Framing Zionism to mitigate Palestinian Rejectionism

The nigh unprecedented protests by Gazans against Hamas suggest that desperation can triumph over long-held ideology. Whether historical in the form of rejected two-state solution offers with Israel or more recent in the strong Palestinian support of Hamas’s October 7^th massacre, this latest uprising against Hamas shows a turning point.

However, a moment of desperation might not be enough to counter decades of opposition to what the Palestinians and Islamic world at large tend to view as a disruption to their ummah, or Islamic nation. Despite the prevailing pro-Palestine mantra of “It didn’t start on October 7th!”, this conflict didn’t even begin with the Arab war on the re-established Israel in 1948. If one ignores centuries of Jewish and other non-Muslim subjugation under caliphate rule, the relatively recent waves of Arab-Jewish violence began with the 1929 Arab massacre of Jews in Hebron. This violence stems from the expansionist concept of dar al-Islam which holds the historic region of Israel/Palestine as fundamentally Muslim, thus framing Jewish self-determination there – however small – as a threat to Islamic hegemony. Indeed, Dr. Einat Wilf warns of this perceived threat in her manifesto that at their core, Palestinian and many Arab Islamic leaderships at large will not tolerate any non-Islamic entity in what they consider Muslim lands.

In this way, she highlights the importance of truly listening to what these entities are saying – namely, that the Zionist aspiration of secure Jewish self-determination in the Jews’ historic homeland is a dire affront. This Islamic rejectionism appears in many statements by entities such as the Islamic Republic of Iran and Hamas themselves. These bodies frame Jews – sometimes, but not always, rephrasing to “Zionists” to distinguish from those Jews still happy to live as dhimmi under dar al-Islam or oppose Israel’s existence from the safety of the diaspora – as occupiers, shaming any associated Jewish diaspora histories in Europe as proof of alleged colonial aims.

Therefore, a solution to persuade today’s Gazans and Palestinians overall toward peace could focus on reframing Jewish self-determination in historic Israel/Palestine as simply a small autonomous region within the greater Arab Islamic dominion of 22 countries. After all, Israel’s two million Arab citizens currently comprise over 20 percent of the Israeli population and enjoy fully equal rights. To this effect, Israel could in fact be thought of us another Arab entity, and one whose status as a Jewish state shouldn’t matter according to the rationale of the ummah which dismisses the Western concept of the nation-state and holds all Islamic land as a single entity.

Generations of political turmoil and, most recently, devastating war and destruction in Gaza might seem to have undoubtedly made any reconciliation impossible at this point. Still, the first step might already have been taken with the latest strong stance by the Gazan people against Hamas’s extremist absolutism. In time, this framing could supplement the already-strengthening ties of various Arab countries with Israel. With such backing, the Palestinians could finally move toward co-existence, wherein the curb in terrorism would allow security checkpoints to lift, Gaza to be rebuilt, and Palestinian Arabs to live alongside Israelis in the pluralistic one-state solution to which so many pro-Palestinian narratives claim to aspire.