Who Really Represents Palestine?
One of the most common criticisms I’ve faced since I began advocating more publicly for peace and coexistence between Palestinians and Israelis is the charge that I am somehow falsely representing myself as a representative of Palestinians.
The only times I actually remember claiming to speak for Palestinians as a whole were jokes: one time I joked that I speak for all Palestinians when I say it is pronounced Hamas, and not Khamas, and another time I joked that I speak for all Palestinians and all Israelis when I say that chocolate hummus is an abomination.
But nonetheless whenever I even mention the fact that I am Palestinian, angry people start coming into my comment section and claiming that I am trying to falsely represent Palestinians.
Honestly, I am not interested in trying to represent an entire nation of millions of people, many of whom disagree with me. If I wanted to represent them, I would stand for election.
Palestinians are a whole spectrum, and the diasporisation of Palestinians made it inevitable that we would become highly diverse, because many of us are scattered around the world. Life for a British-Palestinian living in the UK such as myself is not going to be the same as it would be for a Palestinian in Gaza, or a Palestinian in Lebanon, or a Palestinian in South Korea, or Australia, or New York City.
But beyond that, we all have different ideologies and different motivations because we are all different people. I’m a liberal secularist, so my thoughts and feelings are not going to be the same as someone who is an Islamist. But Palestinians as a group encompass both of those extremes.
If any group represents Palestinians, it would be the elected representatives of Palestinians, but given that we haven’t had a Palestinian election for over 15 years, even the claim of the governmental and leadership structures to represent Palestinians are really quite tenuous.
Perhaps we can say that opinion polling of Palestinians represents Palestinians, but conducting opinion polls in war zones is tremendously difficult logistically, and conducting opinion polls of a group of people who have been scattered and diasporised is also very difficult.
What I mean when I reference the fact that I am Palestinian is that Palestinians are a diverse and complex group of people. I only speak for myself and anyone who specifically agrees with me, but I am part of a spectrum with lots of internal disagreements.
I am not saying that I represent Palestinians as a whole, but I also think the idea that Palestinians should be represented by groups like Hamas as a whole is wrong and unfair to all of the Palestinians who disagree with them. And that includes me. I criticise and condemn Hamas because I disagree with their ideology and their actions. They do not represent me.
Indeed, Palestinians are deeply unhappy with the leadership of Hamas and indeed also the various factions of the PLO, and they should be allowed to express themselves freely. If we were to look at the current opinion spectrum of Palestinians, we would see that actually my views are not that outlandish:
A majority of Palestinians in the most recent polling—with all of the aforementioned caveats about how difficult it is to poll during war, and in the context of diasporisation—favour a 2-state solution and the preferred strategy of the majority to achieve this is either negotiations or non-violent resistance.
In other words, when I criticise and condemn Hamas and their strategy of all-out militant confrontation to achieve an Islamic state on the basis of historic Palestine and ethnically cleanse the Jewish population, I am not in fact going against the majority of other Palestinians.
Certainly, given that I am British and given that I am a liberal secularist I am an outlier on the Palestinian political spectrum. Again, I would never claim to be representative of Palestinians.
But the people who are desperate to tear me down are not representative of Palestinians, either.
In the end, good strategy is good strategy. Successful institutions are successful institutions. You can try to shoot the messenger all you want to, but that does not mean that his or her message is incorrect.
This is a guest essay written by John Aziz, a British-Palestinian writer and analyst of Middle East politics and history. Find him on X @aziz0nomics. Follow his Substack here.
