If We Palestinians Aren’t The Victims, We Have No Identity

By Saeb Erekat

It takes very little observation to realize that the Palestinian approach to the conflict with Israel – and, let’s face it, with the Jews – follows the Zero Sum Game dynamic. One side is either absolutely in the right or absolutely in the wrong. There is no room for nuance. Our position was and remains that we, the victims, possess all the virtue, and our enemies are irredeemably evil.  We deserve all the land and all the power, and they deserve nothing but oppression. We have spent decades cultivating a national selfhood in which we possess no fault. If we Palestinians are not the victims, we have no identity.

If we allow any nuance to creep into our worldview, a whiff of anything other than total victimhood, then our position is undermined. Compromise of any sort means a negotiability in the perfection of our suffering and our virtue, and no such notion can be tolerated. The idea of sharing this land – as anything more than a temporary adjustment, a tactic to serve the larger goal of complete conquest – betrays something less than total justice. If we relinquish a claim to even a millimeter, we relinquish the totality, the wholeness, of the land. By the same token, if we relinquish strict adherence to never being at fault, we relinquish the totality, the wholeness, of the justice of our claim. We cannot be at fault. To admit fault is to betray the very essence of Palestinianness: victimhood.

Thus, any Jew who sets foot in the Al Aqsa compound is “storming” the place. Any target of an attack  – if such an attack is ever admitted – is automatically a “settler.” Jaffa, Afula, Beersheva, and Haifa are in “Occupied Palestine.” To admit that a Jewish state has any right to exist on this land, even on the smallest sliver, is to cede total victimhood, and not to know who we are.

For that reason, our reflex when a Palestinian is shot for trying to attack a Jew is to deny any such attack, even to the point of ludicrousness. Video footage? Doctored. Eyewitnesses? Liars. Physical evidence? Planted. Yes, we Palestinians fervently believe Jews are so thoroughly evil they will stab one another just to be able to frame an Arab for the crime. Not to believe that would be to admit that we Palestinians are less than perfect, that our cause is less than completely just.

Does that attitude condemn us to perpetual poverty, dependence, and underachievement? Perhaps. But it’s the Jews’ fault, not ours. We, after all, possess no fault, and can therefore never be expected to change our behavior. If the world ever voiced an expectation that we do something constructive – something a mite more ambitious than not trying to kill people all the time – we would not know what to do with ourselves. Are they talking to us? Couldn’t be. We’re the victims. It would be existentially confusing.

So please stop trying to get us not to be violent thugs. We’re victims. It’s who we are. Let us stab Jews and blame them for it.