It has happened: the refugees of 1948; the KGB-designed Arafat and PLO and associated Abbas; and Hamas, held to account for rocket fire from Gaza: all — whatever has been the mix — have coexisted with Israel for 70 years.
If not happily, there’s a story there that goes back to the WWII and the character of the Soviet Union then and comes forward to that of the Russian Federation today. Absolute power, corruption on the part of the powerful, the deceptive and disingenuous use of language — such have been the variables that have sustained Palestinian hardship and an angry coexistence with the Jewish neighbor from near the ruins of Ottoman power and Nazi adventure in the middle east. When the phantoms of the Soviet wake up and then decide to go back to sleep forever, then the coexistence will become peaceful, pleasant, productive, rewarding.
I don’t know if there’s a fairy tail ending with “peace and prosperity” for all, but I feel the burden and weight of the “Nakba” should be rightly assigned to the post-WWII role taken up by an historically autocratic, authoritarian, elitist Russia having difficulty shaking off its attachments to “political absolutism” and related egotism, narcissism, and hypersensitivity to civilizational self-concept and image.
Of course Moscow means to look noble and powerful before the world.
Well, here it has its chance to stop covering its yesterdays, which may include immediately two major revolutions and the weathering of three governments within the past 100 years, and shrug away the chaos and dishonesty that have brought a mess to Syria, hardship to Ukraine, and continuous meaningless and needless suffering to the Palestinian main base. BackChannels may well see in its crystal ball — why else publish such a blog? 🙂 — the difficulty of transitioning patronage and power away from corrupt elites in the effort to better and honestly serve the interests of an abused and disenfranchised once refugee population, but where else to go? Let the political criminals and gamblers settle up, reinvest, and move on to the challenges posed by genuinely noble causes and enterprises.
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