My Scariest Halloween Costume? Palestinian Accountability

By Mahmoud Abbas, President, Palestinian National Authority

Ramallah, November 1 – Islamic societies naturally have different cultural touchstones from those of the West, given their vastly different origins. I nevertheless appreciate some of the Western cultural phenomena despite their foreignness, and my favorite has long been dressing up as the scariest thing one can manage for Halloween. If we Palestinians had such a practice, I would choose the scariest possible costume for a Palestinian: accountability.

Just writing that made my adrenaline flow. Imagine a world in which the international community had actual expectations of the Palestinians other than, “don’t kill too many people.” Imagine a world in which we were forced to come to terms with the Jewish connection to the land we call exclusively ours. The horrifying thought of acknowledging the humanity and legitimacy of other people makes my neck hairs stand on edge; magnify that by compounding it with the notion of being expected to work toward something constructive, something positive. And no, contrary to what we’ve been telling our people, genocide of the Jews is not a constructive, positive accomplishment. Really. I asked.

Accountability means being held to a standard of behavior that the world now expects only from Jews, including that big one: caring about human life. It means that Palestinian atrocities and terrorism can no longer be excused or explained away. Can you conceive of a more dreadful prospect? It would take away our chief weapon. So of course it makes an excellent Halloween costume. But that is all it can be – a costume. The idea that anyone might treat Palestinian media, officials, and educators as responsible actors with actual volition and moral capacity is far too frightening to be realistic. But in our modern age of science and critical thought, we enjoy the suspension of disbelief, and revel in the extremes. The farther-removed from reality, the more entertaining the getup, provided it is rendered convincingly.

Therein would lie the challenge. How does one depict a Palestinian society expected to demonstrate accountability? Would such a costume even be recognizable? Does anyone even know what Palestinian accountability looks like? Vampires, zombies, skeletons, ghosts – those at least have years, even centuries, of imagery to evoke. Palestinian accountability has no mythology to invoke, no cultural memes – it would be a new phenomenon. No costume can be scary, let alone convincing, if you have to explain what it is.

So it’s a good thing this is little more than an intellectual exercise. I’m getting the heebie-jeebies just thinking about it.