Side note: due to the huge amount of information flowing around this topic I can only cover so much ground, so I’m calling on the community to add missing information and your own perspectives in the comments to help inform readers. South Africa, Chad, Turkey, Honduras, Jordan, Chile, Colombia, recall their diplomats from Israel. Israel
You might think it means Arab public opinion is extremely sympathetic to Palestinians and eager to see Arab governments help Palestinians have better lives. Were that true, you might expect to see Egypt opening its doors to refugees fleeing the carnage in Gaza. Of course that would be a logistical and economic burden on Egypt. But countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates are right there and could help out with money. You can, of course, understand from general immigration politics why Egypt might not want to do this and why the richer Arab states might not want to help out with money. Generally speaking, “you should do stuff to help foreigners” is a hard sell in politics.
What’s peculiar about the Palestinian issue, though, is that this normal level of indifference to the welfare of foreigners coexists with what we’re told is a profound level of preoccupation with their fate.
The key is that their concern is the success of the Palestinian Cause (the reversal of the Nakba) rather than the welfare of the Palestinian people.
Note that Amnesty sort of glossed over the fact that Palestinian refugees living in Jordan and Lebanon lack full access to employment rights and social services. And in this context, “Palestinian refugees” does not necessarily mean someone who fled from settler violence six weeks ago. If your great-grandparents were kicked out of their village near Acre when they were kids and fled to a refugee camp in Lebanon, and then had children in the 1950s, who had kids in the 1980s, who had you in the 2010s, then you are not a citizen of Lebanon. You are a stateless Palestinian refugee. And the Palestinian cause means fighting for your right to return to that village near Acre, not fighting for your right to enjoy citizenship in the country where you and your parents and your grandparents were born.
To be clear, this is a population of a few hundred thousand people out of millions of refugees, but the fact that pro-Palestinian advocacy generally does not mean advocating for the right of people born in Lebanon or Jordan to become citizens of those countries is relevant to understanding broader dynamics.
Egypt’s role in the Gaza crisis
If you imagine a generic situation where County A is waging war on Country B, displacing civilians and endangering their lives, you would expect many residents of Country B to attempt to flee to nearby Country C.
And in almost every case, this would be a controversial situation in Country C — large refugee influxes are always a big deal and often unwelcome. But one would also expect a fairly straightforward debate in which Country B’s supporters urge Country C to be more generous, and Country C’s refusal to let Country B’s residents in is seen as a sign of hostility. It’s important to recognize that, due to the politics of the right of return, this is not how Egypt’s refusal to allow civilians to flee Gaza is seen.
On the contrary, as Abdallah Fayyad, the Palestinian-American writer and son of former Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad explained last week, to be spending time and energy on pressuring Egypt in this regard is seen as a form of complicity with Israeli ethnic cleansing.
But you could construe basically any refugee situation in this way.
During the Syrian Civil War, you could’ve argued that urging European countries to accept Syrian refugees should be understood as a form of complicity with the Assad regime. Letting Ukrainian women and children flee the war zone for safety in NATO states could be construed as a form of complicity with Putin’s invasion and desire to Russify eastern Ukraine. The construction of narratives is a discursive process that can go in different directions. But whatever you think about the issue on the merits, it’s important to understand that this is the way the Palestinian cause has been constructed.
You can imagine a kind of guy who runs around advocating for the following ideas:
* Egypt should open the borders with Gaza and allow unarmed people who can pass some kind of background check to leave the “open air prison” and enjoy life in a neighboring Arab state.
* Lebanon, Jordan, and other countries should either grant birthright citizenship to the descendants of Palestinian refugees who live in their countries or, at a minimum, create an easy naturalization process.
* The Gulf States, which currently rely heavily on foreign labor, should tilt away from their current reliance on workers from Africa and South Asia and give more visas to Palestinians.
You don’t actually need to imagine that guy, though, because I have met guys like that and they are either right-wing Israelis or Jewish Republicans here in the United States. Clearly Palestinians would be much better off, on average, if this agenda were implemented. But not only is this not a strategy of the Palestinian cause, advocating for it would be seen as incredibly hostile to the Palestinian cause.
In part that’s because it’s not what most Palestinian individuals and organizations want. But even that is a little bit too simplistic. Because the fear, of course, is that lots of Palestinians would welcome the opportunity to emigrate. Conditions in the West Bank and especially Gaza are awful and if other Arab states (or for that matter the United States) were more welcoming to Palestinian emigrants, lots of people might choose that option, just as over the years many people displaced by war or ethnic violence have made permanent homes for their families in new countries.
Imagine someone you love—not a moral abstraction, a real person. Your child. Your mother. Your brother. Your spouse. Even just a friend... Suppose your friend is a civilian—has never used a weapon and never will.
This person is trapped in a war zone. One power, using all the diabolical tools of 21st-century industrial warfare, is trying to destroy another. The other is resisting with all the deviltry it can muster…
And neither of these powers seems particularly concerned with acting in a way that will preserve the life and limbs of this person, this one person, loved and cherished by you, for no other reason than that they are the person they are—no rational reason at all. Now: what do you want for this person? What is the first thing you want?
You want to get them to safety. To get them away from the war. Of course.
Now—extend this concern, mechanically, to all the civilians of Gaza. Since you care about these people, your first goal is to get them out of the war zone. To take them somewhere they have safety and food and water.
Now—think about all the people in the world who care about the Palestinians. Who are in the streets, waving flags, the whole nine yards. How many care this way?
How many are demonstrating to ask Hamas and Israel, together: please, let the civilians out of the war zone? Move them? Move them anywhere—an AirBNB in Thailand? A tent city in Mozambique? Anywhere that bombs aren’t falling? Hm.
Also: if this isn’t what all the “pro-Palestinian” people in the West want, who does want it? Who would be happy with this outcome? How about—the Israeli army?
Now, suppose Palestinian lives didn’t matter. Suppose the only thing that matters is that Hamas wins the war. Obviously, you want to use these civilian lives as effectively as possible to achieve your goal—which means using them as human shields.
Every war is a political contest, and a human shield is a political weapon—a weapon which gives the enemy a choice: to not shoot at whatever is behind the shield, or take the political damage of visibly harming a human being for political reasons.
In a way, the difference between a human shield and a hostage is not great. The only difference is which “side” the human being is on... a hostage is a kind of mega-powered shield. But a shield is a shield.
So: when you try to build sympathy for the Palestinians from first principles, you get—what most “Israel supporters” want. When you try to build cynical exploitation of the Palestinians from first principles, you get—what most “Palestine supporters” want. The one way it makes sense is if all these nice, nice people support Hamas more than the population Hamas governs—which is the exact opposite of what they say.
On next generation hostility to Israel=> I remember how I thought as a young (white) man. I have rejected almost all of those beliefs now that I am an old man. It is folly to think a generation will hold a philosophical/political position constant as it ages. Western Gen Alpha are indoctrinated into a Critical Theory world view. Once they land accidentally in oppressor class, they will repent.
Here’s Matt Yglesias:
You might think it means Arab public opinion is extremely sympathetic to Palestinians and eager to see Arab governments help Palestinians have better lives. Were that true, you might expect to see Egypt opening its doors to refugees fleeing the carnage in Gaza. Of course that would be a logistical and economic burden on Egypt. But countries like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates are right there and could help out with money. You can, of course, understand from general immigration politics why Egypt might not want to do this and why the richer Arab states might not want to help out with money. Generally speaking, “you should do stuff to help foreigners” is a hard sell in politics.
What’s peculiar about the Palestinian issue, though, is that this normal level of indifference to the welfare of foreigners coexists with what we’re told is a profound level of preoccupation with their fate.
The key is that their concern is the success of the Palestinian Cause (the reversal of the Nakba) rather than the welfare of the Palestinian people.
Note that Amnesty sort of glossed over the fact that Palestinian refugees living in Jordan and Lebanon lack full access to employment rights and social services. And in this context, “Palestinian refugees” does not necessarily mean someone who fled from settler violence six weeks ago. If your great-grandparents were kicked out of their village near Acre when they were kids and fled to a refugee camp in Lebanon, and then had children in the 1950s, who had kids in the 1980s, who had you in the 2010s, then you are not a citizen of Lebanon. You are a stateless Palestinian refugee. And the Palestinian cause means fighting for your right to return to that village near Acre, not fighting for your right to enjoy citizenship in the country where you and your parents and your grandparents were born.
To be clear, this is a population of a few hundred thousand people out of millions of refugees, but the fact that pro-Palestinian advocacy generally does not mean advocating for the right of people born in Lebanon or Jordan to become citizens of those countries is relevant to understanding broader dynamics.
Egypt’s role in the Gaza crisis
If you imagine a generic situation where County A is waging war on Country B, displacing civilians and endangering their lives, you would expect many residents of Country B to attempt to flee to nearby Country C.
And in almost every case, this would be a controversial situation in Country C — large refugee influxes are always a big deal and often unwelcome. But one would also expect a fairly straightforward debate in which Country B’s supporters urge Country C to be more generous, and Country C’s refusal to let Country B’s residents in is seen as a sign of hostility. It’s important to recognize that, due to the politics of the right of return, this is not how Egypt’s refusal to allow civilians to flee Gaza is seen.
On the contrary, as Abdallah Fayyad, the Palestinian-American writer and son of former Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad explained last week, to be spending time and energy on pressuring Egypt in this regard is seen as a form of complicity with Israeli ethnic cleansing.
But you could construe basically any refugee situation in this way.
During the Syrian Civil War, you could’ve argued that urging European countries to accept Syrian refugees should be understood as a form of complicity with the Assad regime. Letting Ukrainian women and children flee the war zone for safety in NATO states could be construed as a form of complicity with Putin’s invasion and desire to Russify eastern Ukraine. The construction of narratives is a discursive process that can go in different directions. But whatever you think about the issue on the merits, it’s important to understand that this is the way the Palestinian cause has been constructed.
You can imagine a kind of guy who runs around advocating for the following ideas:
* Egypt should open the borders with Gaza and allow unarmed people who can pass some kind of background check to leave the “open air prison” and enjoy life in a neighboring Arab state.
* Lebanon, Jordan, and other countries should either grant birthright citizenship to the descendants of Palestinian refugees who live in their countries or, at a minimum, create an easy naturalization process.
* The Gulf States, which currently rely heavily on foreign labor, should tilt away from their current reliance on workers from Africa and South Asia and give more visas to Palestinians.
You don’t actually need to imagine that guy, though, because I have met guys like that and they are either right-wing Israelis or Jewish Republicans here in the United States. Clearly Palestinians would be much better off, on average, if this agenda were implemented. But not only is this not a strategy of the Palestinian cause, advocating for it would be seen as incredibly hostile to the Palestinian cause.
In part that’s because it’s not what most Palestinian individuals and organizations want. But even that is a little bit too simplistic. Because the fear, of course, is that lots of Palestinians would welcome the opportunity to emigrate. Conditions in the West Bank and especially Gaza are awful and if other Arab states (or for that matter the United States) were more welcoming to Palestinian emigrants, lots of people might choose that option, just as over the years many people displaced by war or ethnic violence have made permanent homes for their families in new countries.
Good update.
Curtis Yarvin and Matt Yglesias said it well.
Yarvin:
Imagine someone you love—not a moral abstraction, a real person. Your child. Your mother. Your brother. Your spouse. Even just a friend... Suppose your friend is a civilian—has never used a weapon and never will.
This person is trapped in a war zone. One power, using all the diabolical tools of 21st-century industrial warfare, is trying to destroy another. The other is resisting with all the deviltry it can muster…
And neither of these powers seems particularly concerned with acting in a way that will preserve the life and limbs of this person, this one person, loved and cherished by you, for no other reason than that they are the person they are—no rational reason at all. Now: what do you want for this person? What is the first thing you want?
You want to get them to safety. To get them away from the war. Of course.
Now—extend this concern, mechanically, to all the civilians of Gaza. Since you care about these people, your first goal is to get them out of the war zone. To take them somewhere they have safety and food and water.
Now—think about all the people in the world who care about the Palestinians. Who are in the streets, waving flags, the whole nine yards. How many care this way?
How many are demonstrating to ask Hamas and Israel, together: please, let the civilians out of the war zone? Move them? Move them anywhere—an AirBNB in Thailand? A tent city in Mozambique? Anywhere that bombs aren’t falling? Hm.
Also: if this isn’t what all the “pro-Palestinian” people in the West want, who does want it? Who would be happy with this outcome? How about—the Israeli army?
Now, suppose Palestinian lives didn’t matter. Suppose the only thing that matters is that Hamas wins the war. Obviously, you want to use these civilian lives as effectively as possible to achieve your goal—which means using them as human shields.
Every war is a political contest, and a human shield is a political weapon—a weapon which gives the enemy a choice: to not shoot at whatever is behind the shield, or take the political damage of visibly harming a human being for political reasons.
In a way, the difference between a human shield and a hostage is not great. The only difference is which “side” the human being is on... a hostage is a kind of mega-powered shield. But a shield is a shield.
So: when you try to build sympathy for the Palestinians from first principles, you get—what most “Israel supporters” want. When you try to build cynical exploitation of the Palestinians from first principles, you get—what most “Palestine supporters” want. The one way it makes sense is if all these nice, nice people support Hamas more than the population Hamas governs—which is the exact opposite of what they say.
On next generation hostility to Israel=> I remember how I thought as a young (white) man. I have rejected almost all of those beliefs now that I am an old man. It is folly to think a generation will hold a philosophical/political position constant as it ages. Western Gen Alpha are indoctrinated into a Critical Theory world view. Once they land accidentally in oppressor class, they will repent.