Nationalism when it evolved in Europe in the 19th century postulated an ideal of nation states for specific ethnicities. Germany was for the Germans, France was for the French, etc. Realities were more complex. Histories were distorted to promote ethnic unity and create narratives whose inevitable conclusion was the nation state within the borders of the time. That alone was not enough: war raged in Europe for decades before the arrangement of allegedly ethnic nation states of today was arrived it, and even then there was a return to genocidal warfare in the 1990s when the Balkans finally caught up with the rest of the continent.

Yet the fact remains that the story of ethnic purity even in post-modern, post-genocidal Europe doesn’t hold up to much scrutiny. France has its Bretons and its Basques, and French speakers live in Belgium and Switzerland. Spain has its Basques and its Catalans, and many in Andalucia have clearly Berber-Arab origins. Britain is complex mix of various Celts, Angles, Saxons, Normans, etc. One could adduce examples ad infinitum throughout Europe.

In reality, the ethnicity myths help administrative centres create viable units to administer, all the better to govern them, and vice versa: the governed units help create the idea of an ethnic unity. Clan units in Scotland were formed in this manner. Clans were not necessarily communities linked by blood: they were communities linked by territory, community, governance. All those within a specific district would take the same name; that was the clan. After the uprising of 1745, the clan system in Scotland was destroyed by the metropolitan centre in London in alliance with Scots politicians and businesmen who saw their interests as lying in a national unit that was bigger than Scotland. Today Britain is a nation peopled by “the Brits”; Brits consider that the government has a responsibility for all Brits, who are “its people”. 

In the Middle East using the possessive with “people” is a bit complicated: “own people” is a a conflicted term. Hafez al-Assad was frequently cited by Western media and politicians as a leader who had done things “to his own people”, in 1982 in Hama. Saddam Hussein was also a leader who committed atrocities against “his own people”, in 1988 in Halabja. These complaints were of course cited with most force years after the events in question when Western governments had problems with the policies of Syria and Iraq. Since the Middle East street protest movements began last December in Tunisia, the phrase “its own people” has returned to the public sphere with an immediacy and a power it did not really have before. Hosni Mubarak’s regime was killing its own people in Egypt, for which it was denounced internationally and activists are seeking justice, NATO intervened in Libya saying it wanted to stop Muammar Gaddafi massacring his own people, governments are wincing before the events in Syria where Assad is crushing his own people.

Israel likes to bandy around the phrase “own people”. When Ariel Sharon launched Operation Defensive Shield in 2002 to crush the second Palestinian Intifada, the discourse of violence against one’s “own people” was one important rhetorical device used in the propaganda war that raged: ‘we were forced into this response but it pales in significance with what Hafez al-Assad did to his own people in Hama, to what Saddam Hussein did to his own people in Halabja’. The argument, repeated ad nauseum by Israeli spokesmen, diplomats, politicians, you name it, over the years, did not only rest on a comparison of numbers – who killed more? – but also rested on the idea that Israel was acting against an Other for which it was not responsible, whereas Assad and Hussein were acting against their own people.

Since 2000 around 4,800 Palestinians have been killed in hostilities concerning the revolt against military occupation. During Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in December 2008/January 2009, Israeli security forces killed 1,396 Palestinians. This year, Syrian rights/opposition groups say around 1,400 Syrians have died since protests began in March. Just several weeks after protests began in Libya in early February, various international organisations were citing figures of 2,000 or more dead.

Like other states, Israel should be responsible for all of those who reside on its territory, territory which de facto includes all of historical Palestine and which it de jure wants to be include all Palestine. Indeed, if it is forced to concede a Palestinian state, Israel wants to maintain troops in the Jordan valley and retain large chunks of the West Bank/Judea-Samaria. The existence of the Palestinian Authority to help administer and police this one element of the population of Palestine is another prop helping Israel in abdicating a responsibility that is part of modern conceptions of statehood. A political entity that does not guarantee equality and citizenship to all of the people on its territory most likely does so because of outdated and racist definitions of the nation state, and impractical and deadly propositions on who its people are.

The Israeli government’s novelty of demanding the Palestinian Authority recognise Israeli as a “Jewish state” in return for allowing the PA status as a state itself speaks to this issue: not just because it seeks to limit who within historical Palestine has the right to citizenship in Israel while expanding its possibilities to include any and all Jews of the world (who have their own citizenship in other states), but because it may well be a ruse to avoid Palestinians of the occupied territories acquiring separate state status! (Alain Gresh looks at some of these absurdities here: http://blog.mondediplo.net/2011-08-01-Israel-Etat-juif-Doutes-francais)