
Why would someone like Edward Said give his life to intellectually opposing a majoritarian Jewish state if its successor was to be a majoritarian Muslim nation? Why would the Palestinian struggle have a claim on our solidarity, if it’s only goal was to create yet another denominational state?...A radical friend of mine objected to my characterization of Hamas as a fundamentalist and sectarian party. Think of its extraordinary record of public service, he said, the schools it runs, the hospitals and orphanges that it has built, the commitment it has shown to constructively improving the lot of the Palestinian people. I had to point out to him that the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh could claim credit for exactly the same achievements. And since he wouldn’t want Indian Muslims, Christians and Sikhs to live in an India defined by Hindutva, we should be wary of a party like Hamas that would have Christians, Jews and Muslims live in a state defined by political Islam.
King Hussein’s grandfather King Abdullah of Jordan wrote and published this essay in America way back in 1947:
Our case is quite simple: For nearly 2,000 years Palestine has been almost 100 per cent Arab. It is still preponderantly Arab today, in spite of enormous Jewish immigration. But if this immigration continues we shall soon be outnumbered—a minority in our home.
Palestine is a small and very poor country, about the size of your state of Vermont. Its Arab population is only about 1,200,000. Already we have had forced on us, against our will, some 600,000 Zionist Jews. We are threatened with many hundreds of thousands more...
Think for a moment: In the last 25 years we have had one third of our entire population forced upon us. In America that would be the equivalent of 45,000,000 complete strangers admitted to your country, over your violent protest, since 1921. How would you have reacted to that?