Ecstasy and Amnesia in the Gaza Strip

There is something unusual about the Palestinian predicament.

It isn’t the rough boundaries, historical contingencies, and overlapping identities inherent in the definition of the Palestinian people. This is true of all nations, from those based on ethnicity or religion to those based on civic-constitutional creed. It likewise doesn’t matter that the history invoked in the Palestinian people’s creation is one-sided and part mythical. This too is not unusual and probably even universal.

Nor is it unusual that violence has been a means of achieving Palestinian goals. Wherever there have been conflicts of the kind between the Palestinians and Israel, partisans of one side or the other will justify the use of force by their own side and condemn it when it comes from the other side. The strangeness also has nothing to do with the fact that there are real and pressing claims on territory (among other things) that will not be achievable for the Palestinians in any conceivable diplomatic or military maneuver, including sites that have enormous symbolic and historical importance to them. This frustration is also true of Poles, Bulgarians, Greeks, Armenians, and, for that matter, Israelis as well.