We have a Dream!

Unpublished

Forty-five years ago, on the 28th of August 1963 to be exact, Martin Luther King Junior stood in front of a crowd of many thousands at the Lincoln memorial and said  “I have a dream”. That memorable line came to signify the greatest demonstration in the history of his nation, the march on Washington for jobs and freedom.

Dr King, the preacher, Nobel peace prize winner and undisputed leader of the US civil rights movement, came to the fore almost two centuries  after the US declaration of independence. Enshrining the people's inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, the application of this model document for modern liberty had its shortcomings when it came to the negro. But a prevalent culture of racial discrimination couldn’t withstand the upheaval that began  with Rosa Parks on an Alabama bus. The inspiration of Gandhi and the philosophy of Satyagraha, or non-violent resistance, prevailed, and America had its Civil Rights Act.

Forty-five years on, the face of American racial equality  still bears its scars and blemishes. The riots in Los Angeles after the beating of  Rodney King and the havoc in New Orleans post-Katrina exposed the dream's fragility. Yet the very real prospect of a black man as 44th president raises the hope that the majority of Americans may  truly have overcome on the question of race.

Dr King affirmed the power of non-violent resistance. Be it ending colonial rule in India or equality and civil rights in the US or South Africa, the moral standing of the oppressed can overpower the brutality of the oppressor. In addition to the obvious drive to end an ideology of subjugation, Dr King’s struggle challenged three notions; the doctrine of "separate but equal"; the idea of peace as the absence of conflict rather than the presence of justice; and the shallow understanding of people of good will. All three bear relevance to  the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

Often misunderstood as a case of two warring countries and peoples, this is in reality a case of a place with two names. Controlled by one government, that of Israel, the inhabitants belong to one of two crowds, A and B. Crowd A rules, crowd B is ruled; crowd A has access to all roads, crowd B has access to some roads; crowd A can live anywhere, crowd B can live somewhere; crowd A has the law of return, crowd B has no right of return; crowd A has full rights and crowd B may have some basic rights.  

In the late 80s, when crowd B, the Palestinians, embarked on their own spontaneous non-violent resistance, the first Intifada, the  Israeli military failed to suppress it. The rapid successes of the popular resistance led the Israeli leadership to adopt the strategy of "separate but equal", encapsulated in the dreadful Oslo accords that Israel declined to even honour. Since then the Israelis have extended this approach with their one-sided disengagement from Gaza and the building of the walls of separation. Unlike Dr King and his movement, the Palestinian leadership failed to grasp that privileged groups seldom give up those privileges voluntarily, and that separate was not equal.

Dr King’s movement rejected calls to soft-pedal their resistance for the sake of easing tension. From Dr King’s perspective, it was always the absence of peace and justice that caused conflict, not the other way around. The status quo is never an option for those under oppression.  For today’s Palestinians, however, decades of Israeli occupation, economic misery and the residence of half their  population of around nine million  in  refugee camps are not perceived as sufficient to justify resistance. They constantly face total alienation by the United States, Europe and the subservient Arab regimes at  the slightest hint of unrest.

For Dr King, the shallow understanding of people of good will was more frustrating than the total misunderstanding of those of ill will. He didn’t tolerate the ignorant position of the white Christian leadership, and confronted the indifferent clergy of the intolerant South. The world's ignorance of and indifference to the rights of the Palestinians, living as sub-class citizens in their native land at best and stateless refugees at worst, is wrong and immoral. A world that preaches universal values of equality and is anxious to apologise to  native peoples for past colonial injustices has a duty to face up to the needs of Palestinians.

For their part, Palestinians must lay the terminal peace process and the stunted form of segregated governance it created to rest. They must reinvent inclusive organisations of resistance and mobilise at the grass roots to embrace a new way. They should study Gandhi, King and Mandela and what has been tried and worked.  A fresh blend of Satyagraha and Sumud, or steadfastness, must be the strategic and shortest path to Palestinian freedom.

Let us dream that one day, Palestinian children will be judged not by their race or creed but by the content of their character.

Amin Abbas

Diaspora Palestinian

August 2008