of the Discourse of One-State 236 The Reduction of Politics to Ideas 241 Denying the Political 253 Subordinate Possibilities 269 Concluding Remarks 275 Conclusion 286 Bibliography 306 5 Introduction The Palestinian national movement is at an impasse and is suffering a crisis of political legitimacy and direction. Despite retaining its official title as the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people, the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) barely functions. Much of what had previously bound disparate Palestinian trajectories into a relatively coherent political framework has long since been undermined, with this process occurring through a combination of military defeat, neglect, marginalisation and the co-option of national institutions by increasingly unaccountable and authoritarian elites. The creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 1994 contributed to this marginalisation of the PLO, as the former effectively replaced the latter as the main national institution in the Palestinian arena.1 Though the establishment of the PA was widely regarded as a final step towards the Palestinians’ official goal of independent statehood in the context of a negotiated two-state solution to their conflict with Israel, it too at present is in a critical condition.2 It is economically dependent on external sources of funding, divided geographically and politically between the rival factions of Fateh and Hamas, and likewise is increasingly authoritarian in its mode of governance over aspects of Palestinian society in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.3 1 Doumani, Beshara, Palestine versus the Palestinians? The Iron Laws and the Ironies of a People Denied, Journal of Palestine Studies, Vol. 36, No.4, Summer 2007, pp. 49-64, pp. 54-60; Frisch, Hillel, The Death of the PLO, Middle Eastern Studies, Vol. 45, No. 2, March 2009, pp. 243-261; Rubinstein, Danny, One State/Two States: Rethinking Israel and Palestine, Dissent, Summer 2010, http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/one-statetwo-states-rethinking-israel-and-palestine, accessed 31/04/2013; Sayigh, Yezid, Arafat and the Anatomy of a Revolt, Survival, Vol. 43, No. 3, Autumn 2001, pp. 47-60, pp. 51-2; Sayigh, Yezid, The Palestinian Strategic Impasse, Survival, Vol. 44, No. 4, Winter 2002-03, pp. 7-21, p. 15 2 Khalidi, Rashid, The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood, Oneworld, Oxford, 2009 (2007), pp. 150-1 3 Brown, Nathan J., Gaza Five Years On: Hamas Settles In, The Carnegie Papers, The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, June 2012; Le More, Anne, International Assistance to the Palestinians after Oslo: Political guilt, wasted money, Routledge, London and New York, 2008; 6 Moreover, the relative paralysis of the Palestinian political field, and growing authoritarian trends, has taken place within the context of Israel’s ongoing occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, which by implication has prevented the realisation of an independent Palestinian state and a two-state solution to the conflict. For many analysts the current ‘prospects for a two-state solution are as dim as ever’.4 Bodies such as the European Union (EU) have warned that the extensiveness of Israel’s occupation, including its continuing practices of dispossession and land expropriation, is threatening ‘to make a two-state solution impossible’.5 The Oslo peace process, which was initiated by the PLO and Israel in the early 1990s, appears to be moribund and effectively has been since the collapse of the Camp David Summit in July 2000 and the start of the second Palestinian intifada shortly afterwards. According to authoritative accounts, Palestinians generally are disillusioned and disaffected with the ‘peace process as they have grown to know it’.6 Popular resistance among Palestinians to Israel’s structural violence against them is ongoing, but this remains heavily localised or tactical.7 There is, in short, currently no strategic and programmatic alternative in the Palestinian political field. The ‘strategic impasse’ continues.8 Le More, Anne, Killing with kindness: funding the demise of a Palestinian state, International Affairs, Vol. 81, No. 5, 2005, pp. 981-999, pp. 986-94; Parsons, Nigel, The Politics of the Palestinian Authority: From Oslo to Al-Aqsa, Routledge, New York and London, 2005; Sayigh, Yezid, Policing the People, Building the State: Authoritarian Transformation in the West Bank and Gaza, The Carnegie Papers, The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, February 2011. 4 International Crisis Group, The Emperor has no Clothes: Palestinians and the End of the Peace Process, Middle East Report, No. 122, 7 May 2012, p. i (executive summary) 5 Sherwood, Harriet, “Israel putting