Aslı Ü. Bâli & Omar M. Dajani || A postnational future seems far from imminent. The insecurity and dislocation that has attended the successive economic and political crises of the last two decades has given rise to a resurgence in nationalism, and supranational governance today elicits as much suspicion as hopefulness.[1] Even so, questions persist about the merits of the nation-state as the defining unit of the contemporary international order.[2]
Perhaps nowhere are its shortcomings more poignantly reflected than in the predicament of two national communities who remain stateless a century after nation-states first emerged in the Middle East: the Palestinians and the Kurds. And yet, despite—or perhaps because of—the extraordinary challenges they have faced, creative efforts to rethink the relationship between nation and state are unfolding in both contexts. They are worth watching.
As we discuss in a recent essay, the nation-state was introduced to the Middle East through the region’s colonial encounter with the West.[3] As in other parts of the world, the process was violent, as the delimitation of borders and the alignment of new states with new “national” identities created majorities and minorities. In the political order that took form following the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire, Palestinians and Kurds found themselves outside the fold. Zionism, itself both an outgrowth of and a response to European nationalism, succeeded with British assistance in erecting a Jewish nation-state in Palestine.
But it did so by visiting the experience of minoritization and exclusion that Jews had suffered in Europe upon Palestine’s indigenous Arab population. In order to establish and preserve a Jewish political majority in the new state of Israel, Zionist paramilitaries forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homes, and they were subsequently barred from returning by the newly established Israeli military; meanwhile, Palestinians who remained in Israel were relegated to minority status, and the Israeli state has imposed half a century of military rule on those residing in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
The partition of Ottoman territory was similarly cruel to the Kurds. Borders set through imperial machinations split Kurdish lands among the newly independent states of Turkey, Syria, and Iraq. Transformed into the largest ethnic and linguistic minority in all three, the new states subjected Kurds to assimilationist pressure, suppression of political and cultural expression, disenfranchisement, and even genocide. The Kurdish community in Iran has similarly faced marginalization, and at times brutal, political repression.[4] The remedy to statelessness initially pursued by Palestinians and Kurds was to strive to establish nation-states of their own, through armed resistance and, later, negotiation. Neither has gone well.
Although the Palestine Liberation Organization signaled its acceptance of a two-state solution in 1988, it is no closer to establishing an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel than it was 35 years ago. Caged within the now-ossified jurisdictional framework established by the Oslo Accords, Palestinian national institutions exercise authority over a tiny and fragmented space, hemmed in by ever-growing Israeli settlements, security infrastructure, and movement restrictions. Although the international community ritually pledges support for the right of Palestinians to national self-determination, it has shown little mettle in the face of Israel’s creeping annexation of Palestinian territory.[5]
Kurdish political movements, for their part, have encountered similarly difficult obstacles to realizing national aspirations. The decades-long secessionist struggle waged by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) failed to wrest any Kurdish lands from Turkey. And while Kurds in Iraq succeeded in securing significant autonomy, with American military and political support, their attempt in 2017 to translate it into independence elicited a unified rebuke from regional and international actors. Moreover, like other nationalist governments in the region, the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq has systematically discriminated against ethnic and religious minorities.[6]
The tendency of the nation-state system to render the process of selfdetermination a zero-sum game, producing majoritarian and centralizing dynamics that privilege some groups at the expense of others, has prompted a search for alternative frameworks for configuring authority. In Israel-Palestine, one such alternative—the idea of a two-state confederation—has generated increasing interest over the last decade.
Although it has yet to gain traction with political leaders, such thinking is animating a small but vibrant binational popular movement, A Land for All (ALFA).[7] ALFA does not advocate total repudiation of the nation-state, embracing a two-state solution as a means of achieving selfdetermination for Palestinians and Israeli Jews. But it does reimagine the relationship between nation, state and territory, calling for mutual recognition that all of Israel-Palestine is a “shared homeland” for both Palestinians and Jewish Israelis.[8]
While national borders within this shared space would be delimited and regulated, there would be freedom of movement and residence across them, based on commitment to “the vision of an open land, where citizens of both [states] have the right to travel, work and live anywhere.”
By overcoming the binary of “two states for two peoples” in this way, several issues that have impeded a peace settlement become easier to resolve: Israelis would be permitted to remain in their homes as residents of a Palestinian state. Palestinians, including refugees, would have the right to [return and] reside not only in the State of Palestine, but also in Israel. While permanent residents of both states would not be entitled to vote in national elections, they would be assured representation in local political institutions and the protection of a supranational court.
In addition, the city of Jerusalem, which straddles the territory of the two states, would be “whole, open and shared rather than carved by walls and fences.” To be sure, these ideas require elaboration and critical engagement and raise difficult challenges of their own. But by redefining the nation-state to allow a measure of territorial indeterminacy, they offer the possibility of devising integrative solutions to longstanding and divisive problems.
If Palestinians and Israelis have attempted to reconceptualize the nationstate, Kurdish communities in Turkey and Syria have moved to abandon it entirely, advocating—and, in Syria, implementing—a non-statist model of political organization called “democratic confederalism.”[9] Conceived by PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, and inspired in part by the writings of Benedict Anderson and Murray Bookchin, democratic confederalism rejects separatist nationalism in favor of radical decentralization of political institutions, direct local democracy and a normative commitment to gender, ethnic, and religious inclusion.[10]
Moreover, Kurdish communities have implemented these ideas on the ground in Kurdishmajority areas of Syria, after wresting substantial autonomy from the Assad regime during the height of the Syrian civil war and have managed to preserve it despite challenges from ISIS, Ankara, Damascus, and other foes. In Rojava, as the Autonomous Administration of North East Syria is popularly called, governance operates through “a complex network of local, self-administrating bodies,” which are designed, according to Michael Knapp and Joost Jongerden, “to carry out decision-making functions as closely as possible to the people concerned, in the places where they live and according to their direct deliberation.”[11]
Within this system, authority emanates from the bottom-up—from elected councils at the local community level (or, in some cases, serving particular ethno-religious communities, such as Arabs and Assyrians, or other special categories, such as youth and women) up to district, city, and provincial canton levels—though some matters (particularly in the realm of external security) remain under the centralized authority of miliary forces aligned with the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD). Although in this respect, and others, the process of translating theory into practice on the ground in Rojava presents significant challenges, it has delivered a decade of democratic self-government to communities that have never before enjoyed it.[12]
The experience of Palestinians and Kurds over the last century highlights not only the trouble the nation-state has caused, but also the reasons it retains some allure: the promise of security, belonging, and access to the privileges of membership in the community of states. The confederal frameworks for governance being contemplated by Israelis and Palestinians, and deployed by Kurds, may not save or spell the demise of the nation-state. But in a moment when the international order faces unprecedented threats—from technological change, economic and political polarization, and increasing population movement across a warming planet—they offer a reminder that an emancipatory vision for political change can emerge from the most inhospitable circumstances.
Footnotes
*We are grateful to the participants of the Yale Law School Middle East Studies Seminar for their feedback on an earlier version of this essay. We are also grateful to participants at the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law’s Centennial celebration for their comments and questions.
[1]‘The Nation State is Back’: Front National’s Marine Le Pen Rides on Global Mood, The Guardian (Sept. 18, 2016); Susi Dennison & Jana Puglierin, Crisis of Confidence: How Europeans See Their Place in the World, Eur. Council on Foreign Relations (June 9, 2021).
[2] Rana Dasgupta, The Demise of the Nation State, The Guardian (Apr. 5, 2018).
[3] Aslı Ü. Bâli & Omar M. Dajani, Beyond the Nation State in the Middle East, Bos. Rev. (Jan. 9, 2023).
[4] Iran: Human Rights Abuses Against the Kurdish Minority, Amnesty Int’l (2008); Iran: Brutal Repression in Kurdistan Capital, Hum. Rts. Watch (Dec. 21, 2022).
[5] Omar M. Dajani, Israel’s Creeping Annexation, 111 AJIL Unbound 51 (2017).
[6] Iraqi Kurdistan: Arabs Displaced, Cordoned Off, Detained, Hum. Rts. Watch (Feb. 25, 2015).
[7] A Land for All/Two States, One Homeland, A Land for All (2023).
[8] From Conflict to Reconciliation: A New Vision for Palestinian-Israeli Peace Draft for Discussion, A Land for All (2021).
[9] Abdullah Ocalan, Democratic Confederalism (1st ed. 2011).
[10] Nick Danforth, An Imprisoned Nationalist Reads Benedict Anderson, Dissent Mag. (Mar. 7, 2013); Damian Gerber & Shannon Brincat, When Öcalan met Bookchin: the Kurdish Freedom Movement and the Political Theory of Democratic Confederalism, 26 Geopolitics 973 (2018).
[11] Michael Knapp & Joost Jongerden, Peace Committees, Platforms and the Political Ordering of Society: Doing Justice in the Federation of Northern and Eastern Syria (NES), 8 Kurdish Stud. 297 (2020).
[12] Matt Broomfield, Is Rojava a Socialist Utopia? The Syrian Polity was Built on a Web of Contradictions, UnHerd (Mar. 28, 2023).
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