A Genealogy of Political Proof: One Hundred Years of Investigative Commissions to Palestine, 1919-2009

This project is a history of Palestinian nationalism as it developed in dialectic tension with Israel's legacy as a refuge for the Jews. I examine this history as a key aspect of the development of a global politics of suffering and human rights that emerged in response to World War II and the Holocaust. I trace those shifts through a history of commissions that have inquired into the political conditions and opinions of Palestinians throughout the 1900s until today.

In September 2000 the second (uprising) against Israeli occupation began. Throughout, competing claims of suffering have been exchanged between Palestinians and Israelis, repeating a theme that has characterized the conflict for over six decades. It is in part on the basis of their victimhood that Palestinians have waged their struggle for national rights and legitimacy, called for international protection, and sought humanitarian aid. There is a tension in that Palestinians make their political appeals through the language of victimization to the human rights world, which consists of a set of norms, discourses and institutions that has emerged after WWII out of the traumatic historical experience of the Jews, during the same period that Israel achieved statehood. Are Palestinians confined within a paradigm that already defines them as inadequate to the standards of suffering set by the iconic tragedy of the Holocaust? If Palestinians inhabit this impossible status, how does it compel them to emphasize their worthiness as suffering supplicant?

This research addresses those puzzles through an exploration of the changing forms of political claim-making and the role of suffering and notions of rights in Palestinian nationalism. In order to trace the influence of the Holocaust and human rights in the growth of the victim as a Palestinian political identity, I will examine archival material of those involved in select investigative commissions and whose papers contain Palestinian correspondence. Although historians and political scientists have written about many of these commissions individually, none has focused specifically on Arabs' contributions. Nor have these commissions been examined together as a series, or been viewed as a history of transregional knowledge production as I intend.

Tracking the development of "suffering" as a significant theme in Palestinian nationalist practice, and the narration of Palestinian history and its engagement with Zionism, narratives of the Holocaust, and the Israeli state will yield critical insight into how suffering has been construed, discursively, symbolically, and practically, as the locus of proof for political merits. Through their interactions with investigative commissions Palestinians have presented their demands for liberty and justice to the international powers perceived to be most influential in determining the fate of Palestine after the rise of Zionism and the ongoing colonization of Arab lands. Research into the processes by which Palestinian representatives were identified, the idioms through which they appealed to these investigators and international powers, and how they understood or misunderstood Zionism, and the importance of the Holocaust and Jewish suffering as a justification for political rewards will provide an answer to central questions of this project: What effect has the global influence of human rights had on the growing significance of suffering and victimhood in Palestinian nationalism? How have the Holocaust, human rights, and "victimhood" shaped Palestinian national identity and politics? In addition to providing novel perspectives on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, my exploration of how Palestinians' political claims have been made and framed to cross borders and cultural divides, and the politicization of victimhood and suffering that has emerged, will provide insights into the changing nature of the human rights and UN system more broadly.

This research will have an impact across four arenas: academic, political, popular, and cultural. In addition to the academic beneficiaries described, this research would benefit practitioners in the United Nations, in the fields of development and human rights, as well as people involved with international diplomacy and those working in international NGOs. They will gain insight into the effects of their work from my critical analysis of the investigative and human rights commissions, and their many unintended political, social, and economic side effects. Beyond publication of academic articles and a monograph, methods of broader dissemination of results from this project include: 1) presentations at academic conferences in the US and UK and at research centers which NGO professionals attend in Israel/Palestine; 2) development of library capacity in Palestine and Lebanon through a partnership with Institute for Palestine Studies; 3)press and communications activity, including interviews with news outlets and publication of political analyses in popular and online media outlets.

Those with a general interest in the Middle East and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular will benefit from the approach of this research that focuses on the mutually constitutive histories of Israel and Palestine. Although much analysis of Israel-Palestine focuses on one "side" or the other, thereby entrenching false perceptions of the "ancient and unsolvable" nature of this conflict, the examination in this research of how Jewish and Israeli experiences and representations of the Holocaust have also shaped Palestinian identity, politics, and forms of self-representation should prompt readers to take a fresh look at the history and possible futures of the region. It is hoped that in Israel/Palestine, my research into the mutually constitutive histories of both peoples will provoke thought and further research that conceives of both nations within the same analytical purview, which is arguably a step towards producing a more harmonious future for both peoples.

These areas of impact, which are medium- to long-term, can also all contribute to enhancing public debate and contribute to a more informed citizenry in the UK and elsewhere. In order to ensure a wider audience for this research, I will continue to publish socio-political analyses and commentary in popular journals (such as MERIP and Jadaliyya, among others) based on this research. Critical analysis of the effects of investigations of rights abuses may provoke reconsideration of their methodologies by human rights activists and other members of the NGO community involved in Israel/Palestine and elsewhere. It is hoped that the project will also benefit research institutions and libraries housing Palestinian documents, especially the libraries of the Institute for Palestine Studies, by raising the profiles of their collections and initiating preliminary organization of documents.

My research is intended as a contribution to our understanding of the local and global ethical and political logics that, inadvertently or not, promote and enable certain kinds of violent conflict. The dynamics of conflict in Palestine are at once shaped by those logics and are a function of Palestinians' own understandings of them, of rights and dignity, of the meaning of statehood, autonomy, political protest and violence. They are a function of how they represent these values and activities, the reasons they offer to demand and justify them, and how they conceive of the audiences that those explanations must reach. In order to improve democratic governance and resolve the conflict, these dynamics must be well understood.