The thing I love about Newt Gingrich is that whenever he finds himself with one foot in his mouth, he decides that the best way to maintain his balance is to put the other one there as well. In this particular case, I’m talking about comments he made over the weekend regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Gingrich had previously created a bit of a stir by calling the Palestinians a “invented” people. During the latest GOP debate, Gingrich refused to back down:
“Is what I said factually correct? Yes. Is it historically true? Yes. Are we in a situation where every day rockets are fired into Israel? While the United States, the current administration tries to pressure the Israelis into a peace process… Somebody ought to have the courage to tell the truth. These people are terrorists.”
So, because he asked, let’s look at the history. First of all, we need to acknowledge that ethnic groups are fluid entities that evolve over time. If you disagree, just ask your neighbor if his Visigoth heritage still drives him to hate the Romans. Moreover, people can and do belong to a number of different ethnic, racial, and national groups all at the same time. (For instance, personally I identify as a Christian, a Westerner, an American, a Caucasian-American, a Minnesotan, a Protestant, and a Baptist–depending on exactly who is asking and why.)
With those concepts as background, the ethnic group of the people who live in the West Bank and the Gaza strip is usually defined as Arab. “Arabs” as a people group evolved in the first couple of centuries after Muhammad died, when his followers spread Islam and the Arab language across the Middle East and North Africa. Arabs mostly live in modern-day Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan, the Arabian peninsula, and North Africa, and are largely defined by two features: the Arab language and the Sunni Muslim religion. During the 20th century, as the Middle East was de-colonized and the countries we know today were built, the importance of the Arab nationality started declining, replaced by both newer country-based identities (Syrian, Jordanian, Saudi, etc.) and by a growing Islamic identity. This is not to say that being Arab isn’t still important, but it is now in most cases for most Arabs that particular identity is less important than being a Saudi (or Egyptian or Jordanian or Syrian) or being a Muslim.
That’s the context of the development of the Palestinian nationality. When Israel was formed after World War II, Jordan owned the territory that is now the West Bank, and Egypt owned what is now Gaza. Jordan, in particular, made a concerted attempt to incorporate the people who lived in the West Bank into the larger Jordanian identity that they were trying to create. The Six Day War in 1967, however, put a stop to that. I don’t want to get into the specifics or the debate around that conflict, but the result of that war was that Israel controlled all of the West Bank and the Gaza strip (along with a bunch of other territory, most of which they gave back eventually).
Many Arabs lived, and still live, on the Gaza and West Bank, but Israel never incorporated them into the Israeli state and identity. (Again, I’m not trying to pass judgement on that decision, merely mentioning it as historical fact.) Moreover, Jordan and Egypt continued to build their own national identities with the people who lived on the territory that they did control. The result was that the people who lived in the West Bank and the Gaza strip were largely left out. Instead, their mutual goals and interests caused them to start building their own national goals and interests; hence the Palestinians, as a people group, were born.
So are the Palestinians an invented people? Maybe, insomuch as any people group is invented–although I will note that, if you really want to think of it that way then you also need to acknowledge that Israel had a huge hand in that invention.
But, of course, Gingrich doesn’t stop there. Where Gingrich really goes wrong, is his implicit assumption that because the Palestinian people group is “invented” it does not have the same rights or standing as other ethnic groups. After all, Gingrich isn’t engaging simply in an anthropological investigation of Palestinian identity; he is trying to assert a fact that he sees as relevant to the current dispute between Israel and Palestine.
Oh, and then he makes this absurd notion worse with his patently false and offensive statement that “these people [Palestinians] are terrorists”. Yes, some Palestinians are terrorists. Some Christians are terrorists. Some Americans are terrorists. But to say “Christians are terrorists” is offensive, to say “Americans are terrorists” is offensive, and to say “Palestinians are terrorists” is offensive. Anyone who wants to be president should understand that distinction.
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