Hardly a discussion on Palestine passes by without somebody inevitably bringing up how “complicated” of an issue it is. At this point, it almost seems like an obligatory disclaimer that must be declared in order to be taken seriously when such an occasion arises. This is repeated so frequently that you’d think Palestine is some uniquely convoluted, one-of-a-kind issue, requiring years of dedicated study to grasp and truly comprehend, let alone to comment on in an informed manner. But how complicated is it, really?
I won’t be going into the roots of the question of Palestine or how we arrived at the current status quo, however, you can browse our introductory articles [here] on the matter should you be interested. What this article seeks to address is this claim to exceptional complexity that only seems to come up today when discussing Palestine.
Appeals to complexity, especially in the context of settler colonialism, have been historically employed in an attempt to defend the indefensible. For example, during Apartheid in South Africa, white South African’s would commonly retort that things weren’t so black and white, if you can forgive the pun. Similarly, those defending slavery in the United States would argue that while releasing the slaves was the moral thing to do, it was more complicated than that, because it would too greatly threaten the status quo and the economy. Some try to market such arguments as “nuance”, but in reality, they primarily serve the purpose of apologia for heinous oppression.
Do you notice how it’s usually never elaborated how the question of Palestine is so complicated? Do you notice how often this is employed -especially- when discussing the refugees’ right to return, or anything that would pass for common sense in any other situation?
This is not a coincidence. This idea has very deliberately been nurtured over the years, and it serves multiple purposes. The arcanization of Palestine effectively shuts down dialogue, and prevents people from taking a well-defined stance. Even things that seem straightforward are imbued with an air of mystique, where bald faced atrocities are given the benefit of the doubt. It can’t possibly be that simple or straightforward, no, there must be another explanation. After all, you’re not an expert and it’s just such a complicated mess which has been going on for so long, right?
This mainly affects people who are just learning about Palestine, or who don’t feel confident enough to take a clear stance. Combine this with the widespread -albeit erroneous- understanding where neutrality is mistaken for objectivity, you can see why it’s much easier to prevaricate in order to avoid being seen as biased or ill informed.
This arcanization serves to make Palestine exceptional, meaning that our normal judgment or morality go out of the window; they do not apply here due to these special circumstances.
Normally, it would be difficult to argue against the right of refugees to return to their homes, but in the case of Palestine these are special refugees created under special circumstances [You can read more about this here]. Our conventional approaches to law or morality are framed as ill fitting and lacking in refinement or nuance.
Israel openly colonizing the West Bank is different due its complicated history, it is not occupied it is contested. Consequently, Israel can then argue that the Geneva Conventions don’t apply either. Palestinian prisoners are unique and captured under special circumstances, therefore, they cannot be viewed as prisoners of war, nor can they be viewed as civilians deserving of a civilian court or due process. It’s quite versatile and convenient.
It’s complicated because it is special, it’s special because it’s complicated. The cycle continues, and Palestinians continue to lose their lives and lands, yet find themselves unable to clearly indict their tormentors lest they be accused of lacking nuance. These exceptions aim to legitimize what cannot be legitimized and defend what cannot be defended. So that you can look at injustice, oppression and domination and tell yourself it’s not as clear-cut as it looks.
An appeal to complexity is also a way to silence your own conscience, as I’m sure liberal Zionists grappling with their cognitive dissonance can attest. Palestine becomes “complicated” when you view yourself as a progressive, but simultaneously need to twist yourself into a knot to try and justify racist Israeli demographic obsessions, ethnic cleansing and militarism, none of which you’d support under any other circumstance.
Illan Pappe discusses this arcanization of Palestine, writing that:
“The last paradox is that the tale of Palestine from the beginning until today is a simple story of colonialism and dispossession, yet the world treats it as a multifaceted and complex story—hard to understand and even harder to solve. Indeed, the story of Palestine has been told before: European settlers coming to a foreign land, settling there, and either committing genocide against or expelling the indigenous people. The Zionists have not invented anything new in this respect. But Israel succeeded nonetheless, with the help of its allies everywhere, in building a multilayered explanation that is so complex that only Israel can understand it. Any interference from the outside world is immediately castigated as naïve at best or anti-Semitic at worst.”
For the sake of clarity, Palestine is just as deep and worthy of study as any other anti-colonial struggle, the objection in this article is to framing it as exceptional in its complexity in an effort to obfuscate the reality on the ground. The question of Palestine is not exceptional, we can trace its origins, chronicle its events and trajectories and analyze its politics all quite well. There are decades of scholarship on the matter for reference.
We must reject the arcanization of the question of Palestine, and see it in line with other anti-colonial struggles all over the world. If something is deemed an injustice elsewhere, then it cannot be deemed “complicated” in Palestine.
- Khalidi, Rashid. The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine: A History of Settler Colonialism and Resistance, 1917–2017. Metropolitan Books, 2020.
- Khalidi, Walid, Sharif S. Elmusa, and Muhammad Ali Khalidi. All that remains: The Palestinian villages occupied and depopulated by Israel in 1948. Institution for Palestine Studies, 1992.
- Chomsky, Noam, and Ilan Pappé. On Palestine. Haymarket Books, 2015.
- Masalha, Nur. Expulsion of the Palestinians. Washington, DC: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992.
- Pappe, Ilan. The ethnic cleansing of Palestine. Simon and Schuster, 2007.
- Said, Edward W., and Christopher Hitchens, eds. Blaming the victims: Spurious scholarship and the Palestinian question. Verso, 2001.
- Finkelstein, Norman G. Image and reality of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Verso, 2003.
- Flapan, Simha. The birth of Israel: Myths and realities. London: Croom Helm, 1987.