It Only Begins with Recognizing Palestine's 'Right to Self-Determination'

It only begins with recognizing Palestine's 'right to self-determination'

(Reading Takanori Hayao's '30 Things You Should Know About Israel')

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In the final section of this book, pages 241-243, Takanori Hayao emphasizes that

the core common to the arguments of thinkers and researchers such as Hamid Dabashi, Sara Roy, and Judith Butler

lies in the single point: 'Recognize Palestine's right to self-determination.'

Before talking about 'peace,' 'dialogue,' or 'economic prosperity,'

one must first recognize that the Palestinians themselves are subjects who possess

✅ their own land

✅ borders

✅ a political future

(which requires things like having settlements properly removed and handing over border control authority).

Without that, superficial peace agreements, ceasefire agreements, or reconstruction efforts will not lead to any fundamental solution (because a 'ceasefire' without recognizing the right to self-determination can be ended at any time).

Furthermore, as part of Sara Roy's argument,

a strong critique is introduced regarding the stance of erasing the political reality of 'occupation' from the discussion and substituting the issue with talk of humanitarian aid and charity.

This is the perspective of 'recognizing the agency of the people of Gaza.'

'They are pitiful' and 'we must help them' are easy perspectives to adopt, and currently, media reports also tend to follow that line, focusing on questions like 'what about reconstruction?' but,

the point that what is currently most missing from the discussion is the demand to restore the [right to self-determination] of the Palestinian people hits the nail on the head.