| dc.description.abstract | The diplomatic and political deadlock in what has come to be known as
the Palestine/Israel conflict, has led to the re-emergence of an anti-partition
discourse that draws its arguments from the reality on the ground and/or from
anti-Zionism. Why such a re-emergence? Actually, anti-partitionism as an
antagonism depends on its corollary, partitionism, and as such, they have
existed for the same period of time. Furthermore, the debate between antipartitionists
and pro-partitionists – nowadays often referred to as a debate
between the one-state and the two-state solution – is not peculiar to the period
around 2000. It echoes the situation in the late 1910s when the British were
settling in Palestine and authorising the Zionist settler colonial movement to
build a Jewish homeland thus introducing the seeds of partition and arousing
expressions of anti-partitionism.
This dissertation aims to articulate a political history of the antipartitionist
perspectives against the backdrop of an increasing acceptance of
Palestine's partition as a solution. This account runs from 1915 and the first
partition – that of the Arab territories of the Ottoman Empire – to 1988 and the
Palestinian recognition of the principle of partition. Thus, I argue that the antipartitionist
perspectives have persisted throughout history.
Such a historical perspective enabled me to consider the acceptance of
partition as the result of a shift from a “national and territorial liberation” strategy
to the search for “sovereignty and national independence”, a shift that was
operated in the Palestinian national movement as well as in the Zionist
movement, and which made statehood the main objective.
In this regard, the Palestinian acceptance of the principle of partition and of a
two-state solution may be regarded as a legitimation of the Israeli colonial
settler state. | en_GB |
